SOMEWHAT FRANK

Leverage A Virtual Personal Assistant

Finding the ability to do everything you want to in your 24 hour, 7 day week can be a struggle. As the use of Web productivity tools has risen, many of us still try to do MORE with the time we have freed up from leveraging these tools. Email, Instant Messenger and mobile device usage has caused us to look for more instantaneous actions and reactions. How can you get everything done? An intriguing approach that I have recently seen on the rise is the usage of a virtual assistant. This article will look at a few of the current online personal assistant options.

Are you ready to Twiistup?

If you are going to be in the Los Angeles, California area on May 9, 2007 then I would recommend you make your way to Zanzibar in Santa Monica to Twiistup. What is Twiistup? Twiistup, founded by Mike Macadaan, a friend and AOL colleague, is an event that aims to bring together the brightest minds in SoCal for an evening of conversations, demos and enjoyment.

There will be demonstrations from:

Buildv1
Verse Studios
goodreads
yourminis
Urbaniacs
mint
ooVoo

I am planning on being in attendance (unless my work schedule interferes) and it’s my birthday so I am going to take 50 Cent’s advice:

It's your birthday
We gon' party like it's your birthday
We gon' sip Bacardi like it's your birthday
And you know we don't give a f*ck
cause it's not your birthday!

I hope to see you there. I wrote about Twiistup on the TECH cocktail site and Mike offered up the promo code: techcocktail to save guests $10 per ticket - snag your tickets today.

18Seconds.org Spotlights Energy Savings

18Seconds.org is campaign Yahoo recently launched in conjunction with Lawrence Bender, Oscar-winning producer of the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth,"  devoted to informing the world about the energy savings associated with switching from a normal light bulb to a compact fluorescent lamp. The campaign is based on the idea that is only takes 18 seconds to change a regular light bulb to an energy saving compact fluorescent light bulb. Lawrence Bender authored a guest post on the Yahoo! corporate blog which stated:

"If every American swapped just one bulb, it would save more than $8 billion in energy costs, prevent the burning of 30 billion pounds of coal, and keep the equivalent of two million cars worth of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere."

Those are some pretty eye opening numbers. At the same time it is inspiring to hear that everyone can pitch in to help save energy and ultimately the planet. The 18Seconds.org web site offers a mashup which places the current compact florescent lamp purchase numbers by geographic location on a Yahoo map. Currently, Arkansas is the leading energy saving state and Bellingham, Washington is the leading energy saving city in the United States. For additional information about 18Seconds.org, check out the video below.

Six Degrees to… Kevin Bacon's Charity?

We’ve all heard of the game “Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon.”  It’s simple: start with a celebrity, say, Selma Hayek and connect her through movies to Kevin Bacon.

• Salma Hayek in Fools Rush in with
• Matthew Perry on Friends with
• Jennifer Aniston in Along Came Polly with
• Ben Stiller in Something About Mary with
• Matt Dillion in Wild Things with
• Kevin Bacon

And there’s the concept.  Now take the game, and do some good with it through SixDegrees.org. 

Launched by none other than Kevin Bacon himself, in partnership with Network For Good, an AOL, Yahoo and Cisco Systems backed charitable organization, celebrities advocate their favorite charities and encourage others to do the same – and that includes non-Hollywood types.  It’s a great vehicle for awareness as well as fund-raising, as Bacon has promised to match the top six non-celebrity fund-raisers with a $10,000. Check out the video below for Kevin Bacon’s perspective on the charity.

Echoing the ever-growing role of the web as a social network, SixDegrees.org rallies us all around a great purpose that evolved out of a simple grassroots game. I never really considered myself a particularly huge Kevin Bacon fan, though Footloose rocked my world back in 1984, I have to say that I think a lot more highly of him now.

You can donate and add a badge to your web site, social network page or blog. Additionally, you join the Six Degrees AIM Pages Network or buy Six Degrees swag on eBay to show your support.

Special thanks to Kyle Bradbury for assisting with this article.

Related Articles:
Philanthrophy Through Technology
GoodSearch: Search To Benefit Charity
Google.org A 'For Profit' Auto Maker?
The One Million Masterpiece: Online Artwork Collaboration For The Records

The Blogosphere Underground Exposed

Steve Rubel recently posted an interesting piece about the sea of emails, instant messages and bookmarks that are circulated behind the scenes by bloggers, reports and companies calling it the "Blogosphere Underground." The underground conversations are ongoing and sometimes can be overwhelming. Any blogger should be able to relate.

The blogosphere is the ultimate social network. It is a place for exchanging ideas and has connected me with some of the sharpest and most interesting people in the world - many are the thoughtleaders and influencers of the web 2.0 movement. To be quite honest, I cannot keep up with all the conversations behind the scenes all the time as my email fills up like a dirty martini glass at happy hour. Nonetheless, I love the community and interaction the blogosphere provides. Blog on!

Somewhat Frank Turns One

With the two posts today, numbers 567 and 568 respectively, the Somewhat Frank blog has turned one year 0ld - and what a year it has been. It has been a wonderful adventure through the blogosphere which started with a simple business trip to attend a (pre-Katrina) New Orleans conference. Upon returning home from a conference which featured blogging and podcasting seminars, curiosity got the best of me and Somewhat Frank was born to offer my candid perspective and knowledge to the blogosphere in the areas of technology, business and life.

Starting a blog is one of the best things I have ever done. I have shared and debated ideas with people across the globe (see last 100 visitors mapped above).  The network of contacts and friends I have made through blogging is quite unbelievable. Thank you to all of that have read, linked to, mentioned, commented or interacted with me via Somewhat Frank. I look forward to the conversations in the year ahead.   

Gearing Up For Supernova 2006

It’s the first day of summer and I have just arrived in sunny San Francisco where I will be attending Supernova 2006 at the Palace Hotel. The conference is hosted by Kevin Werbach and produced in partnership with The Wharton School of Business. The conference has an all-star cast of speakers and panelists. Here are just a few people who are participating (and there are a lot more!):

    Craig Newmark (Craigslist)
    Jonathan Schwartz (Sun Microsystems)
    Saul Klein (Skype)
    Mena Trott (Six Apart)
    Gil Penchina (Wikia)
    David Sifry (Technorati)
    Mary Hodder (Dabble)
    Mike Arrington (TechCrunch)
    Om Malik (GigaOm)
    Seth Goldstein (Root Markets)
    David Weinberger (JOHO)
    Dan Gilmor (Center of Citizen Media)
    Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC)
    Robert Scoble (PodTech)
    Tantek Celik (Technorati)

Not to mention, TechCrunch is co-hosting the Connected Innovators Showcase on Thursday evening (June 22, 2006). Also the showcase presentation will be streamed into Second Life which was developed by Linden Lab. This means that players of Second Life will get to watch and interact with the Showcase. Attensa will be one of the companies showcased and have posted additional details on their blog. Sounds pretty innovative to me. It should be a super(nova) week - I am looking forward to it.

For additional information about the conference be sure to tune into the Supernova blog.

Apartments.com Moves Into Blogosphere

Apartments.com, a vertical owned by Classified Ventures, recently launched the first corporate blog in the history of the company to coincide with the Apartments.com Room to Move Contest. The contest offers anyone 21 to 30 who still is living at home or with relatives to tell their story and potentially win $20,000+ in cash and prizes. 

I am excited about the project because it was spurred on by a two hour blogging presentation I made to the product development team about a month a go. As a result, I set up the Six Apart Typepad blog with the help of a few design and production resources and as you can see I made the first post but I have handed the reins over to the talented Lisa D. who is having a blast gathering and creating posts like this one calling the day Smurfy. Lisa has been a fast learner and is excited about blogging. She is doing a great job. She had this to say:

"Believe it or not, I knew nothing about blogging until Frank Gruber (of Somewhat Frank) showed me.  Hopefully this will generate a fantastic response for our contest, early results show that we're already ahead of last year's trend."

This is my hope as well. The contest blog is another wonderful example of a unique business blogging implementation. Also, be sure to check it out for yourself here: Apartments.com Room to Move Contest Blog.

Seth Godin Part of Google Video Series

Seth Godin, author of  The Big Moo, Purple Cow and All Marketers Are Liars among others, recently spoke at Google. Google is now presenting a video of his speech on Google Video as part of the Google Author Series. You can view it by clicking this link. I truly enjoy Seth's work so I was pleased to find this free video and would recommend watching it.

In finding this video on Google Video I also came across some the another Google Author Series spotlighting Daniel H. Wilson author of How to Survive A Robot Uprising. So it appears Google is releasing a video a month as part of the series so be on the lo0kout for more to come.

Maybe Google will invite Robert Scoble and Shel Israel authors of Naked Conversations to speak next? Of course they would need sign a wavier promising not to get naked while speaking but that is a small price to pay for free Google Video publicity.

*Naked Conversations 'naked' author photo thanks to New Media Musings

Leadership Is More Than Just Making Decisions

I want to highlight an excellent quote that I recently read in the book compiled by Seth Godin titled The Big Moo. The actual quote by John Seely Brown a renown thinker in the area of management said:

“The job of a leader isn’t just to make decisions, it is to make sense.”

I feel the better you understand the world around you that influences your decisions, the more sense you will make of it all. You can make it easier by surrounding yourself with excellent human resources and relying on them as well as doing your own homework. The blogosphere is an great way to say in tune to the signal.

*Goose image thanks to www.research.ibm.com