SOMEWHAT FRANK

Livecontacts Free GPS Buddyfinder Launches

With the popularity of text messaging and the rise of Twitter via mobile there is a growing trend for find me/follow me mobile applications. FindWhere, a Sterling, Virginia based company, has just launched an application called Livecontacts to help you find and keep track of your buddies. Users can now share their location and track their friends’ locations for free. Livecontacts is taking the same approach that craigslist took to democratize the online classified advertising space by offering users what is traditionally a paid geographic data service for free.

Evernote Helps Remember Everything, Anywhere

There are so many things to remember these days that it can be somewhat difficult to keep track of everything. While notes in a moleskin, sticky notes, emails to yourself and photos of things you want to remember might be a few ways to remember things - all these methods seem to scatter reminders all over the place. Evernote, a Sunnyvale, California based startup, looks to offer a place to send, store and retrieve all of the things you need to remember.

TripIt Mobile Version Launches

As a member of the frequent flyer club, I have used TripIt and previously reviewed when it first launched. Now TripIt has made traveling easier by adding some additional mobile support for users on the go with the TripIt Mobile release. With TripIt Mobile users can access what they need to know from their mobile phones including flight changes, and in my case cancellations, hotel addresses and phone numbers, and auto rental info. By adding additional integration components for your TripIt account, even restaurant reservations can be accessed.

Making TripIts applications available on mobile devices makes a lot of sense since when you are traveling you are most likely cannot as easily get on your computer.  TripIt offers applications to enable staying in touch with others in your social network, allowing you to schedule appointments if in the same area or at the same event. In checking out the mobile experience I snapped the photo shown here can be visited on your mobile device at: m.tripit.com.

YouMail Converts Voicemail to Text For Free

If you are on the go or in lots of meetings (like I find myself) you might want to get your voice mail converted to text message or email. YouMail, an Aliso Viejo, California based startup has just added this feature to its private beta which already is a feature rich mobile voice mail solution which offers personalized voice mails based on caller ID, smart greetings and the ability to manage voice mails over the Web.

OpenSocial Foundation Formed, Tips On Making Great Mobile Apps, Twitter Monetization Issue, Value of Widgets & Are Newspapers Dead?

Photo of the Week: With spring upon us, the cherry blossoms are in bloom around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. this week.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 3.30.2008

Video: Thoughts On Twitter (vs. Facebook)

The adoption of Twitter, which I covered previously a number of times, appears to be acceleratingly since March 6th as I have seen my followers double in that three week period. My friend Gary Vaynerchuk recently started to do a daily "thoughts on life" video podcast and gave his thoughts on Twitter vs. Facebook...kinda. So in response to his video I wanted to make a quick SOMEWHAT FRANK TV episode 18 with my thoughts on Twitter (mainly) as well as a few comments about Facebook. I use them both and they are complementary products.

ajaxWindows: Desktop Access From Anywhere

Getting to your personal while away has now gotten a lot easier thanks to the San Diego based startup ajax 13 creators of ajaxWindows. ajaxWindows enables users to access their computer desktop just as if they were on it via a web browser from anywhere and event on a mobile device. Simply create an account and ajaxWindows syncs with your desktop and creates a duplicate online version. You can then access it from anywhere while on the go.

Poll: Will Technology Replace Business Cards?

I attend lots of industry events and I don't know how many times I either run out of business cards or find myself cardless but thanks to technology it is a lot easier to connect. LinkedIn recently joined Facebook and a number of other sites that have created iPhone experiences which makes it easy to contact people you meet immediately thus online identity has replaced one of the features of offline identity - the business card.

Perspective on Apple beta iPhone SDK Release

Yesterday Apple released their long-awaited iPhone SDK...sort of. For those who don't drink the Apple Kool-aid, Apple originally said that only web applications could be used to create iPhone applications. In October, after three months of unauthorized unlocking programs and hacks to install native iPhone applications, they reversed their decision and announced they would release a software development kit (SDK), so developers could write native code.

iPhone Social Network Pondering, Facebook Fatigue, Oscar Updates, IE8 Beta Coming, Mixx Updates, imagine it! & Olympic Bloggers

Photo of the Week: I visited the skinnyCorp office with TECH cocktail co-founder Eric Olson this past week and snapped this photo of the their workspace. Those threadless folks are pretty rad! The space kind of reminded me of a cross between Pee Wee's Playhouse, without the talking chair of course, and MAKE Magazine.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.24.2008

Twitter Feature Request: @ Replies To Mobile

Twitter is a great communication tool. I use it all the time. I initially enabled mobile notifications but found I was getting a constant stream of Twitter text messages which can be somewhat distracting. So I turned off mobile notifications except for direct messages. But I still find that I miss "@ replies" since they cannot currently be sent to my mobile device.

I just put in a feature request directly with Twitter via their online form. I would love to be able to get "@ replies" sent directly to my mobile device just the same as direct messages are. Brian Caldwell and David Robinson agree with me.  Does anyone else want to see this feature added?

UPDATE: Kevin Lawver just sent me a work around via direct Twitter message which gets your @ replies sent to your mobile device. By simply sending Twitter track @username you can get any @ replies of your usersname sent directly to you mobile device. Thank you Kevin - you are awesome!

Eyespot Sharpens Its Video Editing Toolset

Eyespot, the online video editing site that I previously reviewed with high regard, has released a new set of tools to make personalization and syndication of videos. The tools include the ability to share to a mobile device or to a number of other video platforms with just one click.

Movial Social Communicator: Share Anywhere

Have you ever taken a photo or seen a video and wanted to immediately share it with your friends while on the go? Obviously you could upload it to Flickr or Facebook or a number of other sites but more than likely times you probably would fire off an email to your friends to share it with them. Your friends would then get your message at various times depending upon when they actually go to check their email which means you are not instantly communicating with your friends.

Movial is looking to help make sharing easier with the recent launch of Movial Social Communicator. Social Communicator offers a desktop client and mobile application that syncs all your mobile phone contacts and empowers users to send videos, photos and news directly to their friends at their current location.

Video: BlogTV Now Streams To Mobile

BlogTV, the personalized online TV platform which I use for streaming live split-screen video interviews, has just made it possible to watch all those videos from your mobile phone while on the go. Now with BlogTV offers all its live streams for free, without any installation of software for all major mobile carriers. But they are still waiting on the iPhone to be able to play these types of videos. 

DEMO 08 Day 1: Roundup

After an evening mixer last night which helped to get everyone together DEMO08, as its name implies, was filled with lots of demos. Rather than review every single company that launched a product today I will give you a brief overview of each one. Overall, I was impressed by a couple of pen-like gadgets, a few enabling technology sites, a couple video sites and of course mobile products.