SOMEWHAT FRANK

myAOL Turns One As Other AOL Products Sunset

I was on the road last week and weekend for TECH cocktail Boston 2 so down time and internet access were sparse, preventing me from wishing myAOL, the personalized startpage product I moved to the east coast to work on for AOL, a proper one year birthday.

Happy birthday myAOL - my oh my, you are looking good at one!

I must first note, I am no longer part of the myAOL team as I have been reassigned to the People Network which includes Bebo, AIM, ICQ, Yedda and Goowy. But I wanted to take a moment to check in with the lovable startpage product that I spent over a year and half working on to see just how it has evolved since launching myAOL in July 2007.

The 'my' Trend, How To Freeload at Web 2.0 Expo, Google Genetic Index Coming, AOL Top Ad Network By Reach & Is Content A Commodity?

Photo of the Week: This past weekend brought out some warmer spring weather which brought out the joggers like this photo captured on film in Chicago by my friend Araceli Arroyo.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 4.20.2008

New My Yahoo Beta Reactions, Google Phone, Feedbase Preview, ClearSpring Funded, Free Wi-fi & 5 Design Principles

Photo of the Week: This photo of a robot titled bleeplaps by Eric Skiff was taken at SXSW which is going on this weekend in Austin, Texas.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 03.11.07

My Yahoo! Gets Web 2.0 Makeover
Just as Yahoo CEO, Terry Semel hinted at last week, the new My Yahoo Beta was launched this week to offer an drag and drop experience that mirrors the current Yahoo home page. There were a number of media reactions to the product. Steve Rubel feels that the new My Yahoo is abandoning the geeks. Erick Schonfeld thinks Yahoo is chasing web 2.0 dreams. While Greg Linden explained how Yahoo will be adding more personalization to My Yahoo.

Freebase Will Prove Addictive
Freebase, launched this week to create an online database, is to centralize as much data as possible to allow participants to freely add and access data - developers can extract information from Freebase via a set of APIs and add it to their web applications. This application, if true to its mission, could be huge.

A Roundup of Tools & Applications For Developers
Brian Benzinger pulls together a hardy list of web applications for project planning, system administration, usability testing, collaborative development, and web services to help "Developers, Developers, Developers…".

Criteo’s AutoRoll: What Readers are Reading
Eric Olson showcases a new blog widget by Criteo called the AutoRoll that displays links to blogs that your readers should like similar to the way MyBlogLog offers up popular links in each blog community. Based on each unique reader's affinity for each specific blog, the Criteo Recommendation Engine will compute on a real-time basis the relative affinity of all blogs.

Google Phone: Team of 100 working on Blackberry like….?
Is Google planning to follow Apple's lead into the phone industry?

Clearspring Raises $5.5M for Widget Service
ClearSpring, the Arlington, Virginia-based widget marketplace, which helps content owners widgetize and widget makers hook up with web and desktop distribution platforms, has raised $5.5 million in its second round of funding, for a total of $7.5 million raised.

Start-up to launch FREE wireless network in Silicon Valley
Meraki Networks, a Mountain View, California-based start-up is planning to build a free wireless Internet network in central San Francisco, and all residents have to do is put a small wireless router supplied by the company in their window or rooftop, to bring free wireless Internet access.

Five Principles to Design By
Web designer Joshua Porter gives five principles he designs social media web sites by.

Newsgator Online Beta: Better Than Before - Still Not Good Enough
Marshall Kirkpatrick gives his perspective on the recently released Newsgator online feed reader beta product.

Feedable Puts a Memetracker in Your RSS Reader
Steve Rubel reviews the new Ajax feed reader called Feedable and expresses his liking of its "memetracker" feature. The "memetracker" is built right in and shows you what the hottest items of the day are.