SOMEWHAT FRANK

OUTSHOUTS Makes The Music Go Round

OUTSHOUTS, a Palo Alto, California based three employee startup, takes 'making music going round' seriously. OUTSHOUTS enables anyone to act as a DJ to create and send their own mixes of your recorded voice and pre-recorded music or other content over email and text message directly to your mobile phone.

Video Interview: Orli Yakuel Go2Web20.net

Are you familiar with the ultimate Web 2.0 directory online Go2Web20.net? I sat down from my parents home in Chicagoland to chat with Orli Yakuel from her home in Israel. She recently left AOL where she acted as a Web 2.0 analyst and is now in search for the “dream job.”

Facebook Source Code Leak, Porn 2.0, Spock Launches, Personalize Jib Jab, Change of myAOL Heart & Startup Tips

Photo of the Week: A couple of Maine Lobstahs! from a surf & turf event I attended on Friday. It doesn't get a whole lot more "summer" than this.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 08.12.2007

Personalize Your Photos With Graphita

Does the photo below look familiar? You might recall the photo of myself with my good friend and popular blogger Orli Yakuel, which I clowned with the Graphita tool-set for a TechCrunch article I wrote while at Web 2.0 Expo last April. Graphita has officially launched Live Studio to make it easy to express yourself through annotating your photos in high resolution. Personalize your photos and make them fun with Graphita's easy to use tool-set. Graphita CEO David Shantz had this to say about photo personalization:

"A personalized picture is so much more instantly expressive, allowing people to have a “visual voice” that can be shared in an instant."

Live Studio is open and free and is looking to integrate with leaders in the image hosting and sharing world – making it possible to save images directly into accounts at other sites. Once you are have completed personalizations to your photos users can export, e-mailed, posted on a blog or website, add them to a social network profile. Graphita also offers the ability to print on dozens of items like mugs, posters, shirts and calendars through the site.

Google Acquires DoubleClick, 10 Hot Startups, Social Aggregators, FoundRead Born & Web 2.0 Expo Is Upon Us

Photo of the week: This San Francisco Trolley photo taken by, friend and co-founder of TECH cocktail Eric Olson, was the first photo I found on Flickr related to the Web 2.0 Expo this week in SF.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 04.15.07

The Web 2.0 Expo Is Upon Us
I just arrived in San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo. It should be an exciting week of sessions, demos and launch parties in the city by the bay. If you are in town and want to meetup tonight (Sunday) check out this little meetup but keep in mind, this is NOT a TECH cocktail event like the one we just hosted in Chicago - it is just a meetup in SF.

Google Spends $3.1 Billion To Acquire DoubleClick
Makes sense as Google is truly an advertising company. Google announced that they have agreed to acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. Microsoft was reportedly in a bidding war with Google for the company. That is a lot of cash. Rumor has it they are buying the Internet just after the 2016 Chicago Olympics. :-) 

Birth of the Social Aggregator
Social Networks, Blogs and Startpages have long been treated as separate categories of web-based applications. According to Widgify, it is about to change. 

10 Most Successful Web 2.0 Startups To Date
Rev2.org lists its take on the most successful web 2.0 startups. With FeedBurner’s domination of the feed management space I would probably add them to this list. But you probably know already I am a FeedBurner fan.

New RSS 2.0 spec site deployed
Dave Winer has been working on a project to "future-safe" the Harvard site that houses the RSS 2.0 spec. Yesterday, he redirected from the old site to the new one. Congrats Dave on the new site! 

Search for People Across the Social Network Sites
yoName is a search engine that allows you to search friends (not just) on these 6 big networks. 

Introducing FoundRead
GigaPapi GigaOm is at it again as he has launched FoundRead, a shared resource, where anyone can contribute, either through their posts, or experiences or comments. You can choose to contribute freely or anonymously. Great idea Om, congrats on the launch. 

Hot Startup Checklist: Spam A Lot?
An interesting chart of Valleywag (masters of the pie charts, graphs, slides, etc.) highlighting some of the most promising startups.

Go2Web2 Blog Birthday Video

The Go2Web2 blog, written by Israel-based Orli Yakuel, is a superb blog that showcases interesting web 2.0 products a few times a week as it manually aggregates products to place in its web 2.0 directory, Go2Web20.net. The Go2Web2 blog just turned one year old yesterday (March 16, 2007) and to celebrate co-founder, Eyal Shahar decided to produce this video - it's a dandy. Happy blog birthday Go2Web2 blog!

The Attention Economy, Widget Universality, Digg vs. Wired, Google Maps Traffic & Help Locating Starbucks

Photo of the Week: It was a rather crazy peculiar week so I went searching for answers in photographs and found this photo titled very strange moon tonight by Ordinary Guy. It captures the lunar eclipse that occurred on March 3, 2007.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 03.04.07

The Attention Economy: An Overview
Read/Write Web offers a wonderful overview of the Attention Economy. I think the most notable sentence is the following:

"Because of this information explosion, we no longer read - we skim."

The rapid explosion in content has caused a scarcity in attention. Do you read or skim?

Universality of the web widget
Niall Kennedy gets down to the nitty-gitty of explaining some of the differences between widget deployment endpoints from the publisher's point of view, explaining just a few ways a widget must adjust its dialect and structure to adapt and optimize in different widget environments.

Digg Should Sue Wired
Mike Arrington thinks Digg has grounds to sue Wired and explains why in this article. He points to the fact that Wired Magazine’s parent company, Condé Nast, owns Digg competitor Reddit and how they are actively engaged in using Wired to undermine Digg.

Quintura Relaunches With New Interface
Quintura, a Moscow-based company I have highlighted previously has relaunched with a new interface.

Adobe Photoshop Online: It’s Real
Adobe will move Photoshop online as part of a larger move to introduce ad-supported online services to complement its existing products and broaden the company reach into the consumer market.

TouchGraph - Discover the Relationships Contained in Popular Information Sources
Orli Yakuel showcases an interesting search tool that produces a cluster map based off the links to a particular URL. Just remember to get the Java 1.5 toolkit before attempting to run it on your machine. The TouchGraph for Somewhat Frank can be found here.

Google Maps Tailgates Yahoo, Microsoft With Real-Time Traffic Info
Google Maps has caught up with Yahoo and Microsoft in adding live traffic reporting for the United States to their online mapping service.

Data Shows English Blogosphere Has Peaked
Has the English blogosphere peaked in its growth? A new University of Maryland County report seems to think so. What do you think?

Blog Archive SMS-based Starbucks locator, a double shot
Coffee drinkers can now rejoice in the fact you can now send a text message to find out the closest Starbucks. I prefer Dunkin Donuts but either way, I think it is pretty sweet.

Flickr Turns 3
That's right, Flickr, the online photo sharing community owned by Yahoo, has turned three years old and had a big bash to celebrate. Photos can be found here.

Somewhat FeedBurner
Apparently, I have started to receive snail mail at the FeedBurner HQ in Chicago. I guess people think I work for FeedBurner instead of AOL. Either way, I cannot argue with the idea of dual incomes. :)

Web Influencers, Netvibes Security Issues, AIM is #1, Go2Web20.net Revamped, Attention 200 & Design Geekery

It rained quite a bit this week in Silicon Valley so I thought this photo titled rain on tuesday taken by Daisy Romwall was appropriate.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.11.07

The Wizards of Buzz
The Wall Street Journal took an in-depth look at some of the social bookmarking sites that help others to discover the hottest content on the web. These sites include Digg.com, Netscape, Reddit, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Newsvine – all of which empower users to submit content items from around the web. Items are rated and promoted via voting or other mechanisms within the site.The most popular or highest rated items bubble to the top and usually become even more popular as traffic surges towards sources of these hot content items. These social bookmarking sites are managed by a number of users but there are some key influencers that do the most consistent heavy lifting. WSJ put out a podcast to go along with the article and it can be downloaded here.

Netvibes module developer collects web creds, personal content
Niall Kennedy highlights how Netvibes, the personal homepage startup, recently experienced some serious security issues. Netvibes was recently praised by Wall Street Journal reporter Walt Mossberg, but it appears its open-source approach to development has left its users at the mercy of rogue developers. What does this mean? Basically, it means a rogue module developer could take advantage of Netvibes’ users to steal personal information like emails, bank information and just about anything else personal you might find in a homepage module. This is unfortunate for Netvibes as most of its quick growth and development is due to its developer network. I guess Netvibes will have to rethink its security and privacy approach if it or risk losing the trust of its users.

Wall Street Journal IM Ratings: AIM Is #1
What instant messaging product do you use? If its not AOL’s AIM 6.0 you may want to reconsider your choice as an article published this week in the WSJ titled "Rating the New Instant-Messaging Programs" compared AIM 6.0, Yahoo! Messenger 8.1, and Windows Live Messenger 8.1. AIM 6.0 was rated #1.

A Lesson in Viral Video
Inside Higher Education details the events surrounding the Web 2.0 video created by Michael Wusch which Somewhat Frank helped surface in the blogosphere. The article further emphasizes the viral power of the web and the influences of the blogosphere.

Go2web20 Relaunched!
The popular and slick web 2.0 directory created by Orli Yakuel has been revamped and relaunched with a number of improvements which should make the faster and easier to use. It should also offer more information for users. Included in the changes is the creation of a few innovative advertising options.

RocketDock: Add A Mac-like Dock To Your PC
If you are a Mac-lover stuck in a PC-user’s body then you might want give RocketDock a try. Lifehacker recently showcased it as a download of the day so I gave it a try. Upon installing the application created by Punk Software it instantly fulfilled my longing for a Mac-like dock for managing my desktop. Here is an instructional video which details the various configuration options of this nifty little add-on. Oh and buy some schwag or donate to support their development efforts.

31 Places to Monitor Your Reputation Online
If you are into tracking what people might be saying about you online you might want make sure you are checking a bunch of online sources. This article lists 31 places to keep your online reputation in check.

23 Signs That You're Becoming a Design Geek
While developing products I often find myself thinking I am a designer and I know I am not alone. I am admittedly not even close to the skill level of a full-fledged UI designer (like the designers I work with at AOL – they rock!). Nonetheless, this article will give you 23 design geek signs.

Announcing: The Compete Attention 200™
Compete recently posted a list of the top 200 online destinations based on their metrics tracking systems. Surprisingly, Somewhat Frank did not make the Attention 200 – this has to be some sort of mistake.  :-)

Blog Tag: Five Things About Me(me)

Eric Olson, TECH cocktail co-founder and friend, and online marketing guru Lee Odden both tagged me recently to participate in a holiday version of blog tag. According to Lee's post:

"Jeff Pulver started things off with this Holiday version of Blog Tag and this is the way it works: Once you’re tagged by another blogger, you write five things most people don’t know about you and then “tag” five other bloggers."

Though it’s a little off topic for Somewhat Frank I think it falls under the web life category and I respect Eric, Lee and Jeff  so I took a crack at it.

Five Things You May Not Know About Me:

1. I was once pulled on stage while watching a taping of the The Tonight Show with Jay Leno because I forgot to put my cell phone on mute and it went off while Jay was doing his thing. As a result, I got brought up on stage and asked to dance while a few women from the audience stripped my shirt off in front of the entire audience which included my grandmother, Aunt and sister.
2. I used AOL to go online for the first time. I remember my younger brother and I surfed the web for hours and were made well aware of the impact of our surfing when the phone bill arrived and we were found to be dialing into a long distance number for dial-up service. Oops!
3. I found out earlier this year that while vacationing in Cancun I partied with Paris Hilton. I had no idea until this photo surfaced.
4. I have sailed across Lake Michigan with my dad and brother in-law.
5. I am the Frank J. Gruber the fifth or V if you want to go by the roman numeral. Yes, I come from a long line of Frank’s. The name of this blog, Somewhat Frank, has the more obvious candid meaning but secondarily is based off the fact that I am the fifth and grew up being called by my initials, F.J. – so in essence, I am truly somewhat Frank.

The rules say that I now have to challenge five others. I know it probably off topic for some but think of it as a quick vacation post from your normal blogging routine: Brian Oberkirch, Jeremiah Owyang, Veronica Belmont, Orli Yakuel and Mike Arrington - you're it!

What's Next For The Go2Web2.0 Directory

Go2web20.net, an aggregated directory of web 2.0 products and services, launched a few months ago and has been busily growing ever since. Yesterday, co-founders Orli Yakuel and Eyal Shahar gave some insight into a new version of the directory that will be coming soon. The enhancements are as follows:

• Improved performance for faster load and view times
• The addition of a tag cloud as another way to sort through the products and services
• The addition of a "quick glance" which gives a description of the product or service when you roll the mouse over the logo
• Go2Web20.net is now looking for advertisers to help keep this great directory running - if you are interested send an email to [email protected]
• Companies listed in the directory can now add their own content to their profiles - they may be able to even add a video

These sound like some great improvements to an already extremely useful site. One thing I would like to see is a slight modification of the RSS feed for the product. Currently, the feed updates every time a new product or service is added to the site and provides a link directly to the that product or service. Alternately, I would like to see a feed point to the Go2Web20.net brief of the product or service since it offers a description that is not viewable via the current feed. By bringing users back to Go2Web20.net it gives users the opportunity to find out more about the product before visiting the product or service directly.

I reached out to Orli Yakuel, shown to the left, for a comment and she had this to say of her experience with Go2Web20.net thus far:

"It's been a lot of fun uncovering and exposing all the great services of web 2.0. I'm trying to be the first to publish new and fresh services but I respect the old one too. I'm adding sites after thoroughly testing them myself first. I am excited at the response to Go2Web2.0 so far and look to continue to improve the directory service in the coming months." 

I think it is also worth mentioning Go2Web2.0 will be available in a book version soon. It might make a great keepsake or a wonderful coffee table conversation piece.