SOMEWHAT FRANK

RSS Mixer Makes Blending Feeds Easy

RSS Mixer is a simple application for mixing multiple RSS feeds together into one feed. Interestingly, you can then take the new feed and output a custom feed for your iPhone, an Apple Widget, snaggable widget or feed reader.

I created a feed mashup for TECH cocktail and Somewhat Frank here. Of course you could give myAOL Favorites feed reader if you create a folder add a bunch of feeds  and click the green "Mix & Share" button.

Facebook Impact, Google Acquires ImageAmerica, Internet TV, Pageflakes Blizzard & Collaboration Tools

Photo of the Week: I took a trip to Sausalito yesterday and took in some gorgeous sites including this little red sailboat in the Bay.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 07.22.07

Google Maps: A users guide to personalization
LifeHacker offers a guide to personalizing Google Maps.

The Impact of Facebook's Platform
Read/Write Web looks at the impact Facebook is making on the Web. It has been just under 2 months since Facebook launched their platform initiative, but this self-opening move has already had an extremely positive impact on the company.

Facebook buys Parakey
GigaOm believes Facebook’s new mission is to: buy all talent under 25 in the Palo Alto-Mountain View area. Parakey is a prime example.

Work Together: 60+ Collaborative Tools for Groups
Mashable looks at 60+ sites that will help everyone be on the same page via online collaboration. Stop, collaborate and listen...

Google Acquires ImageAmerica
Google acquired Clayton, Missouri based ImageAmerica, a company that builds high-resolution cameras for the collection of aerial imagery.

The Professionalization of Internet TV
NewTeeVee looks at the low-cost Internet TV options these days.

Pageflakes Blizzard Release Launches
Customized home page startup Pageflakes launched a slew of new features this morning under what it is calling its “Blizzard” release.

Totally Uncorked
Gary Vaynerchuk's WineLibraryTV a daily 15-min video podcast was recently highlighted in TIME Magazine. Gary was a sponsor and demo'er at TECH cocktail in DC 1. Way to go Gary!

Dow Jones, News Corp. Set Deal
News Corp. reached a tentative agreement for the purchase of Dow Jones & Co. at its original $5 billion offer price. The deal will be put to the full Dow Jones board this evening for its approval, said people familiar with the situation.

Mesmo.tv Discovers Videos You Like
Mesmo.tv is social video bookmarking tool launching today that lets you tag videos you like and throw them into a personalized content stream and group channels.

Review of Streamy, a News Networking Service
Streamy users can share, view, filter and drag-and-drop news stories, while communicating via a very slick chat module.

WordCamp 2007 - Journalism Panel: Om & Dvorak
Josh Hallett covers the second session at WordCamp 2007 which featured John Dvorak and Om Malik. I was there to take in the session which offered an eternal blog/journalism debate.

One Llama For 'Fun' Music Discovery

One Llama, a product of six employee Champaign, Illinois-based startup One Llama Media, leverages audio analysis, search and discovery systems to offer a place for music lovers to discover, listen, share and buy new music. Though in the music discovery category, One Llama differs from Last.fm, Pandora and MyStrands by focusing more on search result technology rather than community aspects of music discovery.

One Llama's users interface design is fun and light. Users can search for new music by song or artist and search results are returned in a flashy cluster experience (shown in the screen-shot below) that reminds me of Visual Thesaurus or Quintura.

Users can create playlists on their own or One Llama will create a playlist with recommended songs that are similar to a song or songs you have identified. One Llama created a quick list of recommended songs based off of one song I liked. I was then given the option to share, save or buy these tracks or the playlist. I have shared the list below as an embeddable widget but you can also share it directly to Facebook.

If you like a song you can purchase is on iTunes or Amazon. One Llama also offers an iTunes plug-in which links the web to your desktop music making it even easier to find and purchase the songs you just discovered on One Llama.

In talking with Director of Product Development, Amit Sudharshan, a recent graduate of University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, he explained that:

"One Llama believes finding music should be a 'fun' experience that people should be able to discover, enjoy and share."

As a music lover myself, I would have to agree. Currently, One Llama uses collaborative filtering to offer up song and playlist recommendations but Amit mentioned that audio signal extraction technology is coming very soon. This will enable One Llama to offer music search technology which uses collaborative filtering to recommend songs that people usually play together as well as signal extraction technology to recommend songs that sound alike. One Llama recently partnered with EMI and APM to power their search and find songs that "sound like" other songs within the APM library.

Sticking with it's 'fun' mission, One Llama shows its lighter side by allowing users the ability to personalize their llama avatar. My llama avatar is shown to the right.

Bottom-line: One Llama offers an innovative music search and discovery technology that is fun and easy to use. I had fun using One Llama and I think you will too.

AOL Named Top Site, myAOL Beta Released, Facebook a Fad?, Widgets Evolution and Formats, Tagging Tools, Blogging From Hobby To Fame and iPhone Hackers

Photo of the week: These green frog cupcakes were spotted and then were quickly devoured at the most recent TECH cocktail in Chicago.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 07.15.07

AOL Top Web Site Under New Ranking
Nielsen/NetRatings will begin reporting total sessions and total time spent on a site in order to figure out site popularity putting AOL on top of the rankings and bumping Google down to 5th.

AOL Launches Three New myAOL Products In Beta
AOL launched a suite of personalized products into beta: myPage (personalized home page), Mgnet (image-driven content discovery and recommendation engine) and Favorites (feed reader and bookmarking). All three services can be accessed via tabs on the main myAOL page.

Facebook and the Working Adult: Fad or Revolution?
Web Worker Daily investigates whether or not Facebook in the working world is just a fad or here to stay.

The Tagging Toolbox: 30+ Tagging Tools
Tags - for some, one of the best ideas on the web, for others, merely a visual distraction. Mashable investigates a number of tagging options.

Google Adds Mapplets: Widgets for Google Maps
Google is unveiling what they’re calling “mapplets". Mapplets are essentially widgets for Google Maps which can integrate and manipulate Google with HTML, Javascript and Flash content.

The Evolution of Web Widgets: From Self-Expression to Media Companies
Read/Write Web takes a look at how web widgets have evolved from cool, viral toys of self-expression to important big media tools.

Basic web widget formats
Anyone publishing widget content online should know a few basic concepts shaping their decision and choose the right mix of software and content based on their target. Niall Kennedy covers some of the basic advantages, disadvantages, and considerations for each type of widget content and bring you up-to-speed on a few current widget deployment options.

Google: Viacom's Built to Sue
Google's CEO Eric Schmidt took a swipe at Viacom Friday, saying the company was "built from lawsuits" and pointed to its litigious history. Schmidt's comments were made to reporters at a hotel bar at the annual Allen & Co. meeting of media moguls.

iPhone Hackers: "we have owned the filesystem"
This could be problematic.

Perez Hilton gets show on VH1
The sharp-tongued celebrity gossip blogger has apparently been meeting with someone over at VH1. Another example of how blogging creates a platform to do just about everything.

Turning Blogging From Hobby to Career
Richard MacManus runs the world's 28th most popular blog, Read/WriteWeb, from his home office in Lower Hutt. It's every blogger's fantasy. Mr MacManus started a blog on web technology as a hobby back in 2003. Blogging can pay. Congrats Richard, keep up the great blogging!

Personalization: It's All About You

Pimping your ride, ripping your jeans, popping your collar and putting lime in your water are all expressions of your personality. Thus you are personalizing your experience. Your web experience can also be personalized making it your web. Personalization is all about you.

Jen Consalvo, Director of Personalization at AOL, recently spoke to a group at Web Content 2007 in Chicago, Illinois on June 19, 2007. Jen presented on how to create a personalized web and gave a sneak preview of the recently launched myAOL personalization suite. You can watch some video tidbits from the presentation above.

Mojits iPhone Web Widget Launcher

If you have an iPhone you may be trying to figure out a way to optimize your widget experience. Mojits offers a potential solution as it provides a place to find web widgets optimized for the iPhone.

Currently, Mojits offers a couple dozen web widget options which include AIM iPhone Chat, iPhone Digg, iPhone Twitter, TaDa List and many more.

Simply create a Mojits account, configure your Mojits to your liking and then navigate to the Mojits Launcher on your iPhone with Safari. My Mojits is shown below.

myAOL Personalization Suite Launches

Today myAOL, a personalization product suite, has officially been released to the beta. As the myAOL Product Manager, I feel like our team just gave birth to triplets, as myAOL offers up three applications into one integrated dashboard experience with various levels of personalization. We hope you like it.

I previewed myAOL a few weeks ago and now you can try it out for yourself. myAOL includes the following:

myAOL myPage is an Ajax, personalized homepage which offers applications and content to be your dashboard for the Web. It offers AOL content and applications (i.e. Truveo Video Search, AOL Mail, AOL Video, AOL Music, TMZ.com, etc.) in addition to 3rd party applications (i.e. eBay, Netflix, YouTube and many more coming soon). It offers a push down express widget tray, separate widget gallery, and drag and drop functionality to help make organizing your page a breeze. It also offers pre-configured, Ready-made pages which makes adding pages full of content easier (e.g. news, celebrity, technology). With partnerships with Google and Goowy Media, myAOL will offer an assortment of Google Gadgets and Goowy yourminis among other 3rd party widgets.

myAOL Mgnet (pronounced “Magnet”) is an innovative and fun, visual content discovery and recommendations engine. Mgnet offers a visual approach (using image clouds) to finding new content that you might be interested in on the Web.  By using both collaborative filtering and active inputs to provide Web recommendations to users Mgnet pulls in images and content (videos, articles, blogposts, podcasts, etc.) based on the user's likes and dislikes – users able to rate and save individual stories/feeds.  Mgnet leverages Truveo and Sphere for robust offering of Web content Mgnet also displays “What’s hot” which taps into the hot items in the myAOL suite. Some additional social aspects will be integrated soon to make it easy to share your recommendations with your buddies.

myAOL Favorites is a combination feed reader & bookmarking product with a built in feed mashup creator (making easy to create your own feed mashups!). Favorite's feed  reader offers a robust and easy to use feed reader for fast content updates from your favorite sites with shortcut keys and previous/next buttons make it easier to get through a lot of content quickly. Folders are setup for easy organization Integrated bookmarking and sharing features Import/Export feeds from other readers synched feeds via mobile. Bookmarks are integrated with the feed reader experience making saving your favorite items a one-click process while reading your favorite feeds. Finally, one of my favorite features of the suite is "Mix & Share" within Favorites which allows you easily create a mashup feed which also renders as a page. You simply just added your favorite feeds or bookmarks to a folder then click the green "Mix & Share" button to see you options which include creating a public feed and page which can then can be leveraged in a widget, shared via email, AIM or AIM Share. This really makes creating mashup feeds easy and understandable to someone that may not understand everything about XML, RSS or feeds.

The entire myAOL team (dev, design, product, ops, qa, etc) has worked hard developing this personalization product suite, with some  help from other groups at AOL and partners - thank you to all for the hard work and dedication. We hope you like the new myAOL and if you have any suggestions or feedback on something that you would like to see us add or change please let me know. Be sure to check out the myAOL Blog to stay updated on the latest happenings in the myAOL personalization suite.

AdaptiveBlue Smart Browsing Experience

AdaptiveBlue, a company founded by Alex Iskold a contributor to Read/Write Web, offers a couple of different ways to create a smarter browsing and personalized experience by connecting users with an array of services.

By leveraging Mozilla's platform AdaptiveBlue has created BlueOrganizer, a Firefox extension that makes it easy to collect, manage, discover and share information matched it to real-world things like movies, wine or electronic gadgets. BlueOrganizer's wide spread utility makes it difficult to pinpoint a concise product category but it does offer users easy access to a number of content-based utilities. BlueOrganizer up by saying it is a bookmarking product that offers service related information based on what you are looking at (both past and present) on the Web. Users can use BlueOrganize to save, rate and organize the sites and items that they like. If you are too lazy to bookmark you can turn on an "Auto BlueMarking" feature that automatically saves pages a user has visited a set number of times. This feature could come in handy but can be turned off by the user if found to be cluttering their saved items.

AdaptiveBlue also offers SmartLinks as a way for publishers to surface links to relevant information. SmartLinks take advantage of affiliate programs to offers publishers a monetization option that is similar to putting sponsored links on a site. In similar way that Sphere's "Sphere It" widget adds related blogosphere content to an article, SmartLinks add value to an article by connecting users with other relevant information about a specific item. My only concern with SmartLinks is the time it would take a publisher to add them to their content, since it currently is a very manual process. AdaptiveBlue might address this in a similar fashion to "Auto BlueMarking" by integrating a simple rules system into existing publishing platform thus removing the extra work which could be considered a barrier of entry.

Finally, AdaptiveBlue offers something called a SmartLinks Badge. Publishers can use the badge to display items that they like and want to share or recommend with their readers. You can configure a SmartLinks Badge here. Of course, you can hook your badge with affiliate programs to potentially generate some revenue from your favorite items.

Bottom-line: AdaptiveBlue offers a couple of different ways of connecting you with relevant information about a particular item via an link on a page, a page badge or a web browser plug-in.

iPhone Mania Turns To AT&T Activation Hell, Google Widget Payday, AOL News & CNN Redesign, Web 2.0 Tracking, A Tour of myAOL & French Web 2.0

Photo of the Week: I spotted this sole mushroom while visiting 'the country' in Illinois.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 07.01.07

iPhone Mania Turns To AT&T Activation Hell
The iPhone caused quite a stir and it appears Apple handled demands very well as it was almost too easy to get the iPhone in several locations. I was able to pick one up with no wait. However, since acquiring the iPhone I have yet to get it activated. It seems I am not the only one. Thus far it has taken over four hours, 2 phone calls to AT&T and one trip to an actual AT&T store. I am hoping tomorrow I will be able to get my iPhone activated but it will take at least one more call to AT&T support to help me transfer my number from my current service provider. Bummer. :-S

The French Web 2.0 Wave
France leads Europe in its enthusiasm for Web 2.0 startups, an industry that has doubled in size across the continent since 2005. Jerome Archambeaud examines the French market on GigaOm.

New CNN.com Goes Live - Google and Yahoo Both Search Providers
CNN re-launched its website as an enhanced multimedia site - packed with web 2.0 features such as recommendations and user generated content. In addition, CNN is using both Google and Yahoo for search.

Wimzi: AOL’s Answer to MeeboMe
AOL is widgetizing AIM with the new Wimzi widget: like other chat widgets, this lets you chat with your website visitors in real time.

Google offers seed funding for widget startups
Google is directly investing in small companies to expand the popularity of its iGoogle product. If this is not validation that widgets have real value then I don't know what is.

When You’ve Got To Go, Go To Mizpee.com
MizPee is a new service focused on delivering pertinent information regarding the location of nearby restrooms - cause when you gotta go you gotta go!

AOL launches new blog-like news site
AOL News launched its new design in a blog-like fashion, with excerpts of all the day's main stories laid out chronologically from top to bottom.

A tour of myAOL, a Personalized Aggregator
Jeremiah Owyang had us into PodTech to share the new myAOL with the PodTech team and live blogged it.

Keeping Tabs on Web 2.0
A great roundup of sites that are tracking Web 2.0 directory-style.

Blogging is Like Songwriting
Kent Newsome explains why blogging is like songwriting.

Robert Scoble & Fast Company magazine
Robert Scoble is now writing a column for Fast Company magazine and offers up his first column.

BlogTV For Personalized Live Web TV

BlogTV is an Israel-based company that enables people to create their own live broadcast channel on the Web. Similar to UStream.tv, BlogTV empowers anyone with a webcam to create a destination channel for broadcasting live episodes.

I got a chance to sit down with BlogTV Vice President of Product & Content, Nir Ofir, at Supernova 2007 and got a live demo. While demonstrating the features of BlogTV, Nir showed its unique ability to connect two broadcasts together as co-hosts. The screen-shot (shown below) displays the live broadcast in which Nir connected us (Frank Gruber and Jen Consalvo) with Jeff Pulver on PulverTV. I do not believe UStream.tv or other services offer this type of service but would love to hear if there are other services out there that do something similar.

A BlogTV channel includes live chat collaborations tools and user contributed ratings. Users can record broadcasts or stream them live with the option to embed the show into other sites and blogs. In the short demo we saw, BlogTV appeared to work well, however we did notice a bit of a delay between the two co-hosts on the show. I am not sure if that was due to the poor Internet connection at Supernova or if it was the actual application itself - it could have been attributed to a number of things.

Bottom-line: BlogTV is a platform that enables users to create live broadcast channels via a webcam with ease.

New myAOL Startpage Is Coming Soon

So you want to organize all your stuff on the web in one place? A new myAOL is coming soon. The current myAOL is solely a feed reader that offers some recommendations. The new myAOL offers a personalized homepage experience with some additional bells and whistles.

Aside from an Ajax customizable homepage with drag and drop widgets to give quick click and go access to content and applications, myAOL also offers a few additional pages as part of the first time experience. The additional pages are called Mgnet (pronounced Magnet) and Favorites. myAOL Mgnet is an image driven content discovery and recommendations engine which offers a fun new way to find new videos, images and stories on the web. myAOL Favorites, recently highlighted by TechCrunch, offers feed reader integrated with a solid bookmarking product making it easy to manage and share all your favorite feed updates and places on the Web.

I am the product manager for myAOL and I just posted the video (shown above) on the new myAOL Blog. It provides a sneak peek at the product. Check out what Mike Arrington from TechCrunch has to say about the new myAOL.

Bands In Town Gets You Ready To Rock!

Are you ready to rock all summer long but don't know when you favorite bands are coming to town? Of course you could go out and search for your favorite bands sites and check each individually but now there may be an easier way. Bands In Town recently launched to help you keep better track of tour dates for your favorite bands.

Bands In Town offers the ability to pull in your favorite band information from Last.fm or you can manually save you favorite bands. Upon specifying a geographic location, Bands In Town serves up a huge tag cloud of bands that you might enjoy. Check out the screen-shot below.

Bands In Town also informs you when your favorite band is in coming back into town which saves you from having to keep track on your own. Rock on, you shouldn't miss a show again! 

Ztail Simplifying Selling Stuff Online

Have you ever looked around your place and noticed you tend to save things, lots of things, that you no longer need, want or care about? If so, you might want to sell something on Ztail, an eBay compatible Alpha application. Through a partnership with Compete.com, Ztail surveyed 2,500 registered eBay users about what stopped them from selling online. Eighty-five percent (or 2125 people surveyed) said online selling was too hard and time consuming.

Ztail is focused on simplifying selling by searching product and transaction data for millions of items and automating the listing process, creating the basis for the simple, intuitive and effective Click Once, Sell Everywhere model. Ztail aimed to bypass a complicated and lengthy process, and simplified it into three easy steps:

Find your product, Publish your listing, Share your listing.

Once the listing is created, Ztail plugs the user into his or her own social media and instantly distributes the listing to selected friends via blogs, email and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Finally, Ztail offers tools to help users track and adjust activity in their personal MyZtail pages. 

Bill Hudak and Dave Keefer founded Ztail in 2006, with a combined 20 years in online experience at companies like Google, Netscape, ePinions and Shopping.com. Bill and Dave have watched online commerce develop from its infancy and created Ztail to make selling online quick and easy for everyone.

I set up an account, followed the directions and personalized my ad within a few minutes on eBay, edgeio, Google Base, oodle and vast. GigaOm offers additional perspective on Ztail as well.

Ask 3D Launches, Amazon Buying Netflix?, New AOL Feed Reader, WordPress vs. Movable Type, Web 2.0 Viral Growth Secrets, Gayest Sites & Widget News

Photo of the Week:  Space Shuttle Atlantis Launch from Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom by Josh Hallett was taken this week with the successful launch of the space shuttle.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 06.10.07

Major Relaunch For Ask: Ask3D
It looks very sharp. I like the way they allow users to personalize the wallpaper behind the search box with a few different colorful skins. Very innovative and 3D yummy design.

Will Amazon Purchase Netflix?
Rumor has it (coming from major news outlets) that movie rental company Netflix may be purchased by internet retail giant. Does it make sense?

Who Matters Now?
Business 2.0 Magazine invites you to vote for the business people who inspire, inform and infuriate you, from CEOs to entrepreneurs to media stars. Vote for Pedro Mike Arrington.

Secrets to Web 2.0 Viral Growth
Forbes.com has a short but informative article in which Roelof Botha (the Sequoia Capital venture capitalist instrumental in the success of YouTube and PayPal) shares two tips on how to have your service explode in membership using viral marketing.

Watchdog group flunks Google on privacy practices
In what looks to be brewing into a mutual smear campaign, London-based Privacy International has ranked Google among the worst top Internet sites for privacy protection, and Google is reportedly taking the watchdog group to task.

All New AOL Feed Reader Coming Soon
This new feed reader looks pretty sexy...I cannot wait to see it go live. :)

Clearspring Lands Major Deal With NBC
Clearspring, a Virginia-based company that demoed at TECH cocktail DC 1, announced it was chosen by NBC to be its exclusive widget platform for the next year. This is a major deal for Clearspring, and for NBC as well. The specific terms of this business arrangement have not been disclosed.

Yourminis Delivering Triple Widget Play
Yourminis delivers a triple play of widgets: online personalized desktop widgets, actual desktop widgets and blogs widgets.

What’s the gayest site on the web?
With June being Gay Pride month throughout the US and the World, Compete.com tries to uncover the gayest site on the web.

The Top Social Networks Where Alcohol is Allowed
Mashable looks at the various drink 2.0 web sites.

Feedtwister Lets You Mix Feeds
After registering with Feedtwister, members can begin adding their favorite RSS feeds. You can create as many lists as you like, and each list is a combination of the RSS feeds you selected.

WordPress vs. Movable Type
The interesting question is how the market will respond to an open source battle between the old blogger favorite and the new blogger favorite.

Search is history, says Yahoo!
Although Yahoo!, like Google, has talked before about developing a more personalised web, with relevant information delivered directly to readers, this was the first time that the company has said publicly that search will become less important.

Google Gears Up Offline, Portal Futures Analyzed, Startup Search, Mahalo & Particls Launch, Mashup Editors Compared & Userplane Rev Sharing

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 06.03.07

Internet Video vs DVRs Advertising & Measuring Online Video
Nielsens release of commercial data has led to quite a bit of discussion in the advertising industry about what counts as a commercial worth paying for. Mark Cuban weighs in.

The New Portals: It’s the Bread, Not the Peanut Butter
David Sacks writes about web portals and where they are going.

Google Takes Desktop Feed Readers Head On
Google is announcing a new technology called Google Gears. The technology enables web applications to work both online and offline. One of the first applications of Google Gears that I have seen is its integration with Google Reader.

Startup Search: tracking the web startup ecosystem
Niall Kennedy unveiled a product he hinted at a few weeks ago while talking with him in SF. The new site tracks the startup ecosystem. It's a directory and analytics tool called Startup Search. Startup Search tracks Web startups, their products, key employees, investment firms, and investment partners. Startup Search also tracks the success of each product since it was first introduced to the world, using publicly available metrics pulled into a single page. It is a research tool, a discovery engine, and a fact-filled directory of the Web startup world.

Comparison of Yahoo Pipes to Microsoft's PopFly
Jay Neely compares Yahoo Pipes to Microsoft’s PopFly and also does an early analysis of Google’s Mashup Editor.

Userplane Launches Revenue Sharing Program
Web messaging services company Userplane has launched a new revenue-sharing program that brings monetization to online instant messaging and web chat.

Attention! Particls Launches Advanced Alerts Platform
Particls launched out of private beta this week. It serves as a proportioning alert filter that notifies the user via news ticker, pop-up alerts and mobile SMS messaging prioritized according to user needs. CEO Chris Saad calls it: "an attention management engine."

Jason Calacanis’ Human-Powered Search Mahalo Launches
Jason Calacanis’ ’Project X,’ Mahalo (meaning ‘thank you’ in Hawaii), has launched and it’s a human-powered search engine that’s to Google like what Citizendium is to Wikipedia.

Amp'd, another MVNO bites the dust
As a result of our rapid growth, Amp'd's back-end infrastructure was unable to keep up with customer demand. Amp'd has burned $360 million and is filing for bankruptcy.

Sketch your Dream House
Floorplanner take the best of Web 2.0 and bring it to home design. It is a wonderful application with professional tools and rich visual interface that allow users to sketch their own dream home and share their designs easily. Users are able to embed their designs on other sites or blogs.

Google Launches a Directions API
Google launched a Directions API that will allow third-party sites to offer directions directly on their site.