SOMEWHAT FRANK

Snapily 3D Animated Business Cards

Snapily 3D Animated Business Cards from Frank Gruber on Vimeo.

What if you could get embed video into a printed product like a business card? This is exactly what Snapily, an Israeli based startup, looks to do with its recent launch. Snapily uses depth illusion digital imaging to create printed experiences that appear to be moving like a video. I got a chance to chat with Snapily CEO, Duby Hodd a few months ago at a conference and gave me a preview of some of their products that launched this past week. So I would like to share my video conversation Snapily CEO with Duby Hodd as episode 57 on SOMEWHAT FRANK.

MagCloud: Publish Your Own Magazine

Do you want to publish your own magazine? MagCloud a byproduct of HP Labs is currently in private beta and allows anyone to create a magazine by simply uploading a hi-resolution PDF file. MagCloud does the rest from printing, mailing, subscription management, and more.

Do Paper Greeting Cards Still Have A Place?

With Mother's Day and a bunch of birthdays coming up I have been thinking about the whole gifting process and more specifically paper greeting cards. I think there is still something nice about getting a paper card since it is an artifact but I have found that more of the total inventory of greeting card play music. I find it kind of annoying but it is tough to find a good card anymore. It seems that someone must be buying greeting cards that play music because they seem to be taking up a majority of the Hallmark greeting card rack these days. But with all the social interactions that technology has enabled from your cell phone messages to online e-cards to Facebook gifts that can be sent here is SOMEWHAT FRANK question for you:

Do Paper Greeting Cards Still Have A Place?

Give your SOMEWHAT FRANK opinion in the comments section below.

Photo Attribution: Bashar Al-Ba'noon

Moo Stickers Arrive (Literally)

Moo, a UK-based printing startup, puts an unique and personalized spin on traditional items like business cards and notecards. Moo loves to print as they continue to roll out additional offerings. In mid-July, Moo announced the launch of Moo StickerBooks.

iPhone Chat Apps, Social Networking Exhaustion, Personalization Search, PodTech Marketing, Attention Toolbar Launches, Feed Truncation & Suits Suck

Photo of the Week: This photo was taken by Brian Solis of bub.blicio.us at the TechCrunch event in Menlo Park, California on Friday evening (Suits Suck tee shirt photo explained in first story below).

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 07.29.07

TechCrunch 9 & A Funny "Suit"?
I was in attendance for the event on Friday evening at August Capital in Menlo Park and had a great time. There were loads of interesting web 2.0-fabulous guests in attendance. Thanks to Mike Arrington, Heather Harde and the rest of the TechCrunch crew for a wonderful evening. The guest (who I won't name publicly) wearing the "Suits Suck" tee shirt (shown above) said he was a Google employee in the marketing department and made me laugh. As I sipped on some Stormhoek white wine, he asked me and Nick Gonzalez, also a TechCrunch contributor, "what Mike Arrington looks like?" because he was looking to connect with him at the party. After both Nick and I took our best cracks at explaining what Mike Arrington looks like he left us to continue on his mission. So let me re-cap, the guy shows up wearing a colorful "Suits Suck" tee, works at Google in the marketing department, attends the TechCrunch party looking to connect with Mike Arrington but doesn't know what he looks like. Doh! Solid strategy, I wonder if he is a "suit" himself in disguise? You be the judge. ;)

Fichey: New Web Discovery Player
Fichey is a little player that float on top of the page and lets you navigate and discover new sites and links from the Web. Display search results from : Del.icio.us, Digg, Downfly, Reddit and StumbleUpon.

The many paths of personalization
Greg Linden explains at some point, the only way to further improve the quality of search results will be to show different people different search results based on what they think is relevant. At that point, we have personalized search. Showing different results to different people based on what you know of their interests is personalized search.

Social Network Exhaustion (or Facebook Bankruptcy Redux)
Jason Calacanis gives up on Facebook and tries to rationalize by saying: "Facebook is a multilevel marketing platform where you agree to pay attention to people's gestures in the hopes that those people will pay-attention to your gestures in the future. It's a gesture bank."

Video Review: Mini Moo Cards
CenterNetworks offers a video review of MOO and its print 2.0 ways.

Dear Podtech: I’m Not Your VP Marketing
Mike Arrington explains that Podtech is on the right track by focusing on aggregating third party content under its Flash player and advertising network and moving away from the highly-competitive content creation game.

The new Particls Sidebar
The new Particls Sidebar launched to offer a personalized, streaming view of everything that matters to you online.

First Look: AideRSS Feed Filtering
AideRSS, which launches today, is a new type of RSS filtering service that uses a proprietary system called PostRank to determine the best posts on each blog.

iRazoo Latest to Launch Human-Powered Search Engine
A new social search engine that is looking to promote human-powered recommendations the foundation of its service.

Truncated RSS Feeds Kill Conversations and Long Term Traffic
Ed Kohler of Technology Evangelist explains why truncated feeds offer a pretty terrible user experience thus killing conversations and long term traffic.

Top 5 Chat/IM Apps for the iPhone
Before the iPhone, swarms of Blackberry and Windows Mobile users accessed instant messengers through a variety of different downloadable clients and websites. The iPhone, however, forces developers to create something that’s usable in the browser. Rev2.org takes a look at the options.