SOMEWHAT FRANK

Edmodo: Microblogging For Education

Microblogging has becoming extremely popular as sites like Twitter and Pownce have jumped onto the scene to enable users to quickly share messages, links and files. I recently got a preview of a Chicago-based startup that has created platform a new microblogging platform. Edmodo, a self-funded bootstrapping startup co-founded by Jeff O'Hara and Nic Borg offers microblogging for education and groups. Since both co-founders work in education, they wanted to do something to help others in the space. They also noticed there were not microblogging platforms available with the rostering and privacy options needed in the educational space - so they decided to build Edmodo.

BricaBox A New Kind Of Publishing Platform

Brica what? BricaBox, a New York-based startup, offers a publishing platform for organizing and displaying content in a more structured manner. It's goal is to offer a way to present detailed content or data. Wondering why you might need more structure? Read on to find out how you might be able to use BricaBox.

circaVie For Memorable Photo Timelines

Looking to plot your photos in a memorable timeline? circaVie could be just what you are looking for. With circaVie you can easily create a flashy photo timeline.

Simply sign-up, start uploading or pointing to your photo links, associating a photo date and circaVie plots them on a scrollable timeline. It sort of reminds me of a scrapbook in a timeline format. Timeline is interactive as users can interact with each photo on the timeline as well as leave comments. circaVie offers the ability to change the color of the timeline and it can be snagged for embedding into your favorite web site or blog. You can also pass your timeline via AIM Share or by passing around an RSS feed. I have included a timeline below from a fabulous time spent exploring San Francisco last weekend.

Similar to Ficlets, circaVie was created by AOL's AIM Network, it was done using a nimble and agile development team which at times was up to six people but has since been reduced to just two. circaVie offers OpenID and also makes it easy to select a site specific username and pull in your buddy icon from AOL, AIM, Flickr or Twitter. circaVie is a fun and useful application for anyone looking for a way to tell your photo explorations in a memorable fashion.

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.

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.

Widgets Going Wild on Facebook, Freewebs & Yourminis

Widgets are hot. Widgets are sexy. Widgets, widgets, widgets. I previously have covered the widget craze but widgets now have a few new promoters.

With the Facebook open platform announcement last week there have been lots of new widgets and applications added to Facebook each day. Personally, I have already added Flickr, Slide and Twitter widgets to my Facebook profile. Nick O'Neill, who helped bring TECH cocktail to DC, decided to launch a new blog called All Facebook which will be covering these widget updates and other Facebook news, so you might want to check it out.

Freewebs, the Silver Springs, Maryland-based company that offers an open web personal publishing platform, has added a Widget Bank to their catalog of website building tools. The Freewebs Widget Bank gives members access to thousands of widgets that can be embedded directly onto a web site. Widgets can be added into Freewebs sites without having to copy, cut or paste code. Widget Bank will constantly update its extensive collection and include games, clocks, RSS feed readers, maps, video players and much more.  Freewebs has created its own widgets but has also reached to third party sites like YouTube, Widgetbox, RockYou, Miniclip, Gizmoz and others.

Yourminis has also taken an interesting approach which I have previously covered but wanted to reiterate. Basically, they are offering widgets that work on your home page, are snaggable for your blog or web site and extendable to your desktop. It is a widget trifecta!

Here are a couple of other blogs that are good widget resources:

Widgify - by Hooman Radfer of the widget marketplace Clearspring
SexyWidget - by Lawrence Coburn of distributed rating RateItAll.com
Widgets Labs - by Derek Anderson
StickiWidgets 

The web is definitely widgetizing. Can you dig it?

FreshBooks Adds Estimates To Online Invoice Suite

FreshBooks, the online time-tracking and invoicing service that I previously covered here has continued to roll out new features. As a FreshBooks user for both Somewhat Frank and TECH cocktail, I am pleased to see the introduction of a new option called Estimates.

Users, like myself, can now easily create professional, branded estimate proposals directly from their FreshBooks account and sent them directly to clients. Customers can then review all of the information provided in the estimate and send feedback or accept the estimate. Once the work is completed or the deal is done, a FreshBooks Estimate can easily be turned into an invoice. Estimates should help simplify the Estimate and billing process small businesses and independent professionals face in preparation to starting a new gig or assignment. FreshBooks Estimates adds an elegant way to handle proposed or upcoming client billing relations with easy. Check out the sample Estimate I just setup shown to the right (click to see a larger version).

FreshBooks also recently announced that they have surpassed 175,000 users and much of its success is due to the fact that FreshBooks reduces the need to use a combination of matrices, documents, and QuickBooks among other things.

Give FeedBack With Review Basics

Do you ever need to gather feedback on a photo, document, web site or video? While email and wikis and products like Basecamp and Adobe Acrobat might meet some of your needs, ReviewsBasics as it aims to help by offering a feedback gathering platform which allows users to exchange ideas, gather thoughts, and review various types of content.

This free, feature-rich, product offers a number of annotation options on web sites, images, documents or videos. If these options do not suit your needs then you can also get some custom work done as ReviewBasics offers customized solutions that fit your specific needs. Review Basics are organized by authors who can set up reviews and send them to reviewers to give feedback. A screen-shot of the application while performing a web site review of a familiar blog is shown below.

 

Rootly Relaunches: Design Much Improved

Rootly, a news aggregator site, has relaunched with new site design and additional features. With the help of Marshall Kirkpatrick who has been guiding Rootly looks much improved. It now looks like a news start-page. 

The new and improved Rootly offers highly customizable RSS feed powered vertical news search based on about one thousand preselected sources plus sources added by users. As a number of users add the same source it gains trusted status and eventually enters the general index. Rootly offers some decent search result feeds as well as internal bookmarking. Additionally, Rootly has added the ability to accept OpenID. The site reminds me of the old version of Topix (minus images) before its recent relaunch.

According to Marshall, Rootly looks to continue to roll out new features which include OPML import - which has a whole lot of implications - and a customizable widget for personal startpages. One thing I would like to see though as they continue to improve is the addition of thumbnail images to each result.

Interestingly, Rootly sent me review request via ReviewMe several months ago and I had to decline. Back then, I just did not find it compelling enough to write about. The UI was terrible and it has some usability issues. I am happy to see Rootly has come a long way and offers a much improved its product.  It is just proof that if you create a compelling product experience  and people will talk about it.

 

8apps Suite Of Productivity Tools

8apps, an online suite of productivity applications, recently was launched by Tokyo-based jonkenpon. The current suite consists of three applications which are all in private beta but will be released with time and as new applications are released. According to co-founder,  Jon Yongfook Cockle, the goal of 8apps is as follows:

"I’m hoping that in 8apps, I can provide a suite of 8 applications that provide both an indispensable function and a simple, easy-to-grasp user experience."

The current applications in the suite are called Handshake, Orchestrate and Blueprint have been briefly highlighted in this article.

The backbone of the 8apps suite is an application called Handshake which is a professional social network for users to make new contacts, strengthen existing relationships. It is more a contact management system that is integrated into the rest of the 8apps products as any contact in Handshake becomes accessible in the other applications.  The network enables users to weigh in on their contacts skills which creates an interesting profile graph as shown in the right rail of a profile.

Orchestrate helps you to keep track of your “to do” list or simple tasks. It offers the ability to color coat various lists for better organization. Lists can also be shared with contacts from Handshake.  Orchestrate was well received in its initial release and was previously mentioned in the Wall Street Journal.
 
Collaborate with Blueprint as it allows users to brainstorm online by interacting with a number of individuals from Handshake without forfeiting control of the process. The project manager can control the look and feel of the layout by dragging and dropping items around the board.

Maybe it is the name, the inviting interfaces, or simple productivity apps but something about 8apps reminds me of 37signals. Nonetheless, I look forward to the official launches of these and other 8apps products to the masses.

For more information check out this article on jonkenpon which offers two screen-casts explaining the applications in more detail.

Startup Dreams? Bootstrapper's Bible Could Help

The web 2.0 movement has shown that it is a great time to start an online business with limited funding. As a number of startups have emerged some have received funding while a large number of others that have turned to 'bootstrapping' to keep their startup dreams alive. Bootstrapping in financial terms is the idea of starting a business with little or no money (outside funding). There is not a right or wrong approach however bootstrapping does allows a startup to maintain more control of their product or any eventual returns as the startup does not have to answer to a bank, VC or other investor.

Seth Godin, a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change, has written several helpful and inspiring books including The Big Moo which I highlighted previously. The Bootstrapper's Bible, one of Seth's latest books, is focused on the concept of bootstrapping an idea he touched on briefly in Making Money On The Web. The Bootstrapper's Bible is currently available for free download. I would highly recommend taking a look at is as it has some helpful hints on that can be applied to startups and large corporations alike.

"Heresy!" Innovation Discussion Covers Processes & Customer Inspired Products

Innovation has become an extremely hot word in the last few years as companies work to push the envelope on the products and services. On Wednesday (October 4, 2006), I had the opportunity to listen to a brown bag discussion presented at the AOL Mountain View Headquarters. The event titled “Heresy!” featured Ant Creed, formerly of IDEO and currently a user research manager at Intuit, and Chris Quinn, sr. product manager at Intuit. The event was organized by Mike Macadaan, director of creative design and innovative leader at AOL.

Ant and Chris spoke about innovating to produce products that people can use and like but challenged some common assumptions or as they call them "hereies." They stressed the importance of the people you select when creating a team explaining that the people on the team will make you successful. Also they explained the keys to product development success as follows:

• solve a problem
• solve a problem well

Finally they urged synthesis (taking a more active role) rather than spending a lot of time analyzing data. Interestingly, the strategy and principles presented reminded of the simple, less for success, “Get Real” the rally cry of software development shop, 37signals. If you are interested in listening to the discussion in it entirety, search for “AOL Mountain View” in iTunes and subscribe to the AOL Mountain View, Behind the Scenes podcast.

Time59 Invoice & Keep Time Online

Timekeeping and invoicing can sometimes be a daunting task for bootstrapping startups and consultants alike. Chris Monaghan, a Chicago tech developer for over 20 years clearly encountered this problem decided to develop a solution by creating Time59. Time59 is a web-based timekeeping and invoicing product. According to Chris:

"The original idea for Time59 arose from my own timekeeping needs. So for the most part, I designed it according to my own requirements."

Time59 allows its users to:

• Create and manage multiple projects with various hourly rates.
• Generate and email invoices easily.
• Store client contact information for easy access.
• Export of data to Excel and ASCII formats.
• Integrate with QuickBooks for complete A/R management.

Time59 is free for the first 30 days and then is only $19.99 per year for unlimited use. So give Time59 a test drive and stay up to date on the latest on the Time59 blog.

A Del.icio.us 3rd Birthday

Del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site, has turned three years old this past weekend.  Del.icio.us was one of the first web 2.0 social bookmarking sites to catch on with the masses and was purchased by Yahoo back in December 2005. I have referred to del.icio.us previously on SwF.

Happy birthday del.icio.us!

Apartments.com Design Gets Spruced Up

Apartments.com, the national apartments web site owned by Chicago-based Classified Ventures, launched a spruced up design last night (August 1, 2006).  The new design is fresh and clean and should result in a better user experience. Check it out for yourself below:

                 New Homepage                            Old Homepage

The design was done by our fabulous and speedy designer Sam Gonzalez. As the product manager for Apartments.com, I led the effort I am pleased to have the new look out there for the organization, property management customers and users alike.