SOMEWHAT FRANK

Scrapblog Takes Scrapbooking Online

Do you have a scrapbook? Traditionally, creating a scrapbook was a very physical activity which helped to preserve your real life memories in a book format to look back at and share at a later date. Scrapbooking has turned into an billion dollar business and even merits its own conferences and trade shows. Technology has improved over time and enabled scrapbookers to create a scrap book masterpiece digitally online and then export it to the more traditional paper medium of a bound scrap book. Scrapblog, a Miami-based startup, is leading this charge by offering scrapbookers an easy to use online Flash-based toolset.

Wink People Search Opens Profiles

Finding people on the Web can sometimes be difficult. Many people turn to Google to search for people but unless someone is very active online it can be tough to find people. In addition, there are so many social networks that do not index well on Google. Wink, a Los Altos, California based startup, tries to make it easy to find people online. 

Soup.io Launches Hot New Microblog Platform

Microblogging platforms have been coming into their own as sites like Tumblr and Twitter have emerged to enable users to provide a shorter format for blog posts. Why microblogs? Microblog platforms offer users an easy way to make shorter format posts that take less time and overhead than a full fledge blog. Soup.io has just officially launched to offer users a microblogging platform that pay attention to your content details so different content types are displayed appropriately.

Is Spock Spamming My Contacts?

Spock, a people search engine, that I previously highlighted has been making some slightly questionable moves to grow its user base. Though I am a fan of Spock, I have been informed by a number of my friends and contacts that they were contacted by Spock on my behalf. An example email is below:

Hi Jane Doe,

Frank has invited you to Spock.

Create your account by clicking here

Thanks! Jay and the Spock Team

This was news to me! While the email above looks great, I never sent anyone an email introducing Spock, nor do I recall endorsing the behavior. I assume Spoke offered some way to opt in/out of this type of push technique but I must have missed it. It reminds me of the way that Plaxo used to send emails to all your contacts about birthdays and other updates.

While Spock's auto-email behavior is not spam since it was probably something that could be turned off, I am not happy it has been reaching out to my contacts. I wish Spock would have made it more clear that it would be emailing my contacts.

YouTube Feature Updates, Embed Joost?, Flickr Goes Global, Me.dium $15 Million, Stalker 2.0, Fat Long Tail, RSS Toolbox, Discover via Megite & Blog Or Die

Photo of the Week: Jen Consalvo recently snapped this photo titled backlight. A little sunshine is a beautiful thing and is good for the soul - this little yellow guy appears to agree.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 06.17.07

YouTube Remixer: Edit Videos Online At YouTube
YouTube has officially launched YouTube Remixer, a new service that allows users to edit their videos from within YouTube itself. Also, YouTube Mobile launched this week.

Discover From Megite
Megite recently launched a discover area which offers users a place to find new things via a tag cloud and other discover links.

Embedded Joost Will Change The Market
Reports that Joost is now talking to hardware vendors about embedding Joost into set-top boxes and televisions will change the market as we know it.

Me.dium Pulls $15 Million in Funding
Boulder, Colorado based Me.dium, the sidebar social network, has received $15 million in second round funding. The round of funding was led by Commonwealth Capital Ventures.

11 web technologies political campaigns should consider
Technology Evangelist points to 11 different technologies political campaign leads should know.

Google Reader losing feeds?
A few people complained this week that Google Reader lost their feeds. I didn't see it, did it happen to you?

CommunityNext July 14th: VIRAL... Catch the Fever!
The Next CommunityNext conference is coming up July 14th - are you signed up?

Stalking 2.0: The Websites that Track Your Every Move (Voluntarily!)
Are you letting people track you online? If so you probably have encountered one of these stalker 2.0 applications.

The Long Tail Is Getting Fatter
It wasn’t that long ago that 100,000 users was considered huge for a Web 2.0 related business. Today a small startup such as SpaceTime can gain those numbers in two weeks. 6 million users three years ago would have seemed an impossible dream, and yet it is very attainable now. This article takes a closer look.

Can You Make A Living Blogging?
Great question and I will have to answer with a resounding 'YES!!!' I have seen bloggers go from nothing to something as little as a six months to a year. It is pretty amazing. However, I have to agree with Nick, we don't all blog for the money...the real benefits of blogging are all the great friendships that come from it.

Schilling's Laws for Perfect Start(up)s
Seth Goldstein talks baseball and startups on Found+READ.

The Ultimate RSS Toolbox - 120+ RSS Resources
Check out this comprehensive post on a number of RSS tools available on the web. You may already know but I think RSS is sexy. ;)

Flickr Goes Global
Flickr opens up its doors to a number of new languages and also there is word this week that Yahoo Photos is going to be closing its doors. I'd say this is a big week for Flickr. I have a feeling Flickr video uploads are coming very soon.

"i'm in like with you" For Playing Games

As a single male, in my late late twenties who has never used a traditional dating site in my life, I decided to expand my horizons and check out "i'm in like with you," the online dating site which puts a flirtatious spin on meeting people online.

Upon receiving an invite to "i'm in like with you" (thank you Jeremy Pepper) I set up my profile and performed a few people searches. I found some matches I wanted to add as contacts and I could not figure out how. I was at a loss for a few minutes as I tried to figure out how to add a contact from within the site and connect with others within the community. In talking with others that have used the site, I confirmed this was a common issue with using the site for the first time. I was under the impression that I would search and connect with new friends but it is not that easy.

"i'm in like with you" is driven by points which are the currency of the community. Users can collect and use points to navigate through the site to add friends. Users can get points by:

• logging in everyday
• answering profile questions
• picking winners for your closed games
• for being chosen as the winner of a game

Users setup games that others within the community can bid on with points. This was a bit of a turn off to me as it makes it difficult and time consuming to meet people within the community as only the top bidders get to connect with the user who setup the game. However, I could see how a user could get very involved in the community. My "i'm in like with you" profile is shown below.

i'm in like with you Photo Gallery

   

8hands To Monitor Your Social Web

Although there are a number of web-based web profile aggregators offerings, 8hands is a desktop application that offers users the ability to aggregate the activities of all of their favorite online social networks and sites. 8hands main goal is to:

"make a super cool tool that will help us navigate and keep us updated on any of our social network actions."

I guess you could say it is like having 8 hands helping you to monitor your social life online as 8hands provides real-time monitoring and notification as well as a summary of all your online social networking activities, which includes statistics. Not only does 8hands aggregate your social networks, it also extends the functionality of these networks by offering the ability to IM your social network friends, and to share your online content with simple drag and drop functionality.    Aside from the product itself, 8hands also offers some interesting desktop wallpapers.

Bottom-line: 8hands is an application that helps to aggregate, monitor and extend your social networks from one nifty desktop console.

Web 2.0 Online Identity Video

If you perform a search via a search engine like Google, Yahoo, MSN or AOL you can quickly check what the web has to offer about you. Our online identity is something that is established with time through our interactions online. I recently wrote an article showcasing the Web Profile Aggregators that help users to aggregate and take back their online identities by letting you play a part in how you are portrayed online. With online identity you can be anyone and you can have multiple identities depending on what you are doing online. The video titled online identity recently by staticfuror on YouTube or Captain Ryan on MySpace (see there are two identities right there for the same person, Ryan McGrady) offers some perspective on what having an online identity means in web 2.0. You can view it via SplashCast video player below.

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.  :-)

The Web Profile Aggregators

With the flood of new products that have been developed as part of the web 2.0 movement,  I have signed up for loads of products and services. Besides Flickr, YouTube, AOL Pictures, Digg and LinkedIn, I have too many profiles to even remember without really searching around the web. Several products have emerged in an effort to help users better manage and display all of their profiles in one place. This article will showcase these web profile aggregators more closely as we look to unify our online identities & stay updated with all of our contacts online.

ClaimID is a a service, created by a well-educated duo, that lets you claim the information that is about you online. The idea is that you will be able to claim back some control of your online identity rather than leaving it up to the search engines. ClaimID's "power to the people" approach supports OpenID and offers users the ability a single page to pull in links, photos and other web profile links to classify, annotate, prioritize and share the information, so that users are able to see the identity you want to present. ClaimID offers a bookmarklet that allows user to easily post links to their ClaimID profile page - this makes it extremely easy to keep your profile updated. Check out the ClaimID profile I set up here.

FindMeOn.com offers users the ability to create a record for just about any type of account possible. Unfortunately, I found FindMeOn.com’s design extremely unintuitive and though it strives to be so easy to use your Mom could use it, I would beg to differ. It was not easy to figure out how to add the various types of accounts and really reminded me more of a MySQL database console than a consumer facing web application. If I were FindMeOn.com I would put more emphasis on the "Locate" search which offers users the ability to search for people by email, screen name, real given name or URL – since this feature is easy to understand and could really be useful!

Lijit recently launched to offer users the ability to aggregate and add utility to their web profile information. Like many other web profile aggregators Lijit makes it easy to pull all of your accounts into one profile page like the one I created here. Lijit offers a number of profile options which makes the product more powerful as an aggregator solution. Lijit takes it a step further by then allowing people the ability to search all of their personal aggregated networks. The search functionality is run by Google Coop, a custom search offering by Google. I decided to add my personal network widget or “wijit,” as Lijit puts it, to the “About Frank Gruber” page on Somewhat Frank.

Mugshot is an open source web profile project sponsored by Red Hat determined to create something fun, social and entertaining on the web. Mugshot offers several product profiles options (i.e. Flickr, Del.icio.us, etc) but didn’t seem to offer as many options as other products, which could put it at a disadvantage as web profile aggregator. Mugshot does include its own social networking hooks which enable users the ability to find and interact with active people and groups. Mugshot offers a widget called the Mugshot Mini which can be placed on any blog or web site in a number of configurations. Mugshot provides users an optional download which enables users to display what music they are listening to via a Music Radar application which is similar to another product called MOG. The download also offers users the ability to share items with friends via a product called Web Swarm.

Naymz is a Chicago-based startup which I highlighted previously in this article on TechCrunch. Naymz offers a simple, textlink-based approach to display a number of profile links on a single page. Naymz offers a number of pre-configured profile options as well as the ability to add just about any type of profile you can think of as long as it has a feed or web site URL. Naymz also goes out of its way to make sure you are found on the web by buying your name as a keyword on Google so that when people search for you they find you either via a Google text ad or by organic search results. My Naymz profile can be found here.

Profilactic calls its profile aggregation a "mashup" as it pulls together everything about you into a single stream of information from each of your profile sources. Profilactic makes it easy to add all of your favorite social networks or any other individual site that offers a feed. Profilactic’s user-interface is clean and lays out information in easy to read oversized fonts. Profilactic’s includes some social networking hooks which allow you to add friends and share your mashups with one another. Another interesting feature is the "Clippings" feature which allows users to add links to articles or pictures that you are in that are not accounted for in other profiles. Check out my profile as a sample of what the profile mashup looks like.

ProfileLinker is another profile aggregator that takes on more of a social networking approach of its own though its user-interface reminded me more of an enterprise application. ProfileLinker seemed to be the most complex of the web profile aggregators mentioned in this article as it offered a number of pre-configured web profile options to aggregate into your page. Though I must admit adding profile options was not clear at first glance since ProfileLinker hides them in an auto-complete text field that populates as you type which makes it difficult to quickly add a number of web profile options. ProfileLinker enables users to find friends in a wide array of social networks by offering a comprehensive social network search. Aside from basic web profile aggregator functionality, ProfileLinker also offers a mobile experience which allows users to opt-in to text message updates when another user interacts with your profile. My ProfileLinker profile can be found here.

Spokeo creates a social network around aggregating the latest items from all of the users’ web profiles – think of it as wrapping all of your various site updates into one place. Upon entering the information from your online profiles, Spokeo provides users with three different web profile aggregator views which allows users to see all of their most recent updates to each of their own accounts. Secondly, Spokeo takes a very voyeuristic view by allowing users to switch over to see what all of their contacts from their web profiles are doing online. Users can see all of my contacts updates in one stream or filter them by profile type (i.e. Flickr, Digg, etc.). Finally, Spokeo displays updates from a group of featured users. Additionally, users can then add comments to aggregated content and recommend content to others within the Spokeo network.

Ziki provides a similar simple, single page approach to that of Naymz. Ziki also gives users the ability to buy text link ads to help ensure people find their Ziki profile when searching in MSN, Yahoo or Google. Users are open to add just about any service to this single profile and even can go as far as to add feeds or updates which can then be exported as an OPML file to be viewed from another feed reader or start-page product. Interestingly, Ziki has extending its profile pages to allow companies and groups to create profiles as well. You can check out my profile as an example here.

Interestingly, AIM 6.0, the latest version of AOL instant messenger, offers a number of features which leverage something called buddy updates to give users the ability to aggregate and share updates with contacts as part of the AIM experience. If you are an AIM user you can configure your account to give updates to your buddy list within the instant messenger product. Every time a  buddy takes action on one of their web profiles an exclamation point icon appears in the AIM product which, upon clicking, displays their buddy updates. AIM recently launched a product called AIM Share which enables users to share links with everyone else in their network via the AIM buddy feed similar to Mugshot's Web Swarm offering.

Summary
With the large number of social networking and community sites the ability to manage all of your web profiles in one area is going to become increasingly difficult. In looking at all the options, I found Spokeo to be the most interesting web profile aggregator. Profilactic offered the best looking user interface and I liked the way it creates a sharable “real-time” mashup of all of your profiles. Lijit’s layout and network search emphasis offers great utility – I even added it to Somewhat Frank. Though Mugshot seemed to fall a little short in the number of profiles a user could aggregate, I have to give it a gold star for its open source effort. AIM is innovative in its leveraging the power of its existing AIM buddy network to provide web profile updates – it is extremely powerful. Naymz, ClaimID and Ziki are the most open to configuration options for added profiles to the most obscure networks while ProfileLinker buried the most pre-configure profile options behind a tough user interface. With all these web profile aggregator options you either need to pick one or a new niche for "an aggregator of the web profile aggregators" may need to emerge.

UPDATED (February 1, 2007) to include ClaimID per comments below.

Disclosure: I am an AOL employee but have not worked on the AIM Buddy Update product.