SOMEWHAT FRANK

TripIt Adds Location Based Traveler Alerts

TripIt, a travel planner, organizer and social networking site previously reviewed on Somewhat Frank when it launched at TechCrunch40, has added some more social stickiness to the product by exposing when your contacts might have similar travel plans. Since TripIt already offers an number of useful general travel organization and collaboration utilities the new location-based social “closeness” alerts are aimed at helping travels keep better connected with others by making it easier to keep track of when someone may be in your town or your paths cross while on the road by automatically sending out notifications.

22books To Share & Find Book Lists

I seem to have too many books in my reading queue and not enough time to read them all. However, you might be on the other side of the fence with this one and looking for new books to read. 22books might be a place to look as it offers users a place to create, find and share book lists.

FNN: Facebook Updates Newsroom Style

With the Facebook news wall users get an aggregation of friend updates to keep tabs on whats going on in their social circle. Wouldn't be great if you could just watch your Facebook news wall just like the evening broadcast news on television? Well now you can, sort of...

Poll: Thoughts about Google's OpenSocial API?

This week the Web development community has been buzzing as details were released about a new widget API called Google OpenSocial. Google officially launched OpenSocial and provided this video to further explain its actions. I have been trying to get my head around what it really means and would like to open it up to my readers for input via a Somewhat Frank poll to get your take on OpenSocial.

A Very Facebook Web 2.0 Summit

The Web 2.0 Summit took place this past week in San Francisco. While I participated in a few AOL sponsorship events, I also participated in Lobbycon. In my short time at the Summit, it appeared the Web 2.0 Summit seemed to be more of a "suit" fest while the Web 2.0 Expo, this past April, seemed to be much more approachable. Nonetheless, Facebook was all the buzz and Mark Zuckerberg spoke with John Battelle at the conference similar to how Mark Zuckerberg spoke with Mike Arrington a few weeks ago at TechCrunch40.