SOMEWHAT FRANK

Purdue Fast Track News: Social Media Interview

via youtube.com

During my Purdue University a few weeks ago that I previously mentioned, I was interviewed by Purdue's student run news network Fast Track News. Check out the well done video interview by Bram Wahl where I share social media insight and explain the new AIM product. This is just the minute and a half story that will air soon.

Wolfram Alpha Co-Founder Interview

Last week I traveled to the Midwest to Champaign, Illinois to speak to a group of entrepreneurs about building brands and social media as covered by the Champaign News Gazette and to host another TECH cocktail. The event was sponsored by Wolfram Research which is based in Champaign and has been creating products like Mathematica for over 20 years.

Wolfram Research recently received quite a bit of buzz on TechCrunch, GigaOm Network, ReadWriteWeb and Mashable among others for the launch of the consumer facing product called Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha is a the computational research engine that helps to find anwsers to questions that don't exist on the Web.

I got a chance to visit with Co-founder, scientist and author, Theodore Gray and discussed the lastest from Wolfram Research. He was a joy to talk to as his office was filled with a number unique items which all had an interesting scientific story behind them. Theodore also created periodictable.com and authored the book Mad Science - Experiments You Can Do At Home But Probably Shouldn't. Check out the video interview with Theodore Gray (above). It is episode 82 on the SOMEWHAT FRANK Video Adventures Podcast which is available on iTunes.

Speaking at Bootstrap Maryland Conference

I am excited to be speaking at Bootstrap Maryland Conference today on the campus of University of Maryland. My panel session is at 11 a.m. EST (shown below) has a great cast of local thought leaders in the space and we will look to help start-ups and entrepreneurs understand what you can do to get your message about your product, brand or service out there.

How to market inexpensively with social media, events, and creative public relations Confirmed Panelists: Aaron Brazell, Peter Corbett, Frank Gruber, Kaitlyn Wilkins (moderated by Mario Armstrong)

I will be streaming some videos live from the event so stay tuned to SOMEWHAT FRANK on Qik (below):

Headed to Bootstrap Maryland

Getting Ready for Bootstrap Maryland Panel

Getting Technology Right Session at Bootstrap Maryland

Success Stories in Bootstrapping

Special thanks to Jared Goralnick for organizing the event, it takes a lot time and hard work and I appreciate it. Thanks for having me participate.

NYC Breakfast: Social Web Tech Discussions

I was in the Big Apple today so I decided to do a little breakfast meetup/tweetup event this morning. The event was open to anyone and we had a handful of folks brave the blizzard-like snow storm this morning to meetup. Aside from Comfort Diner in Chelsea having some very sturdy coffee mugs and solid waffles, bacon and eggs the breakfast discussions were very thoughtful and interesting.

The breakfast was made up of the following @innonate, @ceonyc, @noreaster, @msg, Ian Costello and myself (@somewhatfrank) and we did a couple of live streamed videos (via Flixwagon) about lifestreaming, backup, chat and other products and services. Oh we also explained how awesome Mom's are! If you were unable to attend please check out the two videos (below).

NYC Breakfast Intros & Shoutouts

NYC Breakfast Lifestreaming, Backup & Chat Discussion

Thank you to everyone that came out to have some breakfast and give their somewhat frank opinions about social media and technology while I was in NYC!

Seriosity Email Currency To Curb Overload?

Information overload attributed to email is a serious problem. There have been a few companies looking to help. I have been using AwayFind with an away message to help set email reply expectations and allow users to get ahold of me more quickly with important messages. I also recently heard about a well-funded company called Seriosity looking to put a currency around your email inbox to help combat information overload. This intrigued me so I dug a little deeper to find out just how they are looking to accomplish their mission.

White-Label Social Networks Discussed @ GSP

I just moderated a panel discussion titled From Zero to Community in 60 Seconds: White-Label Social Networks at the O'Reilly GSP East Conference. The session took an inside look at the business behind white-label social networks and included the following speakers:

Alex Blum, CEO of Kickapps

Michael Jones, CEO of Userplane (part of AOL)

Kerry Parkins, VP of Products at Mixx.com

Sean Roach, CEO of GotAccess.com

It was a great discussion as we kicked off the discussion by explaining how each of their products or services might be able to help create a social network all about the best baseball team in all the land, the Chicago Cubs. Great job panelist, as we could have gone on another hour or so.

Graphing Social Patterns East 2008: I'm In

Social networking and media have been quite a hot topic for the last few years. I think humans are generally social in nature so the social networking phenomenon online plays into human nature as social networking tools have evolved online. For example, there have been a number of "white label" solutions like Ning, Userplane, Drupal and Kickapps just to name a few that offer out of the box social networking solutions.

I will be moderating a panel at the upcoming Graphing Social Patterns East conference next week discussing white label social networks with some of the leaders in the space in a session titled, From Zero to Community in 60 Seconds: White-Label Social Networks.

The panel includes:

Alex Blum - CEO of KickApps
Michael Jones - CEO of Userplane
Sean Roach - CEO of Got Access

If you have a question you would like me to ask the panel please submit it in the comments section below.

Social Media Panel at TECH cocktail CONFERENCE

I recently sat in on the Social Media and Branding panel at TECH cocktail CONFERENCE. Geoff Livingston, David Armano, Danielle Wiley and I decided to start out with a little transparency and authenticity lesson. The lesson involved the Chicago Cubs (my favorite baseball team and the Chicago home team). In case you missed it, don't worry, it was caught on tape thanks to social media.

How Does Friend Connect Put Users In Control?

Google will be launching Friend Connect tonight to turn the open Web a place for open social apps to run wild as a motivator adoption mechanism for the new Google Gadget 2.0 format with OpenSocial across the Web. With Google powering email and search and collecting user data, I wonder about this new social component and about user controls. I did not get a chance to ask this question on the call due to what may have been technical issues but regardless I wanted to throw it out there to the blogosphere to give their SOMEWHAT FRANK perspectives on the following:

  How Does Google Friend Connect Put Users In Control?

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below if you have a SOMEWHAT FRANK opinion.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Featured As 'Must Know' Blog

I got word this morning that TheMarker, Israel’s prominent business magazine and Haaretz, one of Israel’s largest newspapers, featured SOMEWHAT FRANK in a spread titled "The Blogs That Every Israeli Startup Should Know." 

Make Your Commitments StickK

Every year we attempt to make new year resolutions in an effort to ensure the next year is better than the last. Some of us try to exercise more, some try to quit smoking, while others just try and have more time to relax. Do you stay true to your resolution? I cannot say I always do. There is just something about having a little skin in the game that makes commitments stick. For example, I found that I would go to the gym more frequently when I was paying for the gym every month as opposed to when I had a free gym membership. That is exactly what StickK is all about. StickK is a site developed by Yale University economists who tested the effectiveness of commitment contracts through research. StickK uses currency to motivate you to reach your goals by making you literally pay for it you don't.

Video: How to Start a Company with $25K

What's it take to start your own company these days? Everyone has their own opinion on this question. Recently the GigaOm network site FoundRead sat down to video interview Art of the Start author Guy Kawasaki. Guy is a known for his Silicon Valley "innovation evanglism" as well his books about startups. In the ten minute interview Guy talks about how to bootstrap and start a company with limited resources.

Now Is Gone: Video Interview with Brian Solis

I got a chance to sit down with Future Works and Bub.blico.us founder and PR 2.0 blogger Brian Solis to chat about the book that he assisted Geoff Livingston in authoring - Now Is Gone.

The book which retails for only $10 on Amazon.com (less than you spend on lattes in a week) is positioned to be a good primer for anyone that is thinking about the new media landscape from big companies to entrepreneurs.

A Social Media Discussion Lifestreamed

How can you engage your client community via blogs and social media? Last Thursday, I spoke on a panel at The New New Internet Conference to discuss this very question. The panel consisted of Gary Vaynerchuk video blogger at Wine Library TV and Director of Operations at Wine Library, Geoff Livingston blogger at The BuzzBin and author of Now Is Gone and Rohit Bhargava blogger at Influential Marketing and author Personality Not Included and myself blogger at Somewhat Frank, co-founder of  TECH cocktail a community-building event startup and product manager of myAOL. If you want to find out about social media you best watch the video and learn about blogging, engaging social media and hustle 2.0!  

Car Buying: Online To The Drive Home

After driving a used Toyota Avalon for the last few years, I finally figured out what vehicle I wanted  to buy and made the move on Sunday at Infiniti of Tyson's Corner. I am now a proud owner of an Infiniti FX35 (shown below). This article will summarize some of the online resources I used to purchase my new vehicle.