SOMEWHAT FRANK

BusinessPOV Video Blog Covers Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Creative Culture (and TECH cocktail)

Founded in September of 2006, BusinessPOV is a Chicago-based weekday video blog focused on profiling companies, people and products that display elements of innovation, entrepreneurship and creative culture. Following a short video format the site is organized to offer top stories and local knowledge. Both video types provide valuable insight for anyone looking to or currently running a business. BusinessPOV is produced by Mark Scheffler, a former staff reporter at Crain's Chicago Business and award-winning contributor to the Chicago Tribune Magazine and his brother,  Peter, is the co-founder of XFA, one of the largest independent brokerages at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

BusinessPOV recently attended TECH cocktail 4, an event I co-founded with Eric Olson, to highlight the event. Currently, the following videos are posted:

The Forces Behind Tech Cocktail
TechCocktail 4 Product Demos, Part 1: TimeXchange.net
TechCocktail 4 Product Demos, Part 2: Menuism
TechCocktail 4 Product Demos, Part 3: Text2Store
TechCocktail 4 Product Demos, Part 4: Zaplee.com
More to come…or subscribe to BusinessPOV updates.

If you want to attend a TECH cocktail in real life, be sure to RSVP for TECH cocktail DC 1 - coming soon to Washington, DC.

After A Long Web 2.0 Week: How Much Time Did It Take Off Your Life?

After a long week of traveling from Chicago for TECH cocktail to San Francisco for a week of Web 2.0 Expo events as explained by Mike Arrington, I feel like I may have shaved a few days off my life. Is there a way on the web to find out the impact of this week of sleepless nights and long days at the expo? If you’ve ever wondered just how long you’ll be taking up space on project earth, several sites are available to project how long you will could live. Based on how you complete a series of lifestyle questions, the sites calculate a projected age you will live to celebrate, or put another less popular way, your death age.

Internist Dr. Michael Roizen is a pioneer with health related questions to determine how one’s daily habits contribute to their good health with suggestions on how to live longer. At Dr. Roizen’s Realage.com you can calculate your “real age” based on your lifestyle, eating and drinking habits, and even how often you floss your teeth.

If you want more information, including how long you will live, (and why would you really want to know that?) you can log on to LivingTo100.com for those under 50 years of age, and to Eons.com for those older then 50. Each site walks you through a series of questions on health, diet, exercise, family, attitude, etc. and then calculates how long you will live.

So keep eating the broccoli, taking the vitamins, blogging daily and having fun you should live a long and happy life on the web.

Photo Attribution: stephcarter via Flickr

Google Acquires DoubleClick, 10 Hot Startups, Social Aggregators, FoundRead Born & Web 2.0 Expo Is Upon Us

Photo of the week: This San Francisco Trolley photo taken by, friend and co-founder of TECH cocktail Eric Olson, was the first photo I found on Flickr related to the Web 2.0 Expo this week in SF.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 04.15.07

The Web 2.0 Expo Is Upon Us
I just arrived in San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo. It should be an exciting week of sessions, demos and launch parties in the city by the bay. If you are in town and want to meetup tonight (Sunday) check out this little meetup but keep in mind, this is NOT a TECH cocktail event like the one we just hosted in Chicago - it is just a meetup in SF.

Google Spends $3.1 Billion To Acquire DoubleClick
Makes sense as Google is truly an advertising company. Google announced that they have agreed to acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. Microsoft was reportedly in a bidding war with Google for the company. That is a lot of cash. Rumor has it they are buying the Internet just after the 2016 Chicago Olympics. :-) 

Birth of the Social Aggregator
Social Networks, Blogs and Startpages have long been treated as separate categories of web-based applications. According to Widgify, it is about to change. 

10 Most Successful Web 2.0 Startups To Date
Rev2.org lists its take on the most successful web 2.0 startups. With FeedBurner’s domination of the feed management space I would probably add them to this list. But you probably know already I am a FeedBurner fan.

New RSS 2.0 spec site deployed
Dave Winer has been working on a project to "future-safe" the Harvard site that houses the RSS 2.0 spec. Yesterday, he redirected from the old site to the new one. Congrats Dave on the new site! 

Search for People Across the Social Network Sites
yoName is a search engine that allows you to search friends (not just) on these 6 big networks. 

Introducing FoundRead
GigaPapi GigaOm is at it again as he has launched FoundRead, a shared resource, where anyone can contribute, either through their posts, or experiences or comments. You can choose to contribute freely or anonymously. Great idea Om, congrats on the launch. 

Hot Startup Checklist: Spam A Lot?
An interesting chart of Valleywag (masters of the pie charts, graphs, slides, etc.) highlighting some of the most promising startups.

AOL Feeds Now Powered by FeedBurner

Since I was pretty tied up with TECH cocktail 4 the past couple of days, I did not get a chance to weigh in on the fact that FeedBurner, the Chicago-based feed management company, had announced the signing of a deal to manage the feeds for the AOL Network. In talking with FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo at TECH cocktail 4, he was very pleased about the deal and mentioned the announcement forthcoming (the following morning).

Aside from my Chicago connection, I have been working with FeedBurner since coming on to work for AOL so I am happy to have the deal finalized - they have a great team and offer publishers services. AOL will now be able to leverage all of FeedBurner's metrics and FeedFlare to tie into social media services like Netscape, Digg and Facebook and feed advertising. Congrats to FeedBurner on continuing to grow an impressive publisher network from their home-base in "Sweet Home Chicago."

TECH cocktail 4: Wow, that was fun!

With April flurries plaguing the Midwest the past few days, TECH cocktail 4 offered the Chicago technology and entrepreneurial community a place to get out of the cold spring weather to enjoy an evening of fun. With a number of activities and another excellent turnout which included an appearance by the AudioSnacks mascot a 6 plus foot llama, I think this might have been our best TECH cocktail yet. I think this might have been our best TECH cocktail yet. The venue, John Barleycorn Wrigleyville, was ideal, the demos were great, the sponsors rocked and the guests were wonderful. Unlike the other events, I had more time at this event to mingle with everyone. It was a lot of fun. I think Frank "the Tank" in the movie Old School played by Will Ferrell expresses how I feel about last night's TECH cocktail 4 the best with this quote:

Frank: I had an awesome time!
Beanie: I know that you had an awesome time. I think the entire town knows you had an awesome time.
[to Mitch]
Beanie: And wouldn't you want those times to keep on going?

Of course we will continue to have additional TECH cocktail events. There will be some interesting news coming on the TECH cocktail site in the next few days. Stay tuned by subscribing to updates via RSS or email.

Thank you to everyone that sponsored (shown in the video above). Also thanks to all the great startups that demo'ed their products last night. They included:

Interactive Mediums - Offers innovative text message voting and social interactivity.
Menuism - Rate not only the restaurant but also the specific dish or dishes.
Parkwhiz - Innovative parking search and parking spot marketplace.
Text2Store - Get great deals from local stores via text message.
TimeXchange - Manage your consulting time in a social setting.
Zaplee - VOIP call center software built around skype.

Menuism was the crowd favorite but they all have some wonderful offerings - congrats to all!

Thank you to all our sponsors (see video below) for making TECH cocktail possible. Thanks to everyone that attended. I hope you had a pleasant evening. Obviously, thank you to co-founder Eric Olson. Also I would like to thank my family and friends who they have been extremely helpful and supportive. Finally, thank you to both Eric's (FeedBurner) and my (AOL) employers as they have been extremely supportive of our TECH cocktail creation.

Photos from the event can be found here tagged: techcocktail4.

Check out some of these other reviews of TECH cocktail 4 on The Hot Iron, Olson's Observations and Networking Insight.

Google Sued, Microsoft Buys TellMe, AOL Local, Last.fm Video, Attention Economy Overload & TECH cocktail 4 Coming Soon

Photo of the Week: This is a photo I took in my old neighborhood in Lincoln Park in Chicago prior to moving on to AOL in Virginia. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 03.18.07

Viacom Drops a $1 Billion Nuke on Google
Remember when Napster was a lawsuit target for helping to foster pirated music? When Google acquired YouTube everyone wondered who would be the first company to try and collect on video copyright infringement in a similar fashion. We now know, as Viacom was the first to step to the plate with a one billion dollar lawsuit against Google. Complete.com offers some interesting analysis on the situation.

AOL moves AOL Local Search into Beta - it's very slick
CenterNetworks reviewed the latest beta to come out of AOL. AOL Local refreshes the local options as a user moves around a map. So start in 10036 (Times Square) and move to 11235 (Brooklyn) and the options move.

Microsoft to Acquire Tellme Networks
Tellme Networks, Inc., a leading provider of voice services for everyday life, including nationwide directory assistance, enterprise customer service and voice-enabled mobile search. Microsoft and Tellme share a vision around the potential of speech as a way to enable access to information, locate other people and enhance business processes, any time and from any device.

Last.fm Adds Video Tracking
The Register reported earlier this week that social music play, Last.fm has added the ability to not only track the music you play on iTunes and other services but now is going to start doing the same with video.

Report: New Bloggers Flatlined in 2005, Reading Climbs
Steve Rubel reports that according to the latest State of the News Media report, the share of the online population that tried blogging peaked back in January 2005 at 10% and has hovered since at 8%. Blog readership, on the other hand is climbing.

The Attention Economy is Killing My Attention
Nick O'Neill explains how the attention economy may be producing information overload. He wonders how product like twitter along with blogs will be able to co-exisit as people piling on attention commitments.

Del.icio.us Adds Tag Descriptions
Del.icio.us, the popular social bookmarking site owned by Yahoo, has added a new feature which enables users to for the first time not only tag items but also add meta-data to title and describe each tag.

Goplan launches!
Webreakstuff has launched a new product called Goplan which offers a suite of online project management and collaboration tools that could draw comparisons to 37signals' product line.

TECH cocktail 4: Going, Going, Gone
TECH cocktail 4, the forth event in the event series I co-founded with Eric Olson back in July 2006, is now on its fourth event and we filled a 500 person guest list in 23 hours. Wowsers! TECH cocktail 4 will be on April 12, 2007 at John Barleycorn Wrigleyville in Chicago but due to the overwhelming response we have started a TECH cocktail 4 wait-list for anyone still interested in going. I hope to see you there.