SOMEWHAT FRANK

What's the one thing you would most want to improve when it comes to your laptop or computer?

I love my Macbook Pro (MBP). It makes processing photos and videos a breeze. But like anything, my Macbook Pro is not perfect. I started thinking about this question and actually came up with two things that my Macbook Pro could improve on. They are listed below:

1. My computer gets hot! To remedy the situation I have installed smcFan Control an application that boosts the internal fan to cool the machine down.
2. The MBP keyboard is placed so far back the edge of the computer cuts into my wrists. To remedy the situation I often wear wristbands to help protect my wrists. These wristbands also represent my favorite colleges and professional sports teams. If you have a wristband you would like me to rock while I jam out on my computer please drop me a comment below.

Your turn. What would you most want to improve when it comes to your laptop or computer?

Digital Capital Week Coming to DC In June

I am pleased to announce the creation of Digital Capital Week (DCWEEK), a 10 day festival in Washington D.C. focused on technology, innovation and all things digital in our nation’s capital.

Over the last four years, I have spent many hours working on TECH cocktail with the mission of helping to better connect and amplify the local technology signal in local under served communities. In the process, many ideas have popped up but not every idea comes to fruition. The concept of a week long tech focused set of activities came onto my radar in the fall of 2008 after meeting with Vivek Kundra who was then CTO of DC. After a few meetings, fellow DC'ers Nick O'Neill, Peter Corbett, Shana Glickfield and others began to plan a tech week to take place in May or June 2009. As it turns out, other priorities crept into our lives so the tech week never materialized. Also with the new U.S. President elected, Vivek Kundra, moved up to take on a new role as Federal Chief Information Officer so working with us on a tech week in DC became a lower priority.

So while that tech week may have died, I am excited about the creation of DCWEEK, as iStrategyLabs has teamed with Shiny Heart Ventures (I am a Co-Founder) to co-produce the 10 days of festivities. DCWEEK has support from the WDCEP (Washington DC Economic Partnership), DC Office of Planning, CTDC (Cultural Tourism DC), OCTO (DC’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer) and the city’s BIDS (Business Improvement Districts).

DCWEEK is free to the first 2,000 to attend - registration is open - RSVP HERE. 

Ways You Can Participate:

1. Attend! Register here: http://dcweek.eventbrite.com and build an itinerary here: http://bit.ly/dcwcal. Most events won’t be populated until late Spring.
2. Host an event/session.
3. Lead/participate in a project - Digital Capital Week is not just 10 days of parties and sessions. It’s also an opportunity for you to collaborate on a project with others. If you’d like to participate in a project, please use the event RSVP to indicate your lever of interest.
4. Sponsor or Partner with DCWEEK - contact DJ Saul or Frank Gruber.

Be sure to connect with DCWEEK on Facebook & Twitter.

I will also be hosting a mega TECH cocktail DC that week on June 17th so be sure to RSVP for TECH cocktail too. It should be a fabulous week in June in Washington, D.C. so I would highly advise you to book your travel now and come out to DC for a week of festivities.

The Best of CES: My Favorite Shiny Objects

 
   I just got back from the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, thanks to Intel and my participation in the Intel Insider program. It was a lot of fun and I saw lots of shiny objects and gadgets. I wrote a piece for TECH cocktail sharing the Best 13 at CES 2010. Of the list, I'd take every item on the list but if I had to pick the one I would probably purchase first, I would probably look into the new Sprint Overdrive Mobile 3G/4G hotspot made by Sierra Wireless. It leverages the Clearwire WiMax network to take advantage of the 4G unlimited speeds.I was at the Baltimore WiMax launch so I am looking forward to getting one of these devices to take advantage of it.

If I had to find the coolest gadget, it was probably the Alioscopy 3DTV at the Intel booth as it did not require 3D glasses to view in 3D. Though it has some restrictions on the content that can be turned into 3D it was a pretty impressive device. It was by far the most interesting 3D TV I saw because it was the only TV that was in 3D with the use of glasses. Check out this video of the 3DTV at the Intel booth.

TECH cocktail DC 7 Showcases Six Startups

This past week we had a super showing at TECH cocktail DC 7 which was previewed in the November issue of DC Magazine. It was great to be able to showcase another handful of local start-ups. With the holidays right around the corner it was great to be able to catchup with a crowd of a couple hundred DC area tech enthusiasts and share in a holiday cocktail.

The event was sponsored by Winamp which has been around awhile but is making a resurgence with it's latest offering. I remember using Winamp back in my fraternity house when we hosted events and festivities (think Animal House but in Indiana). It's great to hear it is continuing to improve the media player experience and platform. As an Intel Insider for going on two years I was also excited and thankful for Intel's support as a sponsor. Intel also kicked off a contest to win a HP Envy Beats laptop over on TECH cocktail. Good luck to everyone that enters, contest ends December 17th at midnight EST.

The DC Nationals' Social Media Opportunity

With baseball in it's final series of 2009 I wanted to share some of my thoughts on baseball, branding and social media, thoughts that have been brewing for a while. I currently live in Washington, D.C., a plane ride away from my favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, and within driving distance of the two teams with the worst records in baseball this past season, the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Nationals respectively. They both lost a lot of games this year (98 and 103) which only makes me miss my hometown Cubbies even more but let's not forget they have been nothing less than disappointing for over a century. Even in 2003, where I was five outs away from doing Wrigley Field victory dance by heading to the World Series they found a way to break my heart. But every season, I still come back with even more resilience that it could be the Cubs year.

That said, due to my social technology and media background (my baseball skills probably didn't hurt either), I was invited to meet with the Washington Nationals executives last month at Nationals Park. I was honored to do so and in meeting with Stan Kasten, Bob Wolfe and others I realized that they are just a three year old start-up that spun out of what was the Montreal Expos organization. Call me an optimist but I think they have an almost clean slate, branding-wise, that offers them a huge opportunity to create a strong following both online and off. 

Demo Day For Alpha Labs Pittsburgh Start-ups

This past year I have attended several demo days and covered Launched Box Digital in DC and Dream It Ventures in Philly among others. Yesterday was the demo day for another local incubator, this time it's in Pittsburgh. Yes the "Steel City" has more than just steel these days, as six new start-up companies showed off their stuff as part of the Alpha Lab extensive six-month start-up business incubator program. AlphaLab provides funding, free office space, expert business advisors and services during its biannual program in Pittsburgh. Alpha Lab was created by Innovation Works a seed stage investment firm.

New AIM with Lifestream Launches

Since joining AOL in 2006, I have worked on the product direction and strategy of two AOL products. The first of these was the myAOL personalized start page, which I covered previously when it launched in 2007 and was rolled out to 78 countries. The other product I have worked on is AIM.

AIM has been around a very long time - launched in the 1990’s it assembled the first viable social graph with the AOL buddy list. So I was excited to jump on board with a team of internal AOL thought-leaders in January 2008 to map out the future of myAOL and determine how it could interact with AIM to offer users a streamlined social utility. During this process we identified that real-time data or the “lifestream”, is a necessity to any social experience on the Web. AIM had a similar "lifestream" concept since 2005 called AIM Buddy Updates which I covered previously, as we relaunched it on the Web in the summer 2008. We concluded our work and learnings from the project and proposed a direction and then went on to acquire SocialThing, which I connected with AOL via TECH cocktail Boulder 1 to join the AIM team and contributed to the effort. Being involved from its original ideation till now, I am pleased to see the new AIM with lifestream come to fruition.

26 Startups In 30 Days Demo at TECH cocktail

It has been a busy last 30 days as we hosted three TECH cocktail events in Chicago, DC and Boston respectively. Starting in Chicago in early August we drew a humongous crowd and showed off 9 new Chicago area start-ups as I previously explained. We did not stop with just Chicago, we continued to plan and host TECH cocktail events the past two weeks in DC and Boston. Both events were very well attended and showcased 17 more start-ups. The events attracted over 1400 guests and showcased 26 startups in 30 days. Not bad as we roll into our fourth year, with the same mission as when we started of "amplifying the local technology signal in local tech communities" while "having fun doing it." 

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for coming out to support the last three events in Chicago, DC and Boston. We couldn’t do the events without the support of the local technology community and our fabulous sponsors which included AOL’s AIM & Going.com, BOALT, Saper Law, Jess3, Shiny Heart Ventures, TransFS, SproutBox, Total Attorneys, Chicago Micro, OVAL Vodka and iStrategyLabs. We also had 26 great start-ups demoing at the events. 

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.

140 Conference In More Than 140 Characters

Two weeks ago I was able to take part in the 140 Conference hosted by Jeff Pulver in New York City. I was pleased to be among the characters at the event which brought together Twitter users from a number of different walks of life and geographic locations. While there were a number of highlights at the event I think my biggest takeaways were as follows:

• Twitter is about love as people share their thoughts and assemble an army of supporters online and off
• Twitter is the ultimate social recommendation feed reader and start page for many
• Twitter's text messaging capabilities make it a powerful tool for reporting and organizing groups while on the go - bypassing regular text messaging protocols
• Twitter is a connector, touching so many people in all walks of life

A number of my friends, followers and colleagues spoke at the event and while there are too many to mention in one article without vomiting the entire conference schedule. I thought I would share a few tidbits, photos and videos from the two day Twitter love fest. If you missed the event you can watch it streamed live on June 29th (Day 1) and June 30th (Day 2) starting at 11AM EST. The re-broadcast can be watched over at: http://140conf.com/watchit

iPhone 3GS: First Impression

After making my second stop to the Apple Store in two days, I finally got my hands on an iPhone 3GS. My first attempt was unsuccessful because the AT&T network was down. So when I returned the next day, I decided to go with the white 32GB version since they were out of the black. I figured I could use the extra 16GB over my last iPhone 3G since I would most likely be taking advantage of the iPhone 3GS's video capabilities.

In order to purchase the iPhone 3GS I had to get yet another AT&T contract. This annoys me. The FCC needs to step in to stop the monopoly that Apple and AT&T have created by forcing all iPhone customers into an AT&T contract just to purchase a new iPhone. Consumers have no choice as they cannot fight of the beautiful songs of the Muses that play while starting into the touchscreen interface for a shiny new iPhone 3GS. Ok, I will get off my soapbox now, but I really think the FCC needs to do something.

Upon syncing up my new  iPhone, I was excited to test iPhone 3GS video camera so I recorded and edited a quick video using the 3GS. I think Flip should probably be a little concerned about the iPhone's video camera taking some of its piece of the mobile video camera pie, though there are still lots of people that will not have the 3GS. The Flip and other similar cameras also offer HD quality video which the iPhone does not so there is still value in having both but the gap between them is shrinking.

Aside from the new video camera, the iPhone 3GS also has a better still photo camera with auto focus and balance. So I performed a little photo test by taking a similar photo but using the touchscreen to focus on a different area.

iPhone Push Notifications Tested Via AOL's AIM

Apple will soon be launching of the iPhone 3.0 operating system and part of the new system is a push alert notification feature as highlighted at WWDC 2009 this week. Push Notification is the system developed by Apple to remedy the fact that the iPhone won’t allow third party applications to run in the background due to security, battery life and performance concerns. Push notifications are will enable certain tasks (like IMs) that come to your phone even when that application isn’t running.

TechCrunch recently tested Push Notifications using AIM the new 3.0 iPhone software. Watch the video above to see Push Notification in action with AIM but please note the video makes it seem like there may be a delay between an IM sent and received, but it’s basically instantaneous.

Mobile Internet Device Showdown at Computex

Last week, thanks to the Intel Insider program, I journeyed to Taipei, Taiwan to attend Computex Taipei in my search for the perfect mobile Internet device or MID. In doing so I met up with Steve "Chippy" Paine from MID Moves and UMPC Portal and we explored the Intel mobility display at Computex. We look at a handful of mobile Internet devices all with the Intel Atom processor inside which included the Viliv S7, S5 and X70 EX, Clarion Mind, LLUON Mobbit, UMID mBook and Panasonic Toughbooks to determine which one we like the best.

My favorite MID that we highlight is probably the Viliv S7 (shown here) but I also like the UMID mBook and would love to do a head-to-head hands on comparison of just those two. But until then check out episode 80 on SOMEWHAT FRANK as we explore the mobile Internet devices of Computex Taipei 2009 (video above) and let me know which device you like the best.

MLB Baseball Manager Sues Twitter Over Fake Account & Fuels Online Identity Debate

The issue of online identity has been an age old issue online as some users leverage the Web to manage multiple personas and online identities. Though there are initiatives like OpenID and OAuth that look to help remedy the situation, it still is somewhat difficult to verify true online identity. This opens the door to online identity impersonation. In many cases, someone creates a fake account to playfully mock another person which could be taken as the ultimate form of flattery. But in other cases the mocking can turn downright insulting. This seems to be the case with the fake Twitter account of St. Louis Cardinals Manager Tony La Russa. He has also experienced a fake account of his own and he is not taking it lightly as he is suing Twitter over it. According to TechCrunch the suit was filed in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco seeking “unspecified damages.”

According to ESPN the following Tweet was made from a fake Tony La Russa account on April 19, 2009:

"Lost 2 out of 3, but we made it out of Chicago without one drunk driving incident or dead pitcher."

This is a pretty distasteful tweet as it references two St. Louis pitchers that tragically passed away (Darryl Kile in 2002 & Josh Hancock in 2007). Twitter reacted by taken down the fake account.

This is the second Twitter lawsuit (the first I recall was the Courtney Love Defamation Suit), but it could cause an avalanche of attention and potential copycat lawsuits. Online user generated content businesses should be ready to address such an issue as I am sure we have not seen the last of it.

Since fake accounts can be so destructive, I am wondering what Twitter or other sites should do to address things like this. I feel it is time for people to be real and even switched my twitter name to my real name as social Web has transformed into place of true identity. Should sites allow users to have multiple accounts unlinked to a true identity? By doing so this could cut down the number of fake accounts as they would need to be connected to a real identity thus adding a level of transparency. Is Twitter at fault here or should they put the blame on the user? 

Photo above by toadstool ring on Flickr

Moblin 2.0: Social Platform for Mobile Devices

This morning I learned about a pretty slick new Linux open source project called Moblin. Moblin has been around for a couple of years now but the new 2.0 version is now in beta and today at Computex Taipei there was an executive summit (video below) which helped me wrap my head around the scope and direction of the project. Founded by Intel in July 2007, Moblin started as a project looking to enable a new class of devices based on the Intel Atom processor. With the 2.0 version, Intel has handed the keys over to the Linux Foundation to drive this project to the next level as an open source platform of mobile computing.

Moblin 2.0 offers an open platform that developers can build on and see instant gratification by plugging into the Moblin myzone dashboard. The platform and dashboard reminds me of the iPhone application platform but for slightly larger more powerful devices. The myzone dashboard that aggregator a bunch of widgets of information into a startpage experience that is anchored by a tool bar across the top. The dashboard includes social features by sharing a lifestream are which pulls in information from sites like Twitter, Last.fm and Flickr. It also offers a status message system that is said to push updates out to your various social sites that revolve around status updates. Moblin also positions your videos, photos, music and calendar on your startpage.