SOMEWHAT FRANK

Search for Young Science Talent Lands In DC

Do you remember making a volcano for your high school science fair? I do. It was fun to the watch the volcano erupt but let's just be honest, it did not really push the scientific envelope.

A few weeks ago, I attended the Intel Science Talent Search (STS) as it wrapped up in Washington, DC and these kids blew my mind as they were actually solve really difficult problems. The 40 finalists are selected from a nationwide pool of thousands to attend the week-long Intel Science Talent Institute in Washington, D.C. Students had an opportunity to present their research projects to the general public and members of the scientific community at the National Academy of Sciences. Over $1 million is awarded annually to Intel STS participants and their schools. Awards range from $5,000 scholarship grants and laptop computers for all finalists to the grand prize of a $100,000 college scholarship. All of the 40 exhibitors got a chance to visit the White House to meet President Barack Obama. 

First Quarter Full TECH cocktail Schedule

I cannot believe we have been at TECH cocktail for going on three years now. It has been a pleasure to see so many great people, startups and products rally around TECH cocktail in their local community and we hope to continue that in 2009 with a full schedule of events. We also have some other things on the docket for 2009 and will be happy to share them soon. In the meantime, check out the four events we have planned in the first quarter:

2/19 - TECH cocktail Chicago 10
2/26 - TECH cocktail DC 4
3/12 - TECH cocktail Champaign 2 (more details coming soon...)
3/26 - TECH cocktail Ann Arbor 1 (more details coming soon...)

So I look forward to seeing you all soon. If you would like to be a sponsor for an upcoming event please feel free to contact me as we are always looking for additional support to keep our events free and accessible to all the community. Check out the TECH cocktail song, it is a catchy little jingle if I don't say so myself. :)

AllFacebook Launches Facebook Page Stats Tool

It appears that people will no longer be in the dark as to how well fan pages are doing on Facebook as AllFacebook has launched Facebook stat pages. Nick O'Neill, a DC blogger, friend and closet programmer, has been working furiously the last month or so to roll out the page tracker system that keeps track of over 620,000 Facebook Fan pages. The tracking pages offer charts like the one to the left that upon hover offers users to pinpoint specific cross sections on the chart.

Plinky Through Those Personal Blogging Lulls

Plinky launched this past week to offer a microblogging platform for your personal blog. Plinky was founded by Jason Shellen, a former engineer of blog platform Blogger, to help "cure writer's block" Plinky prompts its users to answer a question a day to keep the personal blog content flowing.

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!

My CES 2009 Experience Recap

Last week, I previewed my trip to the Consumer Electronics Show as I had just touched down and was getting ready to experience my first CES. Well, I am back from CES and to be totally frank, all I can say is "Wow, that was a good time!" Unfortunately, it took me until today to decompress and get enough sleep to be able to spill details about all that I experienced last week at CES. First things first, a big thank you Intel for sponsoring my trip out to CES as an Intel Insider. It was an unbelievable experience.

So how did the party I co-hosted at CES on Thursday night go? I would have to say it was a success but you can see for yourself by checking out some of the photos taken by Brian Solis (this set of photos & photo below)

Wm. Marc Salsberry also took some super pictures (this set of photos & photo below).

We had the entire Sportsbook Bar & Grill at the Palazzo which was formerly the 40/40 Club owned by hip hop star Jay Z, so as you can imagine we felt like kings in the palace of a hip hop legend. It was pretty amazing and the attendees were top-notch. I never thought as a corn-fed Northern Illinois sixth grader attending a junior high sock hop wearing what I equated to MC Hammer "hammer pants" (which are rather baggy pants) that I would years later host a CES kickoff party in Vegas that MC Hammer would attend. I guess you just don't think about stuff like that as a 6th grader growing up in a small town. Oh and we both wore regular pants to the event.

 

CES 2009 Here I Am!

I packed my bag last night and took the first flight possible this morning to Las Vegas to attend the Consumer Electronic Show. While packing last night, I felt very much like aschek on Twitter (left) as I packed a lot more technology gadgets than the normal traveler. I packed my work Blackberry, Nokia N95 to stream videos updates live via Flixwagon, my Canon Powershot SD850 to capture snag shots and the occasional video, my Canon VIXIA HF100 HD camcorder to record SOMEWHAT FRANK video episodes and my iPhone which can take and edit photos with a number of Apps including (PanoLab, CameraBag and PhotoGenie, among others) and stream live video to the Web via Qik (thank you Qik). That is a lot of equipment and I have only covered my phone/cameras. Aside from that I have my laptop and a number of other gadgets. For the 20 percent of clothing, I threw in a couple fine Taylorbyrd button down shirts to choose from. This is my first time attending CES and I want to thank Intel and the Intel Insider program for making it possible. So what do I have on tap?

Tonight (Thursday), I am co-hosting the Intel CES09 Kickoff hosted by @briansolis @sarahcuda @zappos @somewhatfrank and @intelinsiders at the The Sportsbook Bar & Grill in the Palazzo. In case you are not familiar with the venue, it was formerly the 40/40 Club, which was owned by hip hop star Jay Z, so it is sure to offer plush furnishings, lots of technology and bling. I hope to see you there as it should be a great event. Intel will show off some of the latest Netbooks which sport the new Intel Atom processor (a very tiny but powerful processor) and if you visit the Intel booth on Friday at CES you might even be able to win one. Also be sure to tag your Twitter tweets, Flickr photos and YouTube videos CES09 so they get added to the ultimate destination for tracking all the CES social media action at ConsumerElectronicsInsider.com.

SOMEWHAT FRANK in 2008 ... Onward to 2009!

SOMEWHAT FRANK 2008 In Review from Frank Gruber on Vimeo.

I just wanted to take one more moment to look back at 2008 in pictures (above) as we look forward to more adventures in 2009. From DEMO08 to FOWA Miami to rockin' SXSW to TechCrunch50 and more, 2008 was super. Thanks to everyone that made 2008 so great (you know who you are). Happy New Year!

SOMEWHAT FRANK 2008 In Review

It has been a rather eventful 2008, with a number of great memories. I just wanted to take a second to thank everyone that made it such a great year. Check out some of the most popular items of 2008 (below). Thanks for another great year. I look forward to bringing you more SOMEWHAT FRANK adventures in personal technology in 2009.

15 Most Popular Items of 2008 (according to Google Analytics):

1.) 2008 Web 2.0 & Tech Conference Calendar
2.) My Bolt Bus Travel Experience to NYC
3.) Rocking SXSW: An Epic Wine Event
4.) skinnyCorp Threadless Office Visit
5.) Sharing the JoyEngine Community
6.) Cool Globes & Ideas For A Cooler Planet
7.) A Look Inside Lijit Networks
8.) Sarah Lacy Book Tour Hits DC
9.) GeoEye Office Visit & Tour
10.) CrowdSpring Offers Lots Of Design Options
11.) Social Media & My Somewhat Obsession With The Shiny Objects Of The Web
12.) The TECH cocktail Song
13.) Snapily 3D Animated Business Cards
14.) Somewhat Frank Meets NonSociety
15.) Taking the MBT Anti-Shoe Challenge

Happy New Year!

Setting Up Roku for On-Demand Netflix To Your TV

Roku For Netflix To Your TV On-Demand from Frank Gruber on Vimeo.

For a holiday gift this year, I gave out a couple of Roku gift packages which included the Roku Netflix Player. The Roku Netflix Player enables a Netflix user with unlimited videos (currently $8.99 a month subscription) to watch videos on-demand to the TV. Users can choose from the selection of over 12,000 videos that currently are released to watch instantly on the Web. Roku even has new firmware to handle HD videos. To help with the adoption of the new gadget I decided to set it up and documented it in episode 60 on SOMEWHAT FRANK (wow-wooh-eee, can you believe I did 61 SOMEWHAT FRANK video adventure episodes this year!?!). Tune in as I share in the adventure of setting up the Roku for the first time in the video (above).If you have setup a Roku share your experiences in the comments section, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the device and the easy of use.

Somewhat Frank Last Minute Holiday Gift Ideas

So you haven't been doing your holiday shopping or you are totally at a loss as to what to get for that tech savvy friend or family member? To help you out I have created a list of holiday gift ideas. Of course, if you are ordering some of these products you had better do it as soon as possible to have them in time for giving. Printing out a picture of the gift to share as sort of an IOU while the gift is shipped could also work but just isn't the same as the real thing. If you feel like the holidays have crept up on you, you are not alone. We actually all had 5 less days this year between Thanksgiving and and the Christmas holiday. This article should give you a few last minute holiday gift ideas.

Connecting With Google Friend Connect

Google Friend Connect debuted this past spring as it rolled out to a few different sites as part of a private beta program. The idea is pretty simple as it offers an easy way to connect with people on your site via a Google Gadget thus bringing community to a previously community-less site. I like to call it adding a party to a page. Wait a minute this seems like deja vu! Back in November 2006 MyBlogLog offered a similar widget that could be added to your site to help connect everyone in the blogosphere. MyBlogLog was quickly scooped up by Yahoo and has been slowly rolling out new features.

With Facebook starting to allow sites to add Facebook Connect which allows Facebook users to sign in on 3rd party sites and post comments which are then published back to Facebook, Google finally launched Friend Connect publicly just a few weeks ago. I just added Google Friend Connect to SOMEWHAT FRANK. So now SOMEWHAT FRANK readers can connect on the site (see the right rail).

Social Media & My Somewhat Obsession With The Shiny Objects of the Web @ SIPA in Las Vegas

Yesterday I kicked off the Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) in Vegas conference with a keynote discussing social media and my somewhat obsession with the shiny new objects of the Web. I shared my thoughts, antidotes and social media stories in hopes to help both explain and motivate the crowd into taking action. I also mentioned a number of products that I like to use and refer to as "shiny objects of the Web."

After barely sleeping at all last night due to the Vegas oxygen rich air and just sheer excitement about the speaking event I was pretty pumped up and tried to wake up the crowd with a number of little ditties including singing Wheels on the Bus go round and round, sharing some fun stories and having everyone scream OPRAH at the top of their lungs! It was a BLAST! Below is some instant feedback I got via Twitter from one of the attendees.

Be sure to check out the video (below) for clips from the address. Finally, you might find the extensive list of "shiny objects" in the lower portion of this post to be extremely useful. Bookmark it, share it or print it out and put it on the refrigerator or make it into a paper airplane but most importantly have fun while doing it. Social media is life.

Social Media & My Somewhat Obsession With Shiny Objects from Frank Gruber on Vimeo.

What does social media mean (to you)?

Today I am posing you with a challenge. Social media has made it possible for me to share my life online. Therefore I feel my life is social media. Or, social media is life. But I am only one person or cog in this social media wheel and in true social media fashion I wanted to find out your take on social media. What does social media mean to you? I have posted a very quick video above sharing my take on social media, now it is your turn. Watch the video then go to the video on YouTube and drop a video (or text comment) response finishing the sentence:

Social media is _________.

I hope that this video thread can become the most comprehensive definition of social media we have seen to date so join the conversation and post your video response today.

Syncplicity Pledges To Sync Files Everywhere

If you have a number of computers and are constantly switching between them you might run into a situation where you cannot keep straight which computer you are saving files to. Syncplicity looks to help solve this problem by creating an application that installs on one computer and syncs all your documents, photos, and music by backing them up online with remote access and history.

If you install it on additional computers it will synchronize your files so that you have access to all your files across all your computers. Currently the product is available for PC users with a Mac version in the works. I cannot wait to check out as it sounds like a great complimentary service to MobileMe as it helps to bring your files with you and it even backs up and sync your photos from Facebook and your Google Docs.