SOMEWHAT FRANK

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

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.

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.

 

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.

Tropicana Helps Track Twitter Election Tweets

Watch election 2008 related twitter activity today thanks to the Tropicana micro-site that launched just in time for the election called An Orange America. Check out the live twitter analysis of proposition related information plotted with arches (above). Oh and don't forget to vote and tweet about it today.

Strands Offers $100K To Best Recommendations Startup

The Strands, a recommendations company with offices in Virginia, has put a little $100,000 prize to the best recommendation startup. What does that mean? The Strands seek to identify the best early stage project in the area of recommendation technologies, considering the technology, business opportunity and team behind the project. The Winner will be offered an investment of $100,000 from Strands. Winners will be awarded at the upcoming ACM Recommender Systems Conference in Switzerland. If you are interested or maybe you can recommend someone - check out the full contest details.

hi5 Gets A New Communications Director

hi5, a fast growing social networking site, has just landed a new director of communications in Adriana Gascoigne. hi5 is a social networking site for Tweens, users in their teens and 30's, and is among the top-10 global social networks. Based on the June comScore Media Metrix worldwide figures released in June, hi5 grew 79% in the first half of 2008. Adriana made her plans to move to hi5 public via her blog yesterday as she decided she wanted to:

"to build castles in, make new playmates, dig to discover new treasures – most importantly, as Frank Gruber has stated several times, “Have fun!”

You are exactly right Adriana. You have to have fun in life because life is too short, because we die. I am happy you realize that and are taking action. Congrats to Adriana on the new gig with hi5. The social networking space is definitely an interesting and exploding territory and I am sure Adriana's expertise will make a positive impact on hi5's direction which already appears to be up.

Cuil Search Launches Aimed At Google

There have been a number of startups that have launched with Google in its sites and most have failed miserably as it is very much like the story of David and Goliath. But I love to see the competitive spirited startup that is up to taking on the challenge. Cuil, pronounced "cool," launched today looking to take the Google challenge. I took a look at the new search service and reported my findings in this article.

Swurl Your Life Together Online

Swurl, a San Diego-based startup, offers a very smart aggregation of all your favorite services that makeup your social footprint online. Swurl is a place to bring all the things you do online together to share in a blog-like format.

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.

Read Books In Small Doses On Twitter

DailyLit, a creative daily book delivery offering, has just added another means for users to consume book contents in small digestible increments by enabling a Twitter groups with daily updates. If you are interested in reading your books in short, serialized installments via Twitter, DailyLit is offering the following three titles available for free:

• TwitterID: DailyLitMagicK
  Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
  128 readers (followers)
  
• TwitterID: DailyLitPride
  Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
  68 readers (followers)
  
• TwitterID: DailyLitSucceed
  Tom Peters's 100 Ways to Success/Make Money
  60 readers (followers)

Twitter users will be able to follow the selected title each day with Twitter updates providing a link to that day's installment. This release further shows DailyLit's devotion to making book reading more manageable in our everyday busy lives.

DOPPLR Estimates Your Carbon Footprint

If you are a heavy traveler you might not realize it but every time you take an airplane flight you drastically negatively affect your carbon footprint on the environment. In an effort to make travels aware of this very fact, traveling social network Dopplr has teamed with AMEE to calculate your carbon footprint. By investigating past and current trips logged in Dopplr your CO2 emissions are posted on a seperate tab. Users can then contribute their number to the rest of the community or keep it private. I have included an example of the output carbon emissions below.

WE ADD UP T-Shirts Count Your Green Efforts

What are you doing to help combat global warming? WE ADD UP looks to help you answer this very question by making it easier to make it blatantly clear on a t-shirt. We Add Up is counting each and every person that takes a green pledge which includes twenty plus different options from buying a hybrid to showering together. WE ADD UP puts a hand printed number on each shirt that helps to count identify your number in the global count. WE ADD UP prints its shirts on organic t-shirts.

NIN Challenges Music Business Model, Biofuels Compared, Widget Format, Google Reader Sharing Notes, Twitter Tools & Avatars

Photo of the Week: This photo of tulips taken by Melissa Goodman would somewhat frankly make a nice gift for mom as I wish all the moms out there Happy Mother's Day.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 5.11.2008

Do Paper Greeting Cards Still Have A Place?

With Mother's Day and a bunch of birthdays coming up I have been thinking about the whole gifting process and more specifically paper greeting cards. I think there is still something nice about getting a paper card since it is an artifact but I have found that more of the total inventory of greeting card play music. I find it kind of annoying but it is tough to find a good card anymore. It seems that someone must be buying greeting cards that play music because they seem to be taking up a majority of the Hallmark greeting card rack these days. But with all the social interactions that technology has enabled from your cell phone messages to online e-cards to Facebook gifts that can be sent here is SOMEWHAT FRANK question for you:

Do Paper Greeting Cards Still Have A Place?

Give your SOMEWHAT FRANK opinion in the comments section below.

Photo Attribution: Bashar Al-Ba'noon