SOMEWHAT FRANK

Video: Sociality Talk With Thomas Vander Wal

I am a taggaholic. I love to tag items in Flickr and across the Web. I even find myself sometimes tagging other peoples photos and online content. This would not be possible without "folksonomy" and recently got to watch Thomas Vander Wal present at AOL as part of the AOL Developer Network Speaker Series. Thomas Vander Wal invented the word "folksonomy" and knows a thing or two about the social web. It's more than just today's social networks - it's layers of interactivity, circles of sociability, reputation and identity. He also shared his thoughts on the spheres of sociability, social objects, and the path to get users to fully embrace creating and sharing social objects.

I got a chance to talk with Thomas after his presentation and it is episode 20 of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV.

Video: TECH cocktail Earns CityLIGHTS Award

The Illinois I.T. Association CityLIGHTS 2008 Awards Gala took place in Chicago, Illinois on Thursday, April 3, 2008. The event was held at Union Station which you might recognize from the epic scene from the movie The Untouchables where Kevin Costner saves a baby carriage while also shooting up the Al Capone gangsters on its marble steps. While did not save any babies TECH cocktail, the community building startup that I co-founded with Eric Olson, was nominated for the CityLIGHTS Award for its positive impact in connecting the Illinois technology community. I am please to report, that TECH cocktail took home the hardware. I was deeply humbled by winning the award as it serves as validation that all the long hours and hard work is truly helping to sculpt a better connected local technology community while helping to amplify that same community to the world.

Video: Thoughts On Twitter (vs. Facebook)

The adoption of Twitter, which I covered previously a number of times, appears to be acceleratingly since March 6th as I have seen my followers double in that three week period. My friend Gary Vaynerchuk recently started to do a daily "thoughts on life" video podcast and gave his thoughts on Twitter vs. Facebook...kinda. So in response to his video I wanted to make a quick SOMEWHAT FRANK TV episode 18 with my thoughts on Twitter (mainly) as well as a few comments about Facebook. I use them both and they are complementary products.

Video: Sharing The JoyEngine Community Story

I was walking down the street in Boulder, Colorado earlier this month and was intrigued by a storefront symbol. I looked into the storefront windows and my eyes were met with colorful graffiti-like artwork, handmade toys and lots of tees. I had bumped into JoyEngine.

JoyEngine is a brand created by the boutique design firm cypher13 and offers a place for artists and designers to unite and share their work. The JoyEngine store doubles as an art gallery for local artists and toymakers. JoyEngine also has its own line of apparel. At JoyEngine, cypher13 promotes and sells artwork created by the cypher13 team, other local artists, and provides access to ultra-limited designer art toys, offers apparel by independent designers, and supplies the local street art scene with spraypaint, paint markers, and other art supplies. Online JoyEngine offers an blogging community for designers and artists where they can exchange ideas and showcase their work. They also offers some cool artist desktop backgrounds for download.

Video: What's Up Next For BricaBox?

Brica Brica What? BricaBox, the social content platform which I covered previously here and here, that launched a few weeks ago offers users the ability to display structured content with social features. After many attempts I finally got a chance to sit down with BricaBox founder and CEO Nate Westheimer while attending FOWA Miami 2008 which is the latest SOMEWHAT FRANK TV episode. You can subscribe by visiting SOMEWHAT FRANK TV.

Video: MetroProper Local Business "Digg"

MetroProper, a Chicago-based company, that recently demoed at TECH cocktail Chicago 7 just relaunched their site to offer a totally fresh design. Deemed as "Digg for local businesses" MetroProper offers an number of social sharing and bookmarking features.

I got a chance to chat with Philip Tadros founder of MetroProper and he detailed some of the design changes prior to its launch.

Video: skinnyCorp threadless Office Visit

If you are a hip t-shirt junkie you probably have found something on community driven t-shirt site threadless created by Chicago-based skinnyCorp. skinnyCorp offers some great community driven websites which include:

threadless is a popular t-shirt design community driven e-commerce site.

Naked & Angry is a high quality clothing from fabric patterns submitted and chosen by the brand’s audience.

Extra Tasty is a community driven drink recipe site.

Yay Hooray is an 'old-school' forum used to help skinnyCorp learn how to make community-driven sites on the Web.

They have also have a few others. I visited the Chicago-based skinnyCorp headquarters this past week and captured some of it on video.

Video: IsraelWebTour 2008 Showcases NuConomy, Sportingo, ClickTale, Delver & 5min

Thanks to the California Israel Chamber of Commerce, Silicon Valley played host to 15 Israeli companies February 4-7 2008 as part of a week long road show called the IsraelWebTour.

I was able to catch a few hours of the tour at a couple different points throughout the week. I also capture some of it on video. The following companies presented at the morning session at the IsraelWeb Tour this past Wednesday in Mountain View, California:

NuConomy - metrics package for measuring engagement/attention
Sportingo - sports fan community and media site
ClickTale - analytics package that show website owners movies of browsing sessions
delver - social connections search engine
5min.com - how to video platform

Get a peak at each of their products...

Video: Shel Israel Explains FastCompany TV

This past week at DEMO, I bumped into social media expert, blogger and co-author of the business blogging book Naked Conversation, Shel Israel. He had just announced his new video gig working with Robert Scoble to build up a video network called FastCompany TV. Shel was testing out some HD camera equipment and I was actually wearing a head cam so I sat down to chat with him on camera for five minutes about his new show called GlobalNeighbourhoods TV (GNTV) which he recently explained on his blog.

Video: Geoff Livingston on Now Is Gone

Now is Gone so you had better get ready to embrace a new media. I previously chatted with Brian Solis about, Now Is Gone, a book he helped Geoff Livingston author. I sat on a panel discussing social media with Geoff at the New New Internet conference this past November, when he announced his book. So I was happy to finally be able to chat with him about it.

Video: Tantek Çelik On Open Web Media

Tantek Çelik, an innovation leader and long time advocate of open standards efforts like microformats, recently discussed open Web standards and data portability at an Open Media Web Meetup. Tantek  believes writing on the Web is like "writing in sand" since it all could be wiped out irretrievable when the next wave of technology standards come through. Tantek also speaks about data formats and how content data formats expires content over time. Tune in to Tantek's forward thinking perspective and analysis.

Video: We Are The Web

The Web has connected and empowered humans - but what does the Web look like? Today, thanks to my friend Jesse Thomas, I found Space Collective.org which is a cross-media information and entertainment channel for post-ideological, non-partisan, forward thinking terrestrials. That's a mouthful. Basically, Space Collective has created a number of videos, channels and projects devoted covering a number of space related topics. I wanted to showcase a video called" We Are The Web" which helps to visualize the Web.

Video: A Good Pop-up Community Center

There are a number of online communities with a new one popping up just about everyday. GOOD Magazine recently took a more literal approach and created a pop-up community center in New York city.

Video: Forbes Top 25 Web Celebs

The video I decided to highlight this week happens to showcase a friend of mine, TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington as he appeared on the San Francisco Bay area local Fox affiliate discussing being named one of the Forbes top 25 web celebs. Other notables include Robert Scoble, Jeff Jarvis,  Jason Calacanis, Steve Rubel, Pete Cashmore, Kevin Rose, Ryan Block, Seth Godin and "Giga" Om Malik.

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.