SOMEWHAT FRANK

myAOL Intro at the Widget Summit

I spoke a few weeks ago at the Widget Summit in San Francisco on a panel dedicated to discussing the personal homepage space. The session was an hour long discussion with a cast of industry experts. I had a chance to get ahold of a video clip of my introduction. Additional footage will be coming out soon but I wanted to preview this video introducing myAOL to the Widget Summit crowd.

AdaptiveBlue SmartLinks Get Smarter

AdaptiveBlue, a startup that focuses on a smarter browsing experience, had just made its SmartLinks easier to use by making automated. SmartLinks offer site owners the ability to link to a widget that when clicked displays related items (i.e. books, music, people, etc).  SmartLinks offer site owners the ability to add utility and the social dimension to links within the site.

Widget Summit Day One: Product Launches

I spent the day at the 2007 Widget Summit today as I spoke on a session about Personalized Homepages. The day was filled with some excellent sessions about, as you might guess, widgets in all ways, shapes and forms. Widget Summit closed day one with a launching pad which showcased three companies.

New Upcoming Web 2.0 & Tech Conferences

It has truly been an action packed 2007 web/tech conference season thus far. I previously listed a number of conferences to attend in 2007 but since January a number of new ones have popped up. I wanted to highlight few additional conferences as they are approaching  and you might want to get your tickets booked today.

YourTrumanShow Video Widget Launches

YourTrumanShow, the personal video diaries startup, has just launched, VideoMap, video discovery widget at the DEMO Conference in San Diego, California. Catering to artists and online personalities, YourTrumanShow, looks to cultivate discovery within its network by exposing its interesting video linking feature to other social network and the Web via VideoMap.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg Video Chat

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, sat down with TechCrunch co-editor Mike Arrington at the TechCrunch40 conference for a fireside chat. Mark talks about opening up the Facebook platform and announced the FBFUND is a $10 million grant fund from Facebook aimed at helping application developers. The grants range from $25K to $250K and Facebook takes no equity or debt.

MeeVee Personalized TV Via Amazon

MeeVee, a Silicon Valley-based personalized TV startup, has recently announced a partnership with Amazon to offer TV content via their Unboxed Video Previewer widget. The MeeVee product offers a personalized TV listings and video content. With its sites set on being the a personalized Joost-like product without having to install any software MeeVee will now be leveraging Amazon's widget distribution channel. Amazon widgets can be found at: http://widgets.amazon.com.

Metaplace Web Virtual World Launches

Metaplace, a company founded by San Diego-based Areae, has just launched a virtual world at TechCrunch40 that can be embedded on the Web via a flash-based client widget. Dubbed Second Life on the Web, Metaplace leverages open standards to enable players to develop worlds that can be accessed anywhere from the Web to mobile networks. Every world is indexed, tagged and rated by users on the Metaplace portal, so virtual worlds in the Metaplace network can be easily linked together.

Fafarazzi: Celebrity Fantasy Leagues

Are you a celebrity news junkie? If so, you might want to check out Fafarazzi and put your celebrity tracking habits to use. Fafarazzi, a Massachusetts-based startup created by Eastland Media,  offers place for celebrity news lovers to go head-to-head via celebrity fantasy sports leagues.

Text2Store Local Deals Widget Launches

Text2Store, a Chicago-based startup, leverages text messaging to send deals and coupons directly to your cellphone. Text2Store recently launched a local deals widget that shares the revenue of each click-through. Similar to other advertising and affiliate programs, anytime you help someone save money with a coupon text message accessed from your site, Text2Store will pay you 25% of the negotiated income with the advertiser.

New YouTube Video Ads, Google Embeds Maps, PlayboyU & MyNYTimes Launch, the Attention Economy, Microsoft's Tafiti Research Project & Bacn In Your Inbox

Photo of the Week: This photo was taken by, one of my skinnyCorp friends, Harper Reed as he captured some fresh Threadless designs.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 08.26.2007

SmartLink Feeds Added To AdaptiveBlue

AdaptiveBlue, a startup that focuses on a smarter browsing experience, has created feed output for its SmartLinks functionality. This is feature called appropriately, SmartLink Feeds will make it easy for anyone to take the feed from a SmartLinks widget and display it on their blog, website or personalized homepage. SmartLinks are collected via AdaptiveBlue's BlueOrganizer. According to AdaptiveBlue CEO, Alex Iskold:

"Anyone can create SmartLinks feeds with BlueOrganizer and instantly publish stylish lists of their favorite things."

Aside from allowing users to add their own links, AdaptiveBlue will also publish and update popular SmartLink Feeds for anyone to paste into their own sites including, New York Times Bestsellers, Netflix Top Rentals, Amazon Hot Gadgets, iTunes and others.

BuzzFeed: What's Buzzing On The Web

What's buzzing on the web? Wouldn't it be nice to know? Using a combination of techniques which include sophisticated algorithms, click tracking and human editors BuzzFeed, a NY-based startup, discovers and distributes what is buzzing on the Web.

BuzzFeed's simple, elegant blog-like design was influenced by Jason Kottke. The light, clean background and orange accents makes the page pop like shiny candy for your eyes.  Images and large text display categorized buzz from the Web.

My iTunes Data Widgets Now Sharable

iTunes has been offering personalized recommendations within the iTunes application for quite sometime and I have found them to be very accurate and helpful. I have often discovered new songs that I like within the recommendations and downloading them quickly for instant gratification. iTunes has started to role out syndication of personalized music data as My iTunes Widgets, making it easy to share your music interests.

iPhone Secret Features, Flickr Video & Tools, Google Mashup Editor, Facebook on Netvibes, Best Conferences & Twiistup

Photo of the Week: Barry Bonds hit home run 755 last night in a game vs. San Diego tying Hank Aaron for most career home runs in Major League history. John Feeley was in attendance and captured history with his zoom lens in this shot (shown above).  

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 08.05.07

Twiistup 2: 08.08.07 - Sign Up Today!
Time to for Twiistup 2, you may recall I attended Twiistup 1 on my birthday in Santa Monica, California and had a blast. If you are going to be in Venice, California this coming Wednesday (August 8, 2007) you should stop by Air Conditioned Supper Club and Twiistup too! SIGN UP HERE.

How To Become A Blogger
Stowe Boyd dishes 5 simple steps to becoming a blogger. It is a common question, I am glad he addressed it.

Facebook Meet Netvibes: Netvibes Introduces the Facebook Widget
The new Netvibes Facebook Widget launched to allow users to view their Facebook notifications and friends. You can now access your Facebook info on Netvibes, and keep up to date on what your friends are doing.

Secret New iPhone Features
Walt Mossberg points out how Apple issued its first iPhone update this week. And, while the company billed it as merely a bug-fix and security-improvement patch, in fact it has several small feature improvements that Apple hasn’t announced or documented.

FLICKR TOOLBOX: 100+ Tools For Flickr Addicts
Check out some Flickr tools that Mashable pulled together for Flickr addicts like me.

Google Mashup Editor
Read/Write Web got beta access to the new Google Mashup Editor which provides a simple interface that enables developers to make basic web applications and mashups quickly. And again, like Yahoo! Pipes, it is very definitely aimed at developers.

Reconfirmation: Flickr To Add Video
Flickr has been rumored to be adding video since August but it appears that they could do it sooner than later.

Personalize Your Site’s Content With MineKey
MineKey is a startup that makes adding personalization to any website simple through their embeddable widget.

Perform Powerful Searches Visually with SearchCrystal
searchCrystal enables you to perform powerful searches visually. Their wonderful platform makes it possible to explore and filter 50 - 500 web pages, images, videos, blogs in a single display that guides people toward relevant info in a structured way.

What Web Conferences to Attend
I wrote up a pretty extensive list of conferences worth looking into back in January. Of course a few other conferences have popped up over the last few months. Read/Write Web weighs in on the conferences to check out.