Technically Speaking

BlogCatalog and SezWho will integrate SezWho’s conversation platform for tracking and ranking comments across BlogCatalog’s social network. The partnership leverages the value of meaningful dialog encouraged by SezWho and the member-driven network of bloggers on BlogCatalog.

SezWho provides eBay-like ratings and reputations, revealing valuable information about the history and expertise of individual readers through embeddable widgets and one-click panels. BlogCatalog is the fastest-growing social network for bloggers on the Internet. Members will be introduced to the feature soon after the news breaks and will include all instructions. BlogCatalog members can extend the reach of their BlogCatalog profile across other sites within the network along with their reputations across the blogosphere.

BlogCatalog is the fastest-growing social network for bloggers on the Internet. Since early 2007, it has evolved from a blog listing service into a vibrant member-driven online community with tools, features, widgets, and forums that help bloggers connect. More than 100,000 approved bloggers interact on BlogCatalog everyday. SezWho, launched in June 2007, is a collaborative review and reputation service that informs and improves conversation across distributed social spaces.

Technically Speaking, blogging is beyond a social network, it could be a super duper social monster if the right people put it together. Many have tried, and many have also failed. BlogCatalog and SezWho seem to realize that collaborating and working together to utilize the other companies technology is better than being the small fish swimming in the big ocean of the blogosphere. hoodia

Hubdub is introducing a new technology platform and community that combines the value of user-generated news aggregation with the accuracy and excitement of prediction markets at DEMO 08.

Hubdub is one of only 77 companies handpicked to launch its new technology at DEMO 08, which takes place in Palm Desert, CA, January 28–30, 2008.

Unlike Digg or Reddit, Hubdub tracks only the stories that people decide are worth creating a market around. To create a market, someone simply asks a question, for example, “Will Barack Obama secure the Democratic Presidential nomination?” They request either a “yes” or “no” answer or offer a multiple choice scenario, then determine the duration of trading.

Other community members can wager “Hubdub dollars” (H$) to compete on predictions – everyone starts with H$1,000. As market creators and predictors build a successful portfolio, they can establish credibility to leverage within their industry or area of expertise. Successful predictors make the leaderboard in topics such as Technology, Politics and Sports, which they can link back to their blogs, sites or profiles on social networks.

Markets allow people to see how opinion on any question evolves and changes over time, similar to the historical views on favorite financial trading sites.

For each market, Hubdub automatically populates the trading page with aggregated news from across the Web to provide background and insight for predictors and bystanders. Depending on activity, the market, representing opinion, will trade up or down.

At the very least, Hubdub helps people discover, track and discuss all major news stories and offers to challenge, excite, and reward them through competitive prediction of story outcomes. It also promotes and facilitates intelligent user comments and intense debates. In addition, markets can be embedded in blogs, allowing bloggers to highlight news stories, issues and outcomes they care about within their own communities.

Hubdub was founded in November 2007 by Nigel Eccles, Tom Griffiths, Rob Jones and Chris Stafford, Hubdub is headquartered in Edinburgh, UK. cpm

Now I was about to finally get done working for today, when I ran across this post by TC. Apparently Mike, along with many other people think that music should be for free. That artists should just keep writing songs for the sake of creating music. Nice to live in a Utopian world, but the fact remains, it costs to be a musician. While you can become a blogger and never make a dime, like probably 95% of bloggers do, musicians on the other hand like to make money for their works. They should. As the saying goes, it’s not all eazy and sleazy as you think it is!

While I agree with the premise that things are changing and hopefully for the better in the music industry, the simple fact is that it isn’t free to record. Yes, you can build your own studio, your own DAW (digital audio workstation), and pretty much do it for free. DIY (do it yourself) is very popular these days amongst the pros and the amateur musicians. No problem there. The problem lies in the fact that it costs money to build such a studio and DAW. It costs money to hire a producer/engineer to do the recording.

Oh you can record on your own, be totally self contained. I have done it before myself. The thing is a lot of musicians don’t like to do both. It can be quite a pain in the a$$ when you get down to it. I for one would rather do one or the other – perform / play my music and let someone else record it – or – in the next case – just be the engineer and twist knobs.

The most fun I had was when I recorded and re-mixed a track for my bud Trashy Feelgood. He wanted to re-do vocals and remix this song – Color Coded Casket – (very timely and thought provoking lyrics I might add), and being the knob twister was actually fun. I had a blast being one or the other for a change. That song should have one of those “Parental Advisory” lyrics. You have been warned.

Now many of you are not into crust punk which is a unique genre, but still the same, the above track has approximately 20 vocal tracks! So there was a bit of work involved, and I received exactly $0 for my work on the track. Not to mention the fact the song is only like 1 minute long, just think if it was your usual pop/rock/country song which is the usual 3-5 minutes long? Think about if I had to record the music also? There is a lot of time involved in creation of a song, even a 1 minute crust punk track.

To the point of “artists can just tour and sell shirts“. Yes and No is the answer on that one. Yes, I agree you can make more money touring and selling t-shirts. That is how the legendary Metallica survived the early days. The fact remains though, not every artist wants to go on the road to play shows. There are many who would rather only put out music, have it bought, and make residuals off of it.

Yes, the system that is currently in place isn’t perfect, but until someone can figure out how to come up with a system where the artist is compensated for writing, recording, and paying for the costs associated with such an undertaking – music will have to be paid for. Right now, TC offers no real solutions, but only a “I told you so!” attitude. What needs to happen is that the recording industry realizing their past mistakes of ripping off artists, and coming to terms with the new way of distributing music.

Technically Speaking, everyone is excited about the data portability group. I would be more excited if there was an organization that actually addressed the concerns of all musicians whether they only wanted to write and record music or whether they wanted to tour and give their music away for free or for promotional purposes. While Mike definitely doesn’t work for free as a blogger, many of us do. Why should musicians be forced into servitude just because someone wants to and think it’s their right to have their music that they put their hard earned time into for free? It’s not right, and I think if Mike wasn’t making money blogging, the whole “I told you so!” attitude might be more like mine – “Let’s get something going here that will make a difference and work it so that musicians can make money all the time – with or without the recording industry.” diamond rings

Kiwee, the online social expressions outlet, announced extraordinary growth in its first six months out of beta, attracting one million members since July 2007. In December, Kiwee hit another milestone; delivering 500 million IM graphics downloads. This exceptional growth has been bolstered by the Kiwee IM Toolbar, recently out of beta, which provides thousands of unique 2D and 3D expressions for the AOL, MSN and Yahoo! instant messaging platforms.

Kiwee currently adds an estimated 14,000 new members every day, and has tripled its number of unique visitors and page views from December to January. Also, Kiwee features a vast amount of original content for social expressions on the web – more than 6,000 items, many of which can be completely customized by adding text, color and even photographs.

As an innovative leader in social expressions, Kiwee speaks to the MySpace generation by creating new content to match their changing moods, and developing new applications for all the major social networking platforms. In the past two months, Kiwee launched a Facebook application, added postCards, and released a line of customizable widgets.

Kiwee, the youth-focused online social expressions division of AG Interactive – a subsidiary of American Greetings Corp (NYSE: AM). American Greetings Corporation is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of social expression products. Located in Cleveland, Ohio, American Greetings generates annual revenue of approximately $1.7 billion. roller shades

Playyoo™, a social networking platform for creating and sharing mobile casual games, today announced the official launch of its public beta site, also they have a mobile site up. Playyoo is a global online community that offers a fun, social experience that brings together gamers and developers.

Playyoo features key innovations that address chief complaints with the current mobile gaming experience. With the platform’s easy game discovery and download process, mobile phone users can effortlessly find games of interest. Playyoo’s game stream presents personalized recommendations based on each user’s preferences and those of their friends within the community. Intelligent filtering ensures that only games supported on a user’s handset will be offered to alleviate the frustration of incompatibility issues.

To help spark development of high quality games, Playyoo is sponsoring the Playyoo Game Contest. Open to all Flash Lite developers, the contest offers $25,000 USD in cash prizes. In line with Playyoo’s community-driven philosophy, winning games will be determined by Playyoo members – based on download statistics and community ratings at the end of the contest on February 28, 2008.

Playyoo is sponsoring an additional $15,000 USD in cash prizes for members of regional Flash Lite User Groups through the Flash Lite Game Contest. Complete details on the Playyoo Game Contest can be found here. Approximately 200 games are currently available for free download, with more added each day. Everyone can join the Playyoo community and start experiencing the fun world of free mobile casual games.

Playyoo is a privately held company based in London, England. Playyoo is a trademark of Playyoo Limited. Adobe, Flash, and Flash Lite are registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Other trade, product, or service names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. closed captioning

While there is talk and evidence of a pending recession in the United States, Seagate’s CEO William Watkins is not worried. His main sticking point in this CNET interview is the fact that even though the markets are going to hell in a handbasket, people are still getting online. New companies are still forming, and as we saw late yesterday, a company that’s main bread and butter is a blogging platform secured another round of financing.

So where is the great divide that seems to be reality of Wall Street and the reality that the economy online is doing just fine? Most financial analysts only see the facts at hand such as the credit crunch, billion dollar write downs by companies such as Bank of America, Countrywide Lending, Wachovia, Merrill Lynch and other major financial mainstays. Financial analysts don’t seem to see the millions that are being dropped on new companies via angel and venture capital funding.

While the world’s markets are falling, companies with new innovating technologies that work such as the Swedish startup Polar Rose will continue to forge forward. From what I have seen of it, being invited to the Alpha months ago, the technology they are putting out there works. Face recognition is something that Wall Street should get excited about.

In this day and age of watch out for the boogie man that might lurk around the corner in the form of Al Bundy, there couldn’t be a more perfect time for this to have evolved. Companies online realize that the world economy is in a slowdown, but continue full steam ahead. The reason is that great divide that seems to be in place with reality and reality online.

Companies online are doing just fine. Now the other day I made a note here about Yahoo and pending layoffs, but that is an online entity such as IBM is in the real world. Companies that are huge are taking hits. Now above you are reading that Seagate’s CEO isn’t worried, but again his company is one that is providing a real world product while still investing in the online world.

A great divide does exist between Wall Street and the online companies. Yet in this divide I believe there is a common ground. The operations of these companies still keep driving forward, and VC’s bite once again as shown by the Automattic second round of financing.

Technically Speaking, companies such as Lookery and Lending Club are driving the new economy with innovative ideas that just work.

Full Disclosure: Rex Dixon works for both Lookery and Lending Club.

NEW: This came in moments after I posted this, but it seems that Mr Business Golf (Scot Duke) made the WSJ this morning. Also you can digg the article. As many of you know, his site is located here. performance management

TripIt, a free online travel organizer and social network, is helping travelers stay connected with the release of its new location-based social ”Closeness” alerts.

The new features include “Who’s Close To Me?” which automatically notifies users if their travel plans overlap with fellow travelers while on the road, and “Who’s Coming to my City?” which automatically identifies colleagues who will be visiting their hometown when they’re not traveling.

With the new Closeness alerts, TripIt offers a unique social network for travelers and their community of contacts. In addition to knowing who’s going to be where in the real world, TripIt also allows travelers to “connect” with each other online to share and collaborate on trips. And, TripIt automatically syncs itineraries with calendars and eliminates the need for manual entry, even if plans or details change, so that travelers are always “in sync” wherever they are.

TripIt is an online personal travel assistant that automatically organizes all travel plans. The company was co-founded by Gregg Brockway, co-founder of Hotwire and former president of Expedia’s luxury travel company Classic Vacations, Inc. They just launched back in September of 2007. Branson rentals

Yahoo who had some rumors hit the web late last week is now reported in the NY Times as seriously going forward with layoffs. The giant company which employs around 11,000 may be the first big online company to be laying off a percentage of it’s workers. This doesn’t bode well, as we all saw the world markets taking a big dive earlier today.

The last time Yahoo had sizable layoffs was in 2001, following the dot-com crash. Over the last year, the company added several hundred people, some through hiring and some through acquisitions of companies like the online advertising specialists Right Media and BlueLithium and the e-mail provider Zimbra.

Technically Speaking, how many of you still believe this guy? exercise equipment

California Israel Chamber of Commerce has announced the selection of 15 startups that will be touring Silicon Valley as part of its popular road show.

The Tour will kick off on February 4th, 2008 when CEOs from Israel’s most exciting startups arrive in Silicon Valley for a week of activities. The companies will meet with investors, strategic partners, customers, entrepreneurs and industry leaders in a mix of private one-on-one meetings, roundtable discussions and ad-hoc networking events.

The highlight of the week will be a public showcase on Wednesday, February 6h hosted at Microsoft where each start-up will present to the industry and press. The tour will end with a closing night party in San Francisco on February 7th.

Companies that will be represented this year are as follows:

5min – www.5min.com
PLYmedia – www.plymedia.com
AllofMe – www.allofme.com
NuConomy – www.nuconomy.com
ClickTale – www.clicktale.com
blogTV.com – www.blogtv.com
Sportingo – www.sportingo.com
PicScout – www.picscout.com
Qoof – www.qoof.com
8hands – www.8hands.com
Velingo – www.velingo.com
Innovid – www.innovid.com
Semingo – www.semingo.com
PageOnce – www.pageonce.com
Journeys – www.codename-journeys.com

The IsraelWebTour is an initiative spearheaded by the CICC (The California Israel Chamber of Commerce) – a non-governmental, industry supported organization. The 2008 Tour is sponsored by: Google, Yahoo, Adobe, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Lehman Brothers, USVP, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosatti, Elron and Gemini Israel Funds and the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco.

California Israel Chamber of Commerce (CICC) is a not-for-profit, non-governmental membership supported organization dedicated to strengthening business and economic relations between California and Israel.

Technically Speaking, I’d love to see all these companies give Lookery a looksee. prohormones