Author Archives: Michelle Lentz

This is kind of fun for a Saturday morning. OVGuide.com is a search engine for online videos. It indexes all of the video sites out there. However, in the spirit of user-generated content, OVGuide.com wants online video buffs to find a site the company does not currently index in its database of more than 1,600 destinations.

They are running a contest to find the missing sites, if there are any. OVGuide.com’s editorial team will review all submissions for content quality and volume, speed and ease-of-use. If the entry passes the judging criteria, the contestant is entered into a drawing for $1,000.

OVGuide.com will randomly select a winner at the end of each month. I have no idea how long this contest lasts, but it seems like a great way to kill time on a rainy (at least here) Saturday morning.

Have a great weekend!

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If you know of any technology news, gadgets, new apps, or anything you’d like to read about, just send it my way at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net or via Twitter.

by Michelle Lentz

At this point, I find it hard to believe there are folks who haven’t heard of Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s everywhere – Conan O’Brien, Ellen, Time Magazine, New York Magazine, the list goes on. At one point last year, I heard an interview with him on NPR’s All Things Considered.

In case you’ve somehow missed Gary, here’s a little backstory. He immigrated from Belarus as a young boy, worked in his father’s Springfield, NJ, liquor store, and sold baseball cards on the side. One day, he realized that people collected wine just like baseball cards, and that set him on his path. Gary learned all he could about wine, eventually growing his father’s business and changing the name to Wine Library.

Gary has, I’ve read, over 80,000 viewers per day for his Wine Library TV online show. Regardless of the numbers, Gary has succeeded at making wine approachable for the masses. People who didn’t really like wine, or were scared of wine, love Gary because under all the hyperactivity and loudness, Gary is human.

There are conflicts – Gary sells wine online at the same site where he is reviewing wine. He uses the 100-point scale that he also dislikes (although he admits this quirk without issue). He is loud. And it’s helpful if you’re rooting for the New York Jets …

Gary has the ability, with his honesty and transparency, to bring people together. He wants to be, in his own words, a social media sommelier. People like to be around Gary and just soak up the fun. He’ll organize a “tweetup” via Twitter and people will show up. He’s having a viewing party for his next appearance on Conan. Even folks from Cincinnati, who happen to be in NYC that week, are going to the viewing party.

Gary has also written a book – 101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World. He’s going on a book tour. Want him to come to a city near you? Well, there are a couple of rules for that: a) it has to be a book store and b) you have at least 150 people. Interested? Well, you have until Monday. Post your city here.

As a wine blogger myself, I respect Gary for making wine approachable to such a huge audience. If you’re not familiar with Gary, you can view Wine Library TV or visit his personal video blog. This video clip, a favorite of mine, is not necessarily about wine, but is very much what Gary is all about.

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If you have any technology news, gadgets, tips, or apps you want to read more about, send them my way! Email me at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net or via Twitter. 

by Michelle Lentz

I discovered SlideShare last year and while I don’t currently have any presentations out there, I really appreciate the service. I’ve used it extensively for research, gathering ideas from other presentations and going out of my way to search out the presentation authors online. That always leads to great conversations. I was thrilled to read via TechCrunch that SlideShare has now secured $3 Million from Venrock and some other others in its first major round of funding.

If you’re unfamiliar with SlideShare, it’s a simple, but great, model. I find it particularly relevant, as I work a lot with training and elearning. In the Training field, there’s a push to move everything to elearning, even though sometimes an instructor-led presentation is just fine. While I realize that a presentation “done wrong” can be boring and evil, a presentation created correctly can be fun. SlideShare believes that a presentation (PowerPoint, KeyNote, etc) really is enough. Using a typical Web 2.0 model, SlideShare is built on user-generated content. You can share your presentations the way you can share a YouTube video. There are built-in privacy controls – you can share your presentation completely, block printing, and other options.

Aside from Venrock, other investors and/or advisers include Mark Cuban, Guy Kawasaki, Jonathan Abrams, Yee Lee, and Dave McClure. SlideShare will be using the money to move to a larger office in San Francisco and to grow its team from 10 to 18 people.

The press release, found here, is in the form of a presentation – quite a humorous one at that

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If there you’ve got tech news, apps, gadgets, or more you’d like to see here on bub.blicio.us, just email me at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net or let me know via Twitter.

by Michelle Lentz

Xobni is inbox backwards. That’s a great name, considering that Xobni completely flips around the way you use Outlook.

The point of Xobni is that we’re using email the way we were twenty years ago. There are a lot of bells and whistles, but it’s still organizing your email in the same way. There’s a reason we’re all using Gmail. Threaded conversations, email in context, makes sense. That’s just one thing Xobni offers.

Xobni also offers a powerful email search feature and can instantly find those attachments you’re looking for. In addition, it can create a scheduling email for you (“I’m available x, x, and x.”) with the click of a button.

Xobni creates a profile for everyone in your inbox. What I think is amazingly cool is the way it analyzes when you get emails from a person, letting you know the best time to reach them – such as morning or afternoon. If it were analyzing me, it would tell you I’m still in bed until 9 am.

It also displays the “hidden social network in email.” What on earth? It determines relationships based on who copies whom on a message, and how often people exchange messages. A Xobni profile displays the person’s relationships, your last few exchanges (conversations), and any files exchanged recently.

I like that I can minimize Xobni into a small vertical bar until I need it. On my laptop, every inch of screen is valuable real estate, so I don’t like to waste it. The email analytics feature, accessible from the the Xobni menu option on the toolbar, shows some interesting information. For instance, I receive the majority of my email between 10 am and noon each day.

Of course, there are some key features I think are still missing (but that I hope are coming soon). For instance, I have come to rely heavily on Outlook, including the Tasks and the Calendar. Those sync with Plaxo and my iPhone, so that I have that information always accessible. I would love for that information to be on one of the sliding Xobni screens. Apparently there was a similar Organizer tab, but it has been removed. (Please bring it back!) Xobni wants to “do one thing, and do one thing well.” In this case, that’s email.

I would also love for my Xobni contacts to pull more information from my Outlook contacts. Right now, that information seems to be separate, and it seems silly to me to have two sets of contacts. It took me forever to amass my current contact list. Xobni is focusing on email, so its pulling information “automagically” from your email – from signatures and text, which is pretty cool. It pulls photos and phone numbers from your Outlook contacts, but I’d love to have a deeper integration.

It’s worth remembering that Xobni just came out of private beta. It’s not perfect yet and the development team is excited and continuing to improve upon the product. It sounds like Outlook is just the beginning, and they intend on developing versions for Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and other mail applications (might I suggest Entourage for the Mac?). As with any beta, there are things it is missing, but also some great features. It’s also a free download, and it will remain free. You’re getting a lot of application for free with Xobni.

Download here. Great informational video here.

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What do you want to hear about? Name that app, trend, or tech news you want to know more about and send it my way. Email me at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net or via Twitter.

by Michelle Lentz

It’s another conference. But I’ve already found countless sessions at this one I’d like to attend. I’m already trying to figure out how I could possibly get a media pass.

Graphing Social Patterns East is held June 9–11 in Washington, DC.

GSP is the premier conference for developers and marketers building and distributing apps for MySpace, Facebook, OpenSocial and other social networking platforms. Happening June 9-11, 2008 in the Washington, DC area, this event is for both business executives and technical developers who want to learn more about the evolving environment, and how to reach online communities using new and established social networking platforms and applications.

I’m intrigued by the tutorials, as well as the smaller sessions. I like that they are gearing several of the tutorials for marketing executives who are entry-level when it comes to social media. It looks like they’re covering everything the executive might want – from feeds to LinkedIn to “Advertising vs App-vertising.” GSP East has the developers amongst us covered as well, with sessions on developing for FaceBook and MySpace to “Turning Apps into Dollars” and using AppEngine and OpenSocial. Keynotes include Adam Nash from LinkedIn, Adam Bain from MySpace/Fox, and Patrick Chanezon from Google’s OpenSocial.

There are also Birds of a Feather sessions in the evening, run by you (the participants) and an AppNite. AppNite sounds almost like a Pecha Kucha nite, with 10 app developers giving speedy 5–minute demos and a prize for the top two.

You can find out more about GSP East by clicking on the ad to the top right here on bub.blicio.us. If you have ads turned off or we’re just a feed, click here. Bub.blicio.us readers can save 15% by using the code gspe08bbu.

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What do you want to hear about? Name that app, trend, or tech news you want to know more about and send it my way. Email me at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net or via Twitter.