Christine

Pimping the Chumby Bling

...OK, I couldn't resist sharing this one. Chumby is now selling the vintage-style tees that they handed out to us at FOO Camp. For twenty bucks, you can have one too:


Don't forget to check out the charms, too. My 15-year-old stepdaughter is mad for them. And no, I don't make any money from the chumby clan...I just happen to like them.

The Freeloader's Guide to Web 2.0 Expo

So, you want to go to Web 2.0 Expo, but your startup can't afford the $1,895 registration fee? Never fear. This year, conference organizers O'Reilly Media and TechWeb have embraced the proudly (or needfully) scrappy, and lobbycon energy is no longer restricted to the hallway salmon swim. Here's how to register for free, and a schedule of options accessible to free registration.

1. Register for Web 2.0 Expo. The $100 Expo Hall Pass can be had for free with one of the discount codes posted online. Here's one from the good folks at Web2Open: websf08opw . Since online registration is closed, you'll have to register onsite. Make sure to bring the discount code with you. Don't expect Moscone's booth staff to know it.

2. Plan your schedule. Once you've registered for the Expo Hall Pass, a world of free offerings opens up to you. Some events require advance registration to be free, so make sure to sign up online. I've culled a list here. (And if you know of other good sessions or events available to Expo Hall Pass holders, please share them...but only if they're still taking RSVPs. Promoting a sold-out party or conference badge-only event is not helpful. :)

Monday, April 21st

11:00 AM - 1:00 PM   Pownce Brunch, Daily Grill, 347 Geary Street
5:00 PM - 8:00 PM    Flickr-Moo MeetUp, Kate O'Brien's, 579 Howard Street
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM    Web Monday Silicon Valley, Citizen Space, 425 2nd Street, #300

Tuesday, April 22nd

6:00 PM - 11:00 PM   GAB/Blogtropol.us Launch Party, Gray Area Beacon, 1515 Folsom
6:30 PM - 11:30 PM   Digg MeetUp, Mighty, 119 Utah Street
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM     Ignite SF, DNA Lounge, 375 11th Street

Wednesday, April 23rd

9:00 AM - 6:00 PM     Blogtropol.us Blogger Lounge, Moscone West
9:00 AM - 3:30 PM     Web2Open, Moscone West
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM     Web 2.0 Wednesday Keynotes/Plenary Sessions, Moscone West

(Note: I'm not including the South Park Pub Crawl here, because the conference web site has it marked for conference badges only - no expo hall badges.)

Thursday, April 24th

9:00 AM - 6:00 PM     Blogtropol.us Blogger Lounge, Moscone West
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM   Web 2.0 Thursday Keynotes/Plenary Sessions, Moscone West
10:30 AM - 4:30 PM   Web2Open, Moscone West
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM     Web 2.0 Launch Pad
4:40 PM - 6:00 PM     Web 2.0 Booth Crawl, Moscone West
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM     Women 2.0 Networking Evening, Marriott View Lounge, 55 4th Street

Friday, April 25th

9:00 AM - 6:00 PM     Blogtropol.us Blogger Lounge, Moscone West
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM   Web 2.0 Friday Keynotes/Plenary Sessions, Moscone West

I'm sure there are more conference hacks and free events available this week, so post 'em up. One item that came to mind: sponsored sessions. Many conferences will open these up to expo hall badge holders. Access to these hasn't been offered on the Web 2.0 Expo site, but it's worth asking at the door.

Goodbye Google Reader, Hello NetVibes

Something strange crept up on me over the last several months: I slowly stopped reading blogs. Part of this was due to spending more of my limited social media budget on Seesmic, Twitter, and Facebook, which sites tend to expose a certain amount of blog content. (e.g., clicking through to new posts shared in Twitter streams.) And part of this behavioral change was driven by the incredible failings of Google Reader.

Mind you, I want to like Google products. Ubiquity is convenient. But poor interface design not only kept me from adding more feeds, but also prevented effective skimming and consumption of the content that I had added. I didn't even recognize that I had been driven away from blogs by the level of friction in the product. Or that I've been hanging on to My Yahoo! (the old, column-based version focused on large news sources) by my fingernails, because it gives me both the national and local information I'm looking for, and it gives it to me fast.

So today, I've started to move my RSS subscriptions over to NetVibes and suggest that other Google Reader users do the same. (As in a meatspace move, you'll end up weeding out the junk you don't need.) Rediscover the joy of community content! NetVibes is clean-looking, relatively frictionless for adding content, and easy to skim. Interestingly, NetVibes is not included in the default feed reader list on Firefox, but you can add by clicking on the link in this blog post. I did check out Bloglines, which also has rabid fans, but it has usability challenges similar to those of Google Reader. (Again, my focus is on efficient information organization and content consumption, not on tracking traffic trends.)

And if this thing with NetVibes works out, then I'll rethink my relationship with My Yahoo!...but not until then.

Do Women Care More About Social Networks?

Interesting snippet of the day: Auren Hoffman recently blogged about the growing imbalance between male and female participation in social networks. To boil it down, the most popular social networking sites - Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Plaxo, and Hi5 - are roughly 60:40 female:male. Auren theorizes that the sole exception, LinkedIn (61% male) has the reverse skew because it is highly transactional, unlike the other networks. I can see his point.

Rapleaf calculated the study based upon analysis of its (surprisingly large) user base of 13.2 million, so of course there's a large caveat here that we don't know what Rapleaf's own gender skew is. e.g., if women care more about reputation - and given social norms, it's entirely possible that they do - then these numbers will be off. Your thoughts?

Mission Research Raises Series B Financing

Though I don't normally pass on 'press release' type news, I'm making an exception today. As a common shareholder and advisor to Mission Research, I'm thrilled to disclose that the company has closed on its Series B financing, led by TBL Capital. Mission Research launched as a vendor of customer relationship management software for nonprofits (GiftWorks), and is now entering the small business market with SalesWorks. Congratulations to Charlie Crystle and team!

More from their PR guys:

-------------------------------
Mission Research, Maker of SalesWorks CRM & GiftWorks Fundraising Software Raises $2 Million Series B Venture Investment to Help Home Office, Small Office, Boomer Markets With Customer Management and Marketing Needs

Mission-Aligned Fund TBL Capital Invests Only in Socially Responsible Companies

LANCASTER, PA - March 24, 2008 - TBL Capital has invested $2 million in Mission Research, Inc, of Lancaster, PA, to fund the software company's expansion into the Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) retail software market with SalesWorks, and continue its industry-leading growth in the nonprofit sector with GiftWorks Fundraising Software. GiftWorks is the fastest growing fundraising software for nonprofits, and is known for its affordability and unique, elegant user interface, donor segmenting, easy mail merge, and inherent social networking capability. Mission Research serves most nonprofits with software for $399 while companies like Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) target large enterprises for an average cost of $40,000.

"We're thrilled TBL has invested in our success," said Charlie Crystle, Co-founder & CEO of Mission Research. "TBL shares our values of social responsibility, and shares our goal of enabling small nonprofits and businesses to do more through feature-relevant, easier to use web-enabled desktop software. While other software companies serving nonprofits are selling off, stagnating, or losing money, we are growing at unprecedented rates. TBL is helping to smooth that path as we continue to democratize fundraising software for nonprofits."

SalesWorks Standard 2.0 launches in late April into the online retail channel, and will be priced at $99. "Business people have suffered with difficult, bloated contact management for too long, and the online apps just don't perform nearly as well as the desktop. So we take a simpler approach to user interface design, presenting only features that are relevant to each customer, rather than showing everything all at the same time, which makes it easy for people to understand and use the software, which is really quite powerful, despite its easy appearance."

SalesWorks also brings together the power of the desktop with the utility of the web in the company's Hybrid Web(TM) platform, which ships as part GiftWorks and SalesWorks. "It just makes sense to keep the data safe and secure in the desktop application, but to enable customers to send mass email, or map a list of customers, or show each contact's Facebook profile if they have one. In fact, our built-in social networking in GiftWorks integrates well with the Facebook platform in prototype tests, making GiftWorks the first fundraising software to integrate seamlessly with online social networking tools."

TBL (Triple Bottom Line) Capital invests in socially responsible companies that have social impact as well as profitability. "We invest in companies that have significant social impact, and Mission Research is having tremendous impact in the nonprofit sector, enabling thousands of small nonprofits to focus more of their resources on their missions and less on technology,” said Joe Marshall, Principal at TBL. "We're particularly inspired by the company's commitment to its local community. The co-founders combined donation of 20% of founding stock to a foundation, combined with their mission to enable nonprofits to build their capacity to do good, is a model we want to see succeed. So far, they're doing a great job, and we expect that to accelerate with this investment." TBL is led by Mark Finser, Board Chair of RSF Social Finance.

The company has grown in revenue and size by almost double in the past year, and is expected to double again through the investment. "We could have moved to the West Coast," said Crystle. "But this is home, and we're happy to be a part of Lancaster's community and have impact here. It's refreshing not to have to move merely to raise money."

About Mission Research

Mission Research is a socially responsible software company focused on serving the nonprofit and small business sectors with contact, customer, and donor management software that's affordably priced and easy to learn and use. Started in 2002, the company launched GiftWorks fundraising software in 2004 and SalesWorks in 2007. The Pennsylvania company was founded by former US Senate candidate Charlie Crystle, David Weaver, and Chris Walker, the original team behind Chili!Soft, sold to Cobalt Networks in 2000; ChiliSoft is now owned by Sun Microsystems [NASDAQ:JAVA]. Mission Research company is partners with Avery Dennison, Intuit [NASDAQ:INTU], and over 400 independent consultants. Mission Research can be reached at 1-717-431-0200, or info@missionresearch.com. 

About TBL Capital

TBL Capital has developed an intentional, patient capital venture fund platform that focuses on the needs of the entrepreneur with a balanced emphasis on people, planet and profits. With $50 million under management, the firm invests in entrepreneurs who are committed to building companies with strong triple bottom line returns. We provide growth capital to help companies succeed and support entrepreneurs as they manage the many opportunities and demands of a growing business. Launched in the fall of 2007, TBL Capital focuses on a targeted range of socially beneficial sectors: consumer products, service providers, software, clean technology, green building, health and wellness, and retail.

For more information please contact:

Charlie Crystle, CEO
Mission Research
717-368-2445
717-431-0200

Top Ten Mashups for Social Change (Vote Now for Your Favorites!)

Mashups for social change? Apparently, you're not the only one that thinks this is a good idea. Last week, 122 project ideas were submitted to the annual NetSquared Mashup Challenge. This week, you (yes, you) get to choose which of these projects will get support.

Based on the contest's voting guidelines, I voted for projects that would get the most bang for the buck out of combining mashed-up data, exposing it intelligently to the public, and giving communities the opportunity to leverage that information towards change. Many projects provided interesting information, but didn't put a lever into the individual's hand. Alternatively, other projects provided great depth of participation, but not in a way that would scale to multiple communities.

Here are my picks for the top ten mashups for social change:

• OpenCongress.org :: Track Congress with Social Data. New data mashups on “My OpenCongress” will allow users to customize the stream of info they receive about their tracked items. In other words, it can be a lot easier to separate the signal from the noise on Capitol Hill-- to figure out what bills and votes are important or meaningful to you. Users will have access to a wider variety of content, more streams of helpfully-curated data about their interests, and more social wisdom from around the web.

• You Are Here. Punch in your zip code. Immediately, you find out that your water is piped in from a steadily dwindling aquifer in another state, that your garbage is being carted off to an incinerator in the the poorest part of your city. You see pictures of these places, discover their proximity on maps, see related statistics and individual comparisons about resource use and waste production. And something makes you mad--maybe the incinerator is a stonesthrow from your daughter's school. Good news: you don't have to seethe behind your computer, alone with your outrage until you get distracted by the next shiny thing on the net. With a couple of clicks, connect to organizations working on just these issues—suddenly you're linked up with a group working to create a city composting program or a water-conservation organization.

• KnowMore.org Firefox Extension - Get Alerts of Corporate Abuses When You Visit Company/Brand/Product Websites. A Firefox extension that will alert users to corporate crimes whenever they visit company and brand websites. This way, when you visit a company or brand's website that is in the KnowMore directory, the KnowMore extension will automatically display the relevant issues and ratings within your browser. For example, if you were to visit AmericanApparel.net, the statement - "This company has areas of concern around worker's rights and business ethics. Click HERE to Learn More!” would appear over the top of that website.

• MAPLight.org: Mapping Money and Politics. Anyone can create, view, and share maps of contributions from the oil industry, labor unions, or any other interest influencing government. You can compare candidates, to see who has the most local support and whose financial support comes from out-of-state. You can even display income, ethnic, and other demographic information

• City of New Orleans: A Mashup for Citizen Monitoring of the Recovery.       Think New Orleans will provide a citizen driven tool for the notification of demolitions. Not only that, it will provide an interactive map of the recovery: Permit overlay – Citizens will be able to view the pace of construction and the nature of construction with an overlay of city building permits. City demolition overlay – We wrestle with the city to get an accurate list of the houses they intend to demolish. When we do, we will add that information as an overlay to the mashup. Permit and demolition notification – Neighborhood groups are the driving force of New Orleans’ recovery. We want to provide them with a notification tool, that will allow them to get daily updates on who’s rebuilding, who’s coming back. Incentive Eligable Inventory – As further tax incentives for restoration become available, the map will outline the historic districts and map the eligible housing inventory.

• Mapping the Hunger Gap. People will use the Google Mashup to look at the data in communities relative to how much need there is for food, and how many hungry people there are. When they zoom into a city, or a census tract, they will get a picture of how many people in that area are suffering from hunger insecurity. (Sponsored by Second Harvest Food Bank.)
  

• Volunteer Now! - by mobile phone. Tap into the massive untapped capacity to do good by merging human location data with volunteer opportunity data. Spontaneously volunteer your labor or expertise by connecting to volunteer opportunities in your immediate vicinity – or to organizations that can use your expertise over the phone. A scenario: You’ve just missed your airplane and have 6 hours to kill at the Philadelphia airport. You click the “Volunteer Now!” button on your mobile phone and tell it how much time you have. You decide that it’s too much effort to go somewhere to volunteer in person, so you select an organization that needs your expert help reviewing a contract.

• CorpWatch - Government Data on Corporations. By adapting visualization software such as Prefuse into a Drupal module, a large database of unwieldy government information can be made accessible and intuitive for activists and citizens to interact with. The visualization would illustrate the relationships of who-owns-who in the global corporate landscape and shed light on the often dizzying maze of shell companies used to displace liability and avoid corporate accountability.

• Change Broadcasting Channels. CBC (Change Broadcasting Channels) allows users to select channels of social change, and receive instant news about these channels on a mobile phone through SMS or twitter. Every channel has a community of subscribers that use the community tools to promote and share big stories and events. 

• Live Climate. LiveClimate.org is a retail website that links greenhouse gas offset projects in low-income countries, with buyers who value the social and environmental co-benefits of their carbon offsets. The Live Climate retail channel directly connects the offset buyer with the project in a developing country that generated the offset. Vivid descriptions of the community, and people affected by each project and clear descriptions of the social co-benefits inform customers as they select an offset project to buy from. A mashup of maps and project information would allow customers to see where they will make an impact. Customers can get ongoing information about the projects they support through RSS feeds and continuing pictures. 

 

Here's some more info on the event from the Yahoo! Developer Network:

The polls opened this morning, and will remain open until this Friday at 5PM Pacific time. NetSquared has asked that you keep these contest objectives in mind as you're picking favorites:

• Does the Mashup use the power of community and social networks to create change?
• Is there a clear way to measure the success of the application; does this measurement directly relate to creating social impact?
• Does the application give you a sense that the project exhibits passion and commitment to work for social change?

Voters may vote for up to ten projects that they find interesting. Head over to NetSquared and vote! Come on back here to talk about your choices.

Jane McGonigal on Why Gamers Are Happier Than You

There's a backlash against people spending all of their time on the Internet. But are they happier? Jane McGonigal of Institute for the Future spoke on happiness, alternate reality gaming, and gaming as a new langage at SXSW 2008. (And oh yes, she wrapped up by doing the Soldier Boy!)

Andreas Weigend and Ming Yeow Ng Design Interaction, Reputation, and Identity

I'm behind on posting from yesterday's SXSW sessions, so there will be a series of speed posts today. Here's the first: what are the smart ways being used now to design interactions? Andreas Weigend and Ming Yeow Ng explored the science of designing interaction at SXSW 2008:

Mark Zuckerberg Opens Up at SXSW, and Crowd Turns on Sarah Lacy

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a surprisingly interesting keynote interview today at SXSW 2008. (Photo by skidder.) Not only because interviewer Sarah Lacy drew Zuckerberg out from his normally quiet shell, but also because it caused the SXSW crowd to turn on Lacy for too much pedantry.

A quick tangent on the hubbub: The audience grew frustrated with Lacy's decision to storytell rather than to interview. The audience members that I spoke to also wanted her to dig into new, interesting topics that hadn't already been beaten to death in the mainstream and tech press. e.g., tell us more about how Facebook is supporting the guerrilla government revolt in Columbia?  The best snippet may be that Lacy told Zuckerberg that if he wanted to know the real story behind his company, he needed to read her upcoming book of Silicon Valley startup lore. No doubt, the strange interactions will be called out in depth on the gossip sites, and there's a good deal of commentary on twitter.

This being said, let's get back to the details of the Zuckerberg interview. Lacy's drawing-out of Zuckerberg is what made the SXSW crowd warm up to him. Here's the gist of the discussion:

Moore's Law Rescued: Stanford, Toshiba Create Fast Nanotube Chip

Fresh and cool from today's inbox: Electrical engineers from Stanford and Toshiba are the first to use nanotubes to wire a silicon chip that can run at commercial processing speeds of 800 megahertz. (For comparison, the typical iPhone runs at 700 megahertz, while PCs run at 2 to 3 gigahertz.) Some signals going through the integrated circuit reached speeds of 1 Ghz.

While there's still more work to do before creating commercial products, this breakthrough provides a way for Moore's Law of ever-doubling processing power to continue, despite our reaching the physical limits of how thin we can slice a copper conduit. Star Trek, here we come.

More geeky details are available in the Stanford article. If you're really geeky, the research paper was published today in Nano Letters.

Yahoo! Live Beta Launches - Get Your Own Video Channel

Yahoo! opened up the beta of Live, its new personal broadcast video service, on Thursday night. I haven't yet run a live test of the Christine channel, but I'm looking forward to trying it out after a day on the Tahoe slopes today. I'm a huge fan of Seesmic's conversational video community, so I'm happy to see that Yahoo! appears to be going for a broadcast approach rather than competing directly. (Essentially, Yahoo! is providing Justin.tv in a box.) Go ahead and get your own name before someone else nabs it.

Have You Heard of the Col-Pop?

Received this from Lane Becker today, and it's utterly hilarious...the latest in fast-food technology is a soda cup that also contains an insert with your meal:

Col-Pop: The Future of Fast-Food Technology from Adam Kuban on Vimeo.

Google, Flickr, Rackspace, and Socialtext Agree: Community is Key to Scaling Customer Service

An impressive lineup of mission- and consumer-critical online services discussed scalability today at Customer Service is the New Marketing. Marc Hedlund of Wesabe encouraged these market leaders to trot out their own best practices and practical suggestions for handling success. The conversation boiled down to two recommendations: #1: Get your community involved. #2: Integrate your community's voice into your internal operations.

Customer Service and Support Gets Personal

As DEMO 08 Executive Producer Chris Shipley dryly noted today, "service and support is still a complex area." During today's DEMO presentations, it became evident the lines between consumer and enterprise support are blurring. Business IT tools are becoming more granular, and consumers are realizing more transparent access to experts while gaining control over rules-based systems for the home. Given that the average household spends one weekend day per month fixing home computer issues (per Support.com), the need is compelling.

On SEO and Becoming "Lucky" Christine

Search engine optimization for Christine.net has lingered on my to-do list for quite some time. By moving up just a couple of spots on the Google search for "christine", I would not only pop up from the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, but also be the link for surfers entering "christine" into their address bar. Not that most people would notice, but how obscurely fun would that be?

Holiday Comcast Rant

Shannon and I are signed up for 6Mbps Comcast High-Speed Internet service at our home in San Francisco. We had a great experience four months ago with installation and initial performance. In early December, however, our connection became sluggish on and off. When we called customer service, we were told that it looked fine, and since we had no warning lights on the cable modem, there was nothing Comcast could do. This frustrating initial response did nothing to address the worsening problem. (See video rant #1.)

Testing Seesmic Embedding

Just a quick post as I try out the embed code from the Seesmic alpha...presuming this works, enjoy seeing what I look like when I'm sick and swaddled in fleece.

CleverSet Wins Web 2.0 Launch Pad

Six finalists made it to the Web 2.0 Summit Launch Pad today, and promoted their startup in front of an onstage VC panel. My personal favorite was CleverSet, which won Best in Show from the Web 2.0 audience. Other finalists (in descending order of my own 'investibility' ranking) included Tripit, ClickForensics, Spiceworks, Realius, and G.ho.st. Here's a rundown of each finalist and its secret sauce:

Key Strategic Lessons for Facebook App Developers

Several successful Facebook app developers shared their experiences at the recent Community Next gathering. After listening to the early F8 cohort, here are the strategic lessons that stand out:

Reach vs. Niche: Must Social Communities Choose?

Dart-throwing for the day: Social communities - is there really a choice of reach vs. niche? Author Sarah Lacy (and as a panel moderator at today's Momentum Growth Conference, the one who posed the question) firmly believes that companies must choose one over the other as they grow. More of interest to startup communities, Lacy posits that acquisition values will be based on either one or the other.

Sobering, Joyful Life Lessons: Last Lecture of Prof. Randy Pausch

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." So speaks Carnegie-Mellon computer science professor Randy Pausch, who delivered his final lecture in anticipation of dying next month from pancreatic cancer. "I'm in excellent health right now -- It's the greatest thing of cognitive dissonance that we will ever see...I'm in better shape than most of you." Prof. Pausch, who is the 46-year-old director of the Alice Software Project, co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center, a husband, and a father of three, has lived life both richly and well.

Keeping Track of Personal Data is Biggest Problem Solved at TechCrunch40

Continuing yesterday's blunt force approach to filtering the offerings launched at TechCrunch40, here's a final wrapup of the actual problems being solved by the demonstrators. Interestingly, although the session categories varied between Monday and Tuesday, the problems did not for the most part. Here's an update of yesterday's interim list, with final 'pain rankings' based upon how many of the TechCrunch40 companies were dealing with the issue.

Startups Solve Problems at TechCrunch40 (Day One)

Set aside your normal business model skepticism and proof-of-efficacy needs for a moment. Wait for it...that done, here are five themes of problem-solving that were recurrent at TechCrunch40 on Monday:

Mashups go Mainstream: Online Content Tools Stretch Offline

For the past two years, it's been common practice for Web 2.0 mashups to enable users to mash personal content into customizable templates. Recently, however, there's been a noticeable evolution of this space: 1. integrated marketing campaigns are more and more frequently using online or mobile interaction tools; and 2. online content is reaching offline mainstream media.

Dave Sifry Steps Down as Technorati CEO

Just heard over the twitterwire: Dave Sifry has stepped down as CEO of Technorati, though he'll remain chairman of the company's board of directors. Dave lives and breathes from the green fuse of the startup, and I don't think that many would argue that Techorati is that any more. His post on this passion - and why it can make sense for a founder to move on once growth has taken hold - sets the tone just right: