StartupSchwag Looking For Model

StartupSchwag Girl Of The Month

StartupSchwag is holding a contest for any females that consider themselves sexy who have an account on Digg.com. SS is now accepting biographies and photo submissions. The top 20 submissions will be placed on the StartupSchwag website for visitors to vote on. The winner will receive an iPhone as well as a photo shoot and will be the tshirt model for the December startup.

Click here to read more information in regards to the contest as well as checking out Cindee, a Digg.com Tshirt demo. She’s not the official schwag girl but she is definitely Digg worthy.

DIGG THIS PLEASE I’m Begging You

Over the last month or so, I have noticed a sharp increase in what has become known as DIGG BEGGING. These are people who post their links on Twitter, forums and wherever else asking sometimes begging people to Digg their article. The question I ask is, WHY? I understand the importance of the Digg front page which sends a torrent of traffic your way if your lucky but why resort to begging or using Digg exchanges? For us common users, Digg used to be a place which was ruled my the majority, also known as the wisdom of crowds. It seems as if the Digg system has finally broke down to the point where there is more trash within the Digg system than there are nuggets of gold.

If your page or content is front page worthiness, I’m sure it would reach the front page without the need of begging or purchasing Diggs. As DigitalSpammer suggests, please make this stop.

DIGG THIS PLEASE I’m Begging You

Over the last month or so, I have noticed a sharp increase in what has become known as DIGG BEGGING. These are people who post their links on Twitter, forums and wherever else asking sometimes begging people to Digg their article. The question I ask is, WHY? I understand the importance of the Digg front page which sends a torrent of traffic your way if your lucky but why resort to begging or using Digg exchanges? For us common users, Digg used to be a place which was ruled my the majority, also known as the wisdom of crowds. It seems as if the Digg system has finally broke down to the point where there is more trash within the Digg system than there are nuggets of gold.

If your page or content is front page worthiness, I’m sure it would reach the front page without the need of begging or purchasing Diggs. As DigitalSpammer suggests, please make this stop.

Social Networking Baby Boomers

According to this NBC report, every 7 and a half seconds, someone in the U.S. turns 50 years old. That is quite a lot of people. These baby boomers are being looked at as seasoned surfers. There are now social networking sites that are catering to this generation such as BOOMJ, BOOMERTOWN, and EONS. Looks like all of this social stuff isn’t just for 20 somethings anymore.

Video Demo Of Picnik

Picnik.com LogoPicnik is an online photo editor that is somewhere in between Photoshop and a bare bones application in terms of features and functionality. Picnik works seamlessly with Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa web album’s giving you the oppurtunity to edit your online photos straight from the Picnik website. Picnik is hastily becoming one of the best online photo editors. Check out the following video demonstration for more information on this web application.

Web 2.0 Badge Generator

web20badges.com logo

It’s still hip to use web 2.0 styled badges. If you have ever wanted your own badge but didn’t think you had the photoshop skills, your in luck. Web20Badges is a web 2.0 styled badge generator with an assortment of templates to choose from. Users can type in the text they want to appear on the badge, select a font from a drop-down list and configure the font size as well as the color. You can even determine the angle in which the text is displayed although, the text never seems to look right with an angle applied. Once you are finished, you can right-click and save the badge to your desktop and then claim it as your own. If you want the ultimate ability to create your own badge without the generator, WEB20Badges does provide the PSD files for most if not all of the badge templates.

Check out some of these examples.

Digg Badge RSS Feed Badge Google Badge Shield Badge

Share Blog Traffic Via CLIQ

CLIQin.com Logo

Background Info:

Just the other day, I noticed this service come across my FeedReader. It’s called CLIQ but the domain is actually CLIQin.com CLIQ is a service that allows bloggers to work together in order to share their collective readership as well as audience engagement. Members who are part of the same CLIQ share links to featured, popular and related posts on their own site through the CLIQ Widget. Users can manage which posts are featured on the widget as well as see reports about which blogs and posts are getting the most views and driving the most referrals around the CLIQ. By the end of this review, your going to be sick and tired of seeing the word CLIQ.

First Things First:

When you register an account with CLIQ, you’ll be presented with two options. Starting your own CLIQ or joining a pre-existing CLIQ. For the purpose of this review, I have created my own called Jeffro2pt0 A CLIQ Covering SEO, Blogging and Web 2.0. When creating your own, you’ll be presented with a number of options. These include the name of your CLIQ, Description, username, email, password, BLOG URL, and CLIQ Enrollment where you can choose whether to make your CLIQ private (invite only) or public. I have chosen to make my CLIQ private because I want to have complete control over who joins my group. Since I’ll have complete control over who joins my CLIQ, I can ensure that only relevant blog postings and URLs are displayed within my widget.

Your CLIQ Widget:

After you register your CLIQ, your given the chance to invite others via email. Unlike Quechup, your friends won’t be bombarded with invite spam since this is a manual process. Once your done with the invites, you can then give your CLIQ a public avatar image. This image will represent your CLIQ and will be seen within the CLIQ directory.

ShinySilver Bold Black GoofyGreen

At the time of this writing, CLIQ only supports three different color schemes for their widget. Those are: Shiny Silver, Bold Black, and Goofy Green. I would imagine that there will be additional color schemes available sometime in the future but I wonder, why don’t services that offer a widget give users the chance to colorize the widget themselves via CSS or HEX codes? It can’t be that hard to implement. The minimum width of the widget is 160px but will scale to fit the width of your blogs sidebar.

Once you choose your theme and move on to the next step, CLIQin will automatically try to recognize the blogging software attached to your domain and provide you with the appropriate code to copy and paste into your blogs sidebar. Here is some detailed information from the CLIQ support forums in regards to which blogging platforms are currently supported.

In order to fully support a blog platform, two things have to “work” :

1. CLIQ has to be able to ‘read in’ information about the posts (Title, Tags, etc.)

2. The CLIQ widget (which is JavaScript) has to display on the page correctly.

Currently, we fully support blogs with standard templates on TypePad, WordPress and Blogger.

Blog templates with customized fields and names for data elements require some manual set-up from our team, which we can do on a case-by-case basis.

Due to their JavaScript limitations, the CLIQ Widget does not currently work on Hosted WordPress blogs. If you’d like to see JavaScript on Hosted WordPress, contact your Senator…

We are looking into ‘slimmed down’ versions of the CLIQ Widget that would offer (likely limited) functionality on the platforms we don’t yet support…so stayed tuned!

Configuring The Widget:

There are a few options in which you can use to configure what is displayed within the widget on other blogs. You can choose to feature your most RECENT post which is updated daily. You can choose to feature your LONG TAIL which shows one of the five posts with the least total views, this also rotates daily. Or you can choose the manual option and select an article from the list of articles that are presented to you. This is a good feature if you want to pump some Google Juice into a specific page.

Configure The Widget

There are a few things that I don’t like about this widget. The first is that, it doesn’t look good if you have a skinny sidebar for widgets. The text appears cramped and at times, the content within the widget looks like a mess. The second, there is no link displayed that allows visitors to JOIN the CLIQ or at least REQUEST TO JOIN if private.

CLIQ Reports:

Since I created an account yesterday, the reports section of CLIQ is pretty bare. The reports section displays a dynamically generated graph that highlights views that were contributed through CLIQ. You can choose to view stats from your own blog, member blogs or, all blogs. The stats timetable is broken up into three sections: The Last 1 Day, Last 7 Days and Last 30 Days. Alternatively, you can select ALL VIEWS or how many times your CLIQ Page was viewed within the CLIQ Directory.

One Of The CLIQ Report Views

Conclusion:

Overall, this service reminds me of old fashioned web rings from way back when. Web rings were essentially a group of websites that were all related towards a specific topic. Maybe I’ll coin a new term here and say that CLIQ is WebRings 2.0. Unlike MyBlogLog, BlogRush, or any other community based widget I have come across, this one gives site owners full control over who is part of the group which means, you can really create a targeted CLIQ and share each other’s traffic. Because most if not all of the posts within your CLIQ will be related, there is a higher probability of someone clicking on your blog post, thereby gaining you a new visitor.

I would compare this service to BlogRush but that is for another post. If your a blogger currently using BlogRush, I strongly advise you to check this service out and create your own CLIQ. Work on inviting high traffic blogs that are related to your content and build a small niche network where everyone within your CLIQ benefits. As it stands, I currently have my own CLIQ. If your blog covers the topics of SEO, Web 2.0, Blogging or WordPress related material, your welcome to request an invite to join the group.

As always, I look forward to hearing your feedback whether it be about this review, grammatical corrections or questions.

Schwag Is Almost Here

StartupSchwag Logo

StartupSchag the successor to Valleyschwag that I wrote about here, ( From ValleySchwag To StartupSchwag ) will be shipping their first batch of schwag starting on Thursday/Friday. This means that the schwag should start arriving on your doorstep starting on October 16th.

Thanks to the guys at StartupSchwag as they have sent me a care package for review. I’ll be taking photos of the entire process from obtaining the package all the way to wearing the product. Stay tuned for that.

Babytalk In The 21st Century

As I was listening to Leo Laporte on his Tech Guy radio show, I noticed how he tried to pronounce a variety of different Web 2.0 company names and in the end, he mentioned that it sounded like a bunch of baby talk. I have to admit, listening to Leo try to say the names of these companies was hilarious. That’s when I got the idea to feature a list of Web 2.0 companies who’s names are nothing short of googlymoogly.

Not only is it sometimes hard to pronounce these names, but after you figure them out, the question then becomes, what do they do? I’ve taken an excerpt from each companies About page, as they would be the ones to best explain what the heck their company does.

If I missed any, be sure to let me know by leaving a comment at the end of this article.

Vyew Logo

vyew – Vyew is a next-generation online collaboration and web conferencing service that brings people and content together. With Vyew you can host LIVE conferences and work collaboratively on content asynchronously over time, ANYTIME.

Vizu Logo

vizu – Vizu provides services that make online opinion polling and market research easy, fast, accessible, and affordable to everyone.

Musio Logo

muiso – Muiso (pronounced MOO-EE-SO) is the best new way to enjoy music on your computer or mobile player.

Philoi Logo

philoi – Philoi (pronounced ‘fee – loy’) is the first person-to-person online bookmark sharing community!
Stay connected with your friends and the Web at the same time!

Jamendo Logo

jamendo – jamendo is a new model for artists to promote, publish, and be paid for their music.

Diigo Logo

diigo – Diigo (dee’go) is about “Social Annotation”. By combining social bookmarking, clippings, in situ annotation, tagging, full-text search, easy sharing and interactions, Diigo offers a powerful personal tool and a rich social platform for knowledge users, and in the process, turns the entire web into a writable, participatory and interactive media.

Chuquet Logo

chuquet – chuquet scans thousands of blogs to find the latest and biggest news stories

Bloggoogle Logo

bloggoggle – Peer rated and categorized, bloggogglers are searching the Web’s credible best and asserting themselves among them. It’s about building and sharing networks of industry expertise. It’s about navigating the pros efficiently and communicating your value with authority.

Filangy Logo

filangy – No longer Online so I suppose it’s available.

Tedda Logo

YeddaYedda strives to merge the convenience and efficiency of search with the unlimited value of individual knowledge to get you the best answers to your questions.

Qumana Logo

QumanaQumana Software, Inc. is a leading developer of tools and services for bloggers.

IMVU logo

Imvu – IMVU is a consumer internet startup in downtown Palo Alto. IMVU makes the world’s best 3D instant messenger, which is now in beta testing with more than 1 million customers around the world.

Edgeio Logo

Edgeio – Edgeio is making it possible for valuable content to be made available for sale on any web site. The web site does not need an ecommerce system, or a billing system – edgeio takes care of both

Lulu Logo

Lulu – Lulu eliminates traditional entry barriers to publishing, and enables content creators and owners – authors and educators, videographers and musicians, businesses and nonprofits, professionals and amateurs – to bring their work directly to their audience.

Ookles Logo

Ookles – Another service that apparently has bit the dust but you can get in if you know the password.

Goowy Logo

Goowy – goowy is a service that offers you simple, intuitive tools for communicating and sharing on the web.

My Me Logo

My-me – MyMe is a FREE web-based service that lets you easily create your personal online identity.

Elgg Logo

Elgg – Elgg is an open source social platform based around choice, flexibility and openness: a system that firmly places individuals at the centre of their activities.

Qoop Logo

Qoop – QOOP turns digital content into products.

Etsy Logo

Etsy – Etsy is an online marketplace for buying and selling all things handmade.

If I missed any that you think should of made the list of company names that resemble babytalk, please be sure to add or suggest them by leaving a comment.