This morning I met with Yaron Galai and John LoGioco from Outbrain. Located in NYC are Yaron, CEO and John, Director of Business Development. The balance of the team is located in Israel.

The most basic description is that Outbrain is a voting widget for your blog and RSS feed. You add a simple script to your template and then Outbrain will allow readers to rate your content with a simple voting mechanism. You can see a demo below or on Yaron's blog. John described Outbrain as a company that, "makes sense of content."

There are already loads of voting widgets, so what makes Outbrain unique? The most unique feature from what I can tell is their collaborative filtering. Yaron describes it as, "People who liked this, also liked X – the outbrain API provides full support for collaborative filtering allowing you to suggest more recommended links based on the post being viewed by the user." Yaron notes that it's similar in ways to Amazon’s product ratings, or Netflix ratings or Pandora.

Other features include:

• Average score – Provide users with the average score (on a 5-star scale) for each post they’re reading. Providing this community based score can significantly help users to quickly find the most interesting stories in the RSS aggregator.
• Sort items by popularity – Currently most feed readers allow users to sort posts by date. This is comparable to sorting the search results on Google randomly rather than by relevancy. Using the outbrain API partners can provide users with a ‘sort feed by popularity’ functionality.
• Personalized scores and recommendations – For users registered with outbrain, all the scores provided back via the API can be personalized based on their rating history and the ratings of like minded users.

The other interesting part of Outbrain is that the ratings widget will also work on RSS feeds. Their first two partners are FeedBlitz (feeds to email) and Snarfer (desktop RSS app).

The company is funded which seems like overkill honestly. Yaron noted that the funding came half from the product quality and half from his prior track record. I am guessing that the funding will help them market the widget and get it on some prominent blogs.

They are looking into sponsored messaging as the revenue model. So when you see the collaborative filtering results, a sponsored link might be included. John noted that the widget is not branded because they believe that it will speak for itself.

My last suggestion to Outbrain was to look at making the number of voters optional. I explained my post, "Don't Publicize How Small You Are," and there is really no need to display how many people voted for an article.

I think the combination of voting and filtering should prove beneficial for readers and bloggers. For a blogger, they can tell which content appeals best to their readers and by making it a simple vote, many readers should participate. For Outbrain to be successful, they will need large numbers of bloggers and voters. Otherwise the system won't work as created. The other challenge will be market differentiation.

Another site in this arena is JS-Kit which received huge net buzz when they re-launched in April.

Last week I was interviewed by Startup or Bust. The question below is copied from the interview and is something I have been asked thousands of times over the past 12 years.

What words of wisdom do you have for someone wanting to jump into a niche that is dominated by one or more heavy hitters?

Get in there! What are you waiting for? The longer you wait, the tougher it is. And remember this saying from the Honeymooners, “Be nice to people on the way up, because you will see the same people on the way down.” Just because a “heavy hitter” is in the lead now, does not mean that they will in a year. So get out there and give it a try! Better to try and fail than never to have tried at all.

The bottom line is that whatever you want to do in life, it's critical to get your body wet. Jump into the deep end. Early in my life I was a wimp and was afraid to jump into the deep end. I would watch the people in the deep end having fun and a good time but I just sat in the shallow end with my floaties. So yes, do it and do it now. Don't worry a lifeguard is only seconds away if needed.

I noticed a highlighted video on Viddler today. It's an episode from Wine Library TV where the host, Gary Vaynerchuk goes off (more than normal) about someone asking about how to tell the different types of wines. I have clipped just the part where Gary explains passionately that the only way to really know which wines taste like x or y is to TASTE THEM. He goes on to explain that you can't be a chef without tasting the food and a few other great examples but rather than tell you what they are, just watch the video below. RSS you might need to click through to watch the video.

Editor's note: While this video might not be exactly related to Web 2.0, I hope it does a good job to motivate you to jump in the pool. And even if it doesn’t, just watch it to see an example of good online video entertainment.

Over the last year I have attended many conferences across the country. Some have been good, some have been bad, some have been pricey. You can read all of my conference coverage and decide which you agree/disagree with. I am a tough grader of conferences because most cost money to attend.

I would say that my favorite conference from the past year is Future of Web Apps. Streaming Media East was probably my least favorite, not because of the conference, but due to Jeff Jarvis and his continued self-promotion through one of the sessions. After Jeff and the conference organizers went at it publicly, I doubt Jeff will be back next year.

What makes a great conference great and a bad one bad? Simple. It's a recipe. You need to have the right ingredients, all combined correctly. For example, ever eat a cookie right out of the oven? Tastes like crap unless you let it cool for a few minutes. Same thing here. Making sure everything works for a conference is the same. The venue, the price, the attendees, etc., all play into the recipe.

Alex has a good overview from the startup standpoint for which conferences make the most sense to attend and those you should throw money at. He says that DEMO is the best place to show off your startup but that the fee is high (I believe $20k for 5 minutes?). If you are a startup looking to launch/build buzz at an event, Alex's post is a must read. It will save you the time of wasting your money on a bad event.

Alex fails to mention that you need MONEY to attend/present at these events. For every startup that has funding and can afford a DEMO presentation, there are 500 more that can't. Alex includes some info on PR generation while at the event. I would take it a step further and suggest that you stay in town for 1-2 days where it makes sense to meet new connections. You traveled all this way for the conference, why not maximize your buzz generation and friend potential. I use this tactic to complete interviews over the extra days.

Jeremiah touches on this with his follow-up post where he discusses that not every startup has the funds to attend the expensive events and should look local as well. Of course Jeremiah is in Silicon Valley where it seems many of the events are.

Scoble joins in the conversation by suggesting that you should use Upcoming to track conferences. "Thanks to Upcoming.org they (his friends) bring me the best events and I can look and see which ones of them are going," he notes. For local conferences and meetings, Meetup is another good source. In NYC, I haven't heard anyone mention Upcoming but Meetup is mentioned almost daily.

I have ultra-limited funds which makes it difficult to attend most conferences. Even though I receive press passes, attendance is still expensive. In most cities a decent hotel is $100/nte, airfare can run $1000+ so even without the cost of attending the conference, the costs can still go over $2k for a 5-day conference.

Here are some tips I use for reducing the costs of attendance:

• Travelzoo – this is my favorite site for travel-related info. They have awesome deals almost anywhere (at least the big cities) and can save you mega bucks. And most of the deals let you keep the points/miles you earn.
• Credit Card points/miles – this is one that most people don't take advantage of. Make sure the cards you use for these trips and expenses give you something in return. I have stayed many a free night because of these cards, and spend 21 days in Europe without paying for one night in a hotel with points.
• Flyertalk Forums – an awesome discussion board for help with travel and for maximizing your ability to earn/use points. If you are a regular traveler, this is an absolute must read.
• Cheap Airfare Guide – Markus has launched a guide to help you find the best airfare.

The truth is that it will take a bit of time to work the deals. But if you can save $1k or more, isn't it worth it? Even if you or your startup have cash, why waste it where it's not needed!

I would love to get out to Gnomedex but doubt it will happen this year. At this point I have TechCrunch20 on the calendar as the big conference for this fall. I am on the roster for Future of Web Apps but doubt that I will be able to afford the travel costs.

Finally, I reviewed Confabb last week. Confabb is looking to become the destination for conferences worldwide.

Editor's note: Alex's company, AdaptiveBlue is a sponsor of CenterNetworks.

Below are five of the hottest startups according to Killer Startups for the period ending July 29, 2007. Check out previous Killer Startups posts.

Gazhoo.com – Sell Your Old School Papers Here

Gazhoo bills itself as the content marketplace. It is, in effect, a place where anyone can hock their intellectual goods in the form of documents. So if you've got a ninth grade English Lit paper, on, oh say, Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, feel free to give it a price and sell that 93rd percentile gem. The going rate is entirely up to the author. read more »

GlimpseBack.com – Make an Online Memorial

Looking for a unique way to remember a loved one? At GlimpseBack.com they specialize in creating beautiful memorials for those who have passed by providing users the ability to create, customize and post their own — instantly. At GlimpseBack.com you can make an online memorial utilizing Macromedia Flash Player technology. During the beta, all of the packages are free and you only need to pay if you were to opt for add-ons such as photo tiles. read more »

ULoop.com – The Student's Craigslist

ULoop could be thought of as the young love child of Craigslist and Facebook; or one might say it's just another online classifieds sites, with a special focus. It's meant for students—to join you need an .edu email address. Once you've registered you can sell your books, trade your LP's, search for an apartment or roommates, and promote your band—all without charge. read more »

Siphs.com – Send Links To Your Mates/Family Easily

So you come across an absolutely adorable picture of some sort of cat and you must, but must, share it with your kitten crazy sister-in-law, what do you do? Do you, A, write out a quick email with the link included?, or perhaps you do B, and mention it to her over coffee at your next family get together, or if you're in with the latest tech, you might choose route C, and use Siphs to share it with her instantaneously. read more »

Unizr.com – A Tricked-Out Discussion Board

Unizr carries the 2.0 trend with spot on precision: that well worn e-less domain name, the wide, rounded letter sets, and those bouncy colors. And what could be more 2.0 than a lovely hybrid of discussion board and social network? Taking the lexicon further, users can topicize, selecting topics from the web (books, videos, pics and more); they can unize, by inviting their pals to discussion groups (public or private), and more. read more »

Moo is a site that allows you to purchase “mini cards” and other assorted cool items. The feature that has everyone buzzing is that it integrates with flickr. You can simply authorize the site to use your flickr photos, then select 100 photos, and each card you recieve will be different. You can also upload pictures and repeat them, which is what I did. The site has a great interface, which is easy to use, even when creating a batch of 100 cards.

I like this company, not just the website. They seem to have caught on to Apple’s policy of paying attention to the customers you already have. To use an example from Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users, the product you receive has a high attention to detail, and doesn’t have the feeling that they skimped on anything.

I made a photo set on flickr with some shots of the cards, and below is a video of the final product. Enjoy!

James Thomas is a web developer living in Orlando. During the day he can be found building websites for the mouse, and spends most of his evenings working on various projects in a feeble attempt to change the internet.

Chris Conley from Startup or Bust interviewed me while we were at BlogPhiladelphia. He has posted the interview as part of his Blogathon event where Philadelphia area bloggers will blog for 24 hours with no sleep to raise money for the homeless. We speak about CN and my suggestions for those who want to get involved in blogging.

In addition to my interview, Chris has interviewed a bunch of startups including:

• Alex Hllman, Independents Hall
• Kathie Thomas, a virtual assistant
• and 10+ more

This column is a reply to a post by Jason Calacanis about Bankruptcy.

From what I can tell, it seems that whenever Jason's ego-booster level drops, he has to do something to get it back in line. It's like when the oil light comes on in your car (no, not a corvette), you have to pull over and drop in a quart. The manual tells you to check your oil level frequently, and Jason is good at making sure that he always has enough oil to hold him until the next station on his journey. Nothing wrong with self-promotion, Jason is one of the true Internet masters at it and he will most likely author a book on the topic someday. Others seem to share the same view.

Earlier this month, Pete at Mashable wrote, "A trend: sometime every Saturday afternoon Eastern Time (now), tech bloggers run low on real news, and a story about bloggers themselves gets an unnecessary amount of airtime." Looks like we have this weekend's winner! That's right, "Facebook/Comment Bankruptcy" is your winner. Please see the cashier at the front for your prize.

Let me summarize Jason's initial post about Facebook Bankruptcy: "I can't keep up with how fast people are adding me, so I am turning it off." I will admit that I am not a Facebook master, so other than "friending" people, I don't know what else is involved. Scoble says it takes him mere seconds to add a friend. I think what happens is that as we add more and more, even more and more want to be added. Jason has 4000 people following him and he is following another 2900 on Twitter. No idea about how many on Facebook. It does seem that Facebook needs a bulk-add option. At the same time, they probably need a follow option as well.

Robert also notes that Facebook is the new rolodex. He is right. These new tools are sometimes a bitch to get configured and setup, but they are replacing the old-school rolodex. The key is to make sure you always have a connection to whatever or whomever you need. I call it the "internal network." It's important to know who to go to when you need x or y. Want to know a real bitch? Having to put the # before every color in a style sheet. I want to declare pound bankruptcy!

NYC venture capitalist Fred Wilson says, "I think Facebook's an important phenomenon, maybe as important as Google over time. That's a big maybe, but you have to pay attention to maybes." Fred also believes removing comments is not the answer for Jason and suggests he take a blogacation (ok I made that word up!). "You can't turn off the comments and have a truly interactive blog with a community. Comments are where it's at in blogging," he says in a reply to Marc Andreessen's comment removal.

Video blogger Loren Feldman says, "Is Jason becoming disillusioned?" Loren says that Jason is a leader and that if he does something, others might follow. Loren is "freaked by it." and suggests that Jason stick in there.

Let's move on to the other part of Jason's bankruptcy: comments. He has deactivated the comments feature from his blog. Absolutely his right to do so however I would not call it a blog anymore. I wrote about comment removal earlier this year. When you can't comment on a blog, then it becomes a Web site. Jason notes, "At the end of the day this blog is a conversation between me and the people I care about." It would be great if he could explain that comment. In my opinion it is no longer a conversation. It's a shout by Jason and a reply somewhere else. The idea of a blog is that I say x, you say y, we discuss and arrive at the answer of Z. Now when I read Jason's posts, I have to go hunt down any objections or agreements, and then try to put all of that together. Now that's a damn lot of work. Jason says he removed comments because of all of the assholes who comment. As a side note, the popular book "The Secret" says that whatever we put out is what comes back to us. No idea if that applies to blogs and comments. I am guessing that Jason could easily afford to get offshore help for comment removal but then he couldn't post about it and we wouldn't have Pete's Sunday news.

Now here is where the real humor comes in! Jason just posted asking for help with his iPhone. And he turned comments on! So when it suits him, he will put on comments. When he needs help, feel free to comment. Otherwise, no comment for you!

I don't know Jason. I only know him based on what I read from him and about him. He seems like a very bright and knowledgeable guy who has obviously made it out of Brooklyn and to the big time, which is awesome. I still hope we get a chance to sit down and talk one day. My emails to him earlier this year went unanswered, only time I got a reply is when I commented that he spelled Neil's name wrong in the SEO battle. His reply was, "Don't be an asshole." Jason invited me to be part of his Mahalocast last month (which I thought went very well and appreciated being part of the panel) and he has commented on CN regarding Mahalo a couple of times. My last emails to him, requesting a TechCrunch20 press pass and a Mahalo page about my startup have gone unanswered.

My guess is that Jason will start accepting Facebook requests and opening blog comments soon. This is just a temporary oil leak. What do you think about all of this "friending" on so many networks and platforms? Overkill or a necessary evil? And should blogs be allowed to disable comments? Leave a comment :-P