I am overweight, frankly I am very overweight. And I want to lose the weight finally. And my friends want me to lose the weight. Lost the weight years ago, and it felt great. But over the last 3 or so years, I have been putting the weight back on. And as I started to look at the new crop of new weight loss tracking and diet web sites, I came up with an idea. Let's create a 30 Day Web 2.0 Fat Off!

So here is how it will work. I will post comments daily on my progress starting September 1. I will be using the following tools to track my progress. And in 30 days, a winner will be selected.

Tools (let me know if there are other tools to include):

• SKiNNYR – http://www.skinnyr.com/
• Traineo – http://www.traineo.com/

Want to join me? Awesome! Let's make lose the weight together!

Either shoot me an email at (fatoff [at] centernetworks.com) or reply to this entry. I am still finalizing the details but this should be an exciting way to look at losing weight with the help of the Web.

Find all Fat-Off posts » 

Tags: weight loss | centernetworks

There are some interesting news items coming from Facebook this month (August).

The NY Times is reporting that Microsoft will be providing and selling advertising on the Facebook site.

What this means is that the Microsoft adCenter will be the exclusive ad partner for banner ads and links to Facebook. Facebook is the second largest Social Networking site after MySpace.

Facebook set to launch credit card product

Mashable is reporting that JPMorganChase is launching a Facebook credit card by years-end. The big question to me is whether an applicant will receive a coozie or tshirt for the lifetime of debt. I wonder how long until there is a Facebook mall.

Facebook offers blogging feature

Facebook launched a new blogging function within the Facebook site. Called “MyNotes” it is a basic blog. A pretty cool feature is that you can blog from your mobile phone. So now sitting on the school bus becomes more productive!

Tags: facebook | centernetworks

Farecast, a Seattle based startup, launched a 55 city beta today of their product. The basic idea is that you can find the best fares available at the current time for your selected trip. The RSS feed, one of the best features of Farecast, allows you to keep up to the minute watch over your trip plans to determine when is the right time to buy.

Example RSS feed (my most popular route):

I look forward to watching the expansion of Farecast as I have a wishlist of suggestions for them besides the beta list they already have:

• International access – This could result in bigger savings for travelers
• First/Business availability – I typically try to fly in First/Business and many business travelers do as well

I think the site looks and functions very well. There are many ads but they have kept them outside the content area.

It will be interesting to watch how Expedia/Orbitz and the others react to Farecast.

Recently, SocialMeter launched a very useful tool to allow you to check how social a web site is. The best part about this tool is that you can check your site, a competitor’s site, well anyone’s site is. So if a company launches a site that should have “social buzz” – it is easy to do the verification.

I have e-mailed the company asking for a way to do a few things:

• e-mail the results
• rss the results
• post the results
• show off the results

I have already shared this tool around in my circles and see it being useful as CenterNetworks (hopefully) starts to get some buzz around it.

This past May I was in Germany visiting my friends Till and Mark. And we all know what was on TV in May:

• Finals for Amazing Race
• 24 Season Finale
• Lost Season Finale
• Prison Break Finale
• etc, etc, etc.

Now, I do own a dvr with my satellite dish provider. So before I left, I clicked all the shows I wanted to watch upon my return. However, while I was on this three week hiatus, I got the urge to watch. What happened if Jack died and I didn't learn about it until June? What about if the losties were rescued?

So I turned to iTunes. Here are all of the episodes available for me to watch on my laptop. For the small price of $1.99, I can stay current on the American shows while enjoying the German life. My flight from Berlin to Munich was perfect because I caught an episode of 24.

So now I return to the states in late May and see that CBS is now offering Amazing Race, Big Brother and many of their other fall tv shows on Innertube. Basically Innertube allows you to watch tv shows in their full glory for free. But alas, here is the catch, there are commercials. But you save $1.99. I am guessing at some point, we might have a choice of a paid subscription with no commercials or a free ad-sponsored environment.

Last week I tried it out a few times, watching Big Brother episodes. Worked quite well, load times were quick and the video smooth.

And so, with more and more shows offering web versions, with companies like Innertube offering to allow you to watch full tv shows for free, is the TV set dead? Which network will be the first one to "creatively destroy" themselves to be the first pioneer to move to web?

Comcast offers on-demand but it is on my tv set. Who will offer on-demand but on my computer? For example, when will food network offer me Giada or Rachael on-demand on foodtv.com? When will WWE offer the old matches between Funk and Gordy on demand? 

And most importantly, which mega-super-power will offer them all (with a nice remote control!)?

Tags: innertube | cbs | tv

It has been reported that Apple and Microsoft will be entering the Social Networking scene. My friends over and Techcrunch and Bokardo have reported on the story. So I thought I would provide some insight on what this decision really means.

Interesting

The first thing it means is that the game of social networking is going to become way more interesting. Apple and Microsoft have almost unlimited resources, have no VC’s to answer to (ok they have shareholders to answer to but we can PR them), and have the ability to crush the competition (see Apple OS vs. Windows).

Consolidation

I am working on a larger article about consolidation of the industry, but Microsoft has a buy before build mentality. I see Microsoft purchasing somewhere between 5-9 social networking sites within the next year to 18 months. As for Apple, I think they are more likely to build from within, but they will recruit the top talent from the current crop of social networking sites. Which in of itself will lead to more consolidation as the leftover talent looks to grab whatever cash they can.

Guidance

When the big players in the software market enter the social networking scene, they will bring along a bundle of guidance. This guidance will come in several forms. First, I see the creation of standards. Standards for coding, for authentication, etc. I also see a lot of guidance in the areas of marketing. Since these two players have available money, they will flood the market with press. And as my friend Darshan over at Easybib says, “The more players in the market, the more likely you are to succeed as the product will already be known to the market”.

What would I like to see

I think the most important thing I would like to see would be the ability to tie into other databases for login.  Microsoft could easily tie a login system into MSN. Apple could easily tie into their iTunes user database. This would certainly simplify things as opposed to trying to remember 50-100 different passwords. Again, I am working on a larger post about the industry for 2007 coming soon.

I welcome your comments on this entry and look forward to what the future holds for the social networking scene! And CenterNetworks will be there, for every merger, acquisition, site launch and site closure.

Ok – so as I continue to do research for CenterNetworks, I start to think about the sheer number of social networking sites online today. So far I have counted about 650, and that is just the beginning. I remember sitting with some coworkers at CKS back in the mid-90′s. We were talking about some client projects we were working on and one of the people said something to effect of “every company is racing to get a site up quicker than the next”. We laughed and then headed over to play another game of pool. Aah the pre-bubble days…

Today, it seems you are nothing if you don’t own a social networking site. I am willing to bet that every day, at least 3 social networking sites pop up across the world.

I am curious to hear how many social networking sites you believe there are as of today and how quickly they are popping up.

Do I see the trend slowing down? Nope. And I don’t think it should. If you have an idea, run with it. Run Forrest, Run.

When I attended the Search Engine Strategies conference in February I claimed that 2005 was the year of the SEO. Today, I proclaim that 2006 is the year of the social networking site.

Tags: social networking