Mashable Monthly: I Is a Reporter

Last night, for the first time in months, I looked at my Google Analytics and found that my most popular keywords are "insists upon itself" and "diarrhea bear". Thanks to all three of my loyal readers who continue to raise the intellectual bar. As a result of your influence and power, I've been accepted into the blogger lounge at Mashable's Monthly event to cover four demoing companies - Oosah, WeAre.US, Artiklz, and Strands.

OOSAH
Oosah allows for 1TB of storage and is a site for users to manage their media files; however, according to their backgrounder, Oosah "is emphatically not a file sharing site; it is a user-generated content hosting, management, and sharing site". What does that mean? Oosah is a media file storage service with easy mobile access.



WEARE.US
Weare.us is a site that aims to "empower patient communities to take control of their lives by providing social resources and an environment for sharing". As the former online strategist for the Breast Cancer Fund, I see this site as the darling site of the evening. I was fortunate enough to happen upon the founder's wife who told me that the idea for the site came about after she experienced health issues during her pregnancy and could not find the right online community in which to interact. The site fills a need for individuals to share real life experiences with real people. I think this might be the next generation of Ning - with communities pending approval of course. [My profile on Weare.Us >>]


ARTIKLIZ
Perhaps the most elusive service of the night due to their lack of public demo, Artikliz allows content providers to aggregate info on each of their individual blog articles. Good or bad, any comments or votes pertaining to your blog article (across platforms and services) will appear on the same page. In other words, Artikliz aims to increase transparency and give a one-stop psychographic 360. It's like Sylar from Heroes' ability to hear what everyone is saying.


STRANDS
According to the website, Strands "gives users the ability to record their activities and keep track of their friends across multiple social networks and services. Based on aggregated profile info, Strands enables discovery of new things based on your own behaviors as well as those of your friends and influencers." In other words, we are looking at a combination of Me.dium, Delicious and FriendFeed.


THE FRINGE: What Would Cory Doctorow Do? As a Canadian, I love obscure Cory Doctorow References. Naturally, Fake Cory Doctorow Twitter Feed speaks to me. Some of my favorite lines include, "Googled my name. Still less hits then Lessig. Damn" and "Putting together a papercraft scene from my young adult novel Little Brother". I am one of only 90 or so followers, but I know bizarre, geek hilarity when I see it. Fake Doctorow is the XKCD of Twitter. Whoa. That last sentence was too nerdy to handle. I'm going to need to turn up the hoser. Memo to self: Lucky Lager pyramid + woods + bb gun