Over 100 startups applied to present their companies at the TechCrunch-sponsored Connected Innovators
program at the Supernova conference last week. Twelve were selected and
had a chance to launch their new products to an audience of hundreds.
I drafted some real-time notes of the products demo'd and launched at event at CrunchNotes, and my more complete notes are below.
SharpcastPalo Alto-based Sharpcast (TechCrunch posts here)
has developed a platform to sync application data across your computers
and mobile devices. Their first showcase application is Sharpcast Photos,
which not only pushes photos from one device/computer to others, it
also keeps them synced. Make a change on one and it pushes the changes
to the other copies as well. There are lots of new applicaitions coming
as well (documents, calendar, contacts). The company, which has raised
$16.5 million in capital, will be application-agnostic so you don't
have to switch to using new software. Windows only today, Mac coming
soon.
Webaroo
Webaroo, headquartered in Santa Clara is a new service that launched in April
that allows PC users (no Mac support yet) users to access cached web
content when they are offline. Webaroo offers pre-selected content,
called 「web packs」, and users can also cache whatever websites they
would like to have access to. For more, see the TechCrunch Webaroo
review here.
PostApp
PostApp
is a new company that allows users to pull web services directly into
their blog or other website without having the technical skills to use
the API supplied by the service provider. With the explosion of
widgets, PostApp may be the right application at the right time. They
also secured $1.5 million in funding from Hummer Winblad. See the full
profile here.
Vpod.tv
Vpod.tv was one of my favorite companies presenting at a conference in Spain
last month. It is a video sharing site, similar to YouTube, but that
focuses on transcoding to most video devices (ipod, PSP, etc.) and
allowing users to download video to those devices. They also have an
innovative approach to monetization. See the full TechCrunch post here, which also discusses their $5.1 million funding.
Ether
Ether
officially launched at Supernova. They've created an 「ebay for
services」 that allows people who wish to sell their time on the phone
to do so. Place an Ether logo on your site - when someone clicks on it
they can set up a time to speak with you according to the terms you've
set (price, time of call, etc.). When your phone rings, there is a
person on the other end who has already given their credit card
information and is looking for your advice. Ether went into beta in March, and we covered the official launch here.
Lifeio
Bruce Spector from attap gave the Supernova audience a very early look at Lifeio,
「the new life organizer」. Lifeio will combine instant messaging, email,
calendaring, contacts, to-do lists, etc in a multipage Ajax site (from
what I saw it looks like Lifeio is competing with Goowy, Netvibes, Pageflakes, etc.). Lifeio is also opensourcing the platform framework, called jitsu. Look for more details as the September launch date approaches, and sign up for the beta on the Lifeio homepage.
Other attap companies include Riffs, Buzzvote and personal DNA.
GearON
GearON,
a mobile service launching this month from ProtoMobl, centers on your
phone's contact list and creates a social network around it to share
photos, music, events and venue information. See the flash demo of
GearON here to get a better idea of what it's all about. Their launch will be covered on MobileCrunch as well as here at TechCrunch.
Soonr
Soonr is a new mobile platform that we've previously covered
at TechCrunch. One of the most useful applications they've launched so
far is the ability to use Skype on a normal cell phone (all you pay for
are the Skype-out charges from Skype to your own cell, and you can then
use Skype to call anyone on your Skype list). The Mac version of Soonr was announced at Supernova.
Zixxo
There are a few ways to look at Zixxo. For users
they will deliver highly targeted local and national coupons to you
based on whatever personal and demographic information you choose to
share with them. For businesses, they are a very cost-effective way of
reaching consumers who actually want to receive these coupons. For
third parties there is a revenue share opportunity for bringing users
and/or businesses to the network. Zixxo is still very young, but the
core idea is strong. Look for a potential quick acquisition of this
company if they start to get traction.
Attensa
Craig Barnes, the CEO of Attensa,
talked about how his suite of RSS reader applications (mobile, outlook,
online) analyze user behaviors to recommend specific content and help
people deal with information overload. They've also just released a new
version of Attensa for outlook. TechCrunch posts on Attensa are here.
Netvibes
Founder and Co-CEO Tariq Krim gave the audience an overview of London and Paris-based Netvibes,
the Ajax home page that has seen tremendous growth and now has millions
of passionate users. Netvibes now has an active community of
independent developers creating modules for the site. Netvibes is on a
roll. TechCrunch posts are here.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon
is a social browsing application. Users download a browser toolbar and
can find popular sites in different categories, vote on sites, etc.
Stumbleupon has nearly 1 million registered users in 139 countries, who
「stumble」 2.2 million sites er day. Advertisers can get their ads in front of a targeted audience for 5 cents an impression. I use this service.
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