Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: IT/Software (Page 12 of 58)

DEMO Spring 2011 Announces Presenting Companies

February 27, 2011 / / 0 Comments

This year's DEMO spring conference, being held in Palm Desert, CA, February 28 – March 1, features 52 companies taking the stage to launch their new products or concept, ranging from innovators in the enterprise space to the coolest new consumer technology. DEMOspring11-slide The companies are listed below alphabetically, followed by product name (if different) in parentheses, and the DEMO category name.  In addition to this great group of demonstrators, DEMO will feature some exciting speakers and panelists.  We'll be hearing from newly announced Startup America CEO Scott Case, making his first public appearance…Mike Maples, Managing Partner, Floodgate Fund… as well as executives from Salesforce, Cisco, and other firms featured in panels and on-stage fireside chats.

Presenting Companies:

AboutOne.com … Consumer (family tool to manage & share memories and household info)
Ajax (Cloud89 IDE) … Cloud (IDE for Javasript developers, supports HTML5, Python, Ruby, PHP)
ApSynth … Cloud (PaaS for web apps, share them anywhere)
BiznessApps … Mobile (affordable iOS & Android app dev for small biz)
CVAC Systems … Consumer (fitness product)
DataRoket … Enterprise (data analysis tool)
ecoATM … Consumer (self-service kiosk for recycling consumer electronics)
eLIve Entertainment … Social & Media (lets friends talk while watching videos online)
EMBRIA Technologies (VIOLIN Platform) … Enterprise (Web OS for enterprise sw dev)
EyePredict (EPflow) … Cloud (neuroscience-based sw that predicts visual attention)
FaceCake Marketing (Swivel) …Enterprise/Retail (lets customers virtually try on products at home in 3D, poll social graph)
Fetch Plus Asia Pacific (FetchFans.com) … Social & Media (highly interactive, custom-branded Facebook pages)
flyRuby … Consumer (online marketplace for private jet travelers)
GageIn … Enterprise (business networking platform powered by content; intelligent collaboration)
Guardly … Mobile (personal safety service; alert family/friends/authorities about an emergency in a single tap)
GutCheck … Social & Media (DIY Web app to conduct qualitative research, one-on-one interviews w/target consumers)
HBMG Inc. (VECTOR) … Cloud (turnkey cloud server; shock-mounted case, no AC needed)
HeyStaks … Social & Media (shared social search service; collaborate anonymously w/friends, people of like-minded interest)
HighNote … Mobile (new, more social way to message; send free media-enhanced messages anywhere; add video, music, audio, pics, maps, custom buttons, iTunes)
Kuggaa … Cloud (subscribers create, edit, and enjoy their favorite mobile content across different device form-factors)
Life Is Better ON (ON Voicefeed) … Mobile (iPhone app for personalized voicemail messages; also sends & converts text-to-voice messages)
Manilla … Consumer (service for consumers to manage all of their household accounts, bills, finances, rewards programs, subscriptions in one place online)      
Marginize … Social & Media (adds social layer to the web; as you browse, discover what others have said about any webpage you are viewing)
MobileNation … Mobile (lets nontechnical people design & build custom apps for smartphones or tablets; drag & drop interface; no programming)
mSIGNIA (Dynamic Device Identity) … Mobile (safe, reliable device identity for accessing cloud services on Android smartphones & tablets, and available soon on iPhone, Blackberry, others)
NeuroSky (MindWave BrainCubed Education Bundle) … Consumer (intelligence, mental fitness, and game apps that monitor EEG brainwave activity; "exercise equipment for children's minds")
News360 (new app, for iPad) … Mobile (app that collects news from more than 1000 sources; uses semantic analysis to identify the important trends, and social graph to tailor your news stream)
Next Island  … Social & Media (first virtual world with real cash economy and time travel to Ancient Greece; played on a PC, with exceptional graphics)
Nimble … Cloud (Social Relationship Manager, connects your contacts, calendars, communications with social listening and engagement; integrates LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and email into a seamless environment)
Nuvyyo Inc. (JetStreamHD) … Mobile (box that lets you stream videos, songs, photos from your home network while you're traveling; converts any format, delivers true HD video, and adapts to Wi-Fi or 3G strength as it streams)
oneGoodLove.com … Social & Media (gay & lesbian dating site; proprietary matching algorithm focuses on matching perfect personality types)
PhotoRocket … Consumer (share photos instantly in one step to all your photo destinations; single click simultaneously shares to people, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites)
Pixable (iPad app) … Social & Media (free app for browsing Facebook pix; get notifications of the photo activity of the friends you choose)
Primadesk … Consumer (manage and backup online personal cloud data, no matter what the device)
Screenreach Interactive (Screach) … Mobile (real-time two-way interactive experiences between a smart device and any content, anywhere)
ShowUhow (product experience platform) … Social & Media (on-demand, video-based Product Guides for mfrs & retailers,  via smartphone, Web, and social media, for pre-sale education, installation, feedback, and repeat sales)
Silentale (SocialReplay) … Social & Media  (extract key strategic information through qualitative data & analytics of Facebook Page & Twitter accounts to assist in formulating marketing programs)
SocialEyes … Social & Media (social video service to instantly connect you to friends and groups of people who share your interests)
Thoora (Thoora for Tablets) … Social & Media (quickly curate and share beautiful, naturally search-friendly, and self-updating content for tablet devices; human- curated, topical pages that are always fresh and relevant)
TrendSpottr … Social & Media (search & curation service for Twitter, Facebook, and other real-time data streams; uses advanced algorithms and curation tools; filters, aggregates, and publishes top trending headlines, videos, images, phrases, hashtags, and places for any search term)
V3 (Stratosphere) … Cloud (400 virtual desktops in a 2U server))
Viafoura … Social & Media (split-screen video debate, gaming/reward sys)
Websense (Defensio for Facebook) … Cloud (FB security/protection)
Workface … Enterprise (customer-initiated engagement platform for human-to-human selling on the web; software that enables your sales people to build and manage customer relationships)
Zugara (Webcam Social Shopper) … Enterprise (advanced apparel visualization and social media engagement product  licensed to online retailers

Alpha Pitch Companies:
Dvmmy (Offers App)
Ecobe
iCaR Systems
infiniWing (KloudDock)
Outline.com
Speaku
The Geco

The Pitch Fest That Started It All Fires Up This Weekend: DEMO

February 25, 2011 / / 0 Comments

DEMOspring11 I'm pumped!  DEMO Spring 2011 starts on Sunday and runs through Tuesday, in sunny, warm Palm Desert, CA.  And, man, am I looking forward to the break! (After suffering through the snowiest winter on record in Minnesota; they say we'll likely hit 90 inches.) You can still register here.  Hope to see you there! Coolest thing of all this year?  A Minnesota company is pitching: my friend Lief Larson of Workface. Really stoked about that!

New For Me This Year: "DEMO Chatter" Box
Note the latest wrinkle for my DEMO coverage at the right. It's a social-media aggregation widget from my friends at FanChatter in Minneapolis (a Y Combinator startup), which captures all the conversation about DEMO in one place! (Multiple Twitter and Facebook feeds, and mutiple Twitter Lists, are coming in to the three tabs.) You can jump in and start posting, right there, after you connect your Twitter and/or Facebook accounts!  You just have to "Like" my company Facebook page first. That's the love I get for posting this great tool… :-)  It's the same technology some professional sports teams are now using on their web sites, as well as such other customers as the E!Online network, for red-carpet events like the Golden Globes, the Grammys, *and* this weekend's Oscar Awards — which we'll be watching live at DEMO after the opening reception Sunday night!  (That FanChatter box will be on Eonline.com all weekend.)

More Startup Pitches Than I Can Count
I've been attending and reporting on major national tech conferences for more than a dozen years, as part of my continuing passion to get out in front of tech trends, and to do my other favorite thing: network. It's really what turned me into a blogger and part-time journalist several years ago. During this time, I've heard more than 1000 startup pitches — and I've been lucky enough to write about most of them, certainly hundreds. Twitter and live-blogging tools in recent years have only added to my output. Back in October, I did a post called My Adventures as a Connoisseur of the Fine Art of Startup Pitching that's largely about my DEMO experiences. 

DEMOswag-250wDubbing itself "The Launchpad for Emerging Technology," DEMO was founded in 1991 by Stewart Alsop and later acquired by IDG. It's widely regarded as the inventor of the startup pitch fest, and certainly has the longest, continuous track record. It's extremely well run — which, friends, makes a difference! — and remains my favorite conference of them all. The biggest benefit of DEMO for the presenting companies is that it attracts a large, prestigious press and blogger contingent, and generates some 200 million media impressions for the collective participants. And, of course, it draws investors, too, from around the globe (as are the companies). Startups pitching at DEMO events have collectively raised billions of dollars. Many of them are now household names, or have been acquired or gone public. The conference publishes a list of DEMO alumni companies, by event — but note this list is just for the recent years 2006-2010. It's interesting to look back and start at 2006 (when my unbroken string of 12 DEMOs started), to see names that are now quite familiar, but were just upstarts at the time.

I'll again be live-blogging the entire two-day-plus DEMO Spring 2011 program, which will include more than 50 startups pitches, with some great panels, speakers, and interviews mixed in — all hosted by DEMO's Executive Producer, Matt Marshall, Editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Watch this blog for my live-blog post, which will fire up in full force on Monday morning!  (Here's what my last one looked like: DEMOfall 2010 live-blog.)

Are you coming to DEMO Spring 2011? What are you most interested in? Mobile? Cloud? Social? Consumer Tech? Enterprise Software? Enabling Technologies?  (Maybe all of it, like me?)  Or, come on, is it just all about the killer networking?  🙂

Defrag 2010: A Chat With Atlassian

November 19, 2010 / / 2 Comments

On day two of the Defrag conference, I wanted to stop by the booth of Atlassian, a Gold Sponsor of Defrag. I was anxious to learn more about what I was hearing is a pretty freaking amazing company. Atlassian-logo You have to love the story: a couple of 22-year-old university dropouts in Sydney decide to start a company together, because they see problems with the state of enterprise software — it's expensive, difficult to configure, and requires huge investments in consulting to implement and years to deploy. So, they launch Atlassian in 2002, ship their first product, JIRA, and become profitable that first year. Fast forward to today: Atlassian has more than 20,000 customers and some 250 employees, on three continents. A few months ago, the company raised its first outside funding, to fuel even more growth: a $60-million investment from Accel Partners. You just don't hear too many stories of such rapid software startup success as this, certainly not coming out of Australia. (My own home country, I'm proud to say!) The company does so much to give back to the community, too, which is touched on in my interview, linked below. Atlassian-products Atlassian is really a different kind of software company, one that's rewritten the rules of enterprise software development and sales. Its bug tracking, collaboration and software development tools allow companies to work smarter and faster — and these tools are especially attractive for startups and small teams. Altassian offers a special package of six of its products, generally for up to 10 users each, for just $10. It's called the Starter program. But, get this: at Defrag 2010, I picked up on an even better offer for cash-strapped startups: how's free? Yes, lucky readers, it's the Free Starter program, which gets you fully functional licenses to all six products, including 12 months of support and updates. The promo code is ATLDEFR10 (and note the offer expires April 1, 2011). Now, let's get right to my interview so you can hear more about this amazing new breed of sofware company: Atlassian….

• Download or listen to my interview with Matt Hodges, a Product Marketing Manager for Atlassian who is now based in San Francisco… (MP3)

(UPDATE: For more on what Atlassian is doing to give back, I meant to inlude this link to a post on one of their blogs: Freemium is Dead…Long Live Causium.)

 

Defrag 2010: A Chat About Yolink

November 19, 2010 / / 0 Comments

On the first day of Defrag, I stopped by to chat with Brian Cheek, Director of Business Development for TigerLogic, about his firm's product Yolink, which is a next-generation technology that enhances search by extracting information from behind links and inside of documents.  Yolink-graphic I was amazed I hadn't heard about Yolink until a few days prior to Defrag, and found it pretty amazing as I started to play with it.  See the following coverage for more about this technology: Yolink Helps Web Researchers Search Behind Links (Mashable) … Yolink's Next Step Search Pulls Info from Behind Links and Inside Docs (ReadWriteWeb) … and Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (MakeUseOf.com).

It's available as a plugin for all the major browsers. It's also available as a desktop app for Windows PC users. You can even get a Yolink widget for your site or blog (again, all the major platforms). Also be sure to look at some cool lab experiments created by Yolink engineers that showcase the use of the Yolink API. The API allows integrating Yolink into any web service. It can be used to enhance existing search engine results, or to provide site or app search functionality outright. The API is simple to implement and completely customizable.

• Download or listen to my interview with Brian Cheek of TigerLogic about Yolink… (MP3)

My Live Blog: Defrag 2010

November 16, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Defrag-StageSign I'm in Denver for my fourth consecutive Defrag conference, which is every one since it started in 2007.  This time, it's actually in Broomfield, CO, a suburb, at a nice place called the OMNI Interlocken Resort. I'm starting the live blog on Tuesday evening, as we're gathering in the hotel lobby to go to some sponsored dinners. (I'm headed to Boulder with Gist.)  The conference fires up in the morning, when my live-blogging will begin in earnest.  Check out the agenda.  In the meantime, I have my twitter stream appearing in the live blog, and that of the conference organizer (@defrag), Eric Norlin.  I also have it set up so that any tweets with the hashtag #defragcon will appear in the live blog window, at least for now. (I'll probably shut that off starting in the morning, or it would get to be too much.)  [UPDATE: Decided on the morning of day one to leave it all in! Makes for a more interesting live-blog, and archiving the whole conversation, in proper chronologial order, is pretty cool for anyone who may want to refer back. There were so many *great* Twitter exchanges going on during the event!  I know I made a whole bunch of new Twitter friends… 🙂 ]

I'm looking forward to a great conference!  When the event is completed, I'll archive this live-blog, which switches it around to proper chronological order. And the link for this blog post will remain pemanent for the live-blog archive. That's the big advantage for me to document a conference with this live-blogging tool, compared to just tweeting the event. (Have you tried going back to get an archive of your tweetstream for a certain day or event?  Good luck.) Plus the fact that I can do posts longer than 140 characters. Hope you like it!

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