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.

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MindTouch Wants to Wow With Wikibox at DEMOfall

September 15, 2006 / / 2 Comments

St. Paul-based MindTouch…no, wait, it’s headquartered in San Diego….no, wait, most of its people are in Minnesota. Oh, who cares — they have a whiz-band new wiki box Mindtouchlogo I’d heard they’d be debuting at DEMOfall week after next. Picked that up at the “MinneDemo” event last week, and I blogged at least a mention of them and Aaron Fulkerson in my recap the next day. Gee, going from “Minne” to the full-on Monty demo at the biggest of all demo venues in the universe — all inside of three weeks! These guys have it goin’ on for a little outfit from Minnesota (or is it San Diego?). Here’s an article from the St. Paul Pioneer Press today that kinda lays it all out — or should I say, lays it on thick? [Example: “the next must-have office machine for small to medium-sized businesses — as common as a fax machine”] I’ll be following up on MindTouch soon, pre or during DEMOfall. Now if we can only get ’em to stop calling their wiki box a “managed office server.” [Can you tell these guys are former Microsofties? Not for the use of the second word, but for the lack of any name cachet. End of editorializing…]

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Austrians to Attack DEMOfall!

September 15, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Hey, maybe The Governator will drop by, too? [Becky, could you work on that?] SystemOne, headquartered in Vienna, will be launching its enterprise collaboration platform at the upcoming DEMOfall event. Here’s their one-sentence company description [read with Ahh-nold accent]: “System One helps businesses to ensure lasting success by making optimal use of the knowledge production factor.” Got that? I can hardly wait till their six minutes of fame. Techcrunch reported that SystemOne’s product is a wiki “that gathers your resources as you write.” The writer, Marshall Kirkpatrick, goes on to say: “The real power here is the semantic analysis, the relevance.” Who could not like that, especially any blogger? Trouble is, it’ll be mid-’07 till a version for the little guy is available. They’re starting at the top and dumbing down. Here’s a screencast so you can see how it works. Stand by — I’ll definitely be reporting more on this one from San Diego…

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Surfers Get Their Own Online Video Site

September 13, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Southern California-based GrindTV will launch a newly redesigned site in mid-September, complete with a dedicated Surf Channel [sneak-peak screen grab shown here], which it just previewed at the Action Sports Expo in San Diego over the weekend. Grindtvsurf400w GrindTV also announced it has surpassed one million unique viewers per month. It says it has signed major partnerships with such brands as Body Glove and is attracting Fortune 500 advertisers. [GrindTV is a division of PureVideo Networks, which also owns StupidVideos.com and is funded by Softbank Capital. PureVideo’s network of sites stream approximately 60 million videos to six million unique visitors a month.] In GrindTV’s recent news announcement, it quoted Scott Daley, Body Glove’s VP of marketing: “We have so much great video footage and, aside from our own website, we had no place else for people to view it. GrindTV gives us that dedicated outlet that focuses on the core group, who appreciates seeing the best athletes in the world, in and out of the surf.” Other brands signed on include Nissan, Sony, MSN Video, Microsoft Mobile, TagWorld, and Helio (the latter being a joint venture between EarthLink and SK Telecom, headed by Sky Dayton, an avid surfer).

But professional videos aren’t all you’ll find at GrindTV. It says it already has more than a thousand professional and user-generated videos, plus more than 5,000 photos of athletes and contests held worldwide. These current numbers are for all their channels, not just the Surf Channel, although they will of course be increasing as time goes on. Other GrindTV channels, as noted by the icons on their new home page [preview shown here], include Skate, Snow, Moto, Bike, Air, Wind, and Wake.

GrindTV.com bills itself as being created “for and by adrenaline junkies” — that is, fans and practitioners of extreme and action sports. It claims its user-generated videos “showcase the most outrageous, untamed, awe-inspiring sports content on the Web, as well as original video and photographs captured by the GrindTV producers.”

User-generated video is one of the hottest things happening on the web these days, and YouTube is hardly alone. Specialty sites like Grind undoubtedly will continue building very loyal audiences. Do not underestimate the size and spend represented by the surf and related markets. The annual Action Sports Expo event now has close to a 20-year history, by my count at least. The industry may be SoCal focused, but it has a worldwide footprint. It is one big, monster market, and advertisers are right to covet it. Just pick up a copy of Surfer Magazine, one of my longtime favorite reads, on your local newsstand sometime and feel the heft. Then try to imagine the heft of the online marketplace it represents….

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Kicking Off My DEMOfall Coverage

September 12, 2006 / / 0 Comments

You say the event hasn’t started yet? You’re right, it’s September 25-27. But that doesn’t stop me. I blog pre, during, and after such major conferences that I attend as a press registrant. [See my coverage of DEMO ’06 in February in Phoenix here.] Demofalllogo This is just my first post of what will be many for DEMOfall, and I’m looking forward to it.

So, what’s the buzz on this one as I sit here in Minneapolis, less than two weeks from my flight to San Diego? Well, not much that’s hit my radar so far. The DEMO folks like to keep a lid on things till it’s closer to showtime. [And why would they compete with all the Apple media hype going on right now, anyway (peaking today)?] These folks do know how to build the buzz quite well as they approach their conference dates, however, to hype both attendance and media coverage — which is considerable.

Coolest thing I’ve heard so far is the Widgetbox Competition, sponsored by one of the presenting companies at DEMOfall, one of about 70 chosen from hundreds of hopefuls. Demo06widephoto Haven’t seen the official list of all the presenting companies yet from the DEMO PR folks (and it may actually still be getting finalized). But if you search on “DEMOfall 2006,” you’ll see some companies are already promoting their selection to pitch at this event — names such as 4INFO, Simple Star, Add Me, MyPW, Headplay, Koral, Scrapblog, Mvox, and SiteKreator, to name a few.

How does DEMO select companies? Check out this recent series of podcasts from the show’s producer.

Watch this space for much more soon…

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My 100th Post…

September 7, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Just wanted to say that. Hey, somebody ring the gong! Not bad for about nine months [he said modestly], considering I tend to write pretty long posts — articles, really, for the most part — and this is only a part-time effort for me. But I do try to mix things up by breaking up all the long articles with a short nugget from time to time.

Nothing to report specifically in this post — I just wanted to mark the milestone and thank you, my readers. Plus I didn’t think I should devote a special post like this to any one company or news item. Rather, I thought I should stage that next real blog post so it becomes Number 101. How about I just use this one for the purpose of seeking feedback? So, tell me then, folks — how am I doing?

thanks again for reading!
Graeme

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