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

Tag: Tech-Surf-Blog.com (Page 34 of 43)

DEMOfall 07: Day 2 – mSpoke…Finally, Feedreader Relief

Didn’t you just know that somebody was going to address the information overload in your RSS feedreader? How often do you even add a new subscription anymore, for fear of not even having time to read what you already have? Mspokelogo
Not to worry — the guys from mSpoke just introduced Feedhub, a personalized, customizable RSS feed that automatically selects the most relevant posts from the set of feeds you select.  I just registered and uploaded my OPML file (easy to do in Google Reader, in my case), and — voila — I have a personalized feed!  I can’t believe how easy it was….

Mspokeonstage_4

"We make your feedreader smarter," crowed CEO Dave Mawhinney from stage Wednesday afternoon. "We let you stay informed without being overwhelmed."

How does it work?  The company uses its mPower Adaptive Personalization Engine, which dynamically adapts to your reading habits.

"Are you ready to declare RSS bankruptcy?" asked Sean Ammirati, mSpoke’s VP biz dev from stage. "You can take advantage of Feedhub no matter what popular RSS reader you use — Google Reader, Bloglines, NetNewsWire, etc."  And he added: "Are you ever reluctant to subscribe to a new feed because of information overload? If so, this is perfect, because it will give you only the posts from that source that are relevant to you."

Here’s a screen shot of the Feedhub home page (where I simply clicked
to register), followed by a screen shot showing how I selected the
amount of content I wanted (after I uploaded my OPML file), and, finally, a screen showing what my Google home page now looks
like with my Feedhub Personalized Feed just where I want it (upper
left).

Feedhubscreen_3

 


Feedhubscreen2_4

 

UPDATE 10/5: Here’s a great explanation of Feedhub that Guy Kawasaki posted yesterday…"Reality Check: FeedHub."

Mygooglehome_4

DEMOfall 07: Day 2 – MuseStorm…Dead-Simple Widgetizing for Publishers

Are you an online publisher dying to widgetize your content so you can hustle more audience, or just better  engage who you already have, wherever they may hang out on the Web — but have no idea where to start?  Well, bucko, does MuseStorm have a deal for you!  Musestormlogo_2
How about a service that lets anyone — even large, traditional publishers  🙂 — create widgets in minutes. And, to show they mean business, MuseStorm has already signed up CBS, Simon & Schuster, and the Washington Post.

MuseStorm is in the business of empowering publishers and marketers to engage their target audiences
through syndication of highly interactive rich media content. It says it removes the complexity from widget authoring, "enabling companies to
nimbly and inexpensively develop and control intelligent multimedia
widgets with integrated advanced functionality, including user
interactivity."

MuseStorm’s platform lets publishers and
marketers access an unprecedented level of detailed distribution
and interaction metrics to capitalize on their content and dynamically
respond to audience preferences.  The web widgets you create with MuseStorm can also be cloned as desktop widgets.

Musestormdiagram

You can embed your web widgets easily and quickly in a variety of
places. MuseStorm even showed in its demo that you can actually do it with one click….deploying them an any and all of the following:

• most
social networks (FaceBook, MySpace, etc)

• blogging platforms (Blogger,
TypePad, etc)

• start pages (PageFlakes, Netvibes, iGoogle, etc)

• and any
web site

After the company pitched on stage, I spoke with CEO Ori Soen at the company’s station in the Pavilion to see and hear more of the details. "If you’re a publisher, you’re hearing so much about widgets," he said. I guess I understand — who doesn’t want a viral little app out there driving people to your site? "But we buffer you from all the noise. With us, you just build your widget once, then clone it into whatever you want." The benefits, of course, are that the customer doesn’t need to have people learning all the various widget platforms and keeping track of multiple deployments.

But MuseStorm doesn’t just help you with the authoring of your content syndication widgets. It also has an
enterprise-grade syndication service that provides a secure,
high-capacity solution to deliver them,
too. It uses clusters of several types of application servers to
deliver the actual widgets and applications. And it gives you access to
your account via a
management console for authoring and updating, delivery, and metrics.

For analytics, MuseStorm claims previously
unattainable "precise distribution and audience interaction metrics,
including impressions, video playback, rollovers, and clickthroughs."
It says this intelligence lets  customers optimize their content and
delivery in real time to maximize the engagement of their audience.

The company offers (1) Distribution Metrics
detailed information on the distribution and reach of your content and
message, ranging from impressions to unique users to domains and
geo-location data, and (2) Interaction Metrics — to give you
insight into how users actually interact with your content, "monitoring
every user action to create anonymous user profiles that can be used to
optimize your distribution."

MuseStorm is based in Israel, is privately held,
and was founded in 2005. Investors include famed Israeli entrepreneur
Yossi Vardi. It received a Series A of $1 million earlier in 2007.

UPDATE 10/2: To add this article about MuseStorm teaming up with Universal Music Group to promote the upcoming release of a Jimi Hendrix 1967 Monterey Pop Festival DVD — via a widget, of course.

DEMOfall 07: Day 2 – How’s Your Biz Plan Tracking? PlanHQ Will Tell You

Who’d have thought it would take a confident, young startup from New Zealand to come up with an alternative to business plans that just gather dust on the shelf. Planhqonstage
I’m talking here about a way to create a plan that’s focused on tracking, accountability, and actually achieving your goals. What a concept, huh? PlanHQ says says 90% of business plans are never achieved because the focus is on documentation instead of execution. So, they’re out to change that, with a web-based service that has a remarkably simple, intuitive UI.  It’s designed to help the founding team see where they are with respect to their plan at any given moment.

With PlanHQ, team members always know what they’re responsible for, and can see their progress tracked online, in real time. And board members, investors, and advisors get regular progress reports.

Hey, these kiwis are smart guys! And I’m glad they made the trip.

Planhqscreen

DEMOfall 07: Day 2 – BatchBlue Does Contacts…Even Your DEMO Ones!

Here’s yet another cool online app for small businesses: a customizable contact organizer called "BatchBook." It’s a sleek new way to upgrade your people network, from BatchBlue Software. Customization is the key, the company points out,  because no two small businesses are the same, and requirements vary widely by industry. The contact management needs of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of micro-businesses out there (meaning fewer than 25 employees) are all over the map. And most are simply not being served by the usual CRM suspects.  Batchbluescreen
BatchBook has a simple address-book interface (a very clean, simple UI) that you tag and categorize, and you also customize it for your unique business needs. What may be the best thing of all is you can "build relationships between these records." BatchBook is actually a contact manager, a communications manager, and a task manager all in one. This online app is available now on a free trial basis, then it’s only $9.95 per month. Again, I say well worth it — bring it on!

But get this, DEMO fans: just for kicks, over the past few weeks, the kind folks at BatchBlue built an account for DEMO, populating it with contact info from the past three conferences! So, if you’re a DEMO alum and weren’t at the event, shoot me an email and I’ll give you the special code…  🙂 You’ll not only get access to all these DEMO presenters, press, and event organizers, but a free one-year BatchBook account for yourself!  You heard it right here, friends, from your buddy Graeme. As a DEMO alum, your own account will be populated with "all this juicy DEMO data," as the company told me.  You can then log interesting conference conversations, track new business leads or investors, send thank-yous to the event organizers, and much more.  Let’s hear it for the power of community, huh?  Especially the awesome DEMO community.

DEMOfall 07: Day 2 – CashView…So Your Cashflow Won’t Suck

On-demand, hosted apps for small business is just such a HUGE opportunity. I love this space. And one of the very coolest things I saw at DEMOfall was CashView, an online cash management service that simplifies the way you send invoices, receive payments , and pay bills. Cashviewlogo
Remember that advice you heard from some wise, old guy when you started your business — "Listen to me, watch my lips: cash is more important than your mother!" ? Well, assuming you’ve been managing yours manually via the paper method up till now, with all its attendant problems — then, wow, is this a service for you.  I know I’ll be signing up myself as soon as I get back home.  It’s even free till the end of the year, and then only $10 a month. [Are you kidding me? I pay more than that for my blogging platform service!]

Did you know that 97% of invoices are processed manually? Hello!?! Why, friends, are we doing this to ourselves?  We have the Internet, we have hosted services, we have smart companies like CashView — why are we letting paperwork weigh us down? Here’s the way CashView nets it out: "We stop the paper madness, so business owners can focus on growing their businesses." Cashviewscreen
They even cite a recent survey that found businesses spend twice as much time on administrative financial tasks than on growing their business.  WTF?  That’s insanity!  It’s funny, I was just discussing this topic a few weeks ago — telling somebody that it seems I have to spend half my time on marketing and selling, and another quarter on collecting — so, when the heck do I do all the work?

Anyway, so I told these guys my cash flow sucks [and you who are responsible for that know who you are out there 🙂 ]….and i figure I could justify using this thing just for the automated notices it sends out to remind clients to pay my bills!  But the app will even make electronic payments for me, too, if I want, eliminating the need for me to write checks when bill paying time comes around. And, of course, it schedules payments for me, via a dashboard that lets me see my cashflow in real time, anytime — from any computer anywhere.

When I saw this app up close in the Pavilion area, I kid you not, I felt like hugging the guy giving me the demo — the CEO, Rene Lacerte (who’s a guy with a lot of great, relevant experience). The investors like this company, too, because it just announced a second round of financing for $6.5 million led by Emergence Capital — and I chatted with partner Brian Jacobs about the big opportunity it represents.

So, if you’re a solo practitioner like me, or a small biz of any kind (they even say up to 500 employees), go sign up now at www.CashView.com — and tell your accountant to do it, too. And let’s both spend the time we save doing more productive things and growing our businesses, huh?

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