Been some time since I live-blogged, so here it goes:
Andrew Raisej kicks off with an announcement of WeGovernment - things that are useful for their civic lives. Introduces the Deputy Mayor - MediaNYC2020 - series of initiatives. Establishment of business incubators, creation of a media lab for commercialization of new technologies, launch of the BigApps competition.
BigApps accomplish transparency in government, innovative ideas, improve efficiencies of city government, and provides developers and programmers the content needed for new apps. Doubling the datasets, winners will meet the mayor and get $20K in prizes. http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6301114
Brandon Kessler - ChallengePost - describing the NYC Big Apps 2.0 - use at least one dataset and make it available to the public. Submission deadline - Jan 12, 2011.
One Minute Presentations
Ari presents HowMutch - www.howmutch.com - learn about how much people would pay for various product offerings?
Showing posts with label NYTech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NYTech. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 12
Wednesday, December 17
Watching the NYTech community evolve...
So, I came to Fulbright and Jaworski tonight, expecting to see a large group of people discussing the topics that have been brandied about on the nytechideas list started by Richie Hecker. As I walked into the Board Room on the 24th floor, I saw my friend Murat who greeted me saying it was a pleasure for him to have me at his event. I was non-plussed - and realized that this was Murat's Entrepreneur event, not the self-described NY Tech Council event.
I joined the merry band of people - which included a number of the people who also ran for the NYTM Organizer role along with Tony Bacigalupo, Lubna from Mobile Mondays and a number of others. The conversation was lively - with Oz and Richie bringing the very energetic discussion to solid summaries. Once it came to an end, we headed out - and I went into Murat's event as promised.
Watching Murat's event gave me a different perspective of NY Tech events - from the NYTM and The Hatchery. A gent from Comcast Ventures was speaking on how to get investment for business ideas - and allowed for a discussion between one of the entrepreneurs (a marketing preference company) and the VC. I think the idea of having the discussion go on between the VC and the entrepreneur is a good one for understanding (almost like a short lecture) of what a VC would do with an entrepreneur - but (IMHO) I think it leaves the rest of the audience in a passive state - listening, but not participating - which sometimes was demonstrated by the active use of Blackberries at times.
Not sure how I would recommend improving the event - especially since I think Murat has done a hell of a job bringing this community together through various situations - and his event is extremely well attended.
From the new Umbrella Group (a hearty discussion was brought about by not wanting to define the group immediately by the name), there was a noting of the various needs of (from memory, so I know I have some missing):
I think Scott's action of stepping down from NYTM has really started something - watching how things will be evolving now - especially after the Obama win and the economic slowdown. When people have time - they want to contribute. Will the various pockets of energy and enthusiasm cause things to happen in a collaborative fashion or a fractious fashion. Only the members of the community will tell.
I joined the merry band of people - which included a number of the people who also ran for the NYTM Organizer role along with Tony Bacigalupo, Lubna from Mobile Mondays and a number of others. The conversation was lively - with Oz and Richie bringing the very energetic discussion to solid summaries. Once it came to an end, we headed out - and I went into Murat's event as promised.
Watching Murat's event gave me a different perspective of NY Tech events - from the NYTM and The Hatchery. A gent from Comcast Ventures was speaking on how to get investment for business ideas - and allowed for a discussion between one of the entrepreneurs (a marketing preference company) and the VC. I think the idea of having the discussion go on between the VC and the entrepreneur is a good one for understanding (almost like a short lecture) of what a VC would do with an entrepreneur - but (IMHO) I think it leaves the rest of the audience in a passive state - listening, but not participating - which sometimes was demonstrated by the active use of Blackberries at times.
Not sure how I would recommend improving the event - especially since I think Murat has done a hell of a job bringing this community together through various situations - and his event is extremely well attended.
From the new Umbrella Group (a hearty discussion was brought about by not wanting to define the group immediately by the name), there was a noting of the various needs of (from memory, so I know I have some missing):
- Event publishing and promotion
- Advocacy for the tech enabled community
- Networking and collaboration
I think Scott's action of stepping down from NYTM has really started something - watching how things will be evolving now - especially after the Obama win and the economic slowdown. When people have time - they want to contribute. Will the various pockets of energy and enthusiasm cause things to happen in a collaborative fashion or a fractious fashion. Only the members of the community will tell.
Tuesday, March 4
NY Tech Meetup - March 2008
Scott makes introductions - IAC is looking for Java developers, project and product managers for some new ventures.
Danny Schultz, Ross and Adam from DFJ Gotham.
Future of Organizing with technology - power to the people in this century.
Jordan Goldberg, CEO of stickk
Success is found on using anti-charity
Peter Deitz, Social Actions
Independent project for the last year - social action aggregation platform - allowes for people to communicate and join guide for social action platforms.
Anouncing a new functionality: Meetups in the Making - pledging and expressing an interest for a Meetup - the idea is that if you do not want to commit to being the leader of a Meetup, but you are willing to join one at the time when the Meetup happens, then you express your interest.
Then when a person who is closer to becoming a leader of a group, it shows the potential "pledged" people who are interested in the group.
Launched in November 2007 - 70K people have pledged to upcoming groups.
Ready registry: pledgestry (Jesse's word)
"World's first platform for aggregating demand for community" - Scott Heifferman
Paul Miller, SchoolOfEverything (from London)
In 1965, the "Free U" grew from 2 courses to 300 courses (straight out of Accepted). These guys have placed a geo-locator for anyone able to teach a course. They have a search engine, capability of listing your potential course - and a chance for signup.
Similar site: moodle.com and other free ones. They have standards on form and business objects - can we connect with them? Yes - we "broker" relationships. Get people together face-to-face in the real world.
Will include a reputation engine, right now focused on established people who have business. They will determine demand for classes and show the demand geographically.
Andrew, thepoint (from Chicago)
Arose from the problem if - what if all of us did something against a bad thing ("what if we all cancelled our contracts on the same day?") - interesting that Andrew describes what Nate Westheimer described as VentBox - which is now Bricabox.
"Challenging Authority" - hitting a tipping point where the cost of the action exceeds the cost of the policy (e.g. change the policy or the action will cost the company/authority of the policy XXX money).
Has similarities to essembly from before - with a twist on petitions (sign this campaign). Some of the actions can be on issues that have no laws (e.g. upset with university for doing XXX, you can have a group of people do YY).
How much would it be to have the XXX campaign happen to you? Then you could pledge what you feel it is worth to you - ONLY when the campaign reaches the tipping point. (e.g. When we raise $10B, we will build a winter shielding dome over the city).
This is a platform for people to come together and combine in collective action. Aiming for an algorithm such that they understand how a problem will occur to changing the general public.
Concepts: register your "vectors of interest", browse policies you can affect, express willingness to contribute - thepoint will inform you of when you (and the other pledges) can now act to change the policy.
Future of self-government - a DIY-type culture.
Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody
The Power of Organizing with Organizations - sharing, conversation and collaboration - and the fourth is "collective action". We are on the cusp of hitting this point.
Example: flight delays and how the people did not together - media had a field day. 1999 and 2007 -- in 2007, the airlines made it happen. How/why?
Kate Hanni was pissed - builds a blog, contacts the media, reaches out to other passengers, builds a petition, 10s of thousands - could not negotiate with the collective since they wanted on thing.
Thinking is for doing, Publishing is for acting. Every URL is a latent community. (Uh oh - sounding like the tail end of 1999 - where everything was "community").
FlashMobs - point of flash mobs was to tease the hipster community. In Belarus would not allow people to act in concert to coordinate. Case of collective action leading the media - part of the goal was to demonstrate the action against the government. (Tinges of "V for Vendetta").
When group tools applied in free communities - always laughed at. But in Egypt, twitter is becoming a powerful community tools. Have to look at the context and the tool to understand.
Fighting Costa Nostra - collaborating with others to fight the Mafia. (Reminds me of BALCONY)
[Ed comment: Democrats are often on these tools because their structure for organizing is available from their spare time, Republicans have a large number of offline connection mechanisms which does not need to "fill their spare time". I wonder how people will connect to these social actions that leverage these technologies.]
Q: How do you measure results? Effectiveness? A: their own success metrics - there are no comparison metrics. My suggestion: use the measurement of the value of the actions to generate an equivalency for the action in some financial metric.
Metrics - sounding like what we were doing back in the beginning of banner ads - why not come up with something that is a utility metric for success?
Thought: the technology of accountability will actually force the change that is expected.
Q: Are you going to take over or usurpt the incumbents - or will you work with them? A: Jesse from MeetUp wants to work with them. Jordan from Stickk is trying to work with charities.
Danny Schultz, Ross and Adam from DFJ Gotham.
Future of Organizing with technology - power to the people in this century.
Jordan Goldberg, CEO of stickk
- "Put a contract out on yourself" - allow users to create commitment contracts and leverage their network of friends to keep you on track.
- Commit to weight loss, stop smoking, etc - social networking with goal creation - then add stakes (money on the line) to either charity, anti-charity (an organization that you DO NOT want to get your stakes), friend and/or foe or no stakes.
- Referree - a person to verify your progress - which is a viral nature to get someone else into the site and will track your progress. Email sent to them.
- Supporters - list of friends who will encourage you to lose your weight, stop smoking, exercise, etc.
- Using the social networking concept and the social pressure that happens in companies like Kiva and other microloan companies.
- Looking to build in group commitments rather than simply single person commitments.
Success is found on using anti-charity
Peter Deitz, Social Actions
Independent project for the last year - social action aggregation platform - allowes for people to communicate and join guide for social action platforms.
- Problem with interoperability, higher level integration of social change. 29+ social action platforms - social change campaign.
- Each with its own: user base, Facebook app, Tag Cloud, etc.
- Platforms built to empower individuals - full-responsibility for amplifying campaign on campaign creators.
- Making an API in a microformat - what it is trying to accomplish, merge the feeds and have a aggregated source of information. Thinking of how to make social action platforms work together. (peterdeitz at google's service)
Anouncing a new functionality: Meetups in the Making - pledging and expressing an interest for a Meetup - the idea is that if you do not want to commit to being the leader of a Meetup, but you are willing to join one at the time when the Meetup happens, then you express your interest.
Then when a person who is closer to becoming a leader of a group, it shows the potential "pledged" people who are interested in the group.
Launched in November 2007 - 70K people have pledged to upcoming groups.
Ready registry: pledgestry (Jesse's word)
"World's first platform for aggregating demand for community" - Scott Heifferman
Paul Miller, SchoolOfEverything (from London)
In 1965, the "Free U" grew from 2 courses to 300 courses (straight out of Accepted). These guys have placed a geo-locator for anyone able to teach a course. They have a search engine, capability of listing your potential course - and a chance for signup.
Similar site: moodle.com and other free ones. They have standards on form and business objects - can we connect with them? Yes - we "broker" relationships. Get people together face-to-face in the real world.
Will include a reputation engine, right now focused on established people who have business. They will determine demand for classes and show the demand geographically.
Andrew, thepoint (from Chicago)
Arose from the problem if - what if all of us did something against a bad thing ("what if we all cancelled our contracts on the same day?") - interesting that Andrew describes what Nate Westheimer described as VentBox - which is now Bricabox.
"Challenging Authority" - hitting a tipping point where the cost of the action exceeds the cost of the policy (e.g. change the policy or the action will cost the company/authority of the policy XXX money).
Has similarities to essembly from before - with a twist on petitions (sign this campaign). Some of the actions can be on issues that have no laws (e.g. upset with university for doing XXX, you can have a group of people do YY).
How much would it be to have the XXX campaign happen to you? Then you could pledge what you feel it is worth to you - ONLY when the campaign reaches the tipping point. (e.g. When we raise $10B, we will build a winter shielding dome over the city).
This is a platform for people to come together and combine in collective action. Aiming for an algorithm such that they understand how a problem will occur to changing the general public.
Concepts: register your "vectors of interest", browse policies you can affect, express willingness to contribute - thepoint will inform you of when you (and the other pledges) can now act to change the policy.
Future of self-government - a DIY-type culture.
Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody
The Power of Organizing with Organizations - sharing, conversation and collaboration - and the fourth is "collective action". We are on the cusp of hitting this point.
Example: flight delays and how the people did not together - media had a field day. 1999 and 2007 -- in 2007, the airlines made it happen. How/why?
Kate Hanni was pissed - builds a blog, contacts the media, reaches out to other passengers, builds a petition, 10s of thousands - could not negotiate with the collective since they wanted on thing.
Thinking is for doing, Publishing is for acting. Every URL is a latent community. (Uh oh - sounding like the tail end of 1999 - where everything was "community").
FlashMobs - point of flash mobs was to tease the hipster community. In Belarus would not allow people to act in concert to coordinate. Case of collective action leading the media - part of the goal was to demonstrate the action against the government. (Tinges of "V for Vendetta").
When group tools applied in free communities - always laughed at. But in Egypt, twitter is becoming a powerful community tools. Have to look at the context and the tool to understand.
Fighting Costa Nostra - collaborating with others to fight the Mafia. (Reminds me of BALCONY)
"Media is moving form a source of information to a site of action." - Clay ShirkyIn 2008 - less creative use of collaboration tools - think that it has become the "third rail" because of what happened with the Dean Campaign. Being used in quite effective, quite utiliarian operations.
[Ed comment: Democrats are often on these tools because their structure for organizing is available from their spare time, Republicans have a large number of offline connection mechanisms which does not need to "fill their spare time". I wonder how people will connect to these social actions that leverage these technologies.]
"Silicon Valley is obsessed with data and information, New York is about media - helping the world's people self-organize is the real interesting way of sparking the future." - Scott HeiffermanQ: Connecting offline organizations to these tools - spare time fillers versus engaged people.
Q: How do you measure results? Effectiveness? A: their own success metrics - there are no comparison metrics. My suggestion: use the measurement of the value of the actions to generate an equivalency for the action in some financial metric.
Metrics - sounding like what we were doing back in the beginning of banner ads - why not come up with something that is a utility metric for success?
Thought: the technology of accountability will actually force the change that is expected.
Q: Are you going to take over or usurpt the incumbents - or will you work with them? A: Jesse from MeetUp wants to work with them. Jordan from Stickk is trying to work with charities.
Tuesday, December 4
Dec 2007 New York Tech Meetup
@ the IAC Center on 18th and 11th Avenue
Scott reads out the concepts and background of the NYTech Meetup.
"Fashioned over the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley"
First: cofounder of MeetUp - Peter Kamali - ignighter
You and your friends create a group - then you find a group of hotties to go on a group date with.
Conventional online dating is awkward - ignighter is a much more secure solution.
Only been at it for eight weeks, softlaunch on app on Facebook two weeks ago. Planning on a "hard launch" soon.
A way for groups of guys to connect with groups of girls (should look into the Nash Equilibrium theorem).
Q: Building a startup in NY now, harder or easier?
A: Harder since people are more expensive, technologies are easier.
Second: Marvin from evolvist
Database/search engine for finding eco-friendly and socially responsible businesses in a geographical area. "Where is the nearest slice of 'organic pizza'?"
Demos: finding a coffee in NY.
Q: Technology? Platform?
A: Ruby on Rails, three months effort, launch soon.
Q: Just food market?
A: Starting in food, moving to everything.
Q: How do you make sure you verify properly?
A: Community and internal verification processes.
Q: Marketing plan?
A: Two targets are NY and San Francisco. Hopefully going to have stickers to show their connection to evovlist
Third: Udeo from thefunded
Database/search engine on VCs and CEOs int he funding process. Think of a community-based ValleyWag.
Q: What inspired you?
A: VCs take advantage of startups - founders usually get 1/10th of the return that the venture parters do. Need to band together to improve our negotiation ability.
Scott is doing a pitch - he met Dominic Price (part of google AdWords team), became the VP of XXXX at Meetup. Jason Paez - there is a tech innovators event part of the Barak Obama campaign on Monday. Innovator's Ball
Fourth: Shay from Kaltura
Think: "Wiki meets YouTube" - groups of people collaborating to remix rich media online.
Simple Flash widget allowing person to mix video on the web (reminds me of a light-weight iMovie and a video editing tool I saw in England). Using it for mixing video clips, citizen journalism, sports clips, etc.
Can search other media sources - import into their editor. Nice feature with the volume editor, can insert special effect. Open source platform (does this mean that others can edit and modify?), Can insert RSS feeds (interesting) over the video.
Q: Who are you aiming for?
A: encouraging a remix news in video culture. Do private label work.
Q: what will it be used for?
A: people are using it for citizen journalism
Fifth: Murat from Unype (you-nipe)
A virtual representation of the real world built on top of google Earth - connects to social networks (ning, orkut, skype, etc). All information from the SNs comes with you into the virtual world.
Demonstrates within facebook - voice chat using Skype. Server sends file - which will open google earth. Shows all of the events in the location and the people online. Can see the event and the location relative to the world you are in.
Can follow people within unype - you can insert 3D models, videos, locations, etc.
Q: You have the street view?
A: Yes - you can look at the street view on the google earth. in relation to virtual worlds - application is more related to the real world.
Q: What are they using for it now?
A: Just playing with it for now.
Q: Privacy issues?
A: If you are concerned, do not put your personal details out there.
Sixth: Scott from MeetUp Inc. (Meetup Alliance)
Now, he finally gets to demo something after 50 meetups in NYC. New York Company built in NY. Power of self-organized groups.
Meetups teamup when they can work together - e.g. Ron Paul Meetups created one of the biggest fundraising day by external supporters. History of the world is about alliances of "local groups" - announcing the MeetUp Alliance - super-groups (groups of groups) - just launched a few hours ago. Not sure how it is going to turn out - give people the power to form groups of groups - alliances.
Doing something a little crazy - made it platform agnostic - if you are part of a group external - BYOG (bring your own group). Allows for feeds to be aggregated from each of the groups (becoming the groups aggregators). Built with an open API which will allow people to build widgets/interfaces that is not currently out there.
Scott reads out the concepts and background of the NYTech Meetup.
"Fashioned over the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley"
First: cofounder of MeetUp - Peter Kamali - ignighter
You and your friends create a group - then you find a group of hotties to go on a group date with.
Conventional online dating is awkward - ignighter is a much more secure solution.
Only been at it for eight weeks, softlaunch on app on Facebook two weeks ago. Planning on a "hard launch" soon.
A way for groups of guys to connect with groups of girls (should look into the Nash Equilibrium theorem).
Q: Building a startup in NY now, harder or easier?
A: Harder since people are more expensive, technologies are easier.
Second: Marvin from evolvist
Database/search engine for finding eco-friendly and socially responsible businesses in a geographical area. "Where is the nearest slice of 'organic pizza'?"
Demos: finding a coffee in NY.
Q: Technology? Platform?
A: Ruby on Rails, three months effort, launch soon.
Q: Just food market?
A: Starting in food, moving to everything.
Q: How do you make sure you verify properly?
A: Community and internal verification processes.
Q: Marketing plan?
A: Two targets are NY and San Francisco. Hopefully going to have stickers to show their connection to evovlist
Third: Udeo from thefunded
Database/search engine on VCs and CEOs int he funding process. Think of a community-based ValleyWag.
Q: What inspired you?
A: VCs take advantage of startups - founders usually get 1/10th of the return that the venture parters do. Need to band together to improve our negotiation ability.
Scott is doing a pitch - he met Dominic Price (part of google AdWords team), became the VP of XXXX at Meetup. Jason Paez - there is a tech innovators event part of the Barak Obama campaign on Monday. Innovator's Ball
Fourth: Shay from Kaltura
Think: "Wiki meets YouTube" - groups of people collaborating to remix rich media online.
Simple Flash widget allowing person to mix video on the web (reminds me of a light-weight iMovie and a video editing tool I saw in England). Using it for mixing video clips, citizen journalism, sports clips, etc.
Can search other media sources - import into their editor. Nice feature with the volume editor, can insert special effect. Open source platform (does this mean that others can edit and modify?), Can insert RSS feeds (interesting) over the video.
Q: Who are you aiming for?
A: encouraging a remix news in video culture. Do private label work.
Q: what will it be used for?
A: people are using it for citizen journalism
Fifth: Murat from Unype (you-nipe)
A virtual representation of the real world built on top of google Earth - connects to social networks (ning, orkut, skype, etc). All information from the SNs comes with you into the virtual world.
Demonstrates within facebook - voice chat using Skype. Server sends file - which will open google earth. Shows all of the events in the location and the people online. Can see the event and the location relative to the world you are in.
Can follow people within unype - you can insert 3D models, videos, locations, etc.
Q: You have the street view?
A: Yes - you can look at the street view on the google earth. in relation to virtual worlds - application is more related to the real world.
Q: What are they using for it now?
A: Just playing with it for now.
Q: Privacy issues?
A: If you are concerned, do not put your personal details out there.
Sixth: Scott from MeetUp Inc. (Meetup Alliance)
Now, he finally gets to demo something after 50 meetups in NYC. New York Company built in NY. Power of self-organized groups.
Meetups teamup when they can work together - e.g. Ron Paul Meetups created one of the biggest fundraising day by external supporters. History of the world is about alliances of "local groups" - announcing the MeetUp Alliance - super-groups (groups of groups) - just launched a few hours ago. Not sure how it is going to turn out - give people the power to form groups of groups - alliances.
Doing something a little crazy - made it platform agnostic - if you are part of a group external - BYOG (bring your own group). Allows for feeds to be aggregated from each of the groups (becoming the groups aggregators). Built with an open API which will allow people to build widgets/interfaces that is not currently out there.
Tuesday, July 10
July 2007 NY Tech Meetup
Scott was nice enough to let me announce a new initiative called cooperBricolage - a coworking space in the East Village for technology and design startups. For more information, look at http://cooperbricolage.pbwiki.com.
Mike Levin - HitTail
http://www.hittail.com
Effective search engine optimization - add a snippet of code and increases the number of search hits. Extract keywords showing you the performance of keywords.
Hit Suggestions: writing suggestion - patent-pending algorithm. Gives you ideas for the content for your site to increase your performance. Positive feedback cycle. Really good for bloggers - works in real time... As a NYTechMeetup - they offered a discount key (send email for it) to get the main service for $49.95, $50 off!
Jason and Jon from Confabb
http://www.confabb.com
34000 entries for conferences, 4K per month added. Social networking tools for conferences - gives people a way to reconnect with people. Feeds from social media (YouTube, flickr, etc) and a reputation management system. Also offer conference website hosting. Great for speakers to manage their reputation - good search engine marketing/optimization. Started by Salim Ismail and Cameron Barrett.
The vision is the "hallway conversations" - Confabb provides a legacy for the previous conferences for people to find and benefit from.
Ken from DietTelevision
http://www.diettelevision.com
Founder of BlueFly - solving a real thing for real people. Americans washed down 53 gallons of soda EACH every year. Video is free, wisdom of crowds, individuals share their knowledge.
Voice recognition is not working right now - helps in the selections.
Learn It Section: Discovered is that the more restrictive the diet is , the easier it is to lose it. Allows you to select your best diet - with the wisdom (gets people's information and shares it as user-generated content). Sample menu, nutritionist ratings, etcera.
Lose It Section: friends, tracking, etcetera. You can call in your menus from where you are - then later confirm it - and help with the voice recognition - to allow you to track your food and help you lose weight. Make it very simple. Make the complicated stuff easy - long to do, finally getting there.
Inventive stuff - though it is called television.
Jon from ParkWhiz
http://www.parkwhiz.com
Gives a listing of parking spots all over a location. Can enable a reservation system and reserve your parking in the city. Can simply offer attendants the printed receipt and allow them to reserve their spaces.
Why would an owner want this? Because when the owner has empty spots - losing money. Can have a premium service as well. Removes cash liability by allowing for credit payment. eBay for Parking - you could rent out your driveway for games. API coming soon - so people can link via widget and other services. Focusing on event parking and monthly parking. Also offers a mobile app at the website.
Shout out to Wilson-Sonsini and DFJ Gotham - and welcomes Tim Draper from DFJ in the Valley.
Danny and Raj from UpNext
http://www.upnext.com
A better way of doing "local search" using three dimensional maps for various locations - specifically working on Manhattan at the moment (not available to other cities yet, but is easy to make it work). Smooth - stylistic site - textures can be changed easily. Different events based on textures of the City - built from the ground up.
Want to connect with content providers for Manhattan - can search various locations. Great aspect with the transportation medallions. Working for a community - social networking/profile tools. Can see friend's favorites and reviews - allows people to see the city. Launched the site three hours ago. (Ed Note: I met these guys back in Sept when they had their first prototype, and had very nice presentation back then at Columbia University).
Think about make it into a connection for other apps with the Java application they have made. Would like to work with someone in the mobile space.
Jinesh from Amazon Web Services
www.amazon.com
Evangelists from Amazon - some of the infrastructure as a service - Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). EC2 is a "utility service" at $0.10 per instance hour with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) as the drive of the virtualized machine.
Pay-for-use - and allows for scaling of applications to allow for additional services.
Uses "sensors" and creates instances when needed (CPU utilization, Heap Size, load/TCP connections, in-memory usage, etcetera)
Couple of people using the service - PowerSet (semantic search engine in CA), PhanFare (using TB of storage through S3 for their service)
Will S3 allow for block access (for databases)? Difficult to do mySQL. Since it is a virtualized system, very difficult, but there are work-arounds (Jinesh can explain).
Grand fanale: Will from MeetUp
(who developed doublefeaturefinder.com)
Question Party www.questionparty.com
"If I have to explain QuestionParty, then you can not use QuestionParty." - Will
Mike Levin - HitTail
http://www.hittail.com
Effective search engine optimization - add a snippet of code and increases the number of search hits. Extract keywords showing you the performance of keywords.
Hit Suggestions: writing suggestion - patent-pending algorithm. Gives you ideas for the content for your site to increase your performance. Positive feedback cycle. Really good for bloggers - works in real time... As a NYTechMeetup - they offered a discount key (send email for it) to get the main service for $49.95, $50 off!
Jason and Jon from Confabb
http://www.confabb.com
34000 entries for conferences, 4K per month added. Social networking tools for conferences - gives people a way to reconnect with people. Feeds from social media (YouTube, flickr, etc) and a reputation management system. Also offer conference website hosting. Great for speakers to manage their reputation - good search engine marketing/optimization. Started by Salim Ismail and Cameron Barrett.
The vision is the "hallway conversations" - Confabb provides a legacy for the previous conferences for people to find and benefit from.
Ken from DietTelevision
http://www.diettelevision.com
Founder of BlueFly - solving a real thing for real people. Americans washed down 53 gallons of soda EACH every year. Video is free, wisdom of crowds, individuals share their knowledge.
Voice recognition is not working right now - helps in the selections.
Learn It Section: Discovered is that the more restrictive the diet is , the easier it is to lose it. Allows you to select your best diet - with the wisdom (gets people's information and shares it as user-generated content). Sample menu, nutritionist ratings, etcera.
Lose It Section: friends, tracking, etcetera. You can call in your menus from where you are - then later confirm it - and help with the voice recognition - to allow you to track your food and help you lose weight. Make it very simple. Make the complicated stuff easy - long to do, finally getting there.
Inventive stuff - though it is called television.
Jon from ParkWhiz
http://www.parkwhiz.com
Gives a listing of parking spots all over a location. Can enable a reservation system and reserve your parking in the city. Can simply offer attendants the printed receipt and allow them to reserve their spaces.
Why would an owner want this? Because when the owner has empty spots - losing money. Can have a premium service as well. Removes cash liability by allowing for credit payment. eBay for Parking - you could rent out your driveway for games. API coming soon - so people can link via widget and other services. Focusing on event parking and monthly parking. Also offers a mobile app at the website.
Shout out to Wilson-Sonsini and DFJ Gotham - and welcomes Tim Draper from DFJ in the Valley.
Danny and Raj from UpNext
http://www.upnext.com
A better way of doing "local search" using three dimensional maps for various locations - specifically working on Manhattan at the moment (not available to other cities yet, but is easy to make it work). Smooth - stylistic site - textures can be changed easily. Different events based on textures of the City - built from the ground up.
Want to connect with content providers for Manhattan - can search various locations. Great aspect with the transportation medallions. Working for a community - social networking/profile tools. Can see friend's favorites and reviews - allows people to see the city. Launched the site three hours ago. (Ed Note: I met these guys back in Sept when they had their first prototype, and had very nice presentation back then at Columbia University).
Think about make it into a connection for other apps with the Java application they have made. Would like to work with someone in the mobile space.
Jinesh from Amazon Web Services
www.amazon.com
Evangelists from Amazon - some of the infrastructure as a service - Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). EC2 is a "utility service" at $0.10 per instance hour with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) as the drive of the virtualized machine.
Pay-for-use - and allows for scaling of applications to allow for additional services.
Uses "sensors" and creates instances when needed (CPU utilization, Heap Size, load/TCP connections, in-memory usage, etcetera)
Couple of people using the service - PowerSet (semantic search engine in CA), PhanFare (using TB of storage through S3 for their service)
Will S3 allow for block access (for databases)? Difficult to do mySQL. Since it is a virtualized system, very difficult, but there are work-arounds (Jinesh can explain).
Grand fanale: Will from MeetUp
(who developed doublefeaturefinder.com)
Question Party www.questionparty.com
"If I have to explain QuestionParty, then you can not use QuestionParty." - Will
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