Dean’s picks for the best of DEMO
The DEMO 2009 conference was in a familiar setting in Palm Desert, Calif., this week, but it was very different from past shows. The elephant in the room, as organizer Chris Shipley pointed out, was the weak economy.
That colored everything. There were fewer companies… Continue Reading
DEMO: AppZero makes it easy to hop between clouds
Cloud computing offers a lot of advantages to companies that don’t want to run their own data centers. AppZero, one of the companies presenting this week at DEMO 2009, hopes to make it much easier for companies to move their sites and applications between different… Continue Reading
DEMO: Primal Fusion connects your thoughts together
Primal Fusion is using semantic technology to help you with “thought networking.” What that means, apparently, is that it helps you gather relevant materials from across the internet in order to put together a term paper or research project.
The company is showing its offering… Continue Reading
DEMO: Promptu launches ShoutOUT iPhone voice-driven messaging/command system
The DEMO conference is never a kind forum for those trying to do voice recognition applications. That proved true again just now as Scott Maddux, vice president of product marketing at Promptu, tried to do a voice-command product demo at the show.
Menlo Park, Calif.-based… Continue Reading
DEMO: SmartyCard lets kids learn stuff and earn stuff
SmartyCard has a smart way to get kids to learn via its reward-based quizzing approach. The company, which is showing off the service at DEMO today, runs a web site where kids can take quizzes to earn prizes that have been paid for by their… Continue Reading
DEMO: Gwabbit launches automated email contact manager
Contact managers are ripe for a makeover. As such, Technicopia is announcing a tool called Gwabbit today at the DEMO 2009 conference that could take the tedium out of updating your email contacts.
It’s arguable that this has already been done with the automated contact… Continue Reading
DEMO: BitGravity launches high-definition video streaming service
BitGravity is launching a digital video service today that allows its customers to stream high-definition videos over the Internet.
The BG Live service can stream live events in 1080p or 720p resolution (the same quality as high-end TV sets), according to the company’s announcement at… Continue Reading
DEMO: Coveroo lets you personalize your cell phones with laser imagery
At DEMO today, Coveroo is launching a service to personalize cell phones and other gadgets with laser imagery. Now you can have anything from the characters of Capcom’s Resident Evil 5 video game to Garfield etched onto the back of your phone.
Coveroo can render… Continue Reading
Utility Scale Solar aims to bring solar costs level with coal, natural gas
Utility Scale Solar, maker of tracking devices for solar thermal installations, plans to try out its technology with clients over the next several months, and is looking for $6 million in first-round funding to do it, reports VentureWire.
Based in Palo Alto, Calif., the company… Continue Reading
Netgear introduces more connected entertainment gadgets
Connected entertainment is clearly a big theme at the International Consumer Electronics Show taking place this week in Las Vegas.
Today Netgear showed off three products that make it a lot easier to use the Internet with consumer electronics gear.
Its first product was the… Continue Reading
TC50: Twitter-for-business startup Yammer wins TechCrunch50, I may eat my hat
When Yammer presented at TechCrunch50, I wasn’t so sure about it. The company offers a service that’s the business version of micro-messaging company Twitter. You leave short messages about what you’re doing, your co-workers do the same, and everyone can view what everyone else is… Continue Reading
iWidgets lets CBS make money within Fox’s MySpace — the tangle of alliances grows
updated
iWidgets, a San Francisco company that offers a way for publishers to distribute content to social networks, has signed a deal allowing CBS to offer its television programming on popular social networks.
It allows CBS’ audience to watch full episodes of television programming directly… Continue Reading
TC50: Writer-director Joss Whedon may have found Internet success, but will Hollywood follow?
The Hollywood studios don’t “get it” yet, writer-director Joss Whedon (pictured, left) declared today at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco.
You’d think that Whedon, the lead writer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who more recently hit big with Internet TV show called Dr. Horrible’s… Continue Reading
TC50: Niche social networks thrive, for birdwatchers, fashion-conscious, dead people and more
It’s pretty obvious that social networking has entered a new era.
Few new social networking companies are trying to steal market share from Facebook, MySpace or the other big entrenched networks. Instead, they’re aiming at specific, lucrative niches.
Five such niche social networks presented a… Continue Reading
TC50: Ashton Kutcher thinks online content and television are merging and Blah Girls is a part of that
Original video content online has a stigma attached to it. Although it is original, it’s generally thought to be a lower form of content than the stuff made in Hollywood. While that used to be because much of it was user generated or amateur content,… Continue Reading
GoodGuide helps you find healthy, sustainable, ethical products
GoodGuide has a simple goal — to become the one website you visit to understand whether a product is “good,” however you define good. That could mean safe for your kids, environmentally friendly or manufactured in an ethical way, whatever matters to you.
The company… Continue Reading
Dean’s picks for the top ten companies of DEMOfall 08
I listened to all 72 presentations at the DEMOfall 08 conference in San Diego and I am bone weary from it. They were only six minutes each, but listening to every single one — though I’ll admit I didn’t pay as close attention to some… Continue Reading
TC50: The latest gaming companies — Grockit, Akoha, Amosphir and Playce
Here are the companies that presented at the games panel at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco. My favorite company was Atmosphir.
Grockit — massively multiplayer online learning. Grockit is a multiplayer online environment where players can earn experience points by showing off their knowledge… Continue Reading
TC50: Bojam introduces remote musical collaboration; and more rich media developments
Here’s a summary of the new “rich media” companies presenting at the TechCrunch50 conference here in San Francisco:
Bojam — providing a platform for remote musical collaboration around the world. Musicians across the world can seek out other musicians, learn the parts to a song,… Continue Reading
TC50: VideoSurf debuts search engine for video
Video search engines fail most of the time because they rely upon people to tag keywords of things that appear in the video. But VideoSurf is unveiling today a better way to search through videos. It is launching a beta search engine at TechCrunch50 in… Continue Reading