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15Sep/080

Adgregate Markets Revolutionizing the Way Online Ads Work

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Hey readers!

I am back with another post from the TechCrunch50 Conference. This company was probably tied for my favorite company with Swype. The company that I am referring to is Adgregate Markets. Adgregate Markets is set to completely revolutionize the online advertising business. Adgregate Markets solves a long time problem that has faced content providers for years.

For years, content sites hoping to make money have had to depend on advertising. The problem with this is that the ads take the visitor away from their content. Adgregate Market has found a solution to the question of whether you want people to consume your content or click on your ads. Adgregate Market has a product that allows them to do both. The ad is essentially a self contained sales widget. You can purchase whatever product the ad is selling directly from the ad rather than being redirected to some online merchant. Not only that, but the transaction is encrypted, so the sale is secure, even if the site hosting the ad is not. It is truly a revolutionary step in the online advertising space, although I think its biggest potential lies in affiliate sales.

Adgregate Markets has solved a very real and big problem. I wish I had the money to invest in this revolutionary company as I think it has a great future. I am curious to see what the future holds for this company as I would expect such a technology to be gobbled up by Google or somebody similar as the value of something like this is huge. While I think they can have a very bight future staying as their own separate company, I would expect to see them purchased by a large online ad company sooner rather than later. Only time will tell, but no matter what happens, this is going to be a cash cow for somebody.

I will be having more TechCrunch50 related posts coming today, but I will be doing a post about the Best Buy acquisition of Napster first, so stay tuned! Don't forget to check out my daily podcast with more great technology stories and some really cool links, Geek News Daily.

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

 
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12Sep/082

BirdPost, the One-Stop-Shop for Bird Lovers

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Hey readers!

I am back with my thoughts on yet another TechCrunch50 presenter. This time, I am going to talk about the one stop shop for bird lovers, BirdPost.

BirdPost is a site dedicated to bird lovers. The founders said that the bird watching industry was a $35 Billion industry (I think that was the number they gave). Despite this huge number, there is a real lack of a real destination site for bird lovers. BirdPost is without a doubt, that destination site.

BirdPost allows bird lovers to get and share information about any kind of bird. The site has a great ability to search for birds based on things like location so that the users can find birds in their location, which is where their iPhone application comes in handy. When somebody says that a type of bird has been spotted in a particular location, other users who care about that bird or location are alerted so that they know the bird they wanted to see has been spotted in an area near them. This service allows bird lovers to communicate and share stories about birds and locations so that users can go to areas to see birds that they never would have thought to go to otherwise.

The site and mobile application has a ton of features and huge potential. I believe this is the perfect sites for bird lovers without question. If you are a bird lover, you really want to check out this service as it will be your best friend.

As I recall, the business model is based around advertising and possibly some subscription services. Given that this is a $35 Billion industry, I don't see people hesitating to pay for such a great service. I can't wait to see where this company goes as it has the potential to soar with the eagles.  Below is the presentation of the product.

Don't forget to check back for more posts about the many TechCrunch50 companies and be sure to check out the posts I have already written as there are some companies worth hearing about. I will also be podcasting some thoughts later this week, so make sure to check the main site for that.

-Jeremy “pcnerd37” Bray

 
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12Sep/080

Blah Girls is Just Blah

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Hey readers!

I am back with another post on a company that presented at the TechCrunch50. This time, I am talking about Ashton Kutcher's new project, Blah Girls.

Blah girls is essentially a short cartoon featuring three funny girls talking about the latest Hollywood gossip in an entertaining way. The cartoon is aimed at teenage girls that are interested in Hollywood gossip. The cartoon is an embeddable video that can be posted anywhere, but since the advertising is built into the video, they can still make money on the video views even without user having to visit the Blah Girls site. The site as some interesting although probably not exciting features including unique responses to comments based on the tone of the comment. If you leave the comment “You Suck!” you will get a rude response in return, but if you leave a positive response, you will see a positive response in a short video from one of the blah girls in return. Kutcher said new responses will be uploaded every week so that they will stay fresh and you don't have as much of a chance of getting the same response more than once.

While I will admit to laughing at the cartoon, I'm not sure it is going to be as big as Ashton hopes, even though whenever he touches something, it tends to do very well. Short, new videos every week is good, but given the pace at which new stories break in Hollywood, you will likely end up with stale news that is a very small part of what is really going on. Another problem is that the language used by the Blah Girls is likely to turn off a percentage of the potential audience, especially those who have parents that care what their children are checking out online. Its an interesting idea and a solid business model, but I don't think it will be the next Foamy or other popular online cartoon. I could be wrong on this one, but I don't think so.

Don't forget to check back for more of my thoughts on the companies that presented at the TechCrunch50. I have a good number of companies still left to talk about and talk about on the podcast, so check back often!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37” Bray

 
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12Sep/080

Bojam Provides Platform for Global Music Collaboration

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Hey readers!

I am back with another post on one of the companies at the TechCrunch50. This very cool company is called Bojam. Bojam is a very cool service for musicians. Bojam seeks to have musicians from around the world collaborate in music creation over the internet. Their technology allows users to record music and vocals in separate tracks, at separate times and enables them to mix it at a later time into a complete song. You can even use this system to learn music because no only do you get to hear the music and stuff from other people, but it is video enabled too, so you can watch them play the notes for the music.

I'm not sure if I am doing this service justice with my short description, but that is how I understand the service in a nutshell. Instead of having to search your local area to find somebody to play an instrument on a song, the service opens things up so you can have any musician around the world collaborate with you, even big name musicians. There was no evidence of any big name musicians on the site, they just stated it was possible. The service seemed a bit buggy during the presentation but extremely powerful with what you can do given the fancy editing tools. Users can of course take the music the create and sell it as they choose. With anybody able to collaborate on a song, this is almost like the Wikipedia of music creation.

I still have questions about the business model and legal issues that I am not real clear on, so I am not going to go into that.

This seems like a really cool service for musicians and I look forward to seeing the music projects that come out of this service. If you are a musician, this is definitely worth checking out as it could be a great tool for you.  Below is the presentation of this new product.

I will be back soon with more of my thoughts on the many companies that presented at the TechCrunch50 Conference.

-Jeremy “pcnerd37” Bray

 
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11Sep/081

Swype, Bringing Ubiquity and Ease of Use to Text Input

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Hey readers!

Since I started of my TechCrunch50 company thoughts on a rather negative note with the winner, Yammer, I figured I should talk about one of my favorite companies, Swype.

For those that don't know, Swype is a form of text input primarily for devices without a full sized keyboard (laptop, desktop).  This new technology uses touch screen technology and the traditional QWERTY key layout to input text by swiping your finger or stylus across the screen rather than having to hunt and peck with your thumbs that is common on most modern touch screen devices such as Apple's iPhone.  By simply swiping your finger or a stylus from one letter to another, you can quickly and easily type out messages.  With a small learning curve, the company boasts that people will be able to reach 50+ words per minute within a very short period of time.

I must say I found the technology amazing, even more so knowing that it can work with with pretty much any touchscreen device, essentially bringing a ubiquitous text entry solution to many existing devices as well as many devices in the future.  I would go so far as to say that this could be what tablet computing has been waiting for to launch it into the mainstream.  This is truly a revolutionary technology that will bring a unified form of text entry to any touch screen device.

Below is the video of the Swype presentation if you didn't get to see this awesomeness when it was presented.

I am not sure which company I will blog about next, so stay tuned as I will be writing many blog posts over the next few days!  Don't forget to check the main podcast page as I will be doing a podcast this week with even more of my thoughts from the TechCrunch50 conference and much more!

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

 
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11Sep/080

Yammer won the TechCrunch50?! What were the judges smoking?

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Hey readers!

This is my fist on a good number of posts coming out of the TechCrunch50, a truely amazing conference.  Before I start posting my thoughts on many of the other companies that were at the conference, I figured I should start with the winner, Yammer.

For those of you that weren't at the conference, watching it on Ustream or reading the many blog posts from it, Yammer is basically a threaded Twitter clone for the enterprise environment (speaking of which, you can follow me on Twitter!).  The creators apparently decided to steal the threaded conversations idea from Friendfeed, throw it into their Twitter clone and make it enterprise exclusive in the way that Facebook was exclusive in the early days where only people with university email addresses could join.  In this case, its only for people with a company email address.

If you attended or followed the coverage of the conference, you would most likely agree that this was far from the most deserving company.  They didn't even bother to change the Twitter look to something unique.  Like many things that presented there, I would consider this more of a feature than a company.  It would not take much for Twitter to do the same thing, plus they already know the micro-blogging space and have a good bit of experience under their belt.  There were a number of truly revolutionary products unveiled at the event, but this was not one of them.  Adgregate Markets and Swype were just two of the truly industry changing products that were far more deserving of the honor than a Twitter knockoff.  I will of course be writing about those companies and many more in the next few days.

With over a thousand applicants to the conference, this makes me wonder just how bad the applicants were that didn't make the cut.  I don't understand how this could have even been a finalist unless there were some kind of kickbacks to the judges or if the judges were too drunk from the parties to make a logical decision.  I am completely baffled by this decision.  They came up with a business model for Twitter, good for them.  Sell the idea to Twitter, don't try to create a company out of a feature, especially when the same job can be accomplished in a more organized fashion with a simple message board.

Anyway, this is the first of many blog posts on my thoughts about what was presented at the conference.  Over the next couple of days, I will be covering my favorite companies and companies that made me ask myself why how they got got past 1,000 other companies to get into the conference.  I will also be doing a Global Geek News podcast in the next week also with more of my thoughts as well as on many of the other big topics, so stay tuned for that!

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

 
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