Denver/Boulder New Tech Meetup - August 2008

This was my second New Tech meetup (review of July meetup) and it was much better than last time, which is saying a lot because last time was pretty good. Perhaps that was because this was the 2 year anniversary, perhaps it was because all the demos were from TechStars, perhaps it was because I got there earlier so I could partake in the beverages and announcemens (like the wifi username/password).

Once again I'm keeping track of presentation software, browser, operating system, and this time I'm also keeping track of any software used to build their website and what their YSlow! rating is for their homepage.

EventVue Providing "community" Features to Conferences

Used Keynote and Firefox on mac osx. Blog: WordPress. YSlow: "C" (73).

EventVue participated in TechStars2008 and presented about a year ago at the NewTech Meetup. 2 weeks after they presented at the NewTech Meetup, they closed $250,000 in venture capital (they were very proud of this and challenged this year's crop to do the same).

In the past year, they've supported 28 conferences with their software (~2 conference signups per month). They signed up 9 new conferences in the last month.

The point is to make your time spent at the conference more valuable by helping you connect with conference attendees you already know or should know. They did a demo on the Defrag 2008 site where you can click on "who from my network is going" and also "invite people who aren't going" based on your LinkedIn network.

The cost is $4 per attendee. Personally, I would simply build the conference registration site with a richer application that already includes features like this or where it is easy to add features like this. However, their integration to 3rd party social networks is truly valuable (at least until we get things like OpenSocial out into the wild).

Ignighter - "group to group" dating.

Firefox on Mac with some sort of demo/reply software that was typing things in for them. Blog WordPress. YSlow: "F" (37 - and it shows - painfully slow!)

They feel that Match, eHarmony, etc. are a bit more targetted at "old" people. Group dating is safer, less awkward, more fun. Provided a relatively funny (though sexist) presentation.

Business Plan:
1. Get users dating
2. ?
3. Profit!

Serious revenue streams: Advertising, premiums memberships, venues. They started as a Facebook application, thinking of integration with other systems. Will soon provide a "Post your plans" feature. Since this is not an official "date" this feature will help reduce the pressure and awkwardness.

Occipital - Automated Photo Tagging/Organizing with Immersive Gallery Visualization

Powerpoint and IE on Vista. Blog: Wordpress. YSlow score (for blog): F (53).

This was the evening's only non-web presentation. They started with a history of photos culminating in the point that modern photographers take hundreds of photos and spend too much time organizing them. Occipital organizes photos for you using your vast computing resources.

The software starts by churning through your photos for a long time looking at the pixels in the photos for patterns. The real fun, though, is in an immersive photo gallery experience where you can alter your views of your photos. You can cluster photos by time - which is a great first step. Then, if your camera can geo-tag at least some of the photos, it can show them by geo-tag & time to plot the photos on the path where they were taken (this would be awesome for a hiking trip, skiing, or walking tour of a city).

Finds similar items between photos and automatically groups those photos together. So, every photo where you wore that one favorite shirt could get grouped together, or perhaps every photo of your mom. Based on geo-data and partial pixel matches on the edges of the photos it can also creates automatic panoramas of photos.

Frankly the demo was totally unbelievable. I loved this software and can't wait for it to be widely available.

To participate the pilot program send them an email @occipital.com

What about Photosynth? Photosynth takes thousands of photos of a public place and merges them. Occipital brings this and more to you individually.

PeoplsSoftwareCompany / WhozAround - Local to local, non dating.

PowerPoint / Firefox on Vista. Blog: Wordpress. YSlow: D (62).

Started with a 4 box matrix showing availability information (calendar) and awareness(?) (twitter, IM). Guess what? They're in the top right! It is not YASN (yet another social network). Instead they integrate with your existing social network/twitter to help match you up with people who are or will be near you and help you invite them to meet up and manage their invitations to you. Provides an iCal, e-mail, rss feed of your appointments or an integrated web page with a stream of potential invites.

It is local to local, but not dating specific meetings. Wanted to thank Techstars and Boulder who helped a Silicon Valley/Boston women get together and start a company. Also, their presentation included lolcats. Well done.

Foodzie Yet Another e-commerce Platform! (for artisan food producers)

Presented with Safari and Keynote on Mac. Blog: Wordpress. YSlow: C (72).

Bring food from artisan food producers -> you.
Not just e-commerce. Producer/Consumer community and filtering. Filters will provide for "foods within X miles" or "organic" etc. to help you find exactly what you need.

Gyminee Exercise/Nutrition tracking + social network

Keynote and Safari on Mac. Blog: WordPress. YSlow: B (84).

When I heard "Fitness Tracking + Social Networking" I initially thought that this was going to be bad. The recent trend of "anything" + social networking is a little too much to stomach. However...this was one of the more polished business ideas and more successful implementations of the night. Their site provides valuable exercise routines, goal monitoring, fitness tracking and advice, and the social networking is well integrated: you can create group challenges like your own private "Biggest Loser."

Currently have 35K registered users and 100K monthly visitors. Their revenue model is currently based on a direct to consumers "pro" subscription for enhanced features, but also weighing options for gym partnerships and ads.

No device integration for things like Nike running monitor, pedometers, gps monitors, but are considering it.