Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing

Tubes Networks at DEMO 2007 announces Tubes

  Tubes Networks has announced a new version of Tubes, a P2P file sharing and synching application. There are lots of different file sharing utilities out there, but most of them don't synch files across your own devices, or synch files to other users. Tubes is a really simple and fast way to share files and keep changes synchronized.

“Tubes unleashes your content – making it simultaneously available both on your computer and on the web – just by putting your stuff in what we call a ’tube.’ Make a change to anything in any tube on your desktop and the web version instantly updates along with the copy on subscriber’s computers and vice versa.” said John Van Siclen, CEO of Tubes Networks. “Think of Tubes as synchronized media distribution and social sharing with a level of security, control and accessibility never available before.”

I have written about Tubes before, but there are lots of new features in the new version announced at DEMO 2007. The new features include;

TubeSites: Drag-and-Drop Web Site Creation: A tubeSite is a private website that Tubes creates automatically for each tube. Anytime anyone adds or removes files, Tubes automatically updates the tubeSite. Users can have as many tubeSites as they want – all with different users, structure and access privileges. These instant websites can host any type of files such as HD video, music, even Microsoft Office documents.

Social Network Creation: Users create their own networks simply by sending invitations via email. Invited users can be assigned different roles dictating their ability to edit or contribute content in the tube.

URL access to any file on the desktop: With Tubes, simply right-clicking on any file in any tube provides a unique URL to that file. Simply email that URL to a friend or colleague and that file – on your desktop – is accessible over the web. Make changes to that file – on your computer – and the URL still points to the updated version.Tubes provides privacy controls, allowing users to assign different access rights to anyone at any time, even authorizing them to contribute to a group tubeSite. TubeSites can be made private or public at any time.

Public/Private Content Sharing: Tubes provides privacy controls, allowing users to assign different access rights to anyone at any time, even authorizing them to contribute to a group tubeSite. TubeSites can be made private or public at any time.

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Myxer - a platform for distributing content to cell phones

Myxer is a widget that downloads photos, videos, and ringtones to your mobile phone. It is a platform that allows content owners to deliver content to cell phones, and make money doing it. It is incredibly simple to use...just drag and drop content from your desktop onto the widget.

Myxer formats the content to fit on any cell phone. One of the big problems with getting content on cell phones is that every phone is different, has a different screen size, and different features. Myxer takes care of all of that for you.

Content owners like music bands, photographers, or video publishers could offer their content for free or charge any price they want. Myxer provides a forum to sell content, share the revenue with the cell phone carriers, and take a share for themselves.

Myxer also creates a mobile storefront where anyone can purchase ringtones, photos, or videos. So, it is a push platform or an e-commerce platform.

Their business model is similar to ClearSpring in that they are a widget platform for delivering content. They make money by taking a small percentage of transaction revenue, or sharing in advertising revenues.

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LogMeIn at DEMO 2007

LogMeIn does remote control of PC desktops, typically used by customer support or help desk people to remotely fix problems on PCs. They have over 25 million users today for their desktop support product, but now they have a new application for cell phone support called RescueMobile. That is, help desk support for you cell phone.

"Smartphones are fantastic productivity tools, but supporting them is a growing drain on wireless carriers and IT departments," said Michael Simon, CEO, LogMeIn, Inc. "LogMeIn Rescue + Mobile is a breakthrough in remote smartphone support, providing phone companies, IT managers and end-users with a fast, easy and cost-effective means to keep mobile devices working properly."

So, when you are having some trouble with your phone, a help desk person can send you a text message with a URL link that will download RescueMobile, a small app to your phone. Then the support person asks you for permission to remotely access your phone. You press accept, and the support person has virtual control of your phone.

The help desk person gets an image of your phone on their screen with all the buttons working on their PC screen. They have all the cell phones emulated so they can remote control any cell phone. The support person basically sees everything you see on your phone, and can remotely press buttons and control the phone in order to fix it for you.

Corporate IT could deploy RescueMobile on all their employee's phones, or cell phone carriers could proactively install RescueMobile for later support issues.

LogMeIn is based in Woburn, Massachusetts, near Boston. Disclosure: Two of my VC friends funded LogMeIn; Woody Benson from Prism VentureWorks and Dave Barrett from Polaris Venture Partners, both serve on the Board of Directors.

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DEMO 2007 in San Diego

DEMO Fall 2007 is underway. About 800 people here, and 70 companies presenting. Each company gets 6 minutes on stage and a small booth in the demo area. The presentations are grouped around themes. These are slick, well rehearsed, demos with high quality production video. Chris Shipley does a nice job of introducing the companies and setting context.

Internet Video. - The companies presenting include; Digital Fountain, Global Communications, Clipblast!, MotionDSP, MetaRADAR, Proxure, and Your Truman Show. The presentations and demos are impressive...very impressive. These companies are focused on bringing very high quality video over the Internet with no buffering or jitter.  So, what is unique about each of these companies;

• DigitalFountain is a CDN (Content Delivery Network) with great compression and delivery.
• Global Communications delivers broadcast quality video over copper wire, again great compression technology.
• Clipblast! is a video search widget with a built in video player, no launchig a browser or separate video player. You can search for videos, and save videos for later viewing.
• MotionDSP (Fix My Movie) is focused on video tools for video from cell phones. It increases resolution, improves audio quality, and allows you to enhance any specific portion of the video. They showed a poor quality video and enhanced it to the point where you could read the license plate number on a moving car.
• MetaRadar is a media search, navigation and discovery platform that works on the desktop or phone. They deliver a really cool User Interface, as Apple has shown...design matters.
• Proxure (Filmaroo) automates the process of taking a video from the camera to publishing on the web, and sharing with friends. Proxure takes care of the video encoding and hosting. Actually, a CDN partner takes care of that for Proxure.
• Your Truman Show - allows you to organize, share, and discover videos across social networks. It is like a video blog that allows you to jump and link from video to video within a social network.

Social Networks - or the wisdom of the crowds. Companies include; Diigo, coComment, Attendi, RelevantMind, Fluid Innovation, Advanta, Spigit, and Glam Media.

• Diigo - Bookmarking, highlighting, clipping, and sharing of web content on blogs, web sites, and social networks. Diigo also provides search and retrieval tools.
• coComment - They focus on collecting all the relevant comments across blogs. From a single location you can collect track, and share blog comments and stitch them together into a coherent conversation. For example, if you leave a comment on a random blog, how do you stay in the conversation without remembering all the various sites and visiting them regularly to see if anyone else commented. coComment keeps track of your comments, and follow-on comments from other people. They have been out for 8 months and already have over 500,000 users.
• Attendi - a search engine powered by human experience. The search results are people, not web pages. People are ranked and classified so that you can find the best people. For example, do a search for "260 pound guy wants a harley, which bike is best for me?" Attendi finds someone who is a Harley enthusiast. The search result includes a link where you can have an instant IM / Chat session withthat person. Conversations and comments are stored for later search and review. Again they include an instant chat button to pick up the conversation.
• RelevantMind is a collaboration research tool focused on "What should I buy?". They find user community sources that provide rich details and experiences. They find user reviews, blog comments, web sites, and best prices for products you might want to buy. They also link to relevant eBay auctions for those products. They are rolling out new categories each month.
• Fluid Innovation - Virtual Ventures is a prediction community that identifies which startup ideas might be successful. Entrepreneurs post ideas and users vote on which ones they think will be successful. Each user has $1M of virtual currency. You not only vote but allocate some of your virtual currency to companies you like. Virtual Ventures keeps track of how the companies work out and tracks your performance against other users. Virtual Ventures includes a discussion group, a list of potential partners, and potential Angel investors.
• Advanta - IdeaBlob is a community where anyone can post a business idea and pull together the resources to make it happen. A lot like the previous presenter. Get feedback and advice from the community. User vote for the ideas they like. The best ideas can win $10,000 each month
• Spigit -  a simulation and analytics engine to qualify and measure interactions about "ideas" on social networks. Users start with 25,000 spigits, which is a virtual currency. Spigit provides a threaded discussion site where users can discuss and debate business ideas. Spigit has very specific tasks tha must be completed to evolve into a business. It is similar to the real life process of taking an idea through the business plan, finding supporters, and getting laser focused on successful innovation.
• Glam Media - Glam Media has been around for a while. They have about 35 million visitors per month. Today they are launching their Web 2.0 version of their platform. They include photos, blogs, articles, products, profiles, and channels...all focused on the fashion industry. Lots of contextual advertising and links. It looks like an online version of a fashion magazine that is interactive, with elements of community.

Fun outliers that defy categories - I guess this is a DEMO  thing. Every year they have a few fun things that include cool technology.

• Vyro Games - A stress management game. You win the game by relaxing. There is a bio feedback sensor that measures how relaxed you are. You compete against someone else or a computer generated character. Counterintuitively,the more relaxed you are the faster your game character moves across the screen. The game helps you get in touch with your inner self...and relax. Personally, I find a margarita or two work best, but when that isn't possible maybe this game is a good alternative.
• Ncursion - They build cool multi-player games for the Facebook platform. MyGladiator.com is an animated game that simulates an acient gladiator fight. The Facebook audience decides if the defeated gladiator lives or dies. You can build your own character, buy equipment and points, badges, etc. You start as a slave and move up to warrior, knights, generals, etc. by winning matches.
• WMS Gaming - A mashup of mechanical slot machines with 3D visuals...that of course includes a social network model. This is classic web 2.0. This company is a leader in real life casino games, mostly slot machines. Now they are moving onto the web.

Wow! This is exhausting. Trying to live blog each presentation and distill what they do is tough. They are up on stage for 6 minutes...and they talk really fast. I like to think a while and reflect on what is unique and different. That really isn't possible in this venue. Maybe I can go back and write something more insightful after the conference is over. Hang in there. There are 52 more companies to present over the next day and a half.

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YouTube, BroadClip, TechCrunch40 and copyright law

The TechCrunch40 Conference was awesome! Over 100 new startups in two days, 40 on stage and another 60 in the demo area. The two days went so fast there was no time to stop and think, absorb all the new stuff, and put it in context.

Last night I was thinking about several "sound bite" comments I made about copyright laws. It is a deep complicated topic, not given to 20 second sound bites. Back in 1999/2000 I was at Napster where I got a crash course in copyright law and the music business.

There were several companies at TechCrunch40 focused on music and video content, using existing clips, adding new content, sharing in a social network, and variations on that theme. BroadClip and StoryBlender are two companies that caught my attention and reminded me of the copyright issues we faced at Napster. It was like deja vu...they were using all the same arguments and rationalizations that we used 7 years ago. I made some pretty pessimistic comments (sound bites) about the legal risks they faced. Those comments really need more context. Let me expand here.

• What seems logical may not be legal
• Copyright laws are tough, and the penalties are tougher
• You can be right on the facts and still lose
• You are never safe from the threat of lawsuits
• Startups don't have the cash needed to sustain a legal battle
• The odds are heavily stacked against startups

What seems logical may not be legal - At Napster we made all the same logical arguments that we were really expanding the market, increasing their revenues, getting more people interested in music, and creating a new way to consume (and pay) for music. None of that matters. Even if true, the record labels and movie/TV people are not interested...and its not legal.

Copyright laws are tough - Copyright laws are heavily stacked in favor of the content producers. Most consumers don't realize how few rights they have for the content they purchase. Again, what seems logical is not necessarily legal. The penalties for copyright infringement are enormous...way out of line with the actual damage done. Just one instance of illegal use of a video clip is punishable by a year in prison and a $250,000 fine. That is for one single instance. Think about how many thousands of times YouTube may be violating copyright laws each day. We are talking billions of dollars...each day.

Startups are inherently risky - The reality is that most startups fail. That is OK, we knowingly take those risks, and VCs invest knowing there will be some winners and a lot of losers. Adding legal risk to an already risky environment makes it really tough to succeed.

You can be right on the facts and still lose - The sad reality is that the winner in legal battles is often the party with the most money and the best lawyers. The "facts" are always debatable. The OJ Simpson case is a perfect example of how "facts" are open to interpretation, and how money can influence who wins.

David and Goliath - The story of David and Goliath is one that startups engage in every day. The small startup finds a way to win over the giant corporation. The legal system favors the Goliaths. At Napster we were spending over $1 Million a month in legal fees to defend ourselves against the record labels. Startups don't have a big pile of cash to finance a long lawsuit, and investors are not likely to invest more money knowing that it will be spent on legal fees...not growing the company. It is a battle of attrition...and the big guy always wins.

You are never safe - YouTube thought they were safe because they hadn't been sued...yet. The record and movie guys will ignore you while you are small, and maybe even when you gain some exposure. YouTube, like Napster, exploded onto the scene...everyone knew about YouTube. The copyright owners didn't file lawsuits. Cool...we are safe. Not so fast. The copyright holders pick their fights, and decide when and where to fight them. You are never safe. YouTube had no money and no revenue so even if the copyright holders sued and won...they wouldn't collect any damages. Once Google acquired YouTube everything changed. Now there was a big pot of money available. Google has paid out hundreds of millions to the big copyright holders, and faces lawsuits from others that are seeking billions and billions of dollars. Timing is everything.

BroadClip and StoryBlender may be right on the facts, might avoid lawsuits for a while, and might actually win in a legal battle. They might. But, taking on that legal risk in addition to all the other startup risks is daunting. I wish them luck. They will need it.

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TechCrunch40 - Afternoon session - 10 more companies

OK, 30 company presentations so far. Ten more to go. There were also about 100 more companies in the demo area. This is geek heaven.

Rich Media and Mash Ups

Xtr3D - Extreme reality, 3D human interface to computers. Real time analysis of human gestures that can control applications on your computer. For example, you can move your hand in or out to make a map zoom in or zoom out. It could also be used to make game characters move around the screen instead of using a joystick. You can assign physical gestures to certain application actions. It of course requires a camera to see your gestures and the Xtr3D software to interpret your gestures.

BroadClip - Scans Internet radio for music you want on your phone, iPod, Zune. It uses time shifting to capture music from web radio stations. It operates like Tivo for music. You tell Broadclip what kind of music you like. You can use Facebook to see what music your friends like as well. Broadclip will find music for all those artists. You can easily transfer this music to an iPod or any other MP3 player. Song tweaker can adjust the song begining and end points to edit out commercials or "voice overs". Remember, Broadclip is downloading (time shifting) music from Internet radio stations. Broadclip will make money by inserting ads into the streams. My Napster experience tells me they are likely to run into legal problems at some point. Their lawyers are convinced they are in good shape. Time will tell.

mEgo - a site to share all your personal photos, notes, social network stuff. Megos are interactive portable profiles. An avatar that takes all your personal feeds and information that you can share anywhere. You can add animations to the avatar and expose information such as photos, videos, wish lists, and other content from social sites like Facebook. The personal avatars can be customized with hair styles, clothes, and animations. You can put your mEgo on your cell phone and use them as wallpaper.

Wixi - All your media stored in one place. A media home page to store all your media, photos, videos, etc. You view, play, edit, and share the content. Uses a flash player to display and play content. There are several startups going after this idea of consolidating your content. They are all basically the same, and I don't really see a sustainable business model for this idea.

BeFunky - Funky avatars and ways to express yourself. Take a photo and convert it to an avatar. Customize the avatar with colors, shading, effects and animations. Sort of like an online photoshop service, but easier to use.

Entertainment

FlowPlay - social entertainment platform for social games. FlowPlay is a part social network, part avatars and animation, and part game player, all in one environment. Flowplay is a lot like SecondLife too. Avatars that interact with each other, with text boxes for messages, sort of like a cartoon. Pretty cool.

Areae - AKA MetaPlace - This one looks a lot like the last one. It is a virtual world platform like SecondLife where you can play games, build social networks, and share content. MetaPlace can also be a Facebook or MySpace widget. Tagging, ratings, reviews, wikis, tools, all the Web 2.0 goodies wrapped into one environment.

WooMe - Online speed dating platform with browser based voice and video. Meet people anytime anywhere. Woome has session areas that are focused on special topics like "looking for travel partners to China", or "Intelligent and blonde in California"...not many participants in that one for some reason. The sessions connect to live video sessions where you can meet people in a speed dating context. Each person decides if they want to exchange contact information, meet online again later, or never hear from them again.

Zivity - A site for glamour shots of beautiful women. They pay out over 40% of their revenues to their content providers which are essentially models. They do include nudity, so be careful about visiting this site. Moderators at Zivity review the content to make sure it is high quality and not too risque. Users vote on which photos they like best. The photos are available for sale.

Kaltura -  The winner from the demo area was Kaltura. They have 20 employees. A social video site. Allows users to engage in group collaboration around rich media. Users can contribute or add clips of music and video, then mash it up to create a new music video. A group can come together to edit the video, clip, crop, transition, effects, etc., all online. The completed video can be posted to MySpace, Facebook, or any other social network.

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TechCrunch40 - Day 2 - 10 more companies

Here is the next round of TechCrunch40 companies. There are some really good ones in this batch of companies. There are 800 people in attendance, including all the big tech press.

You can follow all the conference news on Techcrunch and on TechMeme.

Productivity and Web Applications

Xobni - an organizer for Microsoft Outlook email, inbox spelled backwards. - Compiles a photo intro and background info for each email sender, extracts phone numbers, organizes attachments in several different ways. People connected to the email sender are listed, along with email threads from each of them. See all the attachments associated with these people. Search is an integral part of Xobni and can be done in several different ways. Xobni works with Microsoft Outlook. Highlights on Xobni; View threaded discussions, find attachments, use email social network, search for email and people.

Orgoo - All your email, IM, video, and SMS organized in one place. Add videos to email with one click. Pop-in or Pop-out of the email window while doing an Instant Message. You can have multiple email or IM accounts from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc, all consolidated in one place. Reply to an email via IM or email, and keep all the IMs associated with an email stored together in one place. Search emails, IMs, Chat, from all your accounts from one place. Launching in Q4.

App2You - User built application framework with process and workflow built in. Build custom hosted web applications for any business process. They say too many business processes are handled in email. App2You has a slick menu driven UI for building simple workflow applications with built in databases and forms. The menu includes all the normal workflow expressions and easily builds forms, tables, voting polls, etc. Automatically keeps track of the current status of any process.

Mint Software - Free web based personal finance tools - Keep track of all your investment accounts, checking accounts, credit cards, etc. Just check off the accounts you want to track, enter your username and password, and you are set to go. You can set up alerts to remind you of payment dates or low balances on accounts. Mint has all the usual tracking, graphs, pie charts. You can slice and dice the data any way you like. For example, you can see all your purchases from Amazon or any store, for any time period. Mint can save you money by suggesting discounts, rewards programs, and cheaper alternatives to some of the stores or suppliers you use.

Kerpoof - fun web apps for children. Sounds like Club Penguin.  Change the way kids interact with the computer. Lets kids see great art, and make it. Lets kids read great books, and write them. Make a picture, story, or movie with Kerpoof.  Kerpoof provides a pallet of objects and tools to build pictures or movies. You can create cards or photos from the pictures. You can add sound tracks to movies you make. You can control the characters by making them walk, run, jump, and do all sorts of predefined animations. Kerpoof is available now and it is free.

Revenue Models and Analytics

Spottt - a free banner ad exchange - A spin-off from AdBrite. It is like LinkExchange, which Microsoft acquired a few years ago. It is a "one for one" swap of advertisements. If you show an ad on your site, they will show your ad on their site. This is back to the future...banner ads.

Clickable - manage ad campaigns across all networks - My friend Fred Wilson is an investor in this company. Clickable gives you the analytics and dashboard to manage your ad campaigns across all networks including Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Alerts tell you when you need to take action on a campaign, and makes suggestions on what you should do. For example, increase your CPC bid on a specific keyword. Or, edit your ad copy to include popular keywords. They look at metrics like cost, revenues, clicks, conversions, etc. The management dashboard is color coded and includes meters and graphs to help you easily understand what is happening with your ad campaigns.

GotStatus - stats and analytics service for any system or service - How many accounts added, how much bandwidth used, how many emails have been received today, what are my SugarCRM stats? You can grab "snippets" from any application or service you use. GotStatus uses API's from all these apps to import XML data. You can track CPU utilization, disk space, etc. Of course each of these applications has their own management console to monitor these things. GotStatus consolidates all this data on one dashboard.

PubMatic - Helps web site publishers make money by managing their ad inventory. PubMatic sets up an ad auction for publishers among the ad networks. This is sort of turning the tables on the ad networks. Now they are competing for the web site page inventory. Pubmatic works with Google, Yahoo, ValueClick, Blue Lithium, and other ad networks. 

ZocDoc- dentist and doctor appointment management - Find a doctor and make an appointment instantly online. It now works in New York City. Search by zip code, specialty, and free appointment times. There is user feedback and ratings on doctors and a quick bio on each doctor. Somehow they figure out when doctors have free/busy time, and allow them to book an appointment online. They of course give you a map to show where the doctors are located. ZocDoc allows you to enter insurance information to speed the process. More importantly, ZocDoc finds doctors who are approved by your insurance carrier.

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Mayfield Fund party limo at TechCrunch20

Mayfield Fund sponsored an after hours party at the TechCrunch20 Conference. The party was at Fluid an ultra chic night club in San Francisco. Mayfield had a big limo take 11 of us from the TechCrunch VIP dinner to the Fluid after hours party. Here are some pictures of the limo ride. Pictured from left to right; Raj Kapoor (Mayfield), Allen Morgan (Mayfield), MC Hammer (DanceJam), Ron Conway (Angel Investor). 

This picture includes Kamini Ramani (Mayfield), Connie Chan (Elevation Partners), Navin Chaddha (Mayfield).

Pictured left to right in the last picture; Barney Pell (CEO of Powerset), Don Dodge (Microsoft), Jeanine LeFlore (CEO of LiveHit), and Sarah Lacy (BusinessWeek) 

MC Hammer has a new company - DanceJam

MC Hammer, one of the original rap artists, has a new company called DanceJam. I first met Hammer 7 years ago when I was at Napster. MC Hammer is a music artist, but he is also a businessman. He understood the potential of Napster, and sees another opportunity with dance videos. 

DanceJam hasn't launched yet, but Hammer gave me a demo of the site. DanceJam can best be described as YouTube mashed up with American Idol. Users can contribute their own dance videos to the site for others to see and vote on. The DanceJam people set up "Dance Offs" where they put two dance videos up against each other and have the user community vote for a winner. After several rounds of voting they declare a champion.

DanceJam has some serious angel investors. Ron Conway and Mike Arrington have already invested, along with several serial entrepreneurs whose names you would know.

There are some obvious revenue possibilities here. The music companies are interested. Advertisers are interested. Keep an eye on this one. It could be The Next Big Thing in music video.

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TechCrunch40 - The afternoon session

The second batch of TechCrunch40 companies will focus on collaboration and crowd sourcing. I am blogging this live so please forgive the spelling mistakes and incoherent flow of information.

Community and Collaboration

Story Blender - online video collaboration  platform where people can work together to create videos. Add music, text, and video from existing clips to create a new video. There is a social networking aspect to the creation inthat you can find other creators to collaborate on a new project.

TripIt - organize your travel - Founders from Hotwire. Travel is the largest e-commerce segment, mostly done directly with airlines and hotels. Tripit makes it easy to add weather, maps, travel tips, Wikipedia, pictures from Flickr, events, to your travel information. They also allow other people traveling with you to see your plans and make similar plans, or add events to the travel plan.

Flock - social web browser - Remembers passwords to sites you visit, and friends in those communities. Flock brings together all the media associated with your friends. Drag and drop media from one site to another, for example from Flickr to Facebook. Share your favorite video with friends. Really focused on social networking.

MusicShake - User created music - Similar to Hyperscore from Harmony Line. A visual way to compose music, add effects, and tracks from a predefined list of instruments. You can also add voice tracks from other sources to create a mashup or what is called "sampling" in the music business. The library of pre-recorded music tracks was created by MusicShake so there are no copyright issues.

8020Everywhere - community created travel magazine - Users contribute pictures, content, maps, and reviews, all focused around a particular destination. Stories are sorted by destination. Real big on pictures and videos. You can also sort stories by social network, meaning finding content created by your friends. The site will launch in a few weeks. The actual printed version of the magazine will follow.   

Crowd Sourcing

Cake Financial - Personal investing social network - Collective wisdom of the crowds around stock investing. Cake works with Fidelity, Schwab, eTrade, and all the big online stock brokerages. They import your current holdings and all your trading history. Cake will chart your investment results against the major indexes, and against friends and other people in the Cake system. People obviously can't see your actual holdings. Everything is expressed in terms of percentages and graphed against the indexes. I think they will have some challenges convincing users to load their real data. No one wants to be exposed as a less than stellar investor :-(

DocStoc - File sharing for business, legal, and technical documents. Find professional documents. It works like a stock photo site, say Getty Images, except it is focused on white papers, business plans, legal briefs, college term papers, and other documents. Do category or key word search for documents.

 
TeachThePeople - Social network for sharing educational documents. Their tagline is "The people powered university". Anyone can contribute content and knowledge to the site. They can make it available for free, supported by advertising, or they can charge money to view your content.

CrowdSpirit - crowdsourcing for electronic products. It is a community where someone with an idea can find manufacturing partners and potential customers. You can post an idea that you have for a consumer electronics product. Manufacturers review the ideas and contact the owners of ideas they would like to build. Users can find interesting first of its kind products and purchase them at the site.

Ponoko - Community to buy, sell, and share product designs. The site lets you design a product with materials, colors, shapes, and sizes. It could be used to design and build childrens toys. There are tools to help you design more sophisticated products, but it is not clear to me how easy it would be to actually use them. The site maintains a listing of products available for sale. Sort of like an eBay for custom made products.

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