Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing

Microsoft Surface - Ashton Kutcher, Mark Cuban, Mike Arrington love it!

Microsoft's new Surface Computer is a big hit at TechCrunch50. Ashton Kutcher, Mark Cuban, and Mike Arrington all stopped by our demo lounge and played with the Surface.

Ashton Kutcher was at TechCrunch50 to launch his new company called  Blah Girls. Ashton wrote about the Surface on his blog. He said "The coolest thing I've seen so far is Microsoft Surface. Its a coffee table that's like a giant iphone."

Mark Cuban spent about 30 minutes talking with us about possible uses of the Surface Computer. He would love to have his coaching staff at the Dallas Mavericks use it to show video to the players.

Mike Arrington of TechCrunch loves the Surface so much he says he is taking it home with him.  He said "Just try and stop me".

Over 1,500 TechCrunch50 attendees got a chance to see Microsoft Surface and try it out themselves. Based on all the reactions it seems clear that Surface will be a big success.

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Swype slide to type - at TechCrunch50

Swype is a new way to type text on a cell phone or tablet PC. One of the inventors of T9, the current method for entering text on a 9 key touch pad, has developed Swype. It is the most exciting technology I have seen at TechCrunch50.

Swype works by simply sliding your finger across a touch screen keyboard. The technology follows your finger and figures out what word you are trying to type. It usually figures out the word within two or three letters. If Swype isn't sure of the word it will pop up several possible words and let you choose the correct word. They say you can "type" 50 words per minute with one finger using Swype.

The Swype technology works on Windows Mobile Smartphones the tablet version of XP and Vista. It is far superior to the text entry experience on the iPhone.

Swype got a lot of attention at TechCrunch50 and several blogs picked up the story on TechMeme. NewsLaunches.com, Wired.com, Gizmodo.

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TechCrunch 50 Conference panel of experts

Mike Arrington and Jason Calacanis asked me again this year to participate on the TechCrunch 50 panel of experts. TechCrunch announced yesterday that Mark Cuban, Marc Benioff, and I will be on the panel. I am humbled…and honored to be mentioned with those guys.

The complete list of “experts” is listed here. They include; Mark Andreessen, Marissa Mayer (Google), Jeff Weiner (formerly Yahoo), Chris DeWolfe (MySpace), Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook COO), Kevin Rose (Digg), and journalists Dan Farber and Om Malik.

TechCrunch 50 will be on September 8-10 in San Francisco. Companies can submit applications to participate here.

The panel of experts will sort through the hundreds of applications and narrow it down to 50 companies who will present at the conference. We will also judge the company presentations at the conference and select winners in various categories.

TechCrunch40 sold out quickly last year. Register here for TechCrunch 50.

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TechCrunch Boston

Mike Arrington organized TechCrunch Boston on Friday night, attended by 800 tech people, and sponsored by IDG Ventures. It was the best tech party of the year in Boston.

The IDG Ventures Boston team was out in force.  I talked with Michael Greeley, Chip Hazard, Jeff Bussgang, David Aronoff, and Kate Castle. Pictured here is Mike Ford (TownConnect), Mike Arrington, and Michael Greeley (IDG Ventures).

This was definitely an event for startups and entrepreneurs but I did talk to some other VC's including; Michael Skok (North Bridge), Lucy McQuilken (Intel Capital), Steve Schlafman (The Kraft Group), and Charley Lax (Grandbanks Capital).

Punchbowl Software was one of the startups doing demos at TechCrunch Boston. Here is David Aronoff (IDG) and Matt Douglas, CEO of Punchbowl (center) hamming it up with Mike Arrington of TechCrunch.

Mike was like a Rock Star. There were entrepreneurs and pretty women crawling all over him. Towards the end of the night Mike made me his manager/agent in charge of all photos and  meet/greets. I was sitting at Mike's table at the after party eating a late night dinner and Mike could barely get two bites before someone else approached. Mike was actually loving it. He is a great guy and will talk to anyone anytime. I went to the bar to order tequila shots for the table...Mike insisted on Patron. Only the best. Mike shouted to  Heather Harde, the brainy beautiful CEO of TechCrunch, that he had managed to spend $1,000 in the first 45 minutes of the after party. He was loving it!

On the way back to the table I bumped into Steve Schlafman (Kraft Group), Eunice Chou (Massive), and Danny Moon (UpNext). By the time I finally got back to the table they were on the next rounds of tequila.

There were some press people and lots of bloggers at the event. Scott Kirsner (Boston Globe) was interviewing and doing video. I also talked to Nick Carr, Francois Gossieaux, Halley Suitt, Doc Searls, and Wade Roush.

I talked to over 200 people at the event and saw another hundred or so with a quick wink or nod. It was a wild night. Startup entrepreneurs were everywhere. Off the top of my head I remember talking to; Ben Saren (CitySquares), Reed Sturtevant (Microsoft Labs), Doug Levin (Blackduck Software), Shawn Broderick (TrustPlus), Jeremey Allaire (Brightcove), Matt Douglas (Punchbowl), Mike Ford (TownConnect), Pito Salas (BlogBridge), Chris Herot (Zingdom), Danny Moon (UpNext), Eduardo Saverin (Firefly Health), Michael Kokernak (BackChannel Media), Mark Pascarella (Gotuit), John Zib (GetMemo), Scott Durgin (OffshoreTP), Nikhil Roy (Spendview), Sarah Meyers (PopSnap), Sean Ammirati (FeedHub), Dave Evans (TheProgressBar), and Ted Morgan (Skyhook Wireless).

I know I talked to more people but after 5 or 6 Martinis my memory was a little foggy. Here is Jeff Bussgang (IDG Ventures) and me towards the end of the night.

Next stop for the TechCrunch Party tour is Los Angeles in December. See you there!

More blog coverage of the event at Chris Herot's blog, and Doug Levin. 

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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) 

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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TechCrunch40 - First 10 companies

The first 5 companies have presented. I will update this post with details on the next 5 companies after they present. Check back here for the update. You can also follow online at Techcrunch, and of course at TechMeme. Here is a little more detail about the companies.

Search and Discovery

Powerset - semantic Natural Language Processing search - "We parse the web" They literally parse web pages in a linguistic sense by breaking things down to predicate, subject, and verb. Most people think they parse the querey you enter. They do, but the real power is in parsing all the web pages and content to find contextual results. Users can vote "thumbs up or thumbs down" on search results. The votes are factored into future search results. Today they announced Powerset Labs where anyone can engage in search projects...sort of like sourceforge. I wrote an earlier post about Powerset here.

 
Cognitive Code - Artificial Intelligence for Natural Language Processing (NLP) of speech commands. You can actually carry on a conversation with Silvia. Silvia is an avatar that anwsers your questions. It feels a lot like HAL in the movie, or a conversation with Spock on StarTrek. It is truly amazing. The responses from Silivia are intelligent and contextual, not just one or two words, but complete sentences. Could be used for call centers, smart phones, voice search, or many other voice related applications. They only have 8 minutes on stage, but the demo is mind blowing. You would have to see it to believe it. I will try to spend more time with them after the show to get more details. I have seen lots of voice recognition and IVR Interactive Voice Response systems, but CognitiveCode is way beyond anything I have seen before. Amazing.

Cast.tv - video search for any video across the web. They find movies, news, clips, and video from any source. I am not real clear on what their competitive advantage is. Perhaps it is that they focus only on video, and keep their index up to the minute so you get the latest videos. In the demo they showed clips from an NFL game that happened yesterday afternoon.

Faroo - distributed P2P web search. It involves a client download to get the P2P client. Each client becomes a server and is used to index web pages. It appears to be a way to use the power of the masses to index the web. Presumably as the number of Faroo clients grows they can cover the web in a fast and complete way for much lower cost. No information on their business model or any details about their ranking/relevance algorithms. This is sort of like the SETI project that uses idle compute cycles on millions of laptops to crunch scientific data. In this case the power is focused on search.

Viewdle  - video indexing/search. This is search within video, not the easier search for video. Searching within video requires face recognition, voice recognition, and sophisticated indexing of metadata. They seem to be focused on high productin value video from movies, news clips, TV shows, etc. They can find people within a video and provide results that take you to the exact point in the video where they appear.

Mobile and Communications

Cubic Telecom - Wi-Fi for cell phones - sort of like Skype. Based in Ireland. They will make it possible to make calls from anywhere, to anywhere, for really cheap prices. The market for this is really for international calls where the traditional prices can be $10 a minute or more. I don't know how large that market is. I don't make many international calls so I don't have this pain. But, I can see the huge cost savings for anyone who has family members in distant countries and would like to call more often.

Yap - Speech enabled User Interface for SMS, texting, and web apps. Does accurate voice to text translation. Speak into your phone and it is translated into text and appears as a traditional text message on the other end. The demo was tough because they couldn't get Wi-Fi connectivity. Jason Calacanis jumped in and saved the day by explaining how it really works. One use case is people talking on their phone while driving a car, speaking into the phone, and converting that to a text message. I really don't like that idea, but the technology could be used in lots of different ways.   

Trutap - Cell phone UI to connect social networking sites to your phone. One UI on your phone for all your social network sites.  Do group conversations through IM, but on the phone. In beta now. Going live in about 6 weeks.

Ceedo - Virtualization platform for application mobility - Take PC apps and put them on the flash memory of your mobile phone. Make a blog post from your phone and publish to the web. Put a full browsing environment on your phone.   

Loudtalks - like an Internet walkie-talkie. Push-To-Talk from your phone or PC, over the Internet. The audio was hard to hear in the demo but they were talking from San Francisco to Moscow in real time.

Ten more companies coming up after lunch. I will be on the expert panel this afternoon, so it will be hard to listen and post at the same time. I will give it a try.

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