All Things Digital

QOTD

Goodbye, Web 2.0. I hope I never have to type those words again.”

– TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington offers up an ironic eulogy for the hundreds of Web 2.0 start-ups in the TechCrunch company index

Of the 40 companies who presented at TechCrunch40 over the past two days, the judges determined Mint to be the best and awarded the online financial-management service the conference’s $50,000 grand prize. Not all that surprising, really. Chatter in the conference lobby had the company pegged as a favorite to win early on and, let’s face it, the competition wasn’t exactly fierce …

MC Hammer in da house yo, and sitting on the afternoon judges panel as well. Please Hammer, don’t hurt ‘em…

Another round of presentations by start-ups at this session of TechCrunch40, this time a group of mainstream (and not-so-mainstream) media-manipulation companies. In addition to Hammer, the panel of judges (new for this session) includes Caterina Fake of Flickr, Yahoo’s Brad “Peanut Butter Manifesto” Garlinghouse, journalist Sarah Lacy and French entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur.

• Extreme Reality (XTR3D): A software-only 3D human/machine interface. Now this is impressive. Presenter is navigating Google Earth with body movements recorded by Webcam. Wait ’til the gaming industry gets hold of this … Aha, next demo is of a boxing game. Rudimentary, but you can clearly see the applications.
• BroadClip: The company is launching MediaCatcher, an application for Facebook users that amounts to a simple means of recording and storing streaming audio. Pitch seems to be TiVo for Internet radio. For example, if you like the Pixies, it will scan the Net for streaming audio that includes the Pixies, intercept it and save it as an MP3 file. Neat idea, but good luck getting it past the recording industry.
• mEgo: Interactive portable profiles. An avatar with substance and utility. Basically, a universal profile widget that you can insert into Facebook, LinkedIn and whatnot. Update your mEgo and the changes proliferate across all the sites you’ve installed it on. Also features a customizable avatar. MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” plays over the sound system as they conclude. (Wonder how many times we’ll hear it played this afternoon?)
• Wixi: Answer to preceding question: at least twice. Presenting their media social network, Wixi’s founders also play “U Can’t Touch This.” (What a long afternoon this is going to be.) Wixi offers users the ability to share content of all types, including photos, audio and video.
• BeFunky: Suite of avatar, photo and video customization tools that seems to be built on the old MacPaint code base. Helps users build (sigh) “YouAtars.” Tagline: “Funky ways to represent yourself.” Pretty much says it all.

Judges Panel:

Hammer enjoyed mEgo and BeFunky.

Surprisingly, Garlinghouse agrees with Hammer. (Wonder if he’s got a pair of Hammer pants in his closet.)

Fake likes Extreme Reality (XTR3D), but hates the name (”extreme” is overused, too ’80s). She pokes holes in everyone else. Doesn’t buy into avatars.

Lacy seems to agree with Fake.

Chatterboxes next to me make it impossible to hear Le Meur’s thoughts. In any event, they’re brief. Perhaps he agreed with Fake as well. (Where are Kawasaki and Dyson when you need them?)

Hammer butting heads with BroadClip over copyright and licensing issues. BroadClip claims it’s going to generate revenue for the recording industry, which will then embrace it. Don Dodge, who spent six years at Napster, stands up in the audience to side with Hammer and tells BroadClip guy he’s essentially full of it.

Correction: An earlier version of this post had erroneously switched the descriptions of the offerings of BroadClip and Wixi, and had incorrectly assigned Hammer’s and Dodge’s criticism to Wixi instead of BroadClip. (See comment below.)

At this midday panel, TechCrunch40 co-host Jason Calacanis moderated a discussion with Jay Adelson (Digg), David Sacks (Geni), Roelof Botha (Sequoia Capital), Sumant Mandel (Clearstone), George Zachary (Charles River Ventures), Hank Barry (Howard Rice), and Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC).

(Quick aside: Before the panel begins, the woman sitting next to me is investigating the contents of the TechCrunch40 schwag bags, which apparently include AOL CD cases recovered from an intern-led archaeological dig at the company’s Dulles, Md.Va., campus.)

After introductions, Calacanis poses the first question to the VCs on the panel: How does somebody best get into your office?

Mandel: A referral or introduction from a colleague.

Zachary: An introduction or a very simple email.

Clavier: Introductions, but he admits–perhaps foolishly–that being mobbed at conferences does sometimes work. (Start-up pig-pile on Jeff in the Demo Pit everyone!)

Botha: Likes the simple email idea as well.

Calacanis asks Adelson about his approach to raising capital. “Do you just call the same people and ask for money?” Adelson says you seek out capital from the people most likely to offer it in support of the business you’re pitching.

Same question asked of Sacks. He says Geni did its series A round as an idea and its series B as an actual product. Suggests aspiring entrepreneurs focus their early efforts on the refinement of your idea and your vision. That’s the best way to guarantee a good VC valuation.

Question: How do you determine valuations? Is it all based on your perception of a start-up as bankable and the idea of owning the next five years of its life?

Mandel seems to agree that there’s a logical aspect to these decisions, but insists that there’s also an emotional one as well.

Botha agrees and notes the recent insanity around Facebook’s valuations.

Clavier, a long-time angel investor, then announces a $12 million seed fund. Its focus will be the consumer side of the Internet, with a few dozen deals, ranging from $100,000 to $500,000, over the next 3 years.

Question from TechCrunch40 co-host Michael Arrington: Wonders if VCs are peeved that the angels are swooping in and taking companies that they would have liked to fund away from them.

Botha says of course. But adds that this all contributes to the ecosystem of innovation, yadda, yadda … competition is desirable. ….

Panel descends into pure VC 101 tedium. And then ….

What’s the stupidest thing an entrepreneur has done to get your attention?

Clavier: Clipping your nails during a meeting.

Clearly the high point of the panel. Time to find coffee.

Today’s session on revenue models and analytics, the sixth in TechCrunch40’s two-day schedule, featured the same judges panel as in the fifth session: Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital, digital pioneer Esther Dyson and VC guru Guy Kawasaki.

Following is a summary of company presentations and what the judges had to say:

• Spottt: Phil Kaplan, of Ask Pud and F***ed Company fame, presenting. Begins with a bit of history, recalling the ill-starred LinkExchange and its premature death at the hands of Microsoft. Spottt is essentially LinkExchange reborn. LinkExchange founder Tony Hsieh is even an adviser. Same deal as LinkExchange as well: one-for-one ad swap, with no paid ads. (No points for innovation here.)
• Clickable: “Online advertising made simple.” My God, what a cliche. That said, the company does seem to offer a compelling solution for managing search-advertising campaigns across multiple networks. Offers analytics tools to monitor revenue, return and conversion rates. Another tool gauges the relative success of your campaigns and offers suggestions for improving them. Seems to me a compelling proposition for the harried ad manager or small publisher.
• GotStatus: Offers a complement to Google Analytics. Systems-management tools that monitor server-side applications in the same way Google Analytics monitors browser data. Tracks metrics like new account creation, database size, etc.
• PubMatic: Offers a new service that helps publishers run the highest-paid ads from the top ad networks. Sounds like an engaging presentation for the ad-management folks in the room, but I’m finding it a bit tedious–greatly improved by the latest Smodcast.
• ZocDoc: A service that helps folks to book appointments with local doctors and dentists that accept their insurance. ZocDoc taps into the schedules of participating doctors to maintain an up-to-date schedule of available appointments. Revenue model: Doctors pay to join the service in the hopes of filling empty appointments. ZocDoc is now live with 2 percent of the dentists in Manhattan. 2 percent of the dentists in Manhattan? There’s a metric to build a marketing campaign on. “Using ZocDoc is simple. Just type in your zip code and ailment/disease/injury and then select a medical practitioner from our list of 2 percent of the dentists in Manhattan.”

Judges panel:

Get ready for the next Kawasaki-Dyson slug-fest…

Kawasaki likes Spottt, apparently because “it’s the only one I can really understand.” Bemoans the fact that he didn’t sign on to be an adviser to LinkExchange when he had the chance.

Dyson (who doesn’t understand Spottt’s business model) likes Clickable and ZocDoc. Wonders about ratings fraud and liability issues. Founders say company is committed to making sure the feedback is fair. Offers practitioner the chance to respond to negative feedback and says it will delete feedback that is inaccurate. Seems a simplistic and untenable way to handle this issue.

Kawasaki jumps in and says he’d never use a site like ZocDoc. Asks Dyson if she were to travel to NYC and suddenly need a doctor would she actually use a site like this to find one, or would she call a local friend or ask a hotel concierge. “I just don’t see it,” he says. “You search this site and you’re like, “Oh look, Dr. Molly Adams, she looks nice, I’ll ask her to operate on my heart.’ “

Founders parry and say service is good for illnesses that people might not want to tell others about. “You might ask your friend for an optometrist recommendation, but you might not ask them for someone who could diagnose the rash on your butt.”

Kawasaki: “Sure I would. I’d call Jason (Calacanis); he’s had plenty of rashes.”

(Kawasaki and Dyson are literally saving today’s judges panels.)

ZocDoc question from audience: Is it pay-for-play like 1-800-dentist? Answer: We always put the patient first. ( So is it or is it not a pay-for-play site?)

Kawasaki suggests ZocDoc generalize their business and become a platform that could be licensed and used to create similar services in other sectors. A salesforce.com model. Dyson agrees, but says it’s important to start small, prove your concept and then build out. She adds that she hopes the company has retained good legal counsel to help protect its business model.

Aww, tender moment. Presenting company announces that this is Roelof Botha’s birthday and leads audience in “Happy Birthday Roelof.” Afterward, Botha describes the moment as one of his most humiliating. Dyson suggests he use ZocDoc to find a good psychologist.

After today’s first session of TechCrunch40 on productivity and Web applications, Google announced it was launching a Web-based collaborative presentation tool to go with its Docs and Spreadsheets.

No big surprises from the company, though. Jen Mazzon, product manager of Google Docs, took the stage to announce the company’ presentation application to its online Google Docs and Spreadsheets office suite. The new app allows simultaneous editing by several users. No word on whether it tracks changes–clearly a desirable feature for multiple-contributor presentations.

An audience member asks about security, noting that companies may be loath to host important documents online for fear they might be pilfered. Mazzon pauses for a moment and then suggests users not share their passwords–not the most compelling of answers.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington added a controversial element by asking about Yahoo’s acquisition of Zimbra yesterday. Mazzon dodges: “I think it’s great. The Internet’s a big place. The more competition the better. I know that sounds trite, but I really believe that…”

Conference co-sponsor Jason Calacanis notes that Google Docs and Spreadsheets isn’t yet a good solution for hardcore Excel users. Mazzon says Google Docs and Spreadsheets wasn’t designed for power users. That said, she noted that the company is always improving it.

Another audience member asks about data backup: “I know we don’t have a financial or contractual arrangement, but what happens if you lose my data?” Mazzon says that won’t happen. Google is rigorous in backing data up. No comment on contractual/liability issues.

Today, the second of the two-day TechCrunch40 conference in San Francisco (sponsored by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis), began with a panel on productivity and Web apps. (For a rundown of the presentations of all companies involved, check out Barron’s Tech Trader Daily blogger Eric Savitz’s report.)

Here’s an abbreviated summary (some of it gleaned from company Web sites) of the presenters:

• Xobni–”inbox” spelled backward–aims to “take email back.” Basically, it’s offering a new way to view email: users get improved organization, faster search and better navigation of their mail. Xobni creates an information profile for each correspondent, providing relevant historical information.
• Orgoo. Company bills itself as “your personal communications cockpit,” enabling users to organize in one place their email accounts, IM accounts, video chat, video mail and SMS. Orgoo will be free (launch by end of calendar year), with nothing to download from the Web; it will be downloadable on mobile devices, and can be accessed from any Web browser or mobile phone.
• App2you: This custom Web-application creator lets developers create web apps without having to perform database coding or designing. Users simply sketch their pages from scratch or choose a template from app2you’s gallery and then modify it to suit their needs. Once the pages have been outlined, app2you creates a hosted, database-driven Web app using patent-pending technology. App2you intends to generate usage-based revenue from fees for enterprise applications and ad-based revenue from non-enterprise applications.
• Mint: Anonymous and secure money-management service. Unifies disparate bank and credit accounts in a single UI. Company claims that Mint does in an hour what Quicken does in 29 hours. Service updates daily with your latest financial info, alerting you to looming overdrafts, etc. Also indexes and categorizes all your transactions. How does it make money? Seems there’s a “save money” tab that identifies banks offering lower interest rates, utilities offering rebates, etc. Presumably, there’s some sort of kickback arrangement here.
• Kerpoof: Company hopes to change the way kids use computers. Goal is to be top destination site for kids. An active site as opposed to the more passive ones that exist today. CEO cites popularity of Neopets and Club Penguin. Kerpoof is browser-based, offering kids tools to create pictures, coloring-book pages and movies they can save and share with others. CEO claims movie tool actually teaches kids object-oriented programming. Movies are created by selecting pre-existing clips and audio tracks. Demo of a short film created last week by an 11-year-old girl.
• Judges panel:

  What was your favorite?

  Digital pioneer Esther Dyson likes Mint (interesting, since I believe she’s an investor in Wesabe).

  VC guru Guy Kawasaki likes Kerpoof. Also likes Xobni, but says he hopes it didn’t pay for the name because “that’s a dumb-ass name. If I were an investor and heard you paid money for that name I’d shoot you.”

  (Dyson and Kawasaki are setting a much more engaging tone today.)

  Arrington likes ‘em all. Asks Kerpoof CEO “is object-oriented programming really that easy?”

  Kerpoof CEO says yes.

  Dyson says no, not according to the true definition.

  Kawasaki says company is making a marketing mistake by even using the term.

  Dyson asks everyone for a two-word explanation of how they make money. Answers: Lead generation, advertising, then “pleasing the user,” which draws laughter all around.

  Someone asks how Kerpoof can compete with successful social-network-based sites like Club Penguin. Kawasaki says that as a father he would much rather have his kids using something like Kerpoof than consorting with 60-year-old pedophiles on kiddie social networks.

  Arrington notes that today’s judges panel is much harsher than yesterday’s. Follows up with question: “So which company sucks the most?” (Now that’s a great question. Too bad no one answers.)

  Dyson asks how Mint can track transactions from all companies, even small local ones. CEO says company has a massive, constantly updating database of merchants.

  (If there’s a TechCrunch40 2, it should have a permanent panel comprised of Kawasaki, Dyson, Arrington, Yossi Vardi and Ryan Block [the last two from yesterday's session]–a far more engaging and entertaining group of folks.)

Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski is blogging from TechCrunch40 in San Francisco, a two-day conference highlighting what its organizers consider “40 of the hottest new start-ups” from around the globe. Additionally, another hundred or so companies are demoing their products, some of which he’ll feature here.

While John settles in for this morning’s first session about productivity and Web apps, you can read what fellow blogger Eric Savitz of Barron’s Tech Trader Daily has to say about the first round of presentations as well as the hubbub at the conference today, to wit: “There are a zillion–well, not quite a zillion–start-ups all clamoring for attention. As the name of the conference implies, there are 40 coveted spots onstage, plus a room down the hall with 50 wannabes who didn’t quite make it … all starving for attention. Example: Someone just dropped on the table in front of me … a promotional item for a dating-site aggregation service called LineUpNewYork.com. The item: a cellophane-wrapped condom.”

Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski is blogging from TechCrunch40 in San Francisco. Technical difficulties at the conference site prevented him from live-blogging, so he summarized the day’s closing session, a “chat” between TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Arrington introduces Zuckerberg.

First question: So how ya doin’?

Zuckerberg: I’m OK. Cool conference …

Arrington opts to avoid retelling the Facebook story, which at this point is nearly a creation myth, and “dive deep” into the company’s recent accomplishments. Does Facebook think it can maintain the extraordinary growth it’s seen to date? he asks.

Zuckerberg: Yes. We’re seeing tremendous international growth.

Arrington asks how many attendees have Facebook accounts. Hands raised all around. How many of you used it today? he inquires. Respectable show of
hands. How many are on it right now? Uncomfortable laughter.

Arrington asks about the proliferation of feed-sharing on the site (feeds reduce views because you don’t need to surf another page to see what your friends are doing.) Zuckerberg responds that it was a trade-off between page views and usability and that usability triumphed.

Moving on to the Facebook platform and the launch event in May in San Francisco: What the hell is a social graph? Arrington asks.

Zuckerberg attempts to explain. Facebook isn’t a social graph, it’s a model of the social graph that exists in the real world. We’re mirroring it as accurately as possible.

(Zuckerberg, in his dress and his manner, is clearly trying to be Steve Jobs, but he’s about as Bill Gates as you get. In fact, if you close your eyes and listen only to his voice, you’d swear he was Gates.)

The conversation moves on to APIs and third-party apps. What’s your favorite third party app? Arrington wonders.

I can’t answer that, says Zuckerberg.

Why?

Because, Zuckerberg responds, we’re neutral.

Well, Arrington perseveres, what’s your favorite app as a user?

Zuckerberg: Oh, I like the video stuff.

Moving on … Facebook platform and the problems it encountered following launch. Zuckerberg says the company wanted a decentralized neutral platform, one that self-polices. “So we ran into problems with spam, etc., but we fixed them and our users helped us to do that.”

Arrington asks if this strategy doesn’t in the end benefit spammers and others who exploited the platform for their own benefit and never faced any repercussions for doing so. Zuckerberg says no and, in a herculean bit of rationalization, says
that ultimately those who exploit the platform drive its refinement and further development.

(Interesting, Zuckerberg for the third time has just compared Facebook
to “Windows, Linux and other platforms.” Odd that he doesn’t include LinkedIn, Friendster, Tribe.net and Orkut in that list. Wonder if that’s on purpose.)

Evolution of Facebook email. Arrington inquires: Does Facebook’s addition of the ability to email non-Facebook accounts hint at further email refinements, a more generalized email application?

Zuckerberg says that Facebook isn’t designed to be an email product, but that the company will obviously consider further refinements to the email app.

On to funding. Arrington mentions the report by BoomTown’s Kara Swisher about Facebook looking for funding. Zuckerberg repeats the standard party line: We’re not looking to be acquired, we’re not looking to go public, etc.

But apparently, they’re looking to fund others. Zuckerberg announces the FB Fund, a $10 million fund he’s established with folks like Jim Breyer of Accel Partners and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman to issue grants to Facebook developers. Grant sizes are $25,000 to $250,000. No equity participation, but first right-of-refusal for second round.

On to a possible Facebook/News Corp. liaison: Arrington asks if News Corp. acquired Facebook and LinkedIn and came to you and said how will you unify those two networks with MySpace, what would you do?

Zuckerberg’s answer: Nothing. It will never happen.

Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski is blogging from TechCrunch40 in San Francisco. Technical difficulties at the conference site prevent him from live-blogging, so he summarized the fourth session on crowd-sourcing:

• Cake Financial. Here’s an intriguing idea: investor hive-mind. Cake aggregates historical investor data that can be used to guide the investments of others. Interesting, assuming the aggregate guidance isn’t compromised by the unskilled investors almost certain to jump on something like this. Presenter notes that top 10% of investors have been beating the SAP by a significant margin lately.
• Docstoc. This is virtual shared professional document storage. Users can upload documents and designate them as shared (under Creative Commons license) or private. Docs then become searchable to original creator or the Docstoc community. Company hopes to create a massive repository of shared professional documents.
• Teach the People. Marketplace for peer-to-peer-powered learning communities. Presenter uses the word “monetize” nine times in first five or so minutes of the presentation. Communities of learning that distribute knowledge to community subscribers. Ad-supported or subscription-based. Teach the People takes a cut of both. Presenter then pitches the service as a Facebook-style social network tricked out with education tools. A place to offer foreign-language lessons or guitar lessons, etc. An eBay for education. (An eBay for education?) Ah, the crux of it all: “We all have knowledge to share, why not earn money from it?”
• CrowdSpirit. Some sort of social network revolving around “ideas” and “solutions.” Presenter offers up an example in which a user has proposed the idea of a “Facebook phone” and proposed a “solution” that involves a
  bunch of Facebook phone mock-ups. Other community members may then either offer up alternative solutions or critique the original. Apparently the idea is that entrepreneurs can use the CrowdSpirit community to refine their ideas. The community can ascribe a value to the idea, and if it becomes significant enough CrowdSpirit will investigate manufacturing costs, etc., and refine the idea into a “product” with a real price. And then, if I’m understanding this correctly, if enough members of the community agree to purchase the product at that price, CrowdSpirit will actually get it manufactured and distributed. Seems a bit of a
  stretch, this one.
• Ponoko. Personal manufacturing outfit. A Service that allows one to design, create and sell one’s own products. Presenter describes the design and creation of an acrylic top (the spinning kind) which can then be sold to others. Interesting, an outfit that takes inventors from the creation to marketing phase. Apparently, we’re at the advent of the Personal Industrial Revolution.

Judges Panel:

Ron Conway likes Cake Financial, in which he’s apparently an investor (this was disclosed as a preface to his comments). And beyond that Ponoko.

Rajiiv Motwani likes Cake, but wonders how much faith he can put in the collective investment advice of a group of investors whose net worth he doesn’t know.

Don Dodge piles on, noting that the only thing people lie about more than their sexual prowess is their investing skill.

Yossi Vardi, riffing off Dodge’s analogy, suggests that Cake might benefit by the addition of a sexual prowess tab to its site.

Dodge likes Cake, too. Also, Teach the People. Noting that charging for content on the Internet has proven extraordinarily difficult, he asks how the company will convince people to pay for content which they haven’t really seen.

Vardi likes Cake, too. Point-blanks Conway and asks him if, as a Cake investor, he eats his own dog food. Conway says no; he doesn’t manage his own investments. Vardi: “Who does, your wife?” (Someone should give Vardi a bike horn to punctuate his jokes. Or a drummer with a snare and cymbal.)

Conway redirects, but Vardi pursues asking him how many of the 160 or so companies he’s invested in he actually uses. Conway says 40%. Vardi follows up with the inevitable: “And you expect us to risk our money investing in the other 60% you yourself don’t even use?”

Laughter. But no answer from Conway.

Vardi addresses all presenters. Apologizes to those who might feel jilted by a lack of attention from the judges. He says, in the end, it doesn’t really matter since we really don’t have the foggiest idea what will happen down the road: “Between us, Ron [Conway] and I have more failed investments than you can imagine.”

Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski is blogging from TechCrunch40 in San Francisco. Technical difficulties at the conference site prevent him from live-blogging, so he summarized the third session on community and collaboration.

The third round of presentations and expert reviews comes off more as a series of infomercials than evaluations. Fitting, I suppose, since as panelist judge Ron Conway notes, “M&A is the most vibrant liquidity path today.” All these presenters are likely looking to be acquired.

Paucity of hard questions from panel, although Don Dodge (once of Napster) does pose the copyright violation question to a MusicShake, a venture that seems destined to run afoul of copyright law.

Interesting. Conference organizer Mike Arrington comments on the softball questions being asked and puts a harder question of his own to Flock, noting that the social Web browser, which has been in development for years, has only launched its 1.0 version today. Why should someone who uses a browser as well-supported as Firefox switch to Flock, which hasn’t proved its reliability? Can the community depend on support and regular updates? CEO Shawn Hardin says yes, rattles something off about the company’s commitment to its software.

(Wondering now if conference might be more effective presented in a “Gong Show” format. Expert panelists scrawling their scores and interpretive drawings on oversized white notecards, with a big ‘ol gong behind them just waiting to be struck. Rip Taylor and Yossi Vardi. Onstage. Together. Agh. My head hurts.)

Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski is blogging from TechCrunch40 in San Francisco. Technical difficulties at the conference site prevent him from live-blogging, so he summarized this demo of AOL’s new Bluestring “personal media service,” which the company says will enable users to upload photos, music and video files to the Web and create multimedia shows to post and share.

AOL’s new product is called Bluestring. The demo begins with a few rhetorical questions: “We’re here today to talk about your memories … Why do multimedia memories matter? … How do we share and preserve them?”

The presentation includes comments on the proliferation of media sites and media storage and the need for a single application that unifies access to all of them and connects all its users.

According to AOL, Bluestring enables you to upload and store your digital media and to access digital media stored elsewhere–on Flickr, for example. It’s available as a Web and desktop application.

The demo shows how the application involves the association of digital music files with a slideshow to create a “show” that is then shared with a friend, who can add new photo and video assets and ultimately publish it to a blog.

Bluestring went live earlier this afternoon and is free.

Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski is blogging from TechCrunch40 in San Francisco. Technical difficulties at the conference site prevent him from live-blogging, so he is summarizing with the following report on the second session.

• Jason Calacanis is back onstage, describing the voting process employed by a panel of judges (which will be done with poker chips).
• Cubic Telecom takes the stage. Discussing trials and tribulations of traveling internationally with cellphone, including roaming charges. Up comes a slide of CEO’s phone bill from two weeks in France: $14,000. Next is a screen of cubic’s MaxRoam service, which is launching today. Allows you to make every international call made on your mobile a local call. (First demo failure. No signal.) The company notes, nevertheless, that you can put as many numbers on the phone as you like.
• Yap is next. Company rep says “We speech-enable your mobile Web. … the product literally speaks for itself.” (Hardy, har, har.) Voice texting. Advertising. Keywords pull up text ads. Example: “We should get coffee” pulls up a location-specific Starbucks ad. (Presenter complaining about lack of connectivity in conference room.) Tech meltdown on stage, GSM trouble, audio trouble as well. Presenter desperately trying to demo some sort of Yap-twitter application. But: “server not found.” Moving on to the next demo …
• Ceedo is next. This is a lightweight virtualization platform, now introducing a new product: Ceedo mobile, a “self-contained device.” The application allows a user to put PC applications on a phone’s flash memory. The user can then connect phone to any PC and use it to launch a localized version of that user’s original PC. These standard PC applications are stored on phone and launched virtually. The demonstration begins with a launch of Picasa from phone. Picasa brings up users’ pictures and Picasa editing tools, etc. Then, pulls up blogger, exports Picasa photos to blogger application and creates blog post. If I understand it correctly, Ceedo acts as an interface between phone user and Web. Why anyone needs such an interface is beyond me. (Presumably, that’s why there’s no mention of business model.)
• Yap is back onstage after the earlier tech meltdown. In a nutshell, we’re told, Yap is “making text messaging while driving safer” with speech-to-text-messaging application for mobile devices. Well, this is odd. … Yap, apparently in a nod to Britney Spears, is lip-syncing the presentation. The whole thing was prerecorded. Presenters are ad-libbing, uncomfortably, over the audio track.
• LoudTalks, the next presenter takes the stage. (Hails from Russia, and with no company logo on the screen behind presenter, I have no idea what company he represents.) Ah, here it is: LoudTalks. Internet walkie-talkie. (Hmmm. Looks like we’re about to see another demo drown onstage. Volume control issues. Demoed conversation is unintelligible; perhaps a better name for the company would be “SoftTalks.”) The Internet’s walkie-talkie is apparently having talkie issues. (Speaking of Internet walkie-talkies, isn’t that what most audio chat applications are these days?) Calacanis to the rescue! He takes the stage, somehow resolves the volume issue. (Q: “How’s the weather in St. Petersburg?” A: (from LoudTalks rep in Russia) “Very cold.”
• TruTap now on. “Our inspiration as a company is to bring the social life of young people to one, free, universal, mobile service.” Begin demoing UI: Web 2.0 design cliche. Application offers blogging, IM, messaging, contacts, social networks, broadcast messaging (one-to-many, a la Twitter) all in a single interface. User can log onto a variety of IM clients and social networks simultaneously. The beta version is available on AT&T. (My god … Trutap developers take stage and perform Boys-II-Men-style jingle. What a multitalented bunch (and apparently quite at home with public humiliation.)
• Judges panel. Judges take stage after Calacanis remarks on the kindness and restraint they’ve shown in their assessments so far. Implores them to be more critical. Pull no punches. That shouldn’t be difficult, given the quality of the presentations we’ve seen so far. That said, many of the judges seem to have a penchant for speaking too far from the mike, so it’s impossible to tell if any of them are following through. Guess we’ll have to watch presenter expressions to see if there are any hurt feelings.
• The surprisingly audible Marc Andreessen asks the same distribution question he asked of the last group of presenters.
• Inaudible Om Malik question met with unintelligible answer from Ceedo guy.
• Calacanis asks Wired’s Chris Anderson if he’s seen a company yet that he’d profile in Wired. Judging from Anderson’s evasive redirection of a reply, the answer seems to be no.
• Engadget’s Ryan Block notes that Yap’s application is dependent on connection to the cloud. essentially useless without it and at this point in time at least, there are lots of folks who aren’t connected to the cloud. Yap rep ducks question with the standard “That’s something we’re already aware of and working on a solution to address.”
• Calacanis asking Om which company wll be here five years from now as
  an independent company, Andreessen which is most likely to get angel funding. Andreessen says he’d use Ceedo, but isn’t sure about business model, noting that presenters have a tough road ahead of them if they don’t have distribution from major carriers. Om says TruTap is most likely to be bought, and Cubic most likely to be around five years from now. Quite the endorsements, given palpable lack of excitement with which he delivers them.

Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski is live-blogging TechCrunch40, a two-day conference in San Francisco highlighting what its organizers consider “40 of the hottest new start-ups” from around the globe. Additionally, another hundred or so companies are demoing their products, some of which he’ll feature here.

OK. After a registration foul-up (don’t you know who I am?!!!!!!!), and innumerable technical difficulties (I am, indeed, writing this on my iPhone, and I’m beginning to realize that Steve Jobs may not have been exaggerating when he said that after a few weeks of typing on this virtual keyboard, “you’ll be flying.”) I am finally up and running.

(Eric Savitz of Tech Trader Daily got in a good post on the five search-and-discovery demos that started the conference in earnest this morning, along with comments from the panel of judges.)

Given these early difficulties, I have no detailed posts on the first round of presentations, just some general observations:

• Big focus on video from first presenter.
• All presenters seem to suffer from the same Web 2.0 Tourette’s Syndrome, uncontrollably spouting Web 2.0 jargon: Ajax, long tail, etc.
• Note: if a drinking game existed that required participants to take a drink every time a presenter used a boom 2.0 cliche, I’d have alcohol poisoning by now.
• Conference co-sponsor Jason Calacanis just told everyone with iPhones to turn their Wi-Fi feature off because the devices are “crashing our Wi-Fi network.” How frigging Web 2.0 is that?
• Judges panel: Seated next to Marc Andreessen, Engadget’s Ryan Block
  looks like a Mini-me version of the Netscape founder.
• Yahoo presents a new service, not yet available. Long-winded intro. Conference organizers should have forced “big presenters” to adhere to the same eight-minute pitch rule.
• It’s called Yahoo for Teachers. Online lesson plans. Social networking for social good. (Wonder how long it took Yahoo PR to come up with that one?) Bit of a yawner, this one.