On Tuesday night, as the historic election results began to take shape, a few hundred gathered at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Denver for the November Boulder/Denver New Technology Meetup. The space, generously donated by the Defrag Conference, provided a geographic opportunity for new urban attendees and a nice change of scene for regulars, although the lack of complimentary alcohol was noted by a few. The presentations included:
Paul Downey, British Telecom: The former Chief Web Services Architect for the British telecommunications giant, Downey is now a global ambassador of BT as well as an open source evangelist. The self-appointed Moral Compass of his employer, Downey has taken to drawing elaborate pictorial metaphors depicting his feelings on every aspect of the coding universe. Likely equal parts genius and madman, his illustrations can be found at www.thewebisagreement.com.
Kevin Marks, Google: The second unscheduled presenter of the evening, Marks discussed Google’s OpenSocial, a common open set of APIs for building social applications across multiple sites. This program would effectively provide users of Facebook the ability to transport all of their personal information (profile, friends, etc) to another site like LinkedIn without the hassle of rebuilding their network from scratch. OpenSocial would scrape the information from one source and deposit it elsewhere, significantly reducing the switching costs when that new new network comes along and what you’re using has gone the way of Friendster.
Brian McKinney, ReframeIt: ReframeIt is a free installable browser tool that allows a user to highlight and comment upon any web page without the website’s permission. The user has control over who can view the script appearing in the margin, making it public for consumption or private among groups and individuals. McKinney offered the example of members of an accounting firm accessing a site describing changes to the tax law, with the partners of the firm commenting (privately) on the impact and meaning of various passages. Private groups with more than 10 users are charged a per month per user fee. McKinney claims what differentiates ReframeIt from its competitors is the contextualization of the comments, whereby they appear next to the web content they apply to instead of the bottom of the page. For an example, download the tool at the company’s website and check out this page.
Donavon Guyot, Peaksware: Peaksware provides human performance software via the web that tracks nutrition and fitness information. The nutrition site boasts a database of 60,000 branded foods while the fitness side offers drag and drop functionality in logging a workout, while also offering the now industry-standard streaming video of how to perform various exercises. The ten-year-old company has plans to add some social networking functionality, although instead of building its own network like competitor Gyminee it seeks to offer itself as an application to existing platforms. Peaksware differentiates itself through its athletic seriousness: Built by endurance coaches, the site continues to boast national Ironman winners and Tour de France podium finishers as endorsers of the software.
Dick Hardt, Sxipper: Hardt took the stage and gave a taste of Sxipper 3.0, a product not yet in beta that follows but dramatically expands upon Sxipper 2.2. Hardt opened with the observation that most web pages are presented at size 1024 by 768, leaving quite a bit of real estate for many with a modern monitor. He’s taken advantage of this space by impregnating the pixels with what he describes as Address Book 2.0 functionality: An application that scrapes all of your contact data from email, address book, and social networks and then puts this information to use as you roam the web. For example, were you to access a page describing the videogame Gears of War 2, had a friend recently blogged on the game that information would appear within the Sxipper frame, along with the information of any contact currently working at Epic Games. While mum on a release date, those interested in signing up for the beta can do so at www.sxipper.com.
Debra Brown and John Hand, MobilizeUs: Brown and Hand demonstrated their company’s MobilizeUs product. Called a group communication tool, the product has many similarities to the Chalk2Me tool presented at October’s Meetup. MobilizeUs allows users to set up a group via the company’s web interface and then log in to send text messages to the entire group or a defined subgroup. For groups using the company’s free service, ads are included with the text messages or groups can upgrade and pay for ad-free messages. Brown cited schools and sports teams among the company’s key users. When pressed by Reich regarding the differences between their service and the many communication tools out there, Brown and Hand noted the company’s reputation for “trust and reliability” – which is important lest the Boulder High School varsity baseball team end up in Fort Collins with no game to play.
Kevin Cawley, Socialeyes: Cawley found himself with much more to say than could fit into his five minute allotment. His focus was on the use of viral applications with Facebook, and specifically how companies can get users to “engage” with their page as opposed to just joining and forgetting. Cawley mentioned the “Microphone” page his company created for Microsoft. While Microphone has a relatively smaller membership compared to brands such as Jeep the number of user engagements per month is high. Cawley did not have time to fully explain the “how” of the increased engagement beyond mentioning a point system where users earn points for different activities (e.g. posting a message, inviting friends), the effective use of a leaderboard among participants, and awarding prizes like an Xbox to top engagers. Keep your eyes open for Cawley’s new FaceBook application “PC or Mac.”
Tom Churchill, Churchill Navigation: Churchill showed off his company’s EarthScape application for the iPhone. The company’s application, which can be downloaded for free, allows users to take photos and add comments and tags to the photos based on the users’ geography. Users can then go in and search photos based on location to see what photos have been posted in the area. Churchill sees the potential for monetization based on directed advertising for which customer proximity is important, especially for small businesses (e.g. local pizza shop). Users have found uses for EarthScape never anticipated by the company including logging the location of their cars in airport parking lots. One of Earthscape’s more active users is a trucker who photographs and comments on truck stops and places to park. If you’re heading out on a long-haul or are interested in what other photos users have posted, you can check things out at www.earthscape.com.
The Boulder Denver New Technology Meetup is held on the first Tuesday of every month and is designed to provide a time and place for technologists and entrepreneurs to showcase the new technology developing in the region. The event is sponsored by Silicon Flatirons, Viawest, w3w3, and Holme Roberts & Owen.
The next meeting will take place at the Wolf Law Building at CU Boulder on December 2nd at 6pm. If you seek to attend please register for the event here.
