Posts Tagged ‘TechCrunch50’
Yammer赢得TechCrunch50 Top Prize（附前5名）
Three jam-packed days, and 52 startup demos later, we finally have a winner for this year’s TechCrunch50. Every day, the presentations just seemed to get stronger and stronger. There were so many strong contenders this year that we are awarding five jury selection prizes, in addition to the top prize. But there must be a winner, and that winner is…Yammer.
Yammer
is Twitter with a business model. Created by an existing company, Geni, to scratch its own itch, Yammer takes the familiar Twitter messaging system and applies it to internal corporate communications. There is such a huge demand for this type of service that 10,000 people and 2,000 organizations signed up for the service the first day it launched on Monday. Anyone with a corporate email can sign up and follow other people in their company. But if a company ants to claim its users, and gain administrative control over them, they will have to pay. It’s a brilliant business model.
The runners up are:
Atmosphir
Atmosphir is a gaming platform that anyone can use to create their own immersive, 3D levels. The tool works by dragging and dropping level elements into place - pieces of land, bridges, hazards, etc. To play your level, all you have to do is hit “play” and you can even go back to the editor after entering gameplay. Atmosphir is available for Macs, PCs and Linux machines and was developed by Minor Studios.
FitBit
FitBit produces a small gadget that can be clipped discreetly to your clothes. It tracks your movement throughout the day and delivers reports on how active you’ve been. These reports can be accessed through a website and used to learn not only how many steps you’ve taken but your sleeping patterns and caloric burn as well.
Grockit
Grockit is an online, interactive learning tool that brings students together to answer quizzes with other. The startup has raised $10 milion for what it’s calling a “Massively Multi Player Online Learning Game”, which takes its cue from World of Warcraft and applies that game’s concepts to SAT-like study groups. Grockit features a chat room where students can talk with one another as they deliberate over questions. They can also award each other points for their insight.
GoodGuide
GoodGuide helps consumers find better and more comprehensive information about the products they buy and the companies that make those products. The site ranks products on their health, environmental and social “goodness”, empowering consumers to buy conscientiously. The founders say they have enlisted the support of scientists and technologies, as well as hundreds of information sources, to make the service as accurate and informative as possible.
Swype
Swype introduced a radical new gesture-based way to input text on touch-screens. Created by Cliff Kushler, the same man who co-invented the T9 predictive text entry system found on over 3 billion phones, Swype lets you simply connect letters on a touch-screen keyboard by making squiggles between them using your finger or a stylus.
Yammer Takes Top Prize At TechCrunch50.
Tags: Atmosphir, FitBit, GoodGuide, Grockit, news, Swype, TechCrunch, TechCrunch 50, TechCrunch50, Yammer
Top 10 Up-and-Coming Products
More than 100 companies are strutting their stuff at the Demofall ‘08 and TechCrunch50 conferences out on the West coast this week. At events like this, which involve dozens of beta demonstrations of new products in development, a lot of the items blend together into a white noise of over-hype, but a handful of this week’s debuts are intriguing. Let’s take a look at 10 of the neatest up-and-coming offerings that aren’t yet available—and the tools already available to you that replicate some of their eyebrow-raising tweaks. Photo by TechCrunch50-2008.
10. Rate Surfer
Not to sound like a doting parent here, but Rate Surfer is really a tool of last financial resort. Still, for those carrying balances between multiple credit cards, it can help you put more dollars toward getting back to financial freedom. You give the webapp access to your credit card accounts, and it monitors them for rate changes. If one card’s got a better rate than another, it suggests moving your balance over. It may not be the best situation to be in, but Rate Surfer is nothing if not an honest tool for those with a serious credit fix.
9. RealDVD
There are, of course, many, many tools for any system that let you take a commercial DVD and copy it, or put it on your hard drive for as-you-like viewing. Until now, however, no major media player has stepped forward with a consumer-level, legal software package. RealDVD aims to be exactly that—it keeps the DVD’s copy protection intact, and adds an iTunes-like layer of its own. At a $30 introductory price, it’s still paying a ransom to use your own possessions, but it might make an easy-to-use solution for legal-conscious parents or less-geeky friends.
TechCrunch 50创业盛会的12个创业板块和Y Combinator鼓励的30个创业方向
TechCrunch 50评选出50个项目，分为12个主题板块，分类不是非常严谨，有些项目和所属板块也不是非常贴切。不过，好在这是个会议，不是像CrunchBase那样的结构化数据库。这些主题倒是可以给我们一些借鉴。小容简单罗列在下面，供大家参考。
Session 1: Youth and Culture （潮流文化）
Session 2: Memes & News （媒母与新闻）
Session 3: Enterprise（企业级应用）
Session 4: Advertising & Commerce Monetization （广告与商务）
Session 5: Collaboration （协作）
Session 6: Finance & Statistics （财务与统计）
Session 7: Mobile （移动通讯应用）
Session 8: Language & Communication Tools （语言与沟通工具）
Session 9: Rich Media （富媒体）
Session 10: Games （游戏）
Session 11: Vertical Social Networking （垂直社交网络）
Session 12: Research & Recommendations （研究与推荐）
和上面的12个创业主题可以对照着看（关于Y Combinator和Paul Graham的背景请看本文最后的相关链接）。
Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund
by Paul Graham
1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom（解决版权纠纷的方法）
2. Simplified browsing（简化的浏览）
3. New news （新新闻）
4. Outsourced IT （IT 外包）
5. Enterprise software 2.0 （企业级软件2.0）
6. More variants of CRM（更多样化的顾客关系管理系统）
7. Something your company needs that doesn’t exist （己所欲也，无所求也）
8. Dating （在线交友）
9. Photo/video sharing services （照片/视频分享服务）
10. Auctions（拍卖网站）
11. Web Office apps（Web办公套件）
12. Fix advertising (合理化广告模式)
13. Online learning （在线学习）
14. Tools for measurement （测量工具）
15. Off the shelf security （现场电子安防）
16. A form of search that depends on design （提升用户体验设计的搜索引擎）
17. New payment methods （创新的支付模式）
18. The WebOS （网络操作系统）
19. Application and/or data hosting （应用/数据存储）
20. Shopping guides （购物指南）
21. Finance software for individuals and small businesses （低端财务软件）
22. A web-based Excel/database hybrid （基于Web的excel/数据库软件）
23. More open alternatives to Wikipedia （以更开放的方式取代维基百科的挑战者）
24. A buffer against bad customer service （改善糟糕的客户服务体验）
25. A Craigslist competitor （与在线分类广告网站Craigslist竞争）
26. Better video chat （更好的视频聊天工具）
27. Hardware/software hybrids （软件和硬件的混合应用）
28. Fixing email overload （解决电子邮件信息过载问题）
29. Easy site builders for specific markets （为特定市场提供快速建站工具）
30. Startups for startups （为创业公司服务的创业公司）
回顾一下这个清单，再看看TechCrunch 50和最近的一些新产品，是不是感觉地球转得太快了，几个月前讲的事情，现在有许多团队已经做出了产品。
大学小容>善用网络，助益成长！ » Blog Archive » TechCrunch 50创业盛会的12个创业板块和Y Combinator鼓励的30个创业方向.
TechCrunch50. It’s like TechCrunch40, but better!
TechCrunch50, 2008
This year, we’re reinventing ourselves again as TechCrunch50. We’ll launch 50 companies over three days, September 8-10. We have a great new venue, the San Francisco Design Center Concourse, with 125,000 square feet of space for us to create even more energy and activities. We’re really excited.
In addition to 50 great new products, we’re assembling an amazing line up of speakers and a panel of expert advisors to spark lively discussion and debate during the conference.
There will be an action-packed DemoPit full of other early-stage start-up ideas, as well as working breakfasts and lunches with topics aimed at helping start-ups succeed.
TechCrunch50 » TechCrunch50. It’s like TechCrunch40, but better!.
