I stared this blog to track the great things happening here on the east coast, got a bit side tracked by personal and professional obligations but wanted to get back on track.
In the recent past there has been a real flourishing of great things happening here on the “wrong” coast. From Boston to New York to Washington DC, great services and companies are popping up with great promise. I wanted to take a moment to go through a few of them here in this post.
Facebook has been a great resource for me to reach out and follow people that are doing really great things in their niche.
1. WhyGoSolo – I met Ann bernard through Facebook and have been following her new startup which has now gone to private beta. According the aboutus page, here is what WhyGoSolo as all about:
Why Go Solo is for making spontaneous connections happen… therefore, bringing about the end of boredom. And you’re thinking… “What does that mean?”
It means, always being able to find or post activities you’re interested in doing, and always finding someone to do your favorite activities with. It doesn’t matter what your interests are: sports, the arts, culture, food, games—you name it, you’ll be able to find a like-minded person with the same interests to go and enjoy your favorite activities. No more wondering what to do on your day off, on the weekends, in the evenings or when you have some free-time. With Why Go Solo… you can always find something to do with someone new and exciting.
Why Go Solo was thought of by a former Marine, don’t be scared… she’s pretty cool, but she designed Why Go Solo to be action oriented with getting results and positive outcomes in mind… It’s about taking an active role in meeting new people, living out your passions, doing the activities you love, networking and exploring new possibilities. It’s about enjoying life and having fun. Use the web to enable the finding of exciting and new things and people but, get OFF the web and go enjoy them.
Ann has become very active in the DC tech scene and I look forward to meeting her in the near future at one of the growing DC tech events.
2. ExecutiveBiz – I recently attended a Web2.0 breakfast sponsored by ExecutiveBIz and had a great time. They are a local DC Digital Magazine that presents great local events. such as the recently successful The New New Internet , and other networking and Learning events.
JD Kathuria is one of the co founders of this group. They have a great list of upcoming events and I invite you all to stop by and sign up for one of them. You will not be disappointed.
3. The Social Times – I have not had the pleasure to meet him yet, but Nick Oneill has burst onto my radar for his work in the local DC tech and social media scene. I first came across his blog The Webpreneur and my admiration started there. He seems to be everywhere all at once. He also writes a great Facebook blog, AllFacebook – the unofficial facebook blog , where he covers everything and anything Facebook.
His recent project The Social Times is having a launch event on December 13th in DC where some local startups, like WhyGoSolo, will demo their products. This is exactly the type of event I have been waiting for and craving here in the DC area and I am happy to report that Mr. Oneill is at the forefront of making this scene come alive.
Congrats and Good Luck Nick !
4. Web Innovators Group – This is a great group organized by David Beisel of Venrock. He holds events every so often in the Boston area where local startups and entrepreneurs gather to network as well as show off their product. This is a great resource for small and self funded ones to get their product in front of people to see its value and what it can do.. The next event is scheduled for January 29th, 2008. I am scheduled to attend and invite all of you to do the same to throw our support to the east coast tech scene.
This last one is a little closer to home, as in my home. I have been working on the side on my own startup. I have online a v .01version of my service and development has begun on the second and bigger phase.
5. MyDropBin – This was my idea and my dream as a single person self funded startup. Like I said, this is just phase one online right now, but there is more better things to come around the first of the year. Here is an overview:
The Problem
Users are gradually requiring the need to have a place to collect and store various types of data (links, web archives, files, images, clippings, notes), and to be able to organize it in a personal fashion. In addition, they require the ability to access this data from a variety of platforms, whether at work, at home, or traveling with a laptop. There are desktop applications which offer this type of functionality, but they lack the ability to allow the user to access his or her data away from that application.
The Solution
MyDropBin will offer users a repository where they can store items. They will be able to save bookmarks or web archives (a cached version of the web page for later viewing). In addition, the user will be able to create notes, save clippings, save files or images. This data will then be accessible to the user through their MyDropBin home page across any platform. Storage of all user data will be handled by the Amazon S3 storage solution.
The How
When you sign up for MyDropBin, you need to provide us with 2 keys to your Amazon S3 storage account. You can sign up for those here. When you hit register, we simply add a mydropbin storage bucket in your S3 storage space and give your MyDropBin permission to read and write inside of it. This way we don’t need to store your secret keys and makes a much more secure system. After that is done, you simply log into your Drop Bin and start uploading files. You can tag the items and place them in folders that you create keeping things nice and organized. Now the best part .. you have total access to your Drop Bin from any internet connected computer. So you will never be without that important file. And even better … do you have a large file to send someone ? Just upload it ot your Drop Bin and then email the link to them. When they get the email they can simply click the link and it gets downloaded right to their computer. This is just the start and there will be more exciting features coming soon
I hope to be able to show it at events like the Web Innovators Group and other local events in DC.If anyone has any other cool east coast news, please let us know. We would love to hear about them !!
