LaunchBox Digital: Helping DC Area Startup’s

I had read about LaunchBox Digital in Ann Bernards blog some time back and it definitely peaked my interest. She was writing about a “startup” program they are running called LaunchBox08. Here is the write up from their web page:

LaunchBox Digital is now accepting applications for LaunchBox08, our summer accelerator program. LaunchBox08 is a global competition, where successful applicants will receive funding and guidance to take their big ideas from concept to market. The program will include seed funding and a 12 week business building program in D.C. where participants will refine their ideas with the help of world-class mentors and advisors. The program culminates with pitch days, where each new business will present to angel investors, venture capital firms, strategic partners, bloggers and media on the East and West Coasts. To apply to LaunchBox08 click here.

Sounds pretty cool and having a small one person startup I would be very interested, but I work full time and it most likely would not work out. In any case, I had kind of forgot about them until I saw this video interview from The Social Times with one of the founders Sean Greene. He struck me as a really down to earth guy who has a passion for passing on his knowledge and helping local DC area startup’s in getting their dreams started. He explained that not only are they sponsoring the startup program but also accept executive summaries from any and all and review them to look into mentoring as well. It really got me excited and thinking about possibly submitting my startup. I went to work right away working on an a write-up to submit.

Anyone good at writing executive summaries ? I am clearly not.

Anyway, I think it is another great resource for the companies in the area. Like Sean said, the areas has a lot of smart people and great ideas and we just need a little help over the first couple of humps and thats what they are there for, getting your idea in front of the right people.

Has anyone submitted an app yet for the LaunchBox08 ? Let us know, we would love to follow along the process.

Mixx Brings Early Holiday Gifts For All

Techcrunch seems to have some serious love for the guys over at our local DC startup Mixx. I always seem to get me Mixx news right from them, which is very cool, at least they are getting some respectable love from the big guys.

Anyway, I headed over to the Mixx blog and was shocked to see the new basket of goodies they have delivered just before the holidays. I guess the biggest feature is the addition of public groups, based on topic area. As Techcrunch put it :

For example Mixx users could start a Ron Paul group that only tracks stories about Ron Paul, and Ron Paul fans would then be able to visit this page on Mixx for those links. Digg offers some functionality in this area with friend lists that allows you to track what your friends Digg, but with Mixx, groups are front and center, with popular groups featured on the front page and a link to an index of other groups easily accessible.

Remember the Milk & Gmail Integration a Hit

As some of your may have read previously, I am always on the look out for a good to-do reminder type do-hicky to keep me straight. I had previously done a review of iwantsandy.com and have been pretty impressed with it. Very easy to use and intuitive. The comes along a new gotcha from the guys over at Remember the Milk. They have release a kick ass Gmail plugin. There are literally too many features to cover here, (Go to their blog to check out all of the goodness) but here is a bit of the list:

• manage tasks in gmail
• connect tasks with emails
• connect tasks with calendar events
• connect tasks with contacts
• and so on …

After installing the plugin, your gmail browser windows will look like this:

Notice the Tasks grid on the right. As you hover over a task it pops up a window of details for that particular task

As you can see, here you are able to edit, set reminders, etc. It is really quite powerful and not obtrusive at all. The Google calendar integration is awesome, especially with the new iPhone interface. Tasks can be added via the web page, email, a mobile web page, and also via Jott making it really a quite powerful tool to have in your organization attempting arsenal. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Twitter: Dangerous or Not ?

Yesterday I was following my Twitter stream and I noticed something interesting happen. Our good DC friend and cameraman extraordinaire @newmediajim (of Verge New Media) was posting tweets from the White House as several incidents were taking place. Initially he was posting first hand about the fire that had broken out in the Old Executive Building (where the VP’s offices are located) and then he was tweeting about the President and his departure on Marine One. I love following @newmediajim for just this reason, interesting stuff from a first hand viewer. But then someone in the chain asked a question of @newmediajim that I found interesting. She asked if the secret service knew Jim uses Twitter ? It actually made me stop and think. Would/Could Twitter be used in such a fashion to make it “dangerous” ? I mean the news I was receiving was about the same in a general sense that I could feasibly see on FOX news Headline news, but the question resonated with me.

Fast forward to later when I saw this headline: “Twitter is dangerous” . Michael Krigsman over at ZDNet wrote about how Twitter could be dangerous to companies. This is his argument:

Imagine this scenario: 20 people are in a confidential meeting, one of them using Twitter. This attendee broadcasts an off-hand “tweet” (Twitter comment) to his or her “followers” (Twitter friends). With traditional instant messaging, that message would be received by perhaps one or two others. With Twitter, that comment may be seen by 10, 100, 1000, or more followers.

Why it matters? Twitter has the power to turn groups of innocent bystanders into instant analysts. Even seemingly innocuous comments, when put before a large group of people, can be analyzed more rapidly, and in more depth, than you might expect. This can easily cause ranges of unintended, highly negative, consequences.

This got me thinking even more about it last night and how Twitter could be considered dangerous. Then when I awoke this morning and saw a tweet from @jowyang referencing a post from Dennis Howlett titled: “Twitter is useful” as a counterbalance to Michael’s article earlier. In it he references a post from Ed Yourdon where he states:

…that’s like saying that the Internet is dangerous because it enables children to see pornography, or because hundreds (maybe thousands) of people actually respond to those ridiculous Nigerian spam emails about millions of dollars in unclaimed bank accounts. Sure, Twitter is potentially dangerous — in the same way that any other form of instant messaging, e-mail, and blogging could be dangerous. Hey, while we’re at it, telephones are dangerous! So are letters mailed through the U.S. Post Office (assuming that any of them actually get delivered.) So is talking to other people, especially strangers. Who knows — maybe it’s even dangerous to think uncensored thoughts in the presence of advanced mind-reading devices operated by Homeland Security and the KGB.

He makes a good point, one that really balances the scales. While it is true that Twitter could be dangerous, is it any more dangerous than the email or IM’s we send on a daily basis ? No, not really. Micheal is right though when he says that eventually IT departments will have to set guidelines and rules and simply trust their employees will follow them. Sure, someone will break them, but at least since their are guidelines they have recourse to take action.

What do you all think ? Twitter: Dangerous or not?

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Amazon Adds New Killer Web Service

December 19, 2007

I am a huge fan of Amazon’s Web Services that they have been slowly rolling out. So big a fan in fact, I am basing my own little startup venture around one of them, and now maybe two. Some time back, Amazon released S3 (Simple Storage Solution) which is an endless storage platform for business and regular users. The great thing though is that while it is endless, you only pay for what you use, and it is very very reasonable. I store like 20Gb of pictures on it and get a bill for @ $2.50 a month. My venture, MyDropBin, is basically a user friendly web front end for a users S3 storage space. It allows the ability to upload files and tag them as well as keep them in user defined folders accessible anywhere you have a connection. And soon there will be the ability to save dynamic data right from the web. But enough about that, this post is about a new service that really rounds out Amazons offerings.

It is called Amazon DevPay, and basically here is what it can do:

• Develop your software application using Amazon S3 or an Amazon EC2 Machine Image (AMI).
• Use the simple Amazon DevPay web interface to register your application or AMI with Amazon DevPay, provide a product description and configure your desired pricing.
• Embed the Amazon DevPay purchase pipeline link into your web site to allow your customers to purchase your product.
• Protect your application from unauthorized use by integrating with Amazon DevPay’s authentication mechanism.
• Monitor the money you are earning on the Amazon DevPay Activity page.

I have to admit I was waiting for a prescription when I saw this and sat riveted to my iPhone as I read about it. I know that they have recently released some other cool stuff, like the SimpleDB and a Flexible Payment System, but to me this is “IT”. For a one person, self funded startup, it is a service like this that makes it absolutely possible to build a viable web service and possible compete on a global scale. Amazon is making it so easy for me to build my vision and make it a reality using building blocks they are providing. I will now be able to integrate this quite easily and in a few small steps have a professional payment pipeline tied into my product, especially since it is another one of their services I have built upon.

This is basically an affiliate program for their web services. Now I can use their products and set pricing to include fees and overhead costs that are passed onto the users. Amazon tracks the users usages and charges and bills them directly and I get the difference dumped into my account. It could not be easier and I could not be happier nor more excited.

Filed Under AWS, Amazon, Startups, Technology ·  

Facebook Embraces Groups

December 19, 2007

Nick O’Neill has a post over at allfacebook about Facebooks announcement of the ability to create and maintain groups of your friends. He has labeled it the “LinkedIn Killer”

I for one am happy to see this. I have written a couple of posts recently, one about which service gives a better return on our investment and another on how we could improve Twitter . One argument I had in choosing Twitter over Facebook was the fact that Facebook was a little too spread out. I have to go to a lot of places to get a little done. And my one holiday wish for Twitter was groups. I think Facebook has take a step in the right direction. Having different groups that you can send messages to independently is a great feature. You could combine different Facebook groups into a particular group you define and have the ability to message the entire lot of them. Nick also had a great point about business contacts, or for that matter any group you want to pool together.

Our time these days is so torn between all these outlets, we have little time to address individual messages and send them out. I would LOVE to see this feature in Twitter and think it would be a killer feature for their platform, but in the mean time good on Facebook for this “small” yet significant step to a better social platform.

Filed Under Facebook, Social Networking, Technology ·  

Is Tweeterboard Relief From RSS Overload

December 18, 2007

I read a great post by Jeremiah Owyang over at his blog today about Tweeterboard. He notes a lot of great things about the service to include:

• metrics
• news feed
• rankings

He notes that this is finally a site that kind of ties the loose ends of Twitter together and also ties the inter-Twitter relationships together.

While reading one of his points about the “news feed” it got me to thinking. Since becoming a little more involved with Twitter I have found two things have happened

1. I have been neglecting my Google Reader feeds
2. I have been getting a lot of great news from the links my friends are putting on Twitter

However, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I found that I have been getting my news fix from the twitter links, and without having to sift through thousands of rss feeds. Enter Tweeterboard. For each user it creates a feed of the links they post on Twitter. Perfect. So now I can go do a major cleanup of my Google Reader feeds and get rid of half the crap and subscribe to my Twitter friends Tweeterboard link feeds. Its almost like a grid computer out there that is filtering out all the crap and I only see the news that is relevant, useful, and interesting.

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Pownce Pownces on Twitter And Releases Mobile App

December 18, 2007

Pownce, the Twitter-like messaging web site that not only allows you to share messages with friends but also files, links, and events quietly release a mobile version today. You can check it out at m.pownce.com. I tried Pownce out for a while when it was first released, but like Twitter at first, I didn’t really “get it”. Since then I have been using Twitter almost exclusively and lost track of Pownce.

I think Twitter has really gotten the better of it though. I mean the only reason people were on Pownce the other day is because Twitter had a downtime …. You know who you all are (shashib …) In any case, as soon as I saw the announcement I grabbed my iPhone and went to check it out.

I will say that I actually really liked it. Clean interface. There are several options. You are able to send a message, to a group or private ones as well from the same page which I like over the mobile twitter clients. You can send a link, a file (this does not work on the iPhone), and what is very cool is the ability to send an event. This could come in very handy.

I think the release of this could be a great move for Pownce. The one thing it was lacking when compared to Twitter was a mobile version. That seems to be the whole point of this space, or at least a very large one. Now that people have a choice, we may see a shift away from Twitter. Although the ability to SMS Twitter messages still gives it a bit of a leg up in my opinion. Not everyone has a viable web enabled phone, while most everyone has SMS. If Pownce gets that feature, it may be a horse race. And if they get the ability to send a file while mobile, the race could be over.

UPDATE: Tony Hung has a good post here about the announcement

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AOL’s Leaving Has Hurt More Than Just the DC Tech Community

December 18, 2007

AOL was once a huge technology cornerstone along the Dulles technology corridor outside Washington, DC. They were an icon in the early days of the internet boom. But sadly, those days are long gone. In October, AOL laid off over 750 local DC area employees and moved their headquarters to New York. Outside of the government, I would say that AOL was one of the larger technology employers in the area and their leaving was a blow no matter how you look at it.

What I didn’t realize until I read this article in the Washington Post was just how ,uch else the local community lost. I think that many of these things get largely overlooked when a company the size of AOL picks up and leaves town. According to the article, AOL was a huge philanthropist in the area,

At its height, AOL donated about $200,000 a year to Greater D.C. Cares, a group that coordinates volunteering and business philanthropic efforts

There were other groups as well who had come to depend on AOL’s generosity. There was the Loudoun County Music Festival who lost much of their operating budget as well as Loudoun Youth who received their last 75K this year according to AOL. Instead AOL has refocused to a more international outlook.

“In the past, we focused on Northern Virginia, but our aspiration is to really reflect the areas where we have a major presence, which now includes Bangalore, [India]; London; New York and Mountain View, [Calif.],” said AOL spokeswoman Anne Bentley, who heads a smaller community-investment group. AOL plans to announce global giving initiatives in early 2008.

After reading this, it struck me how much we as communities come to depend on these large corporations, and not just for jobs. The climate is such that AOL has to make these hard decisions in order to stay a viable entity and answer to their shareholders.

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Razoo A New Breed Of Socially Responsible Social Networks

December 16, 2007

The Washington Post had an article today about the “new” type of socially responsible social networks. They featured a DC startup, Razoo. They have built a social network, but with a twist. Instead of connecting people for personal/business networking reasons, they connect people to support humanitarian goals.

humanitarian objectives such as preventing homelessness in the United States and helping families who live in a Nicaragua trash dump. Users and causes each have their own pages.

Razoo’s founder, J. Sebastian Traeger, is looking to build upon a previously successful internet company which he built and sold. The article touches on the challenges sites like Razoo and Kiva have in a fast paced profit based Internet. While companies like Facebook are enjoying $15 billion valuations, this other niche is looking for its own success which may not necessarily show on the true bottom line.

I have looked at sites like Prosper.com and have been intrigued as to the possibilities. The idea of helping others out and being able to follow along puts a warm face on an otherwise faceless world of these social networks.

Filed Under DC Tech, Startups, Technology ·  

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