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Showing posts from November, 2008

MixMatchMusic - Nerd Stalker #22

(Duration 7 mins) Nerd Stalker (in partnership with SF New Tech) sits down and speaks with CEO Charles Feinn and CFO/Director of A&R Alan Khalfin of MixMatchMusic . MixMatchMusic is the new music community created by musicians, for and about musicians. They have created an environment where musicians easily collaborate online and profit from their art. They built tools musicians need to engage with and involve fans. And they put shape to a place where fans discover new music and new musicians. Of particular interest to me is the web based GarageBand like application for creating/editing music, very slick. The music creators cut of sales was impressive, and the fact that you can both upload and download large very high quality audio files in various formats was key. I believe we will see musicians flocking to this service, if they can get the word out.

23andMe - Nerd Stalker #21

Nerd Stalker partners with SFNewTech to interview Alex Wong, Director of Products for 23andMe . 23andMe's mission is to be the world's trusted source of personal genetic information. For a mere $399 they send you a kit with a tube to spit in then send back. In about 4 weeks you get a ton of in depth genetic information. You will learn health traits/issues you may be prone to, get ancestral information, compare your results with the community, and you can submit your information for research if you choose. Privacy is the huge issue just see the in depth privacy policy they have to protect it's customers. Of note 23andMe was featured on Oprah and had the distinct huge honor of being named invention of the year by TIME magazine.

Offerpal Media - Nerd Stalker #20

We attend the Snap Summit in San Francisco and get a chance to speak with Offerpal Media Director Julie Craft. Offerpal handles a massive virtual currency platform which can make developers some seriously good money. The CPA rate is very inpressive, see the video for details. Offerpal is used in several social media games and virtual worlds, it's a fascinating business model and very successful. Offerpal's full-service platform enables Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace publishers to monetize their social applications, online merchants to generate new leads and increase conversions, and advertisers to reach their target consumers. They have one of the largest networks of premium advertisers and over 500 uniquely engineered offers.

GoldMail - Nerd Stalker #19

Tom Hakel CEO of GoldMail speaks to Nerd Stalker, GoldMail demos incredibly well . GoldMail seems to bring together voice mail, visual presentation and email into one simple to use experience. The client side needs nothing more than a flash enabled web browser, and the author uses a windows desktop application to create these slick goldmails. GoldMail has taken an interesting approach to the business, they have conquered the enterprise space and now make the application available to individuals. The challenge I see is that there is no freemium model (to avoid advertising in the experience), instead they choose a monthly subscription approach.

SF New Tech and Nerd Stalker Partnership Announcement

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SF New Tech & Nerd Stalker Partners http://www.sfnewtech.com

Liveblogging from the NewTeeVee conf in SF

Nerd Stalker selected to cover NewTeeVee conference today.

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NewTeeVee conference Nerd Stalker aka Adolfo will be covering and liveblogging from the NewTeeVee conference in SF today around 12pm pst. http://www.nerdstalker.com

chi.mp - Nerd Stalker #18

I asked Anthony Eden (CTO of Hawaii based chi.mp) to help me with the dilemma so many of us had, that is, explaining just what chi.mp is and why we should care. I originally thought it was nothing more that a life streaming web application but nothing could be further from the truth. chi.mps current strengths lie in it's many features (they have many more on the way): OpenID Giving away it's top level .mp domain for FREE Ability to stream any feed you want Cool tagging system that allows you to display all your info in customized ways to different people chi.mp's features traditionally have been seen as very different, awesome but typically very disparate things. So the challenge posed to them is to somehow articulate and educate this to existing and prospective users. If they get that right than the future for identity management and chi.mp is very bright. See a live chi.mp demo here .

PBwiki - Nerd Stalker #17

Nerd Stalker attends the SF New Tech meetup where we got a chance to speak with Mark Christian, Software engineer at PBwiki . PBwiki was there to announce their new API with the hopes that developers will see it as a rich platform for wiki data pulls, push's, and more. PBwiki is the world's largest provider of hosted business and educational wikis. They host over 550,000 wikis, serve millions of users per month. They are making a push into the enterprise with Sharepoint squarely in their sites. See a live PBwiki demo .

Spot.us - Nerd Stalker #16

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We were one of the lucky few who got word that the Spot.us web application goes live today. We speak to Founder David Cohn at Project One in San Francisco about the breaking announcement. David was conducting research for Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business, when he thought that this concept could apply to journalism. Spot.us empowers both the general public and journalist to cover (and contribute to) the stories that they want, while circumventing the possible exclusion by traditional editors. This could very well be the new face of traditional news and we will be watching closely. See a demo of Spot.us .