Tech~Surf~Blog

#Minnesota #Startup CRAM to Launch at #CES Next Week

GraemeThickins — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:00:53 -0600

Here's the news announcement, which, though dated Monday, January 9, hit the company's newly launched web site today:

CRAM Worldwide is unveiling "Venu," an entertainment game changer, at CES

Las Vegas, NV – January 09, 2012 – CRAM Worldwide, LLC., today unveiled Venu, a portable entertainment gateway of mind bending capacity. CRAM Worldwide, LLC., located in CES booth # 73308, is demonstrating the product throughout the 2012 International CES.

Venu is the world's first portable home entertainment system that uses high capacity secure hard drives to deliver entire libraries of content to your home. The Venu media player gives you hundreds of movies, thousands of songs, entire television series, all in the highest definition, instantly, to your smart phone, tablet, TV, computer or other device. Venu is completely portable and provides an “untethered” content solution; it streams entertainment locally from the secure, removable cartridge. “Venu is the future of entertainment. It delivers quality, choice, convenience and portability. This is a game changer in how entertainment is delivered,” said Keith Pagan, Chief Marketing Officer and former Disney Executive. Venu is a subscription-based service that, in exchange for a small monthly fee, offers consumers virtually limitless content. Users can choose to stock their libraries by ordering online and having their choices streamed to them or by mailing in their drive, after which they will receive a new drive loaded with their selections. Once they have their library of content they can use ThoughtFlow™ technology to search their library and choose a selection. With ThoughtFlow™, compounding weighted parameters shift with each click allowing the consumer to find new content based on previous selections.

Venu is also secure. Venu is tamper respondent and tamper evident, which means any attempt to bypass its security results in immediate cryptographic disk erasure within milliseconds. Matt Fairchild, Chief Technology Officer said: “If my mom can steal content, the industry has a problem. CRAM’s security components are Department of Defense NSA Type-1 qualified. My mom has a problem now. “

CRAM is currently signing up the first 10,000 users to preview Venu. CRAM anticipates that Venu will be available for consumers in the second half of 2012. To see and experience Venu while at CES, stop by booth #73308 located in the Eureka Park Techzone at the Venetian.

CRAM Worldwide is lead by a seasoned team of executives from the technology, software and entertainment industries, among them former executives from CBS News, Scripps, Sony, Best Buy, Food Network, Disney, HP and Hardcore Computer.

CRAM is the information security industry's leading platform for secure digital content delivery. Headquartered in White Bear Lake, Mn., CRAM provides a portable content device and security application to entertainment content publishers, educational institutions, government agencies, medical and healthcare companies. To learn more about CRAM visit www.cramworld.com, read the security blog: http://www.cramworld.com/it, read the entertainment blog: http://cramworld.com/aroundtheworld, or follow on Twitter @CRAMWorldwide

My Top 10 Blog Posts of 2011

GraemeThickins — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 22:45:03 -0600

As the year comes to a close, I decided to humor myself by taking a look back and choosing my favorite blog posts for 2011. (It's New Year's Eve and I'm home sick, so no partying for me.) Here's the list -- in chronological order, the first one from February, and the last from early December. I'm just showing the first paragraph or two of each of these posts below (or, for some of the video interview posts, just a screen grab of the subject), then a link to read the full post.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Blogging Gone Wild

People who've been reading this blog for a while may know I started it in 2005. That's a long time in blog years, and it's resulted in a monstrous archive of what people now call "long-form blogging" -- at least it is for me, as one, lone writer. My quick tally is about 400,000-500,000 words (several books' worth), and I can't even begin to guess the *time* I have into it. Let's just say it's been countless thousands of hours that I've spent filling this space -- planning, thinking, writing, editing, covering events, managing comments, and, not the least, all the time spent in the behind-the-scenes (pain in the ass) administration of the site. That last part is especially a challenge with Typepad, the platform I chose way back when. Unfortunately, it hasn't kept up with bloggers' needs, especially from a UI/ease-of-use standpoint. (But the time to convert my blog to WordPress, as I might like, has just been way too much of a time hurdle to consider if I want to keep paying the bills with the income I have to generate in the non-blogging part of my business life.) The whole notion of "micro" blogging wasn't even in our minds back in 2005. But, of course, those of you who follow me regularly know I've been posting the majority of my online content for the past few years on a certain site that starts with a "T". .... Read the rest of the post here.

Live Blog: DEMO Spring 2011

I'm back at DEMO doing another live-blog. This is the 12th time I've reported on DEMO, and I've been doing the last few by using the "Cover It Live" app (see window below). Produced by the IDG Enterprise events group in conjunction with VentureBeat, the DEMO conferences in the United States and China focus on emerging technologies and new product innovations, which are hand selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launchpad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. For more information on the DEMO conferences, visit DEMO.com. The conference kicks off officially at 9:15 am Pacific today, when my live-blogging will begin in earnest. Here's the agenda. .... Read the rest of the post here.

Glue Conference: A Chat With Mark Suster, GRP Partners

Watch the video here.

Glue Conference: Listen In On a Great Chat Between Terry Jones/FluidInfo and Seth Levine/Foundry Group

One of the things I love most about attending great events like Glue is getting to be a fly on the wall in some awesome conversations. Except, for this one, I had my brand-new review unit Olympus LS-20M at the ready (having been recording interviews all day), so was able to capture this chat literally on the spur of the moment in HD video and high-quality audio, just by unobtrusively aiming the recorder. Terry and Seth went on and on in a really interesting exhange about Terry's big-data startup FluidInfo (investors include Esther Dyson and Tim O'Reilly), so I just kept shooting and taking it all in. Give a listen. .... Watch the video here.

George Reese on "The Cloud's Shining Moment," Four Days Later

The major Amazon Web Services outage that began this past Thursday morning was unlike anything before it. Countless AWS customers, big and small, went down, many for days. Surprisingly, other biggies like Netflix, SmugMug, and Twilio had little or no disruption. One hungers to know why...

Over the weekend, George Reese, a cloud expert and author (and CTO of cloud-management tools company enStratus), wrote a fascinating post on O'Reilly about what some would call a cloud disaster -- entitling it, ironically enough, "The Cloud's Shining Moment." George has a unique perspective on the cloud, and a large following. .... Read the rest of the post her e.

Live Blog: DEMO Fall 2011

It's time, gang -- for another one of my conference live-blogs, this time for DEMOfall. Once again, as I have for the last several events I've covered, I'm using the "Cover It Live" app (see window below). With more than 20,000 technologies reviewed and 1,500 companies selected to launch on the DEMO stage over the past 20 years, DEMO has continually searched the globe to find innovation where it lives. The DEMO Team has logged millions of miles to uncover technology '"diamonds in the rough. Some of the companies that have launched at DEMO include Salesforce.com, Netscape, VMware, TiVo, Skype (for mobile handsets), WebEx, Jajah, Boingo Wireless, BuzzLogic, Vringo, and many more. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, helping its presenting companies secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. .... Read the rest of the post here.

Defrag 2011: My Interview of Robert Stephens, CTO, Best Buy

It was great to catch my friend Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad and now CTO of Best Buy, this morning at breakfast on Day 2 of Defrag. It was right before his opening keynote, and he gave me kind of a sneak peak to his talk. We covered a lot of topics, and could have gone on even longer. ... Here's the 10-minute interview.

Defrag 2011: My Interview of James Altucher

I had a chance to catch James at breakfast this morning, on Day 1 of Defrag. Could have talked to him for an hour... fascinating guy (he's been an entrepreneur, VC, hedge fund manager, and is a prolific writer -- author of several books and a regular TechCrunch contributor). Gonna have him autograph his latest book, "I Was Blind But Now I See," which we got in our Defrag swag bag. ... Watch the video here.

My Live Blog: Defrag 2011 - the 5th Annual!

Wow, time flies. Seems like only yesterday we gathered in downtown Denver for the first Defrag conference in the fall of 2007. Now I'm about to experience my fifth, and each has been better than the one before. A couple years ago, the venue was switched to the OMNI Interlocken Resort in nearby Broomfield, where I arrived today about noon. Why is Defrag special? Here's how conference organizer Eric Norlin (Twitter name: @defrag) explained it in a recent blog post: "It’s about being passionate about the learning process… that turns out to be what is different about Defrag." .... Read the rest of the post here.

Why I'm Returning My KindleFire (and Saving My Money for an iPad 3)

I picked up a KindleFire last week, a couple days after Amazon started selling them. I had pre-ordered one at my local Best Buy store. I didn't really need one, of course -- I've been a happy iPad user since Day One. (And the same for the iPhone since its Day One. It's no secret I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Apple fanboy.) The iPad has changed my online life. I could not live without it. But, heck, I'm a tech blogger, an analyst, a reviewer, and the KindleFire was cheap. (Sometimes, as a blogger, a review unit shows up at my door, but not this time.) For the low, low price, below Amazon's cost, I saw the launch of the Fire as an excuse for me to finally acquire an Android device and see what life is like on the other side. And I liked the idea of the Amazon-curated app store, which would cut down on all the rogue crap-apps and malware in the Android world. Well, the experiment didn't last long. I was not impressed. .... Read the rest of the post here.

That's it -- my 10 best posts from 2011. (Not counting the ones I contribute to Minnov8.com -- check those out, too.) Here's to another good year of banging on the keyboard in 2012. Happy New Year, everyone!

Defrag 2011: My Interview of Robert Stephens, CTO, Best Buy

GraemeThickins — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:52:20 -0600

It was great to catch my friend Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad and now CTO of Best Buy, this morning at breakfast. It was right before his opening keynote, and he gave me kind of a sneak peak to his talk. We covered a lot of topics, and could have gone on even longer... here's the 10-minute interview:

Defrag 2011: My Interview of Bill Heuston, ViaWest

GraemeThickins — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:06:50 -0600

Defrag 2011: My Interview of Eric Norlin

GraemeThickins — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:10:37 -0600

Defrag 2011: Opening Video

GraemeThickins — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:14:23 -0600

This one rocked! Wake up, everybody....

Defrag 2011: My Interview of James Altucher

GraemeThickins — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:07:55 -0600

I had a chance to catch James at breakfast this morning. Could have talked to him for an hour... fascinating guy, prolific writer. Gonna have him autograph his latest book, "I Was Blind But Now I See," which we got in our Defrag swag bag.

My Live Blog: Defrag 2011 - the 5th Annual!

GraemeThickins — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:31:42 -0600

Wow, time flies. Seems like only yesterday we gathered in downtown Denver for the first Defrag conference in the fall of 2007. Now I'm about to experience my fifth, and each has been better than the one before. A couple years ago, the venue was switched to the OMNI Interlocken Resort in nearby Broomfield, where I arrived today about noon.

Why is Defrag special? Here's how conference organizer Eric Norlin (Twitter name: @defrag) explained it in a recent blog post:

"It’s about being passionate about the learning process… that turns out to be what is different about Defrag."

Eric pointed out that there are all kinds of conferences about cloud computing, or social business, or enterprise 2.0, or mobile, or whatever. At these, "you’ll hear about benefits and case studies and tactics and feature sets. If that’s what you need for some project, great. But that’s not what you’ll get at Defrag… We’re really down to wanting to find amazing people that are passionate about something that they’re learning, and then giving them the room to tell everyone about their passion."

So that's it in a nutshell. As Eric says, "amazing ideas, amazing people, amazing conversations — and a ton of passionate obsessions around what people are pursuing. I don’t know how to explain it beyond that. It’s just different. You just won’t find it many other places (PopTech, TED, etc)." Well said, Eric, and it's been my privilege to blog or live-tweet every single Defrag event, and meet many of those amazing people.

It's Tuesday afternoon now, and I'll be starting my live blog of "Defrag 5" soon, as we begin gathering in the hotel lobby (yes, including in the famous Tap Room!). Soon after that, many attendees, myself included, will be going off to offsite dinners put on by certain sponsors. My "Cover It Live" live-blog window (below) will contain all my tweets and those of others' containing the hashtag #defragcon. The volume of tweets in the live-blog will of course greatly increase when the conference itself fires up in the morning. (Here's the entire agenda.) In addition, I'll be doing other live-blog updates that will appear within the Cover It Live window, interspersed with the entire #defragcon Twitter stream.

Allowing the entire tweet stream of the event to appear in the live-blog makes it much more interesting, I think. And, once the event closes, the whole "conversation" will then be flipped around and archived in proper chronological order, which is pretty cool for anyone who may want to refer back. There are always so many great Twitter exchanges going on during Defrag.

The link for this blog post will remain permanent for the live-blog archive. That's the big advantage for me to document a conference with this live-blogging tool, compared to just tweeting the event. (Have you tried going back to get an archive of your tweetstream for a certain day or event? Good luck.) Plus the fact that I can do posts longer than 140 characters. If you like it, let me know!

&lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=c14842f6d2" _mce_href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=c14842f6d2" &gt;Defrag 2011 Live-Blog&lt;/a&gt;

MN-Based Cloud Startup enStratus Secures Series A VC Investment

GraemeThickins — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 22:41:23 -0500

An SEC filing reported by MarketBrief has revealed that Minneapolis-based enStratus Networks has raised $3.5 million in venture capital. The total size of the round is $4.5 million, a reliable source told me, but the investor for the additional $1 million has not yet been announced.

Founded in 2009, enStratus provides a cloud infrastructure management solution for deploying and managing enterprise-class applications in public, private, and hybrid clouds. It counts among its customers Korea Telcom (KT), SAIC, Predictix, Quantum Retail, and The Cloud Security Alliance.

I confirmed that the lead investor is El Dorado Ventures of Menlo Park, California. General Partner Jeff Hinck, based here in Minneapolis, is joining the enStratus board of directors.

More to come as I learn about it, which will likely be next week, in conjunction with enStratus' appearances at two key industry events: Defrag in Denver and Cloud Expo in Santa Clara.

In another recent enStratus development, James Urquhart, a cloud strategist and evangelist at Cisco, revealed on his Twitter page on October 28 that he would be leaving Cisco to join enStratus as VP of Product Strategy.

UPDATE: I confirmed this morning (Nov 4) that the SEC filing only appeared yesterday as the result of an accidental early submission. A formal news release from enStratus announcing the Series A may come as early as Monday, presumably identifying the other investor.

(Disclosure: The writer was a consultant to enStratus during its launch phase.)

SXSW Adding Great New Wrinkle for 2012: 'Startup Village'

GraemeThickins — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 15:56:50 -0500

You've likely heard of the "SXSW Accelerator," which has been a feature for several years at the huge, annual South By Southwest festival, held every March in Austin, Texas. Well, here's something new for 2012: SXSW has announced the creation of a home base for startups, VCs/investors, media, and other entrepreneurial-minded attendees to gather, mix, and mingle during the Interactive portion of the event. It's called SXSW Startup Village.

The 19th annual SXSW Interactive Festival takes place March 9-13, 2012. Startup Village will include the Accelerator program, targeted panels, meetups, lounges, and mentoring/coaching sessions, and will primarily be located on the fourth floor of the Austin Downtown Hilton, making it easy for the startup crowd to find the programming and networking opportunities most important to them.

Want to hang out with startups of the quality of Siri (which won the Accelerator's web category in 2010, then was acquired by Apple) and Hipmunk (the 2011 winner)? Then this is the place for you! I'm sure planning to attend.

I spoke recently via Skype with Chris Valentine (photo), coordinator of the SXSW Startup Village, and asked him some questions. How big is SXSW Interactive? He told me about 10,000 people attended the last one. And he noted it has an "international scope." How many startups applied to last year's SXSW Accelerator? About 400 in various categories, and that was narrowed down to 40 who were invited to present at the event. Who were the winners last year? Here's a link announcing the seven winners in 2011, which includes two that were music-related (there's also an Accelerator program for the music portion of the festival, which follows the interactive event). For the 2012 Accelerator, Valentine said 56 companies will get to present, due the the fact that new categories have been added, including Mobile and Health.

----

[Timeout for a Minnesota Connection: At last year's SXSW Accelerator, Minnesota gaming startup OONQR was a finalist in the Entertainment category. Cofounder and CEO Justin Peck told me that his company's SXSW experience "exceeded our expectations." He was impressed that the Accelerator program "made room for a tiny midwestern startup in their lineup of successful, well-established companies." He said their trip to Austin wouldn't have been possible without the two free tickets they got to SXSW as a result of being accepted to present at the Accelerator. "I'm glad to see they're expanding it. Startup Village sounds like promising addition to the program."]

UPDATE: Chris of course remembered the QONQR guys and spoke highly of their startup. Then I brought up how many Minnesotans have been attending SXSW Interactive for years -- hundreds went last year. Many gang up in cars and drive down, and some even rent houses to save on accommodation expenses! Chris seemed surprised when I told him we have one of the largest interactive marketing communities in the entire country. The Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) has more than 1300 members and holds the largest annual event of its kind, right here in MInneapolis: the "MIMA Summit." It attracts more than 1000 attendees every fall. My coverage of the recent event, with my colleagues at Minnov8.com, is here, here, and here.

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The SXSW people define the purpose of the new Startup Village as "uniting the startup, entrepreneur, and investor communities under one roof for focused programming and networking opportunities during SXSW Interactive."

Valentine explained: “Over the last few years, startups and the entrepreneurs who nurture them have become a vital part of the SXSW Interactive festival." He said SXSW wants these attendees to learn, network, and share their experiences, and to foster an environment of innovation and collaboration. "We’re magnifying that atmosphere by converging startup-specific programming, events, and the SXSW Accelerator program in one dedicated location.”

Startup Village panel programming will consist of discussions and workshops specifically designed to educate budding and current entrepreneurs on best practices and lessons learned. Startup Village will also feature mentoring/coaching sessions, lounge areas, and designated meetups for attendees to network with some of today’s up-and-coming startups, seasoned entrepreneurs, and investors.

The 2012 SXSW Accelerator competition kicks off its two-day Interactive showcase on Monday, March 12, while the SXSW Music Accelerator, which spotlights the latest in music technologies, takes place on Wednesday, March 14. For companies wishing to participate in the Accelerator program, applications are being accepted through November 18. To apply for the Interactive Accelerator, visit http://sxsw.com/interactive/accelerator/enter, and to apply for the Music Accelerator, visit http://sxsw.com/music/accelerator/enter.

Startup Village programming will be open to SXSW Interactive, Gold, and Platinum registrants. SXSW music registrants will be admitted to Startup Village programming and events on Tuesday, March 13, 2012. For more information, visit www.sxsw.com/interactive.

MN Startups Do Their Thing at #Minnedemo

GraemeThickins — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:27:55 -0500

Several hundred tech lovers crammed into Schulze Hall at the University of St. Thomas in downtown Minneapolis last night and challenged the air conditioning on another day of near-record highs in the state, for the latest edition of the quasi-quarterly Minnedemo event. Luckily, there was plenty of cold beer — thank you, sponsors — and a damn nice appetizer buffet as well. Nothing brings out a crowd more than free beer and food… oh, and a chance to sit in a large, crowded auditorium and listen to startup pitches for half the evening, while you overhear others in the lobby having fun and drinking beer. I decided to join the outliers after only one demo, exiting the auditorium for what I thought would be a just a while — but then I never made it back in. Oh, well, I’d heard enough startup pitches in recent days and weeks to make my head explode, anyway (including some of those on the evening’s agenda), so opting for schmoozing in the lobby seemed like the sane thing to do.

And it did prove to be a better bet for me, and for several of the folks I did that schmoozing with. Wow, there were so many great conversations and introductions brokered, my head was spinning. Or was that the beer? No matter, a good tech time was had by all. And you can read all about those startups that pitched in the auditorium here. A brief stop at the after-party (on the outdoor patio on the second-floor of nearby Brit’s Pub) put a nice capper for me on a very pleasant — warm! — evening, blabbing with so many of the key players in our awesome Minnesota startup community. Thank you, Minnedemo organizers and sponsors, for another great get-together!

Minnedemo 2011 via steve borsch on Vimeo.

MN-Based EduTech Startup KidBlog Now Reaching One Million Users

GraemeThickins — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:40:48 -0500

Yesterday, I stopped into the EduTech Minnesota conference at the U of M. I wanted to catch up with my friends Matt Hardy and Dan Flies, cofounders of Kidblog.org, and hear about the latest with their startup.

It turns out, of the 10 startups that were selected to present at the event, none even comes close to the level of adoption these guys have achieved to date, which they announced at the event: 1,000,000 students using the platform, in more than 80,000 classrooms. And all that from a startup that began as just a sideline for Matt to use in his own classroom!

Here's my interview:

The founders describe their creation this way: Kidblog is a platform that provides students with an authentic, engaging, and interactive learning experience. It's designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with his or her own, unique blog. It has simple but powerful tools that allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over their students' blogs. And a teacher can set up a class with no student email addresses.

Matt likes to say it's "built by a teacher, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the blogging process." He also points out that teachers who've tried other blogging platforms (perhaps with limited success), such as Blogger, Edublogs, or Wordpress.com, "will notice the Kidblog difference immediately."

Best of luck to this emerging, homegrown Minnesota edutech company!

Something Amazing Happened at #EduTechMN Yesterday - Steve Jobs Was in the Room

GraemeThickins — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:11:27 -0500

I felt it. I didn't know it then, but it may have been at the precise moment Steve was passing. I was sitting in a room of about 100 people, mid-afternoon, listening to a panel of educators at the EduTech MN conference at the University of Minnesota. I was actually finishing a blog post on my MacBook Air, and hadn't even intended to stay for the panel (the startup pitches were over).

But I was surprisingly drawn in by the discussion. I was blown away by what these people, senior educators, were saying -- showing so much passion, speaking from the heart, talking about how kids are learning today. They just lit up as they described how the new tablet and mobile technologies are opening up worlds for these kids like nothing they'd ever seen before. The iPad, the iPod Touch, and all the great software these Apple devices have engendered.

I found myself beaming from ear to ear as I listened to them describe their real-life experiences, with such excitement in their voices. These aren't boring educators, I thought! These are really dedicated, committed people who work on the front lines, whose worlds revolve around how our children learn, and how they can make that process better for them, every single day. And, thanks to technology and a certain company named Apple, they have more and more amazing tools to help them do that. It was a special experience for me, as someone not involved much in the world of education. I'm so glad I stayed.

I sat there and thought to myself -- right at that very moment -- "Wow, would Steve Jobs be proud to be hearing this right now."

I like to think he was.

Steve, you didn't just change technology, media, music, and retailing forever. You changed education, too -- in a big, big way. We thank you. We will greatly miss you.

But we know we'll see the mark you made on this world for a long, long time to come, in the eyes of children everywhere.

[Left to right on the panel: Jesse Thorstad, technology specialist, Fergus Falls school district; Dave Eisenmann, director of instructional tech, Minnetonka school district; Jennifer Sly, MN Historical Society; and Jay Haugen, Superintendent, Farmington school district. The panel was moderated by State Senator Terri Bonoff.]

DEMO Fall: a chat with Punit Shah, CEO/Cofounder, Zazu

GraemeThickins — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:07:23 -0500

DEMO Fall: a chat with Sean McCoy, CEO, Cloud.cm (student Alpha Pitch company)

GraemeThickins — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 22:56:16 -0500

DEMO Fall: a chat with Abhi Chauduri, Director-Products & UX, Whodini

GraemeThickins — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:28:19 -0500

Here's what I wrote about these guys on my live blog in real-time, as they presented on-stage...

Whodini (Los Altos, CA) definitely gets one of the coolest name awards. Its software automates the discovery of expert coworkers. It plugs into email clients and reduces important emails to core topics, representing expertise. Topics are then securely uploaded to the cloud and put through algorithms comparing them to the entire company and creating the user's "enterprise work profile." Recently closed a $2 million Series A with angel investors.

DEMO Fall: a chat with Dani Alyamour, CEO/Founder, Looping

GraemeThickins — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:52:27 -0500

Apologies for the sound quality on this one. It seems the FlipHD mic is not the greatest for picking up an interviewee three feet away in an open, noisy showfloor like this. (Note: this is my first conference recording with a Flip.) Also, in the middle of the interview, my subject can't get a network on his cell phone, so he switches to another one. I would have edited that out, but I'm about as good at video editing as I am as Dancing With the Stars. So, hey, this is it!

Here's what I live-blogged about Looping in real-time when Dani was on-stage (my entire live-blog of DEMO Fall is here) ....

Looping.com from Imovation (SF) lets any business build a loyalty program, allowing customers to collect points and redeem awards with only a mobile phone! -- and it works with any kind of phone, not just smartphones. No more carrying loyalty cards! There's no NFC, nothing to install, no data plans, no GPS, no camera required..."no problem!" This is very cool, an impressive product -- I saw it live-demoed earlier, and the founder did a knock-out job of explaining it inside of six minutes.

DEMO Fall: a chat with Udi Barone, CTO/Cofounder, BeesAndPollen (Honeylizer)

GraemeThickins — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:02:04 -0500

DEMO Fall: a chat with Rachel Delacour, CEO, WeAreCloud (France)

GraemeThickins — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:26:25 -0500

DEMO Fall: a chat with Jostein Svendsen, CEO, WeVideo

GraemeThickins — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:11:05 -0500

DEMO Fall: a chat with Alicia Perez, CEO, Libelium (Spain)

GraemeThickins — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 11:24:37 -0500

DEMO draws a global audience. Here's an interview with a visitor from Spain, the CEO/founder of a very successful tech startup, with customers in 45 countries including the U.S., and now looking to establish a presence here. Libelium designs and manufactures hardware technology for the implementation of wireless sensor networks and mesh networks.

DEMO Fall: 'Startup Weekend' Video and Winner On Stage

GraemeThickins — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:04:12 -0500

The weekend prior to DEMO Fall, the Startup Weekend organization held a "mega" event like none they had ever done before. Sponsored by DEMO, StartupAmerica, Microsoft, and several others, it was held nearby at the Mountain View Microsoft campus. Here's a cool two-minute video that was shown on Day 2 of DEMO Fall, followed by an onstage talk from the winner, AdGame.

And here's a story later published on VentureBeat (by Dylan Tweney):

AdGame goes from zero to startup hero in one week.

My DEMO Fall 2011 'Top 10' List ... okay, 15!

GraemeThickins — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:35:51 -0500

Really hard to choose favorites out of the 80 great companies that presented. I thought about which ones I'd pick for my top ten, and it turned out to be 15! But all 80 companies were winners, going through the process they did and getting up on that national (global!) stage, pouring out their hearts about their creations... hats off to all of them!!

Here are the 15 that most struck me... based on three criteria: (1) a great onstage presentation that got their story across well, (2) a technology or consumer service that could change the world or is meeting a major market need, and (3) a product or service that personally resonated with me, that I would use myself. Listed alphabetically:

1. Aurasma *

2. BringShare

3. DailyDigital

4. Gust

5. IconFinder

6. TasteJive

7. LifeCrowd

8. Me&MyMoney

9. MeMeTales

10. Needium

11. Stroome

12. Unrabble

13. Voyurl

14. Whodini

15. WeVideo **

* People's Choice winner and one of five Demo God award winners. **Also a Demo God award winner.

I had the good fortune, in all the rush, to capture video interviews of five of these companies. And I sure wish I could have gotten to more of them. But time is at a real premium at DEMO -- it's a content firehose like no other! All my videos -- including a total of 11 founder interviews -- are right here on this blog (one per post). I still have about 10 videos to upload (7 of them DEMO company founders), and am continuing to post them in the order I shot them.

For a look at DEMO Fall in pictures, see my Flickr set. And stay tuned to this blog for more DEMO posts. All my posts tagged "DEMOfall 2011" will continue to be available at this link.

DEMO Fall: a chat with Me&MyMoney

GraemeThickins — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 23:33:39 -0500

Robot on the DEMO showfloor! .. the 'AMP' from Ologic

GraemeThickins — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:38:05 -0500

For more on this cool product that launched at DEMO Fall, click this link and watch Venturebeat's Jolie O'Dell interview the founders:

Here’s how those smartphone-powered robots work & when you can buy them (video)

DEMO Fall - Day 2 Opener

GraemeThickins — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 10:20:24 -0500

DEMO Fall: a chat with David Rose, CEO, Gust

GraemeThickins — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:34:01 -0500

DEMO Fall, Day 1 - Party Lights!

GraemeThickins — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:28:58 -0500

DEMO Fall: a chat with Kevin Watson, CEO & Cofounder, Unrabble

GraemeThickins — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:30:23 -0500

DEMO Fall Day 1: best pitch opener (nice video!) - Schedulicity

GraemeThickins — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:07:31 -0500