Mashable Connect is Mashable’s annual destination conference that brings our community together for three days away to connect (offline!) in an intimate setting at the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World®.
Held in a unique location away from everyday distractions, this is a rare and valuable opportunity to be surrounded by digital leaders across industries.
At Mashable Connect you’ll spend time with Mashable’s passionate and influential community, hear from top speakers who will provide insight into the the technologies and trends that are shaping the next era of digital innovation, and get to spend time with the Mashable team.
Building on the success of last year’s Mashable Connect, this year’s conference will introduce new ideas on stage and even more opportunities to connect in meaningful ways.
To keep Mashable Connect as intimate as possible, only a limited amount of tickets are available. You won’t want to miss the opportunity to be a part of this year’s conference, so get your ticket now!
We’re excited to announce the initial line up of speakers below. Stay tuned for updates to the agenda!
Mashable Connect tickets include hotel accommodation, meals and refreshments, special events in the Disney Parks, exclusive networking opportunities and much more.
A limited number of sponsor opportunities are available for Mashable Connect. This is an excellent opportunity to get in front of Mashable’s passionate and influential audience. Contact sponsorships@mashable.com for opportunities.
A lot of us around the TUAW offices are big fans of everything that comes out of Tapbots, so when Tweetbot for iPhone came out we dutifully shelled out our bucks to get a decent Twitter app for our favorite phone. Just a little while ago we told you about version 2.0 of the iPhone app, and now we can spill the beans on the latest from Tapbots -- Tweetbot for iPad. We weren't expecting Tapbots to announce it quite so fast, but apparently they just could not wait a moment longer.
I won't do a complete review today, but will entice you with a few screenshots from the app. I was fortunate to be a beta tester for Tweetbot for iPad, and let it suffice for me to say that if you like Tweetbot on your iPhone, you're going to love it on the iPad.
Most of us are desperate to spend less time in our email inboxes, but the influx of messages keeps us battling for Inbox Zero. But what if someone told you the key to email efficiency was spending more time in your inbox? That’s the premise behind PowerInbox, a Cambridge startup that integrates apps into email, which today launched its API.
The new API will allow companies to develop apps to integrate their products and services with email messages, allowing them to use the medium not just to drive traffic, but actual engagement.
“Until today, people interacted with emails by hitting reply or forward, or by clicking on URLs to launch webpages – taking you outside the context of email,” explained Matt Thazhmon, founder and CEO of PowerInbox. “All this back-and-forth drains productivity and effectiveness. PowerInbox lets people stay where interaction begins – inside emails.”
With PowerInbox, if you get a follower notification from Twitter you can follow back right from your email interface rather than clicking and going to an external site. Ditto with Facebook commenting and number of other services. With the launch of its API, PowerInbox hopes to expand those offerings dramatically.
The company claims to boost email click rates from the typical 3-4% to 30% with its service.
PowerInbox currently supports Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail for both Chrome and Firefox users, and expects to add Outlook, Thunderbird, Safari, and Internet Explorer later this year.
Here’s the list of PowerInbox API launch partners:
Followup.cc: Enables one-click snoozing of emails for later review.
Fundraise: Allows donations inside emails.
NextWidgets: Browse store items inside emails.
OmniStrat: Enables response to SocialStrat panel activity within emails.
Senexx: Facilitates construction of enterprise knowledge inside emails.
Smak: Enables interacting with relationship alerts inside emails.
Vsnap: Allows Vsnap videos to be viewed within emails.
PowerInbox has raised a total of $1.9 million in seed funding from Atlas Venture, Longworth Venture Partners and Correlation Ventures, Egan Managed Capital, Founder Collective, Cloud Capital Partners, Ecosystem Ventures, and a number of angels.
Some users might balk at the idea of re-orienting our web lives back to email in an age where Twitter, Facebook, and others are supplanting many of its uses. But email isn’t going away – even if we sometimes wish it would – so why not make your inbox more efficient?
Nettle, a startup that has raised funding from Google Ventures, 500 Startups and others, is looking to make the act of going to the movies a more social experience. With the company’s free iOS app, MovieGoer, the startup wants to make the moviegoing experience more interactive.
The Moviegoer app allows you to view trailers, descriptions of the latest movies out in theaters and critics’ reviews. You can also see what movies are showing nearby your locations. Via the app, you can follow specific movies, sign in with Facebook and Twitter to see which movies your friends are going to, and comment on movies after viewing.
The app also includes a feature called MovieGoer Circle, which allows you to create a close network of friends and family with whom you share all of your moviegoing details with. The thought behind this particular part of the app is that you may only value the recommendations of your closest contacts when it comes to choosing and rating movies. As the startup explains, the app wants to create a set of trusted influencers for your moviegoing experience.
Basically, the app aims to be a one stop shop for the moviegoing experience. Not only does MovieGoer include showtimes for movies, but also highlights those showtimes that your MovieGoer Circle are going to. And users can record brief 15-second video reviews using their iPhone.
Founder Brian Dear explains that he believes the concept of “check-in” doesn’t works that well for movies because when you arrive at a theatre, usually the movie is about to start, so it doesn’t do much good to tell friends you are there if you expect them to then meet you. What makes more sense in the MovieGoer world is declaring intent, he explains, by saying you want to “go” to a movie hours or days in advance, and recording relevant information (reviews, etc) afterwards.
Our pals over at Instructables are always having one cool contest or another, and have given away some fabulous maker dream-prizes in the past including four Epilog laser cutters, now, in a series of annual contests. But with their new Make It Real Challenge, they have truly outdone themselves: The grand prize is an Objet30 from Israel’s Objet Geometries, which manufactures some of the highest-performing and most sought-after 3D printing equipment in the world. It’s described as a “desktop” model, but it’s priced like a luxury car at $51,995. Here are the juicy technical deets straight from Objet’s website:
Net Build Size: 11.57 x 7.58 x 5.85 in (294 x 192.6 x 148.6 mm)
Tray Size: 11.81 x 7.87 x 5.9 in (300 x 200 x 150 mm)
Resolution: 600 x 600 x 900 dpi
No. of Print Heads: 1 modeling head, 1 support head
Weight: 205 lbs (93 kg)
Size: 32.28 x 24.4 x 23.22 in (82.5 x 62 x 59 cm)
As if that weren’t enough, each of ten first prize winners gets a $4,000 Up! 3D printer, and each of twenty runners up gets a coupon for a single 3D printed object costing up to $1,000. The challenge is to “post an Instructable that shows how to turn a virtual item into a tangible object,” and the deadline is April 30. Details here. [Thanks, Randy!]
Just as rumors indicated yesterday, Amazon has announced a new licensing deal with Viacom that will add TV shows from its networks -- MTV, Comedy Central, BET, VH1, Spike, Nickelodeon and the rest -- to the Prime Instant Video service. There's still no word on any potential spinning off of the all-you-can-eat video portion from the rest of Amazon's Prime membership program, but it does bring the count of movies and TV shows available to around 15,000, up from the 13,000 cited recently. The details are in the press release after the break, but it appears Amazon will have many of the same selections Netflix obtained in its earlier deals, from MTV favorites like RJ Berger and The Hills to kids shows like Yo Gabba Gabba and iCarly.
Virgin Media's school report for both last year and last quarter has been pretty positive for the Branson-Branded service. It pulled down £4 billion ($6.3 billion) in revenue for the year and made its first ever profit with a tidy £76 million ($120 million). In the last quarter alone, it added 273,000 TiVo subscribers, a figure that doubled its overall figure to 435,000. Favorite shows included Coronation Street, which was most caught-up with and The Vampire Diaries, which was the most binge-watched series. It's also clear that us Britons do love some super-fast broadband, 133,000 users plumped for speeds over 30MB in Q4. Flush with cash, it's going to buy back some shares and double consumers broadband speeds as it promised in January -- which we suppose is a fair way to spend your first profit, even if we'd have preferred to go to Disneyland.
Whether you just need a little help getting out of bed after a long night or a nap, or you just like the idea of a wake-up call in the morning, WakeupDialer will call you for free and play back one of 30 random messages recorded by Stephen Fry to coax you out of bed. More »
The design wizards at Twelve South have come up with another unique and useful accessory for Apple gear. This time, they're introducing the HoverBar (US$79.99), a mounting clamp and flexible bar that floats an iPad 2 (or several) next to your iMac or Apple monitor.
The HoverBar can be clamped onto the upright of an iMac or Apple display, to a tabletop, or any other surface up to an inch thick. Your iPad 2 sits in a plastic clip that's mounted on a swivel ball so it can be turned to any angle. In the video below, one idle youth taking time out from doing his homework uses the iPad / HoverBar combo as a steering wheel for Real Racing. That's a different use case!
Many people will want to use the HoverBar-mounted iPad as a communications device, displaying email or providing a way to do FaceTime conferencing without the dreaded "nose vision" view. Used with an app like Air Display ($9.99), you can even have a Mac window displayed on your iPad.
We hope to get a HoverBar soon for a full review. Until then, enjoy the video and visit the Twelve South website.
We’re just one month away from the first Web Innovators Group event of 2012 on Monday March 5th, which you can register for here. And in addition to our typical format, we have a couple additional sessions which will ensure this one is not to be missed! Our program for the evening will be a follows:
7pm – MAIN DISH DEMOS. We’re continuing with our typical format of startups presenting to the crowd as “Main Dishes” in the grand ballroom with the “Side Dishes” exhibiting in the skyline suites. If your early stage web or mobile startup is interested demo’ing as a Main or Side Dish, please reach out to me with the name of your company/site/product, a brief overview and description, and a link to a live site or password-protected beta demo site – or just complete the application form here on our website.
8pm – FOUNDER EXTRAORDINAIRE STEVE PAPA. Steve Papa, Founder and Chairman ofEndeca, which was sold to Oracle for a rumored $1B+, will share his founding stories in an innovative “reverse panel” session where the audience asks questions. We will have more details to follow about how YOU can ask questions of Steve, who founded a small web startup in Kendall Square which grew into a monster company over the following decade.
9pm – ANGELHACK GRAND PRIZE AWARDS CEREMONY. AngelHack, the largest US hackathon with $50K in prizes, is coming to Boston. The weekend before there will be a 30 hour hackathon at the CIC, simultaneous with teams between in San Francisco. You can learn more and register to participate in the competition with a discount (code: ‘webinno’) on angelHack’s registration page. We at the Web Innovators Group will be co-hosting the Grand Prize Awards ceremony at the end of WebInno with a live feed in conjunction with teams and judges in other cities.
If you’re going to attend this unique WebInno33, don’t forget to register and tweet about the event.