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Meet the Companies Demo’ing at WebInno34: Cloze, ImpulseSave, & MyReci

The demo lineup for WebInno34 was announced this morning by organizer David Beisel of NextView Ventures. If you’ve never been to WebInno, it’s a fun gathering for internet and mobile startups to pitch and get feedback. The previous WebInno was my first, and I was impressed at the mixture of structure and informality, as well as by the size. If you’re in internet startups in Boston, it’s an event worth your time.

WebInno34 will take place on June 25th at 6:30pm, at the Royal Senesta in Cambridge. Register here.

The structure of the night includes a series of short pitches from “main dish” startups, as well as networking prior, during which “side dish” companies are stationed around the room and are available to show you their product. It’s a nice way of keeping the agenda short while still letting you see a variety of companies.

Here are the WebInno34 Main Dishes:

Cloze - Dan Foody – Cloze analyzes your contacts as well as your email history to make online professional connections easier.
ImpulseSave - Phil Fremont-Smith & John Mileham – These guys want to make saving as easy, and impulsive, as spending. I covered them here.
MyReci - Vijay Nathan & Le Zhang – MyReci is a community for sharing recipes, but with a Pinterest feel.

And during the networking portion of the evening, the “side dishes” below will be around for you to check out:

ByteLight - Dan Ryan, Aaron Ganick, Kelby Green & Manny Malandrakis – ByteLight does indoor location technology.
GivingSomeThing - Dave Campbell & Mike Stone – The wedding registry model, but for charities. I profiled them here.
Ovuline - Paris Wallace & Alex Baron – A free ovulation calendar.
Specctr - Chen Blume & Dmitriy – “Specctr supercharges Adobe Fireworks by automating spec generation.”
Stix Mobile - William Ho – Turn your mobile photos into stickers.
Trendslide - Jeffrey Vocell & Benjamin Petrin – A mobile intelligence and decision-making solution.

Again, go register! And hope to see you there.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/06/11/meet-the-companies-demoing-at-webinno34-cloze-...

Introducing The Apollo: a Dress Shirt That’s Wrinkle Free, Odor Free & Made with Materials from NASA

Ministry of Supply’s mission has always been to create clothes that feel like their customers’ second skin. By compiling the perfect blend of athletic gear and business apparel, they’ve created a set of well-engineered men’s dress shirts and undershirts that wick away moisture, all while remaining wrinkle-free. Talk about making it easy.

“People can put us on, and not really think about anything else,” said Ministry of Supply co-founder Kit Hickey in a recent interview. “We make our clients feel like they’re secret agents.” And that idea is what led to “The Agent Shirt,” one of the company’s first products.

Since April, the company’s been accepted into MassChallenge and getting ready to unveil a new shirt that went live on Kickstarter today. Called “the Apollo,” the shirt is focused on four key areas: heat management, moisture management, odor control and dynamic motion.

“When you’re moving around during the day, your body’s constantly reacting to the environment,” says fellow co-founder Gihan Amarasiriwardena. “So, let’s make a fabric that can adapt with your body.”

The Apollo features the same technology that NASA uses in its space suits, helping to control your body temperature. Called phase-change materials (PCMs), the shirt can adapt depending on where you are. Absorbing heat on your way into work? The shirt keeps you cooler. Feeling a chill when you’re sitting in your office’s cold A/C? The shirt warms you back up.

Even better — when you’re sweating, the fiber in the shirt is wicking moisture away from your body. So you can be as nervous as you want on that first date without having to worry about sweat stains. Or odor. Why? Because The Apollo’s anti-microbial coating takes care of that for you, too. Just please don’t use that as an excuse to skip showering after you work out at the gym.

Speaking of the gym, while you might not wear a dress shirt to the gym, you could wear one of Ministry of Supply’s shirts if you needed to. They’ve designed their shirts with “your motion in mind,” meaning it remains tucked in all day, even while you’re standing up, shaking hands and skipping merrily down the street.

“It all comes back to creating clothes that are your second skin,” Amarasiriwardena says.

The pieces are all in place to make The Apollo shirt a reality, from the fabric to manufacturing, the team just wants to make sure it’s a product their customers really want, which is why they went to Kickstarter.

“Kickstarter is a great way to prove that a demand for this actually exists,” Amarasiriwardena admits. “We know we can make it happen, we just want to see people want it.”

To Hickey, Kickstarter is the place where people go for new products focused on design and technology. The Apollo embodies aspects of both.

The team’s currently trying to raise $30,000 in 32 days. Curious to learn more before hopping on board and donating money? Just check out the video below. But let me remind you: no sweat stains, no odors and no wrinkles. What more do you need?

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/06/08/introducing-the-apollo-a-dress-shirt-thats-wri...

How the Arab World Uses Facebook and Twitter [INFOGRAPHICS]

Social media has been often touted for the role it played in the popular uprisings that have spread across the Arab world since December 2010. Despite the buzz, you may be surprised that only 0.26% of the Egyptian population, 0.1% of the Tunisian population and 0.04% of the Syrian population are active on Twitter.

Of all the countries in North Africa and the Middle East, Twitter is most popular in Kuwait, where 8.6% of the population is active users, defined as those who tweet at least once per month. Facebook's more popular throughout the region. In its most popular country, the U.A.E., some 36.18% of the population is on Facebook.

Khaled ElAhmad (who goes by the Internet alias ShusmoContinue reading...

More About: Arab Spring, Facebook, infographic, trending, Twitter, World

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/06/08/arab-world-facebook-twitter/?utm_source=feedbu...

Video: How does politics change in the age of the real-time social web?

Politics used to be a very controlled and almost theatrical process, with politicians and other political actors appearing in carefully scripted events — and the reporting and analysis of those events was also restricted to certain specific media channels: a couple of TV networks, one or two major newspapers, and so on. Now that we have blogs and Twitter and other forms of social media, how has that changed the nature of both the political process and the media reporting of that process? At paidContent 2012 in New York recently, I asked Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall and NBC News digital head Vivian Schiller for their perspective on that question and you can hear their answers in the video embedded below.

Marshall, the editor and publisher of the ground-breaking political blog network, said that social media has really just accelerated the process of breaking down those traditional barriers — a process that started with the arrival of blogs about a decade ago:

I see it as a progression over the past dozen or so years, of a more and more frictionless news cycle, and what we’re today calling social media has just accelerated that. The other major transformation is an increase in key vectors in the news — the way the New York Times used to be a dominant vector in how news was propagated, along with the big TV networks and other big metropolitan dailies. With the growth of blogs and the beginnings of social media, you have a more fluid and unstable ecosystem of news.

Schiller, who was previously CEO at National Public Radio before joining NBC’s news division, said that for a media entity like NBC, social media has a way of amplifying the stories that come up in other formats. For three weeks in a row, she said, comments that politicians — including Cory Booker, Jamie Dimon and Joe Biden — made on the TV program Meet The Press became a national story thanks to the power of social media. “Meet The Press is about as old media as you can get,” said Schiller. “But those events ricocheted around the world — that’s social media.”

Both the panelists also said that one of the positive things about social media and its role in the news and political ecosystem is that some events that are trivial or unworthy of attention can “burn out” more quickly when they are exposed to the glare of Twitter and the blogosphere, whereas they might have taken on a life of their own and dominated the discussion in newspapers or on TV networks before social media. And Schiller said despite the fact that Twitter and other forms of social media can be filled with a lot of worthless noise, overall the impact has been positive for both politics and the media as a whole:

Of course there’s a lot of garbage in social media, but there’s a lot of garbage in every form of media, from the beginning of time. But I think that all of the kinds of access and the ways people can interact with content, for politics, it’s all good.

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    from GigaOM http://paidcontent.org/2012/06/07/how-does-politics-change-in-the-age-of-the-...

    Intel's TV service aims at Nielsen, big cable, might not get here

    Intels TV service plans stalled as big cable flexes muscles

    Reuters is reporting that Intel's mooted virtual television network has hit the buffers because it can't beat its cable rivals spending. The company is eyeing up the $100 million TV business with a set-top-box and over-the-top service that would offer smaller, cheaper bundles of channels rather than the hundreds that come with a basic cable subscription. It would leverage its facial recognition technology in the system both by offering precise ratings data to networks and by showing targeted adverts to whoever it can see is watching. The former will surely annoy Nielsen, a player with plenty of its own influence in the industry. Despite hiring a quartet of industry heavyweights to help negotiations, studios are refusing to offer discounts to a new and untried entrant, meaning we may not see the service arriving by that planned November launch date.

    Intel's TV service aims at Nielsen, big cable, might not get here originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jun 2012 10:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Permalink   |  sourceReuters  | Email this | Comments

    from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/08/intel-tv-setbacks/

    Should the mainstream media see Twitter as competition?

    Twitter unveiled an interesting partnership with the NASCAR auto-racing circuit on Thursday, in which the real-time information network has created a kind of portal for the Pocono 400 race this weekend. The site looks like a fairly normal Twitter feed, with one important difference: in addition to highlighting tweets using an algorithm, an editor hired by Twitter will also be selecting or “curating” the stream. If that sounds like the kind of thing a media company might do, it’s probably because it is the kind of thing a media company would do — the NASCAR deal takes Twitter even further into the realm of being a media entity. Should traditional media players be concerned?

    Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has repeatedly protested that Twitter doesn’t see itself as a media entity and doesn’t want to be one, and there are some obvious reasons why the company wouldn’t want to be seen that way, including the fact that it has been spending a lot of time negotiating partnerships with existing media players such as ESPN. It would likely be a lot harder to make the case that media companies should see the service as a partner if Twitter was promoting itself as a media company (Costolo may also be concerned that media companies don’t typically get nosebleed valuations the way tech companies do).

    Curating content is what media companies do

    Despite the protests, however, there is plenty of evidence that Twitter is a media entity — not a traditional one, perhaps, but a media company nevertheless. For one thing, its business model relies entirely on advertising around content, which is fundamentally the same model most media companies depend on (Facebook could be seen as a media company for the same reason). The content itself may be entirely user-generated, but then so was much of the content in the early years of the Huffington Post, now a major media player in its own right.

    Until recently, Twitter was just a platform that provided easy access to this real-time content created by others. But deals like the NASCAR partnership — and offerings like the email summary powered by its Summify acquisition — are pushing Twitter further and further into the “curation” business, and that is essentially an editorial function.

    Selecting tweets and photos about a car race might not seem like journalism, but what Twitter is doing is very similar to what a site like Huffington Post or even a newspaper or sports site might do with an event like NASCAR. A traditional media outlet might also have a columnist write some thoughts about the race as well or send a reporter down into the pits to interview drivers, but pulling together real-time reactions from those involved and from spectators has also become a big part of the media response to a major event.

    If something like the “Arab Spring” revolutions in Egypt were to flare up again, Twitter could quite easily adapt the NASCAR model to such an event (although there wouldn’t be the obvious commercial relationship). An editor or editors could function in much the same way that NPR editor Andy Carvin did during the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, curating tweets and even fact-checking photos and videos in real time. That is fundamentally an editorial function, whether Twitter sees it that way or not — and as Columbia University journalism professor Emily Bell notes, the network is already an important source of news.

    For media companies, competition is everywhere

    I have no idea whether Twitter has any intention of expanding its editorial ambitions, but the NASCAR arrangement could be an interesting precursor to a number of different scenarios: for example, the company could develop (or acquire) tools and services like Storify or Storyful that make it easier to curate and verify real-time news reports, and it could either offer those to existing media players or it could employ them itself with its own news staff. For these reasons and others, blogging pioneer Dave Winer has said he believes that news organizations should absolutely see Twitter as competition — and suspects that the company might even buy a traditional media player at some point.

    The most compelling reason for Twitter to move into this kind of area is that it could increase the engagement that users have with the network, something that is fairly crucial when it comes to appealing to advertisers. Being a platform and allowing anyone to distribute content through your network is great — but coming up with reasons why users should spend time on your pages (and look at the ads) is also pretty attractive from a business point of view. Can Twitter do both at the same time? Can it offer itself as a partner for media companies while also tip-toeing into the editorial end of the business?

    If nothing else, the Twitter deal with NASCAR reinforces the fact that for traditional media companies, competition is everywhere — just as Twitter itself can hire editors to curate and aggregate content, so brands and advertisers like the auto-racing entity are becoming publishers and content creators in their own right, with all the same tools that media outlets have at their disposal. Everyone is a media entity now.

    Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Abysim and Alan Light

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    from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2012/06/08/should-the-mainstream-media-see-twitter-as-compe...

    Apple Reportedly Set to Open Up Apple TV to Third-Party Developers at WWDC

    Following up on its report from last week claiming that Apple will show off the operating system for its future television set product at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference, BGR now briefly reports that Apple will be using the event to introduce a new software development kit (SDK) to allow third-party developers to build apps for the Apple TV.
    We have heard from a trusted source that Apple will be introducing a TV SDK at WWDC next week. This would enable third-party developers to create software for Apple’s TV products.
    The report reveals no other details on Apple plans, but we do note that Steve Jobs himself admitted just as the revised Apple TV was launching in September 2010 that the company could open an App Store for the Apple TV "when the time is right".

    With rumors of an Apple television set continuing to build, Apple may now consider the time right to begin allowing developers to build apps for the existing Apple TV set-top box ahead of the company's larger entry into the market.


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    from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors - Front Page http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/08/apple-reportedly-set-to-open-up-apple-tv-...

    The Omni Group releases OmniPlan for iPad

    Business users will be happy to know that OmniPlan from Omni Group is now available for the iPad. The project planning app is the last of OmniGroup's core productivity apps to hit the iOS App Store.

    As its name suggests, OmniPlan lets you manage your projects on your iPad. The app features a visual timeline that lets you see all the tasks and people associated with a project. You can easily edit each task and add new ones from the iPad. There's also a robust syncing feature that lets you share your projects with colleagues. When away from the office, you can sync your changes to a server as well as approve or reject changes from others who are collaborating with you on a project.

    OmniPlan is available for $49 from the iOS App Store. You can see a demo of the app below and read more about it on Omni Group's website.

    The Omni Group releases OmniPlan for iPad originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 08 Jun 2012 10:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2012/06/08/the-omni-group-releases-omniplan-for-ipad/

    What are you paying for when you buy TV?

    When pay TV options came out in the 1980s the consumer was buying choice — more channels and more options for their prime time or daytime or anytime entertainment. But in today’s world, where the choices are infinite and spread between Facbeook, So You Think You Can Dance and Angry Birds, consumers aren’t demanding choice. So in today’s world what I am actually buying when I buy TV packages, be they from a pay TV provider, Hulu, Amazon on Demand, or Netflix?

    After thinking about TV in this way, I realize that traditional cable is no longer about choice, it’s about access: we have an abundance of choice, but not necessarily what we crave. As an access provider for content, cable has the widest depth of content right now, but it also costs the most. When I thought about what I was actually buying, it shed light on cable’s problems but also led to insights about Netflix, content companies and broadcasters, and also helped me as consumer to think about TV in a new way that could help me better spend my money. For example, I don’t have cable and this reaffirmed that call.

    Netflix is for sleeping in.

    Netflix’s child-friendly interface.

    When I buy Netflix, I’m buying the ability to sleep in on weekends. Quite simply, it’s worth it to me to pay $8 a month for a service that contains a bonanza of children’s programming in formats that enable my five-year old to wake up, borrow my iPad and settle in for an extra hour or two selecting her shows — all without waking me up.

    I’m also paying for the shows to be ad-free, although I would say to Netflix that creating some easy way for me to create a kid-safe selection of TV for this use case is important, and becomes more so as she grows up.

    Buying broadcast

    On the other hand, I subscribe to Hulu Plus because that’s my only way to get broadcast TV. I occasionally want to watch broadcast TV, but not enough to want to pay $25 for an entire season of a show on Amazon. I can’t receive digital signals inside my home, which frustrates me since those airwaves are considered a public good. Thankfully Hulu and new services such as Aereo are coming to my rescue with my broadcast content.

    I even watch ads on Hulu, which is the only place I actually even ever see ads anymore when viewing TV content. Apparently for some programs web advertising is outstripping it’s TV counterparts, which may bode well for Hulu and other broadcaster’s web efforts. March Madness ad spending on web TV last Spring outstripped the advertising spending on live television. Apparently people know where to reach the March Madness demographic and it’s not on TV. So what does that mean?

    Maybe instead of authenticating users for Hulu Plus to make sure they are cable subscribers, the broadcasters should go all in and embrace the benefits of offering a platform that gives people broadcast TV (and ads) even if they don’t want to buy cable and can’t get broadcast signals. People are willing to pay for it if Hulu Plus and Aereo are any indication. As for the argument that advertisers currently spend more on “real broadcast TV,” that will change, and fairly quickly is my hunch.

    What about sports?

    I don’t watch’em, but my husband does. It’s the thing he misses most about losing access to cable, but so far he still doesn’t think it’s worth it to switch back to paying $85 a month for the service. Instead he shelled out $120 for an MLB Premium pass, and he uses a website to track games that are blacked out. For other sporting events he wanders over to a local sports bar and buys a beer. So now, instead of buying sports, he’s buying an evening out with friends and a game. Unsurprisingly, even though he doesn’t catch every game, he likes the bar better.

    So what do the content and cable guys do?

    The cable guys are in a tough position. People are lazy, and do like choice, but they are also cheap. And the focus today isn’t about choice — it’s about finding the right content on the right device when you want it. That’s a mindset that screams for services like true on-demand networks powered by IPTV where a cable provider can queue up any content for a watcher on demand and on any device.

    But technologically cable companies and some other pay TV providers aren’t there yet, and are hazy about when they’ll get there. One reason for this is because it’s tough to do on the back end, but it also has the potential to destroy the geographical monopolies established by physical access lines into the customer’s home.

    While they wait, they are pushing hard to create TV Everywhere services that will let customers watch whatever they want within certain restrictions and on particular devices. And they are also trying to keep their content providers from decamping to Netflix or other over the top services.

    Some of the content guys are undoubtedly realizing that many consumers will still pay for their content even if it doesn’t come from a pay TV provider. The question is: how much? And when will it make sense for a content company to jump ship and risk alienating a huge source of revenue?

    That’s why the Internet is so eager to see HBO Go’s actions, because many believe HBO Go has the largest and best chance to go over the top thanks to its distribution deals and its quality content. But that argument continues to be debunked and HBO isn’t interested. Honestly, this entire future of TV idea is more compelling than some last season’s dramas.

    TV Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Angela Waye.

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    from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2012/06/07/what-are-you-paying-for-when-you-buy-tv/?utm_sou...