It was a packed house last night at Vicious Circle, where four
intrepid companies demonstrated their wares on questionable A/V
equipment and slow wi-fi while background music was emanating from the
other side of the bar. And by all accounts, it was a huge hit. The
casual atmosphere gave DemoCampers an opportunity to freely mix while
enjoying the beverage of their choice, and we saw a lot of mixing going
on. A majority of the attendees stuck around for an hour or two after
the event, exchanging ideas, advice and business cards.
There are at least two reasons why you would attend a DemoCamp - the
first one is to see the latest and greatest stuff from fellow
technology entrepreneurs; the second one is to meet some interesting
people with common interests and goals. Last night, we succeeded in
both areas for many, if not all attendees. Be sure to give us your
feedback, as the organizing committee continues to work on making these
events even better!
Here's a wrap up of the companies that presented last night:
Casey Pechet of IVOXX
demonstrated the ultimate iPod accessory - it was a voice-recognition
device that attaches to the back of an iPod. Still in prototype form,
he first gave the command "play some stones" to the device - and a
Rolling Stones song played. He gave it a command to "play some Led
Zeppelin", and it did. Then, he asked it to "play more like this", and
the device played a somewhat similar song. The final production version
will also be able to accept commands such as "play something higher
energy" or "play something slow". This has huge implications for those
of us who aren't organized enough to categorize our music libraries.
The device is slated for an August release, and will retail at $129 as
an official "made for iPod", Apple approved product.
Lino Ramirez of Aranducorp
showed us what appeared to be an early build of a predictive analytics
engine for charities. The product, when released, will help charities
raise more money by helping them to predict and target those most
sympathetic and generous to the cause.
Lorand Szojka of JIT Resources
showed a customer site developed on their video streaming platform,
which delivers private training and corporate messaging videos to
enterprise clients.
To round out the evening, Matt Cox and Sarath Samarasekera demoed Shopster,
which was described as a fully-networked retail e-commerce solution.
For companies and individuals looking for an alternative to
advertising-based revenues, Shopster offers a fully-customizable
e-commerce store site template, complete with over 1,000,000 items in
inventory. Prospective e-tailers set up an account, choose which items
they wish to sell, and collect a percentage of all items sold. Shopster
handles all of the logistics, including payments, drop shipping and
customer service. For vendors offering a product, Shopster acts as a
distribution channel. Shopster is a multi-million dollar venture that
currently has over 1,400 active stores online.
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Mark your calendars for the next event - it will be held at Melrose Cafe & Bar on April 8th, from 6:30 - 8:30. Sign up .
Just a quick little weekend rant about letting Google run rampant on your site: I've been researching mind maps lately, and came across a startup blog which had reviewed a mind map product. (For courtesy's sake, I'm not revealing the name of the blog). The blog had also reviewed other sites, including a mashup maker and Yahoo! Search Builder, amongst others. Nothing to indicate that sexuality of any persuasion was of interest. 
Unlimited Magazine's 
