For the past four years, TECH cocktail has hosted large-scale mixers across the country to “connect, educate and amplify” local technology and startup communities. The signature event is coming for the first time to San Francisco on Tuesday, September 14, 2010 from 6:30 to 9:30 pm at ROE.

TECH cocktail is a media and events organization co-founded by Frank Gruber and Eric Olson. The evening promises a casual opportunity to mingle and connect with Bay Area entrepreneurs, investors, developers, designers, bloggers, and tech enthusiasts. Like at previous events, there will be a showcase of demos by hand-picked local startups. Register now!

Past featured startups have included:

• SocialThing (now AOL Lifestream)
• OneForty
• Crowdspring
• SCVNGR
• BandsInTown
• HaveMyShift
• Edmodo

By Julie Blaustein

Trendy Lime will be celebrating its 1st. anniversary with a special edition of JETLAG at the sizzling hot Butterfly in San Francisco, September 10th.

Join San Francisco trend-setters, world travelers, and social media fans, WHERE FASHION MEETS TRAVEL and win a “Any City” round trip with JetBlue! The trendy jetsetters of San Francisco & Bay Area are invited to dress up to the nines to celebrate Trendy Lime’ 1st. anniversary at JETLAG. Served on board of this flight: JETLAG-only delicious mix of Travel, Fashion, Music, and Socializing to be enjoyed by the most discerning tastes. Food bloggers, Gratitude Gourmet and Club Dine In gave the venue and the food a thumbs up during a private tasting.

Admission is just $10 until 11 pm with an RSVP, or $10 all night with pre-sale tickets that you should purchase now as they are limited.

The perks of attending the JETLAG celebration include:

• Round Trip with JetBlue (any 2 cities!) for the lucky TrendyLimer  – To qualify you must be part of the A-List Crowd or join now at Trendy Lime group on FB
• “All you Can Dance” package by DJ Nader & DJ Michelle Musial
• 1st Class pampering with Mary Kay goodie-bags
• Fashion in the Air: “Fresh fashion experience” is brought to you by San Francisco renowned designers “ANYA” and “RockChiq” and presented by the stunning models from around the world.
• Spectacular gourmet creations by the chef and owner of “Butterfly” Rob Lam, complimentary between 9.30-10.30,
• Trendy Lime birthday cake at midnight

Sponsors and Partners include: JetBlue, Mary Kay, Mesaic, Red Bull

Media Partners: Bub.bliciou.us, Eclectic a la Mode, FailCon, Fashionaholics, Jetset Extra, Laura Loves Art, Mashable.com, Moda Epidemic, Vator.tv, 360 Fashion Network.

Follow the buzz about Trendy Lime’s 1st. Anniversary  and  Special Edition of JETLAG at #jetlagTL

JETLAG is brought to you by Trendy Lime and Michael Nader. Trendy Lime is a social media driven producer of upscale social, networking, and networking events for trend-setters and world travelers. Our San Francisco network of international socialites is 3,000 people strong and counting. Soon we are planning to bring Trendy Lime events to other world metropolis. Our distinguishing feature is combining elements of fashion, travel, and technology at the events. Our Mission is to provide unique event experience for the most discerning guests, while supporting good cause initiatives and collaborating with local businesses. DJ Nader (Michael Nader) is the Co-Founder of Feel Group and is the owner of several successful San Francisco establishments including Harlot and Morac.

We recently had a chance to sit down with recently funded CEO Brian Wong, to find out more about what he’s working on with Kiip.me

Brian was recently funded by True Ventures and has had an amazing couple of weeks. Being the youngest to be funded by True Ventures, Brian said that he is looking forward to what is to come, and excited to to be launching at the end of the year.

Thanks to @KickLabsSF for sharing the space, and @Brian_Wong for the interview! We look forward to many more to come!

*Photo by www.RyanChuaPhotography.com

Startup Demo Theme: The Future of Media

Startups demo throughout the venue, all night long. Stop by to check them out! Here’s the list of participants:

Doochoo
Doochoo is much more than just another application think tank — the Doochoo project is about revolutionizing the way opinions on the web carry meaning, starting with some applications, followed by a proprietary platform that will give opinions on the web tangibility and critical weight.

Envolve
Launching at SF Beta! Envolve lets you have topical group chats, private one-on-one conversations, and can do real-time translation in over 50 languages; all of these give your visitors an engaging experience that promotes your brand while increasing time-on-site.

Cisco Eos
Cisco Eos is a hosted software platform that enables Media & Entertainment companies to more economically deliver and effectively monetize social entertainment experiences around branded content.

Reachoo
Reachoo is a revolutionary, free, video classifieds website that connects the local community and assists sellers and buyers within the community to make transactions with ease.

Spreaker
Spreaker is a social service which lets anybody create his own radio show (talk, music, entertainment) and broadcast it live on facebook, mobile phones and internet-enabled radios. Listeners can enjoy single streams or create their personal radio station stitching together several shows.

LazyFeed
Lazyfeed is a unique service that provides a super-lazy way of blogging by actually “feeding” you stuff to talk about. Just follow any topics you want, and watch Lazyfeed deliver all the articles, videos, and photos related to those topics. Never worry about running out of inspiration. Endlessly talk about everything you love.

Diffbot
Diffbot is a seed stage web startup focused on leveraging statistical learning algorithms to achieving the holy grail a truly personalized newspaper that is not limited to structured data sources.

Loudcaster
The future of radio is online, not satellites or towers. Loudcaster enables anyone to create and DJ a interactive on-line radio station. We believe the next generation of broadcasting will come from giving people the power to easily create radio and interact with their audience.

SF Beta is San Francisco’s largest and longest-running startup mixer. Hundreds of founders, developers, investors, and geeks are joining us. Will you?
Our loosely structured event attracts over 350 people from across Silicon Valley. We provide tasty gourmet appetizers and a full cash bar, along with live demos from startups throughout the night.
Details:
• 21+ venue; no minors admitted
• Free appetizers from 5-6pm. (Early birds get the worm — or in this case, the hummus)
• Tickets are non-refundable, but can be transferred
• No formal presentations or talks. Instead, startups give demos at tables across the venue, throughout the night.
• For more information, visit our website at www.sfbeta.com

By Julie Blaustein

Wednesday, February 3rd  I attended the kickoff of Motally’s moChats. Motally plans to hold a moChat the 1st. Wednesday of every month at their cozy headquarters in SOMA.  MoChats are casual talks designed to share insights about successful mobile development and optimizing mobile sites and apps through analytics. Analytics is what Motally provides, not only for mobile devices on the iPhone, Android and Blackberry platforms but also for the Apple iPad.

Pizza and drinks, including adult beverages, were served while sitting around a projector and chatting about Motally. Many features were discussed including the 2-way communications, user statistics such as unique users, page views, top referrers, top devices etc.  Also discussed was their search tracking feature.  When someone does an internal search on a mobile website, the website publisher can track what happens after the search to determine whether an action took place.  For example, say an individual searches for pizza on a mobile website and then later makes a phone call to place an order.  This is the type of data that is captured by Motally’s analytics and is particularly useful for sites that have strong search functionality. In fact, Yelp,  the local search and review site is one of its customers. Other clients include Fandango, IAC , Portable Zoo, and Verve Wireless.

Connect with Motally on Twitter at and keep up with them and all the excitement at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona February 15-18th or if you are in Barcelona, Motally will be at RIM’s App Planet in Hall 7, booth 7B26. You can also join them at the next Motally moChat on Wednesday, March 3rd.

The Motally Team at the AppShowcase/Buzzworthy Event.

As a sports fan and casual fantasy sports participant, reading about today’s launch of FanDuel, a new fantasy sports wagering site by the folks over at HubDub, on TechCrunch definitely caught my attention. FanDuel’s approach to the fantasy sports is combining the quick thrill of traditional sports wagering with the unique nature of fantasy sports.

If you’ve ever been in a fantasy sports league you know it’s great when you’re on top but when you’re down, the season can be hellishly long and brutal. Tuning into the fast-paced nature we’ve come accustomed to via our daily social networks, FanDuel looks to solve that problem giving you a chance to put together a new team daily for baseball and weekly in football – the two primary sports FanDuel hosts at the moment.

On top of that and to capture the audience looking to make a little money on it, FanDuel lets you wager on each of your games (from $5 to $25). So is it legal? Yes. Current U.S. laws provide for wagering on fantasy sports with the payouts usually coming at the end of a season, FanDuel pays out daily or weekly. The site does offer free games with no prizes beyond short-term office bragging rights.

HubDub’s blog goes on to say, “Players can draft a new team at any time, and pitch it head-to-head against an opponent – a friend, or another FanDuel player – for real money. The player whose team has the most fantasy points at the end of the day’s games wins the cash prize.”

paidContent.org points out stats from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimating there are over 27 million fantasy sports players in the U.S., so FanDuel does have a large potential member base to tap into. The company took a great approach not trying to upend the giants in the traditional fantasy sports world like Yahoo!, ESPN or CBS, but with short-term commitments and the ability to make a few dollars on it, I think they have a good shot at grabbing some traction in the market. I have not seen such a unique approach to fantasy sports since the Wall Street Sports/Sandbox days of the late 1990’s.

On July 13th the Israeli high-tech community gathered at TWS2009 to to discuss and preview  new trends and technologies from Israel’s hottest Web and Mobile.

As one of the judges, I was chosen to help TWS select the top 10 companies to present at this year’s showcase. From the hundreds of top-notch applicants, it wasn’t an easy process to funnel applicants down to 10. Other judges included, Ron Conway, Rafe Needleman, Andrew Baron, Stowe Boyd, Ayelet Noff, Deborah Schultz, Jeff Pulver, Kfir Pravda, Gil Ben-Artzy, Dave Sifry, among others.

Congratulations to this year’s TWS2009 Top 10:

Shidonni is a web based virtual world for young kids, based on the simple joy of drawing. In Shidonni, kids draw their virtual pets and play with them as they magically ‘come alive’. After creating their pets, children enjoy over 30 different activities and games featuring their own creations and can even share their creation with their friends.

Confidela provides businesses and individuals with hassle-free document control, tracking and protection services to facilitate the sharing of sensitive documents with customers, partners or suppliers. Confidela’s flagship SaaS product, WatchDox, is the easiest way for organizations to send documents securely, and control and track who views, edits, prints or forwards them.

Cmycasa is a first of its kind “Handshake service” between home owners and furniture retailers. With Cmycasa, users of real estate web sites and “do-it-yourself portals” will be able to visualize in stunning photo-realistic 3D how their new home will look once furnished to their taste.

Cellerium is the maker of MobileCanvas, a mobile application platform that delivers rich, mobile tailored web experiences across leading mobile platforms. Cellerium AppOnce approach resolves device and operating system fragmentation and combines a rich UI experience that rivals client centered applications with the flexibility of web deployment.

ContextIn is a semantic media-buying platform for display-advertising. Using semantic algorithms for automatic extraction of the discussed topics in web pages, ContextIn addresses the display advertising market problems of absence of visibility and control over the media-buying and poor performance, especially over user-generated-content sites. ContextIn offers a new and innovative solution, which proved to show significant increase in the online campaigns returns, using automatic ads targeting, real-time bidding, unique BI data and dynamic ad-creative creation according to the web-site content.

Tweegee is a pioneering destination site designed exclusively for kids. The site empowers children and pre-teens, ages 7 to 12, to express themselves creatively and safely in an innovative and customized online environment. Tweegee integrates social networking, digital content, and interactive tools to offer a complete web platform for kids. Tweegee’s platform has been released with great success in Russia and soon in Turkey and many other countries.

KIDO’Z is a web operating environment intended for children between the ages of 3-8yrs. KIDO’Z creates a personal protected Internet space with a collection of special tools that enable the children, for the first time, to carry out everything that adults do on the Internet; but simply and intuitively, and without needing to know how to read or write

CamSpace is a ground breaking computer vision platform that connects the virtual and the real world through motion games, experiences, activities and navigation of application and websites through your browser and using any standard webcam. The platform can detect human gestures and turns everyday products (like cans, bottles, boxes, etc) or objects into exciting computer controllers that can operate new or existing games and applications. The company is active in the advertising space (creating games and experiences based on products), in the educational space and in the social/fun gaming space. (Disclosure: I advised the company in the past).

Virtual Web provides innovative social network marketing solutions. Its SociaLAVA™ platform enables online publishers of any scale to instantly deploy a fully-functional social network as a transparent layer over their existing websites, powered by a unique social network interaction analysis engine™. Publishers can offer users personalized content to keep them on the site for longer visits, enhance conversion rates, monetize their sites through segmented ads, increase site ‘stickiness’ and link a consistently growing number of online communities to their domains using a unique community-clustering mechanism.

Reimage is a fast growing company that offers a web-based service that automates all PC repairs (due to software problems), and makes PC’s run better than new using unique boosting technologies. To date, Reimage has repaired tens of thousands of Windows based computers.

Connect with me on:

Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, or Facebook

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Now available (click to purchase):

This Thursday, I’m presenting at the SVASE Startup-U in San Francisco. Hosted at DLA Piper’s new offices in San Francisco, we’ll review, “DIY vs. Outsourced PR & Social Media for Startups.”

It’s an important topic, one that will help you navigate the path from startup to success.

Seating is limited, so be sure to reserve your spot now.

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, or Facebook