Last week, San Francisco became home to the inaugural LAUNCH Conference put on by Mahalo founder and creator of ThisWeekIn.com, Jason Calacanis. Some might say that it’s an off-shoot of the popular TechCrunch50 program that Calacanis created alongside TechCrunch founder, Michael Arrington, so it probably wouldn’t be too far of a stretch for others to wonder if Calacanis’ new conference would survive its first lap out of the gate. Well the results are in and the LAUNCH Conference was a big success. As announced live on stage, Calacanis said that his event at least broke even and had some startling news as well.

Held at the San Francisco Design Center, this two-day event offered new and existing startups an opportunity to  seek out fame and fortune on a large platform. Whether it was in the LaunchPad demo area – a pen where people walked through to be educated on startups exhibiting their products, or on the granddaddy of them all, the LAUNCH stage where companies had a few minutes on stage to demo their product to the audience and a jury of investors, analysts and thought-leaders. The goal, as it seemed, was to help startups get funded and move them to the next stage in helping to disrupt and innovate the industry.

More than 100 tech startups and entrepreneurs showed off their stuff at the LAUNCH Conference last week and the lucky few that were on stage were broken down into two distinct categories: Web 1.0 and 2.0. Now don’t be mistaken that Web 1.0 would mean non-social media type companies. Quite the contrary. The distinction here is that for those qualifying for Web 1.0, they are those startups that had never received any press before and/or were still in stealth mode. For those more “experienced” startups, they qualified for the Web 2.0 status, which meant that they were launching a brand new product, pivoting or unveiled a brand new version of an existing product. Awards were given to several of those startups in each category and as an added bonus, the LAUNCH Conference gave several of the companies in the LaunchPad the chance to show their stuff on stage as well.

What makes the LAUNCH Conference somewhat unique was that it offered a separate track for entrepreneurs. For those in attendance, they could sign up to meet with mentors to help further develop their own company strategy. It was truly an event motivated to bettering the status of the startup community and it showed with several encouraging moves by angel investors to help fund companies. Perhaps the most successful sign was when Green Goose took the stage and it was announced that several investors present, including Calacanis, Bill Warner, Jay Levy & Shervin Pishevar would be part of a round of funding of $500,000. Other notable actions included angel investor, Dave McClure of 500 Startups agreeing to meet with startup Volta to offer funds. Yes, it was a good event for entrepreneurs.

Here are the winners from the LAUNCH Conference:

From the 1.0 Competition

• Best OVERALL: Room77
• Best Tech: NeuAer for Toothtag
• Best Design: Cabana (App Design)
• Best Business Model: Volta
• Best Product: (Phone Products) Lifeproof

The 2.0 Competition

• Best 2.0 Technology: Disconnect
• Best 2.0 Design: Hipmunk
• Best Overall: Careers.Stackoverflow.com

From the LAUNCHPAD

• BEST OVERALL: Green Goose
• Most Likely to be Acquired: Shoefitr
• Best Design: Pen.io
• Best Technology: Fluid Info
• Best Business: Nandi Mobile

You can view the entire collection of photos from the LAUNCH Conference on my Flickr photostream by clicking here.

By Miiko Mentz (@miikomentz)

Geeks on a Plane (GOAP) are at it again and this time they’re off to Hawaii for a week of fun in the sun and great talks and networking around technology, business, sustainability and life. The GOAP team and friends are part of [re]think Hawaii, which starts today and runs through November 5.

[re]think Hawaii is a week of events that is bringing together an international group of people — who might not otherwise meet — to rethink technology, business and sustainability. One of those events is Share Your Table’s Farm to Table Lunch that’s an invite-only luncheon of green, tech and business leaders who will feast on a lunch that’s 100 percent sourced from Hawaii, which is quite impressive given 85 percent of Hawaii’s food is imported. Sustainability is a critical issue that affects all of us, and I hope that [re]think Hawaii helps raise awareness not only in Hawaii’s own efforts to support its sustainability, but also globally.

[re]think Hawaii participants will attend a host of other events this week from Venture Capital Secrets and Startonomics Hawaii to BlogWorld’s Social Media Business Summit and the What They Don’t Teach You At Business School workshop that will be given by Duck9 CEO and Businessweek Blogger Larry Chiang (@larryChiang). Larry is also a guest writer at Bubblicious.

One lucky [re]think Hawaii participant is Mugasha CEO and Co-founder Akshay Dodeja (@dodeja) who we caught up with recently at the TechCrunch50 conference. Akshay was the lucky winner of the Girls in Tech [re]think Hawaii raffle giveaway that was conducted during TC50. Proceeds from the raffle went to Girls Inc., an organization celebrating girlhood and inspiring and supporting young girls to become tomorrow’s leaders.

Check out our interview with Adriana Gascoigne (@afgascoigne), GOAP co-organizer and Girls in Tech founder, talking about Girls in Tech, Girls Inc., GOAP and [re]think Hawaii; and at the end of the video we captured a few comments from lucky winner Akshay.

GOAP organizers are Dave McClure (@davemcclure) of Founders Fund and Startup2Startup, Brady Forrest (@brady) of O’Reilly, Adriana Gascoigne of SGN and Girls in Tech (GIT), and many others. Dave McClure, Larry Chiang, and Flowtown Co-founder Dan Martell (@danmartell) are the hosts of GOAP Hawaii. And [re]think Hawaii is organized by Christine Lu (@christinelu) and a unique group of people from around the world.

#rethink #GOAP

This past week, the third annual TechCrunch50 event was held at the San Francisco Design Center. Of course it wasn’t always known as TechCrunch50 – but the format still remained the same: 50 startups were selected by the event committee (specifically serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington) to present their startups and demonstrate their product to the audience and 100 different startups were also selected to pitch their wares to the crowds in the “Demo Pit”.

As this was my first time attending TechCrunch50, I was hoping for something different from the numerous conferences I had attended previously. I really wasn’t disappointed since this exclusively focused on companies that were specifically launching something that day. Whether it was a new product or it was a new company that they wanted to promote, they were there. It wasn’t a lecture circuit like typical other technology conferences and there weren’t any panel discussions. Instead, there were expert judges on stage to critique each startup – almost like it was a tech version of American Idol to help the audience make an informed decision about the viability of the startup.

Amazingly the Internet connection was not something to even be concerned about since it seems that the fine folks at TechCrunch put in some additional dollars (rumored to be about $56,000) on running ethernet cables throughout the conference hall and upgrading their bandwidth. Even Arrington remarked that he was surprised it held up as near the end of the conference he was quoted to have said something along the lines of:

I was watching from the back and noticed that someone was watching the live stream [via Ustream] on his laptop…

Each day presented something new and exciting to talk about. But rather than blabbering on, here are some photos of the event to help tell the tale:

1938 Media’s own Loren Feldman made an appearance at TechCrunch50.

The event hosts of TechCrunch50: Jason Calacanis & Michael Arrington.

Michael Arrington trying to weasel out some information from Mint.com’s CEO, Aaron Patzer, after it was officially confirmed Intuit was purchasing Mint.com.

Some of the fine folks in attendance at TechCrunch50.

One set of panel experts including Google’s Marissa Mayer, Roelof Botha, Marc Andreessen, Lior Zorea & Zappos’ Tony Hsieh.

Hanging out with great people at one of the many TechCrunch50 after-parties.

Kevin Rose

Chamillionaire made a special guest appearance to be a judge.

Girls in Tech at TechCrunch50.

The winners of TechCrunch50 and $50,000 – RedBeacon – with Heather Harde & Jason Calacanis.

View more photos of TechCrunch50 by clicking here for the first day or the last day.

An almost complete listing of the TC50 list was published today – the first of two days dedicated to spotlighting some of the world’s most innovative and exciting startups.

Here’s the list as it stands:

• Story Something
• Clasemovil
• ToonsTunes.com
• Sealtale
• iTwin
• iMo
• FluidHTML
• Toybots Woozees
• Spawn Labs
• Clicker
• 5to1.com
• DataXu
• SeatGeek
• HealthyWage
• RackUp
• Udorse
• Yext
• localbacon
• RefMob
• TheSwop.com
• MOTA Motors
• Redbeacon
• ClientShow
• Metricly
• AffectiveInterfaces
• Penn & Teller
• CitySourced
• Trollim
• CrowdFlower
• cocodot
• LearnVest
• BreakThrough
• Glide Health
• Sprowtt
• Thoora
• Insttant
• Perpetually.com
• AnyClip
• Crowd Fusion
• Hark!
• Threadsy
• Lissn
• Radiusly
• Stribe
• Clixtr
• The Whuffie Bank

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By Miiko Mentz

TechCrunch50 (TC50) had a little something for everyone. The three-day conference was jammed packed with presentations from the 52 presenting companies, demonstrations from the DemoPit companies, and the TC50 exhibitors, partners and alumni showcasing their products and services. We caught up with a mix of these companies to hear about what they were launching and showcasing at this year’s event.

Our first video is highlight clip that includes snippets from Closet Couture, Delver, Fitbit, Five Sprockets, Grooveshark, TechCrunch50 winner Yammer, and last year’s TechCrunch40 (TC40) second place winner Zivity. Also, be sure to check out the full-length interviews (don’t worry they’re short) from watchMEmelt, Fitbit, Closet Couture, Zivity, and Yammer.

TechCrunch50 DemoPit: watchMEmelt

WatchMEmelt is an online video sharing community focused on weight loss and fitness-related topics. Basically, its MySpace meets YouTube for the weight loss and fitness community. The site launched into public beta last week during TC50 and is opened to anyone interested in losing weight and sharing the experience with others. The company was founded by Brian Edward Kenny, who has enlisted two very fun and energetic spokespersons who know first-hand what it’s like to publicly lose weight.

WatchMEmelt’s Marty and Amy Wolff, now newlyweds, met on season three of NBC’s reality TV show the Biggest Loser. We caught up with them at the conference and they shared their story with us and explained what watchMEmelt is all about. It was a fun interview and certainly not something we expected to find at a tech conference.

TechCrunch50 Presenting Company: Fitbit

Ever wonder how many calories you burn in a day or if you exercise enough each day or how well you sleep each night? Well, wonder no more. You can now get those answers with the Fitbit Tracker. During the TC50 mobile session, Fitbit introduced the Fitbit Tracker and Web site.

The Fitbit Tracker and site are designed to help people live healthier by outfitting them with a small monitoring device, which is the size of a USB drive, that wirelessly sends data to the site about the users’ physical activity and other information, so people can track and monitor their progress, and share it with others if they choose to.

The Fitbit Tracker can monitor daily activity and exercise, calories burned, the quality of sleep one gets, and more. The Fitbit Tracker works in combination with Fitbit’s Web site, which offers many features including tracking weight, logging food intake or activities, connecting with or meeting new friends for encouragement and support, or starting or joining a group, such as a weekly exercise group or walking group. The whole concept is to provide people with advanced tools and a place to connect with others so they can live healthier lives. The site is free and the Fitbit Tracker will retail for $99 when it ships in late December or early January.

The Fitbit Tracker price seems reasonable, but I think Fitbit’s business model could be improved. On the distribution front, they may want to consider partnering with weight loss vendors and health clubs who have a built-in customer base. And they should consider offering a premium service for the Web site that offers additional features for a small monthly fee.

People dedicated to losing weight and maintaining a healthy lifestyle will pay for additional value. One doesn’t have to look far to see this, just look at the success of Weight Watchers (NYSE: WTW) where customers pay a monthly subscription fee to access Weight Watchers’ online weight-loss tools, content and community.

As someone who is very health conscious, exercises regularly and is annoyingly careful about what and how much I eat every day, Fitbit is by far my favorite startup that launched at this year’s TechCrunch50. I will be sure to review it when it comes out, who knows, maybe I’ll do a video review of Fitbit over a period of time and share the results here. Check out our interview with James Park, CEO and co-founder of Fitbit.

TechCrunch50 Presenting Company: Closet Couture

Closet Couture was definitely a company we had to check out as it immediately caught the eye of our very own fashionista and Bub.blicio.us Reporter Alison McNeill. Closet Couture is a social community focused around fashion and a place people can go to get fashion advice from community members or professional stylists. Users can create a virtual wardrobe that reflects their real-life wardrobe and then get advice on what to wear for a special occasion or on a new outfit or advice on adding a garment or accessory to an existing outfit.

Closet Couture is currently in private beta and is free to all users, but it also offers paid services such as time with a professional stylist for as little as $25, which is a bargain considering top stylists are paid thousands of dollars for their services.

I’m sure this went right over the heads of the geek boys in the crowd, but it surely wasn’t missed by us, and it also got the attention of Oprah’s editors. Closet Couture will be featured in the November issue of O magazine, at which point the site will be open to the public. But you don’t have to wait until then to see what they’re up to. Check out our interview with Christine Elia, CEO and founder of Closet Couture. Watch the entire video clip because Elia shares with our Bub.blicio.us viewers how to be part of the private beta and get a sneak peek to the service.

TechCrunch40 Alumni: Zivity (second-place winner at TechCrunch40 2007)

While everyone may have had all their attention on this year’s 52 presenting companies launching new products and services, we wanted to share the love by bringing you the latest from a company who had launched at last year’s TechCrunch40 conference and came back this year to provide a service to attendees with the Zivity Em-power-ment charging station while showcasing the Zivity community.

According Zivity Founder and Editor-in-Chief Cyan Banister, she says the Zivity community is a social networking site where models and photographers can interact with their fans. What’s unique about Zivity is that it’s one of the only social networks and content sites that offer a royalty-distribution platform. Zivity empowers models and photographers by providing them with a place to share and monetize their art. The service is currently in private beta and is by invitation only.

At this year’s TC50, the Zivity team had quite the fun booth with beautiful women (Zivity models), a charging station and cupcakes! Check out our interview with Banister as she shares with us a little bit about Zivity and the growth they are experiencing since launching at last year’s TC40. Also, be sure to keep an eye out for their public launch in early 2009.

TechCrunch50 2008 Winner: Yammer

Surprisingly, we were lucky enough to interview the TechCrunch50 2008 winner Yammer. Of course when we stopped by their station in the DemoPit the day before they won, we had no idea that they would win, and frankly, I was a bit surprised when they did win because I’m skeptical whether or not Yammer will succeed long term. However, as a huge fan and user of Twitter (despite constant outages), I do love the concept of what Yammer offers and my hat is off to them for winning.

With Yammer’s launch, it clearly points out that Twitter has not been quick and agile because the Twitter team should have already launched a “Twitter for business” service. But since they haven’t, Twitter left the door open for Yammer to provide it. Yammer is available now, so companies interested in using the Yammer service can sign up at Yammer and begin using it now.

Check out what David Sacks, CEO and founder of Yammer, has to say about Yammer and how it’s one of the most used communications tool in his company Geni, a genealogy site where families can build and share their family trees and history, and it’s also where Yammer was birthed. With the launch of Yammer at TC50, Sacks says that Yammer will now spin out as a separate company. Congratulations to David and the Yammer team!

Related posts:

- Yammer Takes TechCrunch50 Top Spot
- TechCrunch50 Highlights, Through Words and Pictures
- Zivity is the Playboy of Web 2.0

by Michelle Lentz

The top prize at TechCrunch 50 went to Yammer. Yammer is a rather ingenious, and inevitable, application. At its simplest, it’s Twitter for the workplace. Instead of asking What are you doing?, Yammer asks What are you working on? I’ve always said that Twitter flattens the org chart. This takes that concept to a whole new level.

Yammer was developed by Geni for internal communications. It was such an internal hit that they decided to release it as a product. Here’s the kicker: Yammer has a business plan.

Right now, you must have a corporate email address to join Yammer. Employees can then follow each other, based on email address. You can also follow specific topics and people by using tags. Yammer is free for employees, but if a company wants to take control of thier network, that’s where the cost is incurred (and the profit for the Yammer folks).

Yammer has been live since Monday. According to the company, they had 2,000 organizations and 10,000 people sign up since launching. You can view the video from their TechCrunch presentation.

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Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology.

words and pictures by Brian Solis

Allen Stern and Graeme Thickens weren’t the only two bloggers to attend both DEMOfall and TechCrunch50, I also made the journey between San Diego and San Francisco to cover both events. Like most media outlets, we had teams at both conferences, but I had to see for myself, what made each event unique and valuable.

TechCrunch50, dubbed the Sundance festival of the tech startup industry, is truly a special event. No matter how big it is, it’s still an intimate affair. You’re engaged because Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis want you to be part of the conference.

statups + an active audience + expert judges + nervous and polished startup presenters = engagement. There’s just something for everyone.

My only request is that DEMO and TechCrunch fall on different days in 2009 so that I can invest 100% of time, focus, and energy in contributing to the success of each event.

Nonetheless, TechCrunch50 was a blast and I enjoyed every minute that I was to participate. I think that everyone who was there will agree, the hallway conversations, the DEMO Pit, the interactive presentations, and the parties espetially, have earned the TechCrunch conference a place the annual line-up of must-attend events.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story:

Sarah Ross and Ashton Kutcher

MG Siegler of VentureBeat

Frank Gruber

Adeo Ressi of TheFunded.com

Loren Feldman of 1938media

Ben Metcalfe

Rafe Needleman of WebWare/CNET

Evan Williams

Tim O’Reilly

Jason Calacanis

Stowe Boyd

Om Malik

Orli Yakuel

Michael Arrington

Swype

Swype

Dropbox

AlfaBetic

Don Doge

Mark Cuban and Jason Calcanis

Mark “when I die, I want to come back as me” Cuban

Day Two Party (sponsored by Symantec):

Mark Cuban and Brian Solis

Jason Calacanis at your service

Animoto

Marissa Louie

Larry Chiang

Time for the after party…

Jenny Chan of Mahalo

Bryan Thatcher of Empressr

Sloane Berent of CauseCast, Alaska Miller of Valleywag, and Jason Baptiste

For more pictures from TechCrunch50, please visit my albums on flickr:

Day Two

Day Two Party

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by Michelle Lentz

This morning, fotonauts,Inc debuted at TechCrunch50. Not without a large mission, fotonauts would like to “enable the creation of the definitive pool of images for everyone to contribute to, discover and use, covering all areas of human interest. fotonauts will deliver the world’s best tools to discover, organize, and collaborate wtih images, whereever they are stored.”

Sometimes I forget that as an early adopter, what is natural for me is not necessarily natural for everyone else. I always upload my photos, for instance, and don’t really think anything of it. fotonauts states that although more than 500 million digital images are captured daily, only 5% of those are uploaded to the major photo sharing sites. They see several problems: uploading is hard, images aren’t accessible to everyone, different services can’t work together, and collaboration is mostly through commenting. fotonauts aims to change all that. They don’t want to be your next service provider; they’re shooting more for a Wikipedia for photos.

They plan to use sync technology that makes uploading images to any service simple. I like that they also plan on unification: multiple users, subscribed to any service with an API, can work together on common creations. fotonauts also automates tagging of your images and albums. ImageRank, their specific search engine, uses tags and date to provide what they’re calling the global standard for image search.

Albums are apparently a big part of fotonauts, as you can enable albums made of up images from more than one photographer, and allows multiple collaborators. Albums, it would seem, have an seemingly unlimited size. In a beta conducted by the company, a World Heritage Sites album was made of up more than 10,000 pages and more than 15,000 from hundreds of photographers across the Web. Using widgets, the albums can be shared to any web site. From the screen shots, it appears that there is a discussion area where even the discussion, such as this from Wikipedia, can be credited and rich content such as Google Maps can be added.

It’s worth mentioning that they use Creative Commons licensing for all the photos included. One of the issues fotonauts has with the status quo is that the default on many services is All Rights Reserved. I point this out because some folks, myself included, choose All Rights Reserved for a reason. Using fotonauts will open your photos to conversation, collaboration, and sharing.

fotonauts is aimed at three distinct audiences: creators, photographers, and searchers. Creators can, quite simply, use the platform to create photo collections from the overall photo pool. Photographers can share their images with the world. Searchers, and I’ll probably fall into this category, help you find the most relevant photo for your search and will always display the photographer and their licensing choice. That’s right. You now have no excuse about using Google images when you can search fotonauts and get the information for giving credit to the creator.

Keep in mind that I’m currently limited to screenshots, press releases, and video from this morning. But thus far, I’m pretty impressed. I’m at least intrigued to start playing with it. At the end of the presentation, Scoble interestingly calls it “Flickr done right.”

fotonauts was originally formed in France by several ex-Apple employees, including Jean-Marie Hullot. Jean-Marie is the CEO of fotonauts but was previously the CTO of Apple’s applications division and former CTO at NeXT. The team also includes several developers who were all part of Jean-Marie’s iSync and iCal teams at Apple and fotonauts President Keith Teare. The company formed in 2007 and has since received a seed round of $2.3m from several VCs and angel investors.

Beta invites are available, albeit slowly, on their web site. Their TechCrunch50 presentation available on UStream. There are some interesting questions at the end as to whether their business plan of integrating advertising is even feasible.

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Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology.