Tag Archives: w2e

Post and video by Miiko Mentz

At last week’s Web 2.0 Expo we caught up with ooVoo, a company that enables people to connect, collaborate and communicate in real-time through online video. Bubblicious Reporter Jolie O’Dell spoke with Tom Herman, VP of product marketing at ooVoo, about their core products and their new open API that allows developers to build customized applications and widgets for use within the ooVoo platform.

ooVoo enables people to have video chats with up to six people on camera and another six people by audio, as well as screen-sharing capabilities. ooVoo competes against more established players such as Logitech’s SightSpeed, and is an alternative for businesses who cannot afford the higher end solutions such as Cisco’s TelePresence.

Developers interested in building a video app on the ooVoo platform should participate in ooVoo’s developer contest where he or she can win $2,500 by building a creative video widget and embedding it on their personal or company site. Video is a powerful medium and it’s one more way to communicate with readers, viewers, customers, partners, colleagues, etc. Check out our interview with ooVoo:

In addition to ooVoo, the Bubblicious team talked with a few other companies offering social computing applications and services. If you missed yesterday’s video, watch our highlight reel and stay tuned all week for the full interviews with each company. Tomorrow’s video interview is with MindTouch.

Post and video by Miiko Mentz (Special thanks to Jolie O’Dell, Bubblicious on-camera reporter)

Web 2.0 Expo 2009 wrapped on Friday afternoon after delivering four days of presentations and demonstrations mostly focused on being agile in uncertain times. Everyone is feeling the pinch of ‘having to do more with less’ due to declining sales, staff reductions and budget cuts, so this year’s Web 2.0 Expo’s theme of “The Power of Less” fit the climate and mood like a glove.

Even if the economy hadn’t tanked, the Web 2.0 hype was overdue for its own market correction because there was clearly too many startups touting useless apps that only added to the noise and didn’t provide real value. At this year’s Web 2.0 Expo, attendees were focused on the ideas and solutions that will translate into real value and ultimately sales.

As Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft’s business division, explained to attendees in an on-stage interview with Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, consumer elements of Web 2.0 are being translated and brought into the business setting and are being combined with the data and social graphs that reside within an enterprise to provide real value. He goes on to explain how companies are “translating that value into something customers are willing to pay for.” He’s correct in saying that because at the end of the day that’s exactly what needs to transpire.

Companies need to create products that people want and focus on delivering value that people are willing to pay for. Not an easy feat, but if you can achieve this then you stand a pretty good chance at surviving, if not flourishing, in these uncertain times.

The Bubblicious team decided to talk with a few companies in both the business and consumer space that offer social computing applications and services that deliver efficiency, increased productivity, streamlined workflow that connect people to each other and the information they seek. Watch our highlight reel below and stay tuned all week for the full interviews with each company:

• Monday: ooVoo
• Tuesday: MindTouch
• Wednesday: Topix
• Thursday: chi.mp
• Friday: IBM
  

Disclosure: In addition to being a contributor to Bubblicious, I also work at FutureWorks where one of my clients is MindTouch, which I’ve chosen to include in my Web 2.0 Expo coverage due to them being an exhibitor and fitting the focus of my coverage.

By Julie Blaustein

Its the 3rd day of the Web 2.0 Expo. You would think the scene would start to chill but instead the momentum has picked up. Its more crowded, there are great keynotes and so many great sessions, its a major head ache to choose which session to attend; not the worst problem to encounter at an expo of course. The Expo was packed, especially when the booths turned into bars with free alcohol for the Expo web crawl. Numerous languages were spoken due to the many international attendees and many vendors hailed from other countries. The folks from Ghost, from Palestine and Israel, provide a Global Hosted Operating System. This is a Virtual Computer (VC) service that includes a personal desktop, files and applications, available from any browser or mobile phone. Even more fascinating than their technology is the fact that they are a collaboration of an Israeli and Palestinian team, working together and backed by Benchmark despite the differences in their countries.

I attended Launch Pad where 5 start up companies competed through real time voting to win the approval of the audience. It was moderated by John Batelle of Federated Media. It was great to have the founder of not only Wired Magazine but the Standard as the moderator, but other than introducing each company, he sadly did not contribute much to the conversation. There were luckily three great judges though; Marshall Kirkpatrick of the popular blog, ReadWriteWeb, Matt Marshall of VentureBeat and Anand Iyer of Microsoft who asked great questions and kept the presenters on their feet.

It was an entertaining way to spend part of the afternoon. There was 80 Legs, a web scale application that provides crawlers to look at databases, search engines and other things on the Internet with lots of pages. It could potentially save companies millions by avoiding expensive data centers with their solution. Bantam Networks provides an online workspace for businesses. Its dashboard provides updates and features that integrates a number of social media components such as LinkedIn, Twitter and more to come. DubMeNow seeks to shift the process of exchanging business cards via paper to instead via one’s mobile phone through applications such as the iPhone and the Blackberry. Or through SMS text, anyone can can use their technology. ZeaLog provides ways for one to track and measure goals through the apps that they build for the site. The most popular apps track one’s weight or sit ups. Sponsorship is based on the community, so not surprisingly you will find lots of ads for weight loss. And, finally there is Nitobi who has been around for 1o years, but just last year launched PhoneGap which is behind their success. They were chosen as the overall WINNER. They are also a darling of open source allowing anyone to develop apps to run on a number of devices including the iPhone, Nokia, Android and the Palm pre. They plan to monetize by providing tools to build, host and test in the Cloud. After the session I tried to decied where to go next. Go to my Flickr page to see the many more options at the Web 2.0 Expo.

by Rebecca Reeve

The 3rd annual Web 2.0 Expo kicking off yesterday in San Francisco, Tuesday, March 31 – Friday, April 3, with the tag line “The Power of Less.”

In an time constrained by the economy and tighten budgets it’s more important than ever to look at the fundamental Web 2.0 technologies that can create the advantages that will help us move forward stronger than ever.

This year’s main focus areas are:
* Strategy & Business Models
* Marketing & Community
* Design & User Experience
* Fundamentals
* Development

The main focus areas are complemented by five mini focus tracks:
* Web Operations
* Mobile
* Security
* Web 2.0 at Work
* Government 2.0

Reflecting the expo theme of “The power of less” and increased attention to ROI, it’s interesting to note that the marketing and community track is heavily focused on measurement and ROI this year.

Free Expo passes available when you register for a hall pass at here using the code: EXPOPASS.

The Web 2.0 Expo brings together an eclectic group of leaders in the web space, and as always this event is equally about the connections made in the evening over drinks at the parties. Below are a list of a few of the evening events we’ll be attending:

Below are a few of the evening events we’ll be attending.

Opening Reception (Last Night)

Sponsored by Palm, Wed, April 1, 5:30 p.m. in the 3rd Level Lobby at the Moscone Center.

All attendees are invited to an opening reception immediately following the keynotes.

Launch Party 2.0

Hosted by AD-Village, GirlGamer, and Nitobi on Wed, April 1, 10:00 p.m. – 1:00 a.m., Club Six, 60 Sixth St./Jessie street.

Secret party details to be text messaged/voicemailed when you pre-register on their site.

Ignite SF

Wed, April 1, 7:30 – 11:00 p.m. @ Mezzanine (444 Jessie Street @ Mint).
Hosted by Brady Forrest, register here.

AFTERparty
Wed, April 1, 11:00 p.m. – 1:00 a.m., location TBA.

Sponsored by Benchmark and Microsoft BizSpark, and co-hosted by the Austin Secret Society of Entrepreneurs 9, Larry Chiang, Brian Solis, LA Weekly, you’ll receive the secret party location details sent to you when you text the party organizer.