Webware

If you think you have what it takes to be a venture capitalist, you will definitely want to check out VenCorps when it launches in about three months. It lets you try your hand at picking start-ups to invest in.

VenCorps is not an actual fund in which you can participate. If you want to invest real money in a portfolio of pre-public companies, you can't, at least not without inside connections. That's what public company registration, and the public stock markets are for.

Instead, VenCorps lets you pick out the start-ups from its list of company submissions … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Reality check: half of the social media start-ups at Tuesday's Under the Radar Conference won't exist next year.

That was the dour prediction of an advertising executive after a day of start-up presentations from a tongue-twisting list of tech companies--including Verismo, Mytopia, Loud3R, Jacked, Sometrics and PutPlace.

Not that the start-up pitches were boring or hard to swallow. It's just that similar to the dot-com heyday (and eventual bust), the success of many social media companies is tied to online advertising spending. And guess what, after nearly 10 years of hand-wringing over Internet advertising … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The Web has come a long way. The aesthetic of a site can oftentimes determine whether or not a wary user will dig deeper and explore your site. The four companies below offer some of the most beautiful products shown off Tuesday at the Under the Radar social media and entertainment conference, but are they really useful? For the most part, yes. Read more about them below.

Animoto, one of my colleague Elinor Mills' favorite slideshow tools and as CEO Brad Jefferson calls it "The end of the slideshow" (in the boring, stodgy sense, of … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The second to the last group rounding up Tuesday's presentations at the Under the Radar conference comes from all walks of Web services. There's a tool to post your baby photos, one to have artists and creative types scramble to create something for you, an upcoming video channel surfing app, and one that organizes all your files online and off.

CrowdSpring, a start-up we listed as one to watch, is a marketplace for creative ideas. The site lets you put out a project and get it crowd-sourced. The winner gets cash and potentially a job … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--News aggregation, licensing rights, and user-generated content. Every publisher has grappled with one or all of these issues as they've built online operations in the age of social media.

They're also potentially ripe markets for innovation. Or at least that's the hope of four Web publishing start-ups that presented business models here Tuesday at the Under the Radar Conference, a one-day confab on social media.

Four companies--AudioMicro, GumGum, Keibi, and Loud3r--delivered a six-minute elevator pitch to an audience of executives and three judges. Judges included Charlene Li, vice president at Forrester Research; Rob Hayes, … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA-- At 1 p.m. PDT, I'm kicking off my sessions at the Under the Radar conference on social-media companies.

First up, we have a few established companies, showing us what they're doing and what they've learned getting there: Shift Control Media, SocialMedia, and Wetpaint.

At 1:30 p.m., I've got my first group of start-ups, the media tools CrowdSpring, Ffwd, Lil'Grams, and PutPlace. The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher will be one of the judges in this session. Watch the video here.

There will be a break from 2:45 … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--You can't have the Web without content. The companies presenting at this morning's content group at Under the Radar here are trying to scrape together things for people to look at and enjoy--from stand-up comedy to a search engine that tells you how to beat the Serpentshrine Cavern raid in World of Warcraft.

Comedy.com better be funny. Luckily its CEO and founder Dean Valentine is. Valentine's a longtime content creator, and just happens to be the same guy who helped create the mid-'90s TV dud Homeboys in Outer Space, so go figure. … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--At 10:45 a.m. PDT, the Under the Radar conference (all stories) here recommences with two demo tracks. In the Content track we'll hear from Comedy.com, Curse, Hollywood Interactive, and PluggedIn. In Publishing, we get AudioMicro, GumGum, Keibi, and Loud3r. You can watch the live video streams below.

And be sure to tune in at 1 p.m. PDT, when I will be moderating the presentation and judging of several companies (Shift Control, SocialMedia, Wetpaint, CrowdSpring, ffwd, Lil'Grams, PutPlace, Animoto, Aviary, Big Stage, and Overlay.tv). I'll have The Wall Street Journal'… Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--YouTube--that's the first name in Internet video. Apple's iTunes might turn up second.

For start-ups in Internet video, it can be a tough sell to prove a new market. But a handful of upstarts tried their hand at an elevator pitch here Tuesday at the Under the Radar Conference, a one-day confab for Web start-ups. Four video-related companies presented their business models in six minutes to judges including Lewis Henderson, head of digital at the William Morris Agency, and Joshua Newman from Twentieth Century Fox.

Here are the aspiring newcomers:

Jacked An interactive Web companion … Read more