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Check out new mobile apps: Watch the Under the Radar live stream

Natali Del Conte and I will be moderating some sessions at the Under the Radar: Mobility event today on new mobile app companies. You can watch the event live on this post (after the jump), or at the event organizer's own site. Or check out our livestream below for ongoing team updates from the pitch sessions.

Of the 26 new companies presenting at the show, I like almost all of them. It's a really good selection. But, as always, there are a few companies in the group that I find especially interesting. These are the five outfits I'm most interested in learning more about:

DialPlus: When you make a phone call, it retrieves information about the person you're calling from the Web (including social networks) and displays it on your screen.

iVisit: A push-to-talk video phone that works across mobile devices and standard computers.

My6sense: Takes in your social feeds, ranks them for you, and displays what it thinks will be the most relevant information from your social network on your smartphone's screen.

Nextivity: Extends cellular coverage to inside the home. Several companies are trying to win the dominant share in this market. It's more important than ever as consumers continue to dump their landlines.

Smule: This company makes dopey iPhone apps, like the Sonic Lighter, but is also developing apps that leverage its audio technology, which allows iPhones next to each other to communicate via audio tones. Like dolphins, perhaps.

The event runs from 9:00 a.m. Pacific time to 5:30 p.m. There will be two parallel tracks of presenters. Natali will be moderating Track 1 at 10:15 to 10:45 a.m. Companies in her group are Apisphere, MyBooo, PhoneTopp, and Soocial.

I'll be moderating two sessions in Track 1 from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Companies in my group: Billing Revolution, Mojiva, Toro, GotVoice, Iotum, Mobivox, Vello, 911ICE, Mob4Hire, Nextivity, and Torch Mobile.

I'll also be a judge of the one-minute Pitch Session at 1:00 p.m. and one of the co-hosts of the "Meet the Carriers" panel at 4:30.

Here's the live blog. We'll be updating it from 9:00 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.

Live video streams after the jump... … Read more

CrowdSpring leverages weasel economics

I saw CrowdSpring present at a recent Under the Radar conference I was moderating. I like the service a lot, because it simplifies the process of licensing creative works, and it levels the playing field so anyone can play. What it does, in a nutshell, is let people who need design work done put their requests up on the site. Then creatives compete for the jobs.

It sounds familiar, doesn't it -- like TaskMarket, Elance, and other task boards?

It's not. CrowdSpring has a radically different cashflow model. It works like this: If there's a job you … Read more

A somewhat new twist on backup: PutPlace

At the Under the Radar conference earlier this week, the pitch from Joe Drumgoole, CEO of PutPlace, was tragically misunderstood. Drumgoole pitched his product as the one true glue to bind all a family's media together. Webware's Josh Lowensohn saw through it, but the judges and the audience did not, and neither did I. So I followed up with Drumgoole the day after the conference to give him another chance to make his case. See also the video interview at the end of this post.

PutPlace is backup. That's really it. It competes with services like Mozy … Read more

Pretend you're a venture capitalist, with VenCorps

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

Social media's uphill advertising climb

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

Under the Radar: Eye candy that's actually useful

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

Under the Radar: Your data (and life) in the cloud

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

Hunting for a new Web publishing giant

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

Under the Radar: Rafe wrangles start-ups

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

Stand-up comedy, celeb gossip and blood elves hit Under the Radar

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