launchweek08

Postbox brings more Webmail flavor to your software in-box

Postbox is a new cross platform e-mail client for Windows and Mac computers. It's an alternative to Microsoft Outlook, and manages to bring some of the benefits of Web e-mail to a desktop application.

Things like a conversation view, tagging, and search that indexes both mail and attachments are all features Gmail users have been enjoying for years. The problem is, those features and several others have not gone over to the desktop side of things without additional software plug-ins from third-party providers.

Postbox answers that by taking many of these single features sought after by other third-party developers and blending them into a standalone client. For example, if it sees an address it will pull up a quick map link complete with business information. When you're offline you still get this information.

As some of the session judges at the TechCrunch50 conference noted, some of the things this product does would be much better suited as an extension to the software e-mail client you're already using. I'd certainly love the photo browsing client and conversation view in my Outlook, but I definitely can't ditch it until this product gets rock solid Microsoft Exchange support with a built-in calendar (a feature the product does not have).

Postbox currently works with IMAP, POP, and SMTP protocols, letting you tie in your Web mail accounts. Unless your business is running off Google apps this probably won't be a good companion for anything besides your personal accounts. That said, compared with something like Apple's Mail application, it looks like a nice step up.

Update: Postbox will be available for download in "a few weeks" time. Only the sign-ups were opened up today. I've also thrown in another screenshot after the jump.… Read more

Fitbit will get you off the couch

For years, celebs and CEOs have the luxury of having a personal fitness trainer shadow them, tracking their activity levels, urging them along so they look better and feel better than the rest of us. Fitbit won't provide you with your own personal trainer, but the tiny clip-on wireless motion sensor/recorder may be the next best thing.

Introduced today at TechCrunch50, the small, wearable, $99 device records and then transmits to the Fitbit server an encrypted stream of motion data. Your motion data. The server translates the recorded movement into exercise intensity levels, calories burned, sleep quality, steps … Read more

Security software that's perfect for San Francisco government

SAN DIEGO--A standoff between San Francisco city officials and a city employee jailed this summer for allegedly refusing to reveal passwords to the city's computer network could have been avoided with technology launched this week at DemoFall.

Terry Childs, a network administrator for the city of San Francisco, was jailed July 13 on four felony charges of taking control of the city's computer network and locking administrators out. He eventually gave up the passwords to the Mayor in a secret jail-cell meeting a week later.

Things would have been different if the city had been able to use … Read more

Move over T9, here comes Swype

The inventor of the T9 keyboard technology for numeric keypads, Cliff Kushler, is back in the game with a new alphanumeric entry technology for today's devices: touch-screen laptops and smartphones. His new technology, Swype, is quite simple to use, although beneath the user interface there's a lot going on.

Swype works with an on-screen QWERTY keyboard like you have on the tablet version of Windows and on the iPhone. But instead of tapping letters out, you press your finger or stylus on the first letter, then, without lifting it, move it to the remaining letters in the word. … Read more

Firms launch search for people, word meaning

SAN DIEGO--The promise of Facebook and the nightmare for privacy advocates has arrived in the name of a people search site called iSearch, one of a handful of search-related products announced at DemoFall on Tuesday.

Intelius' iSearch site links offline and online data to help people find other people. It uses proprietary algorithms to integrate data from public records, online social networks, and professional sources to provide a comprehensive people search engine.

A demonstration of several searches revealed results that resembled dossiers on people. For instance, the company showed how you could find someone using just the first name and … Read more

Sci-fi demo of real-time visual geotag service could be just that

One of the coolest things to be shown off at the TechCrunch50 conference might not ever become something any of us can use. It was a mythical technology demo from a company called Tonchidot Corporation, which showed off its "Sekai Camera" application. It uses both the camera on your phone and GPS to offer up a near real-time tag of what you're looking at.

The funny thing is the entire demo could have been a complete hoax. We never saw the service in action--just a video of it placed in the gadget-saturated Akihabara district of Tokyo. It … Read more

SpinSpotter lets readers edit out bias in online news

SAN DIEGO--Think the media is biased? Well, now you can do something about it.

Seattle-based SpinSpotter launched an online service at DemoFall on Tuesday that lets readers judge whether articles on the Internet are objective and accurate or not.

"People no longer trust the media," Todd Herman, founder and chief product officer of SpinSpotter, said during a presentation. About 66 percent of people consider the press "one-sided" while only 9 percent of journalists are concerned with the media's credibility, according to a Pew Research Center study.

A SpinSpotter toolbar, called Spinoculars, displays any edits that … Read more

iPhone apps a major trend at DemoFall

SAN DIEGO--At Demo and DemoFall, there are always easily identifiable trends among the dozens of companies chosen to present their products.

In previous iterations of the events that I've attended, those trends have been photo-sharing services, online video hosting, Web 2.0, and the like.

This week, the trend--at least as I've seen it--has been the number of companies here with iPhone applications. Not every one of them is talking prominently about the applications they have, but Demo lead organizer Chris Shipley told me informally that she thinks that there must be at least a couple dozen companies with iPhone applications here out of the 72 total presenters.

I'll be the first to admit that I was slow to understand the value of iPhone apps, and I suppose that's because it took me awhile to buy one of the devices, and even longer after I did before I started trolling the Apple App Store looking for the best and brightest of what was out there.

My major introduction to the applications was a day I spent last month in Seattle, basically letting a series of them control my life for a day. And more recently, I have found myself blown away by some of the most simple applications imaginable. For example, Showtimes determines where you are and then comes up with a list of movie theaters--sorted by proximity to you--and shows the films showing at each and the times for each film.

As I said, it's totally simple, and pure genius.

Ultimately, while other mobile phones have many of the features of the iPhone, I don't think that there will be any others in the near future that combine GPS, a great interface, the power of an operating system like OS X, and a network of developers eager to reach out to an audience of users as devoted to their devices as iPhone owners.

Back here at DemoFall, there is definitely no shortage of companies that have developed applications for the device, and some of them seem very promising to me, even though most have yet to appear in the App Store.

I have my own ideas, as I stated above, why I think iPhone apps are the future of software, but I thought these developers would have opinions even more valuable than mine, since they're building businesses around the platform.

Among the companies incorporating the iPhone into their Demo products are WebDiet, Telnic, SkyData, The Echo Nest, and Rudder.

"Right now, (the iPhone is) the platform with the most immediacy," said Richard Bryce, CEO of Mapflow, a company here with a product centered around an iPhone app. "Especially for the consumer market."

It's easy to see why Bryce would think so.

Mapflow is a very interesting product designed around the idea of helping drivers offset the high costs of gas by finding people who need rides to pay to fill empty seats in their cars.

"Most of our lives are ad hoc," Bryce said. "We're trying to apply the iPhone's smart technology to give that ad hoc, on-demand capability to carpooling."

The Mapflow system works by letting drivers define routes--either one-time, or repeat--they're following and the number of seats they have available to fill. The iPhone makes it simple to do this through lists that can be easily displayed and because the phone's GPS chip quickly determines where the driver is in proximity to anyone looking for a ride.

It might sound weird to pick up strangers in this manner, but Mapflow requires that all users register with their name, a photo, and a credit card, and that means that drivers can feel confident that whomever they pick up is probably going to be safe. And when they arrive to pick up the rider, the iPhone displays the rider's picture so the driver can be sure the person is who he or she is supposed to be.

In addition, drivers and riders alike can choose preferences for the type of person with whom they want to travel. This means, for example, that women can choose to ride only with other women.

Further, the service has a quick and easy rating system--again, enabled by the iPhone's elegant interface--that allows everyone to weigh in on the people with whom they've traveled.

Riders pay about 30 cents a mile to use the system, and Mapflow makes its money from a 15 percent commission on the transactions. Drivers pocket the rest.

Clearly, there are many questions the company must answer before the product becomes profitable--and of course, it must first release the application, which it plans to do in about four weeks. But this seems to me to be a very good use of the device, especially given the growing emphasis on getting people to stop driving one to a car. … Read more

iCharts turns your boring spreadsheet into a flashy chart

Any time I hear a company reference their product as a "YouTube for _____," I cringe a little. Newcomer iCharts said the same thing about its charts product at its presentation at the TechCrunch50 conference this morning. The service takes your data from spreadsheets and turns it into charts that are both hosted on the site and can be embedded elsewhere, including things like PowerPoints, message boards, and PDFs.

What makes iCharts less worthy of the YouTube cringe is that it's a solid business model. As billionaire panelist Mark Cuban pointed out, you can leverage out this … Read more