Trying to weed through the 50 companies that launched over the past two days is overwhelming for you, and us. As done in years past, we've picked five of our favorites from TechCrunch50. These are all consumer-oriented services that bring innovative ideas to the table and have a good chance at succeeding.
Note: CNET's judges for this article were Josh Lowensohn (me) and Caroline McCarthy, both of whom watched all 50 on-stage pitches.
Story Something is one of the few kid-oriented products we've seen in the past few years that doesn't have some crazy scheme with virtual worlds, virtual currency, or a way to suck kids dry of their hard-earned allowances. Instead, Story Something is set up to create personalized stories for kids that the parent can set up and read with minimal effort.
Much like Mad Libs, parents can insert the name of their child, and things they can relate to (like their friends, or parent's names) into an existing work. The service then goes through existing stories and inserts the names. Children also have the option of picking what happens next if it's a multipart story, akin to the Choose Your Own Adventure series.
Stories can be printed, and e-mailed for reading on mobile devices and e-readers like the Kindle. It even includes illustrations in these copies. As a time saver, the service can also be set up to e-mail you new stories as they come in, using information about your family that you set up in previous sessions.
The service is currently in private beta, and is planning to have a free version with a handful of sample stories, as well as a premium version which includes a full library of content for $3 a month.
ToyBots Woozees isn't a product as much as a platform. Think of it like Teddy Ruxpin, but Internet-enabled, and available in a whole slew of smart toys. ToyBots wants to get toy manufacturers using their standardized firmware, which lets toy owners swap personalities, and run downloaded software like games and stories.
This whole idea of shared content is hosted on a large network, kind of like Apple's iPhone and iPod App Store, so that games you buy for one device can work for another. It also lets third-party developers program new ways for consumers to interact with that old toy.
As a business this can bring something toy makers don't currently have with most stuffed animals: a revenue flow post-purchase. Instead of relying on accessories like additional outfits, and other characters, they can make money off software sales. Of course before this happens, ToyBots has to get toy manufacturers on board.
ToyBots envisions a future full of toys that share a similar hardware profile, letting users swap personalities among their Web-enabled stuffed animals.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)
Spawn Labs was pitched as a "Slingbox for video games" and that's exactly what it does. The $199 box is a one-time purchase that users hook up to their home game console and their Internet connection. It then lets them play video games from any Internet-enabled computer as if they were playing it on their home TV.
The service has three big things going for it: One is that it pipes the content in 720p HD, which is the proper size for most laptops and what its creators tell us is as good as you can get for real-time streaming without bulging the price tag to around $5,000. It's also a one-time purchase, which means there's no monthly service fee beyond whatever you're paying for electricity and Internet. And, the company tells me it plans to offer compatibility with future game consoles through updated hardware drivers, meaning that you can buy the box now and not worry about having to upgrade it when the next generation of consoles arrives.
Considering it costs close to what most current-generation game consoles do, it may be a hard sell, but after having tried it out at the company's demo booth we definitely want one--and think many other gamers, and people in one-TV households will as well.
Spawn Labs' box can hook up to your game console and let you play your own games over the Web, free of charge. All you need to buy is the box.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)
It's no secret we're Google Reader users here at Webware. We've got a Newbie's Guide for it, and wholly recommend it to folks who want a simple feed-reading experience. That said the product is not without its faults. Earlier today we got a pitch from a cool new service called Favorit that's definitely gunning to take some market share away from Google and other Web based RSS readers. The good news is that it's got a lot of things going for it that others do not.
First things first, Favorit does all the usual things you'd expect--pulling in RSS feeds, providing a directory of new feeds, and giving you tools to share stories you like with others. But that's not what makes it different. Favorit is linked up with Disqus, a universal community discussion service we covered when it launched back in October. This means you can comment on any story on a Disqus-enabled blog right in the reader, and have it show up alongside the rest of the comments on the original story page. Compared with Google Reader, which only shows you how many comments a story has, you can actually read through comments like their own little feed--right in the reader.
That's not the coolest part, though. Favorit is set up like ReadBurner and Streamy to figure out what stories are hot, then promote them to a various hot topic pages. Each story features buttons to vote the content up or down, and even bothers to keeps track of how a story's been voted on. The system employs a small chart that evaluates those votes combined with user attention (time spent reading it) over the past 36 hours. If there were more users taking advantage of the service, it would be a fun way to track the timeline of how the popular stories get hot, similar to that cool DiggCharts visualization we checked out back in May (on a side note, DiggCharts is DOA).
Track how much interest a story's getting both in user votes and readership. A feature that would work well if more people were using the service.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Besides the comments and popular stories, Favorit has taken a nice open approach to sharing stories with others. Like Google Reader you get your own RSS feed of shared stories. You can also add other users' shared story boxes (called "slices") where you can add stories you think they'd like or set it up to automatically grab stories using Boolean values--it's like setting up a smart playlist in iTunes. Additionally Favorit incorporates several popular social publishing mediums, letting you post stories straight to Twitter, WordPress, Blogger, and LiveJournal.
While I found Favorit to be a little less user friendly than Google Reader when it comes to adding feeds, the reading system is off to a good start. Browsing stories is very user friendly, and Google Reader users will feel right at home with similar keyboard shortcuts and tools to discover new feeds. Where the system currently falls apart is the OPML importing, and subscribing to feeds--the latter of which is nowhere to be seen. You can find feeds by searching for them and browsing the directory, but there's not a clear and easy subscribe button anywhere--something I hope will be amended.
The service is in private beta for the time being, although the creators were kind enough to provide us 200 invites for Webware readers. To manage this we've set up a form after the break and will be giving the first 200 to sign-up access.
Update: Invitations are now used up. Thanks to everyone who signed up. We'll be delivering your invites early next week, so keep an eye on your inbox.
Update 3/6: Invitations have been sent out to everyone who registered on the form. The handy bulk inviter let me know that a bunch of you already got your invites from elsewhere. Be sure to check your spam box in case you're wondering where yours are.
This morning AOL launched myAOL, a group of three services wrapped up into one customizable page. MyAOL is made up of three services: myPage, a customizable start page akin to Pageflakes or Netvibes; Mgnet--an audiovisual mashup of news; and Favorites--which for all intents and purposes is a Web-based RSS reader. All three offer various ways of browsing, reading, and discovering news and Web content.
Since most users are already familiar with the concepts of myPage and Favorites, the real surprise here is Mgnet. This is one of the cooler things I've seen lately, and somewhat similar to Google's recently released Google News image browser. Users can pick out topics they like or are interested in, and Mgnet will pull up a small array of images linked up with story headlines. Clicking one brings up the story description in a separate pane, and users are able to vote it up or down (a la Reddit) as well as see related news stories (which are powered by Sphere).
Pick your favorite topics from a simple mosaic of icons and Mgnet will serve up matching content.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
In addition to providing stories it thinks you'll be interested in, Mgnet also keeps track of "what's hot," a small list of the most-clicked and voted-on stories. I found this more interesting than the actual AOL front page, since it's a little more visually stimulating. The one missing piece in this system is a way to see how user voting is affecting each story, something AOL will likely add later down the line.
Favorites is also impressive. As an RSS reader it's well-equipped. There's a fairly extensive listing of prepicked feeds from a variety of Web sites. There's also the option to add your own feeds, either with a straight RSS address, or by searching by URL. To keep track of your various feeds, you can set up folders, a little bit like Google Reader. You can also go in and reorder feeds with simple dragging and dropping. The one missing piece is a trashcan to delete feeds you don't want anymore, which instead is handled in a separate feeds manager.
AOL's got a pretty solid lineup of Web apps in one spot with myAOL. What it lacks in true originality, it makes up for in execution, as all three services are simple to use and feature-rich.
See more screens below.
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CampusRank is a new service for ranking fellow college students, using a variety of yearbook-like categories. The service ties into Facebook, making use of the social network's application programming interface, so users simply log in with their Facebook account to begin voting. CampusRank launched quietly last week, and is making its official live service announcement tomorrow morning. The service is limited to just under 300 college networks, and does not allow private groups or company users.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
CampusRank lets users choose from 34 categories to nominate friends for things like "Most Athletic," "Most Friendly," "Best Hair," and so on. And by friends, I mean that CampusRank won't let you nominate people from your school who aren't on your Facebook friends list. You can't even look them up--a major flaw in my opinion. To sort through the people who are your Facebook friends, CampusRank provides a quick list to scroll through. Once someone has been nominated, there's a ranking system where other CampusRank users can rate them on a scale of 1 to 10.
CampusRank is an interesting take on combining social democracy tools and social networks in one space. However, things get mired down by the friends list limitation and by requiring Facebook users to venture off-site to use the service, two things that need to change before the service can really take off. Screenshots after the jump.
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