As I've said previously, the Web 2.0 Expo show features a lot of products for developers. But there are still cool new Web apps to find--especially at the Launch Pad, a rapid-fire demo session featuring six relatively new companies. It's kind of like a mini-Demo.
Acquia sells a commercialized version of Drupal, the open-source content management (and Webware 100 winner). If you buy the open-to-commercial model, as executed by RedHat (Linux), and Trixbox (Asterisk), this business makes a lot of sense. I'm glad to see the platform get some business attention.
Chirpscreen is a fun little app that shows you what your friends are up to on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. It also tracks eBay keywords for you. You can get your updates in a desktop window or on your screensaver. It's like a more graphical version of Friendfeed, and like Friendfeed (and other Twitter clients), you can also reply back to posts you see in the tool. It feels like a shallow app, but that's just because it's pretty. News today: Mac version now available.
Smart question from the venture capitalist panel on Chirp: how do you make money? Answer: ads, affiliate feeds, and bundled downloads. All proven models, but none really light my fire.
JobScore. This is a clever recruiting service. Not only can you outsource your company's jobs page to this company, but it will track applications to your jobs. And in a neat twist, it lets you make money from the applicants you don't hire. See previous coverage: Jobscore pays you for recruiting rejects. Update: launching some of the features now, as well as free credits now if you sign up.
Oortle is announcing Videophlow, a social app that lets you view YouTube videos in lockstep with other people, chat about them, and perform important tasks like throw virtual tomatoes at the screen. See today's coverage: Videophlow tries to enliven YouTube.
Tradevibes is a place to discover new start-up companies. Most of the companies on the service are, not surprisingly, Web start-ups. Seems to be oriented more towards industry experts and entrepreneurs than users, but has a nice community vibe. You can also embed Tradevibes database widgets on your own site. I'm going to spend more time looking at this one. News today: a "top movers" list that shows what the community likes best.
Triggit is a very odd blogger's helper, focused on adding monetization (affiliate links, mostly) to posts. It can also automatically add related videos from YouTube and Flickr. See previous review: Triggit: Weird but handy blogging tool. The news today is a handy new way to drag Google Adsense ads into a page. Pretty handy tool if Adsense is part of your monetization scheme.
Via SMS voting, the audience picked Triggit as its favorite. My favorites: Acquia and Jobscore. They have real business models.
I'm here at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference here in San Jose, which is about to kick off. At last night's Launch Pad event, four new services launched.
Fatdoor made its official alpha launch. Originally slated for a release at last month's Web 2.0 Expo, the service opened its doors for people interested in testing the service on their way to making it publicly available. The service touts itself as being a "neighborhood-based community social network," and a place to find local people or events. We'll try to get a hands-on later this week.
Dopplr, like Fatdoor is a location-oriented social network. It's currently in private beta.
GeoCommons is a social map creation and exploration service. Users can browse and create maps filled with various data. Like Swivel (which launched their geomaps last night), there are all sorts of data sets that make a little more sense when you see them geographically instead of on a chart.
UpNext is a mix between an events service and Google Earth. Users can control a 3-D map, and see where events are visually. The service is currently in an invite-only beta.
The conference is about to kick off. Stay tuned.
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