Webware

It's a little late, but I want to wrap up the Stirr event I emceed last week. As with all other Stirr gatherings I've been to, this event included four carefully chosen presenters pitching their new Web companies. These were the companies we heard from last week:

MetaWeb, makers of Freebase, had the most popular presentation, judging by the silence of the audience during the pitch and the applause meter at the end of it. The MetaWeb database platform underpins the Freebase application and is designed to be a shared repository of structured knowledge. The blogosphere loves it, since it's ambitious, really interesting, and very open. Think of it as Wikipedia with structure. For instance, Freebase knows that an entry for an airport should contain a list of airlines that use it, and if you click on an airline from the airport entry you'll automatically see other airports it serves. It sounds simple, but building a semantic web of knowledge like that has been a dream of academics for decades. MetaWeb might just do it. The MetaWeb site has an explanatory Freebase video that's so understated, you might not understand what a powerful platform Freebase is when you watch it.

Practical tidbit: When I asked MetaWeb co-founder Jamie Taylor what important real-world applications he had in mind when the company built the system, he refused (or couldn't) name one. Usually, when a platform is built without an application in mind, it's an early indicator that the product will have a short lifespan. These products may be critical successes, but without traction in the real world, they don't last. I'm not yet sure if Freebase is different, but I really like it. It could be big, and it should be.

Criteo was the only company at the Stirr event that was new to me. This company makes recommendation engines for all kinds of Web sites. An engine can show site visitors what other products or services it calculates that they will like and thus help online retailers to sell their back catalogs of content and products. The company also has a new "AutoRoll" tool, which is targeted to bloggers and automatically creates a list of blogs based on users' behavior across sites. It's an interesting idea, but for a site to appear on an AutoRoll, it's got to be part of the AutoRoll network. That's limiting, especially during the launch phase. The example shown here is a live demo. If the links don't look all that good, mind this caveat from the company: "It can take up to a few days before the links displayed on your AutoRoll are fully relevant."

Wrike is a neat little service that helps you organize group tasks. You just cc: your project-oriented e-mails to write@wrike.com, and the service adds some intelligence to the e-mail thread to keep people on top of things. I covered this company back in December, and I still like it.

Buxfer is an entry-level accounting service that launched last year as a tool to help roommates manage split bills for rent and other shared expenses. Now it's evolving into a more general-purpose cash-flow tracking package for people with simple finances. Essentially, it's a very basic Quicken-like product for young people. It doesn't have enough depth to replace Quicken for anyone halfway serious about tracking and controlling money, but it keeps getting better and can provide insight into your cash flow, which is the first step towards controlling it. The newest feature: importing your bank statements.

Finally, our apologies for Webware's earlier post about what we called YouTube's "new" Streams and Audio Mixer products. They're not new, just updated.

Justin.tv-- the live helmet-video blogging site we wrote about last month--went live this morning. The site combines a live video feed, public chat room, and head blogger Justin Kan's daily schedule--which loosely resembles a content programming guide. Entertaining bits of content are archived for later viewing, complete with a blog post with context for what's going on. The entire production is run through Kan's backpack, which holds a laptop hooked up to an EV-DO card.

Chatters can discuss what's happening on the show with other viewers (using Lingr, the live updating chat service we covered earlier this month), and they have the option to call or text message Justin with feedback or comments about what's going on. Earlier this morning, Justin and his buddies were talking to a man on the street, and one of the chatters text messaged Justin to move closer so we could all hear better. A few seconds later Justin got the message and moved closer. It was very surreal.

Mundane moments aside, Justin.tv is pretty entertaining. In about 10 minutes of watching I felt like I was inside his head, in a Being John Malkovich kind of way. Whether they can keep the quality going--as they dodge the inevitable stalkers flurry of phone and text spam they're bound to get by making their number public--is questionable. In the meantime, I expect the site to grow as long as Kan and crew keep it up.

Justin.tv lets you embed the live feed in your blog, Web site or social networking profile, which I've done above.

As I suspected, there were interesting Web 2.0 finds in the audience at the Stirr event. Many of these online products are still being built, but they're interesting to experiment with:

• Allth.at: Lets you set up custom, persistent searches. In other words, you can tell it which sites to search (Google, eBay, Technorati, etc.), and which sites to exclude. You can also have the system alert you when there are new results in your searches. Somewhat redundant for those of us who use RSS agents (like Google's) to track keywords on the Web, but has the advantage of working with more than just feeds.

• Collanos: Online workspace for teams. Peer to peer. Shades of Groove. Requires a download, but looks conceptually simple, which is something one cannot say about all the workspace products out there.

• EmbraceMobile: Enables polling and market research via mobile phones. Also can be location-based, so if you're signed up for the service, and you walk into a particular store, you might get a text message to take a quick survey. Could be big in Europe and in the US among teens.

• H3: Think LinkedIn, but with money. If you're trying to hire someone, you put a hiring bounty on the job, and send a note to your contacts. They can also send the note out to their contacts. When somebody finally gets hired, the bounty is split by the person who found the candidate and all the people who forwarded the note to him or her.

• KidConfidence.com: New site for parents that collects reviews of videogames for kids. Focuses on the playability and educational aspects. It might also scrape reviews from other sites (like other services do). Will be adding other media types (TV shows, movies) in the future.

  
  

• RB-apps: The company is building Web-based apps for business. The two examples I heard about: an event marketing system and an online media advertising billing system. The site is pretty sparse, so it doesn't look like you can try the apps out yet.

• Weebly: An AJAX-based Web site builder. A new release of this tool is coming soon, which I plan to cover.

• Zenter: Justin Kan told me about an online presentation app being created by some Y Combinator guys. Looks early stage. Guys: Get it done ASAP if you want Google to buy you.

Before I hustled the four pitchmen on and off the stage at the Stirr event last night, Sun's Scott McNealy got up on stage and ran down his advice for entrepreneurs. Most of it was standard book-of-Scott stuff, including this peculiar bit of advice (#5): Manage through slogans.

Scott McNealy

(Credit: CNET)

McNealy also reiterated Sun CTO Greg Papadopoulos' statement that, "the world needs only five computers." Loosely interpreted, that is: Google, in McNealy's mind, is one really big grid-based computer. The PC on your desk? Your phone? Your kid's game console? Not worthy of being called computers.

Still, Sun was giving away servers to nongiant Web service companies at the Stirr event. One was earmarked for the best pitch from the four presenting companies, as determined by an applause meter. The honor went to Confabb CEO Salim Ismail, who cheated by promising to buy all the drinks at the next Stirr event if he won. The audience sure liked that value proposition, and he pegged the meter. But when he came up to accept the award, he said he'd buy the drinks, "once we get funding." What? Boos ensued, and one person shouted out one of McNealy's startup maxims (#4), "Don't cheat!" The rumor that Confabb was going to announce an acquisition at the Stirr event also turned out to be wrong. After Ismail's waffle on stage, one can understand how someone might interpret his words quite the wrong way.

I still think Confabb is a cool service. Salim needs to shoot a bit more straight, though.

If you want to be like Scott McNealy, by the way, here are his six maxims:
#1: Keep your eye on the ball.
#2: Hire smart people who get along with each other.
#3: Your business has "got to be controversial," otherwise everybody will do the same thing you do.
#4: Don't cheat (even if nobody's looking).
#5: Manage through slogans.
#6: Love your job.

Got that? More Stirr start-ups, plus a cyborg, in an upcoming post.

I'm heading down to the Stirr mixer shortly, where, before Sun's Scott McNealy talks with the audience about entrepreneurship, I'll be moderating pitches from four start-ups. Three of them I've covered previously:

Attendio makes a system that automatically feeds your calendar with events it thinks you'll find interesting (let's hope it gets the times right).

Confabb is a conference directory. Rumor has it the site is soon to be acquired. Maybe we'll find out tonight.

JobCoin is a hosted job board service that I think is really clever.

The fourth company is Collaborative Drug Discovery. In a nutshell: Open-source development concepts applied to drug creation. I can't begin to explain it better, let alone critique it. But if you've ever felt that you needed a more efficient way to upload your high-throughput enzyme inhibition and high-content cell assays, check it out.

On the consumer side, see also Mepath[blog post], an initiative to create public drug trials, or at least make it possible for clinical drug users to compare their experiences (efficacy and side effects) with other people.

I'll also be looking for other interesting Web 2.0 companies at the event. I often find the most intriguing start-ups by talking with event attendees, not by hanging out with presenters. Come find me at the event if you've got a good pitch.

Once a month (or so), I get up in front of a room of drinking entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and moderate a Bay Area Stirr event. There are a lot of these social/working mixers these days. I'm also going to try to wrangle the SFBeta mixer tomorrow night. Those pitches will be in limerick. Should be fun.

But the Stirr events are really excellent. Great energy in the room. Lots of deals happening. Nice location. And good startups:

Frucall. Nasser Manesh showed us his new price comparison service for mobile phone users, which he calls "the shopping assistant in your pocket." Unlike some very cool services in development (like Scanbuy; see previous column) that let you take a cameraphone picture of a barcode and then give you pricing information on the item in question, Frucall is a voice service. You call the number, type in the barcode, and hear alternate pricing. It's not nearly as cool as being able to zap a product to get pricing info, but it's a user interface everybody understands, and it's the right technology for today. It's going into my speed dial for sure.

Kongregate, presented by Jim Greer as "the bastard child of YouTube and World of Warcraft," is a place to play Flash games. Some of them are entertaining, and some are pretty awful, but that's OK--the point of this site is that it gives developers a place to post and test their games. Advertising revenue is shared with game developers. Many of the games on Kongregate have a lot more personality than what you'll find on other Flash game sites, such as Pogo.

Krugle is "a search engine for software developers," pitched by CEO Steve Larsen. It searches not just code libraries, but articles and papers. Looks like it has some really nice features. There's a nice video demo. Larsen says his service searches for semantics, not just word matches, which is one up on Google's Code Search. The audience really dug this pitch.

Liftopia. Evan Reece pitched his company like this: "Think Expedia, but for lift tickets." I covered the service recently.

Previous Stirr coverage is here and here.