We have a new expert panel for the last two company sessions this afternoon: Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, Brad Garlinghouse of Yahoo (and author of the peanut butter manifesto), journalist Sarah Lacy and Loic LeMeur who runs the Le Web conference among other things.
Oh, and MC Hammer. I know he has fingers in digital pies but I have trouble distinguishing those pies from, well, the trousers. We'll see what he has to say after the next five presentations on rich media and mash-ups.
xtr3D: Very cool hand-waving technology, sort of like the Nintendo Wii but without the handset. He demo'd zooming in on a Google Map using various gestures through a web cam, and then a boxing game simulation. Not very polished, but compelling.
Broadclip: Their "MediaCatcher for Facebook" software records songs from web radio. However good that product is, it has to be better than their presentation which involved the presenter handing most of the presentation over to a kind of PowerPoint-with-possessed-vocals. And the Star Wars theme in the background. Really very odd. Presentation cut short; apparently presenters have to have a pulse...
mEgo, and nice to see some women on stage. These are interactive, portable profiles that can be used between different social networking sites. They are quite complex and customiseable, with various feed options including a Twitter feature that will publish your tweet on all your social net sites. Plus a a mobile version is on the way.
Wixi: Its French creator wanted to send music and video to his girlfriend in Argentina without publishing it to everyone, and couldn't get her to understand FTP. (I don't know why either...) The solution was Wixi, which is basically a Flash media player.
BeFunky: The presenters look anything but, in matching pin-stripe shirts and khaki "pants". The idea seems to be that BeFunky turns images into animations, but it basically looks like Photoshop for dummies. They demonstrated by taking a picture of Mike Arrington and liquifying it "to show what he might look like if he lost 20lbs". That was quite a bold move considering the demo hadn't really gone down that well, but they were quick to point out that the weight thing was Jason Calacanis's idea.
Not the most sparky presentation but the cartoons made from home video were quite charming. But would anyone actually use it?
Shel Israel, blogging next to me, just said this is the weakest group so far and I agree. Let's see what Hammer says.
Hammer liked mEgo, and also said BeFunky had good opportunities for monetisation. No comment in the number of people that used "U Can't Touch This" during their presentations.
xtr3D was well received; Caterina Fake said it was magical and had lots of potential among kids. But the name was panned - Sarah Lacy said once Elmo has become "Extreme Elmo" that once is pretty much dead.
Wixi - does anyone really need this? Brad Garlinghouse said the service could end up being hijacked by porn and by pirates.
Broadclip - in the form of a real person! - explained that the service is really Tivo for radio. But is that legal? Broadclip's founder said he's a intellectual property lawyer and justified it somehow. But Hammer said it's not enough to say that your service is "probably increasing revenues for artists", and Calacanis said that his rule of thumb for this kind of things is to try and have some empathy for the artist. Would they think it is fair to them?
So Jason ask Dod Dodge, former vice president of Napster (and we all know what happened there) whether he thinks Broadclip is legal or not.
"It doens't matter if you're increasing their revenues or not. You're wrong. You're going to have trouble, and that's it."
So that's that.
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