The second and final day of the TechCrunch40 conference is underway with the first of the final four start up sessions. Session 5 focuses on productivity and web applications. Below are my thoughts about each of the startups that presented.
Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards), makes the Insight plugin for Microsoft Outlook that adds social networking features to your email. The plugin extracts a social graph from your email conversations. Xobni says that email is already used as a file manager, contact manager, todo list and social network and their software just ties those functions together. For example, the plugin can reveal connections between people who have emailed you and create a historical view of your contact with an individual.
Google announced yesterday that it would bring its contextual text ads service, AdSense, to the mobile web. AdSense for Mobile will allow mobile web site publishers in 13 countries to monetize their content with text ads using the familiar pay-per-click model.
Analyst Frost & Sullivan predicts that the mobile advertising market will reach $2.12 billion in the US by 2011. Worldwide, the outlook is even rosier: $10 billion per year by 2010 says the Shoesteck Group, while EJL Wireless Research estimates a $9.5 billion yearly global mobile ad market by 2011.
The thirteen countries that will see the initial roll-out of AdSense for Mobile in the next few weeks are the United States, England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Russia, Netherlands, Australia, India, China, and Japan.
The Google Reader team announced today that the project has left Google Labs and added 9 language options to its existing English interface. Those languages include French, Italian, German, Spanish, English (UK), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, and Korean. I'm glad that many international RWW readers will now be able to read the feed here in an interface in their native language. The product still leaves some to be desired, in my opinion, but today's news is good and I look forward to Google Reader's future.
Now free of the beta tag that even GMail still carries with it, a Google Reader primed for international use will probably increase its already huge market share substantially. The service just added search functionality earlier this month, something that was no doubt required before it could lose its label as an experiment. Still limiting the scope of its potential adoption, though, is lack of support for authenticated (password protected) feeds. So much for business use, or even filtering certain GMail labels to RSS, if you're a Google Reader user. If this is important to you, try any of Newsgator's products for heavy feed reading or Netvibes for a small start page - both support authenticated feeds.
Portland, Oregon based Lunarr is launching a deceptively simple looking collaboration platform tomorrow and we've got invites for the first 200 readers who want to check it out (see bold line below). The company had a very nice launch party tonight and they give a heck of a demo - but here's what I think after using it just a bit myself.
Lunarr aims to solve two problems: version confusion and lost email conversations. The company's solution is like a wiki with site-mail, but there's a certain elegance to how it's implemented. The service has some real shortcomings, but given its Alpha state there's time for improvement. If you'd like to check it out yourself, send an email to marshallsentme@lunarr.com to request an account.
Here's how the service works. While most annotation and collaboration tools let users write on top of objects or around them via all-too-often complex asset management systems - Lunarr employs a fundamentally different metaphor. 
Their document-centric approach lets collaborators share a common asset like a Word doc, a live web page or even Google Apps like a spreadsheet - and "write" on the "back" of each asset using what's essentially a focused, personal webmail client. One click on a tab flips the view to the metaphorical back of an asset where messages are sent and received between users concerning just that single asset itself.
Cofounder Hideshi Hamaguchi, who probably has a career as a poet in his future if this doesn't work out, says that Lunarr leverages the creative tension between structure and chaos. In that mental place, Hamaguchi says, we just may find more time for creativity in our work. I buy that.
Now to some of the problems.
Barry Diller's Interactive Corp. announced tonight that it is taking majority share of Eugene, Oregon based GarageGames, a company that shepherds independent online game developers to market. IAC will place GarageGames at the center of an innovative project called InstantAction.com - due for release early next year. InstantAction will include a fund to publish games and will begin accepting applications from developers on Tuesday. This according to the Wall St. Journal, who reported first on the move. The price IAC has paid isn't being disclosed. Independent game lovers can take heart, the company tells us that IAC has taken zero positions on the GarageGames board of directors and will support the company's original mission with an infusion of cash.
InstantAction will be a continuous social gaming environment, where users can move from one game to the next without web page reloads or leaving the basic environment in any other way. User profiles will be carried from one integrated game to the next.
Google has tonight announced its much anticipated Powerpoint competitor. It has been added to Google Docs - the new, simpler name for "Google Docs & Spreadsheets". With the new Presentations feature, users can create "simple web-based presentations". A quick glance at the functionality shows it is similar to the other Google Docs features (word processing and spreadsheets) - with sharing, revisions, etc. Note that Presentations is also available as part of the Google Apps suite of tools.
We'll test out Presentations some more before delivering our verdict to you. For now here is the rest of the email Google sent out (sans the PR quotes from execs):
Today Mozilla is launching a new organization to develop Internet mail and communications software. It will use the open source email desktop client Thunderbird as a base - the product, code and brand. Technically this will be a Mozilla Foundation subsidiary - and it is very similar to Mozilla's Firefox effort. Just as Firefox aims to give choice in the browser space, this new initiative will try and advance email and communications technology. As with Firefox, the aim is to create a robust developer ecosystem to encourage open source development and community innovation. Mozilla will provide US$3 million seed funding to establish this new company.
The new organization will be led by Dr. David Ascher, currently CTO and VP Engineering of ActiveState, who joins Mozilla to carry out this job. Ascher has a lot of experience in the Mozilla community, going back to 2000. He was formally the lead of Komodo, a Mozilla-based integrated development environment (IDE), and is a director of the Python Software Foundation.
The last session of the 1st day at TechCrunch40 was about crowdsourcing.
Note: for a full round-up of the day's action at TC40, check out Allen Stern's sterling effort at Center Networks.
Cake Financial is a financial sharing platform backed by Ron Conway. It allows people to share portfolios and real time transactions with others. The site can be integrated with services such as E*Trade and Charles Schwab. This sharing feature allows you to chart yourself against other people and the market normals. You see what your friends are doing, you get notified in real time, and so on. So it's financials, enriched with social networking features.
Session 3 was of community and collaboration startups. Two of the
participants were from Korea, showing the internationalization
of web 2.0.
StoryBlender is a promising video mashup startup from Korea. Video editing is not new, but this one's approach is like a 'video wiki' - it lets you mash up videos collaboratively, with your friends and peers. The interface they demonstrated was very easy and straightforward. You can easily add music, video, text and animate things. No need to be a pro, no special skills needed.
Rev2.org is reporting that buried deep in the Facebook Developer wiki is mention of a Data Store API hinting at Facebook's possible intention of offering data storage to app developers. The wiki page was updated this morning to announce that the service is now in open beta and is accessible by any application (any app developers out there want to shed more light on this one?).
Just this afternoon I wrote about platform definitions floated by Marc Andreessen, who called Facebook a level 2 platform -- or a "plug in API." It seems like Facebook might be transitioning into what Andreessen would call a level 3 platform -- one that "handles everything required to run your application on your behalf."
