When the whole world has its attention turned to the TechCrunch40 conference -- at least the whole web tech blogging world -- how does a company expect to get any press about a new product launch? One way is to send out an eye catching, innovative press release. Celtx, a free, open source screenwriting software package we mentioned in the Filmmaker's Tool Kit, sent us one of the most innovative press releases we've seen.
In order to announce the new version of their screenwriting suite, Celtx created a script detailing the writing of the press release. It was a little kooky, a lot existential, but most of all, it was eye-catching. Celtx's interesting and clever gimmick was enough to really catch my eye and ensure I took a closer look at the actual press release to follow.
The second session of the first day of the TechCrunch40 conference was on the topic "Mobile and Communications." There were very interesting companies but unfortunately, they all suffered bad connection & coverage problems, so they couldn't pitch their products so well. Here they are:
The web as a platform is something we have written about quite a lot over the years here at Read/WriteWeb. Over the weekend, Marc Andreessen put up a lengthy post attempting to sort out the idea of an "Internet platform." Andreessen writes, "One of the hottest of hot topics these days is the topic of Internet platforms, or platforms on the Internet ... 'platform' is turning into a central theme of our industry and one that a lot of people want to think about and talk about. However, the concept of "platform" is also the focus of a swirling vortex of confusion -- lots of platform-related concepts, many of them highly technical, bleeding together; lots of people harboring various incompatible mental images of what's about to happen in our industry as a consequence of various platforms."
He goes on to identify three types of platforms:
It's official; Yahoo! has acquired open-source enterprise office vendor Zimbra for $350 million in cash.
The company's alternative to Microsoft's Exchange server includes:
Look out Google and Microsoft! Richard MacManus reviewed Zimbra in detail last year. Zimbra was an early force in bringing AJAX to the enterprise and adoped an RIA model in March, including both online and offline modes.
The company followed up Microsoft's very public critique of Google Apps' utility for the enterprise with a (questionable) statement of their own just last week. I wonder if there was some fascinating communication with the Yahoo! communications team about that.
With additional writing by Josh Catone.
This morning saw the first five startups at the TechCrunch40 event hit the floor and presented to journalists, investors, and early adopters. The first session focused on search startups. It's interesting to note that one third of the presenters at the TC40 are from outside USA. Below are quick reviews of the first five companies to present.
Powerset is a natural language processing-based search engine that raised $12.5 million a year ago to create what many have touted as a "Google killer." Company founder Barney Pell said this morning that interacting with today's search engines is like talking to a 2 year old. What Powerset does to change that is index the web semantically and extract meaningful relations.
IDF, Intel's annual developer forum, starts tomorrow in San Francisco and the hardware company will make one of its most interesting moves into the consumer software world yet.
Included in the event will be the unveiling of two new projects: a developer focused beta testing site called Whatif and a mashup tool called MashMaker. Mashmaker looks like a lot of fun, but I do have some concerns about it as well. Whatif was opened up late last night and currently showcases a debugger, a compiler and and a performance optimizer that developers can download and test out.
MashMaker will open to the public at the end of this week's conference and is the project of greatest interest to me. The service is a cross-platform Firefox toolbar that lets users create their own mashups on the fly and recommends mashups already created for any site you visit based on the MashMaker mashups you've used before. A mashup, for the uninitiated, is a service that adds value to one website by integrating appropriate data brought in dynamically from a different website. They are a lot of fun and have endless potential to be useful.
Enterprises continue to adopt web technologies and 'web 2.0' trends, but there are two common threads to this adoption. One is that web technologies are step-by-step being adopted by enterprises, but they aren't yet ready to usurp many desktop software apps. The Google Apps vs Microsoft Office debate currently raging is proof of that. The second thread is that enterprises have a fear of web 2.0 tools being mis-used by their employees. I was recently in a TV news segment in my home country, answering the question: should Facebook be banned in the workplace? (for the record, my answer was no!).
Forrester Research has just released two reports that address this 'fear of Web 2.0' (my term, not theirs). The first report is entitled 'Web 2.0 Social Computing Dresses Up For Business'. The executive summary first neatly defines the value of Web 2.0 in the enterprise:
Following my post on types of Social Networking sites, I saw a NYT article about sites targeting older people. Two days after that, Techrunch posted an article about massive layoffs at Eons, one of the Baby Boomer sites mentioned in the NYT article. Eons was trying to preserve some of the $32m they've raised.
I am over 50, so I looked at Eons when it was announced and promptly left. I don’t think it was just lousy execution at Eons, although that was certainly a factor. The idea of targeting by age is just not smart marketing. Sure marketers want to target by age, but do “the people formerly known as audience” want content targeted that way? I can't think of a successful consumer print magazine which does that. Reader age certainly varies by magazine, but they target around content rather than age. The only exception is perhaps magazines for teenagers.
Here is a summary of the week's Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. Note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email.
Google Apps Goes After Enterprise Market
This week Google announced a partnership with major IT consultancy and outsourcing specialist CapGemini, to sell Google Apps to enterprises. CapGemini, which is also a partner of Microsoft and IBM, aims to "mix and match" Microsoft and Google office products. So it seems Google Apps will be a complement, moreso than a replacement, for Microsoft Office. Robert Whiteside, Google enterprise manager for UK and Ireland, is quoted as saying: "If you look at the traditional desktop it is very focused on personal productivity. What Google Apps brings is team productivity."
See also the responses from Microsoft and Zimbra:
Finally, a note that Google's powerpoint competitor is rumored to be released next week - under the brand name Presently.
deliGoo Mashes Google with del.icio.us
Our Web product of the week is deliGoo, a nifty new add on for Firefox 2.0+ and IE 6.0+ that mashes up del.icio.us with Google Custom Search. The way it works is by creating a Google Custom Search engine based on all of a user's del.icio.us bookmarks, all of the bookmarks under a single tag, or all of the bookmarks under a single tag from a single user.
This week as part of our focus on Non-Profits, I did a Read/WriteTalk podcast with Brian Bailey - the author of The Blogging Church. While Brian's focus is obviously on one specific type of non-profit, his advice on different ways that churches can incorporate blogs into their communication strategy, is applicable for any leader in a non-profit.
Brian shared four specific ways that churches are leveraging blogs:
