XConomy's 5x5 Forum: 5 Great Ideas Across 5 Cities

XConomy is hosting something called the XConomy Forum in Boston on December 8, 2010. The theme? 5 Cities, 5 Big Tech Ideas. Five innovative companies will present from five cities across the U.S., including Boston, Detroit, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle.

What are the next big ideas in technology, and where are they coming from? How will they rock your world? And how are entrepreneurs and investors building viable businesses around them? Xconomy has canvassed its national network for the most potentially transformative tech ideas—across mobile, software, hardware, energy, robotics, Internet, and more—and only a handful disruptive solutions will present at this day-only event.

Fast Company co-founder and author of Mavericks at Work Bill Taylor will kick things off and featured 5x5 presenters include:

Kiva Systems, Boston—warehouse robots for retail, distribution, and manufacturing applications
On-Ramp Wireless, San Diego—wireless monitoring and data tracking for the electric grid (World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer)
TerraPower, Seattle—nuclear power startup backed by Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold, and Vinod Khosla
Arbor Networks, Detroit—mobile and Internet security firm recently acquired by Danaher
CarWoo, San Francisco—online car-buying startup out of Y Combinator incubator

 

CarWoo! Celebrates With Back-to-Back Events & Launch Party: #BWE10

Client CarWoo! had an incredibly busy week this past week in Las Vegas with activities around their official launch on October 13, 2010. A new service aimed at transforming the way consumers buy cars, the CarWoo! team started at Digital Dealer in The Mirage, a leading auto dealer show, then hit the largest and leading new media conference in the world BlogWorldExpo at the Mandalay Bay and this week, are participating in roundtables and meetings at JD Power. Below is a shot of VP of Dealer Relations Myril Shaw (left) and CEO Tommy McClung at the CarWoo booth at Digital Dealer.

Below is the CarWoo team and friends celebrating at various industry events and parties for both conferences. Las Vegas never seems to sleep and after a long week of preparing for launch, why give in until the very last event has ended?

But it doesn't end there. CarWoo! also sponsored a blogger meet-up in Las Vegas. The buzz was eclectic and the interest extremely high - from general consumers and moms to rappers, hip hop artists, car dealers and vendors. Woo!!

Stickers galore, it certainly felt like the entire city of Las Vegas had been 'wooed' by the time we left.

Even at after (after parties), the Woo energy continued.

Below, you can get a glimpse of some of the media and blog buzz within the first few days of their announcement (just click on each circle (pearl) to jump from one article to the next.

Below is a selection of press and blog buzz as a list.

• All Car Tech  
• AppScout  
• Auto New Today 
• Car Connection 
• Car News Gossip
• Car Vehicle Blog  
• Daily Caller
• Daily Vista 
• Drive Hog
• Gadget Today 
• iPhone Discovery 
• Investor’s Business Daily  
• KillerStartups 
• Lifehacker 
• ReadWriteWeb  
• Reuters  
• San Diego Transcript 
• San Francisco Business Times  
• Social Car News 
• Techland
• Techlicious
• Toyota Daily Report  
• VentureBeat  
• WalletPop  
• We Blog the World
• Wired Autopia
• XConomy  

 Go CarWoo! This is just the beginning of exciting news and events from this Y Combinator company, who also just closed their A round of funding this week as well. Follow them on Facebook, on Twitter and look for some exciting new partnership and event announcements in the coming weeks and months ahead.

 

 

Organizing & Curating Events: #Pearltrees Meets #140Conf

I have written about Jeff Pulver's 140 Characters Conference (more known by its now popular hashtag #140conf) on more than one occasion, starting with his first Los Angeles event now more than a year ago. He has since held events in Tel Aviv, London, New York, Boston, San Francisco and other locations, with more on the way, including a small town one in the Midwest.

What I love about his events (and no, I don't work for him :-) is that he pulls together passionate people who know how to tell really compelling and engaging stories rather than pitch them or throw insights out on a panel on the "same ole same ole" topic with the "same ole same ole" people. Let's face it, life is about storytelling. Branding is about storytelling. Kids are about storytelling. Money is about storytelling. And when we perk up and pay attention, its because of a really good story, one with passion and authenticity behind the 'voice.'

I wrote about some of the 'characters' who participated in the LA event in a post last week.

And in the same week, I posted a number of videos of many of the heartwarming storytellers, entertainers and performers who spoke in LA. Just search for 140 conference or 140conf on the We Blog the World YouTube Channel to find them all.

Finding and sifting through content after an event is overwhelming isn't it? It's overwhelming because A) there is simply too much content out there, B) search is not perfect nor is it customized for the way we (humans) think and C) there are simply too many 'channels' and social media outlets where things are posted.

In an effort to get more organized and save time searching, browsing and reading, Pearltrees can be a useful way for you to organize and curate content the way you want to see it. Why count on a generic, broad search engine or a geeky bookmarking service to display your world of interests and passions?

Below is the Pearltree I created just for the 140 Conference in Los Angeles, which includes customized pearltrees for each of the categories I decided to curate. In other words, I created a Pearltree for just women attendees, another for speakers, one for entertainment tweeters, educators and moms who are using social media in interesting ways and so on.

And, notice that I have embedded the Pearltree inside my blog post, which was as easy to do it is to embed a YouTube video. Copy and paste the code baby and you're done. It takes seconds to share it with an audience! Imagine the branding opportunities here.

To give you an idea of how easy it is to customize and share, below is the Pearltree I created at the Los Angeles event that contains only 'women tweeters/attendees', making it a great way to keep tabs on people's activity in one central place.

You can bounce from pearl to pearl faster than you can from web browser to web browser, getting quick updates at a quick glance. It also helps you find content quickly and readily and is a helluva lot more compelling to look at than a long geeky bookmarking list. I did the same thing for speakers.

Below is a Pearltree I created for the entire 140 Characters Conference, which includes links to the schedules of other city-hosted events Pulver plans to have or has had, i.e., Boston, San Fran, Detroit, London and so on.

Below is a screen grab that I took to show you how you can organize your Pearltrees within greater folders/or pearls if you like. My 140 Conference Pearl is within a Pearltree I call Conferences & Events, but you can slice and dice it however you choose, since you, are the curator and organizer, not Google. Here's a link to how Techcrunch Disrupt was curated using Pearltrees, a very effective way to capture the best of (or all of) an event. Refreshing isn't it?

Join the Land of Bubbalonians: Say What You Want, When You Want

Bubbalon demoed at the latest VatorSplash in San Francisco. More than just a rating site, you can give a 'score' in real time about people, places and things, as you experience them, including the ability to rate a venue, store, cafe or restaurant as you check into Foursquare.

You can even write a review about something. Bubbalon asks people to share their feelings, and gives them the ability assign an emotion in addition to a 1-100 point score. Bubbalon's “SMART CONNECT” feature is built to recommend "Bubbalonian connections", based upon similarities in ratings and feelings. Listen to the video below and Todd Hamilton and Alex Galkin from Bubbalon will tell you more.

Curation Done Right: Pearltrees' Visual Curation of Techcrunch Disrupt

Alexia Tsotsis has a great post that recaps TechCrunch Disrupt, summarizing the event through human curation. Pearltrees is an incredibly interesting, easy-to-use curation tool that allows you to capture content on the web with a simple click of a button and store/save it under any topic you choose. You can also personalize each of your Pearltrees.

Alexia shares the Pearltrees' visual curation of the event, which allows you to relive the three day information hurricane on your own terms by clicking through any of the available “pearls” or data nodes. Embedded Pearltree below so you can do your own navigation.

Le Monde Does Big Splash on Robots

Paris' Le Monde does an extensive piece on Willow Garage's PR2; it makes a big splash in their Weekend magazine.

 

 

Can't Attend? Just Send Your Robot

John Markoff has an interesting article this week on some of the important uses of robots today. He focuses mostly on telepresence robots, which he says will inevitably grow smarter and more agile, not only representing human users, but will augment them.

He gives a few examples of how robotics are advancing, including healthcare and in the workplace. Neurologist Dr. Shatzel was able to treat a patient a couple hundred miles away, using a computer monitor, a keyboard and a joystick that control his assistant on the scene — a robot on wheels.

Mike Beltzner uses the Texai telepresence robot from Willow Garage to attend meetings at Mozilla in Mountain View, except that he is over 2,000 miles away in Toronto. The robot was surrounded by more than 100 young software engineers, each sitting with a wirelessly connected laptop. Markoff also covers the elderly and aging market.

Vgo’s robots are being used in this area today -- execs envision their robots being used by family members to pay visits and offer help to elderly parents, allowing them to remain independent longer. Willow Garage's PR2 robot is also being used for the elderly and Georgia Tech has been making some progress. They're also working on a number of capabilities for people who have physical disabilities. More on their latest here.

CBS Smartplanet on Robotics

CBS Smartplanet just produced a really great 3+ minute segment showing Willow Garage's latest developments in robotics as well as a glimpse of the future.

They show what state-of-the-art robot PR2 has accomplished in the past couple of months as well as a glimpse of the future. The video include interviews with both Willow Garage's CEO Steve Cousins and Keenan Wyrobek, Co-Director of the Personal Robotics Program, the very same program that is responsible for giving away 11 PR2 robots to universities worldwide.

Pearltrees Hits 2 Million Pearls Within 7 Months of Launch

Today, Pearltrees announces its new beta, Version 0.7.2, which speeds up performance and adds new functionality for users. Social curation at its best, interest in Pearltrees is growing; people have created two million pearls within 7 months of launch.

This impressive number comes only a week after Peartlrees announced $1.6 million in funding, which will be used to accelerate international development and growth.

As of July 2010, the Pearltrees North American user base has surpassed the French Pearltree community, which is where the service was launched last December. Global growth continues at a rate of 30% month-by-month and some organizations have already adopted Pearltrees, showing increased momentum and interest in the service.

This latest beta release, will significantly improve the user experience by increasing the speed and performance of the platform, by as well as adding new ergonomic features such as full screen video viewing, automatic updates of the detailed window and new meaningful animations.

Pearltrees supports all browsers so can be used on both PCs and Macs. Users can also embed pearls or whole Pearltrees’ into a website or blog with a simple button click, making it as easy to embed a Pearltree as it is to embed a YouTube video. Fans, readers and customers of a particular site or blog can discover a series of web pages and explore them in-depth without ever leaving your site. Users are exposed to a complete experience about a topic in one easy-to-navigate window.

Pearltrees transforms the process of discovering, organizing and sharing content people find on the web while enabling bloggers, journalists and other content creators to add a new level of depth and context to the articles they post online.

As Pearltrees expands in the U.S., new use cases of Pearltrees are sprouting up on various interests including food, restaurants, wine, travel, music and politics, to name a few. Below are a few examples of how people are curating content with Pearltrees:

• Check out a Pearltree showing a simulating iPod playlist to for working out

• Here’s a Pearltree for a special gluten free diet

• Find the resources a teacher needs

• Create a Pearltree to curate your favorite clubs in a city

• Build a guide of Buddhism

• Use Pearltrees if you are a label as a creative way to present your artist

• You can use a Pearltree to organize and curate your favorite wine experts

For example, you could create a Pearltree to share five recipes to make your brunch a success or where to find the best barbecue accessories, or even how to organize a whole meal – from wine and starters to main courses and dessert.

Take a look at Marshall Kirkpatrick's post yesterday in ReadWriteWeb and also at a Buddhism Pearltree below.

Pop Sci's Robot of the Week

PR2 makes Pop Sci's robot of the week after impressing them and countless others with its ability to zoom off to the fridge, select a beer of your choice and bring it to you. Hats off to the beer hackathon team Willow Garage team!!