Don't Die a Slow Death in a Mountain of Business Cards: Try inTooch!

I no longer get pumped up about cool new social apps or drink the Silicon Valley coolaid - there's just too much of it.

When I learn about new products or services, these are my two go to questions: would I use this today and does this solve a real problem that I've had for awhile?

When inTooch co-founder and CEO Julien Salanon gave me his pitch and suggested we work together, I was at first skeptical about their promise: to eliminate the business card problem.

While it's too early to tell since there are so many variables in this business not to mention human behavior, as a fellow entrepreneur, I couldn't help but be intrigued by his idea. And besides, Julien has one of those personalities that is impossible not to like. 

He shared a story with me as we sipped tea at one of my favorite haunts in San Francisco's SOMA. Nearly ten years ago, he was at an important conference and forgot his business cards and a result, important connections were lost.

Over the last decade, he said that he tried several apps to solve this business-card issue, but none of them worked. They still don't. Don't even get me started with BUMP btw, an app that peer pressure forced me to download yet it only worked one out of ten times I tried it. And, frankly, the whole concept of crashing two phones together doesn't quite gel with me. 

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Don't Die a Slow Death in a Mountain of Business Cards: Try inTooch!

Ray Kurzweil on Ethics & Natural Language Processing

There was an odd but interesting combination of fireside chats at DEMOFall this year: Ray Kurzweil and Ev Williams both took the stage over the course of the 2.5 day event in Santa Clara, CA.

Kurzweil, known for his work in voice recognition, natural language processing, singularity and future predictions, I'm always curious to hear what he's going to share, especially when he moves onto the brain.

Says Ray in a response to the question of why natural language processing has taken so long to advance, "you have to take a hierarchial approach just like human language - you have to build it that way. We learn things layer by layer and we have to educate our synthetic neocortexes too."

When you start to dive deep into a discussion about synthetic neocortexes, where do you go from there, particularly when the majority of the audience are Web 2.0 and mobile geeks not scientists or researchers. Venture Beat's Matt Marshall interviewed Ray, his next to last stage interview before leaving the DEMO Conferences as producer.

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Ray Kurzweil on Ethics & Natural Language Processing

A Visual Journey of DEMOFall 2012

I missed DEMOFall last year if I recall and hate to miss a DEMO since I'm a huge fan of their events, having gone for years (and years). I'm also a media partner every year. As always, they had a great line-up of companies, many start-ups making the trek over from Asia and Europe to unveil their latest and greatest on the DEMO stage.

Some of the highlights included a kick-off Beer reception in the Oktoberfest theme. The great thing about such a theme is fabulous dark German beer and fashionistas like Jolie O'Dell showing up looking like Heidi. (it doesn't seem to matter what outfit she puts on or color her hair is, she always looks smashing).

The downside? The food of course. It was great to reconnect with old friends, some of whom I only see at Demo every year. Not everyone was as stylish as Jolie of course, but the pressure of women pulling out in the stops in Silicon Valley has Dylan Tweney rethinking what he puts on before he goes out of the house...yup, even the socks! (see my geek fashion hurts my senses piece).

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A Visual Journey of DEMOFall 2012

LIFEPROOF iPad & iPhone Cases Lets You Swim With Your Devices Or Toss 'Em Around

Because I live in the "all things social" world, I rarely get an opportunity to review hardware, even at CES. (I'm just too busy).

I ran into a cool 'hardware' product at the DEMO Fall Conference this past week -- or rather series of products. LifeProof produces waterproof cases for your iPhone and iPad that allow you to take them with you from sea to land and back again.

When I first saw the cases, I had that initial reaction that I have with all early products - the case was in black, designed for men and while practical, not sexy and stylish enough for me to want to use.

While their iPad cases still only come in black, their director of communications Jonathan Wegner assures me that a case in white with a soft gray border is coming soon. What about purple, blue, peace or teal I was thinking? Send me anything other than black when they arrive please since the geekier "darth-vader" like versions of today are not going to cut it for my already stylin' iPad.

There are more options for the iPhones on the other hand -- they come in blue, red, turquois, purple and pink. YAY! she says as he pulls them out.

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LIFEPROOF iPad & iPhone Cases Lets You Swim With Your Devices Or Toss 'Em Around

Givit Aims to Make Mobile Video Editing & Sharing Commonplace

The creator of video sharing technology and software for Cisco’s defunct Flip Camera – once a really popular recording device – Givit, has channeled its expertise into a new service poised to make mobile video editing and sharing commonplace.

Unrestricted by length, number of clips or automated editing, Givit has cracked the code in the this race with a powerful, simple new iOS app that transforms raw footage into something polished and shareable on Facebook or YouTube in about 30 seconds.

Unlike any other social video app on the market, Givit’s unique features include:

•  Live Highlighting – While recording a live event, simply tap to highlight critical moments. Tap to recap back seven seconds, or start/stop record at any point.

• Multiple Clips – There are no limits to the number of video highlights that can be combined to create the final product.

• No Length Restrictions – Share highlighted video reels of any length or size.

• Effects - Add motion effects (slow-motion, speed-up), music and transitions to polish and finish the highlight reel. 

• Sharing Options – One-click social sharing to Facebook or YouTube; or, share video privately and securely by email. 

• Cloud Storage – Upload highlighted videos to the Givit cloud for permanent storage, or highlight videos from any other source imported from Givit.

• Facebook App – Watch and share highlighted videos directly from the Givit Facebook app.

• Free – Givit is free for anyone to use, offering 5GB of storage at signup and premium packages for avid users.

They also just announced a $2.5M funding round from JK&B Capital and ATA ventures. Go here for a free download. 

Givit Aims to Make Mobile Video Editing & Sharing Commonplace

With InTooch, Instantly Turn New Connections Into Relationships That Matter

For those of you who go to a lot of conferences and events like I do, collecting business cards, exchanging data and keeping in touch with people after the fact is a daunting task.

Sure, there are apps who have promised to faciliate the exchange of information in the past, but most require both people to have the app installed or the need to work in some unnatural and awkward way.

And, then there's card scanners. I've invested in three over the years and two of the three ended up in a yard sale not so long ago. 

The other one I donated to Goodwill. 

Bottom line, they're not accurate so you're stuck stuck fixing all the mistakes or retyping the contact info into your database for the second and third time.

I recently started working with a French-founded start-up called InTooch who is now based in Silicon Valley. 

InTooch is a mobile application that allows you to instantly turn people you meet into personal and business relationships that matter.

Selected to present their technological innovation with over 75 other companies on the DEMO Fall stage this week, their demo will be included in the social media category.

Did you realize that of all the people you meet at a conference or even in a personal situation, you won't stay in touch with 85% of them? InTooch aims to not just decrease that number but improve those relationships using their app.

The great thing about the product is that it's easy, it's fast and it's free. Instantly, the moment you meet, the InTooch social connector exchanges contact information and connects you on your preferred social networks on the fly.

While many apps have tried to solve the contact update and data overload problem, most require both people to have the app installed for it to work, or they involve connecting in an awkward way.

In doing research about how people around the world stay connected, they discovered that the majority call each other to exchange numbers in real time more than they connect on social networks and exchange a business cards. InTooch takes it a step further by allowing people to share more than just numbers in real time, including your social data.

 How it Works:

Whenever you meet someone you want to stay in touch with, simply call their cell. The app detects that you have called someone for the first time and prompts you automatically to exchange your business or personal contact information.  

 

Works on Any Receiving Device: you can send and receive new contact information regardless of what phone the other person has. If the other person doesn’t have InTooch, it simply sends a link and the rest is done seamlessly through their social connector technology.

 Social Network Integration: In just one call, you can connect through LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. There’s no need to search for a contact in each social network nor to send invitations – connections are simply established on the fly.

No Need for Both Parties to Have the App: unlike so many solutions which require both parties to have the app installed to work, InTooch works regardless of whether the person you just met has it on their phone, making it the most natural, straight forward and easy way to share your personal or business details.  Obviously if the other person has the app, exchanging data is even faster.

 New Connection Highlights and Personal Match Score: For personal encounters, InTooch brings augmented reality to your connections, alerting you to all the things you have in common with another person (friends, places you visited, music, movies you like, social network info, check-ins, interests you share) so you can instantly engage in mutually interesting conversations.

It also provides a matching score based on an algorithm which calculates the probability of how well you should get along with that person.

Geo-Tagging of New Connections: since it’s much easier to remember where and when you met someone than his/her name, InTooch automatically tags the location of the initial connection, so you also can search for people by when and where you met them.

Privacy (Control What Data Your Share): InTooch respects your privacy, allowing you to customize what information you want to share and with whom.

InTooch is available for download at http://www.intooch.com and is free for users. Currently, InTooch works with both the Android and the iPhone (except for iOS6), with support for iOS6, other platforms and mobile devices coming later this year.

 

With InTooch, Instantly Turn New Connections Into Relationships That Matter

8 Commerce Apps Strut Their Stuff at DEMO 2012

On the DEMO Fall 2012 stage this afternoon, eight commerce apps showed off their latest and greatest at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, CA.

Invenia announced the launch of ENSAFER, an innovative cloud encryption service. Ensafer offers users of Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive and alike, to encrypt their data integrated in their service of choice, with all complexity hidden. Ensafer is end-to-end encryption technology, solving an unsolved demand -- the encryption of files as you store, share and collaborate with them in the cloud. They peg themselves as "security by design."

Billing itself as the Expedia for telecom deals, WIRESURFER online marketplace provides small and medium businesses with an easy way to research telecom providers and their promotions as well as order services from national carriers for free.

They provide a map so you can click on any part of the country to find the best deals nationwide and the layout is slick and clean, so you can compare deals side-by-side. Using wiresurfer, SMBs can compare the offerings from national carriers including AT&T, CenturyLink, Comcast Business Services, EarthLink, InterCall, tw telecom, Windstream and XO Communications.  

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8 Commerce Apps Strut Their Stuff at DEMO 2012

Intel Capital Global Summit Invests in 10 Innovative Tech Companies

MIT's Jodie Wu, an Inspiration & Force Behind Change in Tanzania

It seemed as if everyone at the Idea Festival wanted me to meet entrepreneur, Echoing Green Fellow and CEO of Tanzania-based Global Cycle Solutions Jodie Wu.

Enough people know I love Africa and the fact that I have spent time there and lived there.

Combine these known facts with her entrepreneur and technology work and it makes sense that we'd have a lot to talk about.

I also love meeting women CEOs who are an inspiration to be around and in the midst of all this background, did I mention that she's only 25?

She was a speaker this September at the event, the second year I made my way across country to Louisville Kentucky to meet interesting people who are help shaping the world.

Her company Global Cycle Solutions is a social enterprise developing bicycle attachments that improve the lives of smallholder farmers. In May 2009, as an undergraduate in mechanical engineering at MIT, she led her team to win the MIT 100K Business Plan Competition, and in August 2009, she moved to Arusha, Tanzania, to launch her company. 

Her vision is to end "cycled poverty." I had an opportunity to spend time with her before and after her talk. She says, "so much money is going into foreign aid and it's not being spent effectively. The typical person just needs tools and investment in their education. If they buy it, they need it, if they don’t buy it, then it isn’t good enough.

Fair enough. Even if the technology is advanced and might work in the U.S. or Europe, if Africans don't buy the product, then it means its not solving real needs they have every day.

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MIT's Jodie Wu, an Inspiration & Force Behind Change in Tanzania

Former Facebook's Kevin Colleran: Insider View Mixed with Humor

Everyone knows Mark Zuckerberg's name and and if you live in Silcon Valley, you likely know a handful of other senior level Facebook execs as well.

In Kentucky, that's not the case, nor is it the case in other parts of the world.

I was surprised I had not run into Boston-based Kevin Calleran, Facebook's 7th employee in my circles before now....now being this past week in of all places, Kentucky. That said, I met the CTO of the White House for the first time in Louisville at Idea's Festival annual event - same time, same place a year ago.

Kevin did a l'il history of Facebook to a less social media savvy crowd than he may be accustomed to in Silicon Valley or Boston. Most people in the room were Facebook users however, which was a mix of high school and college students, academics, innovators, technologists, researchers, artists and local business owners.

Kevin's a natural sales guy and no surprise that its his background and raison d'etre. He's a great storyteller and adds a lot of humor throughout his talk, all done in a very informal style. In the early days, he ran the East Coast office out of his New York City apartment for months before meeting Zuckerberg for the first time. He laughed as he shared stories of the first two years, most of which captured humorous early stage moments.

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Former Facebook's Kevin Colleran: Insider View Mixed with Humor