With a case of post-holiday ennui setting in, I decided to forgo a visit to Skirball and instead tuned into last night’s NYTM video stream from my couch.
It was great entertainment and far more edifying than what’s transmitted over my archaic bronze-age remote vision box. I may go so far as to claim that it was the most interesting and, in a way, uplifting set of demos I’ve seen since I started attending NYTM nine or so months ago.
Before I run down my list of favorites, something that Nate Westheimer said captured the spirit of tech in New York and, I think, just about any other town where there’s a startup scene:
“If you’re working on a startup, you’re gonna fail. Seriously, if you don’t think that’s true, you’re delusional.”
Nate’s larger point was that we’re all part of a community who want to change the world, and while our own efforts may not achieve success in a narrowly defined way, we may just inspire someone who will.
Here’s my quick rundown of inspiring demos:
Munchly
Currently in invite-only beta, this iPhone app lets you order concessions (french fries, soda, twizzlers) from the comfort of your stadium or theater seat, automatically charging your credit card. At the business end of the connection, a concession worker services your request and sends out an SMS confirmation when it’s ready. Munchly subscribers can pick up their order from a separate line at the counter.
Kudos to the Munchly crew for bringing queue management techniques from the amusement park world to smaller venues and taking a crack at handling the non-trivial logistics involved in all this.
The founders said they should have news regarding a major movie chain or stadium soon.
Sitesimon
I’m just not brave enough for Sitesimon, a browser (Firefox and Chrome) plugin that lets you share your click stream with a small circle of friends, or with the rest of the sitesimon community if you’re truly confident.
Just to over-communicate this point: you are sharing every click you make on your browser.
There is a manual mode that turns this into a more timid Facebook-style like button. But clearly the excitement here is sharing it all with friends.
So what do you do with information? Sitesimon provides a search function for scanning the actual web page content of your friend’s viewing history, letting you learn useful and fun facts.
Sitesimon is an invite-only beta. However, if you tweet @sitesimon with a hashtag of “nytminvite”, you should be able to get in the door.
VYou
VYou is “broadcast video structured as conversations.” This means you communicate with your social network through prerecorded videos. The world sends you a message; you record a response. Both questions and the corresponding video reply are posted under your profile.
Obviously, there’s different routes that VYou, which is still in beta, can go. On a business level, it has clear PR and marketing applications especially for music, movies, as well as plain old products. And it can be used for creating buzz around events in your own life (weddings, parties, etc.).
I like this much better than a similar idea that came out of a highly capitalized Silicon Valley company. I’m referring to Cisco’s very lame umi product, which tries to tap into the latent entertainment talents of the average American. Umi is based on live video technology, extra equipment, and assumes its subscribers have lots of money to pay in subscription fees.
Way to go VYou and the New York tech community!
Related articles
- Munchly
- Sitesimom
- VYou
- Cisco’s umi: Not for me (technoverseblog.com)
