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My article, “First Look: Marginize“, is now available on VentureFizz. Each month, I’ll be reviewing a Boston-area startup on the VentureFizz site. If you’re an early stage Boston-area startup looking for coverage, please contact me at nathan dot burke at gmail dot com.

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My first monthly column for VentureFizz, First Look: xtra xtra has just been published. Each month I’ll be writing a column featuring new startups in the Boston area.

If you have a startup you’d like to see reviewed in the First Look column, please let me know by sending an email to me at nathan dot burke at gmail dot com.

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Image via CrunchBase

Wow. Threadsy. It’s awesome.

These days, it takes something really, really interesting to get me to write a blog post, and threadsy is it. Here we go.

Threadsy is exactly what I was hoping Google Wave would be. Unfortunately, Google Wave ended up being a buggy, spam-infested pile of confusion. Threadsy is a webapp that allows you to pull in multiple email accounts and your social media accounts (twitter and facebook) into one simple interface. And by cross-referencing each source, it’s able to be Xobni-like and find out more information on those that you are corresponding with.

That was a horrible description. Here’s an example:

This is a screenshot of the app. You can see that the app is split into two panels: Inbound and Streams. The left pane shows my incoming emails. Clicking on an email does this:

The email opens on the left, and the right hand pane looks to find that person’s stream. For instance, in this example the person that sent me an email has a twitter account. Threadsy automatically looks up her twitter feed and shows me her most recent posts. Dude. That’s kind of badass.

What Does It Solve?

Right now I’m trying to stay ontop of the following every day:

• My work email address (google apps for business)
• My personal email address
• My work twitter account (@aprigo)
• My personal twitter account (@nathanwburke)
• My personal facebook account
• My work facebook account

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My blogging has been pitiful lately, as I’m spending a ridiculous amount of time working. So instead of looking for things to write about, the only time I’ve been writing lately is when a story finds me somehow. But over the weekend, someone from a startup wouldn’t let me ignore them. That startup is called NeedCube.

Here’s how it happened. About a week ago, I received the following email:

Hello,

one of my friend referred to your site that I find amazing.

I have just launched my project and would like to get help to publicize it.
Is this something you could help me? Any opportunity to write an article about it, or something like that?

Check out the site here: http://needcube.com

The idea is to have a unified central place for people’s needs.
No categories, no hassle, only keywords and proprietary search mechanisms.

The main idea is centered around the DEMAND side and not the supply. You may come and register your needs.
At a certain point the sellers will come and search for the stuff they have to offer and see if anyone needs it via the need search engine.

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks,
Gery

Okay. I’m guessing that the person from NeedCube isn’t a native English speaker, so I don’t have any issues with the grammatical content of the email. And I like the approach: Reach out to a blogger, compliment them on their blog, and ask them to write about the product. It’s simple, succinct, and actionable. Not bad.

But then I got another email the next day:

Hi there,

I already got a nice review of my startup:

http://www.killerstartups.com/Search/needcube-com-turning-the-search-process-around
Check it out!

Gery

When I first read this, I honestly thought Gery was saying “I already got a review, so don’t bother.” But on second glance, I liked the approach here as well: point to a proof-point that the startup is worth writing about. And since I’m not the kind of blogger that cares about breaking news or exclusivity (especially since I almost never write!!), this definitely wouldn’t dissuade me from covering it.

But, I was at work, and I just forgot about it. Until yesterday.

Yesterday I got the following note on facebook:

Dear Nathan,

could you please help me publicize our very new and pretty unique service launch? It is about a unified central place for people’s needs.

http://www.facebook.com/l/2dba8;needcube.com

Thanks,
Gery

Well, I had no more excuses. It was time to take a look at NeedCube. First step: the coverage they’ve already received from Killerstartups-

NeedCube is quite an interesting site. It can be defined as a sort of reverse matching mechanism for people’s needs. That is, instead of executing a search when you need to find anything, here you can set down what it is that you want and be notified the moment it becomes available.

All right. Easy enough concept to understand, but then I saw this nugget:

You are asked 5 simple questions when you are specifying what you need: “what”, “when”, “where”, “how many” and “for how much”. You are not actually required to categorize what you need, and you are saved the hassle of registering to several sites serving different categories. In that sense, NeedCube aims to stand as one unified place for all your requirements.

So wait. You don’t categorize anything? Doesn’t that make it difficult to, you know, find things? Either way, the killerstartups review had my attention, so I decided to check out the site.

My first thought: Whoa. For a site that bills itself as easy to use and intuitive, there’s an awful lot of text to explain what to do. From the site:

NeedCube is EASY to use!

There is only one step ahead of you, or maybe two.

1. If you have grasped the NeedCube concept then you are ready to create your online identity.

2. If you feel you need more information or help to get started with NeedCube go to FAQ.

If you have something to offer on the web, go right into Needs and check if someone has the same need. If your offer is needed there will be an instant match, go ahead and complete the transaction.

I love it. There is only one step….or maybe two. That’s kind of awesome. All right, let’s dive right in and see what’s up.

Pretty standard right? Well, you can’t see it, but the Terms and Conditions link goes to a PDF. Interesting choice, but hey, let’s plow forward.

Once your account is activated and you sign in, here’s the main screen:

So we’ve got car parts, iPhones, something in Chinese, and rental housing all together in the same screen with no way to categorize anything, or filter items. An example:

I need an apartman in Nassfeld ski area in January 2010 for 11 people, preferably close to the skirun for approx 30 Euro/person (After 1/4/2010 / Nassfeld - Austria)

If I were able to filter out only the things that I’m interested in buying or selling, I’d never see this. But without viewing options, I’m guaranteed to see things that are irrelevant to me. And as someone that wants something, I’m not sure how anyone would find me in the first place.

My Thoughts On NeedCube

The Concept: I like the idea of having one centralized repository for what you’re looking for, but only if that repository syndicates what I want to other social services. Otherwise, what’s the point of entering the details of what I need here if I’m going to need to do the same thing on craigslist too?

The Problem: It looks like NeedCube is trying to solve the “it takes too long to find what I need” problem, and I’m not sure that’s really a problem for me. Also, I’m not sure there’s any kind of time savings for posting a need on NeedCube, as their community is exceptionally small (hey, it’s early, I get it), and I’d just have to wait for someone to get back to me.

NeedCube also seems to highlight their lack of categorization as a benefit, and I think that’s a mistake. Once the site gets more than 17 needs, how are people going to find items? Additionally, if I really needed a bumper pool table, I’m not going to be interested in one from someone in Sweden, as the shipping cost alone would be a show-stopper. So apart from categories, NeedCube would need geographic filtering for me to use it.

The Pitch: I really was impressed by the multi-touch, lead nurturing-like approach they’re taking to get coverage. I liked the way they engaged me in both email and facebook. Very, very good.

Overall: This is one of those chicken-and-egg deals. There’s not enough traffic and not enough members yet, so there are very few items on the site. Because there are very few items, people shy away from signing up. And when they do sign up, they see that there’s no way to find things relevant to what they have.

But again, it’s early. If the service was a centralized repository that took input from a user and syndicated that need across many services (both geographically and by category), then it could have some real benefit.

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Tonight at 6:30 PM in Cambridge, MA, the 23rd Web Innovators Group Program will be held at the Royal Sonesta Hotel, featuring three “main dish” startups and six “side dishes”. The presenters:

Main Dishes

Book of Odds - A site dedicated to probabilities. From their home page:

Three years ago we set out to create the missing dictionary, one of numbers, not words – the probabilities of everyday life.

Book of Odds will cover a wide range of topics including health, crime, politics, accidents, and relationships. Its consistent format will make it easy to understand. Any one odds statement may be used to better grasp another – the unfamiliar made more comprehensible by the familiar.

Epernicus - Appears to be a social network for research scientists. From their site:

Epernicus is a professional networking platform for research scientists. Our goal is to connect researchers with their real world scientific networks, enabling them to find the resources they need to advance their work. We believe that having a useful network isn’t necessarily about adding as many contacts as possible. In fact, most scientists already have a large network based on their current institution and their prior research advisors. The bigger challenge is tapping this network to find the right people with the right expertise at the right time. That’s why we created Epernicus.

BatchBlue Software (BatchBook) - A CRM system that integrates with the social web. From their site:

With BatchBook, your contacts belong to you. From turning business cards into BatchBook contacts, generating invoices, sending email newsletters or simply syncing your address book, we’re partnering with other services to let you do more with your contacts. They go where you need them to go!

Side Dishes

Clickframes- A Web Application development suite.

Clickframes was originally developed in 2008 by the Informatics Solutions Group at Children’s Hospital Boston. The first “Clickframes” came about when we decided to automate generation of HTML wireframes (now Clickframes Interactive Previews), and to reduce the time and effort required to manage requirements for a particularly demanding customer. At a certain point, we realized that we didn’t have wireframes anymore – we had a computable requirements model. Some refactoring and development later, the result was Clickframes – a suite focused on the complete lifecycle of a web application, from modeling and design to code generation and development to testing and release

BetterLesson -Helps teachers to share, organize and create their cirriculum:

BetterLesson was founded by a group of teachers from Atlanta and Boston public schools in the spring of 2008 to help educators organize and share their curricula.

We are committed to saving educators from “reinventing the wheel.” By using BetterLesson as an organizational and sharing platform, educators will be able to lesson plan more efficiently and effectively, allowing them to give warranted focus to creating innovative content, delivering innovative content, grading, tutoring, analyzing data, communicating with parents, and finishing paperwork. Oh, and sleeping.

Baydin - An outlook plugin that helps users find files:

Baydin is an add-in for Microsoft Outlook 2007 that shows you relevant files from SharePoint, shared network drives and your computer based on the content of your email.

TheIdeaStartup.com - A site helping entrepreneurs with business plans and startup formation:

TheIdeaStartup formed out of a class project at Northeastern University back in 2006. During the course, the founders were working with a group assigned to create and develop a concept from a mere idea to complete business plan with pro-forma financial projections.

What they found was there were only a few options when it came to tools that could help someone write a business plan. Palo Alto Software’s Business Plan Pro was at the top of that list, but there were some problems with this option: The software didn’t support team collaboration, was lacking in terms of developing financial models, and didn’t support the Mac OS (it was PC only)!

Beyond software alone, the founders realized there were overwhelming resources written for students and entrepreneurs alike (which was great!), but making the move from idea to business plan with only these resources as a rough guide was tough. What seemed to be missing was a framework or process - one that supported teams and really made the process of writing a business plan easier to tackle.

Happn.in - Shows what people are tweeting about in your city.

Tripleseat Software -From their site:

Tripleseat with SmartLead provides a web based Lead,Sales and Event management solution that automates restaurants group dining operations which results in increased revenue and improved customer service.

In addition to the presenting companies, there will also be a special breakout session I’m really excited about called “An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Bootstrapping PR”. The description:

Entrepreneur and marketing/media executive Mike Troiano will host a conversation with a panel of media reporters/columnists/editors including Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe, Wade Roush from Xconomy, Peter Kafka from AllThingsD, and Bob Brown of Network World. Despite the fact that media coverage is as an essential component of any web start-up’s marketing mix, full-blown PR support may not be in the cards. This on-stage discussion will provide the inside scoop on engaging with the media - everything from how entrepreneurs can generate awareness of their company through the media to what do you need to know before you connect with the press. In addition, panelists will cover questions like “What’s the best way to engage with reporters?” “What do reporters care / write about?” “What could entrepreneurs learn from PR people?” and “What really ticks reporters off (pet peeve)?”

This one should be a lot of fun. I’ll be taking notes while there and will add posts tomorrow reviewing each of the presenting startups as well as notes from the panel discussion. If you’re there, stop by and say hi. I should be the only one there rocking an orange MacBook.

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Okay, we’re back. It’s weird that TechCrunch isn’t announcing the presenters until AFTER the presentation. When I look at the page for the second session, I just see:

Profiles of the presenting companies will be published here after the session.

Why not list them?

iTwin is up now. They’re a company from Singapore that allows plug and play remote file access. It’s a piece of hardware that splits in half and allows two computers to share the same folders. I guess this would be cool if you had insanely sensitive information that needs to be shared. Aside from CIA-grade security I don’t know why you’d need this. It’s going to cost $100.

I agree with their idea that the future is in remote access rather than in portable storage, but actually having  a physical pair doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

imo turns the iPhone into a video game controller. Their presentation started with Eye of the Tiger blaring, while a man in a racecar driver costume is on stage fumbling with his phone. Very uncomfortable to watch, as the app just isn’t working at all. Fail.

A minute in and not a word spoken. This is hard to watch. I feel bad for the guy. He’s just got to bag the demo and start talking, but he’s still trying to get it to work.

I love it. Calacanis just said “we’re going to let him try again unlike some other conferences that laugh at them.” They’re going to restart. I think there were network problems rather than product problems, so you can’t blame the presenter.

fluidhtml is a markup language that generates flash. This one is really interesting to me as 1) I hate flash but want to be able to do the things flash does without learning a new language 2) this company is also in Waltham, MA. Hey there, neighbor.

Man I want this to work as advertised. It’s a markup language for flash. It looks just like html but generates flash dynamically.

Looks like the network is down.

And back up……

Problem: Flash and SEO don’t get along.
Solution: fluidhtml can be crawled with no problem whatsoever with fhtml.

Problem: No deep linking with flash
Solution: Each element has a URL, so the back button works. I like that a LOT. HUGE.

Problem: It doesn’t work the way the rest of the internet works. Flash isn’t dynamically rendered.
Solution: This lets you use html and add flash content ontop.

I can’t wait to check this out, but I’m not sure I understand how it can make money. It’s a language, so how do you profit from that?

Ahhh….they charge a fee to publishers. I’ll have to really check this one out. If you guys from fluidhtml are around in Waltham, hit me up.

Toybots Woozees-Gaming platform called Toybots. You have a physical toy that “interacts” with a virtual world. What?

Wow dude, that’s creepy.

But still kind of cool. The platform can send content to the toy, and the toy can tell stories, play games, etc. I’m surprised that there isn’t already something like this.

This is going to be pretty big.

SpawnLabs- Play console games from any network connected computer. It’s an appliance that has to be put on a network and connected to the console. Then you download software to your laptop and you can access the console. Hmm. $200 and it is the size of a set-top box.

Interesting for hardcore gamers, but not to me. I just don’t really play games much.

Clicker-Their tag is “What’s On Online”, and they’re TV guide for the web. They’re right in that there’s no good guide to help you find internet video (especially when it comes to TV shows). It’s hard to find stuff. It’s a structured guide for internet TV.

Cool.

All right, that’s it for this session. For me, the winner here is fluidhtml.

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Today is TechCrunch50, and since I’m violently ill, I’m sitting on the couch watching the live presentation. I just tuned in and here is the agenda for the first session:

Sealtale- Looks like a widget you can create to embed on your blog or social network profile. I do not understand this at all.

ToonsTunes- A music-based social network for kids.

Clasemovil.com is a network for elementary students. I missed their presentation, but I’ll look at it later.

Storysomething lets parents create customized stories for their children.

Penn and Teller just introduced a fun iPhone app that lets you do card tricks. Very cool.

All right, that’s the end of session one, and I’m excited about session two: New frontiers. Since I don’t have kids, this session was pretty much lost on me, but now I get to look at things I care about. Cool.

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Yesterday in the mail I got a letter from google. Inside it contained a glossy piece of paper that thanked me for using Google Apps For Work. But here’s what it looked like when it arrived:

A couple of things to notice:

1. You can’t see it in this terrible photo, but the envelope says that this had been damaged at the post office. You’ll also notice a rip above the black mark on the bottom of the envelope.

2. They say “We hope you’ll enjoy this small token of our appreciation”. Are they talking about the note itself?

So I’m wondering: Was there something else in the envelope, or was the note itself the small token of their appreciation? I mean, if it was just the note, hey, that’s nice enough and I appreciate the sentiment. But it seems odd that the envelope was damaged and there was a hole in it just big enough for someone to take something out of it.

Did anyone else get one of these? If so, was anything else in there?

Thanks.

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Just found out about Panasonic’s new “Living in HD” program and giveaway. They’re basically looking for bloggers, photographers, videobloggers, etc. (anyone who creates content) to join the program, and the winner gets an entire suite of Panasonic HD toys.

What They’re Giving

Grand Prize:

1. A 50 inch Viera Plasma HD TV;
2. Two Lumix Digital Cameras – one SLR and one point and shoot;
3. An HD Camcorder;
4. Toughbook Laptop Computer;
5. Blu-Ray Home Theater in a Box and assorted Blu-Ray Movies, and
6. assorted accessories.

In addition, they’re running a weekly theme photo giveaway. This week’s challenge: upload a photo of your favorite summer food, and the winner gets their choice of a DMC-GH1 Panasonic Digital SLR camera (a $1500 value) or a 50″ plasma TV.

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It’s Monday morning, and I think I’ve finally organized my thoughts enough to talk a little bit about Podcamp Boston 4.

My Initial Impressions

When I looked at the session list, I immediately turned into an angry old man. One of my biggest complaints about conferences like podcamp is that all of the discussion centers around the 35,000 foot view of social media. Talk about “joining the discussion” and “engagement” often dominate, and I think the majority of conference goers are already on board with the idea that social media can help them reach people. Once you see the value of using these tools to reach an audience you don’t need more convincing. You want to know how to do it.

So that was my knee-jerk reaction. Of course, I was wrong.

The Theme

This year’s theme was “What’s Next”, and I think a lot of us thought that meant “What are the next social media tools and strategies that are going to help us”. It wasn’t that. Instead, in this context, “what’s next” really meant “now that the world sees the need to use social media, and everyone is using it, what do we do now?”

See, in previous years the idea of using blogs, twitter, facebook, etc. inside a business was kind of risky. Kind of dangerous. Companies that decided to forget about being proper and conservative gave these tools a shot and looked like mavericks. They were pioneers just for trying. Simply having a YouTube channel for a company was enough for people to take notice.

Those days are gone.

Now every company large and small is trying to make “viral video”. The days of attendees airing their frustration about trying to sell the idea of social media up the ladder to their bosses….those are over too. Now having a social media strategy is the price of admission, but when every company is doing it no one pays attention. Hell, I saw an ad for a tire company on TV last night and they said “check out our YouTube video”. Dude, you’re on TV. Why don’t you show me your video ON TV…you know, where I’m watching right now! It’s so crowded on YouTube that companies are taking out TV ads to get people to go to YouTube. Talk about bizarro world. Whoa.

The Sessions

A good chunk of the sessions dealt with the ROI of social media, and that makes sense. Since a lot of the benefits of using these tools are intangible, having some objective measurement is definitely welcome. For me, the best session was the “Using Online Video for B2B Marketing” presentation by Mike Volpe and Karen Rubin of Hubspot. The reason? Well, I’m working at a B2B company and we’re using video to help us in our marketing. Makes a lot of sense, huh?

Another great session was with Amber Naslund, who did “What’s Wrong With The ‘A’ List?”, in which those that aren’t uber popular among the social media elite aired their grievances and criticized those that are. This included such numbskull remarks as:

“I like following these guys because they give such good information, but they tweet too much. I want them to slow down.”

So wait. You decided to follow this person. You’re getting value from what they say. But you’re criticizing the frequency at which they give you good content? Huh?

Technology Maturity

Thinking back to the last two podcamps, I couldn’t help but feel like this one wasn’t nearly as exciting. I tried to figure out the reason, and I think I’ve found it: the technology has slowed down.

In the past, the rate at which new tools were launched was astounding. Every day there was something new to try, and it was really, really exciting. It was so much fun. There was a buzz in the air that just made everything electric. You knew that something new was going to break out during the weekend, and we’d be the first to try it. There would be some idea brought up in a session that would go beyond a session room, permeate the consciousness of the conference, and spread to the outside world.

But that couldn’t last forever.

Rather than chasing the next tool, we’re all trying to figure out how to get the most out of the ones we’ve got. Everyone’s on facebook, so let’s figure out how to use facebook to hit our targets. People are using twitter, so let’s play there.

This approach makes much more sense from a practical and business perspective. It does. It’s just not as fun and exciting.

Well, that’s it for now. I want to thank everyone that worked to put podcamp Boston 4 together.

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