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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.

Filed under: Web Innovators Group