I say memorable because they fed us drinks.
As the sun set on Menlo Park Friday night, hundreds of interactive web heads gathered on the patio to test and show off their projects.
It reminded me of a high school science fair, but with margaritas and pretty girls.
There were a handful of gracious sponsors, impressive product launches, and I actually learned about some pretty cool websites.
Here are some memorable demos from TechCrunch 9:
Profil.es
No, it’s not a Spanish site. I just think it’s funny that startups are afraid their users won’t understand the dot com suffix.
These guys are the guys from profilebuilder.com. This is actually a cool service. When referencing a person’s name in a blog post, Profil.es adds a little icon after their name, and when you click it, a LiteBox-like popup appears with that person’s information. Think of it as an online identity management system.
Unfortunately, the service is still in beta, but I have a feeling it will open up soon.
ooma
This is a new VoIP service that promises to revolutionize home telephony. "ooma is poised to change the telecommunications category, in much the same way that TiVo changed the landscape of broadcast television," said Michael Ramsay, co-founder of TiVo. Other call ooma the first "viral hardware" product. They are currently in a beta period, but each new user has the ability to invite three new people to the service.
Ashton Kucher is the creative director for the company, so you know it will be groovy.
UStream.tv
I think UStream is the coolest technology out right now. Anyone with a webcam and an internet connection can broadcast their life 24/7, for free. It’s not just for individuals either, they actually used it for this event.
Chris Yeh, UStream’s CEO, was interviewing guests at the party, and hundreds of people were watching it live.
It was hard to keep Yeh’s attention because he was so busy talking back to the chat stream. It was that fast, that they could hear him speaking on the video, respond by typing, and have a normal communication experience.
And he was doing it all on a MacBook.
Kyte.tv
Another cool demo was kyte.tv. It’s not like every other online video platform. It’s more about producing short clips, and building a channel with your community.
You can host the channel on your MySpace or Facebook profile, or just as easily clip the code into your blog.
It’s your own personal TV station, and you can embed it anywhere.
Pandora
If you haven’t used Pandora yet, you are missing out. You can search for a song or an artist name and Pandora starts to collect data about your music taste. You can vote songs up or down, and eventually build a custom online radio station that only plays songs that you like.
They MCed the party and gave out free hats.
Overall, I had a great time and I got the opportunity to interact with people working in the web community.
One Comment
Hey Andrew, thanks for the kind words about Ustream. It was fun having you participate in the whole Ustream/TechCrunch experience. As you noted, while some people are using Ustream to broadcast their lives 24/7, that’s only one of many uses.
We have conferences (like TechCrunch) providing the ability to virtually participate. We have churches Ustreaming their Sunday services to folks around the world. We have politicians like John Edwards using it to have a real conversation with the voters. The possibilities are endless.