TechWeek: in case you missed it, here are some of the highlights.
TechWeek – Los Angeles (November 18) promised to be spectacular and didn’t disappoint. In fact, it felt like a two-day early Christmas gift for thousands of tech lovers and startups. The first day was devoted to apps and the second, to fashion.
New technology from different genres, including Around Wire, Edgecast (edgecast.com), and Robert Half Technology (rht.com), displayed their products and a lucky few even took the stage to promote their companies. Cyborg Industries’ 14-year old founder, Nicolas Dupont, eloquently described his company’s technology (http://www.cyborg.co) which offers immediate data transfer, unlimited data compression, and unbreakable encryption. We’ll be sharing a rare interview with him in the next few days, so stay tuned.
Urgent Call featured an emergency service enabling consumers to reach their loved ones in an emergency – even if their phones are off or on vibrate – through a personal number and a specific ringer. The phone rings continuously until someone answers.
Rivalry Games (www.rivalrygames.com) offered a new approach to online Fantasy Football. Traditional Fantasy Football is an entire season long (we’re talking 4 months), but with Rivalry Games, you play for money against your friends for ONE day, have interchangeable players, can “boost” your players for more points, and add to your salary cap. For sports fans, this is very revolutionary and exciting.
Porter (www.useporter.com) provided a clever solution for maintaining personal chores. House cleaning, dry cleaning, clothes washing, dog walking –you name it, Porter’s got it. And they do it all. You can even have your own personal chef. Porter employs only the most highly qualified candidates, and they have intense background checks. As they say, “Porter’s the one thing everybody else doesn’t want to do.” Sounds good to me.
Our favorite part of the day was Jason Calacanis’ after party. Jason is a well-known entrepreneur and blogger, and a highly regarded keynote speaker. His claim to fame is the sale of “Weblogs” to AOL in ’05. It was an amazing soiree and definitely worth the price of admission to TechWeek.
Signing off from LaLa land! Andrew Merryman and Stephanie Beck
