The final block of the afternoon, "Unleashing Your Inner Creative," continued the “users in control” theme, with several companies offering the ability to modify and publish content in a variety of forms.
- ink2 Corporation
- VUVOX Network, Inc.
- SplashCast, Inc.
- SharedBook, Inc.
- OurStory
- Mixpo Portfolio Broadcasting, Inc.
- Preclick Corp.
- Bling Software, Inc.
- eJamming
ink2: Demanding Print On Demand
CEO Mark Rinella and chief engineer Jason Taylor demonstrated a very flexible interface for self-publishing print-on-demand products using Web-based content. The company, already a well-established printer of customized products – it printed over 10 million cards last year for a range of partners – introduced a Web-based service that will allow anyone with content to create print-on-demand products by embedding some simple code into their Web pages. The result: Your users can clink on an ink2 link, and choose to have site images output in a variety of forms.
VUVOX Network: Slick and Hi-Res
Jim Lanahan, chairman & CEO, and Dane Howard, “chief experience officer,” demonstrated “a powerful new platform for media expression” using high-quality images. VUVOX has three modules: Collect, create, publish. “Collect is designed to connect you with your media,” said Howard, showing the process of dragging in images and video from a range of Internet sites, in a very Mac-like interface. One interesting option: A “media tree” view of images that lets users click around on the leaves of a branch. To Create, users run the company’s ViewVision Customization Palette, creating an MTV-like video wall with moving videos dropped into static images. Not only can users do cool things, advertisers can integrate their messages inside these images. Users can then Publish to a public or private “channel,” embedding in a site like MySpace. (Read on, though: You’ll find out this is a frequent goal.) VUVOX’ chief differentiator: Great design and high resolution.
Splashcast: NewTube Rev 3
“Imagine a world where the TV in your living room is locked down to one single show of the O’Reilly Factor,” said CEO and founder Michael Berkley. But that’s exactly what we need to do if we’re installing a new video or video player on a Web page, claimed Berkley. He and co-founder Kim Ramage showed “the advertising network for digital media,” allowing users to publish and subscribe to video channels, which are then streamed to the user’s site (again, such as MySpace).
SharedBook: Flash Library
Reading from notecards, CEO Caroline Vanderlip worked with VP business development Bridget Williams to show the process of creating a book using content from the Web – 14 billion pages, by Vanderlip’s report. The company provides a “reverse publishing and collaborative engine” that lets users create “flipbooks” and even printed books from a range of sources. Vanderlip announced a new Application Program Interface (API) that allows any Web site to publish its content into a SharedBook, showing how a user on a partner’s Web site, Sports Logic, could create a kid’s sports yearbook customized from site content. (Thankfully, no MySpace demo.)
OurStory: Images From Our Lives
Co-founders Andy Halliday (CEO) and Chris Lunt (VP engineering) demonstrated a timeline-based Web interface that lets users store images, videos and text, then email changes in those “stories” to family and friends. “It’s a world-class multimedia memories platform that incorporates publishing and collaboration,” said Halliday. Recipient replies are automatically stored as comments, or you can choose to invite family members to collaborate on a timeline or story. The site also lets you print high-quality books from the content.
Mixpo Portfolio Broadcasting: NewTube, Rev 4
Mixpo offers an online publishing platform that lets people publish video, online and photo into “mixcards.” By dropping in some short embedded code into a blog, users can post mixcards into existing sites, allowing users to play back images and video. The software offers an easy interface that allows users to easily change multimedia components on their sites without needing to know HTML. The company just announced a distribution deal with Microsoft.
Preclick: Better Sharing?
Brian Smiga, CEO; Jake Sapirstein, Product Manager; and Duncan Winter, demonstrator, took to the stage to show the next generation of the company’s popular photo-sharing software. Already in use by Walmart, 3M, HP, Costco, Sandisk, and many others, Preclick automates the online photo sharing process. Its new Preclick IPM - “the easiest and fastest way to share photos,” according to Smiga – lets users drag and drop images for transmission, adding styles that allow them to send customized e-cards. Images can be sent as instant messages, automatically saving files to the recipient’s local drive. IPM offers a range of activities to do with the files, such as printing, or users can simply run the same functions in a browser.
Bling Software: Cellphones Can Sing If They Can Make It Bling
Going mobile with a rich Web-based application to a mobile device can be extremely costly, according to Bling CEO Roy Satterthwaite. Bling solves this problem with “the first and only Ajax client for mobile phones.” Bling’s Mike Uamato demonstrated the process with Anthony Phills, creative director of BarryBonds.com, a Bling customer. By adding a few lines in a simple Javascript template, and downloading the application to the phone, Phills was able to demonstrate loading images, video and text from Bonds’ Web site into cellphone. (Bling is how the earlier demonstration of reQall was able to transmit to a phone.) And just to add a little star wattage, Bonds himself showed up onstage for a few seconds to thank whatever fans were in the room. Bonds’ appearance may have overshadowed the importance of what Bling is doing: This is a nascent step toward a radical new capability – the idea that users could publish content to cellphones, without having a telco in the way.
eJamming: Take A Piece of My Heart, In Real Time
Co-founder and CEO Gail Kantor, herself a musician, waxed eloquently about the need for musicians to find others to play with. The company’s software solves that problem by letting multiple players synchronize their sound in real time. An onstage guitar player demonstrated that real-time collaboration to the audience with a keyboardist and singer based in Los Angeles. And Kantor herself brought the house down with her closing rendition of Janis Joplin’s “Take A Piece of My Heart.”
gB
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