Startup Diaries

Connected Innovators

I'm sitting right now in the connected innovators showcase of the supernova conference. The showcase features 20 companies chosen by Techcrunch to demo and talk about their new products.

While listening to some great products, I just have to wonder why there are just two hours dedicated for this kind of showcase from a full 3 day conference.
I mean, lets face it, most of the sessions in most of the conferences are quite boring. You keep hearing the same things that you already know again and again.
In the last hour I learned (and enjoyed) much more than I had in the all supernova and Web 2 Expo conference all together.
I would like to see a conference where the people on stage will actually be the young and unknown faces that work on the still unknown startups. Than, maybe we will finally hear and learn something new.

Technorati Tags: supernova2007, startups, innovation

Search the City with Ask.com

I just met with two of the product managers of Ask.com outside of one of the sessions at the Supernova conference.
We had a good discussion about the fact that in the last months Google search results just got worse.
They told me about a new way to look for things in the city using their maps search.

I decided to give it a try and I got to say - cool! I was very impressed.
on the right side of the screen you have the map. The nice thing is that you can actually use some drawing tools to draw on the map the area where you want to look for things.
In my test I marked Market St. in San Francisco and searched for clubs. After less than a second i got a list (also appears on the map) of all the clubs on the part of Market St. which I marked.
So easy and very cool!

Technorati Tags: supernova2007

Do Advertisers Don't Know How to Learn?

I'm sitting in a supernova session about the future of advertising. The panel keeps talking about the fact that as everything is so new, most advertisers still don't know how to view the Internet.

I just have to pop up a question - Everything so new???
In an age where every business book talks about the need to be agile, how can we look at the Internet as something new?

The Internet is here for more than 10 years (in its large commercial sense).
Web 2.0 is already here for more than 2 years.
Video is here for almost two years.
Online shopping is here for years.
So what do we mean by saying everything is still new??

Technorati Tags: supernova2007

The New Journalism

One of the amazing things in being here in supernova is the background noise in the rooms - the noise of constant laptop keyboard clicked.
It seems that almost everyone here is blogging/twittering/vodcasting at the same time. You can really feel how the media landscape of our world has changed just by looking around you.
It will take at least a day for major newspaper or old media companies to report what is happening here. But less than a minute someone here will say something on stage it will already appear in the blogs.

Technorati Tags: supernova2007

Will Voice Rule the Web?

I'm sitting in the first session of Supernova Challenge Day. The discussion is about the new semantic web.
Nova Spovack from Radar Network just talked about the fact that in the future voice will be the main way to access the web.

This is a very important thing to think about. When you ream the reviews Powerset gets today, you see that Google actually still gets better results a lot of the time. But when you think of voice, the ability to actually parse the meaning of a sentence becomes much more important, as people won't search by simply saying words, but by saying complete sentences.

If Powerset will be able to actually understand meaning, they will be bale to be the future gate for the Internet.

Technorati Tags: supernova2007

The Closed Platform of the iPhone

I'm participating in a session about iPhone development in the Supernova Open Space event.
I got to say just one thing - What the hell was Apple thinking?
No Flash, no SDK, no ability to write native apps???
Don't they watch the Facebook vs MySpace Saga?
Didn't they learned from Microsoft mistake of trying to do things their own way and not open up?

Apple - Get a grip, open your platform and create a developer community around you.
History shows us that in the end, open wins.

Technorati Tags: supernova2007

In The Airport... Again

It's already 2007 people. How come nobody invented some other more efficient and fast way to travel around the world???
Why in the year 2007 I still need to fly for almost 24 hours in order to get from place to place?

Tag Cloud On a T-Shirt

Was this the first ever Tag Cloud on a T-Shirt?
I'm not sure... but anyway here is a photo of me with our first company T-Shirt or if you prefer - My life printed on a T-Shirt.

(Thanks Yaniv for the lovely photo)

Robert Scoble and me

I finally found the picture Dan Farber took of me with Robert Scoble.

The Webstars Phenomena

Back in the early days of 2006 when I just started NuConomy I wrote here that the Internet will go through the same route the radio and TV has taken.
From amateur content to semi pro to pro and finally to superstars.

Dutch Esmee Denters just made this leap. From uploading videos to YouTube to be signed bu Jason Timbarlake and coming out with her own album.

Check out Mashable detailed review and be prepared for the new webstars of the world.