Tweets From Under The Radar
Yesterday afternoon, I became worn out by blogging on my nokia 810 (a cool device, courtesy of the Nokia blogging program, but those tiny little keys on its keyboard, while usable, are tiring after a few hours). I switched over to a lackadaisical twittering, which I here reprise:
Under the radar is boring so far. #utr -- about 21 hours ago from txt#twibble is broken just when i needed it most -- about 21 hours ago from txt [I was getting a strange error message, like 'Address has been moved' when I was trying to Twibble.]
Talked with the Blist guys at lunch: social data sharing. Very cool #utr -- about 19 hours ago from txt
UTR is better after lunch. Maybe the food, maybe more interesting companies. #utr -- about 17 hours ago from web
@scobleizer #yoics is a collection of things. They will become a surveillance utility. -- about 17 hours ago from web in reply to Scobleizer
#timebridge is a feature, not an app -- about 17 hours ago from web
Damn. I missed the #blist preso. I was talking with Ridgely Evers of #Netbooks. -- about 17 hours ago from web [Very interesting conversation, which I hope to follow up with a longer talk.]
1674 followers! What's going on here? Can people tell me why? -- about 17 hours ago from web [A bunch of folks did tell me why, which led to me discovering that the Twitter Replies web page was being resolved as an RSS feed on the Nokia 810. Really odd.]
Cosimo looks like a Conceptshare type app, collaboration around media. -- about 16 hours ago from web
The guy presenting is director of rocket science at liquid planner. Ha! -- about 16 hours ago from web
probabalistic scheduling is just lies on top of fuzziness. -- about 16 hours ago from web
maybe it's my work on #workstreamr that makes liquid project look 100 years old. -- about 16 hours ago from web
Rashmi on #slideshare. Blogs have been the seed for the product's growth. -- about 16 hours ago from web
Rashmi sez 'it's the community, not the IP' -- about 16 hours ago from web
Jai Das is wrong when he says people want all sharing in one platform. Think of last.fm, dopplr, flickr, twitter. -- about 15 hours ago from web
Ribbit and Vello won in Business Call sesion -- about 15 hours ago from web [meaning: judegs and audience award in their session, respectively]
judge award = netbooks, audience = magento -- about 15 hours ago from web [meaning: for their session]
slde rocket won both -- about 15 hours ago from web [meaning: both audience and judges award in it's session]
blist won both -- about 15 hours ago from web [meaning: both audience and judges award in it's session]
best in show = slide rocket judges award -- about 15 hours ago from web
best in show audience award = get satisfaction -- about 15 hours ago from web
Scoble interviewing Werner Vogels -- about 15 hours ago from web
From amsterdam via Cornell... is he using the royal we? -- about 15 hours ago from web
Scoble turns out to be a good interviewer; no surprise I guess. -- about 15 hours ago from web
Vogels confesses that even amazon crashes sometime. -- about 15 hours ago from web
Vogels: how do we remain #1 in ecommerce? obsessing about the customer. -- about 15 hours ago from web
today's news from Amazon: apis to their outsourced fulfilment service; in the future, finances outsourcing... -- about 14 hours ago from web
Vogels is pleasantly boring: performance at scale, customers, low margins, customers, reliability, customers, web services changing business -- about 14 hours ago from web
Leaving #utr -- about 13 hours ago from twibble
After all was said and done, I had a really good experience at UTR. A slow start, but truly exceptional companies.
I had already had experience with several of the products: I am a regular user of Get Satisfaction and SlideShare, for example. So it was no surprise to me that those companies did well in the judging.
Regarding new companies -- new to me:
- I was struck with Slide Rocket's elegance and straightforward business proposition. This is a killer app.
- NetBooks has the earmarks of a huge win. Intuit has dropped the ball, and underserved this market sector -- the owner-managed business -- and now NetBooks has put together a comprehensive suite of capabilities to help them into the 21st century. I can only hope that Ridgely brings out the NetBooks Lite he offhandedly mentioned, that would be suitable for me as a soloist.
- Blist (pronounced 'blist', not 'b-list') is offering up a subtly radical notion of data management. Imagine crowdsourcing of structured information, where groups of people can manage complex schemas of information without knowing anything about databases, and that information can be accessed and applied in a variety of ways? The majority of the world's managed data is in spreadsheets and word documents. This is a real opening up of what is now very closed.
I had an enjoyable time, and being off the podium -- not being a judge -- gave me the time to blog the event. I am going to suggest to the DealMakerMedia folks that they consider having some judges-without-portfolio, floating around, not on the podium, but adding their votes to the judges' count. Would be the perfect job for a gadfly curmudgeon like me.

Thanks for the color commentary! I unfortunately had to miss part of the day. Gadfly curmudgeons rock.
Posted by: Christine | March 21, 2008 at 11:29 AM
Hey Stowe - call me, let's talk about what you mean by "consider having some judges-without-portfolio, floating around, not on the podium, but adding their votes to the judges' count". Do you mean judges in the audience?? I love that idea. Let's talk about it. Will you drive this?
Posted by: deb landa | March 23, 2008 at 07:14 PM