Session three as follows, including our live notes.
Story Blender
Story Blender is an online collaborative video production platform where people can work together to “blend” their content into a new multimedia show. StoryBlend’s online editing tool lets users create videos by “blending” images, sound, text, and video clips. When users have created new video blends they can then share it with their friends and the StoryBlend community.
Session 3 starts. CEO is also the founder of Cyworld.
Online video mixing with friends, nice interface.Multi-level relationship model for contributions, friend of a friend sort of thing. Easy to use video mashing with lots of features
TripIt
TripIt is a travel organizer that helps do-it-yourself travelers manage their travel plans. Travelers manage their travel itinerary with TripIt by forwarding their purchase confirmation emails to the service. TripIt automatically creates master itineraries with travel plans and other critical information like weather, maps and driving directions, and destination information. You can print or access your itinerary from anywhere including online, in print and on their web-enabled mobile devices. They can also share itineraries and travel calendars and collaborate on planning trips with friends.
CEO and Founder is ex-Hotwire, along with most of the team.
TripIt wants to eliminate the vanilla travel folder, bringing the travel itinerary into the 21st century. Travel is an information management business, TripIt is not a booking service.
Users send their plans to plans@tripit.com, compiles online itinerary, a sort of travel plan aggregation.
TripIt supports export to iCal and other platforms, also looking at microformats
Friends can share travel calenders. TripIt believes a multi-functional travel planner with collaborative tools will be a much needed service.
Site is live today, out of beta. I’d like to see the site before I pass judgment, but in theory it’s a great idea.
Flock
Flock is a social web browser we have reported on extensively. With Flock, people can discover, access, create and share videos, photos, blogs, feeds and comments across social communities, media providers, and popular websites. Flock is offering custom browser modifications as a revenue model. To date, Flock has shipped editions of its browser for Photobucket and Piczo.
Flock feels that the browser has not evolved over time, and that’s a market opportunity for them. So interesting new features, Facebook sidebar was something new to me. Drag and drop functionality has improved a lot since earlier versions.
I’ll be honest, I’ve not be a Flock fan previously, the new version demoed here (release in 2 weeks) really is something more than Firefox with plugins. I’ll be taking another look at Flock soon.
MusicShake
South Korean MusicShake is a online amateur music mixing service. The service lets users create their own professional quality music using various tools. They hope to provide personalized music for ringtones, and personal websites (blogs, profiles). The service is developed and distributed by SilentMusicBand Corp.
Korean company. Started with music and the speaker dancing on stage. Funny start, he danced worse than I do :-)
Speaker asked whether it was a Britney Spears track…music was created by a 9 year old girl in Korea with no experience of real music…just like Britney Spears.
Demo of interface. Seems simple to us, based on mixing music tracks and sound effects. Tracks are recommended by “Nuba,” the robot behind Musicshake.
170,000 music tracks, 1 million by 1 million. Also a model for creators to make music and sell it on the 50/ 50 rev share.
One of the best presentations so far, big round of applause. Fun idea.
8020 Publishing
8020 Publishing is a media company that publishes user generated magazines. They currently have two magazines JPG and the yet-to-launch Everywhere. Members of the 8020 community can contribute and critique the content in the magazines. However, 8020 Publishing still fills normal publishing roles like choosing themes, putting the magazines together and providing the final vote on all published content. The community also gives them a built-in subscription base not to mention loyal online communities.
8020 is aiming to “make magazines better.” JPG Magazine is used as an example.
Launching “Everywhere” Magazine, the “insiders experience”…travel magazine that is submitted by the community.
All submissions are added to the website, best make the magazine. Geographic focused search.
Submissions 300-500 words to make it easy to participate.
Interesting model, you’ll like this if you like JPG Mag.
Expert panel: Ron Conway, Don Dodge, Rajeev Motwani, and Yossi Vardi
Jason Calacanis asks Yossi Vardi for his favorite, answers: two that appealed Music Shake, will appeal to young people, and Flock, presuming that the user interface isn’t too hard to use. He can see himself using TripIt.
Don Dodge favorites: Music Shake and Story Blender, reminded him of his days at Napster. Question to Story Blender: what about copyright on the videos. A: YouTube didn’t block the copyright material from day 1, they will block copyright content at the “community manager” level.
Michael Arrington asks Don Dodge about copyright, A: just because you haven’t been sued, doesn’t mean you wont end up being sued.
Rajeev Motwani loves Music Shake, wish he’d come up with himself. Also likes TripIt, “Useful and solving a real problem.”
Ron Conway: likes TripIt and Story Blender. TripIt simple idea with potential to grow virally + from an investor view point can be easy monetized. Story Blender is in video, biggest growth opportunity on the internet and a Story Blender is unique idea.
Discussion about 8020’s model, how they pay, copyright. Authors hand over their content when they submit.
Audience questions: is video the hottest market online: Ron Conway, yes, and it’s getting easier as the tech catches up in terms of copyright filtering.
Don Dodge to Flock: market is old, entrench, how do you overcome that, and what is the business model. Flock: partner business, we work with others to include functionality. Multi-site membership works for us by making management easier. In terms of choice, Firefox 1.0 launched less than 3 years ago, 100million + users, there is choice and people will switch. They also have a search relationship with Yahoo that is a main revenue stream.
Jason Calacanis: why not just do Flock as a Firefox extension. Flock: most people dont use Firefox extension, we are targeting the broader market.
Michael Arrington to Flock: you’ve taken far too long to release 1.0, over 2 years, given plenty of rope. Can you guarantee that you wont take users for granted in the future. Flock: yes, people love us…and it’s a great product. (didn’t respond directly to the 2 year comment).
Question to Music Shake: will it translate. MS: yes, music is universal and if I hadn’t told you the demo song was made by a Sth Korean girl you wouldn’t have known.
Conclusion: best panel yet, particularly in terms of the qaulity of the startups. Hard to pick a favorite, Music Shake was certainly the most original idea, TripIt for practical use. Flock impressed.