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Launchweek08

TC50/Demo revisited: What's alive, what's dead?

Correction: This story originally misstated the status of PersonalRIA. PersonalRIA is still alive, but in hibernation mode until the market recovers.

Last year, 124 products were unveiled during the TechCrunch50 and DemoFall conferences. A week later, we went through and sorted out which ones you could actually use. As anticipated, most were closed off from public use. Was this a surprise? No, but it showed which companies were ready for business versus those that had a snazzy PowerPoint presentation.

It's been a little more than seven months since then, and I've gone through the list a second time to see what's changed. So what has? The number of products and services that are open for use has increased from 71 to 94. And impressively, only one of the companies that launched out of the 124 total are no longer in existence.

Here are a couple of charts that help put a face on the numbers, including the ones from our first go-around:

Note: We considered sites that were listed as having "private" or "invite only" betas as closed. This is because there is no guarantee that you could get immediate access once you signed up to use them. For physical products, like the Fitbit or software, we counted whether or not you could purchase or download them. We've also given both charts an equal number of products in the X axis to show scale.

To put things in perspective, a week after TechCrunch50 concluded, 42 percent of the products were open, with the remaining 58 percent still in private beta, in production, or attempting to get funding. Demo fared slightly better, with 67 percent of the launched products open, with the remaining 33 percent behind closed doors. You can see the makeup of this in the chart above.

One thing to note with these numbers is that the Demo conference had a slightly higher number of launching services at 72, compared with TechCrunch's 52, however the apples to apples comparison degrades when you begin to break down Web- and software-based services verses physical product launches--something we should have noted the last time around. TechCrunch50 only had one real hardware launch with the Fitbit, a Wi-Fi and Web-enabled pedometer and sleep tracker, while the rest were all software or Webware. Demo on the other hand, had 7 products that were hardware-based, including UbiSafe, a GPS beacon you could use to track people or objects, and ioDrive, which is a NAND flash-based storage solution for servers.

The casualty… Read more

911ICE: A social network for the sick and wounded

In 2005, British paramedic Bob Brotchie launched an initiative to encourage people to put emergency contact information in their mobile phone address books, under the name "ICE," which stands for "In Case of Emergency." He hoped that when emergency workers reached a person who had become incapacitated, they would learn to look up the ICE number on the phone to connect to a person who could speak for the one in need.

The program has succeeded in the U.K. and Australia, and is gaining some traction in the U.S., Brotchie says. He was at … Read more

Rudder steers personal finance to your in-box

One product that slipped under the radar in the past week is Rudder, an e-mail-based personal finance manager that launched at DemoFall and is a replacement for the now-defunct Spendview (coverage). Unlike a destination site like Mint.com, the idea of Rudder is not to have you continually visit a site to track financial activity. Instead, the idea is to have it delivered to your e-mail in-box.

I met with its creators last week to talk about what would make someone want to get all of this piped into a place where they might already be getting information overload. Rudder founder and CEO Nikhil Roy told me it's more of a utility for trying to cut through all the numbers and get to what's most important--like how much money you can actually use once bills have been paid.

Rudder's name for this magic number is "what's left" and it figures out what you've got for discretionary spending based on when you're getting your next paycheck and what's in your various savings and checking accounts, compared to credit card payments and other bills that need paying off. The entire process is shown to users, something Roy hopes will educate as much as it does take the work out of doing the math yourself.

In addition to this core overview of your finances, you can also set-up reminders when it's time to pay bills. The system will automatically figure out what bills you're paying after keeping an eye on your bank account and credit cards for a few months. You can also add them in manually.… Read more

Post-launch frenzy: What can you actually use?

There were over 120 different products launched in the past week and the sad truth is that you're only able to use about half of them.

I spent the greater part of Thursday dropping all of the launch companies from the TechCrunch50 and DemoFall conferences into a spreadsheet and making a note on which ones were open to the public--including technology you might not be running out the door to get, like Microstaq's silicon expansion valve (although it's cool--literally).

Here's what I found:

Of the 124 products between both conferences, CNET covered approximately 60 percent of … Read more

Best of shows: Top 10 from DemoFall, TechCrunch50

Note: CNET's judges for this article were Dan Farber, Josh Lowensohn, Elinor Mills, Rafe Needleman, and Daniel Terdiman.

Correction at 7:30 a.m. PDT: The current name for the GPS-based ride-sharing product is Mapflow's Avego.

More than 120 companies presented at this week's competing start-up conferences: DemoFall and TechCrunch50.

As usual with conferences like this, many of the products were either derivative or best described as cool, new features that will be commonplace in a year. But there were some breakouts--companies showing unique technology, or standout thinking.

CNET covered the two events extensively. After their conclusions, we gathered to compare notes and select our top products from both shows, the products that we thought differentiated from the pack through innovation, consumer need, business model, or some combination. These are our top 10 products, the CNET Best of Shows:

FitbitSmall, wearable activity monitor and pedometer. Transmits your data to the Web, where you can track your activity and bring in friends to encourage you along. Fitbit was a runner-up for the top product launch at TechCrunch50.

Why we like it: We agree with Josh Kopelman: "Buying this is more of an IQ test than a financial decision."

Chances for success: High. Great idea, great design, great online component. And people need it.

Seen at: TechCrunch50

Fotonauts Beautiful and thoughtful photo sharing site. Being called a Wikipedia for photos, or a more modern Flickr.

Why we like it: Better sharing and management tools than we are accustomed to online; balances presentation controls with the social angle.

Chances for success: Decent. CEO has solid experience (former CTO of NeXT and Apple's application division), and cost of developing is not too high. Potential for viral growth is good.

Seen at: TechCrunch50

GoodGuide Online guide to buying healthy, green, and humane products.

Why we like it: Has great product data presented in a compelling and simple interface. And the timing is right; people care about this information.

Chances for success: Very good. Looks addictive and useful. Great business model. (Site has buying links to products.)

Seen at: TechCrunch50

… Read more

Getting Hollywood's Web business model up to speed

On Wednesday evening five of Hollywood's content producers gathered at the TechCrunch50 conference to chat about what the entertainment industry is doing to adapt in the ever-changing landscape of content consumption.

The underlying theme of the panel was the "balancing act" that Hollywood has to manage to make sure its response to pirating and user-generated content does not keep legitimate users from bring down the entire system. That said, there was very little discussion of digital rights management.

Of the panelists, Joss Wheton, the creator of the popular TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Internet series … Read more

Goodrec launches mobile recommendation engine

The final start-up presenter at TechCrunch50 summed up many of the themes at the event--mobile, social, and on the iPhone.

Goodrec is a service for mobile browsers that features recommendations from people you trust. Rather than rambling reviews, GoodRec has a simple thumbs up, thumbs down, or mixed rating (no stars) and short text messages for evaluating restaurants, bars, movies, books, and other entities. The service also allows posting of photos and other content associated with making recommendations.

The challenge for GoodRec is getting distribution and users to create a social web of recommendations. Users are already giving recommendations on … Read more

GoPlanit lets you shuffle travel plans like a music playlist

GoPlanit is a service for travelers to find things to do in places they've never been. It removes the need to buy travel books by automatically figuring out your itinerary based on budget, physical health, and how much free time you've got.

The automatic planning feature is only available in a handful of cities, but is quite similar to autofill in Apple's iTunes. Clicking the "plan it" button automatically drops in things to do, and if you don't like one of the picked items you can delete it and get it filled in with … Read more

GoodGuide will save your skin

GoodGuide is a new product recommendation system focused on "safe, healthy, and green products." It will tell you what chemicals are in your toothpaste, or if your socks are made with sweatshop labor.

The company's real value add is in acquiring the data on the products. The packaging of the data into a site is the easy part, but we think they've done a great job at it.

That's it, simple story. Looks like a great product and service. iPhone app coming, and expansion into other areas as well: Food, toys, electronics, adding to the … Read more

Final thoughts on a packed DemoFall

For the 122 companies that were featured presenters at DemoFall and TechCrunch50 this week, the pressure of making their cases onstage to the audiences of press, venture capitalists, and analysts is now over.

To be sure, those companies now have to make good on the products they introduced, and the market will soon make it very clear who the winners and losers are.

But as the dust settles from DemoFall, where I and my colleague Elinor Mills spent Sunday through Tuesday watching dozens of companies' presentations and talking to many of the people behind those products, I have a few … Read more