Aviary Archive

The February version of the NY Tech Meetup was held last night. I’d suggest it was the largest crowd to-date and the demos were relatively good. Below are the videos from each presentation – they installed a huge new podium which made videotaping a bit off but you can clearly hear everyone and naturally you can go to each Web site for more information. I hope you enjoy the videos.

TheIssue

TheIssue is a blog newspaper and they want to find “the best content”. Someone asked why a machine couldn’t do it better, I’d ask the same thing. In fact, TechMeme, while not perfect, does a good job of story aggregation.

Aviary

Check out our full Aviary review from yesterday. Corel needs to acquire Aviary immediately.

Xerpi

Check out our full review of Xerpi. It’s a tool to help you manage your favorites.

Plink

Plink lets you tag your photos in Facebook with either information about the people in the photos or the products in the photos. If the tag is for a product, you can link directly to the product for someone to purchase. As many asked in the crowd, without some sort of revshare model, there’s no reason to spend the time plinking something. I’d actually suggest that even with a revshare, meeting the payout will be difficult so there is very little incentive to link to a product. If it was to work, it could be a strong offering, but it will take a massive effort to make that happen.

Takes All Types

Takes All Types is a Facebook application to list your blood type and location. Should there be a blood shortage for your type and location, the system will send you an alert. It’s a pretty interesting idea and the company has non-profit status. This is one of those apps that hits you in the heart for an install.

TechPresident

This one got ugly quick as presenter Andrew Rasiej discussed how Obama is using the internet while Clinton isn’t. People in the audience seemed to believe that Andrew was pushing Obama over Clinton. The TechPresident site has information on how each candidate is using the Internet, from Facebook friends to Technorati links.

Tonight at the NY Tech Meetup, seven companies will present their startup ideas. I am looking forward (as I do every month) to getting ya’all coverage of the meetup. One company who has shared some info on their startup is called Aviary. Aviary is a NY-based startup which has created a suite of online graphics tools that appear to rival Photoshop for the basics.

Aviary describes itself as, "a website for artists of all genres to create, edit and share their works directly in their favorite browser." There are about 15 total image tools, all with bird names like Owl and Phoenix. The tools are all available online inside the browser along with downloadable versions using Adobe Air, similar to Pownce.

What makes Aviary even more innovative is the way they protect and have thought about how artists work. Aviary tracks all rights, royalties and attributions in a work forever, and across collaborations. Aviary’s applications communicate with each other, allowing for seamless editing in multiple tools for a single project, as well as shared resources between tools.

Pricing hasn’t been revealed yet but during the beta all access is free. The one thing that worries me with Aviary is their domain name – it’s not aviary.com but rather a.viary.com — if popularity grows, will people be able to find the app? 

Aviary has given us 100 beta invites to give away to our great readers. If you’d like one, go here. We will have the demo video from their presentation tonight.

Here is an example of what Aviary can do using our favorite poptart, Britney Spears. Damn.