videos Archive

This is the final post (I think!) regarding the MTA developer conference last week. The OpenPlans group has posted all of the videos from the event. You can just listen to the videos – there’s really no need to watch them. But if you are into transit, want to hear where NYC transit is moving and/or looking to build a mobile transit app, you should listen to the videos.

The panel discussion is interesting – especially the part about how the NY Times uses the available transit data.

In related news, if you are into transit and tech in Philadelphia, the PhillyTransit meetup will be held this Thursday evening.

Here’s the first video – the rest can be found on the OpenPlans YouTube channel.
Continue reading “Full Videos From the Transit Conference” »

Yesterday we took a look at the new 2011 Ford Edge which has the Ford MyTouch software. Today’s video will show how Ford wants to interact with developers. The program is named Sync Mobile App Connectivity and will allow mobile app developers the ability to interact with the Sync interface inside Ford cars.

In the video below, the Ford rep shows us how the Sync Mobile App Connectivity works with Pandora. Basically you can control the Pandora iPhone app using your voice inside the car. The music is played through the car speakers and when you want to change the station you hit the speak button and say, “play station Justin Bieber”. Pandora has built the Ford Sync SDK into their general application available in the iTunes app store.

We also tried to take a look at a Twitter application built with the Sync SDK but it didn’t load correctly. Had it worked, the app would read the Twitter messages in your stream and/or your replies and direct messages. How exciting would it be to travel to grandma for Thanksgiving and be able to listen to this:

• I just ate a bologna sandwich – Peter R 7240
• I am the mayor of Taco Bell – MaryLou14
• In reply to PinkFluff24 – yes

I wonder if the apps will be able to use the 8″ display on some of the Ford cars for display.
Continue reading “Ford Wants Developers With Their Sync Mobile App Connectivity (video demo)” »

As with previous years, I met a ton of new people at the SXSW conference. I have to admit that I was very much looking to meet Dries Buytaert. Belgium-based Dries is the founder of the Drupal CMS. If you are a regular reader of CN, you know that all of our sites were in Drupal until a year ago when we shifted to WordPress. I always liked Drupal but the admin interface just isn’t as usable as the WordPress admin interface. Dries told me that the upcoming Drupal 7 release will have a redesigned admin interface.

Check out my video discussion with Dries below (make sure to watch in HD!). We talk about SXSW, the upcoming Drupal 7 release and the Drupal Gardens product. Drupal Gardens is a service provided by Acquia. Drupal Gardens is basically a hosted Drupal service similar to the WordPress.com hosted service.

Dries notes that the Drupal 7 release has a focus on usability (they hired usability experts to help make the product stronger). They are also making lots of improvements for developers – including better APIs and better database abstraction layers. The Drupal 7 release is in alpha and they are hoping to get it out in public within the next few months.
Continue reading “Interview With Drupal Founder Dries Buytaert” »

While at SXSW this week, I met with Shawn, the AOL product manager over the new AOL Lifestream product. AOL Lifestream brings together a variety of social services including Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, etc. The service is available on the iPhone, Android and on the desktop.

Interestingly, AOL now allows you to post status updates to AOL along with the other services you select. AOL Lifestream also allows you to follow places and find updates related to a place. So if you are interested in a certain hotel, bar, etc. you can subscribe to that location and any updates will hit your stream. To make these location pages very valuable, AOL will need to aggregate additional services including Yelp and even Google results (blog, web, news, etc.).

Similar to Google launching Buzz inside of Gmail to gain an instant audience, AOL Lifestream has the same instant audience as the new version of AIM includes the Lifestream product.

I asked Shawn about the comparisons to FriendFeed, his response is worth listening to.

Check out the video demo below.
Continue reading “AOL Lifestream Demo” »

During the SXSW conference in Austin this week, Google held an all day hackathon event. The idea behind the hackathon is to allow developers to create applications in one day and also get help from Google employees on applications they are developing.

I recorded the session that discussed Google App Engine and the video is below. You can also download all of the “code labs” which are simple tutorials on how to use a variety of Google APIs and services including Google App Engine.
Continue reading “SXSW: Google App Engine Demo” »

Ok, I’ve never actually wanted a service to not function and I am partially joking, but it would be great if AT&T service would go down here at SXSW 2010 in Austin. Why? Because perhaps then there would be actual talking and networking at the event. I say the same thing every year and I assume this year there will be even more online chatter instead of offline networking and handshakes.

With that said, AT&T has apparently put a lot of capital investment into the Austin area recently to help handle the traffic loads with iPhone users wanting to tell their “friends” what they are doing while at the SXSW event. There’s a card in the schwag bag that outlines what AT&T has done to handle the load.

MG Siegler at Techcrunch has a post that discusses last year’s AT&T service — he uses lots of words like “nightmare”, etc. I like this line the best, “I’m leaving for Austin tomorrow and I’m terrified of what the AT&T situation will be when I get there.” Read that again – MG is TERRIFIED that he might not be able to both update Foursquare and also write what our sources tell us will be 43.2 Foursquare stories. MG did get a freebie from Sprint (which I am on, pay for each month and had great service last year) so that means he should be A-OK for coverage posts.

Check out the video of the registration line below. Count how many people are either talking on their phones or looking at their phones versus how many people are looking up and/or talking to someone.

Put the phone away, smile, talk to people and meet new people. Learn something new at a session. All the social networks will be there when you get back to your home or office and you can then post updates.
Continue reading “SXSW: I Hope AT&T Goes Down (video)” »

Last year we covered the announcement that early-stage venture capital first First Round Capital (FRC) would be opening an office in NYC. We also covered the Entrepreneurs Roundtable when FRC partner Howard Morgan discussed the overall early-stage capital market.

Today the partners from FRC took a tour of the various startup incubators around Manhattan. For those new to the term, incubators is basically a fancy word for “shared office space”. I attended the first bit of the tour and will have a few more videos and photos over the next day. Mary Kathleen Flynn from The Deal and an editor from VentureBeat (I didn’t catch his name) also participated in the tour. I wore two hats today: first as a writer for this blog and second as an entrepreneur looking for space for my startup.

They also announced that their NYC office will be located at 200 Park Avenue South (23rd Street) and will be opening in March.

First Round Capital partner Josh Kopelman began the discussion with an overview of FRC and what they look for in a deal. The video of Josh’s discussion is available below. Some notes:

• they have invested in 80 companies
• average initial investment in NYC is $600k
• about 15 investments in NYC
• they like to invest very early – they fund Powerpoint and pre-launch companies

Continue reading “What’s First Round Capital Looking For In Their Investments?” »