SF New Tech

Crowd-sourced TV is now just a click away, thanks to the efforts of Redux co-founders David McIntosh, Max Crane, Chris Pennello and their team. A welcome change from traditional cable television providers like Comcast who limit consumer choices and forces bland, boring content down your cable line, Redux enables a discovery layer on top of video, photo and rich media content that could be consumed via numerous platforms.

Discovery takes the form of the social graph and recommendations. In other words, Redux is a personalized channel for you that’s curated and programmed by your friends and people that share your taste.

There is much more to it than this, and that’s why David McIntosh and his team are descending onto the stage to give us a demo of Redux at the Dec 15th SF New Tech event.

What’s In Store For SF New Tech Peeps?

Along with their demo of the Redux platform, they will also be showing off “Redux Discover” for Google TV – a fun and beautiful way to discover the videos that your friends and relevant tastemakers are watching, all in an effortless lean-back experience. Although this feature is not publicly available yet, Redux has promised to give away private invites for SF New Tech attendees, so don’t miss it if you want one!

Plus free custom RVCA Redux T-shirts for a chosen few!

About Redux

Redux is based in Berkeley California. The company has raised venture capital from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Alsop-Louie Partners.

Website: http://redux.com
Twitter: @redux
Contact Email: feedback @ redux.com
Contact Form: http://redux.com/contact

Add-on-Con is the only industry conference focused on web browser extensions, and this year’s event is going to highlight some dramatic changes occurring in the industry.

Join the conversation on Dec 8th and 9th in Mountain View, California.

Especially for SF New Tech fans: Use the discount code SFNewTech on checkout to save $50 off the registration price. That is over 30% in savings right there!

Registration includes lunch, goodies and hands on training. Click here to register!

On Tuesday evening, December 7th, come and join SMAC (Social Media Advertising Consortium) board members Bonin Bough, Global Director of Social Media at PepsiCo and Heidi Browning, President of Rally, the social media agency at Universal McCann as they lead a conversation in what’s working in Social Media for brands and start-ups.

Joining Bonin and Heidi will be Chris Perry, President of Weber Shandwick Digital and Nichole Goodyear, CEO of Brickfish and Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati. This is the first San Francisco SMAC Event, so don’t miss it!

The event is hosted By Technorati and brought to you by Brickfish & 33Across.

Join SMAC members and fellow social media thought leaders for networking, wine & light hors d’oeuvres.

About SMAC

SMAC, short for Social Media Advertising Consortium, is dedicated to responsible scale, innovation and evolution of the social media industry. Their 3 main objectives (as stated on their website) are

1. Create a common vocabulary
2. Define standard buying units
3. Standardize measurement metrics

For more information, and to become a member to join and contribute, visit smac.org

SF New Tech gold sponsor CALinnnovates has just announced the Grateful Tech “What Technology Are You Grateful For?” Contest where you could possibly win

1. A brand new iPad ($499 value) or
2. An iPod Touch ($299 value)or
3. An iPod Nano ($149 value)

All you have to do is record a 30 second (max) video telling them what technology it is that you are grateful for, upload the video to youtube, and enter the youtube url along with your contact info on the contest page here.
Your video could be serious, funny, heart-warming or anything else, so long as it is “clean” (before uploading to youtube, think about whether you could watch it with your mom AND grandmom !).

"Technology I am Grateful For? 'Nuff Said!"

In addition to the prizes above, each winner will get 100$ donated to Kiva.org in their name for them to invest in an entrepreneur of their choice.

Deadlines and Dates: The contest runs from November 23rd 2010 until December 15th, 2010 and online voting runs from December 15th, 2010 until December 31th, 2010.

For a full list of contest rules and terms, click here.

Photo: via joshfassbind

About CALinnovates

CALinnovates is a statewide coalition focused on championing the conversation about the future of California’s critical technology sector. For more information, check out calinnovates.org

You can also stay updated and follow CALinnovates on twitter @calinnovates and fan them on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/CALinnovates

This just in from our Tip Line*!

Skyara, a marketplace for experiences just launched a campaign of donating an experience to charity to raise money for the UCSF Children’s Hospital.

MySpace.com co-founder Aber Whitcomb has donated a chance to win a trap and skeet shooting experience with him for a few lucky people who donate to the UCSF children’s hospital. Details here.

Please note, NO living creatures will be harmed in this event! Whitcomb promises it will be a fun event!

Trap-Skeet With MySpace Co-Founder Aber Whitcomb (Photo by Britney McIntosh)

Our tipster notes that YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim has also promised to join in supporting the UCSF Children’s Hospital by donating an experience soon.

We are on top of it, so stay tuned to SFNewTech.com!

( Tips? News? Stories? Let us know at tips @ sfnewtech.com )

Peter Rojas is the co-founder of gdgt, a crowd sourced, bottom-up, social platform about consumer electronic gadgets. Rojas’ past includes being the founding editor of wildly successful technology sites Engadget, Gizmodo and Joystiq. He sold Engadget to AOL in 2005 and soon after started his 4th venture: gdgt (pronounced, “gadget“) with co-founder Ryan Block.

SFNewTech caught up with Peter at GDGT 2010 event here in San Francisco (on Nov. 12, 2010) to find out what he’s up to these days and his vision for gdgt.

GDGT Co-Founder Peter Rojas at the GDGT 2010 Event in San Francisco (Photo: Shiva Manjunath)

SFNewTech: What came first? gdgt, the website or gdgt, the event?

Rojas: We started with the site first and our first event was kind of like a launch event. It was very similar to this, but we just meant it to be a party to celebrate the launch of the site.

SFNewTech: When did you launch the site?
Rojas: We launched the site in July 2009. Our first event was in August 2009.

SFNewTech: Where was the launch held?

Rojas: At the DNA Lounge, with about 24 companies and a similar format to this event. Then we did another launch event in New York in October 2009 and decided that maybe we should keep doing these.

So we decided to do a handful, about 5 this year, probably 6 or 7 next year.

SFNewTech: Any plans for taking gdgt to the rest of the world?

Rojas: We’d really like to, but logistically it’s just more difficult outside the U.S. We’ve definitely thought about it. We’d love to do London, because we have lots of UK users, so that would make sense at some point. I don’t think it’ll happen in 2011, but it’s definitely possible in 2012.

SFNewTech: Are you positioning gdgt as a blog or as a website?

Rojas: We’re not in business as a blog. gdgt.com is a crowd sourced, bottom-up, social platform about consumer electronics gadgets, to share what you know, and either write reviews and ask or answer questions about your gadgets.

SFNewTech: Do people have to sign up see it?

Rojas: You have to register to contribute, not to just look at it.

SFNewTech: How many users do you have?

Rojas: We have a lot, but we’re not releasing the number yet. (editor’s note: according to the Wall Street Journal, as of April 2010 gdgt has hundreds of thousands of users, and 17,000 products in its database)

SFNewTech: Are you funded or looking for funding?

Rojas: We’ve raised two rounds of funding, totaling 3.6 million. Our biggest investors are True Venture, Spark Capital and Betaworks.

SFNewTech: Who founded the company?

Rojas: It’s myself and Ryan Block. My background is I was a founder of Gizmodo, Engadget and Joystiq, this is actually my 4th company. Sold Engadget to AOL, left AOL about 2 years ago to start gdgt. (editor’s note: Ryan was editor-in-chief of Engadget)

SFNewTech: How do you compare to say the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), or is it a totally different market or audience?

A; Our biggest difference is that our event is obviously much smaller and open to the public. The CES is for trade only, so members of the general public can’t go to CES. You need to be a member of a company or the press.

SFNewTech: Awesome, anything else you’d like to add?

Rojas: Check out the site, it’s the best place to ask a question about a gadget.

GDGT.com Co-Founders Ryan Block (left) and Peter Rojas. (Photo: (cc) Kenneth Yeung - www.snapfoc.us)

Want an easy way to jazz up your blog or just repost interesting web content? That’s what serial entrepreneur John Pettitt and partner Tim McElreavy desired too, so they went out and created curate.us – a means for copying rich media, repositioning or “clipping” it, adding visually appealing highlights like stickies to draw attention and then re-posting it elsewhere, all the while tracking where it goes along the way.

The kicker is that Curate.Us helps you reposition and customize text or graphics, then tracks the re-post, using their own analytics to see click through, content reuse and where exactly that re-posted graphics is used. Because all clips are fully attributed, according to Pettitt, “it drives traffic back to the sourced graphic or text”, which can be a blog or web site, graphic or rich text or HTML.

Co-Founder John Pettitt presents Curate.Us at 10Nov2010 SFNewTech (Photo Credit: Shiva Manjunath)

On the flip side, though Curate.Us regenerates a page every time you look at it, it will never clip anything copy protected, a confidence booster for any company who values their personal data and content.

For those curious about the technology, Pettitt offered that, “It’s hosted on EC2 runs ubuntu using lighttpd, mysql, php, gearman and uses memcache for caching.”

What’s Next for Curate.Us? Deliver more technology in the future that Pettitt promised will be, “something disruptive that builds on this technology”.

About Curate.Us

Website: Curate.Us
Twitter: @CurateUs
Blog: http://curate.us/curate/blog
Co-Founder: John Pettitt @jpp123
Co-Founder: Tim McElreavy @FreeRangeTim
Dark Overlady of Engineering Kate McKinley @sigkate
Community Czarina Tia Marie @tia_marie

If you feel overwhelmed by content overload – and who doesn’t these days – Sameer Yami’s WikiSeer might just be the solution you need.
According to co-founder Yami,

WikiSeer siphons through textual content, figures out what’s most important, presents it to you succinctly, and then as a bonus, allows you to share it with friends.

That’s after all the genesis of creating the product, frustration while browsing massive amounts of data

Think of it as Cliff Notes for web content. Yami noted, “you can find book abstracts everywhere, but there was nothing even close for web pages on the net”, thus WikiSeer was born.

Sameer Yami presenting WikiSeer at 10Nov2010 SFNewTech (Photo Credit: Shiva Manjunath)

Using sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) and several patented techniques, WikiSeer culls the results and sends them back to you, a natural time saver for any reader. WikiSeer is content neutral. It can provide a synopsis of the most relevant sentences of any page, whether you’re seeking the best dishes at a restaurant listed on Yelp, or reading a lengthy book and just want the essence of the content.  It can do so using graphics or text as a foundation for that input.

“We built WikiSeer to find the most informative content in any English text”, explained Yami.

Wanna try it? Take the website  – http://WikiSeer.com/ – for a test ride. You can also summarize any webpage without leaving the site using the Firefox Addon or the Chrome Addon.

Check it out and let them know what you think!

About WikiSeer

Website: http://WikiSeer.com/
Twitter: @Wikiseer
Co-Founder: Sameer Yami
Co-Founder: Sanika Shirwadkar
Contact: Via the Contact Page.
Feedback: Click here to give feedback about your experience.


While the rest of the world depends on electronic communiqués, the medical industry lags behind, given, according to Michael Kleiman, VP Product Management at OneMedical,

90% of providers don’t accept emails, but OneMedical does.

Given creating a positive user experience is a mantra for all startups, that is the essence of OneMedical’s value proposition. And they know they’re on the right track as they continually expand, while just taking off.

Michael Klieman presents One Medical at SFNewTech (Photo Credit: Shiva Manjunath)

The cost? The member based service costs $149 per year.  For that fee, if you have insurance they will bill insurance for you, if you don’t have insurance they will offer you a discounted rate for service. “Both ways, it’s a good way to stay on top of your health,” insisted Kleiman.

OneMedical’s iPhone app works in tandem with their website, delivering a spectrum of help: answers to simple medical questions;  physician referrals for personal consultation;  guidelines for handling billing questions; access your health records and renew prescriptions.

OneMedical’s free iPhone app walks you through a series of question to identify the nature and details of your issue.At one end of the spectrum, if the issue can be handled by the patient accessing information on their own (eg: by onemedical providing links to you) the quick answer is in hand. At the other end of the spectrum, if you have an urgent issue, they’ll ease the process by calling the provider to arrange an immediate office or emergency visit.

With 6 offices in SF, 2 in NY and huge demand to continually expand, it’s clear the service fills a void.

Whether you have insurance, or not, this could be the wave of the future for medical care.

Want to see for yourself? Next office opens Nov. 30th 2010, at 201 Spear Street, and SFNewTech fans are invited to the open house event 5:30 – 7:30 PM where wine and cheese will be served, for health purposes only, of course!

Michael Klieman presents the One Medical iPhone App (Photo Credit: Shiva Manjunath)

About One Medical

Website: www.onemedical.com
San Francisco Website: www.onemedical.com/sf
Founder: Tom X. Lee
Vice President, Product Management: Michael Kleiman
Twitter: @onemedical
Facebook: One-Medical-Group
Contact Email: admin @ onemedical.com
OneMedical Mobile App: www.onemedical.com/mobile

While in high school, Andrew Sutherland needed help studying French vocabulary, so he created electronic flashcards for his own use. Soon, word about Quizlet caught on in a so called flash, which is one reason their user base doubled every year since inception.

With 1 million registered users and about 3 million visitors a month, it’s a concept whose time has come.

Quizlet works like paper index cards, one side for questions, flip side for answers. Users can generate their own flash card content, or use those developed by others on the site, as you can opt for private or public cards. With topics ranging from languages to math, science and history, Quizlet instantly provides access to a wealth of learning material.

Product Manager Phil Freo Presenting Quizlet at SFNewTech (Photo Credit: Shiva Manjunath)

In various modes, Quizlet combines a spectrum of proven techniques with technology to ensure “lessons are learned”, by: shuffling incorrectly answered cards back to you until you get the answer right; true and false cards; and repetitive testing, ensuring you type an answer that you either don’t know or get wrong, again increasing sticking power.

More fun learning games available: matching words and graphics; terms and definitions; and  a “Space Race” game, where terms fly across the screen as you try to fill in the definition before the terms fly off the screen’s edge.

Quizlet is a free service, but for just $10 a year, you can even upload your own graphics to enhance the flashcards.

Quizlet’s goal ? According to product manager  Phil Freo

We want Quizlet to be recognized as the best place on line to learn or study

With an API for the iphone, 15 apps pull content in to Quizlet. Next up: they’re creating Quizlet groups so you can invite your friends to learn with you.

Product Manager Phil Freo answers questions about Quizlet at SFNewTech (Photo Credit: Shiva Manjunath)

About Quizlet

Website: http://quizlet.com
Blog: http://quizlet.com/blog/
Twitter: @quizlet
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/quizlet
Contactl: info @ quizlet.com
Founder: Andrew Sutherland
CEO: Dave Margulius
Product Manager & Developer : Phil Freo , Twitter @philfreo