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Web 2.0 Expo Ignite wrap-up: Session two

Ignite finished strong with presentations from Justin.tv, RobotReplay, and Omnidrive.

Justin Kan of Justin.tv talked about how easy it is to promote your site or product with the right strategy. It also doesn't hurt to have a camera hooked to a laptop, with an EV-DO connection streaming every second of your life. Our previous Justin.tv coverage here and here. Surreal moment of the talk? Checking Justin.tv and seeing him talking to us. Creepy

Andre Charland discussed the difficulty of launching his new site RobotReplay, which lets Web site owners keep track of where their visitors … Read more

Web 2.0 Expo Ignite wrap-up: Session one

I'm at O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Expo kick-off, called Ignite--which is what most speakers are doing to the microphone. The premise is simple, you've got 20 slides, and each one automatically advances every 15 seconds.The result? Speakers sound like they're running a live auction.

Notably, ZDNet's Ryan Stewart gave us a brief overview of his blog, Advancing User Experience with Rich Internet Applications, and told the audience we should keep our eyes on Adobe's Apollo (previous coverage).

Christy Canida of Instructables talked about how user-submitted designs for toys have been so successful … Read more

Spock will find you

I got a chance to sit down with the founders of the people search engine, Spock, in advance of the company's grand unveiling, which will be during the LaunchPad sessions at the Web 2.0 Expo. Spock is Yet Another Search Engine, but it's an important one--it searches for people. You type in a name and it will show you everything it knows about that person and where it found the data. Or, if you search on a term, it will find people that match it. For example, search for "boxer," and Mohammad Ali shows up, … Read more

Virtual desktop trifecta at Web 2.0 Expo

Several exhibitors at next week's Web 2.0 Expo are recreating the desktop workspace experience by using new Web technologies such as Ajax and Adobe Flex. This isn't a new idea, but what is interesting is how many of them have forgone creating their own tools and stuck to integrating existing Web services in a stylized portal platform.

Zcubes attempts to emulate a desktop workspace with nearly 30 different tools that mimic desktop applications. With most of the tools relegated to things like casual drawing, comic strips, and Web browsing, the emphasis of the suite is fun.

G.ho.st (… Read more

Projectiondesign M20: Add 200 trillion colors to your life

There are pros and cons to video projectors. On the one hand, films can look stunning when blown up to the size of a wall. On the other hand, Deal or No Deal is unlikely to benefit from being expanded to such epic proportions. With high-definition content becoming more common though, there is an increasing amount of stuff just begging to be projected on to a huge screen.

The Projectiondesign M20 promises high-end performance, but it doesn't come cheap at 3,500 pounds (about $6,935). The price seems particularly steep when you consider this is only a 720p … Read more

Sea creature meets collaboration tool: Octopz

Octopz (pronounced 'Octopus') is a Web-based, online collaboration tool for small groups. It's one of the many companies presenting at next week's Web 2.0 Expo here in San Francisco, and is making its public launch on Monday.

Octopz runs in its own browser window and uses Adobe Flash to mix a whiteboard space with live text, voice, and video chat. The workspace has an area to upload and share files with other group members. Each uploaded file gets its own folder, which houses any edits made by group members. For example, if you're making notes on a digital photograph, other members can create a copy of that photo and add their own notes. Each version is neatly stacked underneath the original. All group edits are saved and stored, and can be shared and edited later for asynchronous collaboration.

Things get a little tricky with Octopz's multiuser controls. Anyone can grab control of the workspace at any time, which in testing led to some minor power struggles. There's also not a way to keep track of which group member made which edits, either with a history or differentiating colors per each user. Despite these issues, Octopz handled a four-person conference from three different geographical locations smoothly.

Where Octopz excels is its simplicity. It's incredibly easy to pick up and use. It reminds me a lot of Acrobat Connect, a product Adobe launched in January, although sans screen sharing.

Octopz comes in at $99 per month per license, which is twice the cost of the standard version of Adobe Connect. However unlike Acrobat Connect, Octopz lets businesses create an unlimited amount of rooms and users, something you don't even get with Adobe's professional level of Acrobat Connect service.

See also: Vyew, Conceptshare, and Webex for Web-based collaborative tools.

Update: Fixed pricing clarification regarding comparison to Acrobat Connect. Also, Octopz was picked as one of our Top 5 favorites from the Web 2.0 Expo earlier this month.

For more screenshots of Octopz in action, keep reading.

… Read more

I'm Rich!

CNET TV is growing up fast, and now we even have our very own blog! Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Rich DeMuro, CNET TV's guy in New York City. Yes, much of our crew is out in San Francisco, but I'm headquartered in the Big Apple to cover the East Coast. It's not all that lonely here; we have a team of editors out here as well who review digital cameras, TVs, computers, and more. But I digress...I produce and host a show on CNET TV called The Queue, which is sort of like … Read more

Egnyte keeps work group files in sync--for a price

Egnyte is a new business groupware application that's rolling out at the Web 2.0 Expo. It's entering a very crowded market--the product is can be put in or near the same buckets as business wikis, groupware apps such as Groove, Sharepoint, and Collanos (review), and pure Web 2.0 apps such as Basecamp--but at its most basic it's a file synchronization engine.

By the way, it's pronounced like "ignite," not like "egg night."

Egnyte lets you designate directories, individual files, and e-mail folders for sharing. You can collect several items … Read more

oDesk adds fixed-price option to its gig marketplace

The online service marketplace oDesk (previous oDesk coverage) has just added the capability for buyers to spec fixed-price jobs. Previously, all oDesk contracts were hourly. This move puts oDesk up against gig marketplaces like eLance and RentACoder, which are also based on fixed-price bids.

"The problem with the fixed price market is that it's not sticky," oDesk CEO Gary Swart told me. Many business relationships that start with one-price jobs evolve into working relationships where the pay is based on the time put in. Swart maintains that competing marketplaces don't foster (or let you manage) that … Read more