DEMO – Targeted marketing and mobile

Serious thanks to the companies that went in the last two sessions this afternoon. The energy level in the audience was flagging after 50+ company presentations but was invigorated by the presenters and their enthusiasm. Good job folks!

As with a couple of the earlier sessions, there was little or no clustering around themes.

Targeted Marketing

FastCall411 showed a cross between local search (like InsiderPages, Google Local, etc.) and targeted marketing – a user goes to FastCall411 to search for a local merchant or service company. FastCall411 selects local vendors and places 10 phones in parallel to the top search results. When local vendors answer the phone call, FastCall411 tells the merchant that they have a customer prospect on the phone and asks whether they wish to accept the call with no associated cost. FastCall411 ranks vendors based on caller feedback, their speed to answer the phone, whether the number rings busy etc. These parameters are used to score the vendor and feed back into future search results (higher ranked vendors get higher ranking).

Sway showed a platform to manage marketing campaigns for different forms of rich media content.

I wrote about Pudding Media and their system for offering free VoIP calls in return for presenting relevant ads to the caller earlier this week. The demo was very impressive!

360Dekstop showed a new desktop navigation paradigm based on a 360-degree graphical interface. Users can download panoramic background and then place windows, icons, gadgets etc around the display. Visually the effect is very impressive and has a lot of eye candy appeal. For those familiar with X-windows or some of the Linux desktop managers like Gnome, 360Desktop is another way of increasing virtual desktop space with a twist – gadgets, content players etc. can be embedded in the background image and used to display advertising that is either static or refreshed.

MyndNet launched a market place for information for people to monetize what and who they know. In some ways, this reminded me of an extension of Spoke or Jigsaw paying for contact and lead information.

Mobile

Kannu showed a new user interface to simplify and speed up the process of data entry and search using a mobile phone and its pointing device (stylus, touch screen, joystick etc.) It reminded me of the T9 word completion technique applied to reducing the number of keystrokes required to enter and complete a search.

TruPhone has a VoIP over WiFI service that allows people with WiFI capable cell phones to make lower cost phone calls over the WiFI network rather than on the cellular network. The phone roams seamlessly between the wireless and WiFI networks. Very impressive demonstration especially as this works with any carrier network – no prior relationship required. TruPhone has their client up and running on the iPhone – very cool!

RedSquare Ventures is the first public release of a Russian (Moscow based) incubator. They showed an interesting application that allows a user to mix up different sub-tracks (the individual tracks that are recorded of a different instruments, vocals etc that are then mixed together to form the final musical track) and play the results across an ensemble of cell phones – yes, cell phones! The user creating the mix can specify which of their friends' cell phones play back which instrument or sub-track in sync. Check out the video of this demo – it's a must!

Mig33 announced their US launch of their social mobile network - Two very impressive entrepreneurs!

Vitarati uses SMS to return search results to the user combined with their location and personal preferences. They apply collaboration, social networking and location. They have a web presence called SeenR where users rate places they like or dislike together with ranking the recommendations that the service provided to them. The social element is provided by introducing users to each other that have similar tastes.