Last Tuesday I went to my first NY Tech meeting organized and hosted by Meetup.com’s co-founder and CEO Scott Heiferman. While I attended the event to hear the good people from Iridesco talk about their latest launch, “CO-OP,” I also got to hear from several other entrepreneurs.
-
Freshman Fund –
Jason Olim of CDNOW fame showed us his quick and easy way to save money for your child’s education: let friends and family gift it via this website. Despite the clean design and solid presentation, there was one major drawback I noticed: your donation isn’t always tax deductible*. The savings are tax-free for the recipient, as long as they are used for “qualified education expenses.”
* Not tax deductible in the state of New York. Their about page suggests that several other states allow the deduction.
-
Glue –
This service, by way of a Firefox plugin, tries to connect the loose ends of your browsing experience with your social network. Similar to Facebook’s ill-fated “Beacon,” Glue aims to share what you do “off the network.” When you visit a participating site like Amazon or IMDB, a small toolbar descends which tells you if your friends also viewed this item, and what they thought of it. You can then “like it” or leave a “twitteresque” 140-character comment. The interesting thing is the context that Glue provides. If you visit a product page about “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” on Amazon and on IMDB, it knows that you are talking about the concept as a whole, not the eminent release of a sequel or the “double disc Bluray” edition currently on sale. Monetization comes in the form of affiliate links, which is a great way to make money will still delivering quality content. My question (which I didn’t get to ask) is what if the link is already affiliated? Will Glue strip my affiliate code and insert theirs?
-
Cookstr –
Created by a professional cook book editor, Cookstr aims to enable visitors to create their own cook books, on the fly. By combining the best known chef authors and their recipes, the service wants to be the number one /recipe destination online.
Full disclosure: I work at the Food Network. My opinion is probably biased, so I won’t offer it here. -
Wee Web –
A walled-garden network to help new parents share updates on their children with friends and family, safely and securely. Created by previous Meetup.com co-founders Matt Meeker and Peter Kamali, Wee Web lets you post photos, videos, news updates a more to a profile page for your child, which only invited members can see. I think it has potential as long as they deal with data portability issues. After someone asked about bringing data in (because no one wants to upload their photos to yet ANOTHER site), the creators explained that they will allow you to import data from Flickr and the like, but that you wouldn’t be able to easily EXPORT it. I guess when you are dealing with a touchy subject like people’s children this is something you have to consider, but as a whole I’m against companies locking in your data.
-
MixedInk –
They want to do for groups and collaborative writing what Wikipedia has done for information. The demo showed how MixedInk could search for relevant documents based on what you were writing, and easily allow you to slip in references to other material. MixedInk handles all the attribution automatically, which can result in the “byline” looking like a bathroom wall. All in all, I thought it was a cool service. Its focus is more on organizations that reference dense bodies of legal information frequently, and less on college students preparing last minute book reports. Still, my two concerns are that 1) this style of writing might increase “noise” and reduce original content, and 2) some of the interface behavior suggested that this is a flex app. And we all now I’m a big crybaby about flash/flex.
-
CO-OP –
CO-OP is a twitterlike (it was a theme that night) micro-messaging service for groups who collaborate over distances. Very similar to Campfire (which I LOVE), CO-OP lets you discuss your project in a group setting which is then archived and searchable. Iridesco brilliantly tied this to their Harvest App. I’ve long been a fan of Harvest, Iridesco’s time tracking service. While I’ve recently switched to FreshBooks because of its slick invoicing integration, I often recommend Harvest to friends and co-workers. Their design is top notch, and I love that they have an iPhone (web)app. I recently tried to implement CO-OP with my group, but it bit the dust like so many other organizational apps in the workplace: lack of managerial control. This is the question I posed to them.
While it is quite possible that start-ups and small agencies do well without a “roll” system, my projects need a solid way to disseminate information, and get status updates. If CO-OP allowed a project manager to assign tasks, set agendas, and check on overall status, I think it would have really taken off with us. Instead, I found myself being the only one updating it as others looked elsewhere for more relevant information. Instead we are stuck with a mish-mash of unpleasantry. A bloated and difficult to search Basecamp, a horribly designed Wiki system, a frequently down AIM, and a cluttered inbox. Maybe Iridesco plans to implement similar features. If so, I’ll come a’running. Until then, its a no-go. Got suggestions? Leave them in the comments.
At the end Scott Heiferman announced that he was stepping down as the leader of the group and was starting an election process to find his replacements. I happened to find this part quite boring as I was new to the group and just wanted to get home, but it was clear that there was a strong group dynamic, and that many people attend these sessions frequently. I had no idea there were so many talented webfolks in this little city.
On a sidenote: this was my first experience with Meetup.com. Overall I found the experience favorable.
I was able to find the group and RSVP easily, but as soon as I had created an account and bought my ticket, my inbox became bombarded with tech related questions and topics. It seems that you are subscribed to the meetup’s Google Group to help you get in the “spirit” or something. It is quite possible that there was some small checkbox I should have “unchecked” in order to not receive the email, but I didn’t see it. This probably would have been less offensive in a less active group, but I had about 20 messages within the first 5 minutes. I immediately removed myself from that group and ALL other meetup.com mailings. Sorry guys, but that’s just annoying.
Popularity: 46% [?]
