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Posts Tagged ‘Innovative Technologies’

BizSpark Accelerator Finalists: Our Pick for ‘Most Innovative Web Technology’

Today at the South By South West festival in Austin, three finalists competed in the Microsoft BizSpark Accellerator finals in the “Innovative Web Technologies” category.

The companies, RecycleMatch, Siri and Skimble argued their positions on stage in front of three judges and tonight the winner will be announced at 6pm CST.

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The Accelerator competition is in its second year and started out with a list of 32 finalist companies in three categories. While all three categories have some strong entries, we wanted to check out the innovative technologies to see what was, well, innovative.

RecycleMatch

First, Chad Farrell, co-founder of RecycleMatch, showed off the web solution that we hope takes off solely so it can help save the world. RecycleMatch, the only of the three that is not an iPhone app, is an online marketplace that helps match up waste materials with recyclers and manufacturers that need those materials.

“There’s really no place to do this now,” said Farrell. “Let’s say I’ve got this piece of polyester fiber waste but I don’t know anyone around who can use it. It’s the perfect use of the internet – to connect people like that.”

We can see this not only having a great impact on the world, but certainly stepping into the ever popular “green” genre and sticking around.

Siri

Up next was Dag Kittlaus with the digital, voice-activated personal assistant software Siri. We think Kittlaus’ introduction says it best:

“For decades, Hollywood has been paintinh this picture of machine assistants with Hal 9000 – what Siri is doing is taking some steps to make that a reality,” Kittlaus said.

As our own Frederic Lardinois has written before about the iPhone app, Siri is “one of the most ambitious mobile services we have seen in the last few years.”

You simply hold the phone up, hit a button, and tell it what you need and it translates your speech into text, uses natural language processing algorithms to determine what you need and then launches the appropriate services. Whether you want to schedule a taxi pick-up, make a dinner reservation or remind yourself of that Monday morning appointment, just ask Siri and it will do it.

“What if you could make it easy to ask your phone to do something?” asked Kittlaus. “It’s all about simplification.”

While the app looks to simplify your life, the technology behind it is anything but simple and it makes us feel a little bit like we’ve finally arrived in the future.

Skimble

The final contestant to take the stage was Skimble and if there’s one thing we can say, it’s that co-founder Maria Ly did it with style, back-flipping and dancing to the ‘Mission Impossible’ theme song before putting both legs behind her head and doing push-ups.

Yes, you heard that right – she did push-ups with both legs behind her head. This woman is living what she’s preaching, that we can attest to.

“We would like to inspire active lifestyles across the board,” she started off in her explanation.

Skimble is a hybrid social network, physical fitness tracking app, that lets you track your physical activities, whether running, doing yoga, or playing kickball and compete with your friends. As you keep track of your activities, you can compare with your friends on a leaderboard and even compete to win real-world prizes. As with Siri, Skimble is primarily an iPhone app, although it has an accompanying website with additional features.

Our Pick

We have to say, Siri takes the cake in this category and we’re going to have to call it early. If the digital personal assistant doesn’t take the prize, then it’s only because it’s too good and just doesn’t need the start-up funding to continue. That almost seemed to be the line of questioning from the judges – why would something as impressive as Siri need to win this competition, with the funding and functionality it’s already showing? All Siri needs to do, in reality, is start a bidding war between Google and Apple and it has it made, the judges half-jokingly but half-seriously said during the on-stage interview.

For the final word on what company will take the top prize, watch live tonight at 6 pm CST or check out the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator page.

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Finalists Announced for SXSW’s 2010 Accelerator Competition

Last month we brought you information about a promotional package available to startups at this years South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) event, a popular place each year to launch new products. This year SXSWi will be holding their second annual Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator competition where a recently released list of 32 finalist companies representing innovative web technologies, entertainment, and social media (both business and personal) will battle for the chance to be named one of four champions.

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Among the notable innovative web technology finalists is metaio, a company on the cutting edge of augmented reality whose new Unifeye Mobile software development kit was announced just yesterday. From the entertainment category is Are You Watching This?!, an innovative product that will notify you or your DVR if a sporting event might become an “instant classic” using algorithms and live stats analysis.

Most of the applicants, however, represented the two social media categories, including Mobile Roadie, a mobile app development service like iSites or AppMakr which allows for the fast creation of iPhone and Android applications. Another social media startup vying for one of the top four spots at SXSWi is the popular Sequoia Capital-backed mobile contact sharing serivce Bump.

After the first day, 12 companies – three from each category – will be whittled from the original 32 pitches by a panel of judges. On day two, these twelve finalists will compete to be the winner of their respective category. Brad King, Dean McCall, Chris Sacca, and Tim Street will host the event which will be held March 15th and 16th in Austin, Texas. Though it’s obviously too late to apply, startups should pay close attention to the innovative technologies that come from the competition and look into applying for next year’s event.

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Airnergy WiFi power system gives RCA a reason to exist (video)

We don’t usually associate RCA with new and innovative technologies, but we think know they’re on to something with its Airnergy power system, which harvests energy from WiFi signals. Shipping this summer, the pocketable dongle picks up WiFi signals from the air and manages to charge an internal battery through some magic inside. You don’t have to connect to a network, you just have to be in a place that has signal, and it will automatically charge up. As if we weren’t intrigued already, they told us that they’re planning on building the tech into actual cellphone batteries, so you would theoretically never need to plug in again and your device would always be topped off. Yeah, we want.

Continue reading Airnergy WiFi power system gives RCA a reason to exist (video)

Airnergy WiFi power system gives RCA a reason to exist (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Think Tank Study Shows Top Web Trends Are Security Risks

Mobile technology, virtualization, the social web, cloud computing – a think tank study has all our good friends on a hit list.

The study, which shows primary security and privacy concerns of U.S. government IT leaders, is making the rounds among military and government bloggers. Policy makers are being told that the applications we know and love are dangerous and pose gaping security loopholes for cyberterrorism. Is a Big Brother overprotective meltdown? Or are our advances really causing greater risks for all users?

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The infosec-focused Ponemon Institute polled 217 senior-level IT executives located in various federal organizations. They called out these as the top 5 trends in Internet technologies that – at least from their POVs – put businesses, governments, and users at risk:

1. 79% Unstructured data
2. 71% Cyber terrorism
3. 63% Mobility
4. 52% Web 2.0
5. 44% Virtualization

Some of these trends are quite longstanding; however, they still cause a great deal of concern among our friends in infosec. Data breach (40%), cyber crime (40%), cloud computing (39%), outsourcing (34%) and open source applications (18%) also top the study’s list of security vulnerabilities as seen through the eyes of government IT pros.

However, Vivek Kundra, a 2.0 champion and federal CIO, said in a recent post, “Our policies lag behind new trends, causing unnecessary restrictions on the use of new technology…

‘This technology supports every mission our government performs – from defending our borders to protecting the environment. IT is essential for the government to do its work, and it is essential that we have access to the latest and most innovative technologies.”

It’s sad and frightening to see mobile tech, social networks, and cloud computing called out alongside cyber crime and cyberterrorism as perceived threats to data security. But how much validity do U.S. leaders’ fears carry?

The Ponemon Institute reports, “IT operations and IT security professionals identified cloud computing, outsourcing of sensitive information to third parties, external threat of
organized cyber criminal syndicates, cyber terrorism, and a mobile workforce… We believe the findings from this study provide government organizations with guidance on which threats are more critical than others to address.”

What do you think about the assessment of these high-profile and popular trends being identified as threats by IT execs in government? Is this a case of out-of-touch government bigwigs cracking down on the social web when black hat hackers are truly to blame? Or are so-called social media experts remiss in their duties to ensure that any products they roll out are secure enough for across-the-board use?

Or is it a little bit of both?

Most importantly, how do we solve the problem of ensuring that government and corporate sensitive information remains secure while users get to enjoy the benefits of Internet-based applications?

We welcome your comments below.

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