OPLS blog

Since 2007, Techcrunch have hosted a conference for online start-ups in a bid to attract further investment. Called Techcrunch Top 50 in 2008, there are some interesting ideas in development.

To help you navigate your way through, I thought I’d pare the list down a little, in so far as the ones listed below have some resonance for teaching and learning. Hopefully you’ll find it useful.

Youth and Culture:

• Blah Girls - Backed by Ashton Kutcher, Blah Girls is a gossip site that features a group of animated teenage girls who provide opinions on what’s going on in the world of entertainment
• Tweegee A hub for tweens, Tweegee offers the youth market a suite of online tools for social interaction and organization
• Shryk Web-based financial software for children aimed at promoting financial literacy and good saving habits
• Hangout Industries Blends social networking with virtual worlds by creating a 3D, online environment where 16-24 year olds can chat and share media.

Memes & News:

• DotSpots Tracks the memes spreading across the web, aggregates the content associated with them, and gives everyone Wikipedia-like control over that content
• Angstro Lets you set up a feed of news about your friends, instead of news by your friends
• LiveHit Tracks the music, videos, and entertainment sites people are clicking on right now
• Quant the News Creator of StockMood.com, a service that tracks the sentiments of online news stories about stocks and then measures their potential impact on the direction of those stocks’ prices.

Advertising & Commerce Monetisation:

• Burt Collects user data to tailor individual advertising campaigns and target users more effectively
• Adgregate Markets Brings online stores to consumers through a display ad that is a fully transactional widget
• Adrocket Contextual text-based advertising for email; assigns keywords to each address depending on known demographic and contextual data.

Collaboration:

• Tingz Offers a unified platform for delivering internet content across multiple devices including mobile phones and PCs
• MIXTT A group based social network/dating site that encourages real world interaction that’s more comfortable than the 1-on-1 format of most similar sites
• Imindi Based on neuroscientific principles, Imindi’s Thought Engine tries to exceed human thought and help its users find new ideas, concepts, and questions on the Web
• Popego Surfaces the most meaningful information from within your social graph based on your interests and other factors.

Finance & Statistics:

• PersonalRIA Allows users to shadow a professional investment advisor’s portfolio, automatically executing trades (which most brokerage sites cannot do)
• Emerginvest Offers commentary and analysis on Emerging Markets and tools that provide you with information on how to diversify globally
• ExchangeP Dubbed a ‘fantasy stock market’, ExchangeP’s service allows users to sign up for free and start investing in private companies
• Me-trics Lets you see how mood, weight, and goals correlate with other metrics, including web services like Facebook or RescueTime
• iCharts YouTube for embeddable, interactive charts (link not working at time of post).

Mobile:

• Mytopia A gaming platform that lets players compete across mobile devices and social networks
• Tonchidot Makes the Sekai Camera, a camera system that aims to merge the virtual and real worlds by using a digital device as a viewfinder
• FitBit Developing a small wireless sensor called the Fitbit Tracker, which automatically records data about a person’s activities, calories burned, sleep quality, steps, and distance throughout the day.

Language & Communication Tools:

• Alfabetic Translates any blog or Website into another language and places ads alongside it in the new tongue
• Postbox Based on Mozilla technology, Postbox saves users’ time when looking for particular information within their email
• Swype A new method of text input on touch screens; does away with traditional “hunt and peck” in favour of a more fluid motion
• DropBox Provides an easy way to backup your files, share them with co-workers and friends, and synchronise them between computer.

Rich Media:

• VideoSurf A visual video search engine that allow users to search across millions of videos for a given actor and to view summaries of videos through a series of detected keyframes
• GazoPa An image search engine developed by Hitachi that uses visual similarities between photos to suggest matches (rather than simply relying on keywords)
• Fotonauts A photo sharing application that turns every album instantly into a Web page
• Bojam Although there are a slew of online music services already on the Web, Bojam is trying to do something a bit different: it wants to connect musicians and allow them to collaborate over the Web.

Games:

• Grockit A “Massively Multi-Player Online Learning Game”
• Akoha A web-based social game played with trading cards aimed at spreading good deeds around the world
• Atmosphir A platform for creating 3D interactive games by selecting blocks (such as a sand castle tower, fireball-breathing bird, or trap door) and snapping them onto a grid
• PlaYce Provides a 3D virtual world inside the browser for games and social interaction that is based on the real world
• Shattered Reality Interactive A new massively multiplayer online game (think World of Warcraft) that lets the crowd guide the direction of future expansions.

Research & Recommendations:

• GoodGuide Provides information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of products and companies
• GoPlanit A one-click travel planner that assembles a customized trip itinerary with the click of a button; also supports mobile microblogging
• Goodrec A mobile and online recommendation service that provides brief, to-the-point recommendations from friends and trusted sources.