Digital Media Island

Not so many companies demoing new stuff this month. But we do have Sophia Search to check out.

Belfast based Sophia Search is, according to David Patterson who’ll be taking us through it on the night, an enterprise search and discovery tool that understands the different contexts that exist for queries and helps users understand the nature of information found. I’m looking forward to hearing more tomorrow night.

Have your own piece of Technology to Demo?

Be it a website, web app, an advertising concept or even a piece of hardware (We’ve had all of these before) then come along and get some feedback.

Just go register to Demo today and we’ll add you to this post and see you there tomorrow night.

There is one thing that gets me buzzing before events is seeing new products and services for the first time. So we’re very lucky as we’re in Cork tonight and three, YES THREE new services will, as I understand it, be demoed for the first time at the event.

SnapScribe - SnapScribe turns your photos into beautiful books. It is an online service which lets you turn your photo collection into a beautiful photobook. The software is currently at ‘Alpha’ stage

Decisions for Heroes - Helping emergency services save more lives by making better decisions. The service is aimed at helping rescue services make better logistical decisions.

TweetTweet - Tweet Tweet is a WordPress plugin that archives the Twitter conversation, and also sends notification texts when replies or direct messages are received.

I’ll be talking to the people behind them tonight and I’ll be bringing you some more info and reviews and maybe even an interview or two.

Muzu TV were one of nine companies that demoed recently at the Techludd-Techcrunch meetup CrunchLudd.

You may have heard about this already (it was mentioned by web2ireland amongst others) but in case you missed it, out of that event the Dublin based startup have had some fantastic coverage in both TechCrunch UK & Ireland and in the main TechCrunch.com blogs.

Read more here on Tech Crunch UK and here for the main TechCrunch take

(Note: For those that read this blog that may not be aware, TechCrunch is one of the biggest technology blogs in the world.)

It’s great to see a group of great Irish companies getting the attention they deserve in the press. Marie Boran of Silicon Republic came along to the last CrunchLudd event and used the opportunity to connect with several of the “new wave of Irish Digital Media companies” that were demoing at the event. The result was this article in which several entrepreneurs had the opportunity to give their views on the current crop of companies and the issues they face.

Check out the article here on www.independent.ie

This kind of coverage for companies that demo at the events makes it all worthwhile and Kudos to Marie for getting in to talk to these companies when the opportunity arose. There are some great stories amongst these companies and hopefully this’ll help encourage more coverage of Irish Startups.

Eircom Innovation Fund has announced it’s winners finally and I’m delighted but not surprised to see two of the companies who demoed from the last CrunchLudd event named as winners. Obviously that has nothing to do with them winning but it just goes to show the great level of companies demoing at the events. Congratulations to all the winners and we wish then every success and will continue to support and try and help them going forward…

TouristR

TouristR who demoed at the meetup at the end of June when TechCrunch UK & Ireland came to town at the end of June is an integrated full-service trip-planning advisor, which cuts out the online information overload and minimises planning problems. It not only helps the traveller to plan a more complex travel itinerary - such as a trip with multiple destinations on a fixed budget and timeline – but it also draws on content submitted by a community of users which will help the traveller to decide on a destination by getting a sense of the type of experience available at their chosen destination.

A new breed of unique Web 2.0 travel service, TouristR will feature stories, adventures and photographs of destinations submitted by users as well as aid the traveller who needs to factor in multiple elements to their trip such as budgetary, geographical, temporal and other personal preferences and restrictions.

Locle

Locle have demoed twice at TechLudd events now back in April and at the June event when TechCrunch were in town. Locle is a social mapping application for mobile phones that combines information from your mobile handset address book with social networks such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace to create mapping services that show users where their friends are. Locle is an enhanced mobile web experience that facilitates “here’s where I am, and here’s where my friends are” for social networks and groups.

Locle is a combination of a web service and downloadable mobile phone software. When the Locle mobile client is activated, it identifies the user’s location and presents the location of “friends” who also use the application. Friends can be both contacts from your mobile phone address book or contacts from your social networks. As well as letting you know where your “friends” are, Locle can also keep you up to date on relevant information to your location such as local events, news, weather and provide details on local restaurants, cinemas and ATM machines etc.
Locle is a Business Expansion Scheme qualified investment.

HeyStaks

HeyStaks is a new approach to Web search that helps searchers to share their search experiences with friends, colleagues, and other searchers. HeyStaks is a browser plugin that works with Google and provides users with the ability to create so-called “search staks” as a way to organise and share their Google searches. For example, a group of friends planning a holiday abroad might create a “Holiday 2008” search stak. As they individually search for travel, accommodation and entertainment options, their selections will be shared with each other during future searches as specially highlighted search results. In this way all of the friends can see what results have been found to be useful during earlier searches, which may help them during their own searches for that perfect holiday package.

Research shows that HeyStaks can help searchers find information more quickly and in turn allow users to create and share many different types of search staks to reflect different topics of interest. In this way search staks can provide users with access to a form of Web search that is powered by their favourite search engine but customised for a particular topic of interest, based on their own search experiences or the search experiences of others.

The HeyStaks technology has been developed by Prof. Barry Smyth’s research group in University College Dublin and is the first spin-out of the new CLARITY research centre, a €16m Science Foundation Ireland research centre combining researchers from University College Dublin, Dublin City University, and the Tyndal National Institute.

Playza

With most popular online games focused squarely at the adult gaming market, Playza is a new social gaming proposition for “Digital Natives” – our 12 to 24 year olds who have grown up in a digital media environment where mobile phones, social networking, multiplayer online gaming, and music downloading have always been the norm.

Playza is made up of a series of connected mini games in which players complete tasks and earn points. Online game players are encouraged to bring their gaming colleagues to Playza and social networkers can invite their online friends to join. The main objective of the game is to form and control player groups. By getting new members into their group, players will increase their standing and capabilities within the games. Playza users can also create their own page to host their game account and mini games. Within their page, users can create their own game groups, receive feedback and messages and post the game to their other sites or blogs such as MySpace or Facebook.

Playza combines the addictive nature of online gaming with the community features of a social networking portal.

So Pat Phelan of MaxRoam is at it again. The serial entrepeneur and telecoms disruptor has launched a new speech to text service for twitter. It’s not a general lifestreaming tool it’s twitter only and they’ve planned for a million sign ups over the next year.

For those unfamiliar with twitter it is the most popular of the “microblogging” platforms and allows people to send 140 charachter updates to anyone who follows them about what they’re doing right now, and then to respond and converse about that. Many of the A-listers of the blogging world feel it is an indeispensible tool for keeping up to date on what’s going on in the world of the web. (I happen to agree)

The investors behind this are Pat Phelan of Cubic Telecom/MAXroam, Sean O Sullivan and Ivan MacDonald of Dublin based Dial2Do, Florian Seroussi of Global Roaming and David Marcus of Zong. The technology behind these companies is what powers twitterfone. Geneva-based VOX telecom provides calls routing, Redwood City, California-based Zong powers mobile enrollment and transactions, MAXroam powers the telephony intelligence system and Dublin firm Dial2Do supplies the core speech recognition which is at the heart of Twitterfone. Dial2Do CEO Ivan MacDonald who I had the pleasure of meeting recently at the Web2.0 Expo said,

“We’ve been involved in the space where the phone system meets the web for a long time now, and naturally we’ve been fascinated by the rise of Twitter. Increasingly, we’ll see “web 2.0″ services that people use primarily from their phones. Projections are that mobiles will become the dominant way of accessing the Internet, and a lot of this will be done via voice interfaces. We are very pleased to see Dial2Do add even more value to an already extraordinary service.”

Pat himself had this to say “We built this because we are all avid users of Twitter and have made some excellent business connections and friendships from it. We decided to see what we could contribute to the service and with our telecoms backgrounds the Twitterfone idea fitted perfectly”.

Like everything that’s cool, Twitterfone is in invite beta at the moment meaning that only those that have been sent invites can join up. I’m told that there will be regular releases of invites and as I said earlier Twitterfone says they have planned for a million sign-ups over the next year. Naturally enough it’s already on TechCrunch and been covered by Damien Mulley (who has had a deft hand in the PR) and quite a few other blogs and I expect there to be a bit of noise about this one.

It’ll be interesting to see how this develops…