I've met a lot of interesting people, and seen a ton of companies pitch their concepts in 6-minute presentations at this conference. The following are the ones that jumped out to me as super cool and interesting (either because they have cool technology or their demo was more engaging than my surfing the web). In some cases, I'm concerned about some copyright issues as noted, but that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows me. :) Without further babbling, here they are:
voice indigo - This company's technology brings podcasts to your phone. How cool is that? The theme throughout this conference has been that mobile phones will be the dominant content delivery platform. If that's true, the this company is in a great position. With Voice Indigo podcasts are "made mobile." Registration in the service is optional; it has been live since February 2005. Also they enable consumers to act on their purchasing urges(!) by clicking through purchases.
pump audio - Allows you to synch music to your video with all the proper licenses in tact. This is the only company I know that is dealing with synch rights. Are there others? I asked their presenters who their direct competitors are and they said there are none at this time. (The Podcasting Legal Guide addresses the synch rights issue, and I'm definitely going to include them in the resources section.)
castpost -- They have a service that makes it easy to broadcast personal video and audio clips. They have two products. One for users, giving them consistency and interactive features for a variety of source materials. They also ahave a "remote" device feature that can be plugged into software. (I didn't totally get how this works, but it looked cool in the demo.) They have 100,000 registered users, and have gotten to this number without advertising. They claim to be second to YouTube in the blogsphere. They incorporate the promise that they will allow users to do this broadcasting and use of content legally and legitimately. (Their TOS addresses some issues that users should be aware of.)
hipcast - This is the new incarnation of audioblog.com. This company allows users to post and distribute audio and video content. Tom Green did an interview of Eric Rice, the company's spokesdude. In his 6-min. presentation to the conference, Eric says that "business and industry" uses hipcast. And mom and dad uses this service. So in Erik's words, that's "EVERYONE". The panel of experts was in part impressed because they are cashflow positive from day 1. Eric is also a contenbt producer and knows what people are doing from a user position.
simple star - This company's product is called PhotoShowTV. It takes photos from the camera to the computer, and then with one click make it possible to share the photos with people. At first, I was thinking that this is just another photo sharing website. But I was wrong. It's actually much more than that. They have an online authoring application that enables you to share to the web, and then also share to the TV, share to mobile phones, to ipods, etc. Their focus is to help people share their memories in a meaningful way. (One panelist says that this company looks like "iPhoto on steroids"). Q: They have music that goes with their slideshows -- how do they deal with the synch rights here?
jumpcut - This is an on-line video creating system. It's not about just posting raw video online. Instead it's about posting your content to a community and people can share it, remix it with other filmshots. The editing demo makes it look pretty simple. You can alsoadd music, and download to iPods. All of this is in done on-line (no download required; it's a completely web-based solution). Q: How are they dealing with their copryight issues? They have a TOS that is fairly protective. Kara Swisher noted concern for both copyright and child porn issues (same issues that YouTube has).
revver -- This company takes your content and distributes it with an ad. Then it shares the revenue with the content producer. Very cool. Their tag line is "get paid to share". I love that.
dabble.com -- This company is "gathering the most useful collection of video on the planet, made by you." They are built on the idea of the remix culture They are doing a private beta right now. You can provide your email address and they will then let you test it out. They didn't present at this conference, but Mary Hodder was a panelist on the last panel of the day about user-generated content.
Atom Entertainment/Addicting Clips -- This company has a website called addicting clips.com. It works like this. You shoot a video from your phone. You email the film to their website address (2231366@addictingclips.com). Then the content you've sent will be immediately made available on the website. You can upload video, animation and games. Addicting Clips will then sell the best films to Atom Films, and then share the revenue with the content producer. (imho, this clip is pretty funny). Addicting clips also has a video search tool. This demo also included Reality Digital.