It was the last NY Tech Meetup of the year and you know what happens every December : we say we say good bye to the old and ring in the new and that’s precisely what happened at the Meetup.
New York State Chief Digital Officer, Rachel Haot took to the stage to unveil the official new the State of New York website, which hadn’t been overhauled since 1998. You know, the Web 1.0 era, yes, it was about time. One of the site’s feature articles : Everything you need to know to start and grow your business right here in the state.
Speaking of which, here are the companies who presented this month, all of whom are very much starting and growing their businesses right here.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PRESENTING STARTUPS
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Celery
Think of Celery as your fast, simple Bitcoin wallet. Whether you’re buying, sending or hoarding your Bitcoin/dogecoin/litecoin, @GoCelery is the simple – transparent – platform to manage your digital bounty. The company has 10k users and is currently raising their seed round.
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YouWare
Meet YouWare, the world’s first wearable social network that allows you to instantly link when you meet someone new, so instead of exchanging business cards, you form a relationship. The app will sync the contact with your social networks – if you choose. It’s the fashionable way to connect your physical and digital worlds and look at it this way: you don’t save every business card you collect, either, do you? The company is also in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign and far be it from us not to share the information.
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Showd.me
Showd.me is an enterprise peer-to-peer learning platform that allows employees to learn from, and train, other employees across your organization, and who knows better how to do the job? It also includes web conferencing tools, video chat, a shared screen and file sharing. Also cool: you can record and save sessions, so if someone else needs to be trained on a certain subject or tool, the information is there, and why repeat oneself unnecessarily?
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Bespoke Atelier
“Mobile left the browser behind,” said Bespoke Atelier’s Michele Spieza. True that, and @bespokeapp is the mobile browser for visual types, empowering the new way to work by marrying discovery and utility – easily, simply and beautifully. The app allows you to save the content, or clip of content that you want, and store it in book form, on your camera roll, or share it, if you’re so moved. The idea behind technology, and the app, is to liberate, no complicate, and we’re all over that! Download the app here.
Openfolio
Sharing economy has come to personal investing, thanks to Openfolio and before you get nervous, we’ll explain: Openfolio is the modern way to see how your portfolio is doing, and to compare yourself to others around you, like coworkers, people in your demographic – or Howard Morgan. Oh, you share in percentage terms, not actual dollar amounts, within your networks. Openfolio is also the place where investors can share insights and ideas, and watch how others put them into action. We all learn from each other’s successes (and mistakes), after all. They also scraped information on 50 key investors, so, see how you stack up against them and may the force be with you (ok, they gave out light sabers at the meetup. Complete with sound effects.)
Brewster
Brewster was this month’s Alumni Demo – and helps you keep your contacts update – meaning, everyone you know, on every device you use. Oh, and if two people are using the app and one changes his/her contact information, it automatically updates across the other person’s devices/contact managers/networks. It’ll also find you friends who you might want to connect with on WhatsApp, Snapchat, or who all knows what’s coming down the pike next.
Hungrybot
“Ordr.in is one of those cool startups that take the vowels out of their name,” said presenter Sam Agnew, whose Hungrybot was the Hack of the Month. It was a popular one, but then, it’s a hubot plugin for chat based, group food ordering, allowing your team to order food to the office right from the chatroom. New York…food…What’s not to like and bon apetit.
Kinvolved
Kinvolved is an app that helps schools (and afterschool programs) keep track of students and improve attendance and communications with parents of students preK-12th grade.
In other words, it makes it easier for teachers and parents to communicate, and hopefully cut down on low attendance rates which are problematic in some areas/school districts.
« To record attendance, teachers swipe left or right – like Tinder, but for kids, » said presenter Miriam Altman. The app also allows two-way communications between parents and teachers, and many parents have commented that this is the first time they’ve heard from their child’s school. The app is currently being used in 105 schools, not all of which are in NYC.
AppLOUD
AppLOUD fan-generated music videos from around the world, fed to you in a stream. All videos are under 30 seconds, so no worries about licensing or royalty payments – just enough to whet your appetite for more, or help you to discover new artists. New videos are being posted daily on this music/band discovery platform that Mac Observer called « killer. » You can follow by genre or artist, and you can even tip the artist, or buy tickets to their next show, if you’re so moved.
So it not only turns everyone into a music talent scout : it also makes it easier for music lovers to support their favorite artists.
WIREWAX
WIREWAX is the most powerful interactive video platform in the universe,” said presenter and company CEO Steve Callahan. It was founded in London but is now based here in NY – good move – with the idea of changing video forever. They may well have succeeded. @WIREWAX makes it easy to create interactive, taggable videos with motion tracking in real time, face recognition and the platform automatically finds your tagged object elsewhere in the video, too. There’s a free version and a paid one, and over 250 brands are already using it. As for their tag line : “video.evolved” – dead on.
You needed a light saber because a number of the presentations were absolutely killer. And see you all next year, NYTM!
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