Six companies working on new, mobile-focused technologies presented and Jeff Jarvis gave a talk about his new book What Would Google Do? at last night's NY Tech Meetup to a full house at the IAC building in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood last night in spite of the snow.
The theme of this month's meetup was "Mobile Meets Social" and the six presenting companies included:
- Peek: Upping the ante for future product presentations, Peek demonstrated its e-mail device on the big screen using a video projection. Its ease of use was touted as well as its $20 per month service plan. One planned feature, Exchange support, was mentioned and another, chat, was predicted. Peek is also, as of today, inviting developers to hack the Peek and they will select one's application to add to it and it will be featured on Engadget.
- Xtify: A platform for developers, the company's technology allows you to build your own social network for mobile devices.
- ViaPlace: An open source framework for providers seeking to add location-based services to their offerings, the company is in the process of being acquired by Mindgrove.
- Coovents: The company's Web site allows you to keep track of happy hours at bars close to you and their new iPhone application, unveiled at the meetup, allows you to easily view happy hours by location and even shows, by means of a virtual clock, which ones are going on when you sign in.
At this point, NY Tech Meetup Organizer Nate Westheimer paused the proceedings for a series of announcements, the launch of the NY Tech Meetup Web site, the members of the NY Tech Meetup Advistory Board (including Westheimer's current boss, David Rose of RoseTech Ventures), the members of the NY Tech Meetup Community Committee, BarCampNYC-4 (a developer's event which is looking for a venue), Social Media Week, Web 2.0 Expo NY scheduled to take place from November 16-19, 2009, and the new home of the meetup, the SUNY Fashion Institute of Techology where the next meetup will take place on March 2. The presentations then resumed.
- Mobile Commons: They have created a platform that allows non-profit organizations to more easily reach people through their cell phones and for members to more efficiently contact their representatives in local and national government and make donations to a cause through their mobile phones.
- Flixwagon: The company's platform allows you to broadcast video from your mobile phone to their Web site and they're working on an iPhone version (a version for jailbroken iPhones currently exists).
- OMGICU: Allows you to text and tweet celebrity sightings to their Web site to share with other members. It's basically an even more real-time version of Gawker's popular Gawker Stalker feature.
Media consultant and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism professor Jeff Jarvis ended the proceedings with a lightning-fast talk about his book, hyping his belief that if companies adopt models Google uses, they'll be better able to compete in this new age of information and service abundance.
Attendees then made their way over to The Park, a local bar and restaurant, where the crowd was rather large up until about 10 PM.
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