Our friends over at TechDrawl sent a special correspondent to Accelerator, who just happens to be the daughter of the publishers and a UT student, Audrey Dyer. Since most of the web applications these days are aimed a young people, it was great to see the perspective of someone who is part of the target audience. Audrey did an extensive review of each company, and she made her predictions of the winners.

For spring break this year, I am vacationing for a day at the Hilton twenty blocks from my sorority house and swimming in a sea of iPhones, APIs, and Tweets.  This is the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator, the newest addition to the interactive schedule of activities at the 2009 South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) in Austin, TX.

No, I do not actually know what an API is, but I will Wikipedia it later.  I also had to text my dad to ask what “the cloud” was.

Absolutely everyone is constantly on Twitter.  I strongly believe that I am the only one taking notes, as I am writing in a spiral notebook and can see the Twitter and Facebook pages on the surrounding laptop screens.  Before each session, King promotes following the event on Twitter.  Kawasaki’s constant smile indicates that he definitely logged in.

Each presentation is basically a thesis defense, and the judges seem to find the ideas acceptable but generally in need of revision or polishing.  The judges often repeat their questions when they do not get the answer they were looking for. Nearly all of the presenters here are “fast-talkers,” some in the persuasive sense and some who are just plain nervous.

The emcees and judges are aware of the special population of people in attendance.  Whenever they ask for a show of hands, they recognize that this is a room full of tech-savvy folks who might not represent the target market.

Nonetheless, I picked my top 4 beforehand and was 3 for 4 with the judges!

Session 1 — Innovative Web Technologies

Klout, Los Angeles, CA

Pamphlet: “Klout measures influence across the social web.  We discover the people who can spread ideas, content and links the furthest.  Through our website and customizable API, true influencers can be recognized and empowered.”

Pitch: Klout says they are “data junkies” and can provide more information than you would find on your own.

Judging concerns: Dodge discusses a similar company that sells monitoring of Twitter for $500 a month, and Kawasaki says “$500 a month?  What drug are they on?,” to which everyone laughs.

My opinion:  This reminds me of Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.  Klout is technology for finding connectors, mavens, and salesmen.  I’d rather recognize these people by their Twitter followers.  For example, I have 7, which makes me the least influential person on the web.

OtherInbox, Austin, TX

Pamphlet: “OtherInBox integrates elegantly with your Gmail account.  Low priority messages are archived and labeled in Gmail, and important dates are automatically put on your Google calendar.”

Pitch: “Save your real inbox for real people.”  This is not for spam, but for mail that isn’t from people, like coupons and Twitter notifications.  This should make it easier to respond to people who need responses.

Judging concerns: It isn’t that hard to set up filters in your e-mail already.  There is skepticism about leaving life organization up to a computer.  Kawasaki says, “My problem is responding, not figuring out what to respond to.”

My opinion: I’m sticking with Thunderbird, and I’m sure Kawasaki is sticking with Entourage.

Piryx, Austin TX

Pamphlet: “Piryx is a political platform offering the ability to empower the average citizen candidate and social activist to drive change in public policy.  Wake up.  Create an account.  Run for Office.  Change the world.”

Pitch: “Empowering Democracy through technology.”  With millions of campaigns every year, they’re building a platform environment for networking, contribution intake, and government resources.  The name, “Piryx,” comes from the idea of having a piece of the political pie.  Money is made as a cut of the campaign revenues.

Judging concerns:  Is there a big enough market?  Maybe it should be embedded in the candidate’s website instead of requiring a separate site visit?  Get the Huffington Post to cover this.

My opinion: There has been much drama on campus recently with errors in the Student Government elections, so perhaps this program could have helped produce some decisive victories!

Ringlight, Austin, TX

Pamphlet: “Ringlight allows you to access the files on your desktop remotely through easy-to-use Web interface.  No uploads, no file size restrictions.  Every file online, securely and privately.”

Pitch: “If you’re online all the time, why can’t your files be as well?”  All of your files get a URL, and you can share them.   There’s a free level, pro level, and one-time fee bonus pack.

Judging concerns:  They’re worried about security, but the files are all encrypted, and re-tweeting does not allow a document that you send to one person to go public.  Dodge says there are a number of big players out there solving the problem of file sharing and synchronization.  Kawasaki says he only has a laptop and thinks most people do to, but half the room raises their hands to “How many of you have a personal computer and a work computer that you forget files on?”  The presenter, Brandon, says “Sweet. Thanks, guys,” to the audience.

My opinion:  If my dad would use it, then I believe in it.

Thrive , New York, NY, MY WINNER

Pamphlet:  “Thrive is a free website helping people in their 20s and 30s improve their financial health by organizing their accounts, understanding their behaviors, and getting personalized financial advice just for them.”

Pitch: “Behavioral budgeting”.  Thrive shows you how much your money will be worth in the future.  It lets you dedicate money to certain categories of spending.  It also connects you to your banks and gives you a financial health score.  Thrive wants to take the place of the financial advisor.

Judging concerns:  Why not use Quicken?  Because Thrive does it all for you and is easy to set up.  How do you target your audience?  They find Thrive through word-of-mouth and press coverage.  Why don’t you partner with banks?  Thrive wants to.  There is also a concern that finances are too personal for a computer to be your advisor.

My opinion:  I would like to be using a program like this, and I’m sure my dad would agree that I should.

YouData, Houston, TX

Pamphlet: “Check out YouData’s presentation to see how ‘on-demand’ advertising can be used to pay for your online media downloads.  YouData turns attention into currency, allowing consumers to literally ‘pay attention.’”

Pitch: You create a profile, ads pop up, and if you pay attention to them you make money.  It won’t make you rich, but it will sponsor your music downloads.

Judges concerns: Dodge doesn’t think it will reach “critical mass” (a large scale) and thinks hundreds of companies have tried it.

My opinion: If I used it, I would not respond to the advertising just like I never respond to the ads on Facebook or TV.

Ed note:  Similar to Free All Music and TuneItUp recently posted on TechDrawl.

Ribbit, Mountain View, CA, OFFICIAL WINNER

Pamphlet: “Ribbit brings together the Internet, voice and data to form a new world of intelligent, integrated communication solutions—where rich voice and data travel seamlessly across devices, networks, and carriers.”

Pitch: Ribbit has teamed with salesforce.com, for example.  A sales professional’s calls are automatically logged for him or her.

Judges concerns:  It took them a while to understand what it actually does, and the presentation was mainly about salesforce.com, not the general use of the technology.

My opinion: I didn’t understand the presentation or see the originality of this product.  It won though!

Zoomorama, Paris, France

Pamphlet: “ZoomCreator creates zoomable walls of full-definition pictures, enhanced with videos, texts, and active links to be shared as embeddable and resizable Flash widgets.”

Pitch: You can zoom in so close that you recover a sense of touch.  Photos and other media are laid out like a magazine because the way you display your pictures can convey their importance to you.  They made the first online high definition art exhibit just for SXSW.  They sell bandwidth to make money.

Judges concerns: Spivack: “I think it’s pretty cool,” the “resolution sucks on Firefox.”  He suggests that they put coupons or bonuses a surprises when you zoom.

My opinion:  I love this product because with online shopping you can never zoom enough to be certain about a purchase.  Bonus points for  zooming in on my favorite painting (Yellow Wheat and Cypress by Van Gogh)!  I’m glad they came all the way from Paris.

Session 2 – Social Networking Applications

Cubeless, Southlake, TX

Pamphlet: “Cubeless is the practical enterprise social network that allows an organization to tap into the collective intelligence of its employees or members to harness the power of collaboration and community.”

Pitch: This is the glue that keeps an organization together.  It’s an online community platform.  It’s social networking for a community (people make their own profiles) and a place to raise questions between departments.

Judging concerns: Why not stick with mailing lists?

My opinion:  I like that idea for interdepartmental communication in companies larger than the magic number (150 people), but, to me, all social networking is a distraction from work.  I’m a student; I would know.

HourVille, Austin, TX

Pamphlet: “HourVille offers features for buyers and sellers of hourly services including local search, reviews, ratings, multimedia profiles (documents, pictures, video), interactive real-time scheduling, advertising, e-commerce, and pricing tools (including auction).

Pitch: Millions of people provide services in the U.S. This would allow you to see when the provider is available, which is innovative.  There is no approval process for service providers right now, but there could be one when membership increases.  Funding is transaction based.

Judging concerns: They seemed more intrigued than critical but wanted to make sure it was different than Craig’s List.  With HourVille you get a web presence, not just a short ad.  They say go vertical first to dominate one city at a time.

My opinion:  I would use this if there were a guarantee against “sketchy” vendors.

Wakoopa, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Pamphlet: “Wakoopa is the perfect place to discover software and games online.  Track your (web) apps, get software recommendations and share what you use with your network.”

Pitch:  It helps your friends learn about you.  It’s a recommendation business.

Judging concerns: Would companies want their workers using this?  It might turn you on to applications that your company doesn’t support.

My opinion: Twitter buzz and Apple rankings seem like better resources to me, but I can’t speak for the PC users.

Weardrobe, Palo Alto, CA, OFFICIAL WINNER AND MY WINNER

Pamphlet: “Weardrobe provides a platform for people to share reviews of their own clothing, post photos of their looks, catalogue their closet and search for style inspiration.”

Pitch: The presenter was very stylishly dressed and a great speaker.  Google and apparel websites have links to this site already.

Judging concerns:  Who will upload pictures of all of their clothes?  Fashion bloggers and many other women will.  King polled his students, and they loved this company. “How do we invest?” he says.  Kawasaki says Weardrobe will have 20 million page views a month next year.

My opinion: It’s original and looks fun to explore.  Finally, one for the girls!

Session 3 – Online Video Related Technologies

MotionNotes, Houston, TX

Pamphlet: “MotionNotes is a web-based platform for sharing personalized, or branded, rich media, including video.  It integrates with popular social media apps, the iPhone, and automated web services for individuals and brands.”

Pitch: It’s for recording personalized messages along with your written communication.  This will personalize modern communication.  There is a focus on hospitality industry uses.

Judging concerns: King and Kawasaki agree that e-mails can be misinterpreted and often are.  Hayes: on the “vitamin-Vicodin scale” this is a vitamin for the problem.

My opinion: I would rather stick to iChat or Skype.

PortalVideo, Wellesley, MA

Pamphlet: “PortalVideo cuts your editing time in half with rough-cut editing over the internet.  Your uploaded video is transcribed and linked to the video and you can drag/drop your transcript into a script.”

Pitch: There is a pain in editing for producers and interviewers.  Now you can make the script and edit the video at the same time.  The demo makes it look easy.  You don’t need to sit in an editing suite shuffling transcripts.  The technology is the “secret sauce,” but really it’s just people listening to your interviews and matching the transcripts manually, which takes 2-3 days.

Judging concerns: King wasn’t clear on the market.

My opinion:  Would TechDrawl ever be interested?  If not, then I also don’t see the market for this.

TubeMogul, Emeryville, CA, OFFICIAL WINNER AND MY WINNER

Pamphlet: “TubeMogul is the first online video analytics and distribution company serving publishers large and small who need independent information about video performance on the Internet and automated upload to the web’s top video sharing sites.”

Pitch: It’s about analytics and promotion.  They have big name customers already like BBC, ABC, RCA, Ford Models, the Onion, Red Bull, PBS, Home Depot, TX Instruments, Cisco, WB, Condé Nast, Microsoft, Intel.

Judging concerns:  They need to prevent fraud from people writing programs to produce large numbers of fake video views.

My opinion:  It seems useful and is clearly popular already.

SpawnLabs, Cedar Park, TX

Pamphlet: “Spawn Labs products let consumers play console games and watch TV/DVR programs from any Internet-connected computer, and provide game developer teams with real-time, interactive, remote access to dev kits.

Pitch: If kids are hogging the TV with their games, then you can watch it on your computer.  Probably works with 80% of games.  Will cost between $250 and $300.

Judging concerns: It’s really similar to Slingbox, but this incorporates video games not just DVR and TV.

My opinion: When are people so desperate to play video games that they use their computers?  I simply would not be able to beat Super Mario 64 in six hours on a computer.

Session 4 – Online Music-Related Technologies

Echodio, San Francisco, CA

Pamphlet: “Echodio takes the pain out of managing your music collections.  Easily synch your tracks, playlists and ratings, and stream from your online backup when you’re on the go.”

Pitch: When people have multiple iTunes libraries, they need a way to synch them.  You can try it with invite code “accelerator.”  It’s getting your music up to the cloud.

Judging concerns:  Shouldn’t Apple do something like this?  Won’t people stop using the service once they do their massive initial synch?

My opinion: It’s like Ringlight for music.  I don’t need this though.

Gigotron, Los Angeles, CA

Pamphlet: “Gigotron is the best way to find live local music.  It’s a free application on the iPhone/ iPod Touch as well as a website.”

Pitch: It concentrates on the “long tail” of the music popularity Pareto distribution curve.  A lot of information on local acts falls through websites like Ticketmaster.  They say they have 40% more data than the competition.  It’s a lot of legwork to scrape every webpage and news source for band info that big name competitors don’t have.

Judging concerns: Kawasaki says, “Most of the music sucks in the long tail!”

My opinion:  This is a “live music capital of the world” essential.  I can’t believe the company is not from Austin!

Mugasha, Portland, OR

Pamphlet: “Mugasha lets dance music fans listen to 1-2 hour sets as though they were albums.  Listeners can view track lists, skip and replay tracks, and jump to specific songs.”

Pitch: All the dance music you could ever ask for! There’s also a link to buy.

Judging concerns: Songs featuring mainstream music bits are often controlled by major labels and can’t be heard.  How can Mugasha control which songs shouldn’t be shared?

My opinion: I like the idea of free music online because I used Pandora and free artist music on sites like MySpace.  However, the American market for dance music is tiny, which the presentation acknowledged.

Popcuts, Berkeley, CA, OFFICIAL WINNER AND MY WINNER

Pamphlet: “We give fans a stake in the music.  So you get store credit (and street cred) when the songs you buy become hits.  Trendsetters get the biggest rewards.”

Pitch: “Better than free”.  It makes music buying more fun and addictive.  Popcuts is obsessed with the notion of the “good fan.”

Judging concerns:  It’s a great model assuming no laws are broken (they say they have great lawyers).  The incentive issue was brought up by Hurst: is it hip to be a trendsetter for cash?  They say they’ve tested it, and it works.

My opinion:  As a non-trendsetter, I think it’s cool, and as a risk-averse person it sounds like a fun way to semi-gamble.