Category Archives: startups

Google Glass — Can I Get A Witness?

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Don’t get me wrong, I can’t stand gardening. But the first thing that came to mind when I put on Google Glass was my mother’s organic garden.

You won’t catch me outside in broiling 98-degree southern humidity struggling to hack through a dense, painfully stinging row of okra, or pulling nasty, squirming wormy things off dozens of tomato bushes. No siree! But you will catch my mother doing that crazy stuff. For hours on end, day after day, week after week, throughout the south’s high summer months.

That said, if you can get past the oppressive heat and humidity there really is no more verdant and glorious vision of bounty, robust health and natural beauty than a southern organic garden at its summer harvesting peak.

Thus the thought of me strolling, beatifically wired, through rows of an organic garden in full, wearing a pair of Glass with my mother narrating the purvey and provenance of every lush plant and vegetable, set my pan-media-tuned mind into high and sunny gear.

Who wouldn’t want to document and share that kind of rich media in our connected world? To be fresh content-enabled, breezily so, by merely putting on glasses, something I’ve done every day since I was 7-years old anyway.

One of the great things about living near the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech, of course) is participating in some of the innovations and events churned from there. Whether beta testing products in development, networking, attending concerts or lectures, there’s a wealth of experience and knowledge available to the university’s surrounding community, so last night (July 11) I hopped over to nearby startup nurturer, Flashpoint on West Peachtree Street.

There, Randy J. Mitchell, the founder and CEO of Plisten, along with Google and Hypepotamus, hosted a meetup for Google Glass developers and designers. My friend/mentor and sometime colleague, veteran political reporter Tom Baxter, who’s always up for some new media-creation adventures, tagged along too.

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Guest Post – Real Time Web Is Hot

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There is a new way to search the web, and boatloads of users who have experienced the real time web have been impressed with the results.

Traditional search engines rank sites based on relevancy. Because of this, the results don’t change a lot. A search today will reveal most of the same sites and information that were there last month.

However, with companies like Twitter and Facebook having millions of users continue to post content and status updates – there is now real time content on the web which updates each second.

Search engines and startups have leveraged this information to offer internet users instant access to what is happening right now.

So, when breaking news happens a real time search will instantly give you the public’s thoughts, opinions, and experiences in relation to the breaking news.

A search on Google news would give you links to articles written by people in the media. A real time search will allow you to sift through all internet users comments and thoughts.

There have been several startups which have launched search engines and tools to try and offer users a good experience in searching and navigating through the real time web.

Here is a list of three startups… along with a quick overview of what makes each of them stand out:

1.)       Topsy (http://topsy.com)  What makes Topsy’s real time search engine stand out is that it is focused on real time links as opposed to real time content.   So, when you perform a search at Topsy, instead of seeing what people are talking about on the real time web, you are going to see what the most popular and prominent links are being shared on the real time web.  You can ever sort to see the most shared links over the past hour, day, week, or month.

2.)       OneRiot (http://oneriot.com/)  Rumors have been swirling all over the web in regards to a partnership Yahoo is discussing with OneRiot.  OneRiot offers users a real time search engine which can be sorted based on web results and video results.  OneRiot also announced in early October that it will be rolling out a platform for advertisers to pay for listings to featured content on their results pages. While most real time web companies have been focused on technology and traffic, OneRiot seems to be an early leader in the monetization of the real time web.

3.)      Sency*  (http://sency.com)  Sency has built a free feed for websites and blogs  (http://sency.com/feed.php).  The feed brings in real time content which updates automatically on the site or blog it is published on.  The site and blog owners are able to select which keyword they want the feed to scroll for.  So, a blog about sports, can for example, have automatically updating real time content anytime someone uses the word baseball or football shows up on the real time web

*This article was written by Evan Britton, founder of Sency.