Weekly Sparkpr Missive Week Ending March 5, 2010 at Sparkpr

Weekly Sparkpr Missive

Week Ending March 5, 2010

What Tongues are Wagging About

iPad Available in US on April 3
Sources within Apple are claiming that the iPad will be in stores starting March 10 in order to give employees and employees only, plenty of time to get up-to-speed with using the new tablet device, ahead of its official launch.
Apple iPad may delay transition to SSD, say hard drive makers
Application companies are just coming out of the woodwork to say they will create apps for the iPad and are busy porting existing mobile apps to the new device.
Gimmicky apps such as Foursquare, which have proved to be very popular due to their addictive gameplay quality, have been experiencing a backlash in the press for not being useful enough.
Dave McClure is now in DC with a group of delegates for his StartUp Visa campaign – read more here: VCs Push Startup Visa Act (BusinessWeek) – http://bit.ly/aDhOLu #startupvisa
ViPR seems to be getting a lot more attention as a technology now that conversation has shifted to next steps for implementation
Paperless Post is the latest evite / socializer –type service to appear, and suddenly a lot of folks are using it. It’s really cute.
Klout has reached the US. They feature a list of the UK’s top influencers, as measured by Tweets that you might enjoy checking out

Events:

Mayfield and First Round teamed up to discover unfunded entrepreneurs in the US and Canada. Their efforts culminated with an event Monday at Orson with 175 attendees. We believe this was a smart move for Mayfield, since First Round seems to get unfair dealflow of many hot nascent startups (Like Angus Davis’ Swipely).
- Process: Kamini (former Sparkster) created a simple form where entrepreneurs had to explain their idea in 10 words or less. 700 entrepreneurs applied and 100 were selected as ‘winners’, invited to the event. Winners won coaching sessions with Mark Pincus, Gina Bianchini, Ross Mayfield, and a few others – six companies were randomly selected by lottery. Of the companies we met with a few stood out:
  - Skill Addiction, a King.com competitor based in Syracuse, NY
  - A Mobile payment iPhone app for in-store purchases (it’s way cooler than I am describing it)
  - Custom Google maps – ZeeMaps
  - Technology to help companies like PeoplePerHour wade through myriad consultants and offer the best choices to businesses (RentCycle)
Notable attendees included:
- Jay Adelson from Digg
- Jared Kopf, who is on his 3^rd or 4^th startup
- The founders of Foodzie who are working on locally sourced food, and spent a fair amount of time talking with Jonathan Abrams – founder of Friendster who is now focusing his attention on Socializr

Last Friday’s party hosted by Tim Ferris (author of 4 hour work week) that was on a battle ship used to film parts of the movie Titanic. Paula Abdul was there (random),also @ev, CEO of @zappos, @kevinrose, two founders of paypal (kenny & luke), founders of Stumbleupon & Imeem, Dave Mcclure, Scoble, etc. Also met founders of a startup called Foodzie, Tim is one of their advisors…Definitely a talked/tweeted about party, lots of successful people on one boat!

Press Riffs:

The Economist Technology Quarterly – Everything from designing oil rigs to sexing chicken embryos http://news.economist.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eCBuO0WfMcu0Mo0GRba0Ew
The Wall Street Journal is launching “Digits,” a weekday online video series associated with the “Digits” technology blog. Contributors include online technology editor Julia Angwin, personal technology columnist Walt Mossberg, AllThingsD.com co-editor Kara Swisher and MarketWatch multimedia producer Stacey Delo.
Forbes.com – David F. Carr has been appointed Business Intelligence Columnist at Forbes.com, focusing on information technology issues for small to midsize businesses.
Wired.com – Daniel Dumas has been appointed Reviews Editor at Wired.com. He will continue to cover gear and gadgets.

Awards:

Upcoming Events/Speaking Opps:

Sparkpr has 11 clients going to CTIA, March 23-25 in Las Vegas– double the amount from the last CTIA. Seven of these are mobile apps companies. For the first time this year, the show will feature an “Apps World” show floor, much like MWC had this year in Hall 7. Companies like Samsung, Opera, RIM and the global meetup org Mobile Monday will have a presence on the floor. Client GetJar is also purchasing booth space for the first time.
SXSW Events
- #thePARTY @SXSW (March 16-17, 2010)
- Game Development on Social Platforms at GDC (Wednesday, March 10, 2010)
- Flash Gaming Summit (Monday, March 8, 2010)
- The Official SXSW Interactive Kick-Off, Sponsored by Ustream (Friday, March 12, 2010)
- Social Developer Summit (Tuesday, June 29, 2010)