TC50 for the Politically Inclined

Just as Nell highlighted a few music sites that caught her eye at TechCrunch50, I thought I would highlight a couple politically-related sites that I'm particularly excited about.

Politics4all provides a new means for the political crowd to come together. Whether you're running a campaign, supporting a campaign, or trying to get involved in a campaign, this site is the place to go to get connected. I am most interested in how this helps local campaigns build relationships and find ways to support one another in the most efficient way and look forward to seeing how they will help their users make the most of their existing social networks.

Another site that caught my attention was Vlytics and its founder Scott Tranter. Scott has put together a fantastic, and user-friendly, application that allows campaigns to aggregate data and have a much more thorough understanding of the people they are trying to reach and the cost that is going into acquiring each one of those voters. Needless to say, a tool like Vlytics gives a campaign such great means of understanding how to use its limited resources and, once again, I think this is particularly interesting when thinking about how it applies to local campaigns.

So that's my quick take on a couple political sites--definitely check them out when you get a chance!

We'll be posting our last account from TC50 soon so be sure to check back and see which companies Nell and I liked most from the top 50.

Until then,

David

CollegeFest!

This past weekend, we braved the Boston rain for CollegeFest. Over the course of two days, we gave away $500 to some lucky college students in this crazy cash-grab-booth. It was, as our fans told us, "exactly like it looks like on TV". Poorly photographed proof below.

Progress, and the debut of the Orange Pole

Office Space

Our little office is going to be not-so-little very soon: We're breaking down walls and expanding next door! In the interim, we're scattered about the city (and the country for that matter). We think the new space will be worth the wait. Stay tuned for the "after" shots.

We love OtherInbox & OtherInbox loves you!

OtherInbox has generously shared a limited number of beta invites with us. We only have 25 to share, so hurry up and sign up here.

Enjoy!

TC50 Email Solutions

As I wade through the backlog of emails that accumulated during last week's frenzy, I thought I'd take a minute to reflect on some of the email solutions we saw at TechCrunch.

OtherInbox is a neat little site designed to solve your "accessory" email problem. That is, all those newsletters, updates, and alerts that you don't read everyday -- and maybe don't even have in your main inbox. It's a destination site designed to house and organize all that mail. It allows you to create unique email addresses and then categorizes mail based on those addresses to help you break your less-important email intake into a more digestible format. I get my own domain name -- nellwyn.otherinbox.com -- and I can add different prefixes to to create addresses. For example, I can change my Gilt & ShopBop contacts to shop@nellwyn.otherinbox.com and my Facebook & LinkedIn contacts to socialnet@nellwyn.otherinbox.com. The interface -- clean and intuitive -- then sorts and categorizes incoming mail based on address, so my shopping mail goes into one folder and my social networking goes into another.

I'm a big fan of Gmail's + trick, so this is right up my alley. The most appealing feature is that you can see what mailing lists are responsible for unwanted mail. If I sign up to Joe's Event List with joes@nellwyn.otherinbox.com and find that I'm getting 10 emails a day from Joe's affiliates, I can block that one email address and eliminate all the unwanted mail. As Evan, who met a couple of the OI devs at Lone Star Ruby, said, "Props to OtherInbox for doing something that's already been done, email, and making it better."

NutshellMail provides a different take on the issue of the ever-increasing partitioning of inboxes. Nutshell, a web-based service, aggregates mail from your various messaging accounts -- whether it be that personal Hotmail account, Facebook, or your "accessory" Gmail account -- and delivers the mail to a main account of your choosing on a schedule of your choosing in a streamlined update email. Not only does this allow you to check all your email in one place, it also allows you to see messages from sites that might not be accessible from your workplace. While OtherInbox creates a separate, very well-organized, home for your less-important email, Nutshell brings that email to your main account in a systematized way. Both seem like creative solutions to an old, pesky problem.

Postbox tackles another problem: The photos, links and docs that get lost in your inbox. It's a desktop email application that offers advanced labeling and searching functionality, allowing you to more easily find and share everything -- not just the text -- that's in your inbox. I was really impressed by the demo and the team behind it, including Scott MacGregor, one of the original developers of Thunderbird. It looks to me like it's a better email application, and I couldn't be more thrilled: I think I've outgrown the Gmail interface. I can't wait to download Postbox and start trying it out.



That's all for now -- I've avoided my inbox for long enough today.

Happy emailing,
Nell

nextNY community gathering @ shakeshack

myJambi is co-sponsoring tonight's community event @shakeshack, organized by nextNY and Charlie O' Donnell. Who doesn't love free burgers and beers and catching up with the NYC tech community? The event is sold out, but there's a spillover event right across the street for anyone who didn't RSVP in time. Come one, come all!

David: Coffee Delivery Pro, Start-Up Founder

It looks like all our TechCrunch50 work -- and David's coffee-fetching -- paid off. We're on the front page right now! Go over to TechCrunch and check it out.

myJambi video # 2: Need a ride?

Hot off the excitement of TechCrunch50, comes the premiere of the second myJambi video/commercial titled "Need a ride?"



This video features the amazing acting work of Evan Zelnick, Kai Romero (her profile) was our lovely Boom Operator and stunt driver. myJambi co-founder David also helped out on set. Car was provided by ZipCar (found here) a great place to rent a car for a few hours without paying through the nose. The music was another song by Jonah Dempcy called "Too Cool for Home School" procured from Archive.org (found here)

So feel free to forward at will. Spread the doctrine of myJambi.

Stay tuned, on Thursday myJambi has a special surprise in store!

TC50 Nostalgia, Part One

Hello there,

One harrowing redeye JetBlue flight later, I'm back in NYC, and already nostalgic about the sweet myJambi times at TechCrunch50. We'll be rehashing the conference on the blog over the next week, but I thought I'd jump-start things with a short review of a couple music sites I'm excited about.

Now, I love my music sites. There are already a couple great tools in the space: Hype Machine, Pandora, Indaba, and OhMyRockness, among others. After seeing their demos at TC50, I'm optimistic about three new additions: Grooveshark Lite, BlueHaze, and BoJam.

GrooveShark Lite might just fill the whole left in my heart by the premature departure of Muxtape. While it isn't quite as clean and simple as my old favorite, it does offer a lot of functionality. Like Pandora, it allows me to steam full-length songs, and has an "autoplay" feature that will populate my music queue with other songs I'll like. Unlike Pandora, it also allows me to add entire albums of my choosing to that queue as well, so I can mix my favorites with surprise suggestions. It looks like there are a few bugs--duplication of songs in particular--but I'm excited to use it and excited to see what else the team rolls out.


If you love concerts as much as I do, please go check out BlueHaze. It provides full concert support services--notifications about upcoming shows, updates about what shows your friends are attending, a place to upload concert photos and reviews, and a home for your personal concert history. Even better, their iPhone application let's you do it in real-time. Even better than that, the founder is incredibly nice and he managed to sneak a musician into the demo pit to play live and he collected demopit chips in a guitar case. Awesome? Yes.

BoJam, one of the 52 finalists, is a wholly different kind of music site. For those of you who are more musically gifted than I am, you are in luck: BoJam has created a place for musicians to mix, record, and collaborate on songs over the internet. Their demo, set to Toto's Africa, did a cute job of explicating what exactly this means. It has the potential to be a great rehearsal tool for artists, even if the recording functionality doesn't work out. Take a look and let me know if you agree.


Happy musical Friday,
Nell

TechCrunch Day Two

Hi!

Another quick update from Nell & David over at TC50. Yesterday we were back in the demopit, but tried to sneak a few walks around the room and peeks at the panels. We'll provide more detail once the dust from this crazy conference settles, but a few highlights from yesterday:

David was hired through the site to get some coffee at Starbucks for Suggestion Box.

We spoke with Mark Boslet over at UberPulse.

We demo-ed the site to Mark Cuban. He provided some interesting insights and responded really positively to the site.

We talked to more smart people with great sites: BriteClick, Politics4All, Jibidee, Expensify, and BlueHaze.

We got to sneak a peek at a few of the 52. iCharts impressed with its simple, clean idea. PostBox, a desktop email application, showed off some cool features. Finally, Swype certainly took the day, if not the conference.



We saw the Jabbawokeez at the Symantec-sponsored party tonight.


We got a slightly blurry photo with Jason Calacanis and Don Dodge at Temple.


Today, we get to actually attend the conference. Rich Media, Games, Vertical Social Networking and Research & Recommendations: here we come!

Over and out,
Nell & David

The FIRST myJambi Commercial!

After nearly a month of hype, we've finally finished the mythical myJambi YouTube commercials. Yaye! The villagers rejoice. Check back every week for the premiere of a new commercial. Forward to your friends & frenemies and feel free to embed the video on your blog, myspace or facebook page.



The commercial was shot on location in lovely Brooklyn, NY and features the acting talent of Susan Ross & Pam Lyman, who are really mother and daughter. The song used was "Filtered Breakbeat With Clav Solo" by Jonah Dempcy procured from www.archive.org , an amazing site to find public domain music. The camera work & editing was done by Marisol Romero (her myJambi page) and yours truly wrote and directed the spots (my myJambi page)

Enjoy!

--lili

myJambi exhibit @ TechCrunch50

Here's what just came in from the Demopit @ TechCrunch50, where our valiant product team started setting up at 6:30am...

Exciting!

Kristina & the rest of the team (back in NYC and admittedly a bit jealous!)

Back to School Shopping

David & I just received these awesome myJambi tee shirts (courtesy of Kristina's always impeccable taste) and we are so excited to show them off. Don't lie, we know you're jealous.

At the moment, these are only available by special order. If you're interested in purchasing your own piece of myJambi, send us an email at nellwyn [at] myjambi [dot] com with the subject 'AWESOME TEE SHIRT REQUEST' (or something like that). 

Happy Friday,

Nell

New features, new photos

In the ongoing effort to make sure myJambi serves you better, the team has rolled out a new set of features that you may or may not have noticed, but will certainly appreciate.

The first feature is an aesthetic one. You've always had the option to upload a photo when posting an offer or a want. And if you had a profile photo, it would simply default to that one. If you didn't have a profile photo, it would default to a generic silhouette. Now don't get me wrong, I love that silhouette with its gray and orange blocks of color as much as the next person, but it doesn't really say much about your want or offer. Now in this same situation, one of myJambi's snazzy default photos will show up. From a pair of clasped hand representing child & elderly care to colorful paint jars representing creative pursuits, the pictures are a great way to spice up your want or offer and let people know immediately what category your want/offer is in. It's just one more way we help give you a professional looking page without you having to do all that much.

The next two features have to do with the invite your friends & Get Endorsed functions. You may have noticed that when you invited a friend, you had to add them as a friend after they joined myJambi. Now when you invite someone, when they sign up, they are automatically added to your friend list. This saves valuable time that you could be spending looking for work on myJambi. Also, your invitation will from now on include a list of your offers and wants. Ensuring that your friends will know what you can do and what you need done immediately upon receiving the invite.

That's it for this week's new features. Check back for more in the next few weeks. Also, remember to keep the myJambi team posted on any problems or suggestions you have by clicking on the Jambi icon on the lower right-hand side of your screen. Your suggestions fuel the new features and make sure the site runs smoothly.

--Lili