Mint is Techcrunch40 winner - walks home with $50,000 TechCrunch award

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Winner of TechCrunch40 conference is finally announced. It is Mint, which lets you manage your personal finances. As per TechCrunch, it not only manages your finances, but also helps you save money by searching for better deals on bank acounts, credit cards etc. online. It supposedly uses very strong encryption to safeguard your data.

In their own words

Mint allows you to view all of your banking and credit card transactions side-by-side, making identifying all of your transactions much easier and faster than ever before.

How does this help you? We make it easy for you to track down erroneous charges or bank fees, and keep a closer eye on your money.

Mint even lets you label your transactions so you know what bills you need to split with your friends or roommates, know which ones need to be reimbursed for your company, and more.

As per TechCrunch

“Mint is a personal finance application that lets users track and monitor their financials in one place without the need of routine maintenance or accounting knowledge. Their application tracks bank, credit union and credit card transactions and alerts users to upcoming bills, low balances or unusual spending. Mint’s patent-pending technology automatically categorizes transactions, so users know with precision where they are spending money, what their bank and credit balances are, and how much interest they have earned.

Scoble’s blog readers are really sharp, he says

What’s interesting is that two days ago I asked who would win and within minutes one commenter here said he thought Mint would. More proof that my readers know more than I do?

So Mint’s win was kind of expected. But Dave Winer reports that

Fred Wilson writes to say Mint is not a new idea, that Wesabe, a company he has invested in, has been offering a similar product for over a year. He also sent a pointer to their Security and Privacy FAQ, a very inspiring document.

Mint will be a company to watch for in the consumer productivity space. I expect Mint’s competition to show-up in coming weeks, as this is untapped space or we will discover other players in this space in next weeks Demo conference.

Based on what I have seen so far, Mint should be acquired by one of the personal finance companies very soon, that is if Google doesn’t acquire it first and enters this new personal finance space as well.

Techcrunch40 - Review all 40 startups in less than 5 minutes

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Techcrunch40 conference: All TC40 presenting companies and “what they do” is summarized here in one single page. Effort is made to keep it brief and simple, representing facts in layman’s language minus the marketing fluff and all other heavy mambo jambo. Shouldn’t take you more than 5 minutes to finish the page.

After reading short company reviews here, if you want to know more about a company, you can click on the profile link, which will take you to startup’s profile page at Crunch Base. Also included are the links to the live coverage at Techcrunch in detail towards the end of this post. Enjoy!

List of startups presenting at Techcrunch 40 conference -at a glance:

App2You lets you create do-it-yourself database driven web-based applications using a simple browser based interface. (profile)

8020 Publishing lets online communities actively participate in creating print magazines, crowd sourcing the print magazine creation process, and providing the logistics and editorial oversight. (blog, profile)

Cake Financial (blog, profile)

CastTV is a video search engine which help users finding and cataloging videos from the web. (blog, profile)

Ceedo lets you take your Windows desktop environment with you on mobile devices. Just connect mobile device to a Windows-PC and start working. (blog, profile)

Clickable (blog, profile)

Cognitive Code provides SILVIA, a complete system for the development and deployment of intelligent application that allows humans to interact with computers in completely natural and intuitive ways - uses artificial intelligence. (blog, profile)

Crowd Spirit is all about Electronic Product Crowd sourcing - Define, design, invest, finalize, test, recommend electronic products and share product revenue. (blog, profile)

Cubic Telecom Cubic Telecom is a mobile startup focused on reducing roaming and call charges for overseas calls. (blog, profile)

DocStoc DocStoc is YouTube for documents. Upload, share and rate your documents with the world. (blog, profile)

eXtreme Reality (blog, profile)

Faroo is a Peer-to-Peer distributed search engine with a distributed index providing more democratic user centric ranking while sharing advertising revenue with users. (blog, profile)

Flock is a web browser which makes discovery and sharing of rich media (video, photos, blogs etc) easier while enhancing social networking experience. (blog, profile)

FlowPlay (blog, profile)

GotStatus (blog, profile)

Kerpoof (blog, profile)

LoudTalks is a push to talk free downloadable application, which allows you to talk to your friends or colleagues instantly with a single touch of a button. (blog, profile)

mEgo (blog, profile)

MetaPlace (blog, profile)

Mint (blog, profile)

MusicShake lets your create music without previous knowledge of music or expertise. You can create ringtones and personalized music. (blog, profile)

Orgoo (blog, profile)

Ponoko helps you convert your designs into real products, helps sell these products online or deliver directly to the customers. (blog, profile)

PowerSet (blog, profile)

PubMatic (blog, profile)

Spottt (blog, profile)

Story Blender lets your create video mashups from video clips, images and audio and share with your friends. (blog, profile)

Teach the People Lets you create communities for fun, education & innovation and share knowledge. Allows uploading of audio, video, docs and provides broadcasts, chat discussion boards etc. (blog, profile)

Tripit Tripit is a do-it-yourself online trip planner which lets your share your trip itineraries etc with friends. (blog, profile)

TruTap lets you IM from mobile phone, share pics etc across different Instant Mesaging (IM) networks. Requires app download to your phone. (blog, profile)

Viewdle allows monetization of videos by indexing and making embedded meta data searchable. Its facial-recognition technology enables better cataloging and more relevant search results. (blog, profile)

Wixi is a media sharing desktop which lets you store and share all your video, music and photos in one place. (blog, profile)

WooMe (blog, profile)

Xobni (blog, profile)

Yap lets you use your ordinary mobile phone to access applications by just talking into your phone, by providing voice-to-text translation services. You talk, they type. (blog, profile)

Zivity (blog, profile)

ZocDoc (blog, profile)

Techcrunch 40 Day 1 presentations:

TechCrunch 40 Session 1: Search & Discovery

TechCrunch 40 Session 2: Mobile & Communications

TechCrunch 40 Session 3: Community & Collaboration

TechCrunch 40 Session 4: Crowd Sourcing

Techcrunch40 Day 2 presentations:

TechCrunch40 Session 5: Productivity & Web Apps

TechCrunch40 Session 6: Revenue Models & Analytics

TechCrunch40 Session 7: Rich Media & Mash Ups

TechCrunch40 Session 8: Entertainment for All Ages

Note that some links will become functional on Sept 18 once the demos. Please leave a comment if you find any mistakes or inaccuracies.

Techcrunch40 List 2007 (Leaked)

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Techcrunch40 list leaked out before Techcrunch officially announced the list of presenting companies. Paul Boutin discovered the name of the companies on the banners they are hanging in the Palace Hotel where the conference is taking place (Sep 17-18). However list so far has only 39 lucky presenting companies listed

Here is list Paul posted. Most of links are already live.

Clickable
Flock
Ceedo
Cake Financial
DocStoc
CastTV
Cubic Telecom
CrowdSpirit
Cognitive Code
Mint
MusicShake
Ponoko
PowerSet
PubMatic
Teach the People
8020 Publishing
Faroo
GotStatus
FlowPlay
LoudTalks
Kerpoof
MetaPlace
mEgo
Orgoo
StoryBlender
Spottt
TruTap
Tripit
Viewdle
Zivity
Wixi
Xobni
ZocDoc
eXtreme Reality
WC
AppYou
WooMe
Yap

Mike had placed a strict embargo for all presenting startups, I guess to get exclusives. Did they really forgot about the banners or this is planned leak to generate additional buzz? If yes, then Mike’s plan is working.

Update 1: Valleywag is reporting that they are banned from attending Techcrunch40. Scoble says that the best news is flowing fast on Twitter, way faster than Techmeme. I disagree, I have been monitoring techmeme and it is updating regularly with very relevant content.

Update 2: Techcrunch finally posted the official list of Techrunch 40.

DRM Free Music - Is music becomming a commodity?

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drm-free-musicDRM Free music or plain mp3 has remained an unfulfilled dream for a long time. If you wanted digital music which you could copy from one device to another, your choices were ripping the CD or famous illegal cheap download sites like allofmp3.com or p2p networks. Consumer were forced to limit their choice of hardware devices or music players in the name of protecting the copyrighted music. Once you adopted a particular music vendor, you were very pretty much stuck with that vendor.

Looks like that in 2007 we are seeing new DRM free trends. Studios and music labels, having tried all legal and technical tools in their arsenal to prevent illegal downloads are finally ‘getting it’ and ‘surrendering’ to the demands of consumers. I think we are reaching the tipping point in DRM free music scene and in transition of music from plastic based distribution model to online based distribution model.

Techcrunch is running an interesting article on finding DRM-Free Music Online. GigaOm has also covered the DRM music recently. Mark Hendrickson writes:

The first major label to take the plunge was EMI Music Publishing, which teamed up with Apple in May to release its entire online catalog through an DRM-free area of the Apple music store called iTunes Plus. Also in May, Amazon announced that it would launch an MP3-only online music store with songs from major labels by the end of the year.

Online DRM free music choices mentioned in Techcrunch articles are iTunes, WalMart, gBox, eMusic, Audio Lunchbox, AmieStreet. The pricing models vary with option of buying singles, albums or all you can eat monthly subscriptions (for indie music). With Walmart stepping in the game, it is guaranteed that we will see the reduction in prices ( minus rich site functionality, minus great itunes convenience), though the music may not be made in China.

Wide availability of the DRM free high quality mp3 downloads may be a win-win for everybody in the long run. The trend has just started and will have long lasting effect on the way the music is distributed online and consumed. Today Apple iTunes can control the price and terms, because of vendor lock-in, but with the music becoming DRM free, we will soon see mushrooming of the online outlets offering music and competing on prices. Soon we will see value add products such as video interviews with the artists, behind the scene studio footage etc. thrown in as free bonus with your purchase of DRM free music.

The time has come for commodotization of DRM free music and saying goodbye to plastic (CD’s). No more risk of Sony rootkits embeded on music CD’s. How all this will effect the profitability of the music industry as a whole - only time will tell. But given that DRM free music is more comforting and convenient from the consumers point of view, and the availability of high resolution music, more consumers will be inclined to buy DRM free music which they will own with the comforting feeling that no big-brother is controlling what they do with their music and thrusting choices down their throat.