Web 2.0 Expo

I couldn't make it to the Web 2.0 Expo so I checked out the blog, which provided all the highlights and news coverage from the expo. I checked out the article "Cool and Not So Cool from Web 2.0 Expo 2008" covered by David Sparks. The article detailed the interesting and not so interesting presentations and topics that were covered during the conference. Below are some subjects that sparked my interest:

Oosah - A Web-based media management application. Sure I can upload all my media and manage it from Oosah. What’s really valuable is the ability to bring in media from all your social media applications like YouTube, Picasa, Flickr, and Facebook (more to come soon). You can edit and upload from within Oosah and the media will be updated on the respective social media applications.
This is a great mash-up. Some times I feel like the majority of my time working on the internet and with computers in general goes to opening up programs and logging in here and there. It can get really annoying and time consuming. I checked out the Oosah website and it looks very clean and user friendly. I will be opening up an account very soon.

David Calkins’ presentation on Robots - David Calkins’ is the world’s biggest robotics geek I know. His ring bearer at his wedding was a robot and his groomsmen were storm troopers. Seriously! I believe his father also dressed up as Darth Vader (not 100% sure of that though). Calkins teaches at SFSU and is also the President of the Robotics Society of America. I attended one of his ROBOlympics events and wrote about it for T3 magazine. His presentation talked about all the ways robots have and will continue to help us in our lives: home entertainment, home security, assisted living, SEX!, robotic cars, robotic bartenders and waiters, manual labor, sports (NASCAR danger without the loss of human life), battlefield robots, and space/underwater exploration. While all of this is impressive, it is us humans who will decide what robots will do.
I didn't even know this guy taught at SFSU. I did more research on David Calkins and his passion for robotics and it seems like a very interesting guy. On top of teaching at SFSU, he has been on numerous television shows, and is the founder of ROBOLympics (the international olympics for robots), and is a judge on Battlebots.

TellMe - These guys have been around for a while but they showed off their new voice-activated information system for BlackBerry devices. Extremely impressive and accurate voice recognition by anyone using the device. I spoke into the device the name of a Mexican burrito joint, Papalote, and it found both locations. From there I can easily get an address, phone number, a map, or directions. Best part, it’s free. If you have a BlackBerry you should definitely download and install this application.
I researched this further and found out that TellMe and Microsoft had partnered and that TellMe had won CNET Webware 100 Award for mobile application. I think this is a very innovative technology that goes beyond what many technologies do. TellMe actually made their technology fitted to the human user, instead of people having to change their natural human instincts and methods to operate a tool.

In addition to covering the "cool" aspects of the expo, David Sparks also discussed a few presentations that did not go so well and he deemed "uncool". Those ranged from a speaker who was clearly drunk to a new company presentation that Sparks considered "the absolute worst product demonstration in the thirteen years I’ve been a technology journalist." He didn't mention who the company was so I wonder if anybody knows what he's talking about and may have been there to witness the atrocity.