TechCrunch and other technology outlets have provided detailed updates, including a live stream and video updates.

My selections from TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield session are:

UJAM: A web-based toolset for generating music based on a theme, highly customizable by the user. They certainly got the audience choice award, and even persuaded one of the judges to sing a little ditty. They’re planning on doing a freemium model in which the basic tools are free but a more robust version will be for sale.

Soluto: This very fluid and pretty presentation showed off a utility these guys have created that monitors your PC, analyzes when you are “frustrated,” and offers solutions. The cool bit is that the solutions are created by monitoring expert users’ PCs, and when a similar problem comes up, their response is added to a database — kill process, change startup settings, lower process priority, that kind of thing. The UI is very impressive, the best I’ve seen in a while. They’d have the “manual” version free and the “automatic” version (in development) for money (or get fees for pre-installs with vendors).

There are 3 from the second session that I think have great potential as well
Appbistro- think Facebook apps for small businesses.

LiveIntent – social graph on steroids (I recommended a partnership with Buddy Media)

publish2 – launching a new product called Publish2 News Exchange, with the ambitious goal of disrupting the entire reason for being of The Associated Press.

I’m going to miss sessions three & four today (six sessions in total), but I think we’re going to see a solid group of startups that get some attention of investors this week.

If you know me very well, you probably know that I like wine. You know what else I like? Helping babies.

21st Annual Wine Fest
A Benefit for the March of Dimes
Thursday, May 21, 2009: 6 – 9 p.m.
Union Station ~ 30 West Pershing Road Kansas City, Missouri

• Food samples from over 25 area restaurants
• Over 150 varieties of wines to try
• Exclusive Premier Wine Room
• Large silent auction
• Live entertainment

You can get tickets in advance at MODwinefest.com or by calling 913-469-3611 until May 20. Tickets can also be purchased at the door for those that don’t like to plan ahead.

A little background on the event.

Wine Fest began in 1988 as a small gathering of young professionals who shared wine and appetizers donated by local restaurants. Over time, this small social gathering grew into a popular fundraiser made possible by some of Kansas City’s finest restaurants and wine vendors.

Funds raised by Wine Fest support research grants focused on issues related to premature birth and community programs such as NICU Family Support at Saint Luke’s Hospital and the Kansas Cribs for Kids Project.

The March of Dimes is a leading nonprofit organization for pregnancy and baby health and you can find out information about them at marchofdimes.com.

If you saw any of my Tweets from a few weeks ago, you also heard that Maya & I participated in the March for Babies walk, one of the major fund raising events for March of Dimes.

Not able to attend or not your type of thing? Please at least check out the site and help raise awareness for the March of Dimes. They’re doing some great things, and down economy or not, they still need our support.

Raise a glass to raise awareness and be a champion for all babies!

Technorati Tags: March of Dimes, wine, event

Why, you ask? In this day of social networks, you’d be surprised how easily you can connect to others through a few degrees of separation.

Let me use LinkedIn as an example. I currently have about 480 connections on LinkedIn. Three degrees, though, I’m connect to almost 3 million people.

Although Facebook doesn’t have the same “friend of a friend” contact mechanism, it is easy enough to see who each person is connected to and do some manual footwork to establish a connection.

So as I was working through my contact list that I exported from Outlook (about 1000 contacts in all), I noticed several that several email addresses were listed like the following:

/o=ORGANIZATION_NAME/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=Tester2 EX Tester2 Tester2LastName (Tester2@corp.organization.com)

You might ask why I use Outlook when I run a Mac as my main work laptop? Well, I use Outlook in Parallels when it comes to things like contact management because it seems easier to deal with (at least in my mind) than Entourage, Microsoft’s email and calendar client that we use on the Mac side.

Well, that format above isn’t very helpful when you are trying to import the list into another program, such as Evite, for sending out invitations to a party.

After a bit of searching, I stumbled upon the solution from a site in Australia with a blog entry title of Outlook Change Email Address Type.

The problem is due to the fact that we use Microsoft Exchange Server for our email and calendar management, and any internal email address it stores in a format that is easier for the server to read. This also has to do with the way that I added the contact.

In order to fix this and save the actual email address and not the MS Exchange Server information as part of the contact, you have to modify the contact and trick it into thinking it is a stand alone contact and not connected to the mail server.

The hack to change Email Address Type is below. Is it a hassle to fix? Definitely, as I had about 100 contacts that I had to correct, but maintaining the contact information is an important component of maintaining an active social network. I recommend exporting your contacts as a CSV format (comma delimited) and uploading them to sites like LinkedIn at least once a quarter.

LinkedIn and others due have plugins for Outlook that allow you to sync your data much easier, but I prefer the old school method, because it also forces me to cleanup my contacts.

1. Select the contact’s details.
2. In the General tab, replace the existing the e-mail address with a string starting with smtp:. For example, replace a.b@mail.x.com with smtp:a.b@mail.x.com. Note: you have to type in the new dummy address; if you use a suggestion from Outlook, the address type does not change.
3. Select the Properties context menu item of the dummy e-mail address. Outlook should display the E-mail Properties dialog. Note that the E-mail type: field now has a value of SMTP.
4. In this dialog, remove the smtp: prefix from the e-mail address.
5. Press the OK button and the dialog should close.
6. Initially, the Contact’s e-mail address does not seem to have changed. If you click on the Display As: field, Outlook corrects the e-mail address.
7. Delete the string in the Display As: field and press Enter. Outlook should refresh the Display As: field.
8. Save the updated contact.

Technorati Tags: LinkedIn, Outlook, Exchange, contact, export, email

Bodies Revealed

In the tradition of Titanic and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Union Station Kansas City hosts another world-class blockbuster museum exhibition coming in the spring of 2008.

About Bodies Revealed

View the human body from the inside out at this awe-inspiring exhibition on display at Union Station spring 2008. Nowhere else can you take such an authentic look at what lies just under your skin. Through a unique process called polymer preservation, along with sensitive presentation, actual human bodies are displayed accurately for your observation, without any change or deterioration of the internal systems.

Examine everything that lies beneath your skin, from the bones to the muscles to the intricate nervous system. Learn more about the many complexities that make your own body into a flawless, life-giving machine

Bodies Revealed presented by Bank of America will feature at least 20 whole body specimens, as well as many individual organ specimens. See the devastating internal damages caused by smoking, breast and colon cancer, emphysema, arthritis, cirrhosis of the liver, osteoporosis and bone fractures.

Both fascinating and beautiful, this eye-opening exhibition is an unforgettable experience for inquisitive minds of all ages. Bodies Revealed will change the way you view yourself forever.

Lora and I saw Bodies … The Exhibition a few years ago in New York and it was amazing. While not for the queasy or faint at heart, it is a great educational resource into the human body.

These Exhibitions–which feature actual human specimens–allow people of all ages access to sights and knowledge normally reserved only for medical professionals. Take the opportunity to peer inside yourself, to better understand how your elaborate and fascinating body works, and how you can become a more informed participant in your own health care.

Technorati Tags: Bodies, exhibit, Union Station, Kansas City

As National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) comes to a close, I thought it would be worthwhile to provide a brief recap.

I knew I would miss a few days here and there, but I was hoping to come in around 25. As it turns out, I recognized how hard it really is to blog consistently. It takes a fair amount of planning to stay on top of it and you need to have a few posts in reserve for when things come up and you only have a few minutes.

I also have started to use Twitter quite a bit more to capture brief ideas, thoughts and the common “what I’m doing” kind of updates. I have a much better understanding of Twitter after using it more recently and am starting to see where it fits into the social networking space as a mini-blogging platform (and tinyurl, for that matter).

Congrats to Jeremy and Celeste for posting every day.

Seth G missed about a week and I came in under 20.

So, for those over 6000 people that participated in NaBloPoMo or blog on a daily basis, I salute you.

And for me, there’s always next year.

Technorati Tags: National Blog Posting Month, NaBloPoMo, blogging, twitter

Its a good reminder that there are still plenty of opportunities. I’m also in agreement with Russell from MobHappy that the next big wave is mobile.

Comparing 2007 top sites (according to Alexa, which is obviously skewed in results terms) to 2005, eBay, Amazon, Microsoft.com, google.co.uk (not .com), AOL and go.com had all dropped out of the Top 10. New kids on the block were YouTube, Facebook, Orkut, Wikipedia, Live.com and Hi5.com.

I also have no doubt that many of these self-same mega-successes, cool and Web2.0y that they are, will fail to make the leap into mobile, just as a new wave of companies trounced the traditional media incumbents just a few years ago. A case in point; if you try to sign up for Facebook on your mobile, do you know what happens? They tell you to go and use a PC. Hmmm… [via]

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, trends, stats, research, mobile

Who knew? I almost missed it.

So get out there and enjoy the internets, because I know I would be lost without them.

Take a few minutes and reflect on how your life has changed in the last 15 years.

Email? Instant messaging? Google? Wikipedia? Facebook?

Our world will never be the same.

Technorati Tags: internet, World Internet Day, Google, Facebook, Email

I would like to create more movies in the future, and my digital camera has a movie feature that seems to work well enough to capture the moment without carrying around a whole bunch of equipment. In this particular case, it was pretty windy, and the microphone isn’t the greatest so I got a lot of wind noise. Also, a mini tripod wouldn’t be a bad idea. I had my other hand full with some stuff we picked up from the event, so I shot it one handed. A few things to keep in mind for my big video shoots in the future.

Originally written by Bob Dylan, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door is one of the classics when it comes to a cover song played by everyone from Eric Clapton to Roger Waters to Avril Lavigne, made popular by Gun’s N Roses in the early 90′s.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/Sg9Mrzy_WDA]

So, sit back and enjoy my first iMovie, compliments of a bluegrass band at the Lousiburg Cider Mill Ciderfest.

Paul, this ones for you.

Technorati Tags: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, bluegrass, iMovie, Apple

In case you almost missed it, today is Talk Like a Pirate Day. In the days of lawsuits and political correctness, we all need to take a day just to be silly.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cKCkbWDGwE]

Be sure to check out the latest updates on the event at the 2007 event page.

A few highlights so far today:

• National Public Radio’s Morning Edition hosts talked like pirates in a tribute to the day, and interviewed George Choundas, author of The Pirate Primer.
• Flickr, the Yahoo-based photo-sharing site (and home of theTLAPD photo gallery), added a pirate flag icon to its masthead on Sept. 19, and featured only pirate-themed photos in its “Explore” page. See their blog entry.
• Weatherbug, the Web weather site, featured meteorologist Rachel Peterson doin’ her best to talk like a pirate.

Technorati Tags: pirate, event, TLAPD, Talk Like A Pirate Day