Apple’s newest store, which occupies the former home of the formerly elegant Belgian bistro ‘Markt’, opens tonight at 6:00 PM. (Get ready to stand in line. It’s probably forming now.) The three-level store, with an elegant glass circular staircase, is at the entrance to the area of Manhattan known affectionately as [...]

OpenAd.net founder Katarina Skoberne will present at the December 18 Web2NewYork networking party. The Slovenian advertising startup is in the process of opening an office in New York.

AdAge wrote: ‘OpenAd represents the ad industry finally taking advantage of flat-earth economics and communications realities to solve one of the marketing business’ biggest challenges: finding ideas.’

Today’s addition of MyHound founder Ardy Khazaei rounds out the lineup of six companies for this month’s Web2NewYork at Gallery Bar, covering a spectrum from user generated media to Ajax development.

(more…)

The GroundReport episode of nextNYers is the featured of the day on Viddler.com. nextNYers is the interview show which highlights up-and-coming new media, tech and web 2.0 companies in New York City and is hosted by the lovely Meghan Mitchell. Viddler is a video sharing network that has a great player with very innovative features allowing users to add comments and tags in the video timeline. The tags are then matched with advertisers to provide contextually relevant advertising. nextNYers was also featured in the Viddler Spotlight by Colin Devroe.

A quick update from Jellyland…

Quite possibly the largest Jelly yet takes place in Atlanta, GA this Friday.

Also on Friday, the ever-popular Austin Jelly, and the one that started it all, Jelly in NYC returns to House 2.0 this week.

Coming up next: Chicago Jelly (new!), Boston Jelly, Jelly in the O.C., and Manilla Jelly.

Recently: Houston Jelly and Singapore Jelly.

Gathering steam: Milwaukee Jelly, Tuscon Jelly, and San Francisco Jelly. (I know, I know, I’ve been busy!)

… and some recent press: we were on the Clark Howard radio show, and the hugely popular video blog, The JetSet Show.

Here’s the JetSet clip:

Went to IAC last night for the December installment of the NY New Tech Meetup.

The companies presenting had 5 minutes to show off what they are working on infront of 400 people. You would think people would prepare for these presentations in advance. Unfortunately that didnt seem to be the case this evening.

Lots of people had really great stuff to present tonight however they were plagued with technical difficulties, even Mr. Meetup himself Scott Heiferman had some technical issues towards the end of his presentation. If you werent there last night, dont worry you didnt miss out on much, but you can still see the video presentations over at Center Networks. Here's the quick run down of the companies who did present and their simple mistakes that could have been avoided

• Ignighter: Facebook App for group dating
• Couldnt create demo group, since too many groups were created already that day, since he was practicing.
  

• Evolvist Directory of Green Companies
  
• couldnt get the search for coffee in NYC to be displayed
  

• TheFunded VC directory
  
• or in the words of Charlie O'Donnell: [consists of] "1/2 people with an axe to grind and 1/2 people who are already funded kissing butt"

• pretty solid demo, left people wanting more.
  

• Kaltura:Enabling online video collaboration
• while attempting to show off some RSS feed capabilities, he ended up closing the tab he was working in.
  

• Unype - Your friends on various social networks being displayed on Google Earth

• Phentermine pill spam was being displayed on Google Earth during demo which prompted an audience member to ask, "Is Phentermine a friend of yours?

• Meetup Alliance - Allows local groups to create global groups/alliances
• Prepared relevant tabs for presentation had webcam failure while attempting to show the New Tech Alliance leader who was in San Francisco.
  

Granted most people presenting have no prior presenting experience and are probably really nervous standing in front of so many people. Thats why I wouldnt advise companies to just go out there and wing it. If you think a simple walk through of your site will get everyone in the room to understand what you are selling, you are kidding yourself. Odds are it will take longer than 5 minutes to navigate your site alone.

Demos should be completely prepared in advance. When presenting your company be sure to apply the KISS Principle and keep it simple. Just going through mock run throughs by yourself are not enough, as we saw tonight something will go wrong. There Is nothing worse than dead silence in a room of 400 people watching you fumble with your own product. You only have minutes to wow people don't waste it on technical difficulties.

Why not present in front of family members. I am sure they have 5 minutes to spare. Dont present in front of anyone who knows about or has seen your product before, they already know what you are going to say and you cant really wow them.

Make sure to have all relevant pages open, thats the beauty of tabbed browsing. Prepopoulate your browser with all relevant information. You shouldnt have to rely on the internet connection to get to your next page. Try to even save all your inforamtion to your local hard drive. Scott was the only one to do this last night. He even had filler tabs that just had the meetup alliance logo showing to build up the anticipation.

Whatever you do, do not show powerpoint slides people will be sure boo or get restless. Nobody wants to hear you talk or ask rhetorical questions. They paid $5 to be wowed. So WOW them. I think everyone who presented last night could have, but they were preoccupied with technical difficulties.

If you have created something really technologically awesome, dont focus on the tech part. I know its called the new tech meetup, the majority of people dont really understand the technology, if they understand the gravitas, odds are they will approach you afterwards. They paid for the chance of seeing you live opposed to just reading about it online the next day. Dont make them regret coming to the event.

Your main focus should be giving people a taste of how awesome your product is and leaving them wanting more. Allen Stern's provides a nice anecdote to convey this message:

"Imagine going to the red light district in
Amsterdam. There are hot girls in the windows. Each of them knows they
have 20-30 seconds to get you aroused enough that you want to go inside
for some "fun". Think of your demo just like this. You have 5 minutes
to arouse the attendees enough so they will want to come find you after
the demos are over and learn more. Make sense?"

Here are some photos I took from last nights event:

My friend and uber-analysis maven (nextNY‘er too), Jonah Keegan, wrote a fairly in-depth posting over at his not-often enough updated blog.  The reason why I say, “not-often enough” is because it’s fantastic.  I just wished he posted a lot more.

Anyway, his posting goes into high level advertising ecology theory in the online space.  Jonah looked at the ecosystem without marketing speak, but if I were to add in a few buzz words and thoughts from an advertising background, he’s essentially talking about ATL vs. BTL advertising.

• Above the line
• Below the line

Above the line advertisers are trying to drive brand awareness and consideration and tend to be the AT&T’s, DELL, Tropicana, Coca Cola’s of this world.  Big bucks going into ATL campaigns.  The below the line advertisers tend to be folks looking for a conversion metric such as CTR or CPA goal and are those folks like the Adult Friend Finder.  These two types of advertising are not mutually exclusive though.  A big brand advertiser can use BTL mediums & mixes and the other way around, it just depends on the campaign goals.

We’re still in the very early stages of the digital media spectrum and our technologies are being built out further each day that will allow us to harness these mediums much more effectively.  All the answers are not out there as we don’t know what most of the questions are yet.  We’re 12 years into this unbelievable journey and we’ve come a long way, but we’re still not even close to summiting the mountain of digital media.

Do publishers know the value of their content yet?  Yes -the value is whatever someone will pay for it.  It’s like a baseball card.  I’ve got “millions of dollars” of baseball cards at my folks house in Westchester, but unless someone offers me money for them, they are worth nothing.  However, I do think that the value of the medium will evolve once we have more insight into how we can harness it more efficiently.

    Seventy-one year-old Dick Cavett is a national treasure. He has spent much of his career interviewing the most influential and important entertainers, politicians, and artists of his time, in an intelligent, elegant, in-depth, and yet hysterical manner. A writer first and last, Cavett started his career in comedy here in Manhattan, writing [...]

Tonight was the last NY Tech Meetup of 2007. Great crowd as always - even in the cold! Things seemed very orderly this evening.

I've captured video of each presentation and the links are below. Sorry about the lighting - one day I will buy a real camcorder!

At the Social Networking meetup earlier this month, I cried out for better presentations. Tonight, three individuals came up to me after the demos were over and asked me to post the message again so here goes. BRING YOUR A GAME OR GO HOME. Your service might be great but if you can't present it, no one will come up to you afterwards. With that said, overall these demos were better than the social networking set.

Here is my analogy for these 5-minute demos:

Imagine going to the red light district in Amsterdam. There are hot girls in the windows. Each of them knows they have 20-30 seconds to get you aroused enough that you want to go inside for some "fun". Think of your demo just like this. You have 5 minutes to arouse the attendees enough so they will want to come find you after the demos are over and learn more. Make sense?

Tonight's presentations are:

• Ignighter Facebook Application
• Evolvist Green Web Site - not posting their video as the site isn't live or accessible
• TheFunded VC Ratings and Reviews
• Kaltura Video Collaboration
• Unype - some kind of Google Map thingy
• Meetup Alliance - lets groups align together

The New York Chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NY NATAS), awarders of the Emmy®, is presenting the next part of their ongoing seminar series "New Media for New Media Dummies" with featured presenter Paul Kontonis, CEO and Co-Founder of For Your Imagination. NY NATAS conducts activities that cultivate, promote and encourage understanding of, appreciation for, and public interest in the arts, crafts and sciences of television. Paul will be discussing the professionalization of Internet TV, what it means for TV and the traditional media companies and the monetization opportunities for new serialized video content distributed online. The seminar will be on Wednesday, December 5th starting at 6pm at the NY NATAS office, 1375 Broadway, Suite 2103. Please make sure you RSVP if you planning on attending.