Sprowtt.com

Meaningz.com

7ages.com

LearnVest is a personal finance site designed primarily for women. Users can customize what aspects of their personal finances are most important to them, from mortgages to grad school payments to credit scores.

LearnVest offers a step-by-step financial walkthrough, giving expert advice for financial concerns like dealing with debt and it promises to cover every financial event that one can come across. Nice design. Game dynamics were criticized by VCs.

lissn, which was introduced with the promise to “make Robert Scoble’s head explode,” connects users with real-time conversations. IM-ing with rich metadata? Conversation-based advertising. Very hashtaggy.

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Live streaming from the TechCrunch50 2009 conference.

Online TV Shows by Ustream

Last year’s Techcrunch50 caused me to wonder if we’d hit the end of the Web 2 bubble. There was a bloated decadence to the event that reinforced all the negative stereotypes of so many valley startups.

Instead of innovation there were a host of companies who were adding nothing new, simply copying others’ ideas in the great cash-out game.

Yammer, which was closer in degree to Twitter than Kevin Bacon is to Will Smith, was named Best-in-Show. Really, after all the work up, after all the companies coming from all corners of the world, the award was ultimately in appreciation of tweets. A perhaps-politically-motivated appreciation of tweets.

A lot has happened in the last year. Banks crashed less than two months after TC50, with the stock market soon to follow. Good times were R.I.P.’ed in the valley, countless companies shut down and hundreds of thousands lost their jobs in the industry.

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After three days of innovative marketing, carefully researched crowd and cloud surfing, playful spelling and truncated phrases, what can a company do to stand out? Dominating the horizon, beyond the trays of tamales, stands an igloo.

Inside the igloo is a projection dome, and after being passed some intimidating goggles, the imagery snaps into perspective. Micoy has released a 3D image format that flattens all previous incarnations. Omni-3D technology “far exceeds the ’sweet spot’ 3D available in theaters now and can provide a true omni-directional 3D experience.”

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