What's New at SF New Tech?
Time to read: 4 minutes
June 09, 2010
Written by
Hello, I’m Ben McKinley, one of the new additions to the Twilio team. I’m the marketing intern helping Danielle with events and working behind the scenes. I’m very excited to be working at Twilio with the chance meet new people. I last worked at another startup that does cloud based sales software. I’ve always been a huge fan of new technology so it is awesome to get a chance to work at a company that is offering some of this new tech. It was also why I was eager to go to the SF New Tech meetup.
I recently went to the SF New Tech
meetup at MIGHTY in downtown San Francisco. New Tech is a
monthly meetup with socializing, cocktails, tacos and of course, new
technology demos. I went this month with a new colleague of mine,
John Britton who should be writing an introductory post soon. I was
excited to go to my first meetup representing Twilio and so, track
jacket on, John and I headed out. The meetup was all about French companies and six of them presented, 5 minutes each with 5 minutes for questions after each presentation.
avob Wants Every Computer to Save Energy
Avob strives to help other companies and consumers become greener by
cutting costs in their IT infrastructure. They deal with putting
computers to sleep when their users are away and watches real time
power-consumption to allocate computer power as it is needed. They
say that through their technology battery life on laptops can be
increased about 20%
cutting costs in their IT infrastructure. They deal with putting
computers to sleep when their users are away and watches real time
power-consumption to allocate computer power as it is needed. They
say that through their technology battery life on laptops can be
increased about 20%
Laster Makes Augmented Reality Look Good
Laster
Technologies has really cool eyewear technology with augmented
reality. I tried some of the augmented reality technologies at CES
this year and I found it to be clunky and not particularly cool. Most
augmented reality has you looking at a screen that has both a video feed
of what is ahead of you and the augmented reality. Laster is
completely different. You look through the glass and the augmented
reality is projected onto the glass which means that you can see even
when the glasses are turned off. These are really awesome pieces of
technology, sleek and beautiful that can easily blend in to whatever
the user is doing.
Technologies has really cool eyewear technology with augmented
reality. I tried some of the augmented reality technologies at CES
this year and I found it to be clunky and not particularly cool. Most
augmented reality has you looking at a screen that has both a video feed
of what is ahead of you and the augmented reality. Laster is
completely different. You look through the glass and the augmented
reality is projected onto the glass which means that you can see even
when the glasses are turned off. These are really awesome pieces of
technology, sleek and beautiful that can easily blend in to whatever
the user is doing.
AlphaUI Gives You Screen Space by Putting the Keyboard on the Back
AlphaUI offers a “Back-Typing Solution” which is a proof of concept that allows
smartphone and tablet computer users to save screen space by typing
on the back of the device. It works pretty well
in general but is a little clumsy for the english language with only
24 keys. We’ll see how it pans out especially as any problems could probably be solved by remapping some of the keys.
smartphone and tablet computer users to save screen space by typing
on the back of the device. It works pretty well
in general but is a little clumsy for the english language with only
24 keys. We’ll see how it pans out especially as any problems could probably be solved by remapping some of the keys.
Lexip has a 3D Mouse They Want to Bring to the United States
Lexip demoed a “3d mouse” which is very, very impressive. There are currently 3d devices on the market but they are
stand-alone the idea of simply integrating a joystick on the side of
the mouse and having the device serve both 2d and 3d functions is
simple elegance. At the end of the presentation people were all
asking how they could get one and for how much. Lexip currently sells in France
and is looking for distributors to bring it to the US. At the end of the night, our very own John Britton
won one of these 3d mice in a raffle and is now the proud owner of one
of the very first 3d mice in the United States. Pics to follow.
stand-alone the idea of simply integrating a joystick on the side of
the mouse and having the device serve both 2d and 3d functions is
simple elegance. At the end of the presentation people were all
asking how they could get one and for how much. Lexip currently sells in France
and is looking for distributors to bring it to the US. At the end of the night, our very own John Britton
won one of these 3d mice in a raffle and is now the proud owner of one
of the very first 3d mice in the United States. Pics to follow.
Building an app in MLstate is more secure
MLstate showed
off their solution for building and deploying secure SaaS
applications. They understood the audience and jumped straight in to
the code. They showed us a simple chat application and talked about
MLstate’s main driving point: security. Apparently anything written
in MLstate is virtually immune to a vast array of attacks and buffer
overflows. When asked why people should develop in MLstate as opposed
to any other environment the answer, simply, security.
off their solution for building and deploying secure SaaS
applications. They understood the audience and jumped straight in to
the code. They showed us a simple chat application and talked about
MLstate’s main driving point: security. Apparently anything written
in MLstate is virtually immune to a vast array of attacks and buffer
overflows. When asked why people should develop in MLstate as opposed
to any other environment the answer, simply, security.
Build a Mobile app once, port it to any smartphone with Mobile Distillery
Mobile Distillery helps companies to develop mobile applications. The strength of their
platform is that a developer can write code once and port it to any
smart phone with virtually no tweaking of the code and with native UI
elements and using native libraries. Potentially very cool.
platform is that a developer can write code once and port it to any
smart phone with virtually no tweaking of the code and with native UI
elements and using native libraries. Potentially very cool.
I had a wonderful time at the meetup. It was a chance to interact with people that I have not had as much time interacting with as I would like. I was really impressed by each of the presentations. It takes guts to go to a completely new country with a different language and present your great idea and I admire all of the presenters for their ideas and how they have built their companies. I look forward to seeing many of these ideas coming to the United States in the near future. As for the meetup, I hope to get the chance to go to many more in the future. Hopefully I will see you all out there!
Related Resources
Twilio Docs
From APIs to SDKs to sample apps
API reference documentation, SDKs, helper libraries, quickstarts, and tutorials for your language and platform.
Resource Center
The latest ebooks, industry reports, and webinars
Learn from customer engagement experts to improve your own communication.
Ahoy
Twilio's developer community hub
Best practices, code samples, and inspiration to build communications and digital engagement experiences.