I think I honed this skill while working at Arris Interactive.  You see, there I was the first Systems Engineer hired and often ran testing for products before they shipped.  In this capacity I viewed it as my job to make sure products never shipped.  Because when they did, I knew they were solid and that I had discovered as many problems as possible before they hit the field.

My latest display of this prowess was again completely unintentional. I saw the recent post of DailyBooth on TechCrunch and thought I should get over there and claim my username (occasionally other “Sanjay”s land grab “sanjay” before I can and thus I have to settle for “sanjayparekh”).  In playing with the site I somehow autofollowed a bunch of suggested users. I thought “no, I don’t want that” and in an effort to clean that up, I ended up somehow confusing the system into thinking that I’m following nearly 4.3 billion users on DailyBooth. Although the site is getting good traction, I’m thinking there aren’t that many users there.  Especially since none are listed on my following page.  I’m sure that will get fixed at some point but for now you can see for yourself that I’m shown to be following nearly 4.3 billion users.

So the point is, do you have a really good person who is testing your app and is capable of breaking it in ways you didn’t even imagine? If not, it’s going to fall on people like me who have that ability and that isn’t gong to be fun for any of us.

UPDATE: DailyBooth fixed my following counts. Good on them. Wonder if I can break it again…

EventHive started life under a different name (ConfTek). The founders wisely realized that people would misspell the name of their company so they found a better name over the summer.  In a nutshell, EventHive gives conference organizers the ability to create a shared discussion forum for a conference. Okay, so that doesn’t sound that different than using a hashtag on Twitter right? Well, they’ve also thrown in the ability to do live polling of the audience through their platform. The integration with presentation tools is great and provides for real audience interactivity without having the downside of the guy getting the microphone for a “question” and instead launching into a monologue. That right there is total gold. This post may go up too late for you to participate in the forum for demo day but just in case, you can check it out here.  For those of you coming to Startup Riot in 2010, you may see this company again.

Looxii also started this summer under a different name (honestly, I’ve forgotten what that name was so it’s probably good that they changed). Now you know that anything Twitter related would be something I love. And Looxii is no different.  Looxii provides some great analysis of real time trends on Twitter and blog posts based on what you’re interested in.  The implementation is fantastic and really lets the non-techie get up and running quickly.  The guys from Looxii have really nailed a drop dead simple interface that gives you what you want without jumping through a lot of hoops.

ShoutNow is a pretty awesome business.  Coming to us at the start of the summer ShoutNow already had a considerable service and business built.  In case you don’t know, ShoutNow was hatched at Indianapolis Startup Weekend late last year.  I’ve known these guys for a while since they even came down to present at Startup Riot this year.  So clearly I was a fan before they started with us this summer.  In a nutshell ShoutNow lets anyone send mass messages to people over the phone.  Pricing is simple and the entire process is self serve. Now your business, organization, or even your personal life can be managed via phone messages to those you need to talk to.  Again, a simple straightforward service that is priced simply. Oh yeah, they’ve even been covered by Mashable.

SocialGuides is an interesting twist on everything being discussed about the real-time web.  A lot of people are looking towards Twitter and other sources and trying to categorize what is being discussed. This is pretty difficult and fraught with pitfalls.  Instead the SocialGuides folks encourage you to talk but about the places that you’re going to or have been to.  In doing so you automatically can see what people have said about a place before you go there.  The great benefit of categorizing this way is that your comments are easily relevant and can be found by your friends or those who follow you.  I haven’t used SocialGuides as much as I should have but you can find me as sanjay on SocialGuides.

If you’re going through the trouble to read this blog post you hopefully know who I am and have some level of trust with what I’m writing.  But what if you start reading a post from someone you don’t know.  How can you be sure that they are an authority on what they are writing about?  Maybe they’re just a crackpot.  This is the problem that Zeta solves.  They’ve got some algorithms to crunch and analyze your online persona to determine just how good of a contributor you are and how much trust someone should put into what you write.  Take a look and feel free to check out my ZetaPage although I clearly think my rating should be WAY higher. :-)

Ninja Post is tackling the whole issue of real-time collaboration.  Ninja Post provides a service that lets sites run their own intelligent customer forum service.  Sure there are forum services out there already you’re saying.  Well, compared to what Ninja Post has, they suck.  All of those forum providers have updates that are based on the very web 1.0 model of post/update/refresh.  Ninja Post has a much better back end that allows more collaborative discussions and lets companies really engage with their customers.  Plus they have all kinds of AJAX hotness.

So you use open source software, huh? But if you need help with your open source software where do you go? Oh, you’re going to start that painful cycle of trying random keywords in your search engine of choice.  Yeah, that’s going to be fun.  OpenHatch is changing how open source developers are working with themselves and with their userbase.  OpenHatch is building a community that aims to help open source developers connect with other developers, projects that need their expertise, job opportunities, and the user base that needs their help.  The end result?  Better open source software for all of us. Now that’s an idea I can totally get behind.

Okay, we all know it – I’m not the most advanced when it comes to gadgetry for my mobile device.  That said, Khush has coolness to it that I wish it would run on my Razr (okay, maybe I’ll get a new phone before the next decade).  So you think you can sing but it doesn’t sound good without some musical background to it? Khush has got your back. Their first app, LaDiDa, lets you record any vocal track that you aren’t embarrassed to sing out loud (this is gonna be huge in Japan).  After recording the track the software automatically adds background music based on some simple selections you provide.  But know that this isn’t just adding the same repeating background to a song like the five dollar synthesizer you had as a kid.  The software analyzes the vocal track and matches up the music and beats to your voice.  That means the song is different every time you record a track.

That’s it. Eight great companies over a great first summer.  Keep an eye out for these folks. There is some great stuff cooking here and we’ll definitely see more from all of these companies and these entrepreneurs.

297 E. Broad St.
Athens, Georgia 30601

If you’re an entrepreneur, angel investor, or VC you’re welcome to join us. If you’re not one of those three things, you’re welcome to stay away from this get together.

Feel free to RSVP below. Or don’t and just show up. Whatever.

After the event I’m heading over to UGA to speak to an entrepreneurship class.  I’ve been told I can bring along people too.  That class runs from 2pm until 4:45pm so if you want to come afterwards, you can just follow me along to UGA.

Also, do you find keeping up with these local events tough? If so, I’ve started an announcements only mailing list that you can subscribe to. Just send an email to atlstartups-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and you’ll get the announcements. I plan to keep the list postings to about one every few days at most but in no case more than one a day. Or you can just keep coming here to read the latest event scoop.

If you’re an entrepreneur, angel investor, or VC you’re welcome to join us. If you’re not one of those three things, you’re welcome to stay away from this get together.

Feel free to RSVP below or on the Upcoming event. Or don’t and just show up. Whatever.

Also, do you find keeping up with these local events tough?  If so, I’ve started an announcements only mailing list that you can subscribe to.  Just send an email to atlstartups-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and you’ll get the announcements.  I plan to keep the list postings to about one every few days at most but in no case more than one a day.  Or you can just keep coming here to read the latest event scoop.

Thanks again to Greg Foster for letting me announce his attendance before hand (he posted a comment as to why he couldn’t stay the whole time).  I think Greg is going to try and come as is Alan Taetle from Noro-Moseley.  Also, thanks to Alan Koenning for showing up.  I totally didn’t know he was going to show which I think bodes well for how much folks want to get engaged in the local community.  Kudos!

So with that, here are the details of the next Open Coffee.  We’re going to do it on August 27th from 2pm until 5pm or so at Cafe Intermezzo Dunwoody across from Perimeter Mall (unlike the Starbucks at Georgia Tech, there is definitely free WiFi from 10am until 7pm at Cafe Intermezzo).  Some of you may realize that this is the same day as Capital Lounge.  Hopefully Open Coffee will be the pre-lounge get together for some of you.  I’m planning on grabbing some food after Open Coffee (perhaps at Alon’s?) and before heading to Capital Lounge.  Feel free to plan for that and tag along with me.  I’d be happy to have the company.

Note, I don’t manage, organize, or control Capital Lounge.  That’s another crew in town.  So don’t beg me for a pass to get into Capital Lounge.  I won’t be able to help you.

Feel free to let folks know you’ll be attending by leaving a comment, posting on the event on Upcoming.org, or just go stealth and show up.

If you don’t feel like clicking (it can be tiring), you can just watch my introductory comments or Drew Curtis’ keynote (way more entertaining) (I separated out Drew’s talk from mine – you can find Drew’s talk here) below.  Enjoy!

I’m working on a couple of projects and I hope to start announcing stuff soon.  In the meantime, I post a lot more frequently to Twitter but I’ll keep doing longer posts here.  But in the short term, follow me on Twitter for updates.