After taking a short hiatus from writing for the past few weeks, I had a chance to attend Scott Kirsner’s Tech Blog event last night.  It was great event that was much less of a traditional “panel” and more of an interactive discussion between a group of bloggers.  It was also refreshing to attend a Boston tech event that, as Chuck Tanowitz mentions on his post, did not start with a “what is a blog” section.  If you would like the real play-by-play on the event, you can check out Paul Gillin’s round up or Dan Bricklin’s podcast.

I also had a chance to talk with a few startups including Raj Bala who is currently developing BigSwerve, a very interesting concept that will aggregate the comments posted on blogs via a web crawler.   When they work out some of the kinks, BigSwerve could present a whole new way to track a persons identity through their comments across multiple blogs.  

In addition to Scott Kirshner, the panel included:

- Don Dodge, Director of Business Development, Microsoft Emerging Business Team

- Jimmy Guterman, Editor of Release 2.0

- Barbara Heffner, CHEN PR Partner 

- Nabeel Hyatt, Conduit Labs CEO

- Bijan Sabet, Spark Capital VC

Event sponsors included Cambridge Innovation Center, CHEN PR, Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton, and Schwartz Public Relations.

I look forward to the next event and will hopefully see you there.

GO RED SOX!  My prediction…Sox in 6.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Finally back in the saddle and ready to start writing again after my extended hiatus from the blog.  As if anyone actually cares…I spent the past week in Paris visiting the rest of the 3DVIA team (the current day job) to get ready for some upcoming projects and product releases.

If you have an interest anywhere in the 3D industry you can check out some of the current releases including 3dvia.com (a 3D “Flickr” community), Virtools (3D interactive development platform) and the alpha version of TVnima (produce your own 3D news shows…early, but very cool).

Now back to Boston Web 2.o…

I had a great time today at Tastybytes, the new networking lunch today put on by Compete and Yahoo. It was a decent mix of over 50 tech entrepreneurs, agency folks and VCs grouped together in one great location on the water. This could be one of the next events to attend.

“We created tastybytes lunches as a fun, informal way to bring people together to network and share new ideas about the web, marketing, technology.”

It’s worth checking out the next time Stephen and the folks at Compete schedule the 3rd installment.

The event was held at the Foster’s Pavilion at the Boston Harbor. What a great excuse to get out of the office today and have lunch on the water!

Technorati Tags: Events, Networking, Compete, Yahoo, Boston Web 2.0

Utterz.com, a Maynard based site that I first covered earlier this year and one of the few technology stories that broke on 93south, came back out of stealth today and expanded their product offering to include impulse publishing of both pictures and video in addition to the original voice service. I had a chance to play around with the service this weekend and was impressed with the changes and progress that they have made.

Think of Utterz as Twitter for audio, pics and video. Utterz is a very simple concept where registered users call a pre-set number (712-432-6666) to leave short sound clips (or Utterz) that are automatically posted on the users Utterz profile. With this release, Utterz now allows users to accompany their posted messages with both pictures and video that can be submitted via email or site upload. The pictures and video are automatically matched to the previous voice utter on the website.

The company also followed the advice from my previous post and added a selection of widgets (Ok…I’m sure they were planning on it anyway) that allow you to publish your latest Utterz to your blog or online profiles. Notice my Utterz widget in the sidebar - not much of a set I must admit but I’m not sure if I am the real target.

One of the interesting parts of the overall concept is that it allows a 2-way conversation through a blog-like comment system. Users have the ability to post responses to each message through the website or directly through the phone number. When you call in, the automated attendant will notify you that their are replies waiting for your messages and give you the ability to respond…almost voice texting in a way.

This new “micro-blogging” service still has a few bugs to work out and I will be curious to see how they will handle offensive content even in a community policed format. However, I think that the new feature set combined with the site’s clever branding (a bit refreshing for east coast standards) have the potential to turn Utterz into a very popular service.

RPM Communications, the maker of Utterz and Foonz, also announced a $4 million Series A round of funding led by Morgenthaler Ventures.

Technorati tags: utterz, boston web 2.0, maynard, mobile, technology, sms, video, audio, twitter, start-up, launch

Love Web 2.0, Live Web 2.0?
Keep up to date on the latest web 2.0 technology from your browser - Add The Web 2.0 Toolbar today!