WhozAround: Twitter For Your Calendar

This summer I've had the pleasure of watching a new tech company be born right in my back yard. It's called Peoples' Software, and it's the brain child of two of the smartest community-minded entrepreneurs I know: Susan Mernit and Lisa Williams.

People's Software is one of the latest projects of TechStars, a venture capital and mentoring program in Boulder, Colorado that's generating some very interesting and cutting-edge startups. Among them is the social network aggregator service SocialThing, which was just acquired by AOL.

Lisa Williams provides a sneak peak of their company's first Facebook app, WhozAround, on the People's Software blog. She calls it "Twitter for your calendar," and it's all about making it easy to organize events without requiring people to sign up for another service. The events come to you through the social network or platform you use most -- initially Facebook, but eventually also Twitter, e-mail and your mobile device. This makes a ton of sense, especially the mobile component, for which eVite -- the service I use for invitations -- is a disaster.

I haven't seen the full service yet, but based on the track record of these two smart, accomplished women, I think it's worth following. Tomorrow I'll be hearing more about People's Software and other TechStars programs at a presentation in Boulder.

Full disclosure: Susan is running next year's Knight News Challenge, for which I'm a screener, and Lisa is a News Challenge winner from the previous year for PlaceBlogger. I also briefly worked with Susan at AOL years ago. I initially learned about their project because I know them, but it's not why I'm talking about it. I really think they're onto something with the idea of leveraging social services people are already using instead of creating yet another destination.

whozaround, techstars, peoplessoftware

Printcasting in the Blogosphere

The word about Printcasting is starting to spread on the blogosphere. Here are a few recent posts mentioning the project -- for which we are very grateful.

• Fernando Pizarro of the Honolulu Advertiser puts Printcasting in the context of a larger trend of reverse publishing. Many newspapers, like the Advertiser but also The Bakersfield Californian, now publish content online first and then feed it into print publications.
  
  I think the big difference with Printcasting is a) that we give total publishing power over to regular people, b) we allow it to happen automatically, c) we don't require printing and distribution in order for people to read, as they can also subscribe to receive PDFs in e-mail, and d) there's a significant self-sere advertising component that is not dependent on a sales person for every ad.
  
  
• Kristen Taylor from The Knight Foundation is publicizing our screencast of early User Interface concepts.
  
  
• The AFP's MediaWatch site is including a link to my MediaShift Idea Lab post.
  
  
• Fellow News Challenge winner David Cohn posted this impromptu video of a demo I gave him at the MIT Future of Civic Media conference. (I reluctantly link to it, but not because of Dave, who rocks. I really hate videos of myself. So focus on the ideas and not on the bumbling, talking head :-)
  
  Speaking of Dave, check out his own News Challenge project Spot.us, which will take the idea of community-funded reporting to new levels. If there's a story you want to fund, you'll be able to drop some coins in a tip jar -- kind of like Barack Obama's approach to election fund raising. Very cool! Hopefully one day every Spot.us reporter can have an instant Printcast, too.
  
  
• And finally, 2007 News Challenge winner Lisa Williams says she can't wait for us to build Printcasting so she can have an instant magazine for her blog. Music to my ears!
  
  Speaking of Lisa, she and Susan Mernit are now in a partnership together for a new company called Peoples' Software. There aren't many details available yet about what they plan to build, but I've talked to both and I can see the light in their eyes. It will be fun to see what these two smart innovators cook up! Susan is also also running the Knight News Challenge for its 2007/2008 round.

printcasting, knight news challenge