Virtual Reality: Real Products for Cyberspace

Virtual reality got me interested in technology in the early 1990′s.  Two decades ago, “cyberspace” was still an exciting new concept.  I’ve met several virtual reality pioneers over the years, including VPL Research co-founder Jaron Lanier, hardware hacker Mitch Altman, and cyberpunk sci-fi author Rudy Rucker.  The vision for virtual reality was the ability to put on a […]

Project Runway: Wearable Devices Edition

New York Fashion Week is going on right now.  Samsung also just showed off their new Gear smartwatch.  Coincidence?  I think not.  I intentionally wrote 8 Fashion-Related Startups Funded By YC earlier this year when wearable electronics were being widely discussed.  More collaboration between these two markets, Fashion and Devices, could result in some very inspiring products.  Here are […]

YC S13 Demo Day

Y Combinator is having its semi-annual Demo Day today.  This time it’s for YC S13, which contains 53 companies.  By Demo Day, most of these companies have already launched in the technical press.  As of writing this, I already have 45 of the 53 companies in YC S13 on my complete list of known Y […]

Dropbox Hosts Developer Conference

How much longer can Dropbox charge for something everybody else is now offering for free?  The answer to that question seems to involve developers.  Dropbox DBX was held Tuesday, the company’s first ever developer conference.  New developer resources were announced.  There was also a Q & A session with questions about the company’s business model and […]

Xobni Acquired By Yahoo!

Xobni has been acquired by Yahoo!  The company, from YC S06, made the announcement today on the Xobni company blog.  Xobni “makes your inbox and address book smarter by making it easy to search and discover all your contacts.”  It provides “a full view of each contact, complete with their photo, job title, company details, and email […]

Crocodoc Acquired By Box

Crocodoc has been acquired by Box, announced by Box via press release and Crocodoc’s company blog.  Crocodoc is a YC W10 company that makes document-management technology that is used primarily by businesses.  Crocodoc’s products include software that converts Microsoft Office files into HTML5, secure document embedding and sharing solutions, and workflow collaboration tools.  This acquisition is an exciting […]

Reddit Plans Strategic Partnerships

Reddit, from YC’s original batch in 2005, has recently hired startup investor Ellen Pao.  According to the announcement, the past few months have been a time of unprecedented growth for reddit.  Ms. Pao’s role at the company involves managing strategic partnerships that benefit the community.  She’s previously served as an advisor to reddit.

COLOURlovers Is A Visual Community

COLOURlovers enables you to create color palettes, share custom patterns, name colors, and discuss color inspiration ideas.  Over a million user-submitted color palettes is the site’s feature attraction, all of which can be downloaded in various formats.  COLOURlovers has various tools for selecting colors that work well together, gathering color palettes from photos, and customizing the Twitter. […]

Companies

General Description
Data Nitro
  • Batch: ycs12
  • Location:
  • CrunchBase: n/a
  • Hacker News: n/a
  • Status: live
  • Market:
Data Nitro enables you to to use the popular programming language Python in Microsoft Excel. The plugin is free for individual non-commercial and enterprises will pay for the privilege. So far it's only available for the Excel 2007 and 2010 for Windows. The company has no plans to support OSX.
Meta SpaceGlasses
  • Batch: ycs13
  • Location: Los Altos Hills, CA
  • CrunchBase: meta-spaceglasses
  • Hacker News: n/a
  • Status: live
  • Market: devices, hardware, components (manufactured goods)
Meta is a pair of augmented reality glasses that also detects motion in front of it. Meta is essentially Google Glass meets Microsoft Kinect.
Startuply
  • Batch: ycs08
  • Location: n/a
  • CrunchBase: startuply
  • Hacker News: n/a
  • Status: live
  • Market: employment resources
Startuply is a job site focused on jobs at startups. The company argues that the average college graduating engineer goes to Google, Microsoft or another large tech company is that they don't know about smaller startups, where they may have more responsibility and be happier. Startuply aims to solve this problem.

The company allows free job listings from startups, and gives them the opportunity to create extensive profiles that describe what they do. They also provide startups a widget that they can use to list their jobs on their own websites.

The company was previously called Jowba, which launched in late February of 2008.
Swapbox
  • Batch: ycw13
  • Location: San Francisco, CA; Palo Alto, CA
  • CrunchBase: swapbox
  • Hacker News: n/a
  • Status: live
  • Market: logistics, shipping, and warehousing
Swapbox is a startup based in San Francisco, founded by a team with work experience from Google, Microsoft, and Zynga. With Swapbox you no longer have to worry about missing deliveries. Use your Swapbox shipping address and your packages will be waiting for you at our nearest location. Swapbox is currently available on Stanford Campus in Palo Alto and in San Francisco.
ZigFu
  • Batch: ycs11
  • Location: San Francisco
  • CrunchBase: n/a
  • Hacker News: n/a
  • Status: live
  • Market: platform as a service
ZigFu is an app store for motion control apps that run on Microsoft's Kinect platform. The company provides tools for gesture-controlled interfaces and full-body motion games.