Blippar is an augmented reality mobile app for iOS and Android devices (Windows on the way).

Upon opening the app and holding the phone up to visual ‘markers’, traditional print media, advertising and real-world objects can be recognised and instantly jump to life with exclusive content and interactive opportunities. Users can literally ‘pull’ information, entertainment, offers and augmented reality 3D experiences out of the world around them, simply by holding their phone up to a marker. No clicks, no delays – just instant gratification.

For instance, an artist could have links to their website, social pages, and streaming music come up if the user points Blippar at their CD cover. Or a food brand could have a recipe book appear that showcases all the different uses for the ingredient.

A differentiator for Blippar against other AR apps is that it caches all live campaigns into the app as soon as the person open it for the first time. This way, users can still experience AR without a data connection - perfect for subway campaigns. Beyond that, it doesn’t require additional downloads or app updates to run each campaign. It simply refreshes the content each time you open the app.

Blippar’s clients include Heinz, Wrigley’s, Kit Kat, Asos, and many more. The majority of its campaigns have been in UK where its headquartered, however it is currently ramping up its sales efforts in the US.

For more information, visit Blippar.com.

Last night I went out to The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn to check out the NYC Music Demo night. Great event, here are the companies that demoed:

• Cantora Labs: Music+Tech incubator that allows technologists to focus on the tech by providing the business strategy and music industry contacts. They’re investing in about 8 startups over the next 2 years ($25-100k each) and will be providing space for all of the companies to work in. The founders signed and launched MGMT’s first album, and are now working with their first startup implementing a new tech solution for Lady Gaga’s upcoming tour.
• PlayMySong: Recently featured on TechCrunch, PlayMySong is a free app for iPhone and Android that allows users to cue songs in participating bars and venues. Users can view all the songs in the venue’s library and choose which they want to play. Venues can limit repeats and requests per person.
• TuneSat: TuneSat’s unique audio fingerprint technology monitors hundreds of TV channels and millions of websites around the world, helping rights holders collect millions of dollars that would otherwise have been lost. They can detect the audio even when its shrouded by announcers, crowdnoise, and more. It also captures the entire audio recording for proof of when the song was used.
• Tomahawk: Tomahawk is an open-source music player that connects all of your accounts into one player - including your hard drive music, streaming accounts, and more. If someone shared a link from a service you don’t use, Tomahawk matches the metadata from the link and find the song on another service that you do use eliminating the barrier to listen and discover new music. It does this in addition to all the standard features of other music players like iTunes.
• Blank On Blank: Not a music startup, but a cool guest demo. Blank on Blank gathers old American interviews that have never been heard before from famous figures like Martin Scorsese. It works with journalists and other media outlets to convert and edit tape and digital recordings that were never used into timeless content - ultimately reviving content that would have previously never been used.
• Grooveshark: A free music streaming and playlist service, Grooveshark has over 40 million active users that use their service to discover and share music with their share. Unlike other services, Grooveshark allows anyone to upload their tunes to share making it a great distribution outlet for unsigned and other artists.

In their words:

House Party makes it easy to have a party in your own home and get exclusive access to awesome products for you and your friends. We provide the fun, you provide food, your friends and feedback and promise to have an amazing time.

Our parties are sponsored by the brands you love. By hosting, you and your guests get to try their products and receive an incredible Party Pack chock full of goodies! You don’t pay anything or sell anything. It’s a no-pressure party. Just tell us what you and your guests think. 

House Party collects location, social, income, interest, family, and other data points to ensure the host is a good fit for the brand.

Brands on board at present include Playstation, HGTV, Huggies, Johnsonville, Dole, Courvoisier, and more.

To learn more, go to HouseParty.com.

Video is on the rise - big time. Youtube dominates the market, however even with its re-design it’s pretty poor at discovery. Social networks spark virality, however offer a terrible viewing experience due to all the non-video clutter.

Video curation startups VHX and Shelby.tv are out to solve these problems, and will be something more and more people spend time with in the near future.

Why?

1. Lean-Back: Video curation tools stream videos back-to-back with no breaks similar to how TV delivers content. Users simply need to select a channel, then sit back, relax, and consume. It increase time of engagement, and can be considered a substitute for television.
2. Relevance: Whether sites curate by social, interest, or location graph info, they offer much greater relevance than TV. Also, content is short-form, which is a fan favorite amongst Gen Y.
3. Any Screen - Although cable programming is doing a better job of offering content on any screen, its still expensive and nowhere as easy as just pushing play on VHX or Shelby. Shelby has iPhone and iPad apps, can connect to Apple TV, and work on your computer. That’s huge.

Although neither offer formal ad opportunities at present, they’ll ultimately be able to increase views, interaction, and virality as both platforms have built social into the core of their products.

i strongly encourage everyone to play around w/ both products and see what you think. Shelby’s strength is its social curation and any screen compatibility, allowing users to pull videos from their Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr feeds.

In addition to social, VHX offers a list of non-social channel including Boing Boing, Buzzfeed, and more. It also allows users to create and embed playlists making it a great solution for blog content.

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Also, if you’re looking for music videos, the founder of VHX hacked together a Pandora for music videos called Music Video Genome. They don’t promote it, so it’ll be our little secret, okay?

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In conclusion, video curation is the future of content and will continue to eat up market share of people’s online viewing time in the coming years. These two players are ahead of the curve and are definitely something to keep an eye on.

The following list is from Betabeat - a solid online publication that provides the best coverage of the NYC tech scene. Click here to read this article in full. I’m only re-posting the startup overviews.
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Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator is a seed stage incubator based in New York City that just accepted its 2nd class of startups. Here is the complete list of startups:

Appy Couple:

Appy Couple lets you quickly, easily, and affordably create a gorgeous mobile app to share all the excitement of your wedding with invited guests. The Appy platform populates a mobile app in real time, and includes features like picture uploads, virtual champagne, countdown, and geolocation.www.appycouple.com

Cinchifieds:

Cinchifieds is the world’s simplest marketplace. Users catalog what they’re interested in buying or selling, and Cinchifieds does all the work, delivering matches directly to you. Cinchifieds makes buying and selling a cinch.www.cinchifieds.com

Dibsie:

Dibsie makes it easy to find, organize and discover products online by integrating social networking with powerful search capability. Dibsie streamlines the process for discovering and sharing products by allowing users to search thousands of retailers and brands, then bookmark favorites for sharing through a mutually-curated catalog.www.dibsie.com

LocalBonus:

LocalBonus allows consumers to use their existing credit and debit cards as their loyalty card at local merchants and gives merchants an easy way to deploy a rewards program to build customer loyalty.www.localbonus.com

Pictorious:

Pictorious is a photo-sharing game that creates a fun way to explore the world, meet new people and earn awesome rewards and prizes. Pictorious also helps brands and merchants engage with and attract customers.www.pictorious.com

ShareRebate:

ShareRebate is a referral tool that helps mobile app developers get more downloads. The referral tool seamlessly integrates into any mobile app and starts to offer users of the app rewards for recommending the app to friends and family.www.sharerebate.com

Stray Boots:

Stray Boots turns the walking tour on its head through its cell phone-guided, interactive urban games in cities throughout the U.S. Stray Boots curates the games and delivers them to customers’ phones via its proprietary software, taking urban explorers on an adventure that’s more fun, engaging and flexible than other ways to explore the city.www.strayboots.com

STYLYT:

Stylyt is redefining the way fashion brands acquire loyal fans. Partnering with contemporary and boutique brands, Stylyt launches collaborative fashion design campaigns that allow any user to customize an item in a collection, vote on user entries and even choose the winning design entry to be manufactured and sold.www.stylyt.com

Wizpert:

Wizpert is a real-time platform that instantly matches people who need advice with experts who are qualified to provide it on a wide range of topics from parenting to relationships and nutrition. Wizpert offers immediate access to a simple, helpful form of human communication. Talking. www.wizpert.com

WowWombat:

WowWombat is an event sponsorship marketplace that provides an easy way for businesses to find and interact with their target audience. A business selects events to sponsor based on the demographics they want to reach and scale they can afford—while event organizers post event details to receive sponsorship.www.wowwombat.com

Everyone’s familiar with email, the cost-effective channel that brands are shifting more and more budget to each year. While it isn’t the sexiest weapon in the marketing arsenal, there’s a few new players in the space looking to spice things up a bit - Sailthru and Movable Ink.

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Movable Ink’s app allow users to stream live content into their emails. Every time someone opened opens an email, their technology serves live content based on the time, recipient’s locations, social context, and your business rules - increasing the emails relevance and context for every user.

The dynamic content can include:

Via TechCrunch. Read the full article here.

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NYC-based Blueprint Health, a health-focused member of the TechStars Network, is announcing its inaugural class of startups today. The Winter program, which begins on January 9th, will be taking place in a 12,000 square foot loft in SoHo that will be shared with the Health 2.0 NYC team starting later this month. Part of the loft may also be turned into a co-working space for other healthcare-focused area entrepreneurs.

5 O’Clock Records (Draper, UT)

Led by Matthew Cottrell, 5 O’Clock Records helps doctors reduce phone calls by direct requests for medical records from health insurance companies, lawyers, and others to a website where the requester can submit request information, verification, and pay for the request with a credit card.  Matthew is a serial healthcare entrepreneur who previously founded MediConnect.net, grew the business to $22 million revenue and sold it to private equity firm.

AHEAD Research (Baltimore, MD)

Led by Craig Monsen and David Do, AHEAD Research helps care management companies reduce call times by implementing triage best practices and large-scale data analysis of medical information.  Craig and David are both Johns Hopkins medical school students and Ruby programmers.  Craig designed and built a computer-based system for the diagnosis of heart disease using an electronic stethoscope, while David built a handheld device for blind people to detect people in their environments using a thermal camera.

AidIn (Boston, MA)

Led by Russ Graney and Michael Galbo, AidIn makes discharge planning easy by creating an online system to manage discharge planning coordination and billing with nursing agencies.  Russ previously founded and led a high-performing charter school in Brooklyn and Michael previously started a company that converted waste into hydrogen and was a semi-finalist in MassChallenge.

iCouch (Shanghai, China)

Led by Brian Dear and Jessica Dear, iCouch provides a platform for counselors to conduct video counseling sessions and manage the billing process.  Brian is a self-taught iOS and Rails programmer and creator of ClassCloud, a cloud-based classroom management system.  Jessica has been a private practice counselor for over five years.

InquisitHealth (Secaucus, NJ)

Led by Ashwin Patel and Brijesh Patel, InquisitHealth connects recent and experienced patients to new patients based on medical procedure, surgery or treatment.  Ashwin has a PhD from the Wharton and is an MD candidate from Weill-Cornell Medical College.  Brijesh is experienced in web development, information architecture and product management.

Meddik (Philadelphia, PA)

Led by Tim Soo and Ben Shyong, Meddik is a search engine for health that ranks results based on a user’s symptom set, clinical attributes, and demographics.  Tim is a Penn medical student and programmer who built Invisible Instrument, a Wiimote & iPhone gestural-based instrument that won an MTV Award.  Ben is a Web-developer and programmer, having built a real-time transit tool for the Philadelphia transit system and started a bubble-tea restaurant.

Patient Communicator (New York, NY)

Led by Jeff Novich, Patient Communicator is a practice management solution that will help providers reduce phone calls related to refill requests, payment, and appointment scheduling.  Jeff is serial entrepreneur, having previously founded an education start-up and a cab sharing iOS app, and has a computer science and physic degrees from Johns Hopkins and an MS from Columbia.

Procured Health (Dubai, UAE)

Led by Hani Elias and Will Danford, Procured Health will reduce hospital costs by improving medtech product evaluation and purchasing.  Hani is a founding member of McKinsey’s Center for US Health System Reform, a Soros Fellow and holds a BA, JD and MPH from Harvard University.  Will has led development of Facebook and ESPN mobile applications for the new Windows OS.

Needl (Minneapolis, MN)

Led by Rashaun Sourles and Michael Winikoff, Needl is a Q&A web platform that connects healthcare professionals to industry vendors.  Previously, Rashaun spent 7 years in pharma sales at J&J and earned the “President’s Circle” designation, putting him in the top 10% of J&J reps worldwide based on sales.  Michael previously started a technology consultancy focused on graphic design.