Innovators to Watch

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What do you do when you want to disconnect telephone service, but reserve your telephone number for future use? You park the number in NumberGarage. A collaboration of Freedom Communications USA and My Media Moxie, NumberGarage of Dickson, TN is a deceptively simple service that allows consumers to effectively take ownership of their telephone number.

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CauseTV is the online platform (in beta) that enables conversation between personal causes, organizations, and cause-affiliated consumer brands, creating an environment where causes and products interact with their most loyal advocates.

The core of the offering is a “social responsibility framework” that combines video interaction, peer participation, and sponsored causes into an emotional experience designed to engage users and encourage values-based purchase decisions.

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Led by a team of experts in analytics and enterprise data management from the commercial and academic worlds, Truviso of Foster City, CA evolved its core technology from research conducted by Michael Franklin, PhD., a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.

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The wireless networking client software in Windows is a necessary evil, one that we love to hate. The WeFi wireless networking software replaces the built-in Windows client with a much better one, while also adding features including geo-targeted ads, community functionality, and server side aggregation of valid and open access points within range. This is a great feature when you are roaming because you are connected automatically to access points previously used by other WeFi clients.

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Ooyala is a next-generation video distribution and ad integration platform that acts as the intersection point for a community of video producers, viewers, and advertisers. Ooyala’s technology consists of an image recognition system that identifies and tags key images in a video, such as a car or an actor.

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The idea behind Frengo is to allow friends to share content over mobile telephones. The company’s Buzz platform delivers social messaging, social play, and interactive marketing to circles of friends via SMS, MMS, and WAP. Registered users can join existing groups or start their own buzz group. Additionally, users can choose to keep their social circles private or open them to the public.

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VoiceIndigo’s software platform delivers podcasts to mobile phones. The service is advertising supported, matching podcasters and advertisers via Podsense, a self-service licensing program for content providers. The ads are context sensitive and non-intrusive because they are visual. Users can complete transactions without interrupting the audio, using VoiceIndigo’s Ambient Advertising platform that enables click-to-call, click-to-buy, and click-for-information. VoiceIndigo plans to add behavioral and location-based ads in the future.

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Mobile Campus of Atlanta, GA partners with colleges that want to reach their students via text messaging by providing a free Web-based interface to the university. The service enables real-time SMS notifications and can be used by college administrators, faculty, school clubs, and other organizations, but students must opt in to receive messages. Students also receive ads along with their college’s messages, which provide the funding for the service.

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