Apart from keynote presentations (e.g. Matt Mullenweg, Bradley Horowitz, Jeff Jarvis, Chris Sacca), Pecha Kucha presentations and a Twitter ecosystem session, 24 startups get the opportunity to show their new product or service for free to the 900 Internet professionals who are attending The Next Web Conference.
All startups get 5 minutes on main stage to impress the highly tech savvy in the so called The Next Web Rising Sun Startup Rally.

In total 200 startups submitted their company to present here. After a long and strict jury process the top 19 startups were selected. The 5 other startups are selected by the public via a voting mechanism on twitter and on this blog

Mashable and Techcrunch broke this news this morning.

The finalists are:

yellowBird
Yellow Birds don’t have wings but they fly to make you experience a 3D reality. Launching at The Next Web Conference

Contextured
Contextured is the pain free SEO and SEM solution search marketers have been waiting for. Launching at The Next Web Conference

Prezi
Create stunning presentations that helps you to move beyond the slide

E
E connects people to people and people to services, all in real life. It’s like having all your online identities in your pocket. Launching at The Next Web Conference

Aroxo
Name your own price on thousands of items then negotiate! Launching at The Next Web Conference

Silentale
With Silentale, store all your personal conversations in one place and access them from anywhere. Time travel through your message history.

Klomptek
Remote Device Management solution for mobile business phones. Monitor, access, synchronise and control employees mobile phones via RCM Web (administrator) panel. Launching at The Next Web Conference

ShoutEm
Roll your own Microblogging or Mobile Social Network!

Quick TV
We provide revolutionary online tools & accountable video play-out to media publishers looking to give their videos the interactive edge. Launching at The Next Web Conference

Mimic Media
MimicMe enables online shoppers to fit clothes online with a personalized 3d model and shop real time together with their friends. Launching at The Next Web Conference

Yourtour
YourTour is a unique online solution for tailor-made holidays.

plista
Personalize your internet experience. Launching at The Next Web Conference

Yunoo
Yunoo is a personal finance application where users can get insight into their personal finance, discuss financial topics and save money.

Mendeley
Mendeley: Free academic software to manage & share research papers and a network to discover research trends and like-minded researchers

Huddle.net
Huddle is the world’s greatest collaboration app – beautiful, so usable, open API and fully integrated with Linkedin, Facebook and more

IRL Connect
IRL is the first visual social network on the web to map where your friends are & what they are saying. See your social network on a map. Launching at The Next Web Conference

Visibuild
Bring your architectural 3d to life in an online, interactive 3d project environment. Create a true architectural experience with Visibuild. Launching at The Next Web Conference

tarpipe
tarpipe makes it easy to share content across different social media applications.

CoTweet
CoTweet powers your brand on Twitter. Engage people across your organization to tweet through your brand’s Twitter account as a team.

Descriptions are the answers of the companies to the question; Pitch us Twitter style

A professional jury helps us to select the winners and the ultimate winner during the conference. Jury members are:

* Adeo Ressi, Founding Member of TheFunded.com
* Stewart Townsend, manager startup and emerging markets EMEA, SUN Microsystems
* Barend van de Brande, Big Bang Ventures
* Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon.com
* Robin Wauters, editor TechCrunch, organizer Plugg

We’re really looking forward to see all these great companies at The Next Web. The conference takes place in Amsterdam on April 15, 16 and 17. If you haven’t signed up yet, get your tickets now!

If you develop iPhone Apps and want to demo them onstage you could simply use the Xcode Preview app (or whatever it is called). But here is an app that will give you that real Steve Jobs magic feeling of showing REAL products in REAL time.

Now all you need is jaibroken iPhone, your finished iPhone App and DemoGod. Using a Wi-Fi connection you will be able to demo your iPhone app on the iPhone while its screen will be duplicated on a larger screen behind you. All you need to do is install ScreenSplitr and  Demogod.

This is a Mac only solution and in beta but it will rotate with the iPhone’s accelerometer and works good enough to use in a demo.

Check out this video demo of DemoGod:

The jury selected 20 startups out of 200 submissions to present during The Next Web Conference (to be announced) and last Tuesday we decided to give start-ups who wanted to earn their spot onstage at the conference a second chance. We gave them 2 days to post a YouTube movie with their pitch.

We received 15 pitches (included here) which now all have a chance to appear at The Next Web Conference 2009 and pitch their start-up to an audience of 900 Internet professionals. The 3 startups with the most votes will win (cheating in any way will lead to elimination from this competition)

Vote via the voting poll AND/OR via Twitter:
So now it is up to you. Who do YOU want to see onstage? Who deserves this unique opportunity? You can vote via the poll on the right here AND double your vote by also tweeting @thenextweb I want to see #NameStartup on stage during The Next Web Rising Sun Startup Rally #startupvote
Go for it!

Embed this poll on your own blog or website (copy the code below):

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src=http://twittercounter.com/twittervote/?startup=NameStartup ></script>

The voting closes on Wednesday at noon CET.

The video Pitches (in no particular order):

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T-Mobile Germany, iPhone’s exclusive carrier in Germany, have announced that they would not be allowing customers to use the Skype application on either the iPhone or Blackberry devices.

T-Mobile spokesperson Alexander von Schmettow told the German online site, the Local:

“It is clearly stated in our customer contracts that such services may not be used…There are two reasons for this – because the high level of traffic would hinder our network performance, and because if the Skype programme didn’t work properly, customers would make us responsible for it.”

Tech-savvy users should apparently not even consider figuring out a work-around, because T-Mobile will immediately “cut users off”.

“Those who violate their contracts can expect to have them cancelled. It’s the same with any contract. If you rent a no-pets apartment and expect no one to notice your little dog, you can’t be surprised when your landlord comes knocking.”

Skype have responded to the news in a post on the company’s blog

“This is a real shame: many other operators around the world know very well that people want to use innovative Internet applications, like Skype, and that’s the reason they pay their ISP to access the Internet in the first place. On top of that, there is no technical justification for this arbitrary blocking of Skype, and it represents a barrier to online business put in place by a private company just because they can, because they control access to the Internet.”

Ironically, Skype is currently also the most downloaded iPhone application in Germany.

Headquartered in the UK, Intruders.tv launched May 2007 with little fanfare yet impressed from the start with interesting, often personable interviews with internet entrepreneurs and industry players. Recently the company had appeared irregularly quiet, but it’s to no surprise, as the company were hard at work preparing for a grand relaunch of their internet television service.

The relaunch sees a number of significant changes. The site has been given a design overhaul (with thanks to Howard/Baines), content is no longer country specific but rather language focused and above all, the content is not just internet/technology focused but will also soon be entering music, film and fashion arenas.

Vincent Camara, Intruders.tv’s head of Content and Co-Founder says

“Throughout the last year, Intruders tv registered over 10 million video plays, conducted over 600 interviews and have a library of over 300 hours of HD content available.”

Camara also told Techcrunch’s Robin Wauters, that the company hires 10-15 part time staff and earns its keep via channel sponsorships and revenue sharing with syndicating sites.

Interestingly, the company have also teamed up with satirical European tech and hardware site The Inquirer to bring in a different perspective on technology news.

“Intruders tv is great platform for our readers to now enjoy our unique style of reporting on video. We have already lined up a wide variety of content that both INQUIRER readers and Intruders viewers will enjoy.” says Inquirer Editor Paul Hales

Sadly it appears embedding of Intruders.tv videos doesn’t seem to work with Wordpress, however you can obviously watch directly on their site, stay in touch via RSS or subscribe in iTunes – I highly recommend you do.

Google Street View appears to be causing more controversy in the UK than it did during launch in the US. When the Street View car was spotted in quiet Buckinghamshire village, residents blocked the driver car and told the him to turn around!

Police were called soon after, when villagers staged a protest accusing Google of invading their privacy…

Movie star Demi Moore reported a suicide attempt made on Twitter and appears to have genuinely saved someone’s life in the act.

The Twitterer, Sandieguy, twittered a number of times of her attempt to commit suicide but with little response. One of her ‘final’ tweets, directed at Moore, did however finally trigger a response after Moore retweeted it.

She posted:

“@mrskutcher getting a knife, a big one that is sharp. Going to cut my arm down the whole arm so it doesn’t waste time.”

The woman, based in the San Francisco area, was tracked down by Police and was reportedly unharmed, however she was taken into custody for an evaluation.

Moore posted to her profile

“It is my understanding that the situation was not a joke and that through the collective efforts here, action was taken to provide help,”

Moore’s husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, also twittered

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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone appeared on an American TV show with host Stephen Colbert. For those who are unaware (as I was), Colbert is an “American comedian, satirist, actor and writer, known for his ironic style (particularly in his portrayal of conservative political pundits), and for his deadpan comedic delivery.”

It’s fair to say Colbert really does rip Twitter apart better than any other individual I’ve seen – it’s a must watch whether you’re a fan of Twitter or not. My favorite bit comes right at the end in regard to the Denver plane crash.

On a more serious note, Stone states clearly that a business model is on its way this year.

Hat tip to Mashable for the video.

According to sources at digital hardware site Digitimes, next generation iPhone will sport a 3.2Mp camera. According to the sources, digital imaging firm OmniVision has won an order from Apple to supply the 3.2Mp CMOS image sensors, specifically for use on the next-generation iPhone.

And OmniVision should be please, because the moles also told the site that the company have also won a separate five-year contract to supply Apple with 5Mp sensors for “another Apple product”…intriguing.

image credit

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