DEMO vs TC50. DEMO raises the bar – offers $2 million to winners.

Written on 3rd July 2009                                                                                                              124 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.

Until two years ago, DEMO, a conference franchise owned by technology publisher IDG, ruled the roost when it came to ‘company demonstration’ conferences. It took Techcrunch’s TC50 to really ruffle some feathers before the 17-year-old conference finally had some real competition.

The core differences between the two conferences? Well DEMO charges companies for the privilege of attending (the fee is now more than $18,000), whist TC50 primarily charges its sponsors (as well as companies presenting in their ‘demo pit’). DEMO tends to have larger, well funded companies promoting their goods. TC50 is a less glitzy affair, bringing unfunded companies often (more…)

conferences, demo, techcrunch50

124 Comments »

Spellr.us launches, free spell checking for one month

Written on 12th September 2008                                                                                                              7 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Remote spell checking service Spellr.us has launched at Techcrunch50. Bloggers who have problems with spelling and grammar (like me, since English is my second language) can now count on the services of the Spellr.us scan. They remotely monitor your blog or website and send you updates when they find errors and typos. This service will eventually cost money, but is free for the first month.

In a triumphal email, the Australia-based service tells its beta users that it has also improved several features – like reporting and custom dictionaries. Spellr.us has also introduced RSS feeds of errors, scheduled scans, and content filtering.

Boris was the first Next Web editor to report about this service, which was then in closed beta. He expressed the hope that Spellr.us “don’t just do a regular spell check but also look for obvious mistakes like mixing up “there” “they’re” and “their”. These errors are common on a lot of blogs and unfortunately aren’t corrected by most spelling checkers.” I’m not sure Spellr.us has introduced yet, since the mistakes Boris discusses also pop up in Spellr.us emails:

Australia, spell checking, spellr.us, techcrunch50

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You don’t have to be at Techrunch50 to see Techcrunch50

Written on 8th September 2008                                                                                                              4 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

There you go. Live video from Techcrunch50. Now you will be able to pretend you where there. You can even watch previous presentations. Thanks Techcrunch for generously sharing this with the rest of us!

Live Videos by Ustream

livestream, TechCrunch, techcrunch50, ustream, Video Interview

4 Comments »