Matchup Camp

Photo originally uploaded to Flickr by david parmet

I’m a little late in mentioning this, but I popped down to Manhattan Wednesday night for a bit of MatchupCamp. I only stayed for the first hour, but the turnout was impressive, and the format seemed ideal for the goal of somewhat randomly matching startups and people with ideas with those looking to put their technical/marketing/business skills to work in a startup environment.

There were color-coded name tags, depending on what you were looking for, and an opportunity to post short pitches on the wall and see if you got any bites. I posted the above for allCampus. I spoke with a few nice and smart people. Understandably, they were interested in opportunities that called for jumping in head first. Because of my circumstance, that’s not something I can do right now. I’m hoping to find a technical co-founder who’s looking to moonlight and see where that gets us.

That said, it was nice to get a sense of the tech networking seen in the city. It was an encouraging vibe. (And I met David Parmet, a smart PR/marketing guy whose blog is worth checking out and who took the above shot. Thanks, David!)

Poughkeepsie Playlist Startup Mixaloo Gets the TechCrunch Treatment

As I Twittered earlier today when I first read the news on TechCrunch, reading the words “Poughkeepsie, NY startup…” and realizing that they weren’t followed by a punchline was a pleasant surprise for the Techworking blog where we are interested in and rooting for all things tech in the Hudson Valley.

The startup in question is called Mixaloo, and the idea is to let people create playlists that they can distribute and sell through playable widgets on their blogs and elsewhere on the Web or via e-mail with the promise of a 50-50 cut of any profits. There are plenty of places to make and share playlists (though one less after Yahoo recently shuttered Webjay). My personal favorite right now is imeem. The prospect of getting paid may well entice people to use Mixaloo. You can also grab other people’s playlists and promote them on your own sites.

The big drawback — as with all most things music — is DRM. So although you can pull songs from all the major labels into your playlist, you (and your potential buyers) are saddled with 30-second clips. You can customize the widgets and set up is quick. I got in to the private beta but haven’t yet set up a playlist (and couldn’t embed it here on a WordPress-hosted blog anyway) but you can see examples at TechCrunch and on Yohay’s blog.

The TechCrunch review and comments therein are mostly positive (though everyone points out the eternal DRM bummer). Either way, it’s just nice to see a local startup and even nicer to see it getting some attention. I’ll follow up with another post after I’ve played around with the service and perhaps try it out on my old Blogger blog.