Refresh Phoenix - Demo Night

Last night was the June Refresh Phoenix meeting and it was another demo night. The turnout wasn't quite as impressive as it was the last demo night, where we completely packed the coffee shop. Yet, there were plenty of people in attendance and a couple of lively discussions came out. Aaron used a timer and limited the number of people presenting so this demo night ran smoother than previous sessions. It was a great improvement and made for an enjoyable evening.

Earth911.org
Jason Ayers, the CTO from Global Alerts, showed the redesign of Earth911.org. Earth911 started as a hotline in 1991 in Arizona and was later adopted nationwide. It has the largest database of recycling info on the web. The goal of the site is to provide easy access to recycling and hazardous disposal information for household consumers.

Jason demoed the site before the redesign and talked about the teams' process. Earth911 is built on a customized version of WordPress which makes it easy for the non-technical staff to create content. Jason also shared Global Alerts' experience with the Oprah Effect when Earth911 was highlighted on the show on Earth Day. Most impressively to me, Jason highlighted the team of people who worked on the redesign - Josh Gomez, Dave (whose last name is escaping me at the moment), Matt Bob Jones, and Larry Cummings.

Ajaxm
Jason Shipley demoed TenShip's domain management tool, Ajaxm. As a web development shop, they found the need to manage all their customer info and created Ajaxm out of it. It looked to be a handy tool and since its so new, they're offering free accounts to Refresh members.

Red Wrangler
Tim Slaven who described himself as a "web professional," demoed a tool he built for his clients and one that he's thinking about allowing other web developers to use for a fee. It's a tool for the customer to manage all things relating to their website. It holds usernames and passwords for web services so that he never again has to remind a client how to get to their web host or stat counter. It also is a content management system to make it easier for his clients to update their sites. Tim eats his own dog food and uses the same tool to manage his customers which saves him a lot of time.

JumpBox
Sean Tierney, COO of JumpBox, provided the most interesting demo of the night in my opinion. First off, Sean is a great public speaker, very comfortable and engaging. Second, JumpBox is an amazingly useful tool and this was my first time to see it demoed. JumpBox's mission is to take open sourced Linux apps and make them dead simple to use. So instead of spending days setting up tools like Subversion and Trac, you can install a JumpBox and be up and running the app(s) in under 5 minutes.

JumpBox is a virtualized server which has all the necessary components to run the applications. It can be easily moved from machine to machine without losing any data. Currently, JumpBoxes run on VMWare, Parallels, and Zen images. Right now JumpBox provides 9 different applications for free, but plan on implementing fees in the next month. The Refreshers pointed out how much time would be saved and flexibility gained by using a JumpBox. It was clear that people would pay for the product.

Social Media Cards
Chase Granberry started this service because he believes bloggers need business cards. At SocialMediaCards, you can get a business card for yourself that has the same design as your blog template (if you're using one of the default themes). Currently, the system supports a number of WordPress and Blogger themes and they look great. During beta, Chase is offering 100 cards free, you only pay for shipping. Discussion with the group made it clear this idea could take off in a number of different directions so I'm sure Chase went home with lots to think about.

ShareEver
James Able demoed the tool he built with Peter Thatcher called ShareEver. It is a tool which allows you to share files across the internet with all of your PCs. The files are saved on each machine so when you disconnect from the network, you have them locally. The app easily creates a network between your machines without having all the fuss of setting up a real network. Sounds handy, though their website could certainly use some design (so I might want to actually look at it).

Comments