Go to http://march18sfnewtech.eventbrite.com/ to sign up.

Tickets:
$15.00 for early bird online tickets
$20.00 for all other (late bird) online tickets
$25.00 cash at the door if not sold out

Schedule:
5:30 pm – Doors & Bar Open
5:30 -7:30 pm – Schmooze and Free Tacos!
7:30 – 9:00 pm – Live Demos
9:00 – 11:00 pm – Schmooze

Location:
Mighty
119 Utah Street
(Cross street is 15th. Look for the big black doors!)
San Francisco, CA 94103

Attention, Pajama Entrepreneurs! Google has just launched the Google Apps Marketplace which is designed for users of Google. They integrate with Google Apps. If you have a developed an application or are thinking of creating one that works with Google Apps, then this is the place to sell it. It works a lot like the iPhone app store. People can review apps and pay for them online.

Go Tribal helps members get their friends together on very short notice for clubbing, coffee, lunch, dinner, and other social activities. It does this by allowing members to see when their friends are available. It works opposite to the formal “Evite” way of getting people together. This is also a great service for people who travel to a city on short notice and want to meet up with friends, business relations and even relatives.

Here is how it works: As a Go Tribal member you can broadcast when you are available, easily see who else is free and use the simple collaboration tool to finally decide what to do or where to go. From this, Go Tribal is able to grant members broad visibility into what their larger network is planning on doing.

“Getting my friends together for a casual dinner or even a night on the town is not as easy as it once was. Between our travel schedules, careers and relationships it is almost impossible to coordinate when everyone is free and decide what to do. Go Tribal is the perfect tool for us to organize ourselves and make it happen,” said Keylee Sanders (Founder of Style Studio and Former Miss Teen USA 1995).

“What makes Go Tribal different is its focus on social women and informal events. Unlike services like Plancast, Evite or Facebook, Go Tribal helps members form informal plans not just broadcast formal ones — while acknowledging women and men approach this activity differently,” said Ross Mayfield (President and Chairman of SocialText and Advisor to Go Tribal).

“We feel that technology is moving further and further away from facilitating meaningful physical interaction. Our driving vision is to create simple technology that enables friends to get together in the real world. Go Tribal is the first step in fulfilling that larger vision,” said Shruti Challa (CEO and Founder of Go Tribal).

The free web-based service is immediately available to the first 10,000 registrants. To start using Go Tribal, visit http://gotribal.com.

Similarities with Bookioo

I wrote about a Spanish startup called Bookioo, which started out as a social networking site where women can find friends on short notice to go to events, hang out, visit a museum, etc. — just like Go Tribal. However, Bookioo has expanded its concept to include dating site where men who want to join have to be invited by a female member; a man can see a woman’s profile only when she gives him permission to do so. Read more: Bookioo – dating and social networking site gives women full control.

Go Tribal and Bookioo focus on women’s needs and how women interact with one another. Most social networking sites are created by men and start from a man’s point of view. I hope we see more sites like Go Tribal and Bookioo.

According to the press release issued today, Tjoos (pronounced “choose”) grew by 150 percent to well over 1 million unique visitors in February 2010 compared to the prior year. This growth was driven by the site’s more than 500,000 coupons from more than 180,000 merchants.

“This is a hot area,” said Bob Brisco, CEO of Internet Brands. “Discount discovery, fueled by community participation, is growing very rapidly and will continue to do so. Consumers want deals, and coupons are a massive marketing channel for both small and large merchants.”

Tjoos offers interactive merchant management tools that allow online retailers to customize their listing to facilitate traffic and revenue growth. It also provides a versatile platform for content syndication via Twitter, RSS feeds, blogs, and widgets.

Speedtext is an iPhone application that allows you to handwrite text into your iPhone. It is popular in Japan where text entry using Kanji characters is difficult. I suspect it is handy for people who write in other languages as well (e.g. Arabic). For people who find the iPhone’s virtual keyboard challenging, it is also a handy tool. It works with applications such as Evernote.

The developer is Kazuya Hirobe, who I met at the Evernote event in San Francisco last week. Kazuya is getting his Ph.D in computer science at the University of Nagoya in Japan. He told me that when it launched on the Japanese iPhone app store last summer, it became one of the top 10 applications. He is planning an iPad app.

Check out Speedtext. It costs $1.99.

oQuizo is a multi-player quiz site where players compete in free or money games. You participate in online quizzes on various subjects (trivia, music, movies, science and sports) for free or cash prizes. If you decide to play for a cash prize, the amounts you put at stake are small: 50 cents, $2 and $5. Each game consists of ten questions and can have up to eight players. You have 10 seconds to answer each question. To win a quiz game you need to score better than a half of all the players in the given game. Both correctness and speed count.

Example: There are 8 players in a $2 money game. When the game starts, oQuizo will debit your account by an amount of $2. Say you play and you are the best. The accounts of the top four players (including you) will be credited with $4 each. Then oQuizo will charge a commission – 10% of $4, i.e. 40 cents.

You can deposit money into your oQuizo account using secure payments like premium SMS, PayPal or credit/debit card. You can withdraw your money using our automated withdrawal tool. You just specify how much you want to leave on your oQuizo account and they take care of the rest.

I played (against a bot) a free trivia game on oQuizo today. The game was fun and addictive, and I defeated the bot. Questions were fairly easy but I suspect if you are up against other people, the time pressure is much more intense. Check out the YouTube video showing how oQuizo works.

Q&A with Tom Mleko, co-founder of oQuizo

Who are the founders of oQuizo?
Jarek Jacek, Michal Fiedorowicz and myself.

When did you launch oQuizo?
The open beta began on 3 February 2010.

Where are you based?
London, UK and Warsaw, Poland

What inspired you to launch oQuizo?
HyperBees Ltd, the company that operates oQuizo.com, was set up because we wanted to create dynamic, interesting and engaging games for web, mobile and other platforms. oQuizo.com is our first project. We want to deliver the best possible casual and skill games that engage our players and make them want more.

How are you making money (or how will you make money in the future)?
We are addressing two markets: players (individuals) and clients (websites, companies, etc.). When it comes to players we charge them small commission for each money game they win. In the nearest future we will add tournaments with an entry fee. Our offer for clients include outsourcing quiz tournaments for their users, i.e. soccer club may organize a competition for its fans. In such a case we deliver the platform, integrate with client’s website (or run it on our servers) and, if requested, prepare questions and run the tournament.

Where do you see your product/service within a year?
oQuizo.com will be one out of two/three main products in our portfolio. Trivia games will be accessible through iPhone and Android. I’d rather not disclosed anything about next project.

Are you self-funded?
Yes.

www.oquizo.com

I activated the Envolve chat box for a post I recently wrote on MuniWireless.com about Wi-Fi and 3G (see screenshot below). The Envolve chat box is on the lower right side.

After I added a chat box to the MuniWireless blog post, I saw it listed in my Envolve dashboard with statistics on the number of visitors. Since I just activated it and I am the only person in the chat room, it shows only 1 person (see below). However, if you have an article that is generating a lot of controversy, you will see many more people involved in real-time chat about your post.

Q&A with James Tamplin, co-founder of Envolve

Who are the founders of Envolve?
Andrew Lee and I started it in 2009.

Where are you based?
San Francisco.

Why did you create Envolve?
We wanted a Facebook-style chat for every website and web community. We want to give people a way to have meaningful conversations around the content on web sites, and we want to make it easy for website owners to enable these conversations (i.e. without having to write code). For more information, go to www.envolve.com/demo.

Are you self-funded?
Yes.

Brainstorming has started. Follow on Twitter #sucs3 and ustream.

SUCS UStream – http://www.ustream.tv/channel/startup-camp-3

For this Startup Camp, each team will also have their own Twitter hashtag, so you can send comments and feedback to the teams themselves.

Should be streaming at about 8:30pm Sydney time.

For other media, see the blog at http://startupcampsydney.blogspot.com/ and follow Twitter: @startupcampsyd3

For more information go to: http://www.startup-australia.org/startupcamp3

GradConnection is a website that makes it easy for recent graduates (and graduating students) to find jobs with various employers in Australia and New Zealand. When you first visit GradConnection, you select the type of job you want (graduate job, internship, etc.), then choose your field (law, accounting, investment banking, and so on). Then you choose the city you want to work in and narrow your search by the types of perks: relocation package, sign-on bonus, time off, flexible work arrangements, summer hours and more. The GradConnection resume (or CV) builder lets you create an online CV and send it automatically to employers directly from the GradConnection website. What I like about GradConnection is the site has a clean and simple interface, and makes it easy for young graduates to find the employer that best meets their needs and apply online.

The founders of GradConnection are Mike Casey, Dan Purchas and Dave Jenkins. I visited their office in Sydney (which is in the same location as Tjoos, recently profiled on PJ Entrepreneur). They started 18 months ago and have received angel investment. There are four to five people who work at GradConnection. They make money by charging companies who want to be listed on the site. They just expanded to New Zealand and have plans expand to other countries (e.g. the United Kingdom).

www.gradconnection.com.au

Coachfire is an online application created by Aymeric Gaurat-Apelli, a French tech entrepreneur who is based in Sydney, Australia. Coachfire allows a coach (e.g. a career or business coach) to conduct online meetings with clients, monitor clients’ progress, record time spent with a client and prepare invoices. Coachfire’s video chat is powered by Tokbox, so neither the coach nor the client has to download a piece of software in order to conduct online video chats (see below).

Coaches who do not have websites or are unhappy with their existing site can easily set one up on Coachfire. The result is a clean, professional looking website. When a coach signs up on Coachfire, he or she is included in the public directory (see below).

Coachfire is a one-stop shop, a convenient solution for any coach who wants a professional online presence and a simple way to manage his or her coaching business.

I had coffee with Aymeric in Sydney last week to talk about Coachfire and his previous software projects.

Q&A with Aymeric Gaurat-Apelli

What did you do before launching Coachfire?

I created several Facebook games for French users of Facebook at a time when usage of Facebook among French-speaking people was just beginning to rise. Because most Facebook game developers were focused on the English-speaking market, I was able to get the attention of thousands of French Facebook members and the games I wrote became among the most popular on Facebook.

What lessons did you learn from your Facebook game development experience?

I discovered that it’s more lucrative to go after a niche market especially one that is rapidly growing, but still ignored by the vast majority of software developers who are rushing into a larger, but crowded market. You become the big fish in a small pond. I made a good living from the Facebook games that I developed. This lesson holds in other areas such as the iPhone app store. There are so many iPhone apps out there but if you focus on a small niche and write a killer app, you can conquer that market and make a pretty good amount of money.

What inspired you to create Coachfire?

After writing several Facebook games, I wanted to use my talents doing something more useful, something beyond just entertaining people. I noticed that business and career coaches did not have an easy way to profile themselves, manage their business and the progress of their clients, or easily conduct video chats so I created a solution for them. That’s how I came up with Coachfire.

How do you make money with Coachfire?

Coachfire has two paid subscription options: $59/mo and $249/mo. There is a 7-day free trial, too. Coaches can cancel their subscriptions at any time.

Why did you move from France to Australia?

I had been traveling for a while and decided to settle in Australia because of the easy-going lifestyle and the lovely weather. I live in Coogee Beach, which is in the eastern part of the city, a beautiful small community with a wonderful beach.

www.coachfire.com