It's once again that time of the month - the October NY Tech Meetup, again held at the NYU School of Medicine.  As usual, the crowd was packed with an enthusiastic group of folks interested in learning about the city's best new tech companies and products.  Interestingly enough, a large portion of the crowd was made up of first timers.  Scott even wondered if he was losing folks.  Well, your friendly neighborhood Netizens are still attending and as usual, we'd like to recap what we saw and thought of the event. So without further ado, here'sa quick summary of the presenters:

Bootstrappergroup.com - Richie Hecker who presented Bootstrapper signed up as a last minute add on to the event.  He spoke very quickly, so I didn't get much about what they do besides the fact that their an incubation group for new startups.  Their website says they're a "group of entrepreneurs and former C-level executives that have come together to help fellow entrepreneurs turn ideas into not just start-ups but real companies."  Enough said...

Richie also presented mediarfp.com, a commission free marketplace for online media companies to post RFPs.  He insisted there was no complex technology behind it and that its all about relationships, not facilitating actual deals.  He'll charge about $100 as a subscription after a 30 day trial.  Unfortunately, Richie didn't get the best feedback from the crowd and quickly moved off the stage.

Manifesto Games - Greg Costikyan, founder of Manifesto Games made an inspiring presentation about his company.  In a nutshell, Manifesto games is a site that allows independent game developers to sell their higher quality games aimed at the primary gaming demographic without going through the huge game publishers.  He's talked and written a lot about how the gaming industry is being ruined by big business, and hopes his site allows high quality independent games to be seen and played by those users who are ignored.  He referenced that fact that the 'long tail' of gamers is being left out by the game companies focusing on the billion dollar games.  He got some rowsing applause for some of the game titles he showed, including my favorite, The Shivah

Magnify.net - Presented by Steve Rosenbaum, creator of MTV Unfiltered, Magnify.net is a site that allows for community powered video.  Basically, the site allows users to create their own channels to categorize and rate content so that its easier to find video that's relevant to you.  He entertained the audience with a clip of a Representative Foley spoof and showed how Magnify pipes it correctly into a Foley Comedy channel.  An innovative slider rating system helps ensure content ends up in the right place.  For now, they'll probably only be earning revenue through ads, but I'm definitely curious how they'll make money in the long term.  Let's just hope YouTube doesn't do the same thing for Maginfy's sake...

Angelsoft - No, it's not the toilet paper, but rather an innovative application, created by David Rose and his team to help angel investors manage the entire proposal and funding workflow.  The app is a well designed Web2.0 site with features that help entrepreneurs link up and submit proposals to investors, who can then track all aspects of the due diligence process right through the site.  It includes features such as a website creator (for the investors), a submission engine, a nifty PDF Summary of the companies, a proposal management system, a company dashboard, a deal making space, a message board, an evite-like system...and more.  Phew.  It's a pretty robust system, and Rose says more is on it's way.  We're not at the phase where we're ready for Angel funding, but having done it in the past, this seems like an easy way for all parties to make the process smoother and faster.  Very impressive product...

ConstantSun.com - Rob Kohr, the creator of Constant Sun, presented two of his sites, Constant Reader and CueFlash.
Constant Reader -  An RSS and Atom feed organizer that allows users to tag their links for easier sorting.  Nice, nothing to out of the ordinary here.

Cueflash - A site that allows users to create virtual flashcards for school, work, or anything else.  It seems so simple, yet many folks (self included) found it to be a really great idea.  While Rob didn't really have any thoughts for making money with this, David Rose from Angelsoft mentioned that he should sell actual print outs of the cards.  I think there are LOTS of cool ways to make money from this product (and I'll probably email Rob with some thoughts).  CueFlash is proof that even the simplest ideas can often be both useful and powerful if they serve the needs of a focused market.  If they play their cards right (pun sadly intended), they could make some money from this.

radiusIM - I first heard about radiusIM through a friend who highly recommended it and also had a long chat with the brother of one of the founders, Zohar, while down in Austin, TX.  I found the concept pretty interesting and have been using the site for a few weeks.  The premise is simple...incorporate information about your physical location to the internet and connect to people through it.  For now, the site focuses around an IM client and a Google Map interface which allows you to see folks who are physically near you.  Visually, the site is unbelievable - the integration of the map with the IM client is stunning and smooth.  There is a lot of potential to incorporate this location based connection into numerous other apps, but in the short term, the folks at radius want to focus on making people comfortable with sharing this kind of information.  I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be randomly IM'ing someone just because they're near me...but, if there were a way to see if locals had similar affinities as me, I'd be more likely to start up a chat.  Some questions about stalking came up, which led to the presenters IM'ing someone random...sadly, we didn't get a response.  On the hole, I think the site is great and I'm very anxious to see what features they'll be rolling out next.

That was it for the evening, except that is, for the free twizzlers, which was a nice treat.  The crowd seemed to like a lot of these apps, and I'd say I found the selection tonight to be better than previous months.  Congrats to all the presenters, you did a great job.  I guess we'll see what other great stuff is out there a month from now...