The Ask Ziggy app for Windows Phone 7 platform is a free program that translates human speech into transcribed text. Use Ask Ziggy to call contacts, send texts, emails and tweets, get local weather, and update your social networks. The app can also switch from female to male voice as well.

“Natural language processing is a big part of this. What we try to do is take natural language, and we break it down into different parts of speech,” explains Shai Leib, Ask Ziggy founder & CEO. “The parts of speech like the nouns, the verbs, the adjectives and the different phrases that they commonly combine into. Then we break that down into a language that Ask Ziggy can understand which is basically broken down into key word.”

“We are trying to expand the amount of content providers that we are going to include on Ask Ziggy,” continues Leib. “API’s will include check-ins, travel, hotels, car rentals. We are going to continue adding as many content providers as possible. We are going to create our own knowledge base, based on the information we are getting and the answers as well.”

Need to call a friend without searching your contacts? Ask Ziggy. Want to change your status on Facebook? Ask Ziggy. Want to find out the best place for Chinese food in the city you’re visiting? Ask Ziggy will translate your voice to navigate Windows phones hands free with the click of the microphone.

Ask Ziggy Website:                        http://ziggybot.com/

Ask Ziggy on Twitter:                    http://twitter.com/#!/askziggy

Ask Ziggy on Facebook:               https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003787362252 

AngelPad is a mentorship program founded by Thomas Korte with a team of ex-Google employees to help technology startups build better products, attract seed funding and grow more successful businesses. AngelPad provides founders with funding, mentorship and the chance to work alongside other great founders at the AngelPad office in San Francisco.

“AngelPad is in the business of taking companies from a very early stage, anytime from idea to some prototyping, all the way through fundraising and beyond as they become part of the network of companies in AngelPad,” explains Thomas Korte, founder of AngelPad. “Starting a company has become really easy. The challenge that we run into is to decipher interesting features and helping build a company around these.”

Twice a year, AngelPad provides their extensive mentorship program to carefully selected startups. The ten week program covers all aspects of a company launch – from idea to product, market fit, customer acquisition and fundraising. AngelPad also takes care of the less glamorous things like incorporation, immigration visas or setting up books.

During the course of the program, AngelPad provides guest speakers and hosts several events. A strong emphasis is also put on helping founders to prepare for demo day, which occurs towards the end of each program and allows companies to present their idea, vision, and product to several hundred investors. Mentors are extremely involved in helping startups in their fundraising efforts, and all founders after demo day become part the AngelPad alumni network.

At AngelPad, founders, mentors and angels work together to build great startups!

AngelPad Website: http://angelpad.org/
AngelPad on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/angelpadorg
AngelPad on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/angelpadorg
AngelPad on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/angelpad-llc
AngelPad on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/angelpad

Firebase is a cloud service that automatically synchronizes data between clients and with their cloud servers. It frees developers from worrying about how their data will be communicated and stored, and allows them to focus on their own application logic. Apps built with Firebase can be written entirely with client-side JavaScript, update in real-time out-of-the-box, are inherently scalable, and interoperate well with existing services.

“Firebase is a scalable real-time backend. What that means in layman terms is it’s like Dropbox for your applications data. It really let you build great real-time apps without knowing anything about the backend,” explains James Tamplin, founder & CEO. “With Firebase you can build anything. The sky is really the limit.”

Andrew Lee, co-founder & CTO says, “We consider ourselves to be a NoSQL database. The trend with NoSQL is people figured out that there are certain types of operations that are very difficult to scale. When we designed our API we only allow you to do things that scale well. The API has been designed from the ground up to scale leaner with size.”

Firebase is designed so developers can build great apps quickly without the hassle of managing servers, creating a scalable, real-time backend for your web apps.

Firebase Website: http://www.firebase.com/
Firebase on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/firebase
Firebase on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Firebase/317036488362036
Firebase on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/envolve

BoostCTR powers leading advertisers and agencies to optimize ad content across search and social networks. It is the first comprehensive and systematic approach to optimizing ad content. The Boost Method combines proprietary technology with its network of 500+ expert copywriters to deliver highly effective, performance-driven online ad copy at scale.

Founded three and a half years ago in Miami, BoostCTR is now headquartered in San Francisco. David Greenbaum, CEO of BoostCTR says, “BoostCTR is a service that is focused and dedicated on one thing – which is improving pay-per-click (PPC) ad copy for large advertisers and agencies. When you think about the world of paid search, there are three key levers for optimizing spend; key words, bids and ads. When it comes to ad copy, you need to get humans involved.”

The Boost Method is designed to scale to an unlimited number of ad groups while systematically optimizing them all. Even advertisers with millions of SKUs and ad groups can use Boost to evolve their messages and performance over time. BoostCTR combines human creativity and advanced technology to increase click-through rate (CTR) and conversions per impression (CPI), as well as reducing cost per click (CPC).

BoostCTR Website: http://www.boostctr.com/
BoostCTR on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/boostctr
BoostCTR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BoostCTR
BoostCTR on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/boostctr

Podio is an online work platform. It allows people to manage their work better, smarter and in their own way. Podio is currently based in Copenhagen, with a multinational team of German, French, British, and Danish employees.

You can work with everyone on Podio – your co-workers or your clients, contractors and suppliers. Podio adds structure to any type of work. Pick an app to fit your specific needs and start to work the way you want. More than 45,000 apps have been built or modified by Podio users.

Or you can build your own app on Podio, without technical skills. Apps have been built to manage sales leads, execute projects, deliver software, recruit talent, and perform thousands of other company-specific business activities. Apps come with social activity streams: comments, likes, edits and status updates. Use them to collaborate with your team and clients, for projects, and within functions like sales, recruiting, marketing or any other area of your business.

Kasper Hulthin, co-founder of Podio says, “Podio is super flexible and allows you to build a tool that fits the way that you want to get work done. Podio is about getting work done and not just talking about it. The Employee Network will connect your team so you can set up work space to manage the work tasks. Small teams can manage everything in Podio.”

And all the Podio apps you choose or build yourself work on your mobile.

Podio URL: https://podio.com/
Podio on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/podio
Podio on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Podio/127439993968574
Podio on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/podio

Zaarly is altering the way people outsource simple errands and tasks. The site works by letting people post requests for an item or service, and then lets other people, businesses and companies bid to fulfill those needs. Once an agreement is met, Zaarly connects the two parties so they can complete the deal. People can either pay in cash when the service is complete, or through Zaarly’s payment system.

In March 2011 during SXSWi in Austin, Texas, Zaarly was beta-tested and introduced nationally in early May of the same year. Since then, the company has attracted over 100,000 users and acquired an additional $14.1 million in financing along with Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard and the former chief executive of eBay, as a board member.

“Zaarly is a hyper-local marketplace that is driven by buyers. If you have the app or go to the website, you can ask for anything you want,” says Bo Fishback, founder and CEO of Zaarly. “All I think about is building this company. We built a great product and make our users happy. If you don’t take building the company as seriously as you take building the product, it’s really hard to build a lasting thing that matters. And we’re not playing for an acquisition. We are actually trying to build a multibillion dollar company that will be generational.”

With Zaarly, you can ask for anything and get offers from local people you trust.

Zaarly URL: http://www.zaarly.com/
Zaarly on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/zaarly
Zaarly on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zaarly
Zaarly on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/zaarly

Founded in 2009 in the Silicon Valley, Skydera is focused on providing best-in-class cloud command & control products and services that make the cloud enterprise a reality, while complementing both public and private cloud infrastructure services and vendors. Skydera C3 delivers true Platform-as-a-Service for cross-cloud IT and is customizable to support the demanding requirements of SaaS ISVs and IaaS/PaaS vendors.

“The cloud allows for explosive growth. The cloud gives us a lot of flexibility and a lot of utility. Skydera is from a small or medium size enterprise including startups,” says Lecole Cole, founder & CEO, Skydera. “We have a dashboard to see what costs you have so you can see how many servers you are using per hour, how it breaks down per user and department and if you are utilizing all of your reserve instances. We also have an overall dashboard to see what the health of your infrastructure is over time.”

Skydera C3 is the breakthrough cloud automation and management environment designed from the ground up to deliver easy-to-use Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for the age of cross-cloud IT. In addition to providing full-featured cloud application deployment and lifecycle management, Skydera C3 delivers the 4 major ‘must-haves’ for true cloud command and control in the age of the cloud enterprise. Those ‘must-haves” are cross cloud PaaS, radically simplified developer self-service, intelligent automation & granular scaling, and intelligent cost controls.

Skydera Website: http://www.skydera.com/
Skydera on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/skydera
Skydera on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/skydera-inc.
Skydera on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skydera
Skydera on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/skydera

Here’s our press conference where execs at +Rackspace Hosting on Monday announced that Rackspace Cloud is now running on +OpenStack

I started out by noting that infrastructure is boring. Like the plumbing in your house.

But then we saw the demos. 200 servers kicked off in a few minutes.

That’s a bit mind blowing for people who build companies.

Recently the guy who started StumbleUpon visited our offices and talked about how hard it was to build its datacenter. Buying servers, putting them into a cage, loading them up with software, etc. All took weeks and millions of dollars.

Now you just click an icon on an iPad and a server spins up. Even better, an API could spin up a server on its own, which makes new kinds of scalability possible.

So, why does this all matter? Well, there are 1,000 people meeting in San Francisco right now from companies like Cisco, AT&T, Intel, HP, Dell, and hundreds of others. Why? Because Rackspace believes deeply in being open.

Being open means a more innovative infrastructure and a lot less lockin.

Thank you to all the Rackers who are working their butts off to move all our cloud data centers to running on OpenStack (that process will be completed soon, and it isn’t easy work. Think about flying in a plane, having the engines changed while the plane is flying).

Anyway, this press conference gives you a look at how we look at the public cloud and what we’re doing now.

OK, off to get up a ton of non Rackspace stuff.

A fireside chat at the Rackspace office in San Francisco as Rackspace showcases its Openstack cloud and the technology being built around it with Rackspace CTO John Engates, Nicira co-founder & CTO Martin Casado, Soasta CEO Tom Lounibos and Rackspace President Lew Moorman.

“First of all it’s an exciting day and I am so proud of the Rackers around the world. We have been hard at work transforming our business for the last couple of years. We’ve made a transition from an operations hosting business to software driven cloud business,” explains Lew Moorman, President of Rackspace. “That really is the fundamental shift that’s happened. Two years ago we really made a commitment to help drive an open platform. We think the world needed it, it fits really well with our strategy which is about creating great customer experiences, and the faster the innovation can happen, the better.”

“Everything that we do in cloud computing came from an open environment,” say Tom Lounibos, CEO of Soasta. “What it’s done is accelerated our progress, it’s allowed more people into the gate, it’s improved our product and it’s improved the experiences our customer have. It’s core to everything we do whether it’s cloud computing or mobile computing. It has advantages that go well beyond the simple term open.”

At the San Francisco launch event, Rackspace pulled the curtain off its next generation Rackspace Cloud, which comprises new and enhanced cloud products including Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack, Cloud Databases, Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Block Storage and Cloud Networks, all of which is tied together by a brand new, intuitive Cloud Control Panel.

More info:

Nicira web site: http://nicira.com/
Nicira profile on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/nicira
Nicira profile on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/search/%40nicira
Soasta web site: http://www.soasta.com/
Soasta profile on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/soasta

Virtual Private Clouds (VPC’s) let users carve out sections of an IaaS provider’s public cloud infrastructure and manage it as though it were their own private cloud. Although VPC’s can secure public facing web apps, the primary use case for them is to securely extend a corporate datacenter into the cloud.

With VCider, you can build and secure your own virtual datacenter across the cloud. VCider’s on-demand secure cloud networking solution lets you connect all your systems, wherever they are in your own secure Virtual Private Cloud.

“VCider is a solution that lets you connect the network and secure all of your cloud resources as though they were inside your enterprise datacenter. It does that by extending the security perimeter from your enterprise datacenter out into the public cloud, by carving out a Virtual Private Cloud,” explains Chris Marino, CEO & co-found of VCider.

VCider lets you connect all your systems—across regions and providers—with a distributed virtual switch. Then you can extend your enterprise LAN securely into the cloud with a virtual network gateway. Finally, secure all your resources by ‘cloaking’ your cloud network, rendering it invisible to all malicious traffic.

More info:

VCider URL: http://www.vcider.com/
VCider on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/vcider
VCider on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/VCider/200795689964789
VCider on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/vcider