Amazing companies at Techcrunch50

Wow there's quite a few amazing startups out there at Techcrunch50!
U can watch it LIVE here.

Coincidentally the 2 startups that really amazes me big time with their bleeding edge technologies are from Japan! =D

Obviously the rest are really great too (eg: Mytopia and Connective Logic) but these 2 Japanese startups are hardcore!! =P


These guys have built a system that traces what impact u make whenever u buy a product. Any consumer product. U can check the impact by scanning the barcode of a product using a webcam and it'll return a very cool interactive tree-interface representation of the resources used to produce the product. By resources, in this particular context, we're referring to raw ingredients, electricity and even fuel used to deliver the product. Impressive.

Link http://opentrace.org
Watch the DEMO



Another company, Tonchidot, developed an iPhone application (+ a network) that brings up a bunch of OSD (on screen display) icons in camera mode. These OSD icons are geo-tagged descriptors of the objects around you. Wanna know which restaurant around u serves better food? Where is the closest washroom? That's the idea behind this invention. Turn the iPhone around while running the app and u'll see the OSD icons following the objects they're describing and more OSD icons will show up describing the new objects that just came into the camera. Don't get me? IMAGINE =P

Link http://sekaicamera.com/
Watch the DEMO

Ok these 2 companies are great, but I think I'm gonna buy the product from FitBit =P


These guys produce a wearable WiFi device that tracks your daily calorie intake/burn rate. U get to see all the results on a website. Simple? =)

Link http://fitbit.com/
Watch the DEMO