Finovate Blog

Thanks to Christophe Langlois for live blogging today. Unfortunately, we had our first serious NetBanker downtime at 2:30 PM today, so after gallantly posting on 32 presenters, he finished the coverage at his Visible Banking site. We’ll post a few more concluding comments tomorrow including the Best of Show winners.

Last demo of the day. Investment information for individual investors with community aspects.

CEO Steve Markowitz takes the stage. Can use the service, in public beta, to track the activity and advice of vetted professional investors. Easy to use and navigate, attractive interface. Have had success in attracting a large following. Good demo.

Second to last demo. Back to mobile.

ClairMail CEO Joe Salesky takes the stage with so much energy he doesn’t even wait to be introduced. It’s much needed at this point in the afternoon. Shows mobile bill delivery/payment and login via SMS exchange with dynamic link that needs just a password.

Joe closes with a live demo of how fast a text-message query can be returned, asking audience members to text “bal” to a shortcode on the screen. He’s run over his time but closes with a flourish.

Mike Massey is going to focus on the TradeKing Community. Excellent news.

Shame Mike was reading, and not sharing his passion and expertise with us. That's what you would expect from the Director of Community Development, right?

Mike was more passionate and relaxed when he started showing the community homepage.

They have a wide range of activities and features to urge people to produce content and contribute: group, blogs, active forums, research produced by members… Excellent.

CEO Jamie McDonald demonstrates Sparkroom's new lead-management service, LeadIQ is currently focused on mortgage leads and has found an average 120% ROI improvement across clients.

Aradiom and mobile strategies are going to build a mobile banking application live, during their 5-minute slot.

You don't have to be an IT expert: The interface is 100% graphic.

Simple, easy to understand, efficient. Well done, Aradiom. Perfect delivery at this time of the day.

Fun presentation. One of the most entertaining of the day. New service allows user to comparison shop for new rewards-checking accounts.

Online account-opening application powered by Andera.

Good interface. Launch date: 2 June 2008.

Proactive identity protection. New version of their flagship service, IDFreeze. Yesterday, they announced the first true family package.

Another service to manage your investments. The interface is simple and intuitive. A lot of graphics and a good Web 2.0 look and feel. The colors are not as fun as on either Zecco, or Mint. It looks like a comprehensive service, but not as cool as the leading Web 2.0 startups.

The presentation was also a bit too dry. No jokes, no frills. Remember that it is already 2:30 p.m., and the pace at Finovate is hectic. Nothing personal, but we need some entertaining presentations!

Our first annual FinovateStartup debuts tomorrow in San Francisco. The 40 presenters will demo new and improved versions of their products. There will also be a number of new product launches, company rebrandings, and even several company debuts.

Christophe Langlois, from Visible Banking, will be live blogging here at NetBanker, so tune in tomorrow for his impressions. Also, expect even more opinions from the dozen other bloggers in the room, along with a number of other press representatives.

We'll be naming the Best of Show winners here on Wednesday and posting full-length videos of each demo soon. Sign up for our Finovate announcement list here (lower-left corner) if you want to be notified when the videos become available.