Stas Antons contacted me recently about his startup called Jump To Green, Inc. Their mantra is “Making Green Visible.”

Jump To Green, Inc. is a visualization technology developer and online green retailer from Newton, MA.  They focus on developing technologies that allow consumers and businesses to make more environmentally responsible decisions.  JumpGauge is one such technology - its purpose is to make “green” more visible.

JumpGauge™ visual labeling technology has been applied to thousands of green and eco-friendly products, ranging from organic clothing, to toys, books, health & beauty as well as home & garden products (www.JumpGauge.com).  Green consumers do not need to decipher technical jargon or read through government and industry certifications.  Simply by looking at the product’s JumpGauge™ they can see why the product is green and eco-friendly.  In addition, JumpGauge Visual Search™ is the first visual search engine to utilize JumpGauge™ labeling technology to make searching for and purchasing green products quick and easy. Instead of typing lengthy search strings or guessing keywords, a user just selects pictures representing various green attributes and JumpGauge Visual Search™ automatically verifies product matches to deliver accurate results, which means that ‘going green’ just got easier.

During their market research Jump To Green discovered that many consumers want to purchase green and eco-friendly products, but have avoided doing so due to the technical jargon, lack of standards and unfamiliar descriptions found on the product’s label. JumpGauge™ labeling technology solves this problem.

If you are a Boston area startup and are interested in being spotlighted, please contact me.

Boston based RunKeeper, an iPhone app that tracks your runs, launched just a few weeks ago, and it has already been mentioned on TechCrunch.

Jason Jacobs is the man responsible for RunKeeper. I met him earlier this year when all he had was an idea. It’s great to see his idea finally become a reality. I think he’ll have a lot of success.

TechCrunch has a story about the Y Combinator Boston 2008 startups that showed demos of their products to potential investors yesterday. Check out the post for a list with brief descriptions of some of the startups.

The guys from Snipd were at the last Web Innovators Group event. I had a chance to talk to them. At the time, I didn’t know they were a Y Combinator startup.

Last night’s Y Combinator event at Tommy Doyle’s Pub was a success. The place was packed. Somewhere around the order of 100-150 people showed up. Here are some photos. If you are posting photos, Anyvite asks that you post them to Flickr with the tag yrbb4dt0.

Here are some things I took away from the event:

From the Q&A that Paul did, here are some insights on what Y Combinator likes to see on applications:

• Past projects that demonstrate ability. Don’t have one? Funding rounds are 6 months apart, take that time to make something cool.
• Keep it entertaining. They read a ton of apps and it can get rather arduous.
• Short is good. Be to the point about your idea.
• Founders with long histories of knowing each other.
• Don’t stress out about “What is your greatest hack?” or “Tell us something amusing you’ve discovered.” I gleaned this from examples Paul and the Y Combinator startups gave. Most of them were not monumental, world changing discoveries. An amusing anecdote will suffice. You don’t need to say you cured cancer or defeated Skynet to get accepted.

Funny Paul Graham quotes:

• In response to the question “What about MBA and business plan writers applying to Y Combinator?”, Paul: “It’s like ladies night at a bar. You’re ok if you bring a hacker.”

Having worked at Microsoft in the past, I wanted to hear speaker Kevin Merritt’s story about his first startup getting acquired by Microsoft. Overall, his experience with the acquisition was pretty good, and he worked hard while at Microsoft. But in terms of overall excitement level, he said a good day at Microsoft didn’t beat an average day at his startup.

Kevin’s current project, Blist, is a web based spreadsheet/list application with collaboration features. It’s pretty nifty, and you can test drive Blist with no account.

Also, Nabeel Hyatt gave a short and sweet talk which poised the question: “How do you know when your startup is working?” He shared some opinions from important people in the industry (if he got these opinions from them directly, then he has an impressive rolodex). Check out his social gaming company, Conduit Labs. Their web site is quite unique.

I’d like to say thanks to Dan for sharing some interesting stories about TicketStumbler, and also thanks to the following startups who setup this event:

• Posterous - Blog like posting of media over email
• Slinkset - Create your own social news site
• Startuply - Job listings for startups
• TicketStumbler - Second hand ticket aggregation
• Anyvite - Event invites

Y Combinator does a Boston round of funding every summer, and the first few startups from this year’s round have launched. Here are some ones I’ve already noticed:

• TicketStumbler - Aggregated search for the secondary ticket market. In other words, they aggregate the listings of second hand ticket brokers.
• ididwork - Performance tracking for the individual employee
• Popcuts - online music store with a twist, they pay you a cut if you discover bands early. TechCrunch explains.

I’ll update this blog as I discover more.