BlogWorldExpo: Expo Hall Review

For being a first year conference, the expo hall had a pretty decent turn out with regards to exhibitors. Here’s a completely random list of some of the booths I visited and a bit about their product:

• Utterz.com – I have to be honest with you, at first glance I thought to myself, “so what.” Posting to my blog from my phone is something I can already do, so I wasn’t immediately sold on the idea. But, once I saw that you could post audio, video and text I was now interested. But the kicker for me was the fact that you could post to your own hosted WordPress blog, blogger.com account, facebook and other, well, ya got me. I’m a user now. You can check out my post from the expo floor here.
• SharedBook.com & Blurb.com – If you are looking to create a printed book of your photos or blog posts, both of these companies seem to be able to handle the task. I am quite surprised at just how inexpensive this service has become. I’m looking forward to creating a book of my trip to Alaska next year.
• Yovia.com – There are several pay-to-blog type sites out there and I have to say, I don’t think I’m a fan of any of them. I’ve signed up for a few but have never written a paid post on my site. Yovia, however, seems to be different in their approach. Rather than butcher an explanation, I’d suggest you head over to their site and give it a read.
• Unique Blog Designs – Sure, anybody can download a new theme for their blog. There are 1000s of them available free. But, if you are really looking to stand out, these guys will work with you to come up with a design that matches your tastes, your needs and your vision.
• BlogCatalog.com – When I met them in the expo hall, I had no idea how big they were. After a quick trip around their site, wow! Thousands upon thousands of blogs broken out in dozens of categories. You can browse by country or language as well. If you have a blog, you should definitely get yourself listed in this directory!
• Lijit.com – This is a pretty slick tool. If you produce content on a blog, myspace, youtube, flickr and/or several other sites, why not let your readers search all your content at once? Lijit provides a widget (or wijit, as they like to spell it) that well let your readers search all your your sources from a single search box. Very cool concept.
• fix8.com – Not everything you download or install has to be a productivity or money making tool, right? What’s wrong with just having some fun? Spruce up your video chats or youtube videos with all sorts of video overlays.
• techsmith.com – How could my list be complete without talking about one of my favorites? I’ve spoke several times before about the Jing Project. While they still don’t know exactly what will become of Jing, the employees absolutely love it and are dying to talk to you about it. They want every bit of feedback they can get their hands on. I think I made a new best friend when I told them that their service was something I would gladly pay a monthly subscription fee to have access to.

I, of course, didn’t mention everybody. There were quite a few others at the show and even more I met who didn’t have a booth. Be sure and check out these forward thinking companies. They are going to be the ones who help drive the development of new and more exciting/productive/useful tools that we will all benefit from. I hope you all had a successful show and look forward to meeting up with you next year to see what’s new!