VentureNet, which is put on by the Technology Council of Southern California, included keynotes by Kelly Perdew of Rotohog and Zorik Gordon of ReachLocal, plus capital presentations from Cyber-Rain, FlipGloss Media, Viewdle, Social Approach, Ad.ly, Zadspace, RightSignature, Cogi, YouMail, ExpenseBay, AffordIt.com, SharesPost, and TrueCar. socalTECH.com was a media sponsor of the event. ...Tags: Santa Barbara-based RightSignature , online, software-as-a-service for collecting electronic signatures, took "Best of Show" at VentureNet Wednesday, after a day of presentations by thirteen Southern California startups.

In what was a remarkable turnout–given the horrible economy we’re in–there were more than a thousand people at last night’s Twiistup 5 event. Cogi , a service which helps you capture meetings and phone calls in text transcripts, scored the judge’s award (I was one of the judges);  the other firms were Causecast , eHow , FixYa , GoGreenSolar , Meebo , RoboDynamics , TheScene , Totspot , Viewdle , and Yammer . ...Tags: Twiistup 5 –the brainchild of Mike Macadaan–lets startups show off their products to the crowd in a very non-conference setting (this time, a private hangar at the Santa Monica airport).

This video will show you the sartups that will show off at the next Twiistup , an event which highlights promising startups. TheScene - The Scene connects individuals to the hottest places, people and events in their area. Viewdle - Viewdle is a facial-recognition powered digital media platform for indexing, searching and monetizing video assets. I was one of the judges who selected this group of startups, so I wanted to tell you who they are and what they do.