Okay, so Denon wares aren't exactly "cheap," but you can't knock it for trying to innovate. Despite that fact that about eight people on this Earth still care about their beloved SACD / DVD-Audio collections, Denon has developed a Blu-ray player specifically for them. The DVD-A1UD is hailed as the world's first universal BD deck, and it features a black (shown after the break) or silver motif, SD / SDHC card slot, DivX support, HDMI 1.3, 1080p60 / 1080p24 output, internal decoding of DTS-HD Master Audio / Dolby TrueHD, 7.1-channel analog outputs, Denon LINK and all sorts of sophisticated pixel / audio restoration technologies. Better still, users who buy in can look forward to a Profile 2.0 update in the near future. Not surprisingly, the decked-out player will ship in Japan next month for a patently astounding ¥546,000 ($5,860), so you'll probably be stuck dreaming about it unless your ship rolls in.

[Via Impress]

Continue reading Denon's DVD-A1UD: world's first universal (SACD / DVD-A) Blu-ray player

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Denon's DVD-A1UD: world's first universal (SACD / DVD-A) Blu-ray player originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

div align="center"a href="http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdenon.jp%2Fcompany%2Frelease%2Fdvda1ud.htmlamp;sl=jaamp;tl=enamp;hl=enamp;ie=UTF-8"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="0" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadgethd.com/media/2008/12/12-3-08-dvd-a1ud-denon.jpg" alt="" //abr //div Okay, so a href="http://www.engadgethd.com/tag/Denon/"Denon/a wares aren't exactly "cheap," but you can't knock it for trying to innovate. Despite that fact that about eight people on this Earth still care about their beloved a href="http://www.engadgethd.com/tag/SACD/"SACD/a / a href="http://www.engadgethd.com/tag/dvd-a/"DVD-Audio/a collections, Denon has developed a Blu-ray player specifically for them. The DVD-A1UD is hailed as the world's first universal BD deck, and it features a black (shown after the break) or silver motif, SD / SDHC card slot, DivX support, HDMI 1.3, 1080p60 / 1080p24 output, internal decoding of DTS-HD Master Audio / Dolby TrueHD, 7.1-channel analog outputs, Denon LINK and all sorts of sophisticated pixel / audio restoration technologies. Better still, users who buy in can look forward to a Profile 2.0 update in the near future. Not surprisingly, the decked-out player will ship in Japan next month for a patently astounding yen;546,000 ($5,860), so you'll probably be stuck dreaming about it unless your ship rolls in.br /br /[Via a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=enamp;sl=jaamp;u=http://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20081203/denon.htmamp;sa=Xamp;oi=translateamp;resnum=1amp;ct=resultamp;prev=/search%3Fq%3Ddvd-a1ud%2Bimpress%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG"Impress/a]pa href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/03/denons-dvd-a1ud-worlds-first-universal-sacd-dvd-a-blu-ray/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emDenon's DVD-A1UD: world's first universal (SACD / DVD-A) Blu-ray player/em/a/ppFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/homeentertainment/" rel="tag"Home Entertainment/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/03/denons-dvd-a1ud-worlds-first-universal-sacd-dvd-a-blu-ray/"Denon's DVD-A1UD: world's first universal (SACD / DVD-A) Blu-ray player/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.engadget.com"Engadget/a on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:24:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdenon.jp%2Fcompany%2Frelease%2Fdvda1ud.htmlamp;sl=jaamp;tl=enamp;hl=enamp;ie=UTF-8Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/03/denons-dvd-a1ud-worlds-first-universal-sacd-dvd-a-blu-ray/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1390339/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/03/denons-dvd-a1ud-worlds-first-universal-sacd-dvd-a-blu-ray/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/iO2cx3JRZSkXZgQz-vtz2HJ4Bew/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/iO2cx3JRZSkXZgQz-vtz2HJ4Bew/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=3N5QH5ZN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=3N5QH5ZN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=tRANCsaf"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=tRANCsaf" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~4/N5fBm_AWpf8" height="1" width="1"/

A reader named EmJay wrote in with a snide comment about how we wouldn't write about the following story because it's a case where "copyright and patents made sense." I never understand these sorts of comments. We write about all kinds of cases, and if there were one where an intellectual property lawsuit made sense, we'd be thrilled. It would be an example of the system working as planned: encouraging innovation. That would be fantastic. Unfortunately, EmJay's example is no such thing. It's not an example of the system making sense, but of the system being used to slow down innovation and block competition. br /br / The story involves a guy who started making plastic turkey wishbones for Thanksgiving/Christmas celebrations, so that families wouldn't have to fight over the actual turkey wishbone in the traditional "breaking" of the wishbone. Of course, maybe it was just my family, but I don't recall ever "fighting" over the wishbone. Anyway, the agency Young #038; Rubicam, which represents Sears, had asked for a sample for possible inclusion at Sears. A year later, Sears was selling a similar plastic wishbone, made by a different company, so this guy a href="http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/11/smallbusiness/wishing_on_bones.fsb/index.htm" target="_new"sued and won/a. From the article, the guy says they won on both patent and copyright infringement claims, but that's not true. The lawsuit was over a href="http://www.bpcouncil.com/apage/694.php"copyright infringement/a claims only, and Sears made two good points that should have prevailed, in our opinion. First, you can't copyright something occurring in nature -- such as a wishbone. Second, the wishbones that Sears ordered were in different colors and sizes than the ones supplied by the original company. br /br / And, in fact, that's exactly how competition should work. Sears pushed another manufacturer to innovate, designing different (and, in their opinion, better) wishbones. That's competition and that's how innovation works. In fact, the guy from the original company now admits that his company didn't do any updating of their design for years while fighting this lawsuit, and are just now starting to update the design. In other words, all copyright did was get these companies locked in a silly legal battle, rather than focusing on providing better solutions to customers. It's too bad this guy was afraid to compete in the marketplace.br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081126/0822122959.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081126/0822122959.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081126/0822122959op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=9384c9ff33ce52e6d212ce459e3394cap=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=9384c9ff33ce52e6d212ce459e3394cap=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=9384c9ff33ce52e6d212ce459e3394ca" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=Tti4o"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=Tti4o" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/473803020" height="1" width="1"/

Photograph by Nicolas Zurcher

Providing clean water for all could be as easy as riding a bike. Or a trike, if Aquaduct has an influence. Winner of the 2007 Innovate or Die pedal power competition, the Aquaduct Mobile Filtration Vehicle stores, transports, and purifies water as it goes.

"We came up with ideas ranging from ways to clean up oil spills in the Bay to how to boil an egg," says Brian Mason, one of Aquaduct's five designers, all of whom work at the Palo Alto, Calif., design firm IDEO. "But we kept coming back to the need for clean water in the developing world."

More than 1 billion people lack access to clean water. Trekking miles to fetch it can take hours, and boiling it for sanitation uses precious resources. Aquaduct reduces the strain of hauling water, and its closed system prevents contamination.

Simply ride to a source, fill the 20-gallon storage tank -- a day's supply for a family of four -- and pedal home, filtering all the way. Clean water drains into a removable container that can be brought indoors. Once that's empty, the pedals can be disengaged from the wheels and the vehicle ridden in a stationary position to filter the rest.

"The answers are out there," says another of Aquaduct's designers, Paul Silberschatz. "Through design and innovation, we can find simple solutions to even the most challenging problems."

The team, including Adam Mack, Eleanor Morgan, and John Lai, used 2D and 3D modeling to help them modify a Miami Sun tricycle frame, custom-build a peristaltic pump that draws water through a simple filter, and cover surfboard foam in fiberglass to round out the body. Simple sanding and automotive paint finished the job, explains Silberschatz, who, luckily, used to build race cars.

The IDEO crew donated the contest's $5,000 purse -- along with a $10,000 match from sponsors Google and Specialized -- to Kickstart, a nonprofit that develops and markets new technologies in Africa. But they did ride away with something: each member got a brand-new urban commuter bicycle called the Globe.

>> Aquaduct in Action: makezine.com/go/aquaduct

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 14, page 19 - Megan Mansell Williams.

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/made_on_earth_pedal_pure.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/made_on_earth_pedal_pure.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/made_on_earth_pedal_pure.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/made_on_earth/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Made On Earth/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fmade_on_earth_pedal_pure.htmltitle=Pedal%20Pure%20-%20Providing%20clean%20water%20for%20all%20could%20be%20as%bodytext=%20Photograph%20by%20Nicolas%20Zurcher%20Providing%20clean%20water%20for%20all%20could%20be%20as%20easy%20as%20riding%20a%20bike.%20Or%20a%20trike%2C%20if%20Aquaduct%20has%20an%20influence.%20Winner%20of%20the%202007%20Innovate%20or%20Die%20pedal%20power%20competition%2C%20the%20Aquaduct%20Mobile%20Filtration...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/150-red-star.jpg" /In 2008 we saw the Semantic Web gain traction, giving us plenty of choice when selecting the 10 best Semantic Web products of 2008./p pThis is the first in a series of posts we'll publish over December, listing our choices for strongthe top web products of the year/strong. Then at the end of December, we'll post a strongTop 100 list/strong - which we'll be promoting over 2009 and opening up at some point for public voting. Without further ado, let's jump into the top 10 Semantic Web products of 2008./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12774amp;cb=12774' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12774amp;n=12774' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pEarlier this month we posted a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_semantic_apps_to_watch_one_year_later.php"an update to 10 Semantic Web applications/a that we have been tracking for a year now. Some of those make this list, as well as some from our follow-up post a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_more_semantic_apps_to_watch.php"10 More Semantic Apps to Watch/a. We also have a couple of other products in this list, which for one reason or another didn't get mentioned in our watch-lists. /p pYou may disagree with our selections, so do tell us in the comments what you think./p pemNote: the products listed below are in no particular order/em/p h21. Yahoo! SearchMonkey/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/yahoo-purple-logo.jpg" width="140" height="103" border="0" align="left" /In May this year a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_searchmonkey_launches.php"Yahoo! launched an open developer platform for search/a called a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/searchmonkey/"SearchMonkey/a. Yahoo hasn't had the happiest of years, but its willingness to innovate in search is to be commended. As we reported a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_apps_platform.php"at the Web 2.0 Expo/a in April, SearchMonkey is a component of a major overhaul at Yahoo! across all of its properties to "rewire" for the social graph and data portability. SearchMonkey allows developers to build applications on top of Yahoo! search, including allowing site owners to share structured data with Yahoo!, using semantic markup (microformats, RDF), standardized XML feeds, APIs (OpenSearch or other web services), and page extraction./p pWe think this is the best use of Semantic Web by an Internet bigco this year. So for that reason SearchMonkey makes our top 10 list. emRelated: a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/semtech_making_the_web_searchable_searchmonkey.php"The Story of SearchMonkey/a/em./p h22. Powerset (acquired by Microsoft in '08)/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/pset-livesearch.png" align="right" /a href="http://www.powerset.com/"Powerset/a (see a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/exclusive_launch_of_powerlabs.php"our initial coverage here/a and a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/powerset_and_hakia_quest_for_semantic_web.php"here/a) is a natural language search engine. It's fair to say that Powerset has had a great 2008, having been a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_acquires_powerset.php"acquired by Microsoft in July this year/a./p pAt the time of the acquisition, Powerset said that it needed a bigger partner to expand its product beyond its current state of only searching Wikipedia - something we had speculated about when the a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rumor_microsoft_powerset.php"rumors of the acquisition first appeared/a. In its own statement, Microsoft stressed how useful Powerset's technology will be for improving Microsoft's own search products and to quot;take Search to the next level.quot; In a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/does_microsoft_powerset_beat_google.php"our analysis of the deal/a, we noted that it was a quot;bold play requiring exact executionquot; by Microsoft./p h23. Open Calais (Thomson Reuters)/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/calais_logo_mar08.gif" align="left" /At the end of 2007, ClearForest had been recently a href="http://www.clearforest.com/whatsnew/PRs.asp?year=2007amp;id=109"acquired by Reuters/a and at that point it had a Web Service and a Firefox extension. What a change a year brings! ClearForest went on to release a href="http://www.opencalais.com/"Calais/a, a toolkit of products that enable users to incorporate semantic functionality within their blog, content management system, website or application./p pSince a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/reuters_calais.php"launching the Open Calais API/a early this year, over 6,000 developers have registered with it and the service is doing more than 1 million transactions a day. a href="http://www.opencalais.com/node/8823"Version 3.0 was released/a earlier this month and version 4 is expected by January 09./p h24. Dapper MashupAds/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/dapperlogo.jpg" align="right" /In November a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dapper_mashupads_a_new_lease_o.php"we wrote about/a the recent improvement in a href="http://www.dapper.net/mashupads/"Dapper MashupAds/a, a product we first spotted a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dapper_ads.php"over a year ago/a. The idea is that publishers can tell Dapper: this is the place on my web page where the title of a movie will appear, now serve up a banner ad that's related to whatever movie this page happens to be about. That could be movies, books, travel destinations - anything. We remarked that the UI for this has grown much more sophisticated in the past year. /p pThe company believes that its new ad network will provide monetary incentive for publishers to have their websites marked up semantically. We think this has plenty of promise, so it makes our year-end list./p h25. Hakia/h2 pimg border="0" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/hakia_logo_mar07.jpg" align="left" width="150" height="73"a href="http://www.hakia.com/"Hakia/a is a search engine focusing on natural language processing methods to try and deliver 'meaningful' search results. Hakia attempts to analyze the concept of a search query, in particular by doing sentence analysis. Over the past year Hakia has been busy extending its reach - a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hakia_licenses_semantic_search.php"licensing its proprietary OntoSem technology/a to other companies in March and a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hakia_announces_semantic_api.php"announcing a Semantic API/a in June. It was also one of the first companies to a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_opens_its_search_engine.php"utilize Yahoo! BOSS/a, by integrating their semantic parsing with the Yahoo! search index./p pWe think Hakia has made good progress getting its technology into the hands of third parties and making use of Yahoo's broader index, so for that reason it's among our top 10 for the year./p !--nextpage-- h26. TripIt/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/tripit_logo_nov07.jpg" align="right" /a href="http://www.tripit.com/"Tripit/a is an app that manages your travel planning. With TripIt, you forward incoming bookings to plans@tripit.com and the system manages the rest./p pOver the past year TripIt has continued to iterate on its feature set - introducing LinkedIn integration, better mobile functionality, more social networking features, and other goodies. In short, it's user experience continues to rock!/p h27. BooRah/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/boorah_logo_sep08.png" alt="boorah_logo_sep08.png" align="left" /a href="http://boorah.com"BooRah/a is a restaurant review site that we first a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/boorah_semantic_restaurant_reviews.php"reviewed/a earlier this year and has come on in leaps and bounds over 2008. BooRah uses semantic analysis and natural language processing to aggregate reviews from food blogs. Because of this, BooRah can recognize praise and criticism in these reviews and then rates restaurants accordingly. BooRah also gathers reviews from Citysearch, Tripadvisor and other large review sites./p pBooRah also a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/boorah_launches_api.php"announced last month/a the availability of an a href="http://boorah.com/api.html"API/a that will allow other web sites and businesses to offer online reviews and ratings from BooRah to their customers. The API will surface most of BooRah's data about a given restaurant, including ratings, menus, discounts, and coupons./p h28. AdaptiveBlue/h2 pemstrongDisclosure:/strong AdaptiveBlue's founder Alex Iskold is a feature writer at RWW./em/p pimg border="0" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/adaptiveblue_may07.png" align="right" width="238" height="56" /a href="http://www.adaptiveblue.com/"AdaptiveBlue/a are makers of the Firefox plugin, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blueorganizer_semantic_web.php"BlueOrganizer/a. As we wrote in January this year, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adaptive_blue_indigo.php"the basic idea behind BlueOrganizer/a is that it gives you added information about webpages you visit and offers useful links based on the subject matter./p pOver the past year the company has been working on a new product, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/put_the_social_web_in_context_with_glue.php"called Glue/a. Launched last month, Glue is a more social networking oriented version of BlueOrganizer - it connects you to your friends based around things like books, music, movies, stars, artists, stocks, wine, restaurants, and more. We think the company has diversified smartly in 2008, by integrating social networking and mobile functionality into its products./p h29. Zemanta/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/zlogo.gif"a href="http://www.zemanta.com"Zemanta/a is a blogging tool which a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zementa_brings_a_semantic_layer_to_blogs.php"harnesses semantic technology/a to add relevant content to your posts. While it didn't make either of our 'Semantic Apps to Watch' lists in November, a number of commenters pointed it out as something they use. In September we covered a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zemanta_releases_major_upgrade.php"a major upgrade to Zemanta's service/a, allowing users to specify the sources they want to see in the suggestions list that Zemanta provides. Users can now incorporate their own social networks, RSS feeds, and photos into their blog posts. As we noted, this makes Zemanta a lot more appealing to established bloggers who are in less need of suggestions and more in need of automation./p pZemanta's API is also being used by startups, including semantic bookmarking service Faviki - which we mentioned in a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_more_semantic_apps_to_watch.php?p=2"our second Watch-list/a. So all up, we think Zemanta has done enough this year to be included in our top 10 list./p h210. UpTake/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/uptake-logo.jpg" width="150" height="44" border="0" align="right" /Semantic search startup a href="http://www.uptake.com/"UpTake/a (formerly Kango) aims to make the process of booking travel online easier. In a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/semantic_travel_search_uptake.php"our review in May/a, we explained that UpTake is a vertical search engine that has assembled what it says is the largest database of US hotels and activities - over 400,000 of them - from more than 1,000 different travel sites. Using a top-down approach, UpTake looks at its database of over 20 million reviews, opinions, and descriptions of hotels and activities in the US and semantically extracts information about those destinations. /p pAnd now please let us know in the comments what you think of our selections. Do you think we've picked the best 10 Semantic Web products of the year?/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_semantic_web_products_2008.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/CMocRhN6GOs6CQNxJfi0HCHZneQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/CMocRhN6GOs6CQNxJfi0HCHZneQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=17VzMLFa"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=NarFW15R"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=OUd0WMBh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=OUd0WMBh" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=Zxp0mQMt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=Zxp0mQMt" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=Xl99Wg7k"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=Xl99Wg7k" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=bdbZJL2f"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=AiovxOmK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/QRuIJbJSgdY" height="1" width="1"/

Ravit Lichtenberg is the founder and chief strategist at Ustrategy.com—a boutique consultancy with a mission to help startups succeed. She authors a blog at ravitlichtenberg.com.

With the economic downturn grinding the startup wheels to a near-halt here and abroad, companies are competing for a smaller pie. Capital, acquisition odds, advertising dollars, and consumer wallets are all becoming much smaller.

If you are a European startup in the consumer Web services or product space, you have even more obstacles to overcome than your US counterparts. For one, funding in Europe is still very limited and narrowly focused compared to the US. Second, your consumer base is much smaller—especially if your product is localized for language and service. Third, the more innovative you get, the more likely it is you’ll bump against a much greater skepticism and a much smaller pool of early adopters.

So you decide to come here—Silicon Valley, the Mecca of anything startup– to raise funds and tap into the massive and enthusiastic US customer base. But right now, even though you may have enjoyed great interest as investors expand their reach internationally, you’re up against fierce competition from just about everyone.

And this is where European startups face the biggest challenge: presenting your company in a way that makes sense—the US way.

Fundamental differences

In the past 2 months I’ve listened to over 40 pitches from French, Belgian, British, and Eastern European companies. About 1 in 15 presented their company in a way that would stick. This is because Europeans tend to build their case in a highly academic way–stating the conditions under which their offering makes sense and building their argument from there.

American audiences, on the other hand, are used to seeing “the bottom line first” and they do things very fast by European standards. “They’re like cowboys,” a Belgian CEO told me. “First they shoot then they look.” This is a fundamental difference in how people present and perceive information. And it can mean the difference that gets you to that second meeting, someone writing about your startup, and even getting funding.

Key points to remember

Let’s go over a few key points that can help you present your company in a way that makes more sense here:

1. First impression is (almost) everything.

Americans know this very well. That’s why they work on their “elevator pitch.” You have 30-60 seconds to create an impression. Want to spruce it up even more? Have a 1-2 minute demo ready on your iPhone that plays while you speak. Think: Why are you different? What makes you stand out? How do you stick in someone’s mind? Why should an investor want to see you again? These are questions that should always be on your mind and guide what you say— all in 60 seconds or less.

2. Speak in benefits. Customer benefits, that is.

Europeans tend to be highly accomplished on the technology side. In the US, you also need to think about, and communicate, what your prospective customers will be able to do thanks to your technology. How will it address a true customer need? Why will a customer use it? Better yet—why will they pay for it? Every time you speak about a feature or capability of your technology, immediately follow with “and that means that customers will be able to...” (fill in the blank).

3. Start with the end first.

It may sound counter intuitive but business communication in the US is often non-linear and starts with the conclusion first. The people with whom you meet will want to know what your product does and how much money you expect to make from it. If that sticks, then you can go back and talk about how you got to the idea, how you developed it, all those other things it can be, etc.

4. Know your numbers.

In Silicon Valley numbers speak louder than anything else. They’re also important as a reality-check for you as technologies and competitors evolve. Don’t let anyone fool you–no one really knows what’s going to happen so it’s okay to make assessments—just make sure they’re intelligent ones. Be ready to talk about your 3-year profit-and-loss (P&L) model and about your Total Addressable Market (TAM) in clear terms.

5. Focus.

The American idiom is “put a stake in the ground.” It’s when of all the many things your technology can be, you choose one (or two) things for now and go with them. This is a tough one, I know, because you want to show all the great things your idea can become. But where you see options, VCs see lack of direction. So let’s keep things in order: Decide on a focus for now, and put the framing, benefits, and numbers around that choice. You will later have plenty of time to develop your roadmap.

6. Investors are not your friends.

They are meeting with you because you might represent a good investing opportunity. As such, come prepared with all your materials and if possible, with a beautifully executed demo and present your case. If you need advice, ask your friends, other CEOs, or advisors if you have them. In fact, ask anyone–just not investors you’d like to work with. Once the term sheet has been completed and the deal signed, they’ll provide you with plenty of advice whether you want it or not. It’s their job.

7. Networking is key.

Many European CEOs think networking and mingling is “cocktail hour saved for those who don’t do real work.” But in the US—and especially in the Silicon Valley—this is an important catalyst to getting business done. You need to get out of your three-cubicle office which you’re sharing with four other companies and go to events. You need to tell other CEOs, bloggers, and investors about your product. You’ll get invaluable advice that will undoubtedly help you move forward, new connection points, and a perspective on the startup world within which you operate. This is just as important as making phone calls and taking meetings.

8. Keep it short.

Repeatedly I hear that CEOs talk about their companies for too long. Yes- you want to make sure people understand the breadth of your offering, but more talk doesn’t necessarily get you results. Lucas Grassi Gurfein, former International Product Manager for Yahoo!Inc. suggests bullet points often work best: Use them as talking points and keep your presentation short. More important than demonstrating the history of your idea is creating a stellar impression and a genuine curiosity in your listeners’ minds; you want them to come back and say “can we talk more?” Less, you see, is truly more.

9. Don’t be argumentative.

In most European countries, debating a topic is just part of daily conversations. To most Americans—unless they were on their college debate team—the practice of debate can be unnerving. You already know that Europeans can be perceived as uncomfortably direct here—add debating and you come across as argumentative and maybe even hostile, which is hardly what you meant.

Try to balance between presenting your rationale and listening to feedback. If you have a thought about the point being brought up, you can always start by acknowledging the feedback’s validity and then add how you’re thinking of addressing it.

10. Tap into the existing infrastructure.

There are a number of organizations and initiatives designed directly to help advance European companies in the US:

· Each country typically has a Chamber of Commerce in the Bay Area which puts together business-related events and can help you get connected much faster than you could do on your own.

· There are non-profit organizations like SVOD and VC backed events like the Dow Jones’ Venture Wire EuroTech Showcase that help promote European startups through connections to venture capital firms and journalists.

· A number of organizations sponsor conferences, competitions, and “boot-camps” for startups. GuideWire’s Innovate!Europe is one example—it focuses on identifying new and promising talent in Europe and helping them grow globally. Make sure you’re aware of these and attend at least a few each year.

As the CEO of a European startup you will need to overcome a number of obstacles. At the same time, the European tendency to take more calculated risks, base products on proprietary technology, and have demonstrated success abroad, can translate into leverage especially in these difficult times.

As venture capital firms increasingly diversify their portfolio with a greater reach abroad, you may in fact enjoy more opportunity than ever before. If your product is truly offering customers a way to do something new, something they want—if you help them make existing interactions less painful—you’re just as likely (if not more) to get a piece of that funding pie and more of those cavorted consumer eyes. The key is to communicate what you do and what’s unique about your startup’s offering in a way that matches how people perceive and respond to information in the US.

Have tips of your own? Share them below in the comments.

Imagery courtesy of iStockphoto, TommL, Sodafish, Caracterdesign

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Final Reminder: Sun Startup Camp on May 4-5, Kicks off with MorningMash
Sun Startup Camp SF Starts with MorningMash
Sun’s Startup Camp SF Opens with MorningMash
Announcing StartUp Camp: March 7-8th in London
Startup Search Launches Web 2.0 Directory
Startup 2.0 Awards for European Websites
Ringside Startup: Poland’s Wacky Idea

pimg alt="michaelwolff.jpg" src="http://blog.clickz.com/michaelwolff.jpg" width="100" height="135" align="left" hspace="10""...If you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people."/p p-Michael Wolff, author of new Rupert Murdoch biography “The Man Who Owns The News," in an a href="http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/FineOnMedia/archives/2008/12/michael_wolffs_1.html"interview with Jon Fine/a. /pimg src="http://feeds.clickz.com/~r/clickzblog/~4/472528635" height="1" width="1"/

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=47a93caf4b543772005f9fd1maxX=100maxY=178" border="0" alt="michaelwolff.jpg" title="michaelwolff.jpg" width="100" height="178" /BusinessWeek's Jon Finea href="http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/FineOnMedia/archives/2008/12/michael_wolffs_1.html" takes Rupert Murdoch tell-all author Michael Wolff out for dinner/a. Michael then reveals the secret he didn't put into the book: why Murdoch's News Corp (NWS) is trying so hard to ditch MySpace:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"MW: What [MySpace] understand[s] is their $25 billion to $30 billion valuation.-/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"JF: But that's [expletive]. We both know that's [expletive]./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"MW: It doesn't make any difference. That's gonna go down. What they are looking at is the distinct possibility that it can go down to nothing./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"JF: How do you find that plausible? It's not even a utility like--the anti-Google argument is this: If someone builds a better search engine tomorrow, I have zero switching costs. If I am on MySpace, I have 500 friends. I use it to communicate with people. You can't just move. It's a pain in the ass. All your stuff is there./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"MW: But that's exactly what they said about AOL./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"JF: You did not develop that relationship with AOL./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"MW: You did. You exactly did./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"JF: How?/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"MW: Your email was there, because your friends were there. I mean, AOL operated actually as the community of its day. There were all of those-/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"JF: But besides the email and, OK, the-/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"MW: There were the infinite number of chat rooms. Layer upon layer upon layer of sex chat rooms./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"JF: Of course. And I give you credit for having pointed to that as the secret driver of its success. But, all you need is a different chat room. You don't have pictures up [on AOL]. You don't have your history up there. You don't have-/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"MW: It doesn't matter. What they saw at the time was that [users] were absolutely wedded to AOL. That was Time Warner's bet on that./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"JF: AOL was monodimensional in a way that MySpace is not. I don't think that's particularly debatable./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"MW:strong I don't think that's true. I think it is--if you're on MySpace now, you're a [expletive] cretin. And you're not only a [expletive] cretin, but you're poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people./strong/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"JF: [unsuccessfully stifling laughter] I don't mean to get all Murdoch's-kids on you [an obscure reference to an earlier part of the conversation], but if you are in a band, you are on MySpace. You have to be on MySpace. That's a powerful driver. And second of all-- if I am to accept your reasoning, even though I don't--as the success of [News Corp's British tabloid] The Sun will tell you, there are lot of cretins out there and you can make a lot of money off cretins. By appealing to their essential--/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"MW: No! That is the difference. And that is one of the interesting points of Murdoch. He wants to make money off of what he rightly saw as a rising lower class. He came to this country and he sees, that's just not really true. No one really identifies with being lower class [in the US]. As soon as it comes to you- I am lower class'--you run, and you have to rehabilitate all of your aspirational identifiers./p pstrongSee Also:/strong a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/dewolfe-myspace-hasn-t-seen-any-impact-from-financial-crises"MySpace CEO Dewolfe: Recession Hammering Growth Prospects/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/JJHOOkZezKlQXwjDfWKRwdkdux4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/JJHOOkZezKlQXwjDfWKRwdkdux4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=lvr6H64l"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=lvr6H64l" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=IWKu8ihs"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Y41F6YQe"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=7XjUZvcU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=7XjUZvcU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=bCW5Gbf0"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=CbPLhmoq"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=uuuhYuVt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=KyqKMFiT"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/9KRR511ipTc" height="1" width="1"/