039;s Web 2.0 Awards

Seattle Internet Companies | Angel Investment | Web 2.0 Start-up Spectrum: The Firefox Kid Inside his uncle’s restaurant, Ross launches into a laptop demo of Parakey. This isn’t a press conference; he’s just showing his brainchild to me informally. It’s the sort of venue he ­prefers—low key, one on one. And it’s in these moments that he really comes to life. As developers well know, disseminating new software is not only a technical challenge, it’s also a communications task. You’re not just engineering a solution, you’re marketing it. In explaining Parakey, Ross cuts to the chase. ”We all know ­people…who have all this content that they are not publishing stored on their computers,” he says. ”We’re trying to persuade them to live their lives online.” Grandparents love seeing their kids and grandkids on Flickr or Snapfish, but they’re often too intimidated to put their own pictures on these sites. It’s not just grandparents who aren’t using the Web as much as they could—it’s everyone. Take digital photos, for example. What do developers think?