DreamIt’s class tackled education, e-commerce and app publishing and a few used video conferencing in interesting ways.

Here are three that stood out to me:

Take the Interview CEO and co-founder Danielle Weinblatt

Take the Interview. Hiring manager and recruiters often lose time winnowing down the field of applicants to a handful they can bring in for real interviews. Often, there’s a lot of time devoted to scheduling and conducting phone screening interviews. What Boston-based Take the Interview does is provide a video interviewing platform that allows companies to solicit up to five video-recorded answers from applicants that they can review.

It allows HR teams to screen candidates more quickly and get a better feel for people using a medium that many younger applicants are already used to: video. The videos can be organized by question and can be shared and commented on within an organization. Recruiters can also pull up an applicant’s LinkedIn profile while watching a video. Take the Interview launched this summer and has about 80 companies participating in its beta, including Deloitte and Bausch + Lomb. Monster and Craigslist have also started embedding a Take the Interview button on their sites.

I like Take the Interview, because it seems like a simple way to get gain more valuable information from candidates and use video to really see if there’s a potential fit with an applicant. And as video conferencing and webcams become a common way for people to communicate, it makes sense to leverage that more for hiring.

Re-Vinyl. This Los Angeles-based start-up is taking on the demise of albums with an application that allows labels and artists to create their own digital albums complete with cover art, streaming music, lyrics and liner notes. There’s also an opportunity for high quality advertising within the app including promotions for the artists themselves.

There’s also a chance to include more interactivity with fans using a Remix feature, in which an artist can ask questions of their audience and fans can respond by dragging and dropping media into the app. Right now, Re-Vinyl is working with artists to create apps, which can take about a week, but the company is poised to release a self-serve tool to allow artists to make these apps on their own.

That, I think, will be cool because it will allow serious and also budding musicians to create next-generation digital albums. We’ve seen some of the promise of this kind of interactive multimedia apps from Push Pop Press and 955 Dreams. But this could be, if it catches on, it a way to help musical albums make the transition to the app world. Re-Vinyls plans to make money by selling Vinyls or subscriptions, taking a percentage of advertising revenue or through sponsored content.

AppAddictive CEO and founder Michael Onghai

AppAddictive. While brands move to social media platforms to advertise and engage their users, it’s not always easy or very effective, especially as they try to branch out to multiple networks. AppAddictive, based in New York City, is working to solve that with a marketing platform that allows companies to manage their content, ads and analytics on multiple networks. It comes down to AppAddictive’s ability to engage with users using mini-apps like quizzes, contests, coupon offers, video galleries.

That makes a brand’s page more dynamic and interesting and allows them to gather more information from users on what they like and are interested in. And by leveraging social networks, it can bring in new customers through viral channels for less money.  Founder Michael Onghai, one of the first employees at Geocities, left his hedge fund job to give AppAddictive a try. He said already 5,500 companies are testing the apps and 50 million people have tried one of the apps. The company plans on making money through performance-based advertising.

I think as advertisers look to tap the power of social media, having a tool like AppAddictive makes some sense. They can make their brand pages smarter and more engaging and they can gain valuable information on their users while lowering the cost of user acquisition.

I also enjoyed Hoot.me, an interactive learning platform built on top of Facebook that allows users to study with friends, connect via multi-person video chat and bring in tutors to aid in learning. KeepIdeas is also interesting, allowing people to organize recipes and food content in the cloud. You can view a longer list of all the graduates here.

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Richmond Times-Dispatch has a wonderful overview of the state’s broadband efforts. From the article, you gather that since 1998, about $312.9 million has been invested in the state’s broadband infrastructure and a large chunk of the funding has come from FCC.

But more than that, it is the $67.6 million that the state got as a result of the 1998 national tobacco settlement, that has helped Virginia realize some of its broadband dreams. A big portion of that money went into a brand new Intra Muni-Network, the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative (MBC), which connects widespread communities with fiber, and is the cornerstone of this broadband makeover. (see maps below the fold)

Using about $31.9 million over three years, MBC has put together a 700-mile fiber network. MBC fiber network is actually two networks – a long haul network that spans from Atlanta in the South to Ashburn in the North. The other network is one that connects smaller communities in the Southern and South Western Virginia.

MBC General Manager Tad Deriso in an earlier interview told me that the network that is built using Infinera DTNs can offer 100 gigabit connections, should anyone want it. The network which went operational in October 2006, is offering service at prices some 30%-60% below that of the competition. In some cases, their prices are more than 75% below those of existing carriers.

The abundance of bandwidth (thanks to MBC), space and power is making Virginia an attractive destination for new data centers, thereby bringing much needed investment and jobs to the state. Deriso told us that Google was building out a data center in Ashburn and MBC was providing connectivity. “We have private investors turning a warehouse into a new data center,” he said. Some estimate that MBC will lead to the creation of between 2000 and 3000 jobs over the next five years.

This MBC fiber is the cornerstone of Virginia’s broadband makeover. Several companies like Ashburn-based DigitalBridge Communications Corp. are going to use MBC fiber to power their wireless networks, which in turn will service businesses and residents. Other local companies, and phone cooperatives have plans to use Mid-Atlantic’s fiber to offer services.

MBC, to my mind is a good example of a lean-and-focused telecom operator aware of the competitive landscape and using technology to its advantage. I am sure there will be others who will follow their model, but for now, it is one of a kind. How far Virginia gets in is quest for universal broadband, remains to be seen. It is encouraging to see that the state making all the right moves.

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But they did, and issued a complex press release that included the requisite buzzwords like video and IPTV to justify why it was releasing the new router. While the router won’t impact revenues until the end of 2007, it will give Juniper a big morale boost (and a talking point.)

The company claims that T-1600 is one honking piece of iron, and has twice the density of competitive platforms (read 
CSCO’s CRS-1) and delivers 1.6Tbps of throughput per chassis. (Light Reading report has all the arcane details that should keep the router groupies happy.) Whatever it does, one thing is for sure, UBS Research analyst Nikos Theodosopoulos is right when he says that this baby is to help Juniper “regain lost market share & enhance positioning in next-gen RFPs.”

This service provider router market is on an upswing, according to The Dell O’ro Group. In the first quarter of 2007, the worldwide service provider router market grew 29 percent in the first quarter of 2007 compared to the same period last year, the research group says. Juniper sales were up 6% while Cisco saw its router sales to service providers jump 26%.

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