It was one of the funniest sessions I've ever attended at SXSW: a parody "DEMO" in which really, really bad ideas were pitched to David Hornick of August Capital.

Really bad ideas come in three categories, said Andy:

1. Inane: These are just really stupid ideas.
2. Derivative: These are the ideas that you read about on Tech Crunch that sound like they were created using Madlibs. Ideas like "It's a (blank) for (blank)." For example, "a Facebook for Senior Citizens."
3. Just plane evil: Ideas that are, well, like text-link ads or paid reviews or anything that pays you for sharing contact information about your friends.

Here were the really bad ideas:

Jeffrey Bennett: Image Search for the Blind. (My favorite.)
Michael Buffington: Pressca.st. This is an actual company that pay bloggers to write about press releases.
Ben Brown and Katie Spence: Embed any website into your website. This is funny, and it actually works.
David Friedman: PeopleIPO. Take yourself public if you need to raise funds.
Lia Bulaong: SICKR. Tell you who the most likely to be infected people in your social network so you can keep away from them.
Merlin Mann: FlockedUp, the social network for thought leaders.
Lane Becker: MMommerce. Massive multiplayer online game commerce where real people deliver you digital products. Sorta, World of Warcraft meets Kozmo.com

And the winner was: Merlin Mann. While I liked Jeffrey Bennett's really bad idea, Merlin's delivery was solidly bad.

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