Energy and creativity were on display at the eighteenth Web Innovators Group gathering at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge last night. The event attracted a throng of people who were there to mix, mingle, and learn more about where the Web is taking us these days.

I found it particularly refreshing that the gathering was open to the public, held in a swanky conference space, and best of all, free. As a result, a robust, eclectic mix of people showed up, from geeks in shorts and flip flops to business people in power suits.

Many people in the crowd were sporting red dots on their name tags – signifying that they were looking for new talent for their companies. Even the dourest economic prognosticators would have been forced to do a double take last night, with optimism and entrepreneurship valiantly beating back the perception of darkness on the economic horizon.

Here’s a snapshot of the “main dishes” featured at last night’s gathering:

Zeer is a social network website that aims to help people buy better groceries. Founded in June 2007 by Michael Putman, Zeer taps into the wisdom of crowds to identify the best products for communities of people that share your interests. It also offers a mobile application that allows you to look up grocery reviews in the story.

WebNotes says its mission is to revolutionize the way people collect, organize and share their information. With Wednotes (founded in July 2007) users can annotate web pages with highlighters and sticky notes and organize and share that information with friends and colleagues.

TotSpot allows new parents to safely and securely share their baby’s “firsts” via pictures, videos and text with friends and family. Founded in January 2008, TotSpot enables parents to take their TotSpot pages and turn them into personalized parent journals or DVDs.

A real-time vote via mobile text put Zeer on top of the list as the crowd’s favorite – but I’d have to give the nod to TotSpot. Parents these days are more devoted than ever to their kids. They want to share milestones with their friends and family but are deeply concerned about safety and privacy issues. TotSpot fills the niche.

Co-Founder Adam Katz told me they’ve already attracted 10,000 members in less than seven months. That’s quite an accomplishment.

Good luck to all of the presenters, and hopefully I’ll see you back at the next Web Innovators Group gathering.

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Technorati Tags: Boston, technology, TotSpot, Web, Web Innovators Group, Webnotes, Zeer

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