Some of the most promising start-up companies were present at yesterday's Pitch San Francisco 2011. Hosted on the club level concourse of AT&T Park, the venue was just about as impressive as the start-ups.

There were some really great new mobile and web apps on display at Pitch. From a new way to listen to and share music with friends to a comprehensive photo editing and sharing app and everything in between, here are some of my top picks from the event.

We have to innovate, we enjoy it, so let’s do it!

With the release of Opera 11, I talked to co-founder Jon Von Tetzchner to find out what makes the company behind this innovative browser tick. Back in 2005, Jon had proclaimed he would swim the Atlantic if Opera 8 got a million downloads in four days, so I asked him where he stood with Opera 11.

Do you have any plans to swim the Atlantic again?

When we had this competition thing, it was about getting one million downloads in four days, and now we have that in a single day! So from that perspective I would probably have to swim back and forth to the states multiple times just to cover that. I think I’ve had my swim, it was cold and it  would be even colder now!

Opera 10 was very innovative, what are the biggest developments in 11?

For Opera 11 we’ve taken a different approach. We’ve looked at what are the most important things for our users. What do they like best that we can improve on? And then we’ve looked at the things people are saying they would like to have.

So, for the first part, speed is important, Opera Turbo is important, and we made a smaller installer. But then we looked at tabs. A typical Opera user has around ten tabs open at any one time, and keeping track of these can become difficult, so a better organization is a benefit and this is why we’ve come up with tab stacking. We did the precursor of tabs back in 1994, with multiple windows inside one window, and we’ve been gradually improving this and I think tab stacking is an important improvement for anyone who has a lot of tabs.

Mouse gestures are a very popular feature in Opera, and we’ve made them easier to use in Opera 11, and more accessible to new users.

Turbo is very popular with people who have slow connections, and we’ve made it more efficient. The most user requested feature we’ve added is extensions.

A while ago I wrote a post about how to configure Asian languages on Windows XP. Since that day, my interest has increased to the point that I’m currently taking Japanese lessons – which means I often have to use those tricky characters on the computer.

Using hiragana, katakana and kanji on a Mac is no big deal. You only need to add the new language as a new keyboard input source in System Preferences, and switch from one to another from the top toolbar.

Things are a bit more complicated on Windows, but if you follow these steps, you’ll be able to set up Japanese as a new language on Windows 7, and use Japanese characters in Windows application.

1. Go to Control Panel and click the Change keyboards or other input methods option.

Every time I go back home I try to convince my Mum to buy a laptop and start using Internet, but she always rejects my offer with the same excuse: “It’s too difficult for someone my age”. Though I do know people who are already in their seventies and use computers every day,  many people at that age find those awful machines just too complicated. This is where Eldy comes in handy.

Eldy replaces the standard Windows desktop with a special interface, designed for senior users, with large buttons and text, and a colorful mouse pointer that stands out on the screen. The buttons take you to basic Internet activities, such as checking your email, browsing the web, chatting with other people and watching online videos.