By Mike Calore

AUSTIN, Texas – As dedicated readers of the most popular business blogs are well aware, the web is positively awash in terrible ideas for startups. So many, in fact, that Waxy.org's Andy Baio was inspired to create a contest to see who could dream up the most awful, short-sighted and unfundable business plan.

Baio tapped eight of his friends who, presenting alone or in teams, pitched their creations to real-life venture capitalist David Hornick, general partner at August Capital. The presentations during the Worst Website Ever contest Saturday evening at South by Southwest Interactive, varied between the droll and the downright hilarious, and all of them gently skewered the clueless vapidity of Web 2.0 marketing-speak.

A few of the teams actually went through the trouble of creating working websites for their fake ideas, and, clicking around, you get the feeling that some of the ideas are stupid enough to actually work. Here's how it went down on the stage at SXSW.

Entrepreneur: Jeffery Bennett, web designer from San Francisco

Bad idea: Image Search for the Blind

The pitch: "To bring vision to those who do not have vision." The service uses patented software clients to capture descriptive information about images on the web that can be recited back to blind internet users. Sight-enabled users type the image descriptions into the Capture client, and other users running the Verify client check the crowdsourced information for accuracy.

Entrepreneur: Michael Buffington, co-founder of Grockit

Bad idea: Presscast

The pitch: Gather press releases from PR flacks with large budgets and pass them on to paid human workers. The workers blog and podcast about them, then promote their blog posts by linking to similar blogs. Sign up for the public beta at (the disturbingly real) presscas.st website.

Entrepreneurs: Ben Brown and Katie Spence

Bad idea: Happy Net Box

The pitch: "Put the internet in your box." Expand your website by putting any other website inside of it. It's one line of code and it's easy to monetize (just check the "Monetize" box). Embed Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn inside your pages and keep people at your website all day long.

Entrepreneur: David Friedman, blogger at Ironic Sans

Bad idea: PeopleIPO, home of the Individual Public Offering

The pitch: If private companies can divide up their worth up among shareholders and become publicly traded companies, why can't private individuals do the same? PeopleIPO helps people go public. Determine your worth, manage your IPO and communicate with your shareholders using your public profile, or PIPO, page. Beware of hostile takeovers.

Entrepreneur: Lia Bulaong, blogger at cheesedip.com

Bad idea: Sickr

The pitch: A social networking tool that tells you who the most-infected individuals in your network of friends are. Avoid those with colds, flus and mononucleosis. You're 30 percent more likely to get sick in New York than at home, so don't go there this week. Track your friends' sicknesses with a dedicated Facebook app.

Entrepreneur: Merlin Mann, 43 Folders

Bad idea: FlockdUp

The pitch: A social network for technology thought leaders. Fill out a profile, add contacts (or "friends," as FlockdUp calls them) and get ready to monetize. As you collect friends, you become a more valued user and you make more money. Yes, it really is that simple. That's why you're a thought leader.

Entrepreneur: Lane Becker, co-founder of GetSatisfaction

Bad idea: MMOmmerce, the future of the future of commerce

The pitch: Shop for real-life items within MMOs. Frag Nazis while shopping for designer home furnishings in a game co-developed by Target and the U.S. Army. Shop for goods on Amazon.com in a virtual Amazon jungle. Visit a Barnes & Noble inside the Lord of the Rings multiplayer game for the true "Clicks and Mordor" experience.

The Winner: FlockdUp, the social network for the BlackBerry-and-PowerPoint set. Merlin Mann won the (fake) $1 million funding check because his presentation had the best animations, used the most buzzwords and made the least amount of sense.

Photo: Andy Baio gives the audience at the Worst Website Ever: That's So Crazy, It Just Might Work panel a tour of the web's most spectacular business failures, one of which was Boo.com.

Credit: Jim Merithew/Wired

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