More newsprint behind the baseboards – what could it mean?
Posted by Jeffrey on Mar 22, 2009
Today we spent most of the morning and into the afternoon packing up the kitchen and living/dining room as we are trying to get the house ready for the demo which is happening next weekend.I was pulling up some more baseboard and lo and behold found some more newspaper shoved behind the baseboard. This time however the baseboard seemed to be stuck in place with clear caulking, which made it somewhat more difficult to pull up.
I think I know the cause - around that time (1990) the federal government gave grants for “draft proofing” houses, so probably the old owners got a couple of tubes of caulking and put it down to try and reduce the gale force winds that whip through the walls.
Problem is that the holes where the subfloor joins the walls are rather too large for caulking so the newspaper (The Toronto Star) was shoved in their to slow the air movement. “Hey if it was good enough for 1925” (when I think this house was built) “it’s good enough for us.”
Demo-Wrapup
Posted by Jeffrey on Feb 2, 2008
Well another Demo has come and gone with a whirlwind of information and opportunities. There are a few things which I found at this year’s session.It seems like collaboration is no longer a nice to have but a feature that is really becoming standard when it comes to online products. Notably, Cozimo, LiquidPlanner and some others are taking it to a new level as they are allowing simultaneous work across multiple locations which points to the new, geographically dispersed nature of projects these days. And LiquidTalk allows simultaneous translation across differerent groups all within an IM client.
Social media as a concept is also being rolled up into all products; so much so that Demo is going to stop having a separate grouping for these products. How’s that for validation of a concept?
Gadgets and devices are still around (even thought sometimes it feels like all the services are being delivered inside the browser). Livescribe’s pen
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Livescribe’s Pen. |
brings your voice (or any audio) to the printed page. Even translation of words into other languages!
And for another audience alltogether (kids 4-8) Leapfrog’s tag system (available Nationwide in June ‘08) gives little ones the ability to interact with books with audio and music with their pen-like reader.
Green has to get bigger at Demo and the buzz around the pavilion was that having only two companies there representing the category was a real letdown. There have got to be more worthy companies out there (besides the great offering from Celsius and GreenPlug.) With the amount of monitors and cpu’s buzzing over the sessions, there is growing awareness of the impact of this sector.
Video is not just for broadcasters anymore and although we’ve know this for a while, there are a bunch of new tools out there (VisibleMeasures, TubeMogul) which help monetize and analyze online video for publishers, be they consumers or national brands.
And of course, the web is a Web 2.0 (sorry couldn’t resist) playground as everything is and can be, mashed up together. One service (Flypaper) even allows searching and viewing of flickr photos right from inside their application. Sprout brings the power of custom flash applications to a wider audience with their cool builder application which allows users to create cool flash apps right from inside their browser. No download needed.
But my concern as always with these new services is how they will sustain themselves over the long term to support their rapid advancement and integration of really fantastic functionality. I have heard that funding for “Ad-supported” services has tapered off over the past 6 months or so, and if that is the case, what other type of subscription, transaction or other models are out there?
For other views on this check out ZDnet and Rafe’s column.
Demo- An end to Social Media?
Posted by Jeffrey on Jan 30, 2008
Not really.There were the requisite B2C startups and also a lot of Enterprise or B2B companies in this session, but an interesting comment from Chris Shipley in that there is currently a category for “Social Media Companies” which will be dropped in the next event as this is becoming not a separate category, but integrated into every product that will be demo-ing in the future.The Revolution Will Be Broadcast on the Web
| BitGravity |
Make internet powerful for delivering media. Experiences that rival television but are compelling because they are interactive. First broadcast quality content delivery network. Live video streaming HD, affordable and scales. Flash client , not download. Can use it as a DVR. Fast channel change as well. Good demo. |
| Cozimo.com |
Collaboration of filmmakers and clients. Markups that are designated by contributor, can chat and respond. Quite a few attributes and features. Can step thru all notifications on the timeline. |
| xtranormal |
Gives avatars new life. From templates can do things like a talk show with avatars. Has preset actions and this is all in browser! And you can scan in pictures and map them on the avatars. “Movie making in a box” |
| Capzles, Inc. |
Social storytelling – empowers anyone to create multimedia stories. Time-based emphasis. Can be used by consumer brands to tell a story. |
| HubDub, Ltd. |
Prediction markets, aggregation and social networking. Weird demo start with props (entrails and magic 8-ball). Predictions or forecast on how news stories will develop. EG who will get the republican nomination? Given $1000 virtual dollars to make a prediction. Can will virtual dollars. Users are news participants. |
| notebookz.com, Inc. |
Connects users to others research on the web. Place and tools to discover others research on the web. Goes out and looks at other collections of information on the web. Sort of like del.icio.us but allows cutting and pasting as well of text. |
| atlaspost.com |
Social mapping network. Putting houses on a google maps mashup |
| Liquidus Corp. |
On Demand Marketing. Production and distribution of video to channels. Pulls images from the web in turns them into flash videos. |
| TubeMogul, Inc. |
Ratings for video. Content creators can upload video to the site and the metadata. Can then push it out to the video sites in one click. Saves time in uploading etc. provides a single dashboard for tracking/stats. Can analyze demographics of audience. Helps provide more metrics for doing deals to get advertisers for content on line. |
| Visible Measures Corp. |
Measure behaviour of internet video audience. Can see what people do in each video like replay, rewind or leave the video. Good for advertisers to see also how other sites pick up the videos and blog posts feature the ad. Can also see geo-location who is seeing the video. |
| support.com |
Remote support. Pc health check does a scan of the pc to look at where problems exist… What about if the PC is offline and they have to download the app? Gives a report using traffic signals and colors. Then gives a huge list of things that could be fixed. Looks a little overwhelming at first, but gives a description of what each would do to fix. |
| Pathworks Software Corp. |
Customer service. Application called help stream. Customer service is hard to do cost-effectively. Looks like aggregation of web results, community and KB. Its also Free !?…Not sure how they do this… |
| SupportSpace, Inc. |
Community based tech support market space. Community can then engage experts based on their profile and rating. Can do desktop sharing. |
| good2gether, Inc. |
Reinventing philanthropy. People want to get involved and it makes it easier to recruit the volunteers. It is free and the local non-profits can sell ads. Can share to facebook and email invites out to others. Hyper local content that can be monetized with partners. Connecting people. |
Demo-Tuesday Afternoon Sessions
Posted by Jeffrey on Jan 29, 2008
Simplicity was the kickoff theme as we went through a wide variety of demos this afternoon; all the way from virtual desktops for the enterprise to teaching music over the web.Chris Shipley noted that: “Simplicity on the other side of complexity. Making really hard stuff simple.”
A real cool demo was Sprout, that allows you to create flash widgets without being a flash programmer.
Simplify, Simplify
He wasn’t much of a technologist, but Henry David Thoreau had the right idea. We make our lives easier, and arguably better, by using products that wrap complexity and capability in simple designs and interfaces. DEMO will continue to beat the drum for practical products that work well, hide complexity, and make our professional and personal lives more enjoyable.
Demonstrations by:
| LiquidTalk, Inc. |
Podcasting- better connect and engage mobile workers. |
| Zodiac Interactive |
Mobile content for the TV web- |
| Voyant, Inc. |
Do it yourself financial planning. |
| Review2Buy, Inc. |
Review a free mobile price comparison product. Wine comparison with winereview.com reviews. |
| Acesis, Inc. |
Simplifies healthcare records keeping. Built on Flex and Adobe Air. Templated forms for doctors to enter information/ patient records. Can customize without professional services because in effect, it is user-generated content on a CMS. |
| blist, Inc. |
“Worlds Easiest Database” online application that has a more friendly UI for non-programmers. Competitors are DabbleDB , quickbase etc. [name is: WeBLIST] |
As consumer-generated content become de rigor, we’ll want tools and techniques to create and deliver better looking, more stylish and professional content. Whether it’s presenting materials at work, delivering messages to friends and customers, or distributing content, these products give individuals the ability to communicate like pros.
Demonstrations by:
| Flypaper, Inc. |
“Tell stories that stick on the web” bridges gap between PowerPoint and custom flash development. Using templates users can create rich flash animations that they can then upload to the web. |
| GoldMail, Inc. |
“Voiceover messaging” – uses rich messaging in custom branded player. Recipients get an email then a link back to the site where they can view the content. Simple easy-to-use creation tool, which you then basically do a slideshow with voice-overs. Not as rich as the previous company in terms of impact, but there is an email tie-in automatically. |
| Sprout, Inc. |
Web-based drag and drop environment for building flash files using Flex. It integrates with other web services such as Yahoo maps, Ribbit etc. Can publish and republish to popular platforms such as Facebook and blogger.. Can change the widget and republish and it updates wherever you have published it. |
Over decades, the technology industry has had a profound negative impact on the environment. With greater awareness, the industry is also poised to have a profound positive effect as well. We’re watching for products, technologies and services that are responsible to the environment and sustainable in the economy, with an eye toward a future DEMOgreen event.
Demonstrations by:
| Green Plug, Inc. |
Is there a universal power adaptor?? Will recognize the device and just charge it. They sell a chip for free, software on the product side and they both recognize each other. Shuts off power when device does not need it. |
| Celsias, Ltd. |
First online collaboration site for climate change projects. Easy to put up projects on the site and easy to join whatever projects users want. Revenue Model: (in addition to Google Ads), they want companies to use it for CSR projects for 29.99/month. |
Steven M. Barlow , PhD., Professor, SPLH
Programs in Neuroscience, Human Biology, and Bioengineering
Director, Communication Neuroscience Laboratories, University of Kansas
Ronald Indeck , PhD., The Das Family Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Washington University, St. Louis
Yannis Papakonstantinou , Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering, University of California, San Diego and Founder, app2you.com
Virtualization technology is at the center of more secure, more stable, more scalable IT infrastructure. These two products are leading that trend.
Demonstrations by:
| Citrix Sytems |
Streaming virtual desktops- can roll out virtual desktops remotely with a instant on logon and no real difference than a physical installation. If users open a presentation the application is dynamically automatically provisioned to the virtual environment. |
| StackSafe |
Virtualized pre-production testing. Trying to eliminate downtime in software applications. Cost effective staging and testing platform. |
From virtual IT infrastructure to virtual entertainment . . . why indulge someone else’s second life when you can build a second, or third, life of your own?
Demonstration by:
| SceneCaster |
First social media content creator to share within the browser in 3D. Sceneweaver creates new opportunities for 3D media on the web. Full in browser 3D experience. |
You may think you know these products, but we invite you to take a closer look, as each demonstrator unveils a new aspect that brings new dimension and import to these emerging products.
Demonstrations by:
| Livescribe, Inc. |
Smart pen – part of a mobile communications platform. Just begin writing on the special paper, and as you speak it records audio. You can scrub to the audio you recorded by just touching the area where you started speaking. It even does translation as you write! Books $5 each, 2Gb pen for $199. Neat! (see the video here- http://livescribe.com/smartpen/videos.html) |
| Seesmic |
Can push video to twitter as well as seesmic.com. Their marketing material calls this “the twitter of video.” Not too sure based on their demo (but a whole bunch of smart guys, including Arrington and Clavier have invested so what do I know?) |
| MOLI, LLC |
“Next generation social networking sit” and can allow you to control multiple profiles in one account. Can permission each profile separately to allow access to each profile. Co-brand and whitelabel technology for Enterprises and SMBs. These companies can communicate with their customers. Can also add ecommerce as well (and the Moli doesn’t take a piece of the transactions!) Has reporting on visits, % gender etc. Also has video content. Like what else do they have? It seems like they have a lot of different pieces going on. |
Demonstration by:
| iVideosongs |
Brings innovation to music – “its all about the songs” they teach complete songs accurately |
Demo-Tuesday Morning Sessions
Posted by Jeffrey on Jan 29, 2008
The day is broken up into groupings and the first one is entitled:
“We’re Not Just Conference Producers, We’re Customers”
| TimeTrade Systems, Inc. |
Easy scheduling to market. For the enterprise mkt. |
| Iterasi, Inc. |
These days, can’t save pages which are dynamically created- “Notarize” but couldn’t one of the other app creators (or IE of FF) do this? How do they make money? Has search function as well. Can schedule a regular grab |
| LiquidPlanner, Inc. |
Project management- capture and manage uncertainty on schedules. Can manage at product and the portfolio with prioritization. Has document and collaboration management and workforce management |
| Citiport, Inc. |
Local (travel ) info, can interact and share info with locals. Not sure of the monetization or the competitive market for these services. |
| LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc. |
Tag Reading System- get kids 4-8 reading. Portable reader kids can use, download books and upload child use data. Works with real books. Tiny camera and can read print in books. can read along by scanning with the device, even works on the pictures. At retail buy the books and then go online and manage from a dashboard. Can upload data and see the learning path. Good demo and looks like fun (at least for parents!) http://Leapfrog.com/tag |
| Skyfire |
Web-browser for mobile. |
| Fabrik, Inc. |
New apps on Adobe Air platform. Need for storage (40M ext hds shipped). How do I find my information? Provide a central location to see stuff, but leave it where it is. |
| SpeakLike, LLC |
Translation in chat window. Uses automated and human translators. Over time gets smarter and faster. Can do multi-lingual simultaneous translation. Pretty neat but question is with most of these hybrid services is how does it scale? |
| STEP Labs |
Voice optimization for auto systems. Noise cancellation technology, but the demo didn’t completely work. Needs a bit more work as the audio wasn’t completely intelligible. |
| NotchUp, Inc. |
Helps companies cost-effectively recruit. The best people currently have jobs, but they are not actively seeking new jobs. Lets recruits set an ‘interview price’ How do you get the word out to recruiters to use this? Can import LinkedIn profile. Probably pretty good for the tech crowd in the Bay area, but maybe limited appeal in other areas. |
| Education.com |
Schoolfinder helps parents research schools. “Trustworthy” vetted answers to those questions |
| 800 PBX, Inc. |
Personalized telephony service. With access to applications like weather and Yahoo. Speech recognition a bit like Jott? |
Commercial break with a Heinz commercial (Message in a bottle), which segues nicely into the next topic area called:
| Toktumi, Inc. |
Makes small business look big. Like an office phone system, but uses the PC with hosted services. But like a VoIP control panel, with more customization. Had some problems with the demo, getting the service running. |
| Avistar Communications Corp. |
Video for unified communications. Can overlay web pages on a video call. Managing multi-party video. And also video enhancement |
| Santrum Networks, Inc. |
?? |
| Movial |
Makes social media social. Integrates social media with telecomm. Instantly share social media with friends that are not connected on the PC. |
| Ribbit Corp. |
Developers can add voice to their apps easily through APIs. Unified directory (through Plaxo). Connected to OpenSocial and pulls info about caller into the window for more detail. Interesting stuff; probably an acquisition candidate (remember GrandCentral?) |
| LegiTime Technologies, Inc. |
Professional SMS client which improves utility of SMS for business |
| Vidyo |
High quality video conferencing over general IP networks (because it was designed for the internet). Really impressive quality and a good review at GigaOm |
Demo- Brief overview by Chris Shipley
Posted by Jeffrey on Jan 29, 2008
Here is the schedule for the first day.
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People starting to arrive for first day’s sessions. |
['The number of iPhones here is pretty overwhelming, but I'd expect it with this crowd. ]
Chris Shipley (Host and founder of Demo) gives a brief kick off talk:
Her update on state of industry:
· 77 demos this week out of hundreds that applied; representative of the market and direction
· Why 77? Not really driven by raw numbers, but only want to present best products and wide range of ideas
· Can’t just show Web2.0 products but it has to represent broader industry
· All products are interrelated; Demo is about seeing connections where maybe none were apparent before.
· All of us are driving new products and concepts, we create a new opportunity and put more demands on infrastructure or security etc. met by many of products here
· More reliable CDNs, or security; whatever it is should be driven by customers
· Software on the web often better than many of the business apps we use today; the general web and interface experiences have upped our expectation. Why the slow response and bad user experience from
· We can get these web tools without a requisition, they are just available and people in the Enterprise are starting to use them as they help get work done more effectively (like Basecamp?!)
· Communication- text, voice, video need to be part of all applications- seamlessly
· We as consumers are challenging s/w and h/w providers to make it easier and easier.
· We are defined by technology we use – but we need to drive good user experience for ourselves. The experience will matter more and more
· How will you deliver experience to our customers?
Early start at Demo
Posted by Jeffrey on Jan 28, 2008
I got in today after a bumpy ride into Palm Springs due to the remnants of some bad weather they had on the weekend so some coverage of some of the companies presenting here this week.A few that I will be talking to include a content delivery network startup called BitGravity for a while (and also Squidcast which allows users to share HD video in a P2P environment!) and definitely Ribbit which allows developers to add voice quickly and easily to their applications. It “lets you make and receive multi-protocol calls via Flash-based phones, provides speech-to-text message transcriptions and provides an open message management environment – all built using Ribbit’s open APIs. ” I will have to ask them about their business model… Giga Om’s NewTeeVee has some Day One coverage here.
Demo is trying something a bit different this year; along the lines of CES they are trying assemble some companies around the “Green” concept; but there are only two of them this year. Sounds like they are going to start up a potentially new conference in the future called “DemoGreen” but have to wait and see how that pans out.
My question is around the whole impact of this show. Given that it is in the desert and most of the companies here are using electricity to power their demos, could the show have considered some offsets to somehow mediate their impact on the environment? Aren’t most shows doing something like this now?