This is what I get for catching a cold on the way home from Demo, and taking two days to pull my sorry carcass back to the keyboard to write up my notes.
They’ve been widely reported elsewhere, but the Demo Gods of 2008 are:
- BitGravity. Broadcast-quality video over the Web. Just go to their site, you’ll get it.
- Ecrio. Its MoBeam is a small keychain device that generates a light beam that looks like a barcode to a laser reader. Like a virtual coupon, the idea is to allow people to get offers from vendors – on their PCs, or locally by Bluetooth – and bring them to the point of sale. It’s a good idea – but it’s not clear why someone wouldn’t just want to get a barcode image on their cellphone, a device they’re already carrying around.
- Education.com. The company’s SchoolFinder clearly hit a nerve with the attendees, since any parent will tell you the school search process – especially in a big city – is an exercise in frustration. I’m hoping, however, that it will provide the right context for comments that will allow a healthy dialog between parents, educators, and administration: It’s far too easy for disgruntled parents to take potshots at a school without making it easy for faculty to respond.
- Flypaper. Drag-and-drop flash programs. Go to their site, create one, you’ll be amazed.
- Green Plug. The vision of a universal plug is a great one, especially because Green Plug’s approach could dramatically reduce power consumption. But it’s hard to see it gaining much traction without the backing of several major technology companies.
- LeapFrog. The venerable educational company’s Tag pen “reads” aloud from its specially-printed books. But the idea that you could exactly track your young kid’s reading – and match it against a map of what they “should” be reading at that age – creeps me out.
- Livescribe. If you don’t mind a fat pen, it’s pretty cool to hold a real computer in your hand – especially one that not only sends images to your PC, but can translate languages as they’re written.
- Sprout. Rich media widgets you can drop into your site. Some similarity to Flypaper.
- Vidyo. HD quality real-time video over cable modems. ‘Nuff said.
- Xtranormal. Didn’t see the demo, but Rafe Needleman did.
And the People’s Choice: atlaspost. I can see why they appealed to a populist crowd: James Chi, the company’s director of business development, had an infectious, upbeat tone in his presentation. “People are connecting more and more through social networks,” he asked, “but how do these connect to their social lives in the real world?” His answer: Using Google maps, let people add their own images and messages anywhere in the world. You can create a “personal atlas village,” either with your own pictures, or with static and moving images from the company’s own shopping mall. It’s a very clever, accessible offering – “Very successful in Taiwan!” claimed Chi - made all the more cheap and easy because it leverages Google’s map platform.
Four Non-Gods:
- I’m surprised that SupportSpace didn’t get more notice. It's not sexy, and there are many different talent platforms out there, but this is the first one I’ve seen that seems to get a number of things about tech support right. By ensuring that customers’ comments about techs are posted for all to see, it creates a more-perfect information space about support quality. They obviously need to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of getting lots of techs supporting lots of companies’ products. But they have a partner program that lets vendors control pricing and the expert pool, which may help them extend their reach. I wouldn’t necessarily say that “call centers will soon be extinct,” as they do, but I’d watch this company.
- Another strong entry is Ribbit. What the company didn’t make clear enough is that it’s really a platform, with thousands of developers who’ve used their API to create new Web phones and other utilities. (Full disclosure: a good friend of mine is an advisor to the company, which I only found out after I’d first posted about them.)
- I liked ROVE’s PCMobilizr, which allows users to edit files on a remote PC using their mobile device; it’s a reasonable approach to an interface that makes the tiny smartphone window halfway usable. You wouldn't want to do it often, but if you're desperate to access a remote PC, it's likely a good thing to have in your pocket.
- One small but interesting offering was Visible Measures, which provides information about online video viewership. Though the company might say it gives accurate information about how long people are viewing a video – what head of marketing Matt Cutler called “the engagement curve” - it really tracks the length of time someone allows a video to run on their PC. Which is a little different: Someone could simply let a video play to completion, and it wouldn’t be clear if they’d actually watched it or not. Why is that important? If, say, people stopped watching before your ad or product showed up, that’s information you’d like to have. Not sure if I agree how likely this is, but more data about what people like and don’t might lead to better offerings.
gB
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