As I sit back in my office with boxes and papers lying around, the real world has sunk back in a little after the two fun days out at Demo seeing enthusiastic start-ups and cool products. If Demo could take that energy and optimism and bottle it up, it would definitely help us in the industry during some of the down times...
Here are some final thoughts from the show this year:
Akimbo launched its Akimbo Player and service, which lets users get video-on-demand TV-style broadcasts delivered to users over their broadband connection. The idea sounds great, but Akimbo officials used part of their demo showing a Naked News feed as part of the service. After watching a news anchor start to unbutton her blouse, I (and others in the crowd, I imagine) had a hard time concentrating on the rest of the demonstration. In light of the Janet Jackson incident, etc., I'm not sure that Naked News was the best choice of video feeds to show off the device. Other companies that were showing entertainment feeds with their demonstration (such as Valence and Molino Networks, chose to show Finding Nemo and Shrek, respectively.
The HotSeats, where vendors get only one minute to pitch their product, complete with the fire-orange backdrop and ticking countdown clock, were oustanding this year. The vendors totally committed themselves to practicing their pitch, and for the most part I understood the product and the pitch within that one-minute timeframe. I wish sometimes regular vendor meetings here could go that fast. So kudos to Consera Software, Foursticks, Mainsoft, Metapa, Priva and Viack for sticking to the subject.
Searching seems to be big this year. There were five different companies showing off different technologies related to search, and all of them seem to be using the same interface, where searches become less linear and more visual. In fact, two of the companies, Fractal Edge and Groxis used this circle concept to explain their searching interfaces. Fractal Edge uses the concept to search your desktop, while Groxis uses the concept to search the Web.
While the show was definitely geared towards a business audience (even the consumer apps were still computer-related and work related), there was one cool tool for the gamers. Ultimate Arena showed off its Xfire application, an instant messenger platform that connects friends together for online gaming sessions. The application takes out the guesswork in figuring out which game servers friends should meet on (basically eliminating the need to send out IP addresses, etc.). The free application is currently in beta for download. At the show, Ultimate Arena invited Thresh (aka Dennis Fong), the world champion Unreal Tournament player, to show off his skills.
hi, in the same group about searching was estory LinkedMinds wich use bubbles to search in your mail box,web,and all documents and allow you to share securely with your community! Not bad,and more than the others.
www.linkedminds.net
thanks
Posted by: gerard chalom on February 23, 2004 03:03 PM
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