Yesterday afternoon was a blur! I was wiped out from waking at 5 A.M. and worrying about how the panel would go. Drum roll....it went great! Rave reviews from everyone that I spoke to, a handful of people have asked me to talk to them later and show them the stuff that I talked about.
Demo is broken up into themes. Yesterday after lunch was all enterprise stuff, some products most intriguing but all solving problems that I would pretend to understand.
This morning, there have been a handful of companies demoing media and photo related stuff. All striving for simplicity, and all seem to be working on a subscription model, i.e. you pay them $$ a month to easily host your photos.
I am going to try a couple and will report back.
One company demoed a Terabyte home media server for $995. Not sure that I would want or could afford one, but interesting idea and excellent interface.
Just sat through XFire, making gaming more fun. I have no clue how big this market is, but they claim 50,000 downloads since Friday.
Next up is "Collaboration"...
Convoq...seems to be IM, with video and smart access. and it allows you to see all the "presence" of all the contacts, and then you can choose to schedule a meeting. Gives you an on the fly way of creating meetings, you then create unique URL's and the meeting environment is built with "flash", with a full rich media experience. Convoq ASAP, gathering right people at the right time. Again subscription model. $49 per user per year. Looks like a powerful way to collaborate.
Next up SightSpeed....SightSpeed Video messanger. Great little camera somewhere with smooth and natural video. No delay, pretty cool. 30 frames per second. Voice a little choppy, but video excellent.
Click through a SightSpeed URL, connecting through a browser. SightSpeed through a web browswer. Video through a browser made easy. Now showing SightSpeed multi-party. Dazzling example of add hoc video meeting. Now there are four guys on screen all talking. Test is whether Mom can use it. Looking for strategic partners.
Next up...GoToMeeting...Great guys, part of www.gotomypc.com which I use all the time. I hope this stuff is as good as their other products. Simple and intuitive way to create and establish adhoc meetings..$50 a month for all you can meet plan. Nice focused presentation meeting. Will go look at this stuff closer.
Next up..Voltage Security...making for secure IM. Three nice young guys. Identity based security. Using Martha Stewart as the metaphor for broker talking to client. Also nice demo of hacker using software to listen in to IM...conversation. Demo seems to be hanging up. Screen stalled. Nice script....built around Microsoft IM..server. hit a button, and whammo you are in this secure chat window. Hard to imagine that I would have time or topics to make use of this, but then again, I am not Martha Stewart. First end to end secure IM..product.
Next up...View Center...been reading other blogs, need to focus. Seems to run around a consol, that allows you to set up a bunch of stuff related to the web conference. It's funny how when you look at this stuff, you wonder how you might use it yourself. This looks like a nice tool for informing people in say a continuing education context. Also, I like the idea of looking at recorded events so that you can say on demand learning. Demo only gives people say 7 minutes to show their stuff. This is tough, and you need to really have your pitch down.
Next up...Quindi Meeting..easy sharing and rapid review. Think Tivo for meetings. This seems to allow you to record the entire meeting experience, including time stamped notes, audio and video. Screenshots, whiteboards, etc. all indexed and time stamped. File can be sent via E-Mail that can be reviewed later. Meeting documents are searcable. Tivo for meetings? I have too many meetings that are eminently forgetable, going back and looking at them again, not sure this works for me.
Every serious conference has WiFi running. Today there must be 600 people in this room, easily 2/3's of them on line right now. Just checked my E-Mail, slow as paint drawing. Think one milk shake and 600 people with digital straws.
Next up... BigOnTheNet from Singapore. not sure I understood what there deal was all about. Seemed to a browser enhancer. Not sure there is a market.
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Next up FractalPC...Visual clues for directory structures..maybe a tool for those more visually oriented. Key seems to be the assumption that brain will gather more visually than we can linguistically.
E-Mail madness. Just used www.gotomypc.com in the background to get my E-Mail from my home desktop. Last time I checked was Sunday noon. 678 emails since then. Just showed Nina Lytton how this works....
Back to e.Story's demo. I talked these guys yesterday. From Lille, France, which is in northern France. They immediately recognized my last name as being a local name to the Northern France/Belgium/Holland part of the world. Fun stuff. As I have blogged before, "Bruggeman" means a man from Brugges. e.Story does a pretty cool trick. It allows you to to gather stuff, and then idex it and graphically visualize it. Also seems to be easy to share the "personal knowledge networks"
One footnote, the non-English speakers really have a tough challenge here. They don't have much time, they have complex products, and 6 minutes to get it done.
Next up...Groxis...last year Grokker, now Grokker 2. This stuff is very cool, new UI, ability to organize info dynamically on the desktop. Seeing all these products reminds me that I need a new computer, and also that withough broadband these companies wouldn't exist.
Next up...Mailblocks..web based E-Mail, works on everything every where. Trying to create a smart E-Mail, recognizing meeting requests in E-Mail, recognizes new contacts, presenting it to you, no more cutting and pasting from E-Mail. They call the smart tool Maxwell, a la Maxwell smart. Mailblock seems to ignore the fact that there are 155 Million Outlook users out there. The case they are using is soccer mom with home decorating business. Not sure how this syncs with say my Treo. Using an illustration of sending your sell a note with a time date in it that will then update your calendar. E-Mail, calendar and contacts in single service.
Just by being here they will give me 100 meg personal E-Mail box.
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