Boston Power didn’t give us much detail, but used the occasion of DEMO to introduce its new “Sonata” proprietary lithium-ion technology. The claim is that it’s the only battery to actually match the lifespan of a notebook computer, solving “today’s battery fade problem and delivering a 50% faster recharge time.” 
And more is on the way, said the CEO and founder of the company, Dr. Christina Lampe-Onnerud (who, incidentally, went on stage at last night’s jam session to sing!) “I’ve devoted my life to batteries,” she said, “and we’re committed to delivering a battery you can rely on.” Do I hear a thunderous roar out there? John Wozniak of HP’s PC division, who says his group “ships a ton of battery packs,” gave an extremely complimentary introduction of this presenter, and said his firm is closely partnering with Boston Power. The firm raised an $8 million Series A round last year from Venrock and Gabriel Venture Partners. Once more, the promise for improving our road-warrior lives. Can’t come fast enough for me!
Category: DEMO 2007 (Page 2 of 4)
Think ubiquitous interoperability across all your devices will happen only when pigs fly? Well, DARTdevices showed us just now that pigs can do that! 
We’re talking intelligence that lets any device discover, access, and share apps with any other DART-enabled device. No installing software or drivers. This is a company with funding from Motorola Ventures that’s all about virtualizing devices. Now to convince the device OEMs to adopt the technology, and our lives are bound to get simpler….
Saw four cool demos this afternoon related to consumer media distribution. The first, Magnify.net, empowers online publishers to integrate user-generated videos into their existing web offerings. [We’re talking especially about the little guys here, not the big players as Brightcove tends to focus on.] The whole idea is to create high-traffic niche vertical content sites that will attract advertisers looking to reach micro-target audiences.
Yodio has an end-to-end audio publishing system that it’s used to create an online destination community for creating and sharing audio casts. “The future of the podcast is still ahead of us,” said CEO Clay Loges. All you need is a cell phone, a camera, and Internet access. Post an audio cast, for example, about a vacation you recommend, and upload photos, too. Sharing is similar to Flickr.
Blerts, an offering from ThePort Network Inc., is riding the rapid growth of RSS consumption, which CEO Bob Cramer says now numbers more than 30 million people. “But, even for those who subscribe to 100 or more feeds, only 5-10 are really important,” he said. Sound familiar? Blerts is the first graphics based RSS alert utility that notifies users when their most important RSS feeds are updated. It’s pretty cool looking, and you can download it now.
The Splashcast media syndication platform is “the first one that’s easy enough for everyone,” said CEO Michael Berkley. Create and syndicate an online channel of mixed-media content — music, photos, video, text, RSS feeds. The key is that it’s a universal web-based media player — you don’t have to install a player for every video you put on your MySpace page, for example. In about 48 hours of having the site live, Splashcast users have already created more than 1000 channels.
San Francisco’s Jaman.com has just demoed its new site, calling it “the best place to discover and share world-class films.” CEO Gaurav Dhillon said that less than 1% of the world’s films get distribution in the U.S. Jaman is “bringing ‘social’ into cinema,” since it’s also a community site. It has a fully resizable window to view the film, and a window at the right that contains community comments, which facilitate lively discussion. “It’s a film festival that never ends,” he said, and noted his firm is “not limited by DVD licensing.” Still in beta, he said Jaman already has 200 films available. Pricing is $1.99 to rent or $4.99 to buy. Its technology offers “better than DVD quality for both Mac and PC users.”
For those who thought Adobe would be announcing availability today for its Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform, called Apollo — sorry. It’s still a “couple of months” till the developer version will be ready. So said presenter Mike Downey, who apparently was substituted at the last minute, because Chris Shipley introduced Kevin Lynch, the company’s Chief Software Architect (where’d he go?). Guess they’re just here to keep the buzz going about it. I’ll find out more later.
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