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Category: DEMOfall 2006 (Page 4 of 5)

VaporStream ‘Recordless’ Email Alternative Will Raise Controversy

A new chapter in the continuing question of email privacy — if there is such a thing — opens today, as the aptly named Void Communications announces its new VaporSteam service at the DEMOfall conference in San Diego. [The event kicks off tonight in San Diego and I’m headed there soon. See my previous posts about it.] Vaporstreamlogo The company says its technology is the “world’s first recordless electronic communications system.” The announcement from Void, based in NYC, says “VaporStream electronic messages never create or leave a record” and that it is “providing employees with an alternative electronic communications system.”

How does it work? Using your existing e-mail address, Void says its technology automatically separates the sender’s and receiver’s names and the date from the body of the message, never allowing them to be seen together: “VaporStream messages cannot be printed, cut and pasted, forwarded or saved, helping promote open and collaborative communications. Once read, VaporStream stream messages are gone forever.” The instant a VaporStream stream message is sent, the company says, it is placed in a temporary storage buffer space. “When the recipient logs in to read their message, the message is removed from the buffer space. By the time the recipient opens it, the complete stream message no longer exists on the server or any other computer.”

Anyone can go to the company’s web site and sign up for the service at $39.95 per year. It is Web-based, meaning that no hardware or software purchases are required. The company also says that VaporStream is completely immune to spam and viruses.

But this technology raises all kinds of questions. The most glaring of which being: How will the bad guys (take your pick: money launderers, terrorists, corporate wrong-doers, et al) be prevented from using this technology? The answer, I guess, is they will not. And what will — or can — the regulatory bodies that dictate archiving of business email, such as the SEC, do about it? How would companies control the risks associated with their employees using this form of electronic communications? Would they simply leave the decision up to the individual? That does not seem likely. Companies own their own corporate messaging systems, and therefore have every right to monitor, control, archive, save, search, and retrieve from it whatever and however they want.

Void Communications seems to be bucking a big trend toward the archiving of email by signaling they will actually try to sell their concept to business. To wit: “Companies seeking a reprieve from the risks and costs inherent in their e-mail system can benefit from using VaporStream stream messaging. As the first secure, recordless complement to e-mail on the market, VaporStream is an attractive method for communicating confidentially in the corporate environment.”

Trouble is, it goes in the face of existing laws that are pressuring companies to archive everything. The laws are so stringent that many companies even disallow the use of IM in the workplace, especially those in highly regulated industries such as financial services — simply because it’s too hard for them to control, retain (archive), and search, because it’s outside the corporate email system. Now this to contend with? How many companies might flat-out ban this as well?

Allowing individual employees to determine what will or will not be a business record goes against what a large percentage of companies (I think it’s fair to say the majority of well-informed companies) are doing these days with electronic messaging: archiving everything. This is as opposed to say, only saving all corporate emails for 30 days and flushing the system. Why? Because managing your own records, knowing what you have and being able to quickly search it, is better that having someone external to your company produce that “smoking gun” email from some other computer or server somewhere that implicates your company or one of its officers or employees in wrongdoing, somewhere down the line. Remember, once an email is sent, there’s no controlling where it ends up and gets saved, forwarded, backed up, or archived. Thus the point: archive everything and be able to search it quickly, or you’re living dangerously. The email archiving market is one of the hottest growth segments in IT today, in the range of 35% CAGR. Storage is cheap, and archiving systems are becoming much simpler and easier to implement.

But Void seems to be taking the approach that will allow individual employees to determine whether or not an email should be preserved or maintained in the first place. Here’s what they say: “With VaporStream, electronic communications policies can be as simple as: If you need a record, e-mail it. If you don’t, use VaporStream.”

Would that it were that simple.

Here’s more on the company’s FAQ page. Two of the benefits the company cites elsewhere on its web site are these: “Guaranteed Confidentiality: VaporStream is the first recordless electronic communications system that protects companies from the risks and costs associated with e-mail. Simply put, it keeps confidential information confidential.” And “Saves Companies Money: From e-mail discovery services to e-mail analysis services to e-mail storage. Since no record is produced using VaporStream, corporate networks are saved from congestion and other potential hazards. It also limits the risk and liability inherent in e-mail communications.”

That last sentence is interesting. Yes, if an employee is thinking about doing something less than above board, he or she will simply think, “Oh, why risk jail? Let me just VaporStream this baby…”

We haven’t heard the last of this controversy.

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What to Look for at DEMOfall – Part 1

Let’s take a look at what we can expect at DEMOfall 2006, where I’ll be bloging from next Tuesday and Wednesday. First, I notice nine non-U.S. companies are presenting, undoubtedly a result of executive producer Chris Shipley’s wild travel schedule. As Gary Bolles of Conferenza says, “she meets with more startups than anyone on the planet.” Demochrisshipley_1 For this fall’s event, I see on the list there’s a company from Canada (Cascada Mobile), one from Israel (eSnips), one from the UK (Moixa Energy), one from Germany (Open Business Club), one from France (Realeyes3D), one from Austria (SystemOne), another from the UK (Tao Group), another from Canada (Trigence), and another from France (Violet).

My “hardest-company-name-to pronounce” award, by the way — overall — has to go to one of these non-U.S. firms, Moixa. Ta-dah! Please come forward….. Now, tell us, is that moyxa…mo-ik-zah…or….huh??? And, looking through the entire list, including the U.S. entries, the most-confusing-name award has to go the Grand Central Communications. Why? At first, I thought — what? — that company was founded in 2000 by former CNet head Halsey Minor, and it was a web services outfit. This one appears to be VOIP startup, founded by two other guys, though there is little yet posted at their new web site. So, what’s with that? Did they acquire the domain of the previous firm? Is this a rebirth? Or is this just some kind of of a weird coincidence? That would be doubtful, since both firms are in SF….

By the way, speaking of the Bay Area, fully 45% of the presenting companies at this event are from there — 30 out of 67. Chris may travel the world, but why is it the geographic distribution of the DEMO presenting companies ends up, again, being heavily skewed to a certain county or two in NorCal? Could it be possilby be….the VCs? Or is it simply because more companies from there apply?

You tell me….

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Semantic Web Goes Blue at DEMOfall

Adaptiveblue is launching its blueorganizer Firefox extension at DEMOfall next week. Chris Shipley, executive producer of the conference, said it will give us a “glimpse of powerful semantic Web technologies to come.”

Adaptiveblue is a personalization and smart browsing company founded by Alex Iskold in early 2006. Adaptiveblue500w The vision of adaptiveblue, says the company, is to invent new browser technologies that deliver a personalized Web experience, enhance productivity, and save time.

Among other things, Alex writes frequently for Web 2.0 journal, Ajax World magazine, and the Read/Write blog. There’s more about him here. And here’s what some people are saying about the product. Amazon’s Web Services Blog recently said this.

Blueorganizer uses Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), which it calls “storage for the Internet” … “designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.”

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Just Announced: All Presenters for DEMOfall

Here are the DEMOfall 2006 demonstrator companies, as just announced by the show’s producers. Quite a lineup — 67 companies.

3jam, Inc., www.3jam.com, Menlo Park, CA
4INFO, Inc., www.4info.net, Palo Alto, CA
adaptiveblue, LLC., www.adaptiveblue.com, Livingston, NJ
Add Me, LLC., www.addme.com, Princeton, NJ
Be Here Corp., www.behere.com/, Fremont, CA
BriteSoft Corp., www.britesoftcorp.com, Reston, VA
BuzzLogic, Inc., www.buzzlogic.com, San Francisco, CA
Cascada Mobile Corp., www.cascadamobile.com, Toronto, ON, Canada
Cozi , www.cozi.com, Seattle, WA
Cuts, Inc., www.cuts.com, W. Conshohocken, PA
Dash Navigation, Inc., www.dash.net, Mountain View, CA
Data Security Systems Solutions, Inc., www.datasecurity3.com, New York, NY
Eluma, www.eluma.com, Tewksbury, MA
eSnips, Ltd., www.esnips.com, Ein Sarid, Israel
Eyespot Corp., www.eyespot.com, Solana Beach, CA
Flurry, Inc., www.flurry.com, San Francisco, CA
Fonpods, Inc., www.fonpods.com, Hermosa Beach, CA
Genius.com, Inc., www.genius.com, San Mateo, CA
GrandCentral, www.grandcentral.com, Fremont, CA
HEADPLAY, Inc., www.headplay.com, Santa Monica, CA
HeyLetsGo, Inc., www.heyletsgo.com, Boston, MA
iBloks, Inc., www.ibloks.com, San Francisco, CA
i-Lighter, Inc., www.i-lighter.com/, Ft Lauderdale, FL
Imaginestics, LLC., www.imaginestics.com, West Lafayette, IN
JAJAH, Inc., www.jajah.com, Mountain View, CA
Koral, Inc., www.koral.com, San Mateo, CA
Lirix, Inc., www.lirix.net, Evanston, IL
MindTouch, Inc., www.mindtouch.com, San Diego, CA
MobileSphere, Ltd., www.mobile-sphere.com, Boston, MA
Moixa Energy Holdings, Ltd., www.moixaenergy.com, London, U.K.
Mvox Technologies, Inc., www.mvox.com, Cupertino, CA
MyPW, LLC., www.mypw.com, Mercer Island, WA
NanoLearning, Inc., www.nanolearning.com, Austin, TX
NComputing, Inc., www.ncomputing.com, Orange, CA
Open Business Club GmbH , www.openbc.com, Hamburg, Germany
PhotoCrank, Inc., www.photocrank.com, Wayne, PA
Pinger, Inc., www.pi.pngnger.com, San Jose, CA
PixSense, Inc., www.pi.pngxsense.com, Santa Clara, CA
Pluggd, Inc., www.pluggd.com, Seattle, WA
PostPath, Inc., www.postpath.com, Mountain View, CA
PrefPass, Inc., www.prefpass.com, San Francisco, CA
Presto, www.presto.com, Mountain View, CA
Realeyes3D S.A., www.realeyes3dcom, Saint Cloud Cedex, France
Retrevo, Inc., www.retrevo.com, Sunnyvale, CA
RingCube, Inc., www.mojopac.com, Mountain View, CA
scanR, www.scanR.com, Palo Alto, CA
Scrapblog, Inc., www.scrapblog.com, Coral Gables, FL
Serebrum Corp., www.serebrum.com, Iselin, NJ
Simple Star, Inc., www.simplestar.com, San Francisco, CA
SiteKreator, www.sitekreator.com, Santa Clara, CA
Solid State Networks, Inc., www.solidstatenetworks.com, Tempe, AZ
SportStat, LLC., www.sportstatz.net, Orion , MI
System One, www.systemone.at, Innsbruck, Austria
Tao Group, Ltd., www.tao-group.com, Earley, Reading, Berkshire, U.K.
Teneros , www.teneros.com, Mountain View, CA
ThinkFree, Inc., www.thinkfree.com, San Jose, CA
Trend Micro, Inc., www.trendmicro.com, Cupertino, CA
Tribeca Labs, Inc., www.tribecalabs.com, New York, NY
Trigence , www.trigence.com, Ottawa, ON, Canada
uControl, Inc., www.ucontrol.com, Austin, TX
Violet, www.violet.net, Paris, France
Void Communications, LLC, www.vaporstream.com, New York, NY
W5 Networks, Inc., www.w5networks.com, Fremont, CA
Wallop, Inc., www.wallop.com, San Francisco, CA
Widgetbox , www.widgetbox.com, San Francisco, CA
Yoriwa, Inc., www.yoriwa.com, San Jose, CA
ZING Systems, Inc. & Sirius Satellite Radio, Inc., www.zing.net, Mountain View, CA

More soon on a few of these that have hit my radar recently….

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A Bloggers Heyday in San Diego

Looks like the upcoming DEMO show will draw a ton of bloggers once again. The PR folks tell me the list already includes such names as TechCrunch, MobileCrunch, Techdirt, GigaOM, Gizmodo, Engadget, ForbesOnTech, buzzmodo, Kauffman’s eVenturing blog, Marc Orchant, Dan Farber, Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed, and others…including yours truly, of course. Demofall06logo I’ll continue to post a heads up or two about companies who’ll be presenting there over the next few days, and will be blogging onsite as well — starting late Monday night or early Tuesday morning, as the opening session fires up.

Oh, many of the usual press suspects will be there, too, I’m told: AP, USA Today, Business2.0, CNet, WSJ, PC Magazine, Forbes, Computerworld, InformationWeek, ZDNet. Notice how I list them second? 🙂

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