Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: IT/Software (Page 51 of 58)

The Buildup to DEMO Intensifies

January 30, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Well, it’s 24 hours and counting till the opening of DEMO ’07 tomorrow morning, and the bits are flying. (By the way, here’s the event schedule.) The blogs are lighting up, traffic tripled to yours truly yesterday, and the pre-announcement news releases are starting to hit my in-box. The first was from BUZ Interactive, which has designed a way to send personalized voicemails, mixed with music, to any mobile phone on the planet without having the phone ring. More news just arrived from ThePort.com, which has gone live with the download for its Blerts desktop RSS alerter (Windows only for now). [A quirk about some of the companies on the alphabetical DEMO presenters list — their service or product name is not what they’re listed under, so don’t look under “B”.]

Over at TechCrunch, I’m not surprised to see a post on Splashcast, a cool new Flash player to embed your channels on a website, since it’s where TechCrunch contributor Marshall Kirkpatrick has been working. (Though he, of course, did not write this post — Nick Gonzalez did.) Turns out Marshall has been blogging at the SplashCast web site for some time.

Meanwhile, Pete Cashmore at Mashable did a great post last night called Social Networking at DEMO – Standards Higher than Usual? It’s an excellent rundown of what we can expect in this category over the next two days at the conference.

Who will win the coveted DEMOgod awards? That we’ll learn at the closing media-panel dinner on Thursday evening. The panel will be moderated by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, and will include Victoria Barret, associate editor of Forbes, Larry Magid, tech columnist and CBS News contributor, and Laetitia Mailhes, correspondent for Les Échos. For some insight into the DEMOgod phenomenon, check out a blog post from my old Conferenza colleague, Gary Bolles, about the recent Churchill Club event in San Francisco. I also note that Conferenza is now running some breathless blogging by Sam Perry out in chilly NYC at the AlwaysOn Media conference, which overlaps with DEMO.

More from the desert soon….

What’s Really Happening at DEMO

January 29, 2007 / / 4 Comments

Here’s something better than just a list of presenting companies at DEMO ’07, which I posted the other day. Below is a list with a few words on what each of these companies actually does…or what they’ll be introducing at the event, which starts Tuesday evening in Palm Desert, CA. Demofirst Note some of these mostly brand-new, hand.pngcked firms are remaining “stealth” right up to the end (but surprisingly not that many). What is surprising is that a few have no web sites at all! [We can only hope they might activate a site once the conference actually begins? 🙂 … ] Also note there are five big-name firms using DEMO to introduce something new as well, but I didn’t have time to drill into their massive web sites to see that that might be. Nonetheless, here’s everything else, and I must say some exciting stuff is due to be unveiled. (If you’d rather view this list with live links to each company’s site, here’s a quick web page I put up. It’s all public info — I just aggregated it so I can see everything in one place to plan my coverage.)

The DEMO 07 Presenting Companies and What They’re About
6th Sense Analytics, Inc. – Morrisville, NC – www.6sa.com – SaaS analytics for sw dev teams
Adobe Systems, Inc. – San Jose, CA – www.adobe.com – ??
Aggregate Knowledge – San Mateo, CA – www.aggregateknowledge.com – content recommendation engine
Alcatel-Lucent Ventures – Murray Hill, NJ – www.alcatel–lucent.com  -??
Attendio, Inc. – San Francisco, CA – www.attendio.com – still stealth (angel investors, Sunbridge Partners)
Bling Software, Inc. – Pleasanton, CA – www.blingsoftware.com – Ajax-based player for mobile Apps
blinkx, Inc. – San Francisco, CA – www.blinkx.com – video search
BooRah, Inc. – Palo Alto, CA – www.boorah.com – restaurant reviews (SF area only for now)
Boston-Power, Inc. – Westborough, MA – www.boston-power.com – WEB SITE NOT FOUND (hello?)
Brevient Technologies, Inc. – Milwaukee, WI – www.jyngle.com – mobile messaging for groups
BUZ Interactive – Palo Alto, CA – www.buzinteractive.com – mobile personalization
Ceelox, Inc. – Tampa, FL – www.ceelox.com – biometric security software, incl for web site access
CircleUp, Inc. – Newport Beach, CA – www.circleup.com – online tool for community information-gathering
ClipSyndicate, a service of Critical Mention – NYC – www.clipsyndicate.com – news clips for web sites
DARTdevices Corp. – Mountain View, CA – www.dartdevices.com – middleware for device integration
DesignIn, Inc. – Marblehead, MA – URL unavailable – (no URL, hello?)
Devicescape Software, Inc. – San Bruno, CA – www.devicescape.com – connects devices to wi-fi w/o browser
eJamming, Inc. – Valley Village, CA – www.ejamming.com – jam with other musicians online, in real time
Eyejot, Inc. – Seattle, WA – www.eyejot.com – still stealth to the end
GoWare, Inc. – Gilbert, AZ – www.goware.biz – access your PC data through your mobile phone
Helium, Inc. – Andover, MA – www.helium.com – user-created online reference resource, peer-reviewed
Inilex, Inc. – Chandler, AZ – www.inilex.com – platform to track assets like cars via phone or email
ink2 Corporation – Emeryville, CA – www.ink2.com – WEB SITE NOT FOUND (hello?)
Integrien Corp. – Irvine, CA – www.integrien.com – predicts enterprise app slowdowns and outages
iqzone, inc. – Scottsdale, AZ – www.iqzone.com – “snap, send, sell” (otherwise stealth)
Iwerx, LLC – Mt.Dora, FL – www.iwerx.com – WEB SITE NOT FOUND (hello?)
Jaman.com, Inc. – Palo Alto, CA – www.jaman.com – global online community for cinephiles
Kauffman Innovation Network – Kansas City, MO – www.iBridgeNetwork.org – online forum, research/innov
LiveSquare.com  – Gilbert, AZ – www.livesquare.com – anti.pngracy technology for streaming media
Magnify.net – New York, NY – www.Magnify.net – video publishing platform, integrates UG video into websites
Me.dium, Inc. – Boulder, CO – www.me.dium.com – reveals hidden world of people/activity behind browser
Mission Research – Lancaster, PA – www.missionresearch.com – “Giftworks” fundraising software
Mixpo Portfolio Broadcasting – Seattle, WA – www.mixpo.com – broadcasts videos/photos/music to the web
Mobio Networks – Cupertino, CA – www.getmobio.com – mobile content & apps that are fun, simple, everyday
My Currency Co. – San Francisco, CA – www.my-currency.com – community site for real estate, investment
Nexo Systems, Inc. – Palo Alto, CA – www.nexo.com – free web sites for online groups
Nextumi – Dublin, OH – www.nextumi.com – sharing layer that connects cell/IM/MySpace/Facebook/email
Nuvoiz, Inc. – Mountain View, CA – www.nuvoiz.com – software to expand usage of VoIP over Wi-Fi
OurStory – Mountain View, CA – www.ourstory.com – capture, share, and preserve stories about your life
PairUp, Inc. – San Francisco, CA – www.pairup.com – “the business trip, reinvented” (no more info)
Panjea.com – Los Angeles, CA – www.panjea.com – social media network with marketplace for members
Preclick Corp. – Atlantic Highlands, NJ – www.preclick.com – simple software for organizing & editing photos
QTech, Inc. – Hyderabad, AP, India – www.qtechinc.com – tools for mobile phones to jog your memory
Reveal Technology – Palo Alto, CA www.revealtechnology.com – trusted enterprise P2P network software
SailPoint Technologies – Austin, TX – www.sailpoint.com – enterprise software for identity mgmt/compliance
Seagate Technology – Scotts Valley, CA – www.seagate.com – ??
Serendipity Technologies – Yakum, Israel – www.serendipity–tech.com – WEB SITE NOT FOUND (hello?)
SharedBook, Inc. – New York, NY – www.sharedbook.com – reverse publishing platform (online to offline)
Shipwire.com – Los Angeles, CA – www.shipwire.com – automated, low-cost order fulfillment
SOASTA – Mountain View, CA – www.soasta.com – sw for testing, certification of web services & web apps
SplashCast – Portland, OR – www.splashcastmedia.com – Marshall Kirkpatrick’s media syndication service
SupportSoft, Inc. – Redwood City, CA – www.supportsoft.com – automated software support for consumers
Symantec Corp. – Cupertino, CA – www.symantec.com – ??
TeleFlip – Santa Monica, CA – www.teleflip.com – send messages from PCs to cell phone with no software
TextDigger, Inc. – San Jose, CA – www.textdigger.com – AI software for advanced information retrieval
ThePort Network – Atlanta, GA – www.theport.com – solution for creating, administering online communities
Thunk – San Francisco, CA – www.honeypitch.com – proposal automation solution w/CRM, productivity tools
Total Immersion – Suresnes, France – www.t-immersion.com – augmented reality software (returnee from ’04)
Trailfire, Inc. – Seattle, WA – www.trailfire.com – hosted service to let anyone comment on any web page
Triumfant, Inc. – Research Triangle Park, NC – www.triumfant.com – automated resolution management
Vringo, Inc. – Beit Shemesh, Israel – www.vringo.com – community for sharing video ringtones
VUVOX Network – Redwood City, CA – www.vuvox.com – personal, emotive expressions on your media
WHISHER.COM – Barcelona, Spain – www.whisher.com – “Wi-fi reloaded” (otherwise stealth)
Wyse Technology, Inc. – San Jose, CA – www.wyse.com – ??
Yodio, Inc. – Bellevue, WA – www.yodio.com – personal audio publishing for “fun, fame, and fortune”
ZINK Imaging, LLC – Waltham, MA – www.zink.com – still stealth to the end
Zoho / AdventNet – Pleasanton, CA – www.zoho.com – CRM & office productivity apps, incl ZohoWriter
ZoomInfo – Waltham, MA – www.zoominfo.com – search engine to discover people, companies, relationships

I have my list of favorites to check out. Which ones are you most interested in, and why?

Conferences I Plan to Blog…

December 20, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Just to update you, o faithful blog readers, I thought I’d mention what conferences I’ll be blogging from in coming weeks and months. First of all, I’m happy to report I’ve been accepted again as a press registrant at the DEMO 2007 event, which is January 30 – February 1. This will be about my fourth DEMO event. Demo07banner The venue this year was switched from Phoenix to Palm Desert, California, which should be a glorious locale at this time of year (especially when I’ll be escaping Minnesota winter!). I always look forward to this conference, not only because 70 of the hottest startups in the country pitch their businesses here, but because it attracts so much buzz and media attention, more than virtually any other event all year long. The media list is like a who’s who. As always, companies you’ll be reading about a year, two years, three years from now will first be heard from at DEMO. And I’ll do my best to report the highlights for you… [See categories to the right for my coverage of both DEMO events in 2006.]

Another event I’m thinking about covering (but not sure yet if I can break away) is the big momma of ’em all: CES …which used to stand for Consumer Electronics Show, but now wants to be so much more (see theme). Being a content guy, how could I not like this one? Haven’t been to Vegas in a while — caught an Interop show there a couple years ago, and of course attended many Comdex events back in the day. CES, by the way, may be big, but it still doesn’t draw as many people as Comdex did in its heydey. Nonetheless, the show is today the “world’s largest tradeshow for consumer technology and North America’s largest annual tradeshow of any kind.” Get this: it will feature 2700 exhibitors covering floorspace the equivalent of 35 football fields(!), and will have 140,000 attendees — 25,000 of them from other countries. Ces07logotheme Those attendees will include manufacturers, retailers, content providers and creators, broadband developers, wireless carriers, cable and satellite TV providers, installers, engineers, corporate buyers, government leaders, financial analysts and the media. [How could I not like pal-in’ around with those installers, huh? Cable guys attend this thing?? Maybe I should reconsider….] Anyway, there will be a ton of press at this one, and the bloggers will outnumber them — guaranteed. The combined total will easily be in the thousands. Robert Scoble, the well known author and former head blogger at Microsoft, who’s now VP of Media Development at Podtech, will even have his own suite where bloggers can hang out. Here’s what he said on his blog: “By the way, our BlogHaus at CES will be open to ANY blogger, not just those ‘blessed’ by Microsoft or some other company. You just need to have me put your name on the list so you can get up to our suite.” I did.

Finally, I’m looking out to March and thinking I’d love to blog ETech again. O’Reilly is my favorite publisher and conference producer. [You’ll note I recommend many of its books under the “Reading” subhead at the right. Disclosure: I do get free books from time to time, but only post those I really find of value.] Oreillyetechlogo I’ve really enjoyed reporting on this conference in the past, and love running into my old blog buddies there, like Doc Searls and David Weinberger. Sure, it’s a developer event. But, as I’ve said before, some of my best friends are developers…. 🙂 And this event draws an awesome, a-list of attendees, too, at all levels, and many other great bloggers. Anyway, it would be fun to capture it again for y’all, and I hope to get out to San Diego for it in late March. [Okay, it’s an excuse to hang out again at my favorite beach, too 🙂 … ]

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With Multiple Devices, Synching Is an Issue

December 14, 2006 / / 0 Comments

If you shoot digital pix (is there really anyone left who doesn’t?) and have multiple devices, especially both a Mac and PC, plus a smart phone, and/or you travel a lot, then you really should check out Sharpcast. It just announced at the Le Web show in Paris its Mac uploader. This is great news for anyone using Apple’s photo organizing/editing app — iPhoto — which is flat-out the best one out there, my friends. [Not a day goes by when I don’t use it…and love it.]

Sharpcastsynchitall

So, synch your brains out, Mac digital shooters — across all the toys you got! Even if some of them say “Windows” on ’em…. With Sharpcast, Mac users can back up and share their albums online and view their iPhoto albums on a smart phone or Windows-based PC. You can export iPhoto albums directly from your Mac to your Sharpcast Photos Web albums in just a few clicks, where they are backed up, easy to share, and automatically synched all the way down to your mobile phone and PC desktop. You can get the iPhoto uploader as a free download at www.sharpcast.com/download.

But, Wait – There’s More
The photo app from Sharpcast is the first thing out of the chute for this well-backed startup. [See my coverage from DEMO ’06 back in February.] It’s built on the company’s patent-pending universal “push” synchronization platform, which it says “marks the first time that Blackberry-like push synchronization capability is available to the average consumer, outside of an enterprise setting.” It automatically backs up photo collections online, organizes them into web albums, and keeps the collection constantly up to date across all of a person’s mobile phones, all their PCs, and the web. It thus eliminates the hassles of manual uploading, sync cables, etc, so people can get on with creating and enjoying their media.

Here’s what’s coming from Sharpcast next: it previewed at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco its upcoming product code-named Hummingbird. It’s a solution for backing up, sharing, accessing, and syncing ALL your documents, photos, music, and video — across all the computers you use, the web, and optionally your mobile phone, in what the company says is “a completely automatic way.” Sharpcastsynchgraphic Watch for a publicly available version of Hummingbird in the first half of 2007. Anyone interested can sign up as an “alpha” tester at www.sharpcast.com/products/hummingbird.

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It’s Pah-ty Time!

December 7, 2006 / / 0 Comments

That’s not only my favorite line from my favorite cut of Big Audio Dynamite, but it’s my favorite call to action at this time of year! And here, friends, are three of the coolest places to be in Minneapolis in the next week. The first, unfortunately, is by invitation only…a customer-appreciation kinda gig for the great design/UI firm, FactorUE, tomorrow night, Friday, December 8. But maybe you know someone who can get you in….or just show up at the Foundation Nightclub downtown about the time it’s wrapping up at 9:00, when things will continue raging, I’m sure. The cool thing is that two of FactorUE’s designers are DJs, too!

Factorueevite

The second local event I’ll be catching, on Monday the 11th, is the holiday gathering of our great local community of developers and entrepreneurs, playfully called MinneDemo. [It’s the local chapter of a loosely affiliated global network called Bar Camp.] Go onto that MinneDemo link (it’s a wiki page) and sign up if you’d like to attend — unless the list has already gone beyond the capacity of the larger club where it’s being held this time. Dan Grigsby and friends have done a great job organizing and planning these gigs, which are catching on like wildfire. Actually, this one is half-serious, too — a separate room is devoted to a program of five or so brief demos by aspiring entrepreneurs or new startups.

Minnedemoholiday

The third event on my agenda is next Wednesday the 13th — the annual holiday bash of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association, which has a reputation for being a really fun party. This year, it’s at the brand-new locale of the Guthrie Theater, so I thought I’d check it out, and catch up with some old friends. It’s free for members or $20 for non-members, and you can read more about it and register right here.

Mimaparty

Okay, I must be getting to sound more and more like the Michael Arrington of Minnesota here 🙂 …. [except I don’t throw parties at my own house]. But, if you’re a player in our local IT/Internet/Web 2.0 community, you should be showing up at one of these events, at least! I’m looking forward to all of ’em. See ya there….

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