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: The Web & Web 2.0 (Page 12 of 41)

DEMOfall 08: 72 New Technologies to Launch Sept 8-9

September 5, 2008 / / 1 Comment

I’ll be attending the DEMOfall 08 conference in San Diego, September 7-9, 2008. Demofall08 Close to 100 media and bloggers will be there, with total attendance expected to be the largest ever (I predict close to 1000).

Here are some excerpts from DEMO’s press release, which just hit the wire, including the complete list of presenting companies, A to Z, and their web addresses:

Leading Technology Conference Continues to Highlight
the Best in Entrepreneurship from Around the World

The DEMO conferences, known for launching some the world’s biggest technology products, will kick off this Sunday with 72 new products poised to launch onstage in just 72 hours.  Beginning its 19th year of supporting innovation, DEMOfall 08 will highlight products from more than 11 countries and 19 states. Known as the conference that launched products from Google, Apple, Palm, Intel, Yahoo!, and TiVo, the fall conference will host one of its largest attendances of journalists, investors, and business professionals in its history.  DEMOfall 08 is being held from September 7 – 9 at the Sheraton San Diego.  To learn more about the event and register to attend, visit www.demo.com.

"Every DEMO, we strive to identify the companies that will defy all the odds and have significant impact in the technology markets.  Ours is a year-long process that culminates in 72 hours of products that are more than disruptive; they change the rules of the game as we know it,” said Chris Shipley, product analyst and executive producer of the DEMO conferences.  "I am very excited to unveil the class of DEMOfall 08.  They are innovative, they are important, they are fun, and they represent the future products and solutions we all will be using soon.”

The DEMO conferences are held twice a year, requiring the DEMO team to hold in-depth interviews with more than 1,000 companies ready to launch new products at the event. This rigorous process ensures that DEMOfall 08 attendees will, for the first time, see new products from around the globe including Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Taiwan.

DEMOfall 08 Presenting Companies

Accordia Group, LLC; New Rochelle, NY; www.accordia-group.com
Adapx, Inc.; Seattle, WA; www.adapx.com
Alerts.com, Inc.; Bellvue, WA; www.alerts.com
Arsenal Interactive, Inc.; Mountain View, CA; www.heycosmo.com
Asyncast Corp; Campbell, CA; www.rocketron.com
Awind Inc.; Junghe, Taiwan; www.awindinc.com
beeTV; Milano, Italy; www.bee.tv
Best Buy; Minneapolis, MN; www.giftag.com
BizEquity Corp.; Spring House, PA; www.bizequity.com
Blue Lava Technologies, Inc.; Honolulu, HI; www.bluelavatech.com
Cerego; Tokyo, Japan; www.usa.iknow.co.jp
Cinergix, Pty Ltd.; Melbourne, Australia; www.creately.com
Clintworld; Boenningstedt, Germany; www.clintworld.de
CoreTrace Corp.; Austin, TX; www.coretrace.com
crowdSPRING, LLC; Chicago, IL; www.crowdspring.com
DesignIn, Inc.; Marblehead, MA; www.mydesignin.com
Dial Directions, Inc.; Alameda, CA; www.dialdirections.com
DOCCENTER; Omaha, NE; www.doccenterinc.com
Enterprise Informatics, Inc.; San Diego, CA; www.enterpriseinfomatics.com
Familybuilder; New York, NY; www.familybuilder.com
ffwd.com, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.ffwd.com
Fortressware, Inc.; Mountain View, CA; www.fortressw.com
Fusion-io; Salt Lake City, UT; www.fusionio.com
G.ho.st; Ramallah & Modin, Palestine and Israel; http://g.ho.st
Green Sherpa; Santa Barbara, CA; www.greensherpa.com
Infovell, Inc.; Menlo Park, CA; www.infovell.com
Intelius, Inc.; Bellevue, WA; www.zumende.com
Invision TV, LLC; Bethesda, MD; www.invision.tv
iWidgets, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.iwidgets.com
Kadoo Inc.; Washington, DC; www.kadoo.com
Koollage, Inc.; San Jose, CA; www.koollage.com
Mapflow, Ltd.; Cork, Ireland; www.eirlift.com
Maverick Mobile Solutions, Pvt. Ltd.; Maharashtra, India; www.maverickmobile.in
MeDeploy; Hamden, CT; www.medeploy.com
Message Sling; Worcester, MA; www.messagesling.com
MeWorks, Inc.; Taipei, Taiwan; www.meworks.net
Microstaq, Inc.; Austin, TX; www.microstaq.com
MixMatchMusic, Ltd.; Burlingame, CA; www.mixmatchmusic.com
Momindum; Paris, France; www.momindum.com
OpenACircle.com; Dallas, TX; www.openacircle.com
Paidinterviews, LLC; McLean, VA; www.paidinterviews.com
Paragent, LLC; Muncie, IN; www.paragent.com
Photrade, LLC; Cincinnati, OH; www.photrade.com
PlanDone, Inc.; Petaluma, CA; www.plandone.com
Plastic Logic, Ltd.; Mountain View, CA; www.plasticlogic.com
Qtask, Inc.; Burbank, CA; www.Qtask.com
Quantivo Corp.; San Mateo, CA; www.quantivo.com
Radiant Logic, Inc.; Novato, CA; www.radiantlogic.com
RealNetworks, Inc.; Seattle, WA; www.real.com
Rebus Technology, Inc.; Cupertino, CA; www.rebustechnology.net
RemoTV, Inc.; New Haven, CT; www.remotv.com
Rudder, Inc.; Houston, TX; www.rudder.com
Semanti Corp.; Alberta, Canada; www.semantifind.com
Sim Ops Studios, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.wildpockets.com
SitScape, Inc.; Vienna, VA; www.sitscape.com
SkyData Systems, Inc.; San Mateo, CA; www.skydata.com
SpinSpotter; Seattle, WA; www.spinspotter.com
Telnic, Ltd.; London, England; www.telnic.org
TetraBase, LLC; Boothwyn, PA; www.tetrabase.com
The Echo Nest Corp.; Somerville, MA; http://echonest.com
tikitag, an Alcatel-Lucent Venture; Antwerp, Belgium; www.tikitag.com
Toolgether; San Mateo, CA; www.toolgether.com
TravelMuse, Inc.; Los Altos, CA; www.travelmuse.com
Trinity Convergence, Inc.; Durham, NC; www.trinityconvergence.com
TurnTo Networks, Inc.; New York, NY; www.turnto.com
UbiEst S.p.A.; Treviso, Italy; www.ubiest.com
UGA Digital, Inc.; Taipei, Taiwan; www.ugadigital.com
Unity Solutions, LLC; Clearwater, FL; www.unitysolutions.com
Usable Security Systems, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.usable.com
WebDiet, Inc.; Henderson, NV; www.webdiet.com
Xumii, Inc.; San Mateo, CA; www.xumii.com
Zazengo, Inc.; Santa Cruz, CA; www.zazengo.com

Why I Haven’t Been Blogging Much Lately: Micro-Blogging!

August 28, 2008 / / 1 Comment

So, here’s a chart that shows what I’ve been doing lately instead of blogging here.  Yep, micro-blogging on Twitter. There’s a free service for us twitterers (or, as some call us, "tweeple") — it’s called TweetRush, and it lets us graph our recent Twitter activity. Pretty cool. Graemetwitterusage_2

So, for you blog readers out there that may have been wondering why I’m so quiet, I’m really not!  🙂  Heck, 232 tweets since July 19th is pretty darn active, wouldn’t you say?  And virtually none of these tweets is about what I’m eating for breakfast, or some lame thing like that, which is what a lot of Twitter detractors think people do there. Darn near all my tweets or "micro-posts" are news items or insights that I think my "followers" — approaching 400 now — would be interested in. Occasionally, some are replies to certain followers, too — though I prefer to do a lot of that privately via what Twitter calls "Direct Message" or DM.  Some people go nuts with Twitter replies, though — almost using it like group email or IM. Letting everyone sort of be voyeurs into their personal, one-on-one conversations. But I find that quite silly, actually, for the most part. I much prefer to use Twitter to publish useful tidbits and, especially, links that open people up to even more connected knowledge out there — and create conversations on the back channel, whether via DM or email. Twitter is having huge implications in marketing and PR. Game changing, as a matter of fact. I even have a friend — a reporter — who’s about to publish a book called "Twitter Means Business," which gets into a lot of that. (He interviewed me and people from about three dozen other companies.)

Do you use Twitter?  Are you following me there?  If not, please set up your own free account, and then click "follow" here: www.twitter.com/graemethickins. If you’ve already been using it, what do you think of it?  Is it changing your online life, as it is mine?

Ranting on Apple: Not All Developers Are Happy

August 9, 2008 / / 4 Comments

UPDATE 8/10/08:  Check out Apple’s Rotten Decision (via eWeek). It’s a report from the Black Hat Conference, where the writer says "Apple’s image was pilloried on the show floor."

A smart friend of mine, who’s the founder of a startup with a successful online application/platform — and a longtime Apple user and developer — told me recently he’s really unhappy with Apple of late. I must say I was taken aback!  Rant
What, with all the hoopla about Apple’s latest consumer hits: the iPhone 3G and the wildly successful iTunes App Store (which I’m sure is up to 50 million downloads by now)?  Can Apple actually do wrong?  (Okay, with the obvious exception being the recent MobileMe launch, which they’ve already admitted they flubbed, and I have no doubt will be fixed soon — Steve will make sure of that.)

So, this was a real surprise to me — that such a longtime Apple believer and supporter could say something like this. I had to probe: "What on earth do you mean?"  I wanted to get at what could possibly be behind his newfound negative feelings toward Apple. 

Well, it turns out my friend has some very real concerns, and he makes a lot of sense — particularly because he speaks as someone who really understands the SaaS (software-as-a-service) business. So, here — unedited, in the raw — is his response to me:

BEGINNING OF APPLE RANT:

Graeme, I think part of the issue is that Apple’s culture is now at a mismatch with the SaaS and developer worlds. There certainly is a pattern here: arrogance and secrecy. Namely, SaaS and developer communities require transparency; Apple is more secretive than the CIA.

Ringtones
Apple tried damn hard to prevent people from making Ringtones of music they legitimately own. And you still have no mechanism for making Ringtones out of DRM’ed iTMS purchases without paying again for the song. And it is hard.

iPhone 3G Activation
In my opinion, the downfall of Apple (no, I am not really about to add myself to the legion of idiots predicting Apple’s doom over the years!) began with acquiescing to AT&T on the activation issue. I understand the legitimate business concerns involved, but the reality is that Apple re-invented the way a cell phone works with the original iPhone, and they gave away one of the coolest things about it with the iPhone 3G (the activation process). You can’t buy iPhones as presents any more!

But that was a nuisance.

MobileMe
So many things. One, the fiasco illustrates that Apple does not know a damn thing about web-based application hosting. They have iTunes working (more or less) right because it is so narrow in focus and so tightly controlled. But the MobileMe fiasco should not happen with any SaaS based system, ever.

And then their silence. They were silent for so long. When we finally heard from Apple, it was really just a note saying how Steve was forcing some dude who would give only his first name to blog about it every day or so. Contrast that with Amazon’s recent S3 fiasco. Amazon had updates every half hour for the duration of the outage, even if only to say we still don’t know any more than we did a half hour ago. For our online platform, we have a Twitter feed dedicated to system status so that our customers have ready access to what we know is wrong.

Every day or so? And saying nothing at all really in those communications. Inexcusable. The technical issues were about hard problems. The communication issues were easily fixed and never should happen in any scenario.

DNS Vulnerability
So, Apple knows about this vulnerability long before the rest of the world. The work of patching it is done for them. All of the major vendors of the world coordinate the announcement of the vulnerability and sending out patches.

Apple does nothing.

Weeks go by. Apple does nothing.

Exploits appear in the wild. Apple does nothing.

Eventually, Apple sends out a patch with the version of bind that is supposed to have the vulnerability patch. Somehow or another, it does not actually include port randomization features that protect against the vulnerability.

Apple does not send out the patch to non-server versions of OS X.

Apple never bothers to explain what it is up to or why it is failing to deliver timely patches.

I move my DNS off OS X for good. This was the final straw in the back that breaks OS X Server for me. I have been learning slowly over time that Apple is way too untrustworthy as a vendor of business services. This proved it.

In the meantime, Apple still has the vulnerability out there.

The App Store
Apple has proven the App Store concept is screwed up beyond belief. No ability to reasonably allow for trial use. No ability to reasonably have beta programs (the ad hoc deployment stuff is a fiasco in itself). But those are just feature complaints.

No one company should ever control what you can put on a device you own. If I want to pay $1,000 for "I am Rich", that’s my own damn prerogative. But even if we grant that right, the idea that they can remove apps from the store and tell no one anything about why it was removed? And what about if Apple corrupts my iTunes library and I need to re-install an app that I bought, but Apple later determined is not appropriate for their store? This is unacceptable.

———

END OF APPLE RANT.  What do you think?  Please speak your piece in the comments below.

USA Today writes ‘Static continues for Apple’s iPhone debut’ – and Rob Enderle Gets the ‘Stupid Quote of the Year’ Award!

July 28, 2008 / / 2 Comments

Seen the story?  Unbelievable!  Rob Enderle tries to compare the wild-ass consumer success of the iPhone, and the growing pains that come from such a rush, to — get this — Microsoft’s Vista bomb!!  ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??? 

Hey, USA Today — I seriously believe you need to update your list of quote sources!  That is the extremely most *LAME* comment on the situation that anyone could ever imagine….

read more | digg story

My Day in the Sun – I Mean, the StarTribune

July 23, 2008 / / 5 Comments

Or I really should say, our day in the sun — meaning our whole team at DoApp (my new gig). What a bunch of great guys, and I tip my hat to every one of ’em! Especially our illustrious founder, Joe ("Google guy") Sriver, and our crack team of talented developers.

It isn’t every day you wake up and find yourself at the top of page one of your local daily’s Business section. I was even quoted there, before the jump. Here’s the story: Apple Shines on Minneapolis Firm’s iPhone App (Minneapolis StarTribune).  But wait, there’s more: another great piece on us appeared late Monday: Minnesota Keeps Feeding the iPhone Habit (Minnov8.com).

Doappstartrib

Having our myLite Color Strobe and Flashlight app break into the top ten of *all* free apps on the iTunes App Store, surging past many big-name apps — like Facebook, AOL, MySpace, Google, and the NY Times — has been a humbling and amazing experience. (We topped out at #8, after a wild ride up the charts.) We’re even ranked higher than all the apps featured on "What’s Hot" on the App Store front page! (Apple’s a little behind in updating that list, it seems…)

Go grab any or all of our apps on iTunes — just type "DoApp" in the search box. And reviews are always appreciated once you download ’em!  (Our apps are getting high ratings by consumers, which you can see via the independent ranking service, Medialets. For example, myLite is currently #25 of all apps — paid and free! — with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5.)

Our other apps are myTo-Dos with Email Support and Magic 8 Ball (it’s mystical, man!).  And DoApp has many more iPhone/iPod Touch apps on the way, in a variety of categories.  We’re even updating our first three apps with cool, new features. (One you get an app, you automatically get the updates — so sweet.)

Apple said yesterday the number of iTunes App Store downloads is now up to 25 million! Got an iPhone or iPod Touch yet?  Downloading apps like mad?  Tell us your experiences in the comments…

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