Other Cool Things I Saw Yesterday at Demo 2006

The clumsy-name-but-that-doesn’t-mean-it’s-not-cool award goes to The Multiverse Network (yes, that’s listed under “T” for “The”….duh). And wait till you hear what market they’re in: MMOG! Yes, it’s true. For those of you feeling really acronym-challenged right now, that’s “massively multiplayer online gaming.” [Oh, right, how silly of me…] Okay, so “branding” and “household-name” are not the first things to flash to mind with this outfit — unless maybe you’re an online gamer — but they do have a great concept to address a monster market. It’s now about $1 billion in the U.S. and probably 2-3x that worldwide thanks to Asia. CEO and co-founder Bill Turpin (ex-Netscape VP-engineering) told me a lot of the play here for Multiverse is subscription revenue, making it a great “longer term business.” It’s a free technology platform that enables independent game developers to compete with the big game companies, which typically spend $10-20 million to develop a single game(!). The kicker is the independents using the Multiverse Platform get to share in the revenues that their games generate. The company plans a public beta of its tools toward the end of this month: a “terrain generator” and a “world editor.” We saw these demoed, and they appeared very easy to use. Close to 2500 developers have signed up already on the company’s site, said Jeff Weinstein, engineer. And marketing director Cory Bridges (also ex-Netscape) told me the key advantage developers see is “rapid prototyping,” a process that can now be completed in as little as half an hour. The company got a nice boost when James Cameron, director of such movies as “Titanic” and “Aliens,” signed on to their advisory board. For more, see this article about him and Mutiverse just out in Business Week (requires free registration).

Other companies I liked yesterday include Blurb, which provides a “personal book publishing” service. In less than an hour, you can produce your very own book for $30 (yes, even one-off) and have it on your doorstep 4-6 days later. Get this bloggers: one option is turning your blog into a book! [Doc’s would be like the War and Peace?] We’re talking really professional-looking, hard cover books here — with shiny dust jackets, friends! Coffee-table quality. I suppose you could even get your buddies to write those oh-so-objective little “blurbs” for the back jacket! Think of the gift ideas. But that and the vanity thing are hardly the whole market; CEO Eileen Gittins says there are some 400,000 fundraising organizations and associations that publish cookbooks. By the way, Eileen gets the best closing line in the pitches so far: “It’s so easy, even our VCs can do it.”

Going quickly down the list (have to get to breakfast): another outfit with a technology that would seem to have big potential is being developed by Digislide, based in Adelaide, Australia, but just setting up a U.S. outpost. Their “Digismart” product is a micro-optical engine that lets you project an 11×17 image from your handheld device: cell phone, PDA, GPS, MP3/4 player, etc, or a laptop. Demo thinks it will do for mobile presentations what camera phones have done for digital photography. They’ve spent north of $4 million developing the technology so far, and are, of course, looking for more VC money. Plenty of those folks here!

Speaking of cell phones, Bones In Motion showed off their service that turns your phone into a performance monitor and coach for your daily run or bike workout, etc. [Too bad it doesn’t have a better name than “BiM Active” — huh?] And they announced yesterday that Sprint will soon be offering the service for $9.99 per month. See more on the comany’s blog.

And yet another cell-phone service was shown by Tiny Pictures, which uses a peer-sharing model to let you publish your cell pix with a single click and “share your experiences as they happen with the people who care most.”

I heard more than one comment that there was a lack of “gadgets” at this Demo — i.e., products. Consumer services seemed the biggest category. But the “Pleo” robotic toy from Ugobe, created by Furby inventor Caleb Chung….what can I say? You’ll be reading tons about this one.

More soon….from the final day’s sessions.

Tag: Demo 2006