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.

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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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Esther Dyson Calls It Quits (but only sorta)

Just got an email from Esther that she’s discontinuing the annual PC Forum conference. Wow, what a bummer… Such a great, long-standing industry event. She leaves a huge legacy. But she goes out in style, after an excellent conference this past March, which I was lucky enough to catch. Estherdyson200 Here’s the terse email she sent to those of us on her Release 1.0 list: “Word has slowly gotten out that the PC Forum last March was the last ever. So let me interview myself.” And a link then takes us here (requires registration), where she explains her decision. It’s all quite upbeat and positive, but it still comes as a shocker. Few individuals command as much respect in this industry as Esther. She’s one of a kind, that is for sure! And many, many people will miss her annual event. She built up a huge fan base and following over the years, and attracted the very finest speakers. Pcforumlogo300_1 Here’s a rundown of those speakers through 2005. For more about the swan-song event in March 2006, read my coverage here. Esther launched her conference near the dawn of the PC revolution, about the time I was going off on my own as an independent consultant, and I’ve followed her all this time, as has the entire technology industry. But, as she reminds us in her self-interview above, she’s not done yet! I know we’ll be hearing much more from her…. Good luck, Esther!

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