Before the DemoFall start-up conference kicked off, I wrote a "What to watch" story covering what I thought would be the hot products at the show. As usual, I identified a few of the interesting companies, missed some others, and misidentified some that I thought would be hot but weren't. Now that the show is over and I've spent time with almost all the products introduced there, I've picked out my top winning products, companies, and concepts. I paid no attention to the wisdom of the crowds nor to the official Demo God awards handed out at the show. In my mind, perhaps uniquely, these were the five most interesting Demo launches:
Emo Labs makes good sound from clear plastic.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)Emo Labs has invented a way to send high-quality sound through a clear, flat panel that can be place on top of a flat-screen TV or a computer monitor. The demo rocked and the business is straightforward: Sell technology licenses to Sony, Panasonic, Apple, etc. Great demo, great tech, great business. Read more.
The most disruptive business was Cortera, which I called "dullest of Demo" in my writeup on Tuesday. This company does credit ratings for business. Stay awake, though: it's a $42 billion global business dominated in the U.S. by Dun & Bradstreet. Cortera's system is cheaper to run and makes for much less expensive reports for users. It could expand the market for credit reporting to more businesses and win a financially significant portion of the market, too. Read more.
Point of Wealth: Your money checks in.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)Another financial play, Point of Wealth makes a "reverse ATM" that lets people who are paid in cash deposit their money to cover bills, pay into retirement funds, and top up prepaid credit cards. It's a good service for the "unbanked," as they say, and a solid business. It will take a small fee (in the $1 to $2 range) for each transaction. Read more.
More television viewing is moving to the Web, and Twirl TV adds a social layer to that activity. A compelling and simple viewer for streaming available online TV shows, it also makes it easy to start conversations on Facebook about those shows. You can also see what your friends are watching and if they haven't watched the latest show you like, and give them a hard time about it either way. It's the selection of content combined with a user experience that's no more complicated than it needs to be that makes it work. Read more from Venture Beat.
Zorap was one of several video chat services introduced at Demo, but it looks like the easiest and most enjoyable to use of the bunch. While the demo showed the product being used as a fun family chat room, it also showed how it made it very easy to share pictures, videos, and files with participants--which is valuable for people in business as well. The product lacks sufficient security layers for the workplace at the moment, but layer that in and you've got a fun, easy, and capable tool for real-time sharing and conversation. Read more from Venture Beat.
Some of the most popular products at Demo are not in my list. I left out Datecheck, for example. This was a very fun demo of a free public records look-up service from Intelius. From a marketing perspective it's a hit, but technologically it's just a coat of paint on the Intelius system--and, if you want deeper data than Datecheck provides, you have to pay for it. Other clever products seemed more like features than standalone companies; TrafficTalk comes to mind.
DemoFall 09 was a strong conference with a wide range of clever ideas. Despite my criticism of the Demo conference itself, it is always great fun to see the innovation that gathers at this show twice a year.
In the last three years, September has become a busy time for Web start-ups and other new companies looking to make their mark. Warring start-up conferences TechCrunch50 and DemoFall take place within mere days of one another, leaving a wake of more than 100 companies that are launched within just a week's time, all vying for media and consumer attention.
Last year it was even worse, as both conferences happened at the exact same time.
This scramble to get things ready often leaves companies not ready for the users they hope will flock to use their product. So, as a service to you, we've gone through and sorted out which of the products you can use right now. These are sites with open registration, and no special beta or invite requirements.
We've also sorted out which ones are aimed at business users versus consumer use. All of this information can be found in a spreadsheet embedded at the end of this post. But before we get there, let's take a look at the makeup of launches that were open versus closed:
Note: We considered sites that were listed as having "private" or "invite only" betas as closed. This is because there is no guarantee that you could get immediate access once you signed up to use them. For physical products, we counted whether or not you could purchase or download them. All data was gathered Thursday.
This year, there were slightly less products launching at Demo, although that's not including the 14 "alpha pitch" companies, which are neither part of the main program, or by definition supposed to be live at the time of presenting. That said, there was a higher percentage of companies that were live and ready to go in the days following the show than the year prior, which came in at 75 percent compared with last year's 67 percent.
TechCrunch50, on the other hand, stayed around the same as the year before. Last year's show had just 42 percent of the 52 launching companies open for public use, compared with this year's 48 percent.
Worth noting is that there are a few sites that are on the verge of being open but that were not ready to go in time of this article going live:
• HealthyWage, a company that launched at TechCrunch50 will be opening up to beta users on Monday.
• Spawn Labs, the video game place-shifting service that demoed at TechCrunch50 will be available in November. We played with a demo unit at the show and everything worked great. The company is just working on production ramp-up to get it ready for the holiday season.
• Twirl TV, a DemoFall launch is currently open, but will close after the first 10,000 users sign-up. We marked it in this list as open, since we were able to register.
• Weels' site said it would launch on Thursday, however it was having problems with Amazon's EC2 service, and was expected to launch later in the evening.
Consumer vs. Business
Also of interest, and something we didn't do when comparing open and closed companies for last year's shows, is the make-up of products that launched at the show. Were they for consumers or businesses?
Not surprisingly, TechCrunch50 had a better showing of consumer-oriented products and services. That's to be expected though. The show is pitched at this audience and as a place for companies to pitch new software and services. Very little hardware is chosen to present--and what is has historically been for consumers. Demo on the other hand had more than a third of the companies aiming their products at businesses, or business users.
How important is being open?
Tech trade shows are never likely to have a 100 percent live at launch factor, nor should they. Many of the companies that made their debut at these shows are coming out of stealth mode and have worked very carefully to keep information about their service secret, both for a competitive advantage and to iron out last-minute kinks. Others have services that just plain aren't ready for big audiences and need a small and eager test group to help see if their creation scales.
What's often more impressive is how quickly some of these companies that aren't live, go on to sort things out and open up. Although last year that wasn't necessarily the case. Just seven months after the conferences many of the companies that were not yet live or open were still shut (including a few that shut themselves down). Will it be the same with this year's crop? Check back here in six months.
Previously:
Post-launch frenzy: What can you actually use? (from 2008's show)
TC50/Demo revisited: What's alive, what's dead? (seven months later)
The Viaas camera
(Credit: Third Iris)At Demo on Tuesday, Third Iris pitched Viaas, a video-monitoring system for business that's simple to install and use. Plug the cameras into just an Ethernet cable (if it's enabled for Power-over-Ethernet, that is), log into the Viaas Web site, and you can get your own business surveillance system up and running in a snap.
From a business perspective, Viaas follows the mobile phone model: the cameras, which sell for a low price ($199.95) considering their high-end sensors, are subsidized by the monthly fee you pay to access them, $29.95, or more if you want to have access to historical video beyond the default four-week archive. Each camera in your system incurs a monthly fee.
It seems like a solid offering for small businesses or even some residential installations that need remote access to cameras. The system has some smarts, too: The video service detects motion, and can send alerts based on that. But the image recognition system is very broad, as competitive products are. Even with motion detection, reviewing the "tapes" for a particular person or type of incident would be tedious.
Chris Shipley (left) with pattern recognition experts, from left: Donna Dubinsky and Jamie Niemasik of Numenta, Rob Haitani of Vitamin D, and Dick Lyon of Google.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)Wednesday at the conference, we heard from three companies doing much more sophisticated pattern recognition. These emerging technologies could make systems like the Viaas more valuable.
The Vitamin D technology can pick people out of crowded backgrounds.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)First, Numenta CEO (and Palm co-founder) Donna Dubinsky showed off her company's use of "cortical algorithms" to do sophisticated and rapid visual pattern learning. The demo showed how the system could tell a chair from a sofa, not based on programmed rules but rather human training and feedback: You tell the system what's what, and it learns. But from a security perspective, the more impressive demo followed Dubinksy's. It was from Vitamin D's Rob Haitani. This company's system can recognize shapes of people and things in real time, or as a video is being reviewed. You could, for example, find all clips of someone leaving a storeroom, and if that gave you too many returns, you could filter out the video to show only people who then walked out the building exit door next to it. See the cool video demo.
The Viaas video-monitoring system I opened this story with does not record sound, just video. Third Iris CEO Steve Roskowski told me there are legal issues around storing peoples' conversations. But he also said he wished he had put mics in the cameras anyway. The third science demo Wednesday, after the two video demos, from Google's Dick Lyon, showed how some of the same types of pattern recognition that work on video can apply to audio recordings.
Lyon's demo was not about speech recognition but rather creating and recognizing the fingerprints of certain sounds--a particular bird call, or glass breaking, or an engine starting. As Dubinsky said during a discussion after all the science demos, the best results in real-world recognition systems, and by extension, surveillance, will come when we have audio and video recognition engines reinforcing each other, the same way humans and other animals process their sensory inputs.
Dick Lyon sees a world of audio search.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)See also: Avaak's consumer-grade camera system (which has no motion detection at all), launched at the March 2009 Demo conference, and a my Real Deal podcast on security cameras.
Point of Wealth co-founder David Prehn (left) pitches to USA Today writer Ed Baig. The POW system lets employees who are paid in cash deposit their money, pay bills, and top off pre-paid credit cards.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)At DemoFall 2009, one of the few hardware companies launching is Point of Wealth, which makes a bank machine. It's like an ATM, but in reverse: You can only put cash in, not get it out.
The kiosk is designed to be placed in businesses where employees are paid mostly in cash. The idea is that the employees, when they're paid, can then deposit their cash in the machine and distribute it as they wish -- to pay bills, put money into IRAs, or top off debit cards for use later. Of course they can keep whatever cash they want in their pocket, too.
CEO and bar owner Doug Lindstrom told me that the kiosk can also be used by business owners to pay their employees, by transferring funds from their bank account to their employees' pre-paid debit card accounts.
Full-service ATMs do many of the same things, but they generally don't serve the "unbanked," like this business does. Point of Wealth is a very solid concept with a strong business model: The machines are free to the establishments that install them, and Point of Wealth takes small fees for each transaction.
Multiprotocol-messaging client Digsby has announced new features at DemoFall focusing on a completely revamped Twitter interface.
At the time of writing, users must download Digsby build 65, which will then auto-update to build 67, which includes the new features.
The new Twitter timeline window in Digsby features new posts at the bottom, plus a Favorites option.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Once logged in, users, set to follow Digsby on Twitter by default, are given two ways to manage their tweets. The tweet timeline is a single-window column that starts with the oldest ones at the top. It is accessible only by double-clicking on the Twitter bar in the Digsby Buddy List pane.
Running the oldest tweets on top runs counter to the Twitter Web site, as well as just about every other Twitter client around, and already, there's a heated debate over the tweet order in the Digsby blog post announcing the new feature.
Most recently received tweets and the status update box reside at the bottom of the timeline window, but every time you open the timeline window, it will go to your most recently read new tweet. Mouse over a tweet, and Twitter functions such as Reply, ReTweet, and Direct Message will appear.
There's also a new option that should be familiar to Internet Explorer users: Favorite. Mark a tweet as Favorite, and when you switch the view to Favorites--accessible behind the drop-down arrow at the top of the window--you'll see a list of all your Favorite-marked tweets. Other options include a History view that shows off only your tweets, as well as group creation and editing.
Digsby's mouse-over Twitter stream.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Mouse over the "quick look" Twitter pop-up window that's part of the Digsby Buddy List, and the tweet timeline runs in the traditional direction. Although Reply, ReTweet, Direct Message, and Favorite are also available from this view, forcing users to switch tweet stream directions depending on which pane they're using doesn't strike me as particularly logical. There's no option for altering the defaults in the timeline or the quick-look pane.
Twitter account options in Digsby.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)In Digsby build 67, users get two methods for updating their tweets. They can use the text field at the bottom of the Twitter timeline pane, or use the global status updater available from the drop-down menu at the top of the Buddy List. It comes with a character counter, useful, even though the global updater can be toggled to work for other social-networking statuses. The Twitter timeline text field and the global-status updaters will both automatically shorten URLs and automatically upload photos. Auto-shortening can be toggled in the drop-down menu by clicking on character count.
Some users have been complaining about stability problems that are probably related to the untested nature of programs that debut at DemoFall. If you don't mind the unusual flow of the timeline window, or if you're a Digsby user to begin with, this Twitter implementation isn't perfect, but it's a strong step forward for a program that already supports MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
You can share comments on streams you're listening to in RadioWeave with your friends.
(Credit: RadioWeave)SAN DIEGO--MyVocal is launching here at DemoFall 09 what looks like a useful service for anyone who ever gets bored while commuting in a car. The service lets you combine into a single stream your audio podcasts, as well as your text RSS feeds, which it will read to you. You get a local phone number to call to listen to the stream, and if you hang up and then reconnect later, it'll just pick up where you left off.
The company also has services for publishers. It can help them make their RSS feeds accessible to users on less-than-smart phones, plus the content feeds get links to download stories as dictated MP3 files, as well as the option to add a stream to a user's dial-up custom broadcast.
If you'd rather listen to streaming radio over an Internet connection in your car, it's worth also looking at RadioWeave, also demoed here, which will blend streaming music with other audio channels like traffic reports--or even text-to-speech readings of Twitter streams--into what looks like a clean iPhone interface. Users can also record their own quick messages from the iPhone app to share with their friends.
Of course, it's much easier to just turn on your car radio or CD player than it is to user either of these services, but they both show how Internet content is entering drive-time. I hope to see car audio systems updated with these kinds of technologies, but realistically I don't expect the car manufacturers to get up to speed quickly. So we're all probably going to be stuck with docked iPods and audio over phone connections for a while.
Everything you've done on your phone gets pushed to the Web.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)SAN DIEGO--Rseven makes an interesting service that archives everything you do on your mobile phone so you can review and analyze your activities later. With the app on your phone (it was shown on Series 60 phone -- the first demo at DemoFall 09 not on an iPhone), everything you do on the phone is stored, including recordings of incoming and outgoing calls. Call logs, text messages, and photos. (Actually, it wasn't clear if activities in other apps, like e-mail, are also saved.)
Once you sync your phone to the service, all the data goes onto the Web so you can pick over it later. You get charts and graphs showing you who you communicate with the most. You can easily tag and share your photos. Mostly, you can just see what you've been doing with your phone at any time. The CEO calls it a "lifecache" service.
It's a good idea, but it doesn't belong in an app (having to sync to save the data is a bad idea). Rather, this is the kind of thing you should be able to get online from your mobile phone carrier. They already have the data anyway, so why can't they display it for you? Hopefully the Rseven team realizes this and is trying to get their service out to the carriers.
Jonathan Kessler, CEO of Hand Eye Interactive
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)I'll be paying special attention to Hand Eye Technologies when the company gives its pitch at DemoFall 09 at about 10:40 a.m. PDT Tuesday. This company, as I said in "What to Watch," is trying to close the loop between television and the Internet, by using smartphones as secondary, interactive screens for people when they're watching typical broadcast shows.
As CEO Jonathan Kessler explained to me Monday night, the first step to making this work is to enable your smartphone to know what you're watching. First, you need special technology in your TV or set-top box. It knows what the screen is displaying and whether it's live or playing off a DVR or DVD. Then your phone needs to know what you're interested in that's showing on your TV.
One way to do this is to have the smartphone actually watch the TV with you. When you see something you like--something you want to buy, learn more about, share with friends, etc.--you press a button on the phone that communicates with the set-top, which causes the screen on your TV to overlay, briefly, some colored squares on the display that your phone's camera picks up. It can then tell what you were pointing your phone at and take you to the next step in your interaction with the content.
Hand Eye Technologies requires an app on the smartphone as well as on a box connected to the TV.
(Credit: Hand Eye Technologies)What's interesting about this is that Hand Eye Interactive Technology (HIT) takes the interaction off the main TV display and pulls it onto the personal, mobile, and much smarter display on users' phones. The TV isn't forced to become an interactive terminal, and the interaction a user has with content on his or her personal phone won't disrupt a viewing experience for anyone else watching the main show on the big screen.
Kessler said the technology could be generalized to work with any content on TV, but that the business model is to sell the platform to TV studios so they can embed it in individual smartphone apps they build for shows or networks. A shopping channel app is the most obvious example (Kessler is in talks with one of the networks) since it would enable commerce, but apps for other networks or even individual shows could work. For example, a Discovery Channel app could use HIT technology to kick off games or educational content (or DVD sales) on the smartphone.
The business also requires that set-top boxes (and network DVRs) get the core HIT technology embedded in them. Technically, this is simple. From a business perspective, I can only wish Kessler the best of luck. He will probably need it.
For HIT to succeed several different elements have to line up. But that high level of difficulty is also a barrier to entry, something that many Web-only businesses don't have.
Using smart phones as navigation tools is all the rage these days, what with a slew of applications available for the iPhone and Android platforms that utilize those devices' built-in GPS systems in determining users' real-time location.
One such service is from Waze, which in August released its iPhone app after being available on Android for several months. Waze's service is meant to help drivers figure out where they are and how best to get where they're going, all with the help of a large community of other motorists.
Waze gives users many different views of the road, including this one, in which users' avatars turn into a Pac-Man-type creature when going down previously undiscovered roads.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Among the information that Waze provides are traffic flow, road reports, and warnings about where drivers might run into speed traps.
At DemoFall 09 in San Diego on Tuesday, Waze plans to unveil its latest steps forward, which include rolling out its service on every major smart phone platform (except BlackBerry) and offering, for the first time, voice prompts for directions.
That could be good news for users of, say, Symbian-based smart phones, in cities where AT&T service is spotty. And that's important because even in a city like San Francisco, using Waze on an iPhone--with AT&T as the only service provider--meant being subject to areas where there was a significant delay in information showing up on the screen.
Further, because the service will now be available on other platforms, it means that the overall amount of data available to drivers--via the crowdsourced nature of the system--will be broader. And, because users until now have had to occasionally look at their small screens to see where they need to go, the voice prompts may well mean an easier--and safer--way to get to a destination.
Waze's application begins as a standard turn-by-turn directions tool and also offers a slew of other features, many of which give drivers something fun to look out for as they make their way to wherever they're going.
"At the end of the day," said Di-Ann Eisnor, Waze's community geographer, Waze is "about a community of drivers helping to build this map."
The company is counting on one part being fun for drivers: seeing where anyone else who's using the system is.
That may be fun for a while, but the application is really about making for a better driving experience, and that will rely on a critical mass of users. Rolling out on Android and iPhone first was a good way to ensure a significant number of drivers, especially tech-savvy ones, had access to it right from the get-go. But only time will tell if the new platforms the service will be on will make a difference in producing that critical mass.
For CNET News' latest coverage from DemoFall 09, click here.
Piryx makes creating and tracking fund-raising campaigns simple.
(Credit: Piryx)The Piryx pitch I head in advance of DemoFall 09 may be over-reaching--the founder sees it as a competitor to PayPal--but the service itself appears solid and useful. Piryx is a payment processing system designed primarily for causes and campaigns. If you're collecting money for a political candidate, for your school's band instrument fund, or something along those lines, Piryx lets you easily set up a page to collect money from people who want to contribute and track the messages you're sending out to people via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and so on.
It's a simple and attractive system, and in that it makes collecting money easier than putting up a PayPal link, it is a functional competitor. But Piryx is not a completely new payment system. Piryx charges credit cards and hooks into checking accounts. Then, like a typical credit card processing system, it deposits funds in its users' merchant accounts. It takes a significant percentage of funds collected: 4.5 percent on the high end, down to 4 percent as the money increases. (PayPal charges less.)
Piryx is ambitious in its architecture. The platform is open to new applications, and users pick these apps depending on their needs. For example, there's a compliance app that makes sure you're collecting funds in accordance with campaign contribution laws, if that's important to your program.
Piryx could work as a general-purpose storefront for selling an item or two, and it's good for that since it tracks which sites and blogs are generating the most traffic and income. But it was designed originally to help political campaigns raise funds and it's strongest when used for that purpose.
