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Total Immersion, which wowed the Demo crowd two years ago, has technology that lets you merge computer-generated objects into live video. At Demo 07, the company showed off how a small PC with a camera could add a little dancing cartoon character to a live video of a newspaper. In other words: the newspaper was flat, but the live video of it on the PC's screen had real-time characters dancing around on it. And when the camera moved, they moved, so they almost appeared to be connected to the paper.

This technology will be great for navigation apps, and for games.

Like so many mobile trends, GetaBuz has its genesis in the creativity of teenagers.

GetaBuz licenses hit songs from major record labels and allows users to record personalized voice mail greetings and messages over the song, which cost $1 to $3 each.

It's a smoother way of doing what teens had already figured out--they wanted to send clips of songs to their friends from their mobile phones, Buz Interactive Co-founder Steve Ehrlich told me.

I got a quick demo, and the interface is pretty smooth. Just choose a song and record a message--up to 30 seconds--with any microphone. No mic? GetaBuz has a feature that calls you at any phone number and prompts you to record the greeting. Once that's uploaded, you can "mix" your voice and selected song, and send it off. The message you send shows up in your recipient's voice mailbox without ringing.

I received my recorded Buz on my phone, no problem, but my one complaint is the quality of the music file: nothing to write, er, call home about.

Demo 07: Seagate is showing off its new "Dave" technology mobile hard drive. Available in 10GB or 20GB capacities (bigger drives coming later), its unique feature is that it's wireless. You can connect to it via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, or via USB cable if you're feeling old-fashioned.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The Bluetooth thing I get, and it's interesting: You could use it as outboard storage for a cameraphone or a future camera that has Bluetooth. The fact that it connects via Wi-Fi means that, essentially, it's also a portable, wireless, battery-powered network-attached storage device too. And that's just plain cool.

Uncool (at least for dudes): It looks much like a cosmetics compact.

The first Demo 07 pitch today: DARTdevices. The company makes a technology that allows data and apps on mobile and fixed devices to sync up. So if you have a laptop, a camera, a phone, and a PDA, you can share the laptop-connected printer among all of them, automatically sync pictures, and even run the same games.

Users can add devices to their "crew" of devices even if they don't have DART software in them yet. That's the magic part. Cute demo tidbit:the presenter says, "If you think true mobile interoperability will happen only when pigs fly...", then he unveils two plastic pigs with wings that are embedded with "$1 Bluetooth chips." A button press, and the wings start flapping.

I talked with the DARTdevices CEO yesterday. He told me about the architecture of this platform, and how it can spread virally among devices you have access to. Which, of course, led to an interesting discussion on security. We also discussed the fact that apps have to be written for the DART framework--Photoshop, as it is today, isn't going to run on your Blackberry. But there's a lot here, and it's potentially disruptive (in a good way). We'll look into it more.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Bling Software makes software for mobile phones that lets them run Ajax apps. Publishers can easily take their Ajax-heavy Web pages, and quickly recode them for the mobile platform. The Bling software can then display the apps, including interactive content and streaming video.

What the service doesn't do is just display existing Ajax-heavy Web pages on mobile phones. The publisher has to do some work before they'll display correctly.

The presentation here at Demo 07 was based on the Barry Bonds Web site. At the end, the man himself stepped up to the stage, seeming a bit bewildered. But it made for interesting Demo theater.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Sci-fi time at Demo 07: call in to Qtech's ReQall, speak your ideas and to-do lists, and the service then does smart things with them. For example, if you save a task for a particular date, ReQall will feed it to you when you call in on that future day.

It also does speech-to-text conversion, and can e-mail you your notes, or put them on a desktop widget.

Pretty cool idea. For me, it depends on the speech-to-text quality. Can't wait to try it out.

Vringo bills itself as a video ringtone service, but don't let that fool you. My theory is that the company uses the term to convince traditional media types--like those at AlwaysOn's conference this week, where I heard about Vringo--that it's a viable business model for mobile marketing. "Ringtone," after all, is an easily-recognized buzzword, and it's pretty well-known that tech-savvy kids are willing to shell out money to pay for ringtones of the hottest Top 40 tracks. (I might not be a kid, but I admit that I did pay for a vintage Super Mario Bros. ringtone.)

In reality, Vringo is a video-sharing platform for cell phones. We've all heard that now that video has conquered the PC and the iPod, it's going to move on to the mobile handset, and Vringo is aiming to capitalize on that. Here's how it works: you, and any friends with whom you want to share clips, download the free Vringo app. Then, you surf Vringo via the Web (on a PC or mobile device) and choose what video clips you'd like to use as the ringtones when you call particular friends. Founder Jonathan Medved suggested it as a potential goldmine for movie and music marketers, demonstrating a Vringo call that used a clip from the movie Wedding Crashers. But you also can upload your own video content and use that, too. Yes, it costs money if the content's licensed--so it'll be free for you to share a Vringo clip of your cat, but not one of Nelly Furtado's latest video. It looks like licensed content will have a one-time download charge, and don't forget the fact that anything like this potentially will incur charges from carriers' data plans as well.

It's not perfect. I think that some Vringo users are going to wish they could quickly share video without actually making a call--it just seems a little bit constrictive. But hey, mobile video sharing is still pretty new. This could really be where things are going.

PALM DESERT, CA -- There are nearly 70 companies launching new products at the Demo 07 conference, which starts tomorrow. I arrived at the show a few hours ago, and I've been poring through the conference materials trying to plan my attack. I'll have a video crew with me, and Erica Ogg, another CNET blogger, is here too. We hope to shoot some cool demos and interviews, and we'll write up the most promising new products.

We can't cover every company, so we're going to focus on the ones below first. They look like the most interesting and useful new ideas for consumers and small businesspeople. The list, of course, is subject to change as we actually see product demos:

Gadgets and enablers
Bling Player: Brings Web 2.0 sites to your phone.
Sonata: New fast-charge, no-fade battery technology. See preview.
Crickett: Pocket wireless hard drive from Seagate.
D'Fusion: Augmented reality.
Zink: Print without ink. See preview.

Content and community
Me.dium: Turns any Web page into a community.
OurStory: Document your life.
Digger: Search that understands what you mean.
Blerts: RSS reader and with desktop alert utility.
Helium: Answer engine now has a debate function. See previous coverage.
SplashCast: Makes custom media feeds. See preview.
SharedBook: Prints blogs.
DesignIn: Social network for people doing home remodels.

Video, audio, and photo
Jaman: Streaming movie service and social network.
Yodio: Online audioblog creator and destination site.
Mixpo: Digital media organizer.
Eyejot: Video voicemail. See preview.
eJamming: Skype for musicians. See preview.

Mobile
ViM: New-technology stolen car tracker.
Vringo: Video ringtone sharing.

New platforms
Apollo: Adobe brings Web apps to the desktop.

Productivity
Zoho Notebook: Multiformat document-creation tool.
ReQall: TiVo your brain! Think out loud, recall your thoughts later.

From this list, Erica and I will pick our 5 (or maybe 10) top products from Demo, which we'll post on Thursday.

See also: More Demo 07 coverage on Webware and Crave, including previews of products from before the show opened.

Boston-Power says its new battery for laptops comes with three distinct advantages over conventional ones: It recharges in about half the time, it provides about the same amount of power, and it won't blow up.

The Sonata battery, which Hewlett-Packard has been tinkering with, can be charged to 80 percent capacity in about 30 minutes, CEO Christina Lampe-Onnerud says. Conventional notebook batteries take one to two hours to get to 90 percent capacity.

Boston's battery in action

(Credit: Boston Power)

"We picked 30 minutes and drove development to that," she said. Lampe-Onnerud will show off the Sonata for the first time publicly during a presentation at Demo '07, taking place in Palm Desert this week.

The Sonata, she added, is also electrically and mechanically compatible with current notebook designs. Put it into a regular notebook and you'll get about the same amount of run time. (The Boston-Power battery is the blue one pictured here).

The company is part of a wave of battery start-ups that have emerged in recent years. A few years ago, if you said you worked at battery company, people thought you were the guy who filled up the Ray-o-Vac display at Walgreens. A few exploding laptops later, venture capitalists are throwing money at you.

There is no magic silver bullet inside the Sonata, Lampe-Onnerud said. Instead, the battery differs from conventional notebook batteries through a large number of design tweaks. "We understand the system. We don't have a killer chemical," she said.

The "can," or outside casing around the battery cells, is made from a metal alloy that is stronger than the iron cans used with notebook batteries and thus will remain intact in case of a thermal reaction, or fire, inside.