Geek Gestalt

Dot Go, from Scientific Media, is positioned as the 'Internet for text messaging,' and promises companies an easy way for potential customers to communicate with them by text message.

(Credit: Scientific Media)

SAN DIEGO--For better or worse, text messaging has become, according to a company called Scientific Media, the most popular mobile application on Earth. And while many companies are trying to build marketing efforts around people's use of texting, it's clear there is a long way to go before those efforts are coherent.

At the DemoFall 09 conference here Wednesday, Scientific Media unveiled its Dot Go service, a tool it hopes large numbers of companies will employ to try to boost their text messaging-based marketing.

The idea? Blow apart the current texting/marketing dynamic, in which companies try to get users to text questions to them, but in which there's no easy way for people to remember the so-called short codes (the five- or six-number codes people text their questions to) used by most companies.

For example, Google offers a wide range of information via text message, and to access it, mobile users must text a message to 466453, which equates to "Google." That one is kind of easy. But Starbucks, by comparison, uses MYSBUX (or 697289), a much harder to remember code. Similarly, Fandango uses FNDGO, or 36346.

Scientific Media's solution to this problem is to do away with each company having its own hard to remember code, and instead have all text messages to companies go through its service, which is reachable by a single short code, "Dotcom."

Dot Go imposes a single rule, Scientific Media said: The first word of any text message sent to Dotcom (368266) specifies the Internet domain a user is looking for.

So, for example, if someone wanted to get information from Fandango, they would simply text "Fandango" to Dotcom. For Weather.com, they'd text "Weather" to Dotcom. By texting "Gasbuddy 92101" to Dotcom, a user would get a list of the five cheapest gas stations in the 92101 zip code.

One major value proposition of this, the company argued, is that text messaging works on every mobile phone, meaning that anyone with such a device can use the service. Also, while good domains are pretty well locked up in the West, there are plenty of great available domain names in developing countries, meaning, the company argued, that the marketing upside is tremendous in such parts of the world.

What this mean, Scientific Media said, is that Dot Go is "the Internet for text messaging." And while that's a very bold claim, you can see what they mean.

As far as monetizing this service goes, it's clear that Scientific Media is hoping to engage companies like Fandango, Starbucks, and Weather.com in co-marketing deals. Will it work? I don't know. I'm often skeptical of these types of services, because they represent nothing but potential. But if that potential pays off, this could be a big winner.

Faculte allows anyone to quickly and easily make video slideshows.

(Credit: Faculte)

SAN DIEGO--Sometimes, elegant, innovative ideas come across as incredibly simple and feel like they've been around all along.

That was my thought after watching a company called Faculte make its case Wednesday morning at DemoFall 09. It's a new service that makes building multifaceted video presentations as easy as creating PowerPoint slideshows.

It's not that there aren't other ways to make video presentations. Other companies like Brightcove, SlideRocket, and WebEx all offer ways to build them. But what Faculte showed off onstage here looked intuitive, easy, and about as drag-and-drop as could be. It almost seemed like the kind of software that Apple would build into the Mac OS or its iLife suite. But so far, Jobs and Co. hasn't done so.

And indeed, making a video slideshow with Faculte's software did seem like a simple matter of dragging and dropping individual pieces of video--from easy-to-access folders--into a stream. Further, at least according to the demo, it seemed simple to add new elements after publishing, or delete pieces you don't like.

The result? A way to put together such a presentation with a number of different video elements that make a larger case. After watching one of these, I asked myself why this hasn't been something readily available all along. It's certainly long been possible to use a video-editing tool to piece together different video elements into a larger presentation, but this felt more creative than that. And also simpler to use.

What's not clear is Faculte's business model. I'm not sure I would pay to use it, and I don't know how ads would fit in. But the company has venture and angel funding, so it looks to have a chance to demonstrate its profit potential. I look forward to seeing how it fares.

An example of featured patent studies that Article One Partners has put out to its adviser community to help research.

(Credit: Article One Partners)

SAN DIEGO--It's been very clear for a long time that the American patent system is deeply flawed.

According to information provided on stage at DemoFall 09 here Wednesday by a company called Article One Partners, as much as 45 percent of all litigated patents are eventually found to be invalid. But the U.S. Patent Office is obviously overwhelmed by the sheer workload it faces, and its investigators' inability to keep up with the research that would help them reject many applications.

There are some solutions in the works, including Peer-to-Patent, a nonprofit system that would spread out the investigative work to a wide ecosystem of subject-matter experts. But clearly, some believe there's money to be made by putting some of this work--at least when it comes to invalidating patent applications or even approved ones--in the hands of a large community.

That's where Article One feels it can make a difference in stopping patent trolls from trying to make fortunes by suing companies for infringement.

The company's model is to farm out potentially invalidating research to a community of "advisers," all of whom can get paid for doing research that makes a difference in investigating applications or existing patents. The company has had its system in beta for about a year and it said that a third of the research done by its advisers has resulted in invalidating evidence.

Now, Article One is formally launching its service, and attacking what it said is a $1 billion market in fighting potentially invalid patents.

It aims to incentivize its advisers by paying them as much as $50,000 to do research and write up sophisticated studies. And this can be deeply valuable work, the company argued. For example, it said, even though RIM paid out more than $600 million to settle an infringement lawsuit, the patents in question were subsequently found to be invalid.

But again, because official patent investigators have only so much mental bandwidth, it is simply not possible for them to come up with the evidence themselves that can help out companies like RIM.

So, in a case like that, a company would put in a request for research on Article One, at which point the advisers can respond with supporting evidence. And the company said it is paying out as much as 5 percent of its profits to the advisers, who are paid if their work helps to invalidate a patent.

If it works on a broad scale, this seems like an extremely important addition to the patent landscape, though certainly not the only one. But as is abundantly clear, the system is broken and needs as much help as it can get, regardless of whether it's nonprofit or profit-based. And given how valuable such work is to large companies, there's definitely a lot of money at stake.

SAN DIEGO--It's not that today's Web browser users don't have keyboards. It's that we don't really need to use them.

That's the business case of Weels, a start-up that presented at DemoFall 09 Wednesday: that much of what we do in browsers, including sharing content between users, can be done strictly with a mouse.

The idea is that, in a browser, everything can be manipulated--moved around, copied to folders and shared--solely by being dragged and dropped with the mouse. After a simple registration, users see what amounts to a toolbar at the top of their browser and can then get information related to various kinds of data by moving that data into the appropriate place on the toolbar.

For example, say you want to get product information about a high-tech gadget from Amazon.com, you could click on the gadget from a product review site and then, with a click of the mouse, bring up a list of sites--including Amazon--and drop the copied product information onto the Amazon logo. The result? The Amazon page for that product pops right up.

Similarly, different users can set up a sharing relationship, with each user having a spot on the toolbar. Then, content can be dragged to that user's spot and it immediately appears on their screen. That can include text, photos, videos and many other items.

The service also features what's called "collages," which are basically pastiches of content that can be saved and arranged as a user wants for later investigation. Collages can also be shared between users.

For now, the company appears to be just getting off the ground, and its founders--some college and high school students--made a point of calling for investors while on stage. And it's not at all clear how they would make money off their free service. But the idea is intriguing, since it simplifies the way users live with their browsers, their keyboards, and their mice.

Infochimps is looking to build a business around a marketplace for sets of data like those in this picture.

(Credit: Infochimps)

SAN DIEGO--It might not make immediate sense to everyone why someone would want to buy datasets, but to an early-stage start-up called Infochimps, there's an entire business to be built around the market for such products.

At DemoFall 09 here Tuesday, Infochimps got its chance to explain what the market for datasets is and how it works.

The company, in fact, is building a marketplace for collections of data, which could include anything from weather information to the number of people who have appeared in Rambo movies to the full collection of words in the Scrabble dictionary. And everything in between. Users who buy them can then plug the data into their own applications, for whatever purposes they have in mind.

On Infochimps, anyone can add a dataset that they hope to sell, and anyone can search for set of data they'd like to buy. If a match is made, the company gets a commission.

According to COO Joe Kelly, most datasets are very small, so the cost to the average user is negligible. But at a cost of about 20 cents a gigabyte, he explained, there are some datasets that could bring in big bucks.

Though the company is only getting off the ground, Kelly explained that Infochimps has already landed one big client. He said that well-known political pollster John Zogby has agreed to put some of the data he collects on the site for sale. Another initial client is FootballOutsiders.com, a leading fantasy football data analysis site.

Ultimately, whether this kind of marketplace can be profitable depends on the source material and whether the site can do a good job matching up sellers with buyers.

But there's no doubt once you realize the full breadth of datasets that are possible that there's potential here. Only time will tell if Infochimps can survive long enough to get the kind of critical mass necessary for this kind of business to flourish.

SAN DIEGO--Earlier this summer, I wrote about the blossoming transition movement, in which local communities around the country and the world are beginning to prepare themselves for a post-peak oil world.

One of the best ways for communities to do this is to focus on local food supplies. With oil prices at peak prices, it won't be economical to truck in food from around the country, and those that do continue such a dependence are likely to experience major financial problems.

But those towns and cities that do put an emphasis on building more sustainable local food infrastructures are the ones that are going to be in the best position to take care of themselves with as little outside assistance as possible.

At DemoFall 09 Tuesday afternoon, a company called Hevva unveiled a system that could help just about everyone in such communities to meet those local food needs.

The idea behind Hevva's Local Dirt system is to create a searchable database of local food that can serve farmers, sellers, and buyers alike with the development of a robust market for locally-grown produce and other foods.

According to the company, demand for local food now outstrips that of organic products. Yet it's hard for just about everyone in that ecosystem to find just what they need when they need it.

One of the unfortunate side effects of the inefficiencies in this market, Hevva argued, is that as much as 40 percent of the post-harvest supply is lost to spoilage. As a result, Local Dirt is built around trying to ensure that the market is as efficient as possible.

To begin with, the system provides a simple search that buyers can use. As an example, someone could search for where to buy pesto made within 100 miles and then see a list of all the purveyors who can meet that request. Similarly, the system shows all the online local sellers who offer pesto for sale right now.

Taking the example further, users can narrow their search results to farmer's markets, and can look to see when each such market is open.

To Hevva, while individuals are important buyers in the local food economy, those who can get the greatest advantage from the platform are larger buyers: grocery stores, schools, hospitals, and the like.

That's why buyers can also search for food that can be delivered to such institutions.

Ultimately, Local Dirt is meant as a way for every participant in the ecosystem--the farmers, the buyers and the sellers--to find the best way possible of getting what they need from the local food market.

Whether this helps communities move towards a future independent from large food producers spread around the country is impossible to know. But it is good to know that there are people working now to build systems that could make it easier for such communities to move forward with their goals of focusing more and more on food grown locally.

SAN DIEGO--The list of Twitter clients grows every day, and for many people, finding just the right one is a crucial decision. Being able to track and manage multiple accounts is essential, but doing so can create somewhat of a chaotic flow of information.

At DemoFall 09 here Tuesday, DotSyntax unveiled the latest version of its already-popular Digsby social-media management tool, and the new version is geared specifically towards helping solve the Twitter chaos problem.

The new Digsby extrapolates from what it already does with social media offerings from MSN, Facebook, Yahoo, and others. Among those tools are a one-click status setting, easy switching between IM conversations, and seamless tracking of multiple e-mail accounts.

Now, Twitter implementation has become a key component of Digsby. It's the "first Twitter client designed for the mainstream audience," DotSyntax boasts.

The first innovation, the company argues, is a flipping around of the Twitter client standard, in which the stream of tweets is displayed newest first. Instead, Digsby shows the oldest first, so that it is easier to read threads from the beginning.

The client then tracks which tweets you've read so that you don't have to read an entire thread in one sitting. Instead, the tool can bring you back automatically to where you were if you don't finish reading a thread.

Another new approach is defining who are the most important Twitter users someone follows, and separating out everyone else they follow into one column. That means only the most important Twitter users will be in a primary column, making it more simple to see the most important information in your feeds.

There are other new features, as well, but one that I think is the most elegant and useful is adding a reply button to new tweet notifications. As a long-time Twhirl user, I both love and hate the constant pop-ups that let me know I've got new tweets in my feed. But if I see something I want to respond to in one of those pop-ups, I have to switch out of whatever I'm doing, bring up Twhirl and take action. By comparison, Digsby will allow replying to those tweets right from the pop-up.

I'd like to get my hands on the new application and see how it really performs. But it seems like one of the most promising Twitter clients I've seen in awhile, and if a critical mass of others agree, it could become the next standard-bearer client.

SAN DIEGO--It's great to see modern technology applied to experiences we've all had for years. One thing that many people share is the difficulty of getting the most out of traveling, and helping others benefit from what we've learned on our own travels.

After seeing the presentation Tuesday morning at DemoFall 09 from TravelTrac, I'm hopeful that this dynamic may be changing.

TravelTrac enables users to share their travel experiences in real time, with easy uploading of photos, videos, and more.

(Credit: TravelTrac)

The main idea behind TravelTrac is to "share adventures as they happen." This works by enabling people to use their iPhones to share their experiences as they have them. Users can post videos, photographs, their location, and journal entries, whether they're online. If someone is online while doing the posts, the content goes live right away. When not online, those posts go live the next time a user connects.

TravelTrac is built around the concept of creating traveling communities, and the company has broken down its users' experiences into three main areas: MotoTrac, for those who travel by motorcycle; TrekTrac, for those who travel on land by car, train, RV, or other vehicle; and SailTrac, for those who prefer maritime travel.

Regardless of which method someone travels by, what's nice about this is that it allows users to share the best parts--or the worst, if that's what's important in the moment--of their journeys, and for everyone else to benefit from that knowledge. And because the service allows the sharing of a wide range of media, it means that there will be a new form of collective memory of traveling, no matter where people go.

And that is exactly what modern social media and devices like the iPhone are supposed to be about. It's nice to see someone applying these things to something so many people do.

SAN DIEGO--At DemoFall 09 here Tuesday morning, one theme quickly emerged: new applications for collaborative video meetings.

First, Hewlett-Packard introduced its Skyroom videoconferencing application for PCs. But in my opinion, the better answer is Fuze Box's Fuze Meeting. This is a nice application for the iPhone or BlackBerry that allows multiple users to conduct multimedia meetings via their mobile devices.

It's designed to make it possible to add participants easily and quickly from various social-networking services' friends lists--like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter--to a real-time meeting session.

Fuze Meeting allows rich-media videoconferencing on iPhones and BlackBerrys.

(Credit: Fuze Box)

Like Skyroom, Fuze Meeting allows users to have high-definition meetings--on the iPhone, that requires having OS 3.0.

Once a meeting is initiated, users can share a wide range of media with each other, including PowerPoint presentations, business documents, 3D geospatial maps, photos, video, and more. In addition, any URLs used in a meeting can be posted, with one click, onto Facebook or Twitter for wide dissemination.

What's nice about Fuze Meeting is that it seems to provide a simple way to get multiple people together, regardless of where they are, and have a quick meeting where they can all share many different kinds of content. To be sure, this is not likely to be a company's only way to have online meetings for remote employees, but given its ease of use and the fact that it allows the sharing of rich media across popular mobile devices, it seems like something that a lot of people may use.

It's also got a major advantage over HP's Skyroom, which is limited to being used behind a single corporate firewall. I liked Skyroom's technology--though it seemed to have many similarities to Apple's long-available iChat AV software--in particular because it offered the ability to share rich media, including real-time video.

But Skyroom's behind-the-firewall limitations seem unnecessary, and Fuze Meeting proves it.

This post was updated with correct information about requirements for Fuze Meeting on the iPhone.