Webware

If you're a frequent Amazon shopper, you might be looking out for tools to help enhance the experience of buying products on the site. There are services on the Web to help you get more out of Amazon than simply picking up a few products from the company's pages.

Let's take a look.

Get your Amazon on

AmaDig If you're looking for a different way to search Amazon, AmaDig will provide it.

When you get to the site, you can pick which Amazon category you want to sift through. From there, the site lists images of different products offered in that category. When you click on a respective product, you can view its specs, pricing, and reviews. You can also view the listing on Amazon or add it to your shopping cart from the site. It's a neat tool, but beware that the interface is a little clunky.

AmaDig has a unique way of displaying items.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Amazon Mobile If you're ready to buy a product at the store, you might want to consider using the Amazon app on your iPhone before you plunk down the cash.

Amazon Mobile not only lets you search for products and pricing, you can also take a picture of a product and have the app search Amazon's database to get its pricing. You can add items to your cart and use Amazon's 1-click payment system to place an order. (Read our full review here).

Amazon Mobile in action.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

Adobe AIR applications are typically well designed. They feature a sleek look and relatively fast response times. TweetDeck (Windows | Mac), a popular Adobe AIR app, has put the platform on the map. It has caused some developers to view AIR as a viable alternative platform to building a Web site.

Nomee (Windows|Mac), a company that helps users see what celebrities, prominent figures, or their friends are up to online, is one such app.

The basics
Nomee is based on "cards." When you first sign up for the site (you can use OpenID if you don't want to create unique Nomee credentials), you'll be presented with celebrities and prominent figures who currently have cards on the site. But before you start thinking that there are scores of celebs on Nomee, think again: for the most part, those cards were created by Nomee users, not the celebrities themselves.

When you view a card, it displays an image of the person, followed by several sites or services that are related to them. When you click on one of those services, you'll be brought to its respective Web page. For example, if you click on the Twitter logo on my card, you can view my Twitter page.

That's me on Nomee, even though I didn't create the page.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

If you like what you see, you can "add" the card to your Nomee Dashboard. From there, Nomee will track all the card updates. It will alert you when there's something new for you to check out.

Nomee's Newstream lets you view all the updates from every card you follow. Thanks to such a nice design and some filtering options, you shouldn't have any trouble finding exactly what you're looking for. It's arguably Nomee's best feature.

The Nomee Newstream in action.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Card creation
Of course, Nomee isn't just a place where you can see what your favorite celebrities are up to. You can also create your own card to share with friends. Those same friends can create cards and share their social profiles and links with you.

Over the last 13 years, Chris Shipley has been the primary gatekeeper of the twice-a-year Demo conferences, evaluating more than 20,000 applications from companies wishing to present in front of a roomful of reporters, venture capitalists, and analysts.

Now, with DemoFall 2009 beginning Tuesday morning, Shipley is marking the last of 24 Demos she has overseen as she prepares the formal hand-off of the show to VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall.

VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall, who is taking over the organizational leadership of Demo after this week's show.

(Credit: VentureBeat)

For each Demo, Shipley and her team have selected a few dozen companies, giving each a chance to make a name for themselves during a 6-minute presentation in a tiny show floor booth by unveiling something never seen before--or perhaps a great new take on an existing product or service. All told, over the 24 shows, she has given the opportunity to more than 1,500 firms.

Some of them are now household names, and some have long since faded into little more than memories.

As a parting gift to the many Demo alumni, Shipley recently announced the show's Lifetime Achievement Awards, honors that went to some of its most successful presenters. Among the winners were Palm co-founders Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky, Six Apart founders Mena and Ben Trott, Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff, WebEx CEO Subrah Iyar, and others.

Given that list and the fact that Marshall is waiting in the wings to usher in the next generation of Demo--to begin next spring--now seems to be a good time to follow in the footsteps of my colleague Josh Lowensohn, who a week ago took a "Where are they now" look at 10 alumni--five good and five not so good--of the TechCrunch50 shows, examining some of the stars and flops of Demo's past.

The good

TiVo

One of Demo's older success stories, it's still hard to believe that TiVo, the first successful service for digital-video recording, is already 12 years old (it was founded in 1997, though service didn't debut until 1999). From its humble beginnings on the Demo stage, the company has gone on to become the standard-bearer in the world of DVRs, even as others have tried to ride its coattails.

Today, TiVo has just more than 3 million subscribers and is boosting its presence among cable users. During the last quarter, cable provider RCN became the first to ever use both TiVo's hardware and software offerings. The company offers three main DVR models, two of which have high-definition capabilities.

Over time, TiVo has become synonymous with DVR technology and, to some extent, has been one of the major thorns in the side of commercial advertisers, who have had to battle against viewers' preference for skipping through commercials.

Palm

Although Palm as a company has had its share of ups and downs, it has to be considered one of the most important players in the history of handheld computing. Today, it is trying to make one of its biggest comebacks ever with its Pre smartphone, one of the few devices that has the potential to take a bite out of the iPhone's market share.

With its original Palm Pilot, Palm essentially created the market for personal digital assistants. And while the company lost some of its edge when Microsoft decided to get into the business with its Pocket PC technology, there is little doubt that the PDA market, and the subsequent smartphone market, owe a great deal of debt to Palm. The original Palm OS was used by millions of people around the world.

Founders Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky, who were recently awarded Demo Lifetime Achievement honors, left Palm to form Handspring, which produced its own line of PDAs using Palm OS. Eventually, Handspring was sold back to Palm, giving the latter a chance to regain its dominance with the Treo.

Salesforce.com

Marc Benioff brought his fledgling company, Salesforce.com, to the Demo stage in 2000. Unknown at the time, the company has since become a household name in customer relationship management, or CRM, services.

Today, Salesforce.com has more than 63,000 corporate customers, and in its most recent quarter, it earned $21 million on record revenues of $316 million.

Six Apart

After debuting at Demo in 2004, Six Apart became a leading provider blogging tools. Its Vox, Movable Type, and TypePad services are used by many of the most popular bloggers in the world, including HuffingtonPost.com, Boing Boing, and Talking Points Memo.

Founded in 2001 by Ben and Mena Trott, the company got its first significant round of funding, a $10 million B round from August Capital, and soon after, purchased Danga Interactive, the makers of LiveJournal.

Blinkx

Launched at Demo 2007, Blinkx has become the world's-largest video search engine. It has more than 500 media partnerships and currently indexes more than 35 million hours of video content.

The Bad

Ugobe Ugobe, which presented at Demo in 2006, looked poised to become a leader in personal robotics. Furby inventor Caleb Chung was one of its founders. And ts Pleo animatronic dinosaur, both friendly and programmable, was the kind of toy that seemed certain to provide enthusiasts and children alike with hours of robot fun.

Pleo, from Ugobe. It looked likely to be a big hit but fell victim to the recession.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

But the company probably came along at the wrong time. Ugobe found itself in the position of trying to sell a product that cost too much, just as the global recession was kicking in.

While Pleo got positive reviews and had a wide range of fans, it simply couldn't gain a foothold in the market. Ultimately, Ugobe filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, and today, Pleo is sold, albeit with little marketing, by a company called Innvo Labs.

Filmloop

Launched at DemoFall in 2005, FilmLoop was intended to be an online service that presented a tray of moving images that slide from right to left across a user's screen, showing each picture and then advancing to the next.

The goal was to create a community in which users could invite anyone they wanted to join, and even add photos, to, their loop. There was no limit to the number of people that could be added to a loop, meaning that an entire community could participate.

The company also hoped to become a photo newswire of sorts, and it had relationships with hundreds of professional photographers.

But things didn't go as planned for the company. By early 2007, it had burned through millions of dollars of venture capital and had laid off most of its staff. In large part, that was because there were other companies providing similar services, and FilmLoop's service simply never picked up a critical mass of users.

Peerflix

Also launched at DemoFall in 2005, PeerFlix aimed to be something of an open-source Netflix.

The idea was that users would send each other their own DVDs, and would search for and figure out where to send their DVDs through PeerFlix's servers. The company hoped to take advantage of the collective library of movies of its users, and it thought that members would trust each other enough to send off their own personal property to strangers.

From the get-go, the idea seemed problematic, in part because it required a critical mass of users in order to maintain an attractive collection of films. By early 2008, PeerFlix died. According to my colleague Rafe Needleman, who liked the service at first, "instead of getting more reliable as its user base grew, the service got less and less reliable, most likely as users stopped participating in it."

WebDiet

It sounded like a good idea when it was announced at DemoFall in 2008: WebDiet, a service designed to help people find healthy restaurant food, regardless of where they are.

The idea was that people would enter--either via a Web interface or through an iPhone app--dietary criteria and then see healthy food options arrived at by combining those criteria with location-based data. WebDiet even planned on partnering with restaurant chains with online menus so that users had a wide range of choices right from the get-go.

But good idea or not, a year later, and WebDiet is still in private beta, not a good sign this late in the game. It's certainly possible that it will still launch publicly and make an impact on people's eating habits, but at this point, it seems like the odds are against it.

Ham-It

Announced at Demo 09 last spring, Ham-It was touted as a "mobile-centric single-stop shop to globally connect and match consumers with local providers of day-to-day consumer services with capability to collaborate and schedule."

At the time, I wasn't sure what that meant, and I'm still not. And it looks like potential customers never understood either, as the company appears to have all but disappeared.

The DemoFall 2009 roster

Starting Tuesday, these companies will be taking their 6-minute turns on stage at this year's DemoFall. Stay tuned for full coverage of the show.

80legs
Anaplan
Answers
Armorize Technologies
Article One Partners
Burt
CallSpark
Cazoodle
Cortera
Digitrad Communications
DotSyntax
Emo Labs
Enthusem.com
ePulze
Faculte
Freeddom Tecnologia e Servicos
Fuze Box
Glam Media
Gogrok Technology
Hand Eye Technologies
Hashwork
Hevva
Hewlett-Packard
Indigo
Intelius
Kryon Systems
LeapFile
Liaise
Lunchster
Micello
MicroAssist
MoLo Rewards
MyOwnRealEstate.com
MyVocal Holdings
NativeTung
Piryx
Point of Wealth Systems
Rseven Mobile
RumbaFish Technologies
Scientific Media
Symform
Third Iris
TotalTrainer
Traackr
TravelTrac
TuneWiki
Tungle Corp
Twirl TV
VicMan Software
Waze
Webroot
Weels Corp
WhoDoYouKnowAt
YiqYaq
Zorap
Zuora

In addition, these 14 companies are part of Demo's AlphaPitch program, in which presenters get 90 seconds to make their case:

Cardagin Networks
Diditz
Dubzer
Enroute Systems
Gelato Dating
Infochimps
Keen Systems
Melior Technologies
Nubli
Pinyadda
Ringful
Sarithi LocalMart
ShareGrove
TrafficTalk

If you've just started using Opera for the first time with the release of Opera 10 (download for Windows|Mac), you're probably looking to add some widgets to your browser. But finding exactly what you need might take some time. That's why it's best to start with Opera's "Fun and Games" widgets. They're perfect for those times at work when you want to forget about the day and just zone out for a few minutes.

Fun and games with Opera

25 Square Puzzle If you enjoyed Lights Out, an electronic puzzle from the 1990s, you might like 25 Square Puzzle.

Unlike Lights Out, 25 Square Puzzle wants you to turn lights on. As you start clicking on different blocks in the game, you'll find that based on the block you click, other lights will turn off. You'll need to find the right combination to get all the lights on in as few clicks as possible. It's much harder than it sounds. Try it out.

Try to get all those lights on in 25 Square Puzzle.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Basketball Basketball is an extremely simple Opera widget, but it's also quite fun once you learn how to play.

Basketball places a basketball hoop to the left of your screen and a ball underneath the hoop. At the top of your screen, you'll find a scoreboard. The goal is to score as many points as possible within the allotted time. To do so, you'll need to click on the ball at the right angle to "shoot" it into the hoop. It's a tough game to get used to, but once you do, you'll probably find yourself sneaking games when no one is looking.

Basketball is a fun, addicting game.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

One of the things that has been most-surprising about the advent of Netbooks is that it has become less about the hardware as much as how mainstream operating systems and applications have had to adapt to fit within their confines. In the earlier generations of these machines, operating systems like Windows Vista just didn't cut the mustard, which is why most Netbooks you can buy right now are either running Windows XP or a variant of Linux.

While that is certain to change with the release of Windows 7 in late October, which runs leaner and meaner than Vista ever did (and could even come on a thumb drive), Microsoft's stumble opened things up for other operating systems to come in and fill the gap. Many consumers have more of a choice than ever with alternate operating systems that are becoming easier to install and use on these smaller machines.

One of those, called Jolicloud is launching in beta in the next few months. Created by Tariq Krim, who founded and later left widget-based start page Netvibes, the alternate OS has been designed for Web workers, or people who do most of their work (or play) on Web applications and services.

I've been giving it a thorough run-though over the past few days and have come away impressed at what it's trying to do. Some bits and pieces are definitely still beta, but the underlying approach of making Web sites and software applications feel the same, as well as introducing users to new ones to use is really innovative.

How it works

Jolicloud centers on a directory of applications that can be sorted by genre, release date, and popularity. To download or remove them from your computer, you just click on their icon and it does the rest. Jolicloud groups both Web apps and software programs under the same name umbrella, and both are added and removed from your system in the same manner. There's also a normal add and remove programs tool just like you get in Windows, but it's easier to do it from Jolicloud's rounded and simplistic interface.

To install or uninstall "applications" you can head to Jolicloud's online directory.

(Credit: Jolicloud)

Jolicloud is designed to let users hop back and forth between apps that all use the entire screen. Apps you have open stay in a top menu bar and can be switched back and forth just by clicking on them. Alt+tab works too.

Interestingly enough, you don't actually launch any downloaded app from the directory screen. Instead... Read more

Google is ready to open up its iGoogle home page to the social world.

The company is expected to announce Wednesday that gadgets for iGoogle can now take advantage of the Open Social API to build social-networking features into the small little software programs that iGoogle users can use to customize their home pages, according to Marissa Mayer, vice president for search products and experience. For example, gadgets will now be available for Flickr, YouTube, and social games like Scrabble.

Google opened up the Open Social API to iGoogle developers last year, but only in the "sandbox," a protected area for experimentation. If developers like what they see, it could help turn iGoogle from a personalized home page for "tens of millions of users," according to Mayer, into sort of a mini social network.

For example, friends (who have to be iGoogle users) can share YouTube videos that will appear automatically on the iGoogle home screen if you choose to embed that gadget on your home page. You can also access a "stream" of updates and see all the different types of content your friends have shared recently.

That's exactly what Facebook's News Feed does for folks on that social network. Google downplayed attempts to compare this service directly to other sites like Facebook, but "we'd like people to see all of the 'push' content that they would like to see on this page," Mayer said. She was referring to content that is regularly updated and delivered to the user, as opposed to search, where a user "pulls" information from Google.

iGoogle users in Australia have been using these social gadgets for about a week. Games and news dominate the first crop of Open Social gadgets on iGoogle, with chess, Scrabble, The New York Times, Huffington Post, and NPR represented among the initial 14 applications from third parties.

The new iGoogle Open Social gadgets let you keep track of what your friends are up to online.

(Credit: Google)

As Internet-connected TVs become more popular, set makers are looking for ways to stand out from each other. Vizio, which made its name by undercutting much larger names in electronics on LCD sets, is no longer just looking to attract buyers at Costco. It's now trying to compete directly on the number of bells and whistles with the likes of Samsung, Panasonic, and Sony.

Announced in late June, Vizio's Via HDTV has some things going for it that its competitors' sets do not: integrated 802.11(n) Wi-Fi--which means no separate dongle for connecting to the Web--2GB of flash memory, and a well thought-out remote control.

The remote design is almost a no-brainer in retrospect, and makes you wonder why it hasn't been done before. It looks like a standard model, but with this one, Vizio took into account what the user would be doing with it: interacting with Web applications like Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo Sports, and Flickr. The TV maker put a slideout QWERTY keyboard on the back of the Bluetooth remote, so users can type as they would on some smartphones, instead of keying in letters one at a time. And, it doesn't seem to add much to the price of the Via HDTV: the 42-inch version will begin at $999 when it starts selling in stores in November.

Vizio is also looking to differentiate itself with developers who will create more applications for the TV. Yahoo developed its TV widget engine last year, which brings a range of preselected applications like Twitter, eBay, Flickr, Yahoo Sports, Showtime, and many others right onto the TV screen. Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, and Vizio each offer it. But Vizio says it wants to appeal to application developers, so it integrated Adobe Flash directly into its Via HDTV. ... Read more

Adobe AIR apps are some of the best designed, most useful applications you can have on your desktop. Last month, I highlighted 10 applications to try out, if you're thinking about using AIR apps. This time around, I want to take a look at 10 apps that will make you more productive. Trust me, they will help you save some time.

Be more productive

Agile Agenda Agile Agenda is a project management tool that helps project managers keep their team on track.

Agile Agenda is quite impressive. You can add your team and input information about the tasks you need to perform. You can set priority, dependencies, when a task should be completed, and more. You can also edit milestones so you can track how the project is coming along. Most importantly, the app's fantastic design makes it easy to use.

Agile Agenda gives you the option of trying it for 3 days or 30 days, or buying a license. If you're buying one license, the software will set you back $70. More licenses reduce the price.

Agile Agenda makes it much easier to manage projects.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Doomi Doomi is an extremely simple to-do-list app that lets you quickly add items you need to complete. That list is displayed under the input box. You can set how long it should take to complete the task and mark the box next to it when it's complete. It's a simple app, but it's far more effective than writing your to-do list down.

Doomi keeps you on track with a to-do list.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

File Furnace File Furnace is a unique app. Instead of impressing you with a nice design and several menus, the app displays a simple image of a fire. Over that, the app displays a message that reads, "Drop unwanted files here." It also features the sound of a crackling fire. As long as you follow the directions of File Furnace, and drag and drop unwanted files or directories into the fire, it permanently removes them from your computer. It's a slightly unusual app, but it's much easier to delete files with File Furnace than waste time with the Recycle Bin.

File Furnace is unique--and quite useful.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Splashtop in the U.S. and Japan will have a Yahoo search bar for quick Web queries.

(Credit: DeviceVM)

Computers loaded with Splashtop will soon be able to do very quick searches as soon as the pre-boot phase of the machine starts.

Starting in September, notebooks and Netbooks with Splashtop will have instant access to a search bar on the instant-on desktop, Splashtop maker DeviceVM is planning to announce Thursday. In the U.S. and Japan, the default search engine will be Yahoo; in China, Baidu; and in Russia, Yandex.

"Instant on" is essentially a "pre-boot" environment that allows users to get a PC up and running in seconds instead of the minutes it takes to power up and launch a browser with a standard full-featured operating system. DeviceVM makes Splashtop available to hardware manufacturers that embed it in a computer's BIOS. Current customers include Asus, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Sony, Acer, and LG.

Currently, Splashtop users can get quick access to a dashboard of predetermined local and Web-based apps, but the appeal of instant-on is to get you online quickly. So there are apps like Skype, a Mozilla browser (not Firefox), links to online photo services, and streaming music sites. When the search bar is added in September, it takes one more step out of the process of launching the browser from Splashtop.

The search bar can be customized--if you prefer Google or Bing, you can set that up too--but deals with Yahoo, Baidu, and Yandex include a revenue-sharing agreements with the Splashtop maker, though DeviceVM would not provide details of the arrangement.

The instant-on environment is especially handy for Netbooks, since they're primarily meant to be used for Web-based work anyways. But DeviceVM director of product manager Dave Bottoms said that up to six local applications can also be added to Splashtop. And if enough corporate customer are interested, that one day might include Outlook, he said.