Demo 07 Day 1 Afternoon Session
Below is the rundown of what I saw this afternoon. Note that I arrived a few minutes late and missed the SupportSoft demo then missed VUVOX because of a pressing business issue I had to address.
Software designed to help diagnose computer problems. Focused on the enterprise rather than end users. Simple interface for finding and fixing problems. Replaces missing software files without backups or reboots. It won’t replace that memo you inadvertently deleted so it isn’t a replacement for backups, but it does fix many problems users can create by installing bad software or inadvertently deleting or changing system files or settings.
My Take: Looks very easy to use and potentially useful for enterprises. I’m not an IT software expert, so I can’t really speak to the marketplace in which it competes, but the demo impressed.
Automated web testing. No scripts or fancy development needed to test your web services or applications. Starts at $250. Unfortunately, these folks killed their demo’s effectiveness by reading from a script.
My Take: They completely put me to sleep through a rapid-fire monotone recitation from notecards. The concept has promise, but I’ll have to learn more about it in a different venue.
An IT monitoring solution that finds slowdowns and outages in key applications and identifies the cause. Attempts to detect problems before they occur using “predictive alerts” by monitoring normal and abnormal behavior and learning over time early warning signs.
My Take: If it really can do what it claims, it has a lot of value for enterprises. Again, I am not an IT infrastructure expert, so I can’t speak to competition in the marketplace.
Helps with Sarbanes-Oxley compliance by assessing risk based on user access privileges. The presenters represent, and I understand from my sources as well, that this sort of thing is a huge problem for public companies who must now better identify such risks.
My Take: Anything related to SarbOx compliance remains hot. As for how useful the specific application is, I can’t really say since I have no experience with it. But it does look pretty slick.
Allows users to create their own online TV channel. They equate it to creating mix tapes for friends. They had a glitch, but passed it off with a passable joke and moved on. The Panjea player took a while to come up, possibly due to network bandwidth issues, but then it came up. Simple interface to combine a series of video clips into a “channel.”
My Take: I could see where this would have appeal among the MySpace crowd. As I have written on this blog frequently in the past, I do question to what extend people want to watch a large volume of streaming video online. Short clips a la YouTube make perfect sense to me, but movies and “channels” like Panjea’s offering are harder to grasp. Of course, they are targeting pop culture brands, and this may yet work since those brands are willing to try these sorts of things to target youth.
Apparently a spinoff of Critical Mention, a TV monitoring service, Clip Syndicate seeks to license video clips for display on blogs and other content-oriented sites. Just as AP, Reuters, Creators, and others offer written content to web sites, these guys want to do the same for video. They claim deals with most major broadcast networks, as well as others in order to stock the network with content. Site editors can easily create channels of clips and even reorder them. Smart channels will allow content to automatically update on the content publishers web site.
My Take: This has some real promise. Sean Morgan, the company’s CEO, is a hard-charging guy who made his case forcefully on stage and I trust he will do so with potential partners as well.
Starts out with a very high-energy pitch. Used audience to get input to move the demo forward — a great tactic to prove the system really works and isn’t just capable of the canned keystrokes that the company has pre-planned. Allows aggregation of user generated video. It searches major providers like YouTube and Yahoo. Presents aggregated search results on the site of your choosing. Partners with weather.com to allow users to present weather videos. Visitors can vote on results for different criteria to help tailor future result sets for themselves and others.
My Take: Not precisely the same as Panjea, but I think these guys hit the mark a little better. Looks pretty easy to use and I could see it catching on with bloggers and other content sites.
“Destination site” for audio casts. Allows people to contribute audio content directly to the site. Photos can be added as well. Aims to collect and aggregate audio content. Permits tagging. Content can be emailed. Groups can be created. Positioning themselves pretty much as a Flick for audio.
My Take: Flickr for audio? Maybe.
Manages “priority” RSS feeds. Allows visual alerts when new posts come in. Customizable graphics can be associated with each feed. Billed as a cross between personal feed aggregation and social networking. Presentation was heavy on buzzwords and light on details.
My Take: They say they don’t compete directly with the likes of Newsgator, but I just don’t see it. Feels like they have some ideas for features for the existing players in this space, but I don’t see them making it on their own without more innovation or some creative partnering.
LiveSquare.com Streaming Media Defender
Aims to prevent piracy. A lot of talk at the beginning about the problem of piracy. Kept wondering when the demo would begin … OK, we’re now over 1/3 of the way through their time and still no demo … a lot of emphasis on how quickly they update the product (less than 1 minute to auto update) … still no demo … doesn’t add much overhead — just 80 bytes and blah, blah, blah less overhead … OK, I know I’m getting snarky, but really, we still haven’t seen a demo … ah, now we’re seeing it. Hmmm. The demo consisted of showing a video for 10 seconds, unchecking a box and seeing that it shut off the feed, and then a quick look at some sort of logging screen. Then a spin into VoIP.
My Take: I’m left speechless here. Clearly a candidate for the “Worst of Demo 07” — at least as far as the demo itself goes. Can’t offer any real opinion on the product or the company based on what was seen on stage.
Print on demand service. Example was a greeting card that was designed and addressed online. Will be mailed within 24 hours. Presumably there are other products that can be created as well.
My Take: Has potential, not sure how much.
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Channels, channels everywhere! That’s sort of how it feels this afternoon, but here we go… Allows embedded channel content on any web page that includes video and other media (photos, text, etc.). Handles a variety of formats transparently. Allows channel sharing across sites. Simple channel creation. Openfor 36 hours and they claim 1000 channels created so far.
My Take: It will be interesting to see how all of these channel creation services fare. At first blush, I still prefer Magnify.net (see above).
They call it an “on-demand reverse publishing system.” Example given was the ability to print comments produced for obituary guest books on Legacy.com. Seems like a simple process to set up and receive a printed book with the user generated content provided. This was a custom integration, but they now offer API’s to permit any site to interact with the service.
My Take: It will be interesting to see growth here since it requires semi-custom integration through API’s rather than a way to easily integrate content either through cut and paste or better yet through RSS/XML/etc.
Feels like an ongoing, “living” version of a baby book. Follows timeline of someone’s life and permits text, photos, and multimedia to be inserted. Content can be printed in book form. Others can access online. Alerts can be set to receive email updates when a timeline is updated. Can also be used to do timelines for groups of people instead of individuals.
My Take: I’d love to see this rolled up with a genealogy web site to have an end-to-end family history solution. Done right, I think this would meet a real demand and feed off of the existing desire to build family tree information. But even on its own it has some promise. Even 5 years post 9/11, there still seems to be a much greater interest among a lot of folks to be better connected to friends and family.
They don’t use the word channel, but seems very similar to the other offerings that permit personal channel creation. Pick content. Embed it on the blog or web site of your choosing. Etc. Final words were that they have a “distribution deal” with Microsoft. No idea what that means, but obviously it could be significant depending on what it really is.
My Take: Luck of the draw put these guys on the stage after too many channel presentations and it has all become a blur to me now. These guys did do a better job of describing practical and business applications for the service, so they do get points for that.
Preclick IPM Instant Photo Messenger
Just like it sounds — sharing photos via IM. Billed as an alternative to email. Automatically resizes photos to reduce file size. Easy to add captions, reorder images, etc. Preclick already partners with Walmart, Cosco, and others to offer photo services. It appears to be a proprietary IM app, but either I missed it or they weren’t entirely clear about that.
My Take: Existing partnerships will likely give this service some initial juice and probably could sustain it on its own.
Claim to be the first AJAX client for mobile applications. Joined on stage by the creative director of BarryBonds.com (apparently there’s at least one company that isn’t running away from Bonds despite his — how do I put this tactfully? — questionable public image). Demo made it look very simple.
My Take: Mobile application development isn’t my expertise, so I’m not sure I have a lot to offer on this one.