DEMO - Day Two

The morning started out with some VOIP oriented serivces.  None of them blew me away but eqo.com is pretty cool.  It allows you to connect your Skype account on your computer to your mobile phone.  Your skype buddies appear on your phone and you can start talking to them. I saw another similar company in Boston whose name escapes me.  How long until Skype offers this?  It's certainly a nice thing to have.

Then we had four search demos.  All of which were interesting.  Steve Levine from Transparansee did a very nice demo of Transparansee's fuzzy search solutions for database driven web services. I particuarly liked the use of slider bars in the results page.

Nexidia blew me away with their audio search service.  You type in a word or a phrase and they can find it in a spoken word in an audio or video file.  It doesn't use close captioning or tags.  It literally searches the audio.  Very nice.

Truveo, which was bought by AOL recently, demo'd their video search service. It seems to work very well. I'll have to start using it to find SNL skits on the web.

The rest of the morning session was not as interesting to me. I did like the demo of NewsGator's new web based reader for publishers.  SimpleFeed was also interesting to me given our investment in Feedburner.

The afternoon was all about security.  It's not an area I have a lot of feel for.  I realize the need for security, but its not an area I can get passionate about.  Just ask Rich, who does the technology work in our office.

Comments

[Bob Corrigan]

Regarding the SimpleFeed demo, was there something particular that captured your eye? I'm a Feedburner fan, and I often wonder if they've filled their particular ecosystem about as well as anyone could.

[Craig Plunkett]

Skype add-ons are very cool beans, decent margin, high-volume, like iPod accessories. At HDcommunications we are carrying the ipdrum cable, which doesn't require a central service. You add another cheap phone to your family or corporate plan, connect it with the cable to your home computer's USB port, assign speed dial numbers to your skype contacts, then you can skype in and out to your mobile at no extra cost, because calls between phones on the family plan are free. It's a one time cost for the cable and whatever your carrier charges monthly to add a phone to the plan.

[Cyanbane]

I admit that I do not know much about the VC realm, but are companies that are built on top of other inet era companies likely to get funded? I mean I understand some certain creative uses of APIs and such in presenting data that the new company has a lock on within a visual that is supported by a 3rd party API (like Zillow using GMaps API). But do companies that actually just enhance an already existing product (ie some type of merchant software for ebay merchants, or like your article above with a mobile phone add-on) usually in a position to get funded? It would seem like there is a.) the fact that you are basing a product on another company's revenue and popularity, and b.) that the base product’s company could easily decide to implement a product like yours, while simultaneously shutting off your access to the API/Scrape-ability for your product. I know I may be naive when it comes to funding, but just seems odd to me that someone would seek funding knowing that.

[jackson]

Nexidia sounds cool, I don't know how many times I wished for this type of service...."What's that song, it goes da da da.."

Oh yeah, it's Tom Petty....

[Devin Thorpe]

I love your reports from Demo 06. I've been attending a slightly lesser venture and technology conference the last few days. It is interesting to compare notes. You bring great insights to your blog.

[Brandon McLarty]

Fred,

I offerr a 1Num service it is a more intelligent FindMe / FollowMe service. It will ring up to 5 phones at once it also offers call screening and call diversion.

I am trying to carve out a niche of lastmile Voip offering Voip services to those who don't have or can't have VoIP. What are your thoughts?

Try my service for free at www.1num.com promocode "ceoguest".