I just got back from DEMO@15. Some significant WiFi issues really slowed me down yesterday afternoon in keeping up with the furious pace of events. Now that I've got a reliable connection and don't have to compete for bandwidth with 700 other people, I'll be getting the news from yesterday posted in short order. Pictures are text are coming first. We'll get the videos processed and posted soon.

Kind words for bloggindemo.com from A VC - a venture capitalist's blog written by Fred at Flatiron Partners.. We appreciate the shout out but I've got to respectfully disagree about reading a blog replacing the experience. The networking opportunities and the after-show chatter about what's coming next is invaluable.

Still... thanks for the link love Fred!

Right off the bat, Ramsay confirms he is not leaving TiVo but will move into the Chairman role and cede his CEO role to free up more time to invent and innovate. Chris estimates that 90% of the DEMO audience are TiVo users and points out that "to TiVo" has become a common verb in our lexicon. Mike discusses the question of whether TiVo is a media company or a service. "Our business model in a lot different than people imagine - we're really not a box company.

"TiVo is approaching 3 million subscribers which, Ramsay points out, is not very big from an advertising market perspective. "We need to get to something like 10 million," he said, before TiVo's subscriber base becomes a real target for advertisers. Comparing the 100 million cable customers with TiVo's 3 million customers, Chris asks if there isn't a whole market segment being missed in the PVR market. "The real issue, Ramsay says is that the set top world is very proprietary and fragmented with so many different set top boxes in deployment and the switching costs and changing distribution channels providing friction for a lot of strategic deals.

Chris asks Ramsay about the balance between innovating and making distribution deals, suggesting that perhaps TiVo has been more (too?) focused on the latter at the expense of the former. Ramsay admits that there has been a strong orientation toward making the distribution deals but points out a number of new features the company has delivered and points out that there are 15 different TiVo platforms currently available to meet the needs of different customer groups.

"Ultimately, TiVo should be a multiple-platform company," Ramsay said, pointing to a future where TiVo runs not only on set top boxes but also on PCs and other platforms.Jason gets up and says that while he's a huge TiVo fan, he's concerned about the direction the company is going -wondering if TiVo isn't kowtowing to the media companies and stating his opinion that TiVo doesn't seem to be innovating anymore. Ramsay, after acknowledging that there were about 25 questions in Jason's comment, said that he felt a lot of the press coverage Jason cited wasn't particularly favorable to TiVo nor did he feel it was completely accurate or fair. He then tried to address a number of concerns Jason raised about the relationship TiVo has with Hollywood and pointed to innovations the company has announced.

Jason came back with a question about why he can't take content off the TiVo unit. Ramsay countered that TiVo-to-go does allow that and suggests that perhaps Jason shul dread the product literature more carefully. I'm stepping out of this one as I'm sure Jason will posting his thoughts on the exchange shortly.

 

Kind of spooky - a video introduction with two actors wearing full rubber masks of President Bush and Governor Ahnahld. Good joke - "Bush" asks: If Al Gore was so smart, how come the web starts with W, W, W?" Oh no… now it's Tony Blair! SIPAssure is Borderware's offering - a carrier-grade firewall for VOIP. SIPAssure prevents the VOIP channel against a variety of spoofs and attacks. The firewall offers the ability to define rules using a web interface as well as adding specific people and/or numbers to either a white list or a black list.

Adomo demos their Voice Messaging for Exchange. This is quite cool. If you work in an Exchange environment, you can now receive and manage your voice mail just like you do e-mail, right from your Outlook inbox. Adomo leverages Windows Active Director as well. Adomo runs on an appliance that continues to provide voice mail services even if the Exchange environment is down and transparently switches over to Exchange when service is restored.

SmartFMS (Fixed Mobile convergence Solution) is a solution that allows telecommunications carriers to cross markets. In their demo, Outsmart showed a conventional telephone, a "soft" phone running on a laptop, a VOIP deskset, and a cellular phone. Placing a single call rings multiple devices, providing greater flexibility for the recipient. 40% of all calls are received indoors for example, where a conventional phone is available. Taking the call on that device saves minutes on the cellular calling plan and generally provides better call quality as well. Not an end-user solution but a great technology for service providers to deliver better and more flexible service.

In the Chair is for people who are dissatisfied with learning an instrument on their own. Wouldn't it be more fun to play along with a full orchestra or band? The In the Chair simulator places you in a virtual environment playing along with professional musicians. Unlike other options that requires keyboard synthesizers, In the Chair lets you play a real instrument, follow a conductor and get real-time feedback on your performance. You select the music and degree of difficulty, then play your own instrument as if onstage with the world’s leading musicians.

Avvenu is a web service that provides access to all of your images wherever they may be located. Each device (office PC, laptop, home computer) is registered with Avennu and can then be accesses from a web portal from any connected device including cell phones, PDAs, or net kiosks. Cool DEMO trick: Avennu is smart enough to recognize the device requesting an image and automatically scales the content so that your cell phone doesn't get a six megapixel image! Images can be shared with any contact in your address book by sending them an invitation by e-mail. All the recipient needs to do is click an embedded link in the e-mail invitation and a secure web connection is established showing only the content you've elected to share with that recipient. Avennu claims the really big win is that you can now download images from your camera phone to your PC at any time. Motorola seems to agree - they will be shipping Avennu pre-installed on some of their new phones.

PhotoLeap attempts to solve the problems associated with sharing photos using an e-mail-like application (which is, after all, how most photos are exchanged). PhotoLeap works on both Windows and Macintosh and uses patent pending technology to overcome the file size issues associated with sending hi-res photos to friends, families, co-workers, and customers. This one definitely passes the "mom test" - that is, my mom can use this without having to call me to ask for technical support. Cool DEMO trick: Dragging a folder of 250 hi-res images directly from the My Pictures folder to the PhotoLeap application where they are ready to select and send.

PhotoLeap uses its proprietary compression technology to generate JPEG file sizes without the image degradation associated with that format. When the files are sent, the recipient opens the message in their PhotoLeap application and can see the images in thumbnail, preview, and slide show modes. The images you want to save to your hard drive, can be selected and downloaded. PhotoLeap also includes a print wizard that automatically formats images for popular printing tasks like generating wallet-sized prints.

Rick Smolan (of the "A Day in the Life of… series of photo books) introduced Digital Railroad, a service that provides subscriptions to image feeds from the online archives of professional photographers around the world. Photo feeds are delivered via RSS, Atom, and Javascript and already boasts a photographer base larger than that of Corbis or Getty Images, the 800 lb. gorillas of the stock photo business. This is an outstanding way for professional photographers to make their work available to a worldwide audience interested in the specific subject they have images of.

LiveDeal claims that they combine "the best of eBay and Craig's List" to generate local classified ads that can be added to any web site or blog. LiveDeal Listings Creator draws on a database containing more than 100,000 classified listings that are selected based on criteria including zip code, city, and product category. A LiveDeal affiliate site logs into the LiveDeal portal, selects their ad criteria and then copies and pastes autogenerated code into their website or blog. The LiveDeal demo showed a Blogger.com site that had added classifieds to their blog.

ImpactEngine is a hosted multimedia production solution that allows an online multimedia presentation to be built in less than 10 minutes. In fact, they did it live on stage in the last four minutes of their DEMO presentation. They selected from pre-designed backgrounds, music tracks, Flash introductions, text captions, and more. Once you've made all of your selections, your multimedia file is generated. Because Impact Engine is template driven, a company can provide exactly the content elements they want their employees to use. The multimedia can be delivered over the web, as an e-mail attachment, and for offline viewing.

Demandware provides e-commerce capabilities on a pay-for-usage basis requiring no investment in technology or specialized knowledge. The Demandware hosted service allows for customizations like free shipping over a certain purchase threshold and cross-product promotion based on items in the cart. Yes, Amazon does this but now you can too. These cross-sell links are generated in a drag and drop application interface so simple "even a French guy can do it".

Disclosure: the presenter was a French guy. We're not picking on French guys.

WOW! The best DEMO yet. A rockin' presentation sung to the tune of American Pie brought the DEMO audience to their feet for a standing O. Awesome. Clever. We'll get this video up right way. You do not want to miss this!

Oh, by the way, Homestead Quicksites is a template-based web site creation service that allows average folks to produce high-quality web sites in a matter of minutes.

Browster simplifies the process of browsing through search results and websites like Google, eBay, and Craig's List - all of which generate pages that are essentially a page full of links. What Browster does is provide an on-demand preview of any search result simply by placing your cursor over a link. Move off the link and the preview vanishes. These previews are pre-loaded into memory to make them instantly available. Browster showed the same capability in Bloglines, Outlook, and any other environment that displays a hyperlink. Very cool. Browster is a free plug-in for Internet Explorer (Firefox support is coming). Browster is optimized for some sites, including Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL search, as well as eBay and Yahoo Auctions. Jason pointed out that in the previews they were blocking ads on the page (technically they were blocking the Javascript code that displayed the ads) and wrapping the preview page in their own branding. There's a legal issue or two brewing here.