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.
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.
Perspectives
addresses one of the biggest issues facing people creating online content who
participate in a number of different online communities: cross platform
publishing. What Perspectives does is "normalize" the content and
allow it to be posted to any number of different online platforms (e.g. Tribe,
eBay, a blog). iUpload demonstrated how a bank is using Perspectives to create
secure blogs to communicate individually and securely with each of their
customers. Look for a video interview with iUpload later today.
imeem
allows people with similar interests to create private social networks on the
fly. Once these connections are established, imeem allows friends, family, and
co-workers to share photos and files, create group blogs, and use the
integrated search to find local and net-based files and information. Cool DEMO
trick: An Indiana University group blog with over 200 members sharing photos,
files, and movies. Cool DEMO line: "It's like a peer-to-peer Google."
Jambo
networks showed a totally cool idea for conferences like DEMO and other social
networking spaces. Sign up for the service and build aprofile and Jambo finds people at the show
with similar interests over a local WiFi network or the net. You can IM someone
and arrange to connect. Jambo works on PCs, Macs, PDAs, and phones. Jambo's
initial partners are conferences, universities, and WiFi hot spots. Jambo
announced they are looking online social networking partners. Cool DEMO moment
- my good friend Buzz Bruggeman showing up in the Jambo demo.
ASAP Express is a free web conferencing tool. ASAP includes tools for audio, video,
PowerPoint, screen sharing, chat, and file sharing. Cool DEMO trick - an
audience member called in to the Convoq demo and established a real-time video
chat (there were some technical difficulties with the audio but it was a huge
hit). While the demo was going on, a second Convoq demonstrator downloaded the app, imported all of his
contacts from Outlook and his IM client and was up and running. They also showed integration with Social Text Wiki. Very cool stuff and,
did we mention it's free?
Bubbler
is the "fastest blogging tool in the world" (and the fastest DEMO so
far). In just three minutes, the three Bubbler demonstrators built a blog,
added photos, text, and audio. A number of our Weblogs, Inc. team are really
jazzed about Bubbler. We were discussing it last night online and you can
expect to see some coverage of Bubbler in the next few days. Bonus DEMO moment
- they added a photo of our own Jason Calacanis sitting in the front row,
blogging DEMO live!
Both
of these tools install into the browser and provide the ability to search,
collect, organize, and subscribe to (via RSS) information. Check the Office
weblog for a recent review of Onfolio .
Both applications provide the ability to publish your information to share
research with others. Pluck (above)
is a combined search and RSS tool. Pluck's publishing paradigm uses a hosted
web server that allows you share a personal Pluck folder by making it public
for others to view online or subscribe to via RSS. AT DEMO, Pluck announced the
Pluck Online Edition - a free, web-based version of their solution accessible
from any browser. Cool DEMO line: "Pluck is available for three easy
payments of free, free, and free."
Onfolio
demonstrated the business case of an investment banker (Steve). Beginning with
the integrated RSS feed reader, Steve searches his overnight feeds, finds a
relevant article and, with one click, e-mailing it to a client. Then Steve
shares web pages with colleagues by saving a local copy of an interesting web
page and then sharing it with another Onfolio user. Steve also adds RSS feeds
to his Reading List for later review and then uses Onfolio's built-in search to
find an article he had filed based on keywords and metadata attached to the
article. Onfolio also showed how a snippet of text from a web page can be
captured, highlighted, and annotated. Steve set up a persistent search against
a set of criteria that dynamically updates as new content arrives in the
aggregator. Finally, Steve dragged and dropped content from Onfolio directly
into a Word document he was building.
The
Code Scout is a handheld diagnostic tool that plugs into the diagnostic port on
your car's engine (assuming your car was built in 1996 or more recently).
Originally designed as a shop tool, the Code Scout has been redesigned as a
consumer device. Plug it onto your vehicle's engine when the "Check
Engine" light comes on and Code Scout will read the codes form your car's
computer and translate those codes into a message that might suggest anything
from tightening your gas cap to an immediate trip to the repair shop.
Xfire offers instant messaging for gamers and now has 1 million users. At DEMO this year, XFire announced in-game messaging allowing gamers to send instant messages to each
other, even when they're playing different games. Messages can have any level
of transparency so that incoming messages can be seen without disrupting play.
XFire is now skinnable - allowing companies like nVidia to sponsor a version of
the application for their customers. XFire now incorporates a peer-to-peer
engine for file sharing and adds a nice twist - a request channel you subscribe
to to establish preferences for the kinds of files you're most interested in.
XFire also maintains an inventory of the games you play and searches for and
downloads required updates so they're immediately available to you when you
next launch the game.
Kai
Krause has been "invisible" for the past six years. In his return to
DEMO he talks about Byteburg - a think tank and incubator he's established in
Germany. He recounts the history of his pioneering work in the world of
computer graphics and explains some of the lessons learned along the way. Kai
has been working in his native Germany (and the rest of Europe) to help create
the kind of infrastructure (investment capital, industry conferences, etc.) we
take for granted here in the US. "Everything we ever sold was six months
too early." he apologized, explaining the compromises he felt he had to
make from his vision of what the software should look and work like to what was
actually shipped.
I
first saw Kai speak years ago and he's lost none of his charm, nor his tendency
to wander from topic to topic in a fractal display of storytelling. It was
pretty obvious that he was avoiding the issue Chris Shipley was trying to press
home - asking him wahat he's been working on most recently. Eventually, after
more than little badgering, he finally provided a few hints that he's been
working on the question of how we can organize all of the digital media we've
been collecting. Given his past efforts, this project, whenever it does see the
light of day, should prove to be totally fascinating.
Here is our first video (right mouse click and download for best result) from DEMO, just a couple of hours after iControl
Networks showed their home control and automation system you can watch it here--almost live! iControl is run
from a web portal, allowing you to monitor your home or business
remotely.
The video is six megs, and pretty solid audio and video for that size. We are going to put up higher resolution videos later, but it takes a long time to rip them so we figured we would put up four lower resolution ones now.
An amazing application that allows professional quality video blogs to
be produced mixing still images, live video, chroma-keyed backgrounds,
and a teleprompter -all for $99.00. Vlog-It also takes boring, flat
PowerPoint presentations and converts them into dynamic video
presentations. Listen to a podcast of Serious Magic's hugely entertaining
presentation!
