R/WW: What is your company about?

We're seeking influencers in conversational markets, giving them more power and marketers better insight into how to deploy their limited resources to deal with the explosion of incredibly specific feedback that companies, organizations and political campaigns are receiving through social media. The tools we're building will be applied to many of the challenges we talk about with social media, such as valuing individual contributions to the conversation, rather than just traffic - and how to interact through a dynamic personal form of communication in order to get the results you aim for.

R/WW: Why did you start this company?

It actually began with a question about how to deal with a blogger, from a friend who is the CEO of a public company. I found myself drawing maps to explain not just the connectedness of a blogger to others in the market, but the way that a blog's influence varies from topic to topic. It was a short step from that to deciding, with Todd Parsons, to start the company in early 2004 - in order to find automated ways of analyzing influence.

Now, the company has built an infrastructure that is both more powerful and much more efficient - so we are able to launch our first product, which is a hosted influence monitoring and tracking service that combines our analysis with tools for interacting with influencers, so that marketers can measure the results.

R/WW: What are you major accomplishments thus far?

Well, we launched. The backend is built on a solid index and patent-pending analytics that produce really useful information. The initial feedback from our launch at DEMO was very positive, especially with regard to how we display information and the UI that customers use to manage their interactions in conversational markets. That was particularly satisfying for everyone at BuzzLogic, because it would be easy to ship something that only managed to add noise rather than increasing signal in these incredibly active social networks.

R/WW: What are your major challenges?

Handling the growing amounts of data flying back and forth over blogs, mainstream media and all the others sites people talk about, particularly the false information generated by splogs. Our engineers have developed some really clever approaches to identifying spam, so our index is very clean. But, there's a paradoxical problem, too, in that sometimes what appears to be noise can be orchestrated to have an impact on how people find and come to perceive information, so we have to keep the spam in context to provide customers some warning if splogs begin to reshape sentiment about their product or brand.

Then there is the problem of scaling the index for performance and growing customer demand, the usual challenges for a Web service. The beauty of these challenges is that every time we overcome one, a new market for our data appears.

R/WW: What are you going to build in the next 12 months?

Lots more cool stuff, especially some tools for bloggers to use to understand and act on the market around them - and to tap into the value they are creating. Our marketing and PR tools will be substantially enhanced, drawing in more data from specialized sources that shape conversations, as well.

R/WW: What is the most important thing for a start up to be successful?

Hydration. You need to keep the fluids coming to everyone on the team. After that, it's all about trusting people to do their best and tolerating the cost of people learning, because the sum of those experiences is greater insight into the thing you want to build.

R/WW: What web sites / blogs do you use / read often?

Blogs:
Fred Wilson's A VC
Alex Barnett
Another World is Here
Bubblegeneration
Confused of Calcutta
Doc Searls
Ethan Zuckerman
Brad Feld
if:book
Greater Democracy
Battelle's SearchBlog
John Robb
Mashable
Read/Write Web
ResearchBuzz
Reverse Cowgirl's Blog
Seth Goldstein's Transparent Bundles
Nick Carr
Scoble
ZeFrank

Sites:
Baseball Prospectus
CNET
Economist
Nature
New York Times
Washington Post
Tacoma News Tribune
Techmeme
ZD Net

R/WW: Which web 2.0 things are noise and which are signals?

I'm discinclined to celebrate the Ajaxification or Rubification of existing functionality, so the announcement of a drag-and-drop feature in an Ajax office app is just noise - because that feature isn't going to differentiate the product from its desktop predecessors. 

Signal is taking something new and turning it into something practical and surprising. I don't think a lot of people agree with the one I was surprised by at DEMO, but Cuts - which lets people create edit paths through media, including DVDs and television shows, and share those edit paths through a community - was a big signal for me, because it shows how people can route around dumb industries by passing instructions for using products created by intransigent industries, from person to person.

Alex Iskold had a chat with HeyLetsGo CEO and Co-founder Roy Rodenstein at DEMO last week. HeyLetsGo is claiming over 90,000 users in its initial launch location of Boston. It is the latest in a number of events-focused social networks. As GigaOm noted during DEMO, others include Renkoo, Socializr, Involver, Skobee. I think this type of product is interesting because it connects the online and offline worlds, which is especially relevant for the younger generation.

Alex: What is your company about?

Roy: At Demo we launched HeyLetsGo as the first social network designed to connect people face to face. More broadly we are about helping people enjoy all that their local area has to offer. This includes fun things to do, as well as interesting people to meet. If you want to know what's happening tonight, and who's going, we want you to think of us.

Alex: Why did you start this company?

Roy: We know from experience that any major city has many interesting things going on that you never hear about or miss, and so many interesting people that share your interests - yet it can be hard to meet people once you're out of college. So we thought, there's gotta be a better way. And then we found that our friends and others we surveyed felt the same way. People told us they missed when U2 was in town. That's the biggest band in the world, with a huge marketing machine behind it! Yet people told us they didn't hear they were in town, or they didn't know exactly when it was, or they couldn't get tickets, or their friends weren't interested in going with them. So, there's a whole set of things we feel we can do around all these issues, applying technology to help people enjoy life offline more.

Alex: What are you major accomplishments thus far?

Roy: Definitely gaining the user base and momentum we have achieved. Their validation is just tremendous. Someone new to town told us they could now have a housewarming party because of the people they met through HeyLetsGo. That's when we know we're doing something right :) Since we opened the site publically about 4 months ago we've reached over 90,000 users, which we feel is pretty good reach into the post-college demographic in a short time.

Alex: What is your rollout plan for HeyLetsGo?

Roy: We just officially launched in Boston, and we are starting to work on our San Francisco and New York sites. So if you're in SF or NY give us a month and then check us out. You can certainly use HLG in other places, we would just like to have good depth and a good user base before we really holla to everybody else to pile on!

Alex: How do you know (if) it's working?

Roy: We've asked that question of ourselves for a while, because we're pretty harsh critics of ourselves. But we have so many great stories now. Like people who hadn't seen each other in 10 and even 20 years running into each other at our parties. That's just cool. We just did a big party in Boston by Fenway Park, and we had over 5,000 RSVP on HeyLetsGo to come to the party. And thousands did show up! (see the pictures here). That tells us that yes, the online site really is bringing people together face to face.

Alex: What are your major challenges?

Roy: Our major challenge is mostly letting people find out about us. Most people who try HeyLetsGo like it, many love it. But most people simply are not aware of us yet. The other challenge, which I think we do well at but is a constant task, is being as true to users as possible, listening to them, incorporating feedback, and making sure we really are helping them make the most of their "real" lives rather than just creating an online site that doesn't have an impact.

Alex: What are you going to build in the next 12 months?

Roy: The best chocolate cake in the world! You didn't expect we'd tell you our product plans, did you? ;) Well, at a high level we feel there is so much more we can do in this space that there's really no shortage of things we're working on. Some of the basics we are still adding, like more RSS, embeddable widgets, better mobile support. And continuing to develop features like our Live Vibe to let people find out if an event is a hopping or DOA.

Alex: What is the most important thing for a start up to be successful?

Roy: Two things. First, find a problem people really care about. That's step 1, bar none. But after that, it's largely execution. Forget about grand visions, don't be dissuaded by early hiccups, don't be distracted by competitors. Build the smallest thing that starts to give people value, get it out, and each day chisel it a little bit more. If you got step 1 right, most other things will fall into place if you stay focused.

Alex: What web sites / blogs do you use / read often?

Roy: Not that I get to read these as often now, but here is a smattering: 

Corante, Fred Wilson's A VC and Brad Feld's Feld Thoughts if you want to learn how VCs think, Read/WriteWeb and Mashable are among my favorite Web2/entrepreneurial oriented blogs because they go deeper than most, Jakob Nielsen's useit back in the day, and my friend Coach Wei's blog on how Web2 is perceived in the enterprise.

Alex: Which web 2.0 things are noise and which are signals?

Roy: I think highly interactive UIs, however they're built, are absolutely signal. I think web services and RSS have the potential to be signal, and hopefully will be within a year or two, but until my sister benefits from them (I'm not even sure she has heard of the terms themselves) I can't call it signal. What is noise? Frankly, all the talk about noise, bubbles... :)

Alex: What is your company about?

Yael: The company is about making it simple for mainstream people to share their interest, passions or creations online and to go one step further beyond sharing and socializing to easily sell and promote their creations online. eSnips is a one-stop sharing and social media site that represents numerous aspects your interests, passions and creations. Not only can you share and socialize, but you can easily sell and promote your creations online as well, using any media type, all in one central location. Unlike so many social media sharing sites, eSnips allows users to share every file type, not just photos, videos or links. From a single account, you can share things such as your thoughts, stories, artwork, photos, music, kids videos, flash files, presentations with business colleagues, party or vacation photos with friends, web research and tidbits you find on the web and more.

Alex: Why did you start this company?

Yael: We started the company because there was not one place where adults could easily share content about our interests. All the social sites were and still are dominated by teens, singles looking for dates, people obsessed with who they are and what kind of persona they want to convey. On the other extreme, content sharing sites like flickr or YouTube let you share just one type of file. There seemed to be so many options, but none of them fit pretty basic sharing needs for people to share by topic rather than by content . People do not only publish, they share too, and they have several networks not just one and there’s more...

Alex: Tell us what eSnips has achieved so far?

Alex: What are your major challenges?

Yael: The ‘industry’ perceives the space to be crowded and I can see why. There are so many services out there, all of which are ‘social’ and all have something to do with sharing and passions. You can’t stop hearing about video and photo sharing for example, so new services start to blend together. When there is so much activity and noise, it starts to become confusing and everything feels the same. Fortunately our end users who are mainstream consumers, not techies, early adopters, or teens, can tell the difference. They find us online through friends and communities and see a substantial benefit. We sometimes have a hard time differentiating ourselves when talking to the industry or press. We do not have this issue when talking to end-users however, who see the difference between us and other sharing platforms and get the benefit immediately, hence our million registered users in such a short period of time. As they start to create and share on eSnips, they find more things to add and their use and sharing grows over time. We are close to finalizing our series A funding and have had strong support from our existing investors to-date. We can also tap into our users and the web, which is a wonderful self promoting tool.

Alex: What are you going to build in the next 12 months?

Yael: We have added a ton of new features in the past 12 months, optimizing what we have already done in terms of usability and performance. We’ll start with mini portals for our communities . For example, our karaoke community will get it’s own mini portal on http://karaoke.esnips.com. The mini portal will include dynamic social content the recent people that joined the karaoke community, latest files, most favorited users and songs and so on… Building out and growing our existing fan base and communities will extend the reach and get our existing customers to use eSnips in new and diverse ways. This will help spread the word about eSnips' value and the adoption.

Alex: What is the most important thing for a start up to be successful?

Yael: To think independently, not to be automatically persuaded to do what works for others just because it works for others . It is important to narrow down to what’s most important at a particular point in time, to focus on what has been successful for us, hone it and to execute well on all fronts. It is important that this is the mindset of our entire team. You will not get very far without an excellent team and an aligned mindset.

Alex: What web sites / blogs do you use / read often?

Yael: Leading a start-up, I do not have the time to follow many blogs, but when I do I enjoy reading Slashdot, danah boyd’s many to many, TechCrunch, David Hornik’s Venture Blog, Jeff Clavier’s blog, CNET, PC World Online, ZDNET, NY Times, and the WSJ for news and industry trends.

Alex: Which 'web 2.0' things are noise and which are signals?

Yael: There are broad definitions of what web 2.0 is, but generally I think it is most signals rather than noise. Simplicity, low cost yet major impact: Tagging is probably the biggest signal. Such a small, non technical thing that revolutionized the way people connect and find each other. At eSnips we first launched a skeleton version (Alpha) in which there we were no tags, just the basic infrastructure of personal, group and public access to content, then a few month later we released a beta version that included tags. The effect was amazing. The first metaphor that came to my mind was that we turned on the light in a dark room full of people that were sitting right next to the other but were not aware of each other’s existence and presence until the tagging system was put in place. All the metrics jumped in an extraordinary way right from the first day. I blogged about it here. That being said, I think we are still very much in the web 2.0 phase and will be for a while. Talks about web 3.0 and 4.0 seem to be very premature as we are really far from having mainstream users buy into the Web 2.0. Most Web 2.0 are still mostly used by early adopters, teens and techies and we have to remember that rather than move on. At eSnips we try to do just that.

Also adaptiveblue has just released a brand new version of the blueorganizer. New features include the "autobluemark" (which automatically collects objects from the sites that users visit often), blogs collection with popularity ranking built in, smart filtering (which brings iTunes-like flexible selectors to the blueorganizer), a google desktop widget and much more.

Richard: What is your company about?

Alex: adaptiveblue was founded with the vision to build the next generation of smart browsing and personalization technologies. Our first product, the blueorganizer extension, is focused on bringing the semantics of everyday objects into the browser to make users more productive.

Richard: Why did you start this company?

Alex: I have been thinking about personalization and semantics for quite sometime. I saw that there was a gap between theoretical thinking about semantic web and practical steps to get to it and wanted to help bridge it. Ironically my previous startup, Information Laboratory (which was sold to IBM), was focused on the structure of complex systems like software, power grids and society. So I think that understanding of the structure can take you very far, but to build truly personalized online experiences you need to understand the semantics of things.

Richard: Tell us what adaptiveblue has achieved so far?

Alex: We have developed and launched our product in record time - just short of 5 months. We also created innovative and important pieces of infrastructure for blueorganizer. We leveraged XML and JavaScript to roll out new collections and actions in a very short time, without having to do JavaScript coding. Finally, we just had an amazing launch at DEMOfall. It has been a great success and we are very pleased.

Richard: What are your major challenges?

Alex: There are a couple major challenges. Number one is building the user base - standing out from the crowd. DEMOfall helped us address that in an excellent way. Another challenge is expanding and growing in the right way. We are here to build products that people use without expanding to be a 30 people company. Our challenge is to scale and we are going to address it by being smart about our software infrastructure and resources.

Richard: What are you going to build in the next 12 months?

Alex: We are going to add more collections like images, video and people. Expect support for microformats and more smart browsing stuff. We are also planning to start work and roll out some backend personalization technologies. But we can't talk about them yet :)

Richard: What is the most important thing for a start up to be successful?

Alex: Passion, closely followed by people, focus and agility.

Richard: What web sites / blogs do you use / read often?

Alex: Techcrunch, Read/Write Web, Peter Rip's blog, Headrush. Use Basecamp from 37signals a lot, and cvsdude to store our code.

Richard: Which 'web 2.0' things are noise and which are signals?

Alex: Signals are true innovations, noise are clones.

Richard: How did you find DEMOFall?

Alex: We found this show fantastic! The energy and the crowds were just amazing, We got so much out of it and were very well received. We highly recommend the show to all companies that are launching new products.

Disclaimer: not only is Alex a regular R/WW contributer, but blueorganizer is a sponsor too.

R/WW: What is your company about? 

Jonathan: Pluggd is a company focused on helping consumers discover, consume and share internet audio and video.

R/WW: Why did you start this company? 

Jonathan: We saw that audio and video on the internet is reaching critical mass, but there is still a lack of tools that help people find and consume that content. These tools exist for the text-based web (e.g. Google) and are needed in the audio/video space as well.

R/WW: What are your major accomplishments so far? 

Jonathan: Creating one of the largest podcast directories available and developing the HearHere technology (which we plan to make generally available by the end of the year).

R/WW: What are your major challenges? 

Jonathan: Resources. :) As CTO, my focus is on recruiting the best and brightest software engineers to help us build out the breadth and depth of our vision.

R/WW: What are you going to build in the next 12 months? 

Jonathan: Making HearHere generally available is my immediate focus. Beyond that, we have plans around social media, search and advertising.

R/WW: What is the most important thing for a start up to be successful? 

Jonathan: Be scrappy. Be tenacious. Be passionate. Hire the best.

R/WW: What web sites / blogs do you use / read often? 

Jonathan: Techcrunch, Read/WriteWeb, GigaOm, O'Reilly Radar.

R/WW: Which web 2.0 things are noise and which are signals? 

Jonathan: Signals... the lowering barrier of entry that allows anyone to create, publish and remix all forms of content (both text and rich media); the growing availability of data and services that can be used in new, exciting, and often unplanned ways. 

Noise... web 2.0 companies that haven't established themselves as sustainable businesses by creating unique solutions to a problem or developing differentiating IP.

R/WW: Did you feel that participating in DEMOFall was useful to Pluggd?

Jonathan: It was great! We couldn't have hoped for a better reception from the press, the investors, and other attendees at the event It was great to see that something we've worked so hard on created such buzz and that everyone who saw it immediately 'got it'.

R/WW: Can people play around with HearHere before it's generally available?

Jonathan: Yes, we demoed live code on our production servers that is available for everyone to check out at www.pluggd.com/demo.

Ed Anuff, founder and CEO of Widgetbox gave a sharp presentation this morning introducing Widgetbox - the online widget marketplace. Widgetbox is an end-to-end solution for both widget developers and widget consumers. The Widgetbox site provides a nicely organized directory of widgets - with categories for Games, Media, Blogs and Money Making. You can either browse, search for a widget by name or provider, or just get one of the featured or most popular widgets.

But Widgetbox is far from being just a directory, it really helps to make widgets and add meaning to widgets. Developers have access to tools to abstract and parametrize the widgets, so that users can customize them. For bloggers, Widgetbox offers a Widget panel. Once this panel is placed into a sidebar of a blog, any widget can be added simply via drag and drop.

The final feature that I thought was notable is the context-sensitivity built into widgets. Widgetbox calls this Tag Awareness - it is basically the ability for widgets to be reconfigured depending on the context of the page. As Ed mentioned in his presentation, we are in the very early days of the customizable, Read/Write Web (pun intended) and widgets are going to play a big role in this new web. I tend to agree [Richard: me too!].

Three years in making, the Linux Mail server from PostPath debuted at DEMOfall this morning. What took them so long? Well, their sever is a 100% compatible replacement for Microsoft Exchange running on Linux. As far as Outlook is concerned, it is talking to Microsoft Exchange Server - all of the protocols and information are exactly the same. The difference is in resilience, scalability and cost.

Since this is a Linux based solution, the pain of backup - which is notorious problem for Exchange administrators - is simply gone. PostPath stores everything in the form of flat files, so any Linux backup can work. One of the PostPath executives mentioned to me that the total cost of installation of PostPath is going to be about 1/3 of the cost of an Exchange installation. Given the cost savings, resilience and ease of use, I think this one could give Exchange run for the money.

This morning at DEMO Retrevo launched a public beta of a new vertical search engine for consumer electronics. This is one of the better examples of vertical search that I have seen so far. Retrievo offers a simple search box and then organizes the results into several categories. The Top results section has the most likely matches. Manufacturer information contains an impressive collection of user manuals. There are also sections for gadget reviews, blogs and forums.

The user interface is intelligent and helps you navigate quickly through the wealth of information. The system also allows you to share the search results via email to anyone - and they are guaranteed to see exactly the same page as you saw. The most impressive thing to me is the integration with user manuals. This difficult to find information is indexed and made readily available with Retrievo. The site is now in public beta, check it out for yourself and let us know what you think.

It's been a busy day on Read/WriteWeb, with Alex Iskold managing to find time to file multiple reports from DEMOfall 2006 in San Diego. Here are his posts from today:

• Widgetbox: A Chat With CEO Ed Anuff
• USBCell does away with chargers
• Lirix innovates in music advertising
• BuzzLogic innovates in social influence space
• RingCube launches Mojopac - pure portable computing magic
• Presto - photos for people who are not online
• Tribeca Labs bring interesting twist to photo space
• Dash Navigation launches first truly connected automotive navigation system

Alex Iskold's own company, AdaptiveBlue, is also presenting at DEMO - debuting the Firefox extension blueorganizer. It's already gotten a rave review from Techcrunch, with Marshall Kirkpatrick writing:

"Social bookmarking is a crowded space, but for people who seek a well constructed tool that balances an intuitive user experience with features to please the power user, Blue Organizer may be a very good option. The beauty is in the details in this one."

As for my own highlights from Day 1, I love the sound of MojoPac - which allows Windows users to save their entire PC onto a USB or iPod. Also I think BuzzLogic is doing some cool things to track social influence on the Web.

See our list of DEMOfall 2006 presenting companies for full details of the 70-odd products chosen for DEMO. Thanks Alex for the excellent coverage and I can't wait for Day 2!

Photo: b_d_solis

Widgetbox is a marketplace for widgets and they are one of the companies presenting at DEMOfall '06. Alex Iskold caught up with Widgetbox CEO Ed Anuff today for a quick interview, before their presentation on Wednesday...

R/WW: What is your company about?

Widgetbox is a web widget marketplace that makes it easy to build widgets, find widgets, and use widgets.

R/WW: Why did you start this company?

We wanted to turn the portal model of web aggregation on its head and provide a way for the millions of bloggers and social networkers to be able to find and integrate content and application services into their web pages.

R/WW: What are you major accomplishments thus far?

Successful beta program which yielded over 200 widgets and over 5000 widget developers participated in the beta.

R/WW: What are your major challenges?

Make the everyday blog user or social network member aware of our service. Continue to make it as easy as possible to use.

R/WW: What are you going to build in the next 12 months?

The next major milestone for us is to roll out our advertising services which allow our users to select from an assortment of ads and affiliate ecommerce widgets that they can add to their sites to make money.

R/WW: What is the most important thing for a start up to be successful?

Determination and resourcefulness, have a big dream while keeping touch with reality, building a strong network of partners

R/WW: What web sites / blogs do you use / read often?

Mashable, Techcrunch, Read/WriteWeb, Programmable Web

R/WW: Which web 2.0 things are noise and which are signals?

Too soon to say, too many things are changing to quickly these days

Richard's Note: See also Widgets are the new black, a R/WW post from June in which I referenced Widgetbox.

Look Ma, no charger! Today at DEMOfall, the CEO of Moixa Energy Simon Daniel (a quirky physics PhD from the UK) dropped a bag full of chargers on stage. He kicked them away and pulled out of his pocket the marvel created by his company – a battery called USBCell that charges from the USB port. Not only is this very cool, it's smart - because there are billions of USB ports in desktops and laptops that can effectively become outlets for these batteries. It is also elegant, efficient and environment friendly.

The company claims that it takes about 5 hours to fully charge a battery, but they are working on significantly reducing this time. There is already a version of this battery for cell phones, which has a USB jack attached to it via wire. Launched just last week, the site has had over 100,000 visitors already. The battery is going to be available first in UK, then later in US. It will be sold direct online and via major chains.

More info:

"This revolutionary rechargeable battery can charge from any USB port without the need for any recharging devices, cradles or cables. Simply pop the lid to reveal a built in connector and charger, plug into any powered USB port on your desktop, laptop, keyboard or games console, to charge the battery."

Until now, online music advertising has been a somewhat unsolved - sometimes controversial - problem. Today Lirix unveiled at DEMO an intelligent and elegant solution to the problem, called AdLirix. It is a smart, context-sensitive advertising solution that will allow musicians to make money off their music in a fair way.

The ads are inserted between tracks, never interrupting the user experience. But more importantly, the ads are contextual - because they are based on the lyrics of the songs! The advertisers bid to place ads in an auction fashion, but they are not charged unless their ad is played. The system also rewards artists, because even if their music is pirated - they will be paid because ads play. All and all it seems like a well thought through and elegant solution.

Here is what DEMO staff said about Lirix:

‚ÄúProtected by a recent patent, Lirix‚Äôs dynamic ad-insertion platform delivers targeted, dynamic advertising in streaming music and enables interesting new business models for over-the-air digital music services. The Lirix platform offers particular benefits to MVNOs, which can now supplement branded phone service with a potentially richer ad-supported music service offering as well.‚Ä?

BuzzLogic has unveiled a solution today which helps marketers keep track of social influence. Based on your topic of interest, BuzzLogic software turns the chaotic world of blogs and web sites into a network of flows of influence. The software finds top influencers, measures the weight or importance of each source, and shows you incoming and outgoing influence flows.

The company used an interesting example on stage - Microsoft Zune's marketers need to compete against the beloved iPod. To do that, they need to tap into the blogosphere to identify iPod's top influencers. The BuzzLogic team tracked iPod, Zune and iPod+Zune influencers and literally got a picture of the situation (like the one shown below). They were able to identify a few key blogs that Zune should approach to help them turn the tide. Personally, I am skeptical that Zune can catch up at this point, but with the BuzzLogic service at least they can see what the need to.

Pics: dchurbuck

MojoPac got a round of applause here at DEMOfall for demonstrating portable technology that looked like pure magic. MojoPac allows Windows users to save their entire PC onto a USB or iPod. The users can then plug the portable storage into any other PC and that PC will have exactly the same software and settings their original PC had.

During the DEMO show, the company had 2 computers - one running a standard English version of Windows and another one that was running a localized Windows version in, I think, a flavor or Arabic or Hindu. In other words, they were totally different system with different configuration, settings and locale. The demonstrator copied the contents of the English-version of Windows onto an iPod - then walked over, plugged it in and in a matter of a few seconds, the entire PC was restored and ready to go. This looked more like a Houdini trick than technology, except that it is real. Here is how RingCube describes it:

“With MojoPac you can turn any portable storage device - an iPod, USB flash or hard drive, even a cell phone or digital camera memory card– into your PC. Simply install the MojoPac software on your favorite device, copy your files, select the applications, settings and environment preferences you use regularly, and MojoPac will mirror the capabilities and functionality of a private and secure PC. Whenever you plug your MojoPac enabled storage device into a Windows XP based PC, MojoPac will automatically launch, magically turning the host PC into the customized and private PC you enjoy at home, work or school. Instead of lugging your computer/lap top, you can pack up your entire PC and carry it in your pocket wherever you go.“

Presto has launched a photo service which is focused on helping get photos to people who are not online. This might not be a spicy web 2.0 ajax application, but it solves a big problem and does it very well. Here is how it works. Say your grand mother is not web savvy. For $149.99 you purchase an HP Printing Mailbox and then signup for the Presto service, which is $9.99 per month. You install the device in your grandma's house and then login onto Presto.com.

You then create an email address, like mygrandma@presto.com. To ensure that no spam can get in, you add a list of emails that are allowed to send emails to your grandma. That's all. Now anyone with their email address on the list can simply send pictures to e.g. mygrandma@presto.com. The photos are extracted and automatically sent to the Presto device at your grandma's house. If you are busy, then you are done. If you have some more time, you can customize each photo by selecting from numerous templates that add flare and spice to each picture.

This is an example of technology going through several iterations and ending up with really simple and elegant solution.