The Best of DEMOfall 09: 5 Companies to Watch
Now that the DEMOfall 09 conference has wrapped, we can look back to see which companies have the most potential out of the 70+ exhibitors. Despite what the DEMOgod awards crowned as king, we can't say we agree with the judges' every pick. For example, award winner DateCheck from Intelius, a mobile app that lets you search for dirt on that new guy or gal you're seeing, had one of the best onstage demos of the week. However, they don't deserve to be in a "best of" list because the app is really just a front for Intelius's paid (and sketchy) background checking service. That being said, there were still plenty of companies worthy of notice at this fall's conference.
Which companies did we think made the grade? Read on to find out.
80Legs
80Legs, a web crawler service, publicly launched at DEMO. For a small fee, anyone can rent out this "mini-Google" to do their bidding. A number of markets will be impacted by making web crawling an affordable option, including media analysis, IP protection services, market researchers, and more. In addition, the company announced a new "app store" concept that lets developers build and share applications that run on top of the service. Now, not only is web crawling itself made simple, but also what you want to do with it.
Read more: 80Legs: A Web Crawler as a Service
Cortera
The best way to understand Cortera's potential is to read the tweets about it. People were calling it "dull" and "unsexy," but also "smart" and "addressing a real need." Essentially, what this B2B service wants to do is reinvent credit reporting. By combining traditional credit data like what Dun & Bradstreet offers with crowdsourced payment experience reviews from Cortera members, the company offers a modern and much less expensive option for small business owners. The end result is that mom-and-pop shops will have access to the same business intelligence that previously only large companies could afford.
Read more: Cortera helps you see whether small businesses are credit worthy (VentureBeat)
Twirl TV
Twirl TV initially looked like a Hulu competitor, considering that its focus is delivering online streaming TV to your PC. However, where Hulu is a joint effort from media companies NBC Universal, FOX, and ABC to put their TV shows on the net, Twirl TV is simply a search engine for what's already out there. That means that you can use the service to find all the TV content on Hulu along with the streaming media from companies like CBS who have yet to participate in Hulu, choosing to keep their content on their own site. While that alone makes Twirl TV an interesting alternative for online TV watching, it's the focus on "social TV" which really makes Twirl TV stand out. Like a social network for TV viewing, you can share episodes with friends, see what others have viewed, and discover new shows. If that doesn't interest you, then maybe you're just not in the right demographic. Twirl TV claims they don't care about anyone over 25 - they're marketing only to today's digitally connected youth.
Emo Labs
Emo Labs had the honor of walking away with not one, but two awards from DEMO: a DEMOgod award and the people's choice award from IDG which gave the winners up to $500,000 of free advertising. They certainly deserved it. When chatting among fellow attendees about their favs, Emo's name kept coming up. While not the sort of tech we typically cover here at ReadWriteWeb, Emo Labs has created something incredible. Their "invisible" speaker systems made out of clear, thin sheets of plastic can be overlaid on TV screens where they vibrate to produce sound. Unbelievably, the sound is actually sharp, crisp, and clear. Currently, the technology is more expensive than traditional speaker systems, but that's always the case with new hardware it seems. One day, though, we may see external speakers as relics from the past and we'll have Emo Labs to thank for that.
Liaise
It wasn't just hype when we proclaimed Liaise to be "possibly the coolest email add-on ever." This smart tool automatically extracts information from the content of your emails and creates "to do" lists when it finds items requiring action. You can then manage these items right within your inbox where Liaise provides summaries, reports, and even calendar integration. For now, Liaise only supports Outlook users, but that makes sense given its enterprise focus. While inbox management services aren't always the sexiest of technologies, either, it's an area that undoubtedly needs the most help. The people must agree, too, since Liaise won the other IDG media prize for best enterprise product.
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Thanks, Sarah for sharing this wonderful information. Wish I was going to be able to be there but can't this year. Will check your link blog.
Phew... 80legs sounded like a really nice solution and in fact i tried it out: works like a charm... so I actually fell for the crawler-as-a-service idea.
This whole idea involves wrong conclusions and strange ethics. Let me explain: they are using the technology of a software / company that is called pluraprocessing... this company dresses itself in a charitable dress paying affiliates e.g. for including a small applet into the affilates site / software which then downloads jobs to be processed onto a the affiliate's customer's computer. the affilates get paid "upto" $2.9 per compute month. 80legs charges around $23 roughly 8times as much...
customer pays 80legs, 80legs pays pluraprocessing, pluraprocessing pays affiliate... no one pays end-user. one of the affilates of pluraprocessing is www.superdonate.com ... they do make an impressive 1.000.000 compute minutes per month and donate 80% of their revenue to charities... nice idea... now look at the numbers 1.000.000 / 60 / 24 / 30.5 = 22.8 compute months which in facts is 22.8months * $2.9/month = $66 in revenue for all registered charities... c'mon manuall clicking on googles banners is more effective. ;)
also 22.8 compute months is two years... leaving my computer turned on for a year means that it consumes around 2500kwh - that's a rough estimate but let's not discuss 100kwh more or less. 2500kwh/year cost me around 500€ (=733,15$) in germany with an average energy plan. let's say I work 12h/day each day of a week at that computer that means I add an extra 365$ per year by having my computer run their stuff without actually getting paid. let alone this redicules the "nice effects" in terms of CO2 production they claim. the business case just works out because someone in the value chain doesn't get paid. and even if they were only to use the computer in launch pauses et cetera the global effects stay the same they are just spread out more across a larger user-base.
This whole idea involves wrong conclusions and strange ethics. Let me explain: they are using the technology of a software / company that is called pluraprocessing... this company dresses itself in a charitable dress paying affiliates e.g. for boya including a small applet into the affilates site / software which then downloads jobs to be processed onto a the affiliate's customer's computer. the affilates get paid "upto" $2.9 per compute month. 80legs charges around $23 roughly 8times as much...
So, I work at 80legs. The Plura guys know more about Superdonate than I do, but I just wanted to say I think it's unfair to get down on Superdonate just because they aren't donating some "significant" amount of money to charities yet. From what I know, they only started a few months ago and are trying really hard to become more popular.
To get down on someone trying to raise donations just because they haven't raised enough yet sounds mean.
As for the supposed increase in electricity.. I've left my computer running Plura for a full month and didn't see any increase in my bill. That's because it only runs when idle but not while in sleep. This point seems to always be left out when people bring up this issue.
Hey Shion, I did not mean to get down on Superdonate because they don't pay enough... rather because their members have contributed an incredible 1,000,000 compute hours last month which is turned into an estimated $66. Well I think that is not much compared to the 1,000,000 compute hours. But we probably agree there... it still is nice that they pay money to charities! I am actually currently measuring the power consumption of my computer running plura processing using an energy meter to see whether or not my assumptions are correct.