My colleague (and book co-author) Josh Bernoff is at DEMO 07 this week covering the happenings there on our book blog. In four different posts, he provides quick reviews (done in real time) of 33 companies. It's quite the feat!!Some things that caught my eye from Josh's posts (see the individual posts for Josh's take on these companies):From Post #1: Worklight: Secure RSS for the enterprise that pulls information out of enterprise applications. This sounds very much like what KnowNow does with its RSS/alert service. Josh also saw a product called Reqall from Qtech that turns phone messages into text and delivers it via email. Reminds me of another start-up, Jott that does almost exactly the same thing. From Post #2: Josh has a short-hand way of thinking about the widgets/gadgets someone can insert into Web pages like MySpace -- he calls it "MySpace furniture" which is very appropriate. I can build and insert these widgets into my page, arrange them to my liking, and invite my "friends" over to check it out. In one afternoon at DEMO, Josh saw five companies that fits this definition: panjea.tv, Yodio, VUVOX, Splashcast, and MixPro. I've used several Web page widgets like these and while each offering has it's cool, neat spin, I can't help but feel that this is turning quickly into the "me too" category in much the same way that photo sharing sites are variations on the same theme. Just how much traction can any player get? From Post #3: At the end of the post, Josh raises two questions about new mobile applications like BUZ Interactive and Jyngle: The main question is 1) are the mobile operators going to allow, encourage, or block any of these, and 2) how will the user determine what's actually useful to him or her?From Post #4: (As I'm reading the last post from Josh, I have to wonder how he's doing it -- I'm tired just reading his posts!) Lots of good stuff here -- groups get more firepower with CircleUp and Nexo, but I have to wonder if they will be pushed aside once Yahoo! redesigns Yahoo! Groups. ZoomInfo caught Josh's eye because of it's core and expanded people search capabilities. I've been following ZoomInfo for quite a while and it's good to see them at DEMO (disclosure: I did a Webinar for them last February on the future of online recruitment.)Lastly, Helium joins players like gather.com, agoravox.fr, and associatedcontent.com to pay contributors of user-generated content for their work, based on how much traffic and advertising views they generate. Helium's twist: it ranks the comments and articles based on what users find the most interesting, relevant, and helpful.
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