DEMOfall: Life Just Got Simpler
The first group of demonstrators today is the "Life Just Got Simpler" series. Below are the companies and my initial reactions:
In-car navigation system with a traffic avoidance component. Big name VC funding. Someone can send an address to the device through a web form. They tout it as a way for friends to send addresses. Presumably you could also send your destination address before leaving in order to avoid having to clumsily type in an address as you do with most nav systems. Dash proposes alternate routes and allows you to select the one you want to use. Integrates Yahoo local data. "Competitively priced" is how cost is described and monthly subscription cost is pegged as similar to satellite radio. Product to be available in California in January 2007 and nationwide next summer.
Initial Reaction: Certainly seems to be the next gen of in car navigation, but why won't Garmin, TomTom, et al just do the same thing and win because they already have market share? Need to learn more to see the business prospects.
Automatic photo correction. Red eye, contrast, brightness, etc. Auto uploads backup copies to facility in Switzerland (one used by Swiss Banks). Fully automated. Private and self-funded (less than $1 million).
Initial Reaction: Certainly seems simple and photo correction I think holds a lot of promise as more folks use digital photography. I've been using an Adobe product for this, but it isn't nearly as automated.
HearHere podcast search technology that zeroes in on specific portions of a podcast related so a user-specified topic. Not strictly keyword search, system also looks for related words. Speech recognition software along with patent-pending topic technology. Player shows color coded progress bar to reveal where topics are covered in the podcast.
Initial Reaction: Podcast search is certainly an emerging area that is ripe for innovation. Need to learn more about scalability -- demo covered searching within a known podcast versus searching a wide universe of them.
Service for to allow unconnected (i.e. those not using the Internet) to receive email and photos on a printer without any user intervention. Grandparent or whomever can subscribe to the service and family and friends can send content to a specific email address. Device uses a regular phone line to periodically poll the service and prints out whatever new content has arrived. Service monitors health of the printer and will even automatically send printer cartridges when necessary. Whitelist to ensure spam doesn't get through.
Initial Reaction: Certainly looks easy to use and could appeal to less tech-savvy consumers. As I've pointed out previously on this blog, there are a lot of folks who are still not online. But I do wonder if this isn't one of those odd services that will actually have a declining market right from the get-go. Chris Shipley addressed this by suggesting even connected folks might find a use for this by automatically printing daily newsletters etc. for those (like me) who prefer to read longer pieces on paper).
Mojopac is the product. Another USB portable desktop. Humorous presentation playing off of a "dropped" laptop followed by booting the portable desktop on a foreign language laptop. Switching between USB environment and the laptop environment is possible. Each is fully isolated from the other however. Desktop apps are said to run full speed off the device, including intensive games. Available on their website today.
Initial Reaction: Seems more fully featured than previous incarnations I've seen from other companies. I'd like to learn a little more about this one.
Tags: DEMOfall, DEMO, Chris Shipley, Dash Navigation, Pluggd, Tribeca Labs, Photobot, Presto, RingCube, Mojopac
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