The format for the Demo conference here in San Diego is that each company gets six minutes to present what's great about their service. Some, like Plastic Logic and Usable, come out looking like winners. And then there are services like HeyCosmo, which at the halfway point of the conference looks like Demo's dog.
The idea, as far as I could tell, was to organize trips and outings by harassing friends and strangers alike with annoying robot calls and phone tree menus. Want to go to dinner with friends? You choose some restaurants you're interested in and HeyCosmo calls each one and asks, in a voice with all the warmth of your GPS device, whether they have room for you at the time you want to eat. The restaurateur, assuming they don't hang up immediately, presses 1 if they can seat you, 2 if they can't, etc. Then you still have to call them back to confirm the reservation. This is better than OpenTable how?
Another example from the HeyCosmo demo: You and some pals are taking a friend to Las Vegas for his birthday. HeyCosmo's robodialer calls all your friends and asks them whether they'll agree to pay everyone's travel expenses or everyone's food costs. Has anyone ever split the costs of a trip that way? It's a great example of a service that operates not the way people do but in the way the developers could get the code to work.
