DEMO 08 Highlights, Sidelights, and Lowlights

As usual, technology executives stood onstage and claimed that their products--many of which will ultimately fail--will change the world forever. Many of the presentations were glitchy. (The best presentations may win awards called the DEMOgods, but I saw no Steve Jobs-like gods at work.) And a higher percentage than usual seemed to involve products that won't be available for awhile--or which, in some cases, are clearly still rough drafts at best.

But I still had a good time at DEMO 08--which, like PC World, is part of International Data Group--and saw several things that I know I'll want to put through their paces when I can get my hands on them. Herewith, some of the show's highlights--and a few lowlights and sidelights:

Harry's Unofficial Best of Show: The single thing I liked best at this DEMO was Sprout, an entirely Web-based tool for building and distributing widgets that can live on any Web page. It's the best browser-based interface I've seen for content creation of any kind, and a great advertisement for the power of Flash. (Both Sprout itself and the widgets it lets you create are Flash-based.)

Potential Best of Show--If It Lives Up to the Demo: I also really liked the Blist online database. Unlike with Sprout, though, I haven't had a chance to try it yet, so my enthusiasm is based entirely on a cool demo. Like Sprout, Blist really shows off the potential of Flash to let Web developers build applications that are at least as powerful and usable as their desktop-bound predecessors.

Potential Best of Show--If It Actually Works: SkyFire's browser for Windows Mobile was spectacular--I felt like weeping with joy when I saw how good PCWorld.com looked on it, and how quickly it loaded. In the back of my mind, though, I wonder how well the proxy-based approach to browsing will work when there are more than a handful of phone users hitting SkyFire's servers at once.

Silliest Thing I Liked: The excellently-named XtraNormal lets you create little animations starring characters who look like Lego people, with either real voices or synthesized ones.

Best Idea--If the Industry Buys In: Green Plug has a technology for a universal power adapter that can work with gadgets of all sorts, if their manufacturers decide to support it. If they do, you might travel with just one Green Plug power brick, which would be both kind to the environment and a whole lot less cumbersome than packing multiple adapters.

Not the Best of Anything, But Entertaining Nonetheless: I liked Hubdub, a Digg-like aggregator that adds the twist of letting you bet on predictions relating to each story. Will Jennifer Lopez deliver a baby in January? Will the Dow close up on 1/31/2008? Will Jesus return by the end of 2008? I don't know, but I can make my guess, with "Hubdub Dollars" at stake.

Also Just Plain Interesting and Worthy of Further Investigation: Delver is a search engine that searches your social-network buddies rather than the Web.

Most Unglamorously Useful Service: TimeDriver is a free service that lets people add a Web-based self-service scheduling widget to Web pages and e-mails. It's not a new idea, but the interface and integration with Outlook and Google Calendar look extremely slick.

Most exuberantly excessive claim: The PC Mobilizr exec who demoed a useful remote-control service that lets you access your Windows PC from a BlackBerry described it as being fairly easily to use--a rare moment of humility on the DEMO stage. Which was appropriate considering that the tiny size of a phone's screen presents basic usability problems when it comes to controlling a PC with a high-res display. But the "DEMO says" squib about Mobilizr on the DEMO site seems to say that PC Mobilizr will eliminate the need to take a notebook when traveling. If anyone associated with the conference intends to dump his or her laptop in favor of BlackBerry-based remote control, I'd be dumbfounded.

Best Toy: LeapFrog's Tag, a neat pen that can read words aloud when you use it with special books. (Actually, it was the only toy at the show--or at least the only one meant for kids rather than grownups-but I liked it anyhow.)

Cutest Irrelevant Moment: The demo by Sterna Technologies involved the executive's dog fetching his master's slippers and remote control. I'm not sure what it had to do with the product, but as DEMO producer Chris Shipley noted, the pup fared better onstage than many of the human presenters.

Most Unexpected Celeb: iVideosongs, which offers online video training for musicians, brought John Oates onto the DEMO dais--yup, the mustachioed half of yacht rock legend Hall and Oates. (Actually, 2008-model Oates has lost the 'stache.) I felt kind of bad for him when I wandered past the iVideosongs display later in the show, and there were no throngs of fans (or, actually, anyone) waiting to talk to him.

Most-Used Adjective: "Liquid," which was part of three startup monikers: LiquidPlanner, LiquidTalk, and Liquidus.

Most-Used Demo Meme: On Tuesday, YouChoose did a parody of Apple's "Hi, I'm a Mac" ads and got some chuckles. I felt sorry for the folks from Squidcast when they used exactly the same idea the next day.

As I write, the final company has had its time onstage. The show wraps up tonight with the DEMOgod awards, the official best-of-conference honors. Whether they'll overlap at all with my picks, I have no idea...