demo

Medium makes each Web page a community

Wait, we've heard this before, haven't we? MyBlogLog (recently acquired by Yahoo) shows you who is viewing a Web page when you visit it. It's a really interesting app, but can be quite creepy.

A similar idea: Me.dium, which is launching its new "semi-public beta" at Demo 07 (which means it's an open beta, but new signups could be shut down at any time). Like MyBlogLog, Me.dium shows you who else is on the site you're on. It also shows you where your friends are hanging out online. And it shows … Read more

Share2Me helps clip content and share

Share2Me is essentially a button for forwarding any content to MySpace, AIM, and a number of e-mail services.

Aimed at 15-to-24 year olds, Share2Me is a logo that sits on your browser (just Firefox for now, Internet Explorer is next). Should you stumble upon a YouTube video or Flickr photo that just MUST be plastered onto your MySpace profile, click the Share2Me logo button and choose whether you want the content forwarded in a MySpace message, as a comment on another's page, or simply on your own MySpace profile. Content also can be sent to any Gmail, Yahoo Mail, … Read more

Boorah "Zagatizes" restaurant reviews from the Web

Boorah, a new restaurant reviews site, scrapes the Web for criticism and generates Zagat-style evaluations. (Lawsuits are sure to follow.)

Unlike Zagat, which has its own volunteer army of reviewers, Boorah scours reviews from sites like Insider Pages, SFGate, and blogs, and extracts content from them. The site parses all the data and assigns scores for food, ambiance, and service for each restaurant.

The site has a relationship with OpenTable (my favorite Web site ever) and will let you make direct reservations for restaurants that take them.

What I liked about Boorah: it has a very good search engine, … Read more

Attendio helps stave off boredom

Attendio helps you avoid that dreaded circular conversation: "What do you want to do tonight?"---"I don't know, what do you want to do?"---and so on.

More specifically, Attendio is a social-events discovery service that continuously feeds events directly to a calendar program based on specified interests and geographic location.

Launching here at Demo 07, Attendio is not shy about how new it is--its tagline is "seriously beta." (Speaking of names here at Demo, can we talk about that? Attendio, Yodio, Vringo ... the names sound to me like a series of … Read more

Teleflip makes stupid phones smart

Most mobile phones are not BlackBerrys. Or Treos. If you have a "dumb" phone, you can go a long way toward making it a better e-mail appliance by "flipping" it at Teleflip.com (starting in March). The free service uses SMS to make any phone into a nice e-mail-reading machine.

Sending e-mails to phones via SMS is not a new idea. Teleflip's pitch is its ease of setup: go to the site, enter your phone number, e-mail address, and password, and from then on you'll be able to see your e-mails on your phone. … Read more

Total Immersion demos new augmented reality tech [video]

Total Immersion, which wowed the Demo crowd two years ago, has technology that lets you merge computer-generated objects into live video. At Demo 07, the company showed off how a small PC with a camera could add a little dancing cartoon character to a live video of a newspaper. In other words: the newspaper was flat, but the live video of it on the PC's screen had real-time characters dancing around on it. And when the camera moved, they moved, so they almost appeared to be connected to the paper.

This technology will be great for navigation apps, and … Read more

Jyngle sends real-time mobile messages to groups

Jyngle from Brevient Technologies says it's "real-world, real-time" voice mail and SMS messaging.

It's a social network--set up groups online and make them public or private. From a phone, dial in, submit a PIN, record a message. The voice or text message is then sent to the mobile phones of the predetermined members of that group.

Brevient says the ideal application is event reminders or meeting changes. At first glance it seems a bit complicated, but probably useful for messages that need to be heard ASAP.

DoMo: Home page for your cell phone

DoMo from GoWare is a new PC app that lets you build a home page for your mobile phone. You create the categories you want on your phone, and choose content (such as RSS feeds) that goes in the categories. Then the app creates a home page for your cellular that's customized for the particular screen and resolution of your phone.

It looks like NetVibes for a phone, which is a pretty nice idea. Of course, what would be really cool is for NetVibes to offer a mobile version, so that you wouldn't have to create separate home … Read more

When words aren't enough: GetaBuz sends musical voice mail

Like so many mobile trends, GetaBuz has its genesis in the creativity of teenagers.

GetaBuz licenses hit songs from major record labels and allows users to record personalized voice mail greetings and messages over the song, which cost $1 to $3 each.

It's a smoother way of doing what teens had already figured out--they wanted to send clips of songs to their friends from their mobile phones, Buz Interactive Co-founder Steve Ehrlich told me.

I got a quick demo, and the interface is pretty smooth. Just choose a song and record a message--up to 30 seconds--with any microphone. No … Read more

Seagate launches wireless hard drive

Demo 07: Seagate is showing off its new "Dave" technology mobile hard drive. Available in 10GB or 20GB capacities (bigger drives coming later), its unique feature is that it's wireless. You can connect to it via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, or via USB cable if you're feeling old-fashioned.

The Bluetooth thing I get, and it's interesting: You could use it as outboard storage for a cameraphone or a future camera that has Bluetooth. The fact that it connects via Wi-Fi means that, essentially, it's also a portable, wireless, battery-powered network-attached storage device too. And that'… Read more