demo

PALM DESERT, Calif.--If you've ever lost your keys, phone, or both at the same time, a new company called Phone Halo has a tool for finding them.

Launching at the DemoSpring conference here, Phone Halo is a $60 gadget that turns your BlackBerry or Android phone into a handheld finder. Unlike some more traditional key finder hardware, however, Phone Halo integrates Bluetooth and GPS to create a tethered radius for your gadgets. So, if one of them goes out the door without the other, you get a message about it back on your phone, or through e-mail and even Twitter.

The hardware itself is a black module about the size of a car alarm dongle that packs a speaker, Bluetooth, and GPS antenna and can be attached to your keys, briefcase, or anything else. When your gadget goes missing, you can just open up the Phone Halo app on your phone, then toggle it to beep. The transmitters also can transmit a beep back to your phone, so you can hit a button on the unit to start ringing your handset. This works even if you have it set to silent, the same way Apple's "Find My iPhone" feature does on MobileMe. … Read more

PALM DESERT, Calif.--The first demo at the DemoSpring conference here that actually made me want the product being shown was from Fliptop.

CEO Doug Camplejohn showed off two aspects of his new content subscription service. The first is a "subscribe" button that publishers can put on their sites. Like the ShareThis service that lets publishers replace dozens of social-network sharing buttons with one, Fliptop's button gives readers a lot of controls to subscribe to content on sites. They can select all content, get digests, ask for only new stories that meet a filter, and so on. … Read more

PALM DESERT, Calif.--One of the coolest demos at DemoSpring here is from Exaudios.

The company's new Maginify product analyzes the intonation of someone on a phone call and can tell if the person is calm, beginning to get angry, or seconds from blowing up. It also identifies other emotions, but for this product, the focus is on happiness and anger. The service is being pitched to call centers, though there is potentially more to it than that.

You may rightly note that most humans have the innate ability to tell if the person they're speaking with is … Read more

PALM DESERT, Calif.--Flinc is one big idea that could save us all from the horrors of pricey cab rides. Unfortunately, it's years away from showing up in a major U.S. city.

The idea, as pitched in 90 seconds at this year's DemoSpring conference here, is that people who are driving around are often in a position to pick someone else up in return for some cold, hard cash--yet for much less than a taxi.

Sure, it's ride sharing with a receipt, Flinc's organizational system happens entirely in the cloud. The commands get sent … Read more

PALM DESERT, Calif.--Brandfolium's Navid is a clever yet creepy marketplace for ads on Twitter and other social services. With this service, a marketer can find an online writer who's willing to accept paid endorsements in his or her feed, put a price on the paid mention, and schedule the campaign. The site should launch shortly.

Writers open to these campaigns have to register on the service so marketers can find them.

In the launch presentation Monday at the DemoSpring conference, the company's CEO showed a geographic component of the service, too. Marketers can find, on … Read more

PALM DESERT, Calif.--If you thought Apple's App Store was getting crowded, we've got bad news. It's about to get worse.

Appwhirl and Appvoyage--a pair of new companies launching here at the DemoSpring conference, are trying to make the process of creating an iPhone app and submitting it to the App Store take less than five minutes and something that requires no programming prowess whatsoever. In fact, building them takes place right in your Web browser.

Are these apps capable of building mind-blowing games, or complex business apps? No. For both companies, the expectation seems to … Read more

After revealing at Demo the winners of its Developers Challenge, PayPal had a consolation prize for the companies that didn't win the award: the company is announcing a funding project for new apps builders. Participants in the PayPal Startup Accelerator Program can get not just funding, but space at the PayPal building as well as access to PayPal's marketing muscle.

Given the inevitable growth of competitive payment technologies (see Square), it's smart for PayPal to encourage companies to build on its platform in whatever way it can. And let's not forget: Doing a start-up on a … Read more

PALM DESERT, Calif.--Among the many companies pitching at the DemoSpring conference, newcomer Visiarc is trying to solve an annoying problem. In this case, it's accessing and sharing large e-mail attachments on underpowered devices on congested networks.

While those two problems are slowly being solved by hardware-makers and the carriers, Visiarc wants to make the transition a little less painful with an app called Mobile Documents that simply streams in large attachments.

The tool, which is being launched first for Symbian 60 devices, changes the way your phone handles e-mail attachments. It lets users browse attachments page by page … Read more

Introduced at Demo, Ambit Control is parental spyware for kids' smartphones. In addition to telling you where a kid's phone is, via the phone's GPS radio, a phone with Ambit on it will tattle when a kid installs an app. You can also configure an Ambit phone to allow calls or texts to only specific numbers. Children can be told that their phone is tapped, or, as the company CEO said from stage, you can just give your kid a phone with Ambit without telling them that they're being watched.

Since the app needs to run and … Read more