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DemoFall '05: first looks

DemoFall '05: first looks

Justin Jaffe Managing editor
Justin Jaffe is the Managing Editor for CNET Money. He has more than 20 years of experience publishing books, articles and research on finance and technology for Wired, IDC and others. He is the coauthor of Uninvested (Random House, 2015), which reveals how financial services companies take advantage of customers -- and how to protect yourself. He graduated from Skidmore College with a B.A. in English Literature, spent 10 years in San Francisco and now lives in Portland, Maine.
Expertise Credit cards, Loans, Banking, Mortgages, Taxes, Cryptocurrency, Insurance, Investing. Credentials
  • Coauthor of Uninvested (Random House, 2015)
Justin Jaffe
2 min read
There are two serious problems with this year's Demo conference. One, it is not supposed to rain in southern California; if I wanted torrential rain and gray skies, I would've stayed in San Francisco. Two, a conference sponsored by Network World should not broadcast a Wi-Fi signal that gives Google.com a 45-second load time.

Having said that, the fundamental idea behind the conference is great. In contrast to behemoth shows, such as CES, Demo brings together a digestible handful of innovative companies--this year, 65--and gives most of them six minutes apiece to pitch their products to a few hundred entrepreneurs, investors, and industry bigwigs. The result: an early look at some cool technologies and products, along with some hideously awkward moments when demos go awry.

A quick rundown of the most interesting demos so far:

U3: Packs your desktop into a USB flash drive, including software and settings; lets you use any computer as if it were your own. Rafe discussed this type of technology last year, with particular attention to a seemingly very similar product, the Migo. U3 is giving attendees a trial version of the product, and as Windows' Remote Desktop is giving me spotty performance at the moment, I'm looking forward to checking it out.

H3: A "referral-hiring tool that uses cash rewards to unleash the power of your trusted network to identify relevant job candidates." Behind that jargon-filled mission statement lurks an interesting alternative to career-focused social-networking services such as Jobster. Going to put this in front of my wife, who's a career counselor, to see what she thinks.

UniPrivacy: I'm a little freaked out by Zabasearch, the self-proclaimed number one "Free people search and public information search engine," which amasses "personal" information about people and puts it online. So I was heartened to hear about Uniprivacy's DeleteNow service, which hunts down and deletes personal information from hundreds of Internet search engines and databases.

On tap for this afternoon: file management solutions, process management solutions, and wireless infrastructure solutions. I do hope it stops raining soon...