Demo
Recap
For
14 years, IDG has produced DEMO around the concept that it’s
possible to gain insights into industry direction, see a bunch of
brand new products – some of which might be the next Microsoft
or Blackberries – and see our industry buddies in some pleasant
and sunny spot. The
longevity of the conference is a testimonial to how well it works.
Conference producer Chris Shipley does a fabulous job in
both selecting the themes and companies/products to spotlight, and
then in hosting and commenting at the event.
Even
jaded insiders like me who attend vendor briefings under NDA
nearly daily always find something they’ve never seen – or
heard of – and the surprise is definitely part of the fun.
The
only problem is there’s so much to see.
This year there were 66 presenters in 60 second hot spots
and 6 minute Demos. You
could see them all again at a crowded and very busy exhibit hall,
but you had to choose wisely – no possibility that there was
time to look at everything in a detailed way.
But
the good news is you can revisit everything – or pretend you
were there – by going to http://www.demo.com/demo/demonstrators/2004/page772.html
where DEMO has cleverly created a set of links to each of the
demonstrators with complete information about what they showed,
why Chris thinks it’s interesting or important, and even a video
clip of their on-stage DEMO appearance.
This is really slick.
You
can go and look at anything you like.
We, having seen it all, will tell you about what caught our
eye (remember, that’s a combination of what we’re interested
in, what we liked, and what surprised us; we’re only human).
There
were a number of categories into which the DEMO offerings fell
this year, including the liberated desktop, blogging, new
approaches to the office; enterprise software (with an emphasis on
management, easy development, and measurement), security, and
enterprise email. Quite
a few on the second day were consumer offerings and, as you might
guess, we’re going to pretty much ignore those here, but the
second day then moved on to collaboration and search – and we
were all eyes.
Among
the 66 things we saw, here are what we considered a few standouts.
Vulcan’s Flipstart Mini
PC
I
was among the dozens of attendees who went wild for a tiny but
complete Windows PC, offered by Microsoft-founder Paul Allen’s
company, Vulcan (www.vulcan.com). Weighing in at less than one pound, the system made few other
compromises. Of
course, it has a tiny keyboard, but memory (256M) and storage
(30GB) are full-sized, and its little display has the resolution
of HDTV, making it possible to use Windows and Office, for full
desktop compatibility. Of
course it’s wireless (802.11b/g).
An optional display in the little notebook’s lid lets you
check email or personal information without having to open (or
fully power up) the system. The little device is expected to ship
in the fall of 2004 and the price was whispered to be at an
astounding (smaller is almost always pricier) $1,500.
At that price, we’ll be standing in line, with lots of
company.
Note
that this isn’t the first attempt to build a really small
machine. For example,
IBM Japan has built a prototype PC that
weighs just 10.6 oz. This
machine also offers 256MB of memory and a 20GB hard drive and can
run Windows. But
note, it’s not a system, but rather a “PC Core,” allowing
users to carry their system around and plug it into a base station
equipped with display and keyboard wherever they happen to be.
Theoretically, it could also be used inserted into a
portable (notebook or handheld) device.
Others have suggested such a device previously, but they haven’t
caught on yet, perhaps because they’re generally based on
non-mainstream components (IBM’s PC Core uses a TransMeta chip);
another, T-Cube, used a non-mainstream operating system.
Blogs
We
all know I’m a big devotee of blogging.
Some of you may read my blog at http://amywohl.weblogger.com.
So it will be no surprise to you that I was interested in the
blogging panel and the five blogging-related demos at DEMO.
The panel was interesting, but pretty tame, if you’re
already a blogger. The thing I liked best was the presentation by
SilkRoad, aimed at supporting blogging as a business application.
I’m planning most of an issue on blogging later this
month, so I’ll save them – and quite a few others – DEMO
attendees or not – for then.
Office Alternatives
We’ve
been telling everyone about the Chinese competitor to Microsoft
Office Suite, Evermore’s Integrated Office, but we haven’t
given it the Opinions attention it deserves.
It was a DEMO hit, with CEO Gus Tsao inundated with
overtures from VC’s (particularly after he won a full column
sidebar in Business Week’s article on the Linux Desktop just
before the show).
Evermore
has built (with funds from a regional Chinese government
authority, originally in Chinese, but now ported to English) an
office suite including word processing, spreadsheet, and
presentation graphics. The
interface isn’t like Microsoft Office – it’s nearly
identical. We can
assure you, from personal experience, that no training is
required. But
it’s also different than Microsoft’s Office Suite:
-
All
data types (text in documents, visuals, and numerics) are
stored in a single data repository.
-
The
product was written in Java so it will theoretically run on
any desktop platform with a JVM.
Evermore is currently supporting it on Windows,
Linux, and Mac OSX.
It
is possible to download your own copy of Evermore at their North
American web site, www.evermoresw.com.
Current pricing for U.S. users is on a $99 per year
subscription basis, including all upgrades and web-based
support. We suspect
this is just the beginning, however, and that the real market
for Evermore in the west will be in partnership with system or
solution partners. We’d
expect to hear more about that later this year.
- Office As A Service:
AllenPort
An
intriguing company that turns out to be from the Philadelphia
area showed up at DEMO. AllenPort
(www.allenport.com)
provides Linux-based office functionality to users who will
never need to provide administration or support; it’s all
included. We were
instantly reminded of CenterBeam, although it’s a bit
different in concept and scope.
We agreed that since we’re neighbors (looked at from
the perspective of a Phoenix show floor), we’d meet up in
Philadelphia, so I’ll save the full dress review for a later
issue; let’s just say that we think IT function as a service
is an idea whose time has come and the SMB market is often
overlooked as a great service opportunity.
- Enterprise And
Collaboration Software
We
confess that although this is our primary focus we didn’t see
anything here that blew us away.
We do want to give application development and
integration provider AboveAll Software (www.aboveallsoftware.com)
another look and we’ve already said we’re saving the
Bloggers for a separate issue.
We’re
pretty sure it’s time for some new collaboration software;
we’re just not sure it’s any of the stuff we saw here.
Okay.
I confess to being a junky for this stuff.
What we’re seeing now is lots of new ways to search for
or display the results of (and therefore navigate through) vast
piles of information. If
you live on the web (isn’t that all of us), you’re probably
looking for some of this. I
found Fractal Edge (www.fractaledge.com
) and Groxis (www.groxis.com)
particularly compelling for interface originality.
And
we’ve said we’re skipping right over the digital photography,
future of television, gaming stuff.
If you like it, go look at their web sites.
All
in all, a very compelling collection of really neat stuff.
If I had 20 pages, I’d write about it all – but you can
read about it on the DEMO
site itself.
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