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Demo Day 1

Blogging from a live event is a new thing for me. What can I tell you during the event that couldn't possibly wait until the end of the day? Probably not much, but I've got a couple cups of coffee in me and I'm surrounded by people doing the same thing, so here goes...

The Microsoft blogger sitting behind me just bragged that he'd covered all 41 products at the last show he covered. He's got a camera, too. I'm kind of jealous about that, I should have brought a camera. I'll probably get caught up in Hemmingway-ish descriptions and miss the big picture. That might be OK, since this morning is all about video technologies.

Digital Fountain: Wants to eliminate delays in video feeds. Its content delivery network is called Splash. The point is to clean up video and permit up to 20% packet loss -- the demo was pretty impressive. At 20% loss, normal video is unwatchable.

Digital Fountain says it doesn't need edge servers like LimeLight Networks and other CDN vendors. It uses Amazon Web services to deploy Splash, keeping its capital and variable costs low. Not much said about how it does it, but it's certainly going after a real problem.

Global Communications: Looking to increase bandwidth over copper to at least 178 Mbps in each direction with any wiring quality. The application shown is video, and it's not clear from the demo whether video is the only application.

It's a last-mile solution that can be extended through use of free space optics. Again, no discussion of how it works or of the cost.

ClipBlast: Web video search. Based on a widget that does the search, based on a Web crawler that classifies videos. Also working with third parties (Showtime was shown) that create their own indexes with the hope of easing a user's search for particular videos. This is probably the most useful aspect of the technology.

For this technology to make it mainstream, it'll have to be bought by a Google, Microsoft, or Apple. The widget looks suspiciously like an iPhone, so you can guess where these are heading.

MetaRadar: "A new navigation experience on the Web." Seems to be an RSS feed aggregator -- the platform also has an API that content creators can support.

This one, too, looks a lot like an iPhone and will only succeed with a lot of provider support.

MotionDSP: Seeks to improve mobile phone video. Fixes up video by using technology originally used to enhance military video. The correction is nice, but not drop-dead stunning. The technology does what you often see on cop shows by taking multiple frames to enhance the overall resolution, lighting, and smoother action.

You can try the technology at fixmymovie.com for free now. The business model is to offer the technology through agreements with service providers. This one looks pretty cool.

Proxure: Filmaroo is an automated private video sharing system. Does for video what Photobucket does for still pictures. The cool part of th technology is that it automatically formats the video for whatever end points the user might have. The service is a partnership with OkayPublish, which is a content distribution network.

Will be providing editing and mobile device support eventually. Why not, right?

YourTrumanShow: The idea is create your personal Truman Show (the Jim Carrey movie). The idea is Friendster or MySpace goes video -- and rather strictly video. It allows you to build on-the-fly communities by matching your videos with others. It doesn't use tagging or metadata, instead it looks for commonality in the videos.

Check it out at yourtrumanshow.com.

So there you go, lots of video innovation. Some of it may eventually have application for the enterprise, but it's primarily a consumer play. I need more coffee.

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