DEMOfall: Share and share alike

Wednesday morning at DEMOfall started off with a slew of new products that look very useful to corporate users: calendar sharing, screen sharing, file sharing, project management and even marketing tools. That was followed by some small-business apps and Web 2.0-ish stuff, but even they had some potential interest for corporate IT.

For those who've never been to a DEMO conference, it's a seemingly endless series of six-minute pitches for IT products and services. Most of them are new, all of them are innovative, but not everything is aimed at Computerworld's readers. I boil them down to what's likely to matter to corporate IT shops.

Here's the summary from the Wednesday morning session:

* Tungle demoed a slick little plug-in for sharing calendars and setting up meetings. It looks like an instant messaging window, and users can pick other users on their list to overlay schedules and find common times. Works with Exchange, Outlook, Lotus Notes and Google Calendar, or none of the above. Tungle will also automatically set up a temporary web page containing a Tungle user's schedule, for would-be attendees who don't have the Tungle plug-in. It looks easy, and it looks like it works.

* Vello showed MyVello, a service that automatically calls everyone who's supposed to be in a conference call. And yes, they really did demonstrate it, using the mobile phone numbers of dozens of attendees. Yeah, there's Outlook integration, a set of Web-based management tools and the ability to set up the conference call from a mobile phone. But that cascade of ringing phones as dozens of people got a near-simultaneous call -- that's what lodged in everyone's brain.

* Tubes talked about its drag-and-drop file-sharing system; it lets users send a document to multiple users, then automatically keep all the copies in sync. The secret is that the document lives on a central server, but the effect is that anyone who's invited can work on it. Miserable problem, nice solution.

* Yuuguu demoed IM-like screen sharing, complete with the ability to remote-control the other user's keyboard and mouse. That's a capability being shown by several DEMO presenters this year, which means a lot of users will be remoting into each other's machines. Sysadmins beware.

* Quire showed a new version of MyQuire, a user-level app for managing projects. MyQuire already had a nice set of screens and functions for tracking projects, teams, tasks and events; the new version will add screen sharing and remote control, among other features. Clean design, simple feature set.

* InstaColl talked about Live Documents, a system that uses a Microsoft Office plug-in to let users share and collaborate on documents. As usual, there's automatic synchronization and merging of changes; other functions include annotation, chats and alerts when a document is changed. For non-Office users, there's a slick Web version that gins up a Flash version of the document.

* Apprema demoed StarMail, a collaborative e-mail system. Yeah, that sounds goofy. It's actually a marketing tool, designed to send prettied-up thank-you messages to customers and business partners. Easy to create custom stationary, include company logos and signature images. It's intended to work with Apprema's online business-gift store, StarGift, so the marketing people can send the customer a gift certificate as well as that fancy e-mail. Sure, IT people are likely to sneer at all that window dressing when ASCII works just fine. This is why we're in IT, not marketing.

* Prolify showed its tool to document project workflow. Project activities are built into a map, which can then be used to track the processes; there's also a dashboard and analytics for managers. Integrates with document management systems, and all interactions are captured. Potentially very useful for dealing with projects that get off track and no one can figure out why.

* DimDim demoed its open-source Web meeting service -- yes, they're going after WebEx. The new version includes the ability to record presentations in advance.

* CashView had its cashflow management system for small businesses. Nice way of aggregating invoices, cancelled checks and other documents, and it supports the ability to do approvals for payment, juggle when bills will be paid and send reminders to people who owe money. It sounds dull, but if it really does clean up the mess most small businesses have, it could be a godsend for them.

* BatchBlue showed its contact-management system designed for small businesses. In this case, "contacts" can mean anything from customers to employees to competitors; each category can have its own customizable profile. Easy to use interface, automatically tracks connections between contacts, allows creation of group lists.

* AgendiZe talked about AgendiZeMe, its system for making Web advertising "actionable." In this case, that means one click by a user transfers information from the Web ad; the user can save it or send it to someone else.

* LongJump demoed its hosted application service for small businesses. The idea is that small-biz guys can select business apps from LongJump's catalog on a pay-as-you-go basis, and the data is interchangeable among all the apps. Non-programmers can add scripts and custom data fields.

* PlanHQ showed its application for keeping small businesses focused on their business plans. It's a sort of project-management nagware that keeps all activities focused on business priorities. The usual dashboard keeps track of what's overdue and generates summaries and graphs. Nice feature is that managers can decide to reduce the priority of projects that are bogging down, so employees can focus on more productive work.

* Real Time Content demoed its Adaptive Media system, which lets web marketers slice up video ads and then reassemble them on the fly according to a template, personalizing the remix based on the location of a customer and other data. It also tracks which remix versions result in a sale, and learns from the experience.

* Matchmine showed its MatchKey, a visual representation of a user's media tastes for movies, music, video and blogs. The idea is that it doesn't include any personally identifiable information, so a user can be anonymous and still get personalized media.

* MuseStorm had its Content Engagement Platform, which boils down to a way of building, delivering and tracking Web and desktop media widgets. PowerPoint-like interface for building the widgets, tracking and reporting tools, definitely designed for marketeers.

* Generate showed gClick, a tool that automatically parses a Web page, extracting the names of individuals, businesses, products and events. Then the information is fed to a database, and the tool coughs up a research report that can be sliced and diced or drilled into. Think of a research department, only without the researchers. Version for publishers is out now; a business version should ship "in a few weeks."

* mSpoke demoed FeedHub, its RSS feed aggregator. The hook is that it pays attention to which items a user reads and finds useful, and learns to push those to the top.

More to come...