“You don’t have a WiFi router on you, do you?”
“As a matter of fact, I do”
And that was how DemoCamp 10 started for me last night — tucked into a corner of Ottawa’s Velvet Room cabling together a Linksys Wireless-G Travel Router and Rogers Portable Internet so that the assembled demo fans could actually see what the products and services that the demonstrators had brought. Five minutes later we were up and running and the show could go on. I recommend anyone who travels buy one of these trusty unite.
Ottawa DemoCamps have always been fairly geeky affairs. We’ve had people describing new graphics algorithms, showing off single board computers and many more very early stage companies. Last night, however, the Ottawa tech community really stepped it up, showing more companies and products with more polish than many I had seen previously.
Three of the companies that really stood out for me were:
Ramius with Sixent. Sixent’s multi-profile social networking site addresses the biggest complaint that I, and many others, have with Facebook — the ability to easily manage your online profile. It’s true that Facebook gives you tools to manage your online persona, but Sixent’s approach makes managing your persona (and privacy) in an online world accessible to mere mortals. You can create multiple profiles depending on the use case, and add appropriate capabilities and information to each profile. With a built-in set of collaboration tools as well, Sixent looks to be very suitable for both personal and business needs. I signed up on the spot.
Chide.it. Chide.it showed two products – FluidSurveys.com and ReviewRoom. Of the two, FluidSurveys showed the most promise. It’s a free tool for quickly constructing online surveys. You can then run the surveys, collect the results, and analyze them with Excel. I would imagine that makes SurveyMonkey ($20/month) and other companies like them Chide.it’s competition. I signed up for this one on the spot as well.
Gazaro, who have created an AI driven “personal shopping flyer”. List the things that you’d like to buy. Gazaro then shops the sales for you to find the best bargains. There are a couple of short comings at the moment — it only works with US based retailers, and it only lets you shop for electronics. Nonetheless, Gazaro shows a lot of promise.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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