One of the take-aways from Demo is how far rich interactive applications (commonly abbreviated as RIA) have come. The web today is a much more exciting and accessible place than the HTML webforms of 1999 and some of the following cool companies that presented this morning demonstrate this enabling creative power.
CapZles; This company provides an online tool to create and present an asset "filmstrip" and add comments. They have an ad-based revenue model so the tool is free to anyone. It's a nice way to share pictures and video with your friends and family. It looks beautiful and is very easy to create. My mom would love this tool and I think I'll send her a link to a CapZle I created of pictures from her garden. The company says they integrate with FlickR.
Cozimo is an online collaboration interface geared toward the design community but super simple it could be used by anybody. Cozimo lets you upload images in PDF and video and then allows you to overlay these files with markups and comments. You can annotate the files in different colors and collaborate with multiple users as you hash over a creative idea or vision. All viewers will see the same area or frame in a design document and can chat real-time. You can zoom in their viewer with full vector graphic support. They have wrapped their viewer so that you can embed with a few lines of code, their application into your website imagery which is very cool. This tool brings the phrase "get on the same page" to life.
XtraNormal: This company is really neat, allowing anyone on the web to create a customized 3-D rendered "movie" video clip with just a few clicks. They provide a library of 3D avatars where you can customize your characters by selecting from a library of assets, gestures and appearance. You can choose scenes and add props. It's in private beta currently but I can't wait to wow my friends with xtranormal and flex my movie-making muscles. Their motto, "we're not normal, we're xtranormal..."
The defining traits of these companies are impressive visual design, ease-of-use and ease of sharing. With just a few clicks I can impress my friends and family today more than I ever could before.
