This week I had the privilege of attending the DEMOFall O7 conference in San Diego, California. 69 innovative companies presented their solutions over a two day period.-  All of these were startups, who mostly used the opportunity to preview or launch their products to the world, attract attention from Venture Capitalists - and yes ... companies like Microsoft (one of the sponsors of the event).

This was my first Demo conference and I must say it was one of the best conferences I have attended for start-ups.  Unlike conferences like 3GSM, where one can get lost among hundreds of companies  of all shapes and sizes presenting- this one was specifically focused on start-ups. Each company had the opportunity to pitch and demo their product to all the attendees at general sessions- so  everyone attending the conference got a flavor of all the companies, and afterwards had the option of visiting the companies at their booths to get more information.  The general sessions were held twice a day with each session focusing on specific themes like social networking, mobility etc. This was great - so I did not have the usual feeling of being overloaded with too much information - which sometimes happens at big conferences like 3GSM and CTIA.

There were some great companies that presented at the conference so I will give an overview of some of the best ones I saw in the next few blogs...

The Pudding

The first company I will review is one with very controversial but interesting set of technologies called The Pudding.  This company has built their technology under the assumption that voice services are moving to zero cost in the future, and want to accelerate that transition. The company has built a platform to speed the transition to free VOIP calls.  Here is the basic premise:
 Everyday people make billions of phone calls that are rich in content. In typical phone conversations, people are exchanging information, getting entertainment, placing orders, solve problems etc. Their platform called VoiceSense captures key words during the course of a phone conversation, and delivers relevant ads and information on the computer screen.  For instance if you are having a casual conversation with a friend about going out to restaurants, their system recognizing the word "restaurants"  in the conversation, will display local restaurants ads on the screen

At first sight, this seems quite controversial - because it almost seems that conversation between parties is being wire tapped - which is a little unsettling.  However, in reality, no one is listening in on your conversation.  Embedded in their platform is speech recognition technology which recognizes key words in the conversation, and then uses the words captured to deliver relevant ads etc.  No record of the conversation is kept. 

In conclusion, I think this was one of the best companies I met at the conference. I think this company has developed a great product by combining speech recognition with VOIP.  I do think they will have to be very careful how this service is  rolled  out to consumers.  Most consumer are not technology savvy - so they will have to be very careful in the messaging of their product. They need to do it in such a way to relieve likely concerns\perception from the average consumer that their calls are being tapped or listened to. If they can successfully do that - I believe this company has a great future. See more about them at http://www.thepudding.com