I’m bummed I’m not at Demo

Skiing in the Alps is something you will never forget, how many demos ever make the big time?

Paul, actually a few of each Demo's demoers make it big time in my experience, which is why so much time and effort is spent on Chris Shipley's conference. It really is a great conference, by the way. One of a kind.

I would take the alps too.

Actually, come to think of it, I got a killer demo in the Swiss Alps after going skiing.

Maybe we should start a Swiss Demo. Then we can all go skiing, see a demo or two, and write about it.

Oh, and at least we had wifi in Switzerland (at the hot tub, at least): http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=142

If Riya, which is a bad copycat photocopy, of tons of prior art, makes it to the top, no hope for any of the rest. Looking over the "proposals", I could write paragraphs of snarky material (and I still might if commissioned by a journo), but then why bother. By next Demo they will be but a vanished memory, heck give them two weeks, after the blog gurrble-spurt has had it's run.

Chris: tons of prior art? Hmmm. I don't remember seeing anything like it before. At least not on Web. Maybe some casino owner has a security system that works like it, but I sure didn't have access to it.

What were you thinking of as prior art?

The guy over at PCWorld said "I haven't tried Riya myself yet". I like that.

Scoble said "Hmmm. I don’t remember seeing anything like it before.". You are ignorant, that's all.

All you guys are PR people. Time to move on.

And for the record, every single freeware (or 10$ shareware) matches the capabilities of Riya. Read : they are all broken because face recognition software is an unsolvable problem, for many reasons.

It's good to try. But Riya hasn't solved it.

Scoble, you don't trust my words. Just ask your friends at the research. Or better yet, ask non-Microsoft researchers.

Anon: I have tried Riya. It works pretty damn well. Makes me smile everytime I use it.

It doesn't have to be perfect. If you think it does, you're missing the point and you obviously haven't tried it.

Also, nice to see you switched from your weekly ActiveWords pitches to weekly Riya pitches. I believe you are only working towards landing a job there, just in case.

Scoble said "you didn't try it". I didn't try it, I happen to know this software niche very well. I have ready very carefully the latest post from Munjal where he mentioned all the requirements : lighting, long training, etc.

Sorry, it speaks volume what the software really is.

Hope it all fits...Ver .01

vSee - Yeah? P2P Video? Hard to make sense of just how to use this. Academics doing Video Conferencing all over again. Only they, in their supreme wisdom, have the smarts to make it actually work, why they helped found Google and Pixar. Seems only something Clay Shirky could use or understand. Have Clay get his students to do tons of research and then have him write up a paper. stealing that research, on the "Emerging Worldwide Changing Impact of Peeeeer 2 Peeerrr Videeeoo Conferencing". As an aside, why does all this PhD smarty tech make for such horrible unmanageable code?
MooBella - IT Scream Machine, HEY it RUNS Linux. Network that Rocky Road, Butter Pecan has it's own IP. Telnet to Mint Choc Chip, FTP in some Orange Sherbet, but rm the Coffee Fudge.
Blurb - Self-publishing redux. Pluuuzzze. Zillions of these companies preying on wantabee authors hopes and dreams. Most all fizzled. Looks another kick of the tires. eBook Print on Demand meme dead already?
Bones in Motion - Phone as a personal trainer. Ohdearme. Talk about demographic mismatch. Real runners have all sorts of cool toys. Geeks with SmartPhones doing Excerise? On what Planet?
Street Deck - mp3's in car? Yeah? Heck you have been able to get mp3 car stereo's for years now at even Wallworld-like places. But hooking up iPod more the kick.
Accomplice - Yetmoregroupware pie-in-sky over-promised software. Outlook killer this is not. Snooze. Sucky UI too.
Grassroots - Just what the world NEEDS, yet more presentation software. Groan.
Digislide - Aussie group with "projection tech" and enough buzzwords on their website to kill an Army. Patent hoard or buy us out move. Established companies could eat this even before breakfast.
Network Streaming - Ok why are they at DEMO? They about dead and need more Venture money to stay afloat? Remote PC and Security stuff in the appliance-based form. Sorta a real biz, swimming with sharks in crowded waters however.
PolyVision - "The New Generation of Collaboration", translation, multi-screen video conferencing, whiteboards and presentation toolsets at triple the usual price. It's the New New thing, doncha know?
Tiny Pictures - Phone Camera Tricks De Jour. Geepers, how many zillions of these companies are there?
Ugobe - Ok, now this rocks. Total novelty, total fluff, but totally cool. Furby as a Dinosaur. Not sure why at Demo? Just marketing I guess. Still thumbs-up by me.
Zingee - Online sharing tool. Geeee, I don't think I have EVER seen one of these before. ((Rolls eyes)). Add them to the hundreds out there, and the thousands no longer with us.
GarageBand - Sometimes there is a reason why talent remains undiscovered. Supposedly up-and-coming artists doing digital music, yadda yadda yah. Just bubbling with flavor-bursting boredom.
RawSugar - Raw is right. Tagging Searching Directory something, yadda yadda. Still unclear on the concept, after trying real hard to grep. Create your own directory of tagged stuff? Help? DOA.
Multiverse - In case you want to WASTE even more time in virtual life worlds. Reach Out and Touch Faith, Your Own Personal MMOG Generator. Someone To Hear Your Prayers, Someone Who Cares. Sorta the Beth-Goza-Eumulator.
Krugle - Google for code? Ummm, Sourceforge turned into a Search Engine? Ad Content forthcoming?
Plum - Mash-up after Google Searching? What? Idontgetthisanddontthinkanymarketneed. Hey, whatever happened to OnFolio, like no one talks about them anymore. They were all the mash-up research rage once.
TagWorld - Would you BELIVE, yet more Social software, with pictures and tagging and a "marketplace"? They claim 700,000 users, but methinks early start on fuzzy accounting. One-stop-shop for Web 2.0 memes? Flame out. Anyone that funds this needs to see a shrink.
GuardID - Yetanothercheaposmartcardsecurity thingamajig. Riding the Identity Theft hysteria wave. SecurID and IBM Smart Card this is not.
Riya - The famed "We Got Googled, Oh No We Didn't" school of Shel Israel "breaking-NDAs-and-using-blogs-as-hype" PR management. Photo reco tech, taking old-school face-reco to the new Web 2.0 brain-deadheads. Jazzing it up on a photo site and performing geek tricks. Limited use, if you can even find a use.
Kosmix - Good location at least, Cosmic. Kosmix is such a 1999 name; Attention all Space Cadets, report for duty. Yet more search enginey tech, just taxonomy-based, sorta.
Sharpcast - Sync your PHOTOS...whhheeee. Sync to Phone, sync to PDA. It's a "connected applications platform", honest, yes, and blah blah blah. 20 zillion of these sync things in the PDA glory years. But this one is DIFFERENT, yesiree, they have "top-notch computer scientists and MBAs" with tons of start-up and flame-out experience. So very pre-crash 1998ish. DOA.

Gosh...well Pleo is cool.

I am in Phoenix, but I'd have been nice to get down the Swiss slopes.

I am in Phoenix, but It would have been nice to get down the Swiss slopes.

Robert: Swiss Demo? Wow, that'd be neat. Be sure to plan it during the school holidays so that I can attend, though ;-)

Riya naysayers, please point to these mythical opensource projects which perform one tenth as well as it does and use distinguishing features such as clothing and timestamps to aid its accuracy.

Or are you trying to kill off enthusiasm because you are worried it will find something interesting when people run it on their pr0n collections?!

Well, spoke too soon, seems the jounro wants my reports...so more, last for this blog tho.

Vizrea - YouarenotgoingtobelievethisbutyetanotherdeadtiredFlickrcopycat. What's different? Microsoft droning retirees, playing software games, Mike Toutonghi (eHome crash and burner) and the Brad Three's (Brad Silverberg, Brad Chase and Brad Schick). And the Silverberg loyalist, and zillions expensive cars, world travels and moon pictures, Ben Slivka. Using and abusing the old and tired Microsoft loyalist press and analysts, getting Gartenberg to gurbble-up the buzzwordy "contextual flow" and getting increasingly-senile Mossberg to help out with a photo album. Maybe they can sell it back to Ray Ozzie, as a Live offering. Pretty death-valley dry UI and search. Nokia inclusion something, won't get much pingback. What no SmartPhone? ;)

You know there is something downright CRIMINAL about a PC World Editor in Chief saying...

"I haven't tried Riya myself yet, but it demos extremely well."

http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/00141...

I've been using Riya for quite a time as a tester. Best feature to me is the ability to pick out what is a face in a selection of photos and then allowing you to easily annotate them. Any automatic recognition from that point onwards is a bonus to me. I would like it released as a client based programme with just that basic feature forgetting the automatic individual recognition - which is kinda scary when stored on a remote server. And yes Robert good decision to stay in the alps - I love them too as well as punting in Cambridge.

Reg Muffet : you are a troll. Point at what Riya does that any published software in this area does not do.

Aside that, Riya does not even own the technologies. Their text recognition software is actually Nuance's + ABBYY's. See the bottom of their home page.

And you are right that p0rn will probably the most revenue generating VAR channel for Riya. In fact, any channel that does not require the software to do anything accurate with pictures.

Getting adoption with software or services that don't serve much of a purpose will be tough.

Software is a tool that solves a problem, does a job. If you approach it as a gadfly, not really having a job to do, the whole seven day thing, then you don't need it and you won't adopt it.

What is somebody showed you a piece of software that imported your DV and did parallel encodings to Windows Media and Quicktime? Would you adopt that tool and post your videos to Channel 9 with it?

Arg! I wish I were in Phoenix, too. I first met Robert last year when my company demo'd at DEMO. It is the best conference I've ever been to. There is an enormous sense of potential--so many cool technologies, and so many cool companies.

It reminded me of the summer I toured with a band on the "second" stage of the Ozzfest tour. The second stage features about 20 up-and-coming bands. You knew that most of those bands weren't going to make it--but you also knew someone was going to bust out of the pack and go platinum.

Plus, DEMO is the only conference I've ever been to that features a jam session at the party, with attendees, demonstrators and even writers joining the jam!

I'm in San Francisco. It would be nice to be either in Phoenix OR the Swiss Alps.

Had fun here in Phoenix - my second DEMO. Last year I was a DEMO God Looser. :) The $30K fee is wrong. It's around $18K - and well worth it for a start-up looking for exposure. Some great products were demonstrated here, but the final Mossberg-led panel was also very entertaining.

demo rocked

screw Switzerland

Seems like all Christopher Coulter can do is criticize. Show me what he does to advance the tech world. He just cuts and pasts his innacurate and ignorant "analysis" from one blog to the other - hoping for some kind of attention. It is so obvious that he has no information on any of these companies, dosent understand the technology or the applications for the new technologies and clearly is not interested in learing.

IMO, his credibility = zero