[HTML2]Just a little reminder that NedSpace will be hosting the grand opening of their second location—NedSpace Old Town—at the space formerly known as Vidoop, tonight beginning at 4 PM. The event—entitled “Hellzapoppin’“—will have free beer thanks to the fine folks at Widmer. And there will be live jazz thanks to Boy and Bean. Can’t beat that on a day like today.
But that’s not all. Tonight’s event will also feature you. Yes, you. If you’re a startup with something to demo. Read More
As I mentioned on Monday, local stealth startup Ontier was selected to unveil their product, Pixetell, at DEMO09, one of the premier venues for showcasing new—and previously unseen—technology.
As any number of applicants can tell you, it’s a coup to even be selected to appear on the DEMO stage. So Ontier was way ahead of the game by being one of the only Northwest companies selected.
And anyone who has stood on the DEMO stage can tell you that it can be one of the most nerve-wracking experiences—even for the most seasoned presenter. Making it through the five minutes is an accomplishment in and of itself.
So, they got selected. And they presented well. End of story, right? Not quite.
Ontier didn’t stop there. No, no. Just leave it to the Portland types to go and make us even more proud.
Not only did Ontier lead off the presentations, they led off by knocking it out of the park: Ontier has been named one of the DEMOgods for DEMO 09.
What’s a DEMOgod?
Each conference DEMO unveils a new class of the industry’s upcoming technologies, and it always proves difficult to pick and choose the most exceptional products. The desirable DEMOgod Awards are given to those that show outstanding potential to succeed in the market while motivating and exciting the DEMO audience.
Ontier was one of seven companies selected for the honor.
That makes this worth one more look.
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Offers whoosa whatsa?
Okay, okay. Maybe the headline is a bit too hyperbolic—and those are my words, not theirs, so blame me. But that’s the first thing that jumped to mind when I saw Portland-based Ontier demo their product Pixetell at DEMO 09.
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Here’s another way I’d describe it: it’s like having Seesmic and Jing wedged into your email. Better? No?
Okay, maybe it would be better to let them explain what their product does:
Pixetell on-demand software provides the power of in-person interaction and the convenience of email. You can verbally and visually explain spreadsheets, drawings, designs, proposals… anything on your screen. With Pixetell, you quickly combine screen recordings, voice, webcam, rich text and attachments into a secure, interactive message sent over existing channels including email, blogs, wikis, IM and Twitter. Recipients view Pixetells at their convenience in their Web browser and can reply with their own Pixetell message.
And their not the only ones talking about it. Spend 5 minutes on stage at DEMO and a whole bunch of people start chattering about your product.
Here’s what some other folks are saying:
Pixetell is one of those products that sounds a little fuzzy at first, but really grabs your attention (or mine, at least) once you see it in action. Basically, it allows you to use screen recordings, voice, web cam, rich text and other attachments to enrich emails and related documents — spreadsheets, designs, proposals and so on. And it allows you to add these things as part of your normal workflow, using a simple dashboard that appears at the bottom of your screen.
Regular e-mail, especially for complicated discussions, can be tedious, with many messages going back and forth before a problem gets solved, said CEO Sebastian Rapport, who will demonstrate Pixetell at the Demo conference in Palm Desert, Calif.
Web conferences have their own limitations as well, because they can be hard to schedule, especially for distributed teams, he said. “At awkward hours, you can’t get it done,” Rapport said.
Pixetell, meanwhile, “sits somewhere between e-mail and Web conferencing,” he said.
Ontier’s Pixetell is on-demand software that lets users verbally and visually explain spreadsheets, designs, proposals – basically anything that’s on your PC screen. Instead of using a Web-based collaboration or conferencing service like WebEx, you can create a similar demonstration or explanation of anything and then send it off in a Pixetell message. The user interface looks gorgeous, and the demo was very effective in showing what it could do.
The major presenters started with Ontier, Inc., which showed a product called Pixetell, a competitor to products like WebEx allows you to send screen shots, video and audio in a special email message;; and to respond similarly. You can use a web cam for video or capture what is happening on your screen; and collect the responses via email. What I like about it is that it allows for a rich media conversation that doesn’t have to be in real time. It looked very easy to set up, and I can see how businesses could like this very much.
It’s great to have another Silicon Forest company launching at DEMO (Iterasi launched at DEMO 08 and SplashCast launched at DEMO 07), especially one that appears to have been so well received by those watching the show.
Here’s hoping we see more of Ontier around Portland, now that they’re done being stealthy.
Ontier, Inc. was founded in early 2008 in Portland, Oregon by industry veteran Sebastian Rapport. The company is comprised of a global team of experienced managers and product developers brought together to enable a leap forward in the way we communicate.
For more information or to sign up for the beta, visit Ontier.
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[Full disclosure: Iterasi is one of my clients which may taint my objectivity. For other reviews of the tool, see coverage in CenterNetworks, Profy, VentureBeat, Webware, and Web Worker Daily.]
Vancouver, Washington, based Iterasi has been working in stealth mode for the last six months. (So stealthy, in fact, that my friends and family have, to date, only known them as “double secret probation.”) Today, Iterasi was finally able to start talking about their offering, unveiling an early—yet highly functional—version of their product at DEMO 2008.
They will be the only Silicon-Forest-based company taking the stage at DEMO, this week.
So what does the Iterasi do? It saves Web pages.
Sounds simple. But, these days? Not so much.
Given the dynamic nature of today’s Web sites—AJAX, CSS, dynamic HTML, widgets, database-driven content—“saving a page” is a little more difficult than it seems like it should be.
But Iterasi makes it incredibly easy, enabling the user to save the exact page he or she is seeing. No matter how many little AJAX balloons may have been opened or what personal information has been provided.
When Iterasi saves the page, it’s in its native format. It’s HTML. So all of the links still work. All of the CSS is still there. So you get to see all of the content, in context, and work with it, instead of just looking at it.
In addition to saving pages, Iterasi offers a scheduler that allows you to capture the same page over time:
You can also schedule automatic capture of a page at regular intervals. We believe that capturing the same page over time will highlight the differences among notarized versions. And we think that type of comparison will be great for competitive intelligence and other online research. Some people will use it to monitor their kid’s MySpace page over time, others to take an extended look at Craigslist search results for a town they might move to.
For more information, to see a demo, or to sign up for an invitation to future BETA versions of Iterasi, visit Iterasi. To keep tabs on what the company is doing, visit the Iterasi blog.
Next week, I’m in the enviable position of getting the opportunity to travel down to DEMO 2008 with one of my Silicon-Forest-based clients.
Although I’ve been tracking DEMO for years, this will be my first actual trip to the event. And, quite frankly, I’m looking forward to being a bit shellshocked by the whole affair.
What’s DEMO? DEMO is very much the grand ball of high-tech product launches. A very hush-hush, invite-only, keep-your-product-under-wraps-until-the-show kind of thing. Or, as the DEMO folks put it:
DEMO is the premier launch venue for new products, technologies and companies. For more than 16 years, DEMO has established a reputation for identifying and presenting to an elite audience the products most likely to have a significant impact on the marketplace and market trends in the coming year. Each product is carefully screened and selected by DEMO’s Executive Producer, Chris Shipley, one of the top trend spotters in the personal technology product industry.
Who’s the Silicon-Forest-based client? The embargo on DEMO product announcements lifts on Monday morning, at which point, I’ll cover the client’s product (with full disclosure of my consulting relationship with them).
Suffice it to say, they’re small, they’re out of Vancouver, Washington, this is the CEOs third trip to DEMO, and I think they’ve come up with something that will have utility for a wide-range of folks.
But for now, let’s just leave it at that. Please tune in Monday for more.
Now, I’m going to cover that client because they’re part of our community. And I hope you are okay with me doing that. I’m not doing it to push the product. I’m covering it because it’s as newsworthy as any startup I cover here. And I’ll strive to be as objective as I possibly can.
Obviously, I’m hoping to cover any of the other Silicon-Forest-based companies that come out of stealth mode down there. (If you are one of those companies, please drop me a line and let me know, so I can plan to jump on the coverage.)
What I won’t do is provide generic coverage of the event, itself. Or profile every single one of the more than 70 products that will launch at DEMO. In fact, after Monday’s post, this may be the last you ever hear of DEMO from me. Unless I uncover a story that has a specific Silicon Forest angle. (Or unless you’re following me on Twitter, as I’ll likely tweet some coverage of the event, just for my own historical reference of my babe-in-the-woods naivete.)
Just because I’m down there doesn’t mean that the blog should lose its focus.
If you are interested in more insightful coverage of DEMO, I know Portland-based blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick will be providing coverage—though not entirely product-focused—for Read/Write Web, Allen Stern of CenterNetworks has proposed a sort of blogger bullpen of writers to cover the event, and Rafe Needleman of Webware usually does a bang up job. Plus, the DEMO folks post videos of each and every one of the six-minute presentations to the DEMO site, so you can watch at your leisure.
If you are planning to be down there, as well, please let me know and let’s try to find one another. And if there is anything specific you would like me to cover from DEMO, please use the comments to let me know.
