VideoEgg

[ 2005.09.23 | News Article ]

While some new products leave you scratching your head and wondering 'what were they thinking?' there were some very practical product introductions at Demo Fall 05 that I did not get a chance to write up during the event so I thought I'd just blog'em.

Demo for those not familiar with the annual, now bi-annual event, allows mainly startups to present never-before-seen hardware and software products to an audience that's made up mainly of investors.

Besides the usual VCs I saw taking notes during the six minute segments allotted to each company, there were also companies like T-Mobile and MasterCard looking around for something that they might be interested in buying or licensing.

Jingle Networks' 1-800-Free 411 is a service that gives users free 411 calls if they opt in to hearing a nine second ad before getting the phone number they need.

The typical fees for a 411 call range anywhere from $1.25 to $3.50 depending on your service provider. Last month I paid $27 for using 411 information so I'm in.

Since 80 percent of 411 calls are business related, according to Tom Latinovich, senior vice president of Business Development at Jingle, the nine-second pitch that precedes getting the number matches your inquiry to a relevant business.

If you call to get the number of the local pizzeria you might get an ad from another local pizza joint offering you two dollars off a large pie.

Video Egg is a B2B play offering its plugin video technologies to companies like eBay and the enterprise.

The gist of it is that once deployed on a Web site it reads any video format and, for example, would make uploading a video on eBay as easy as uploading jpegs are now.

VideoEgg can read at least 100 different file formats, according to Matt Sanchez, co-founder, president and CEO, and will even accept video straight from a camcorder.

Speaking of eBay, I also liked the product gNumber from a company called Unwired Buyer

I've lost enough auctions to appreciate any technology that will call me on my cell during the last five minutes of an auction to tell me if I've been outbidded.

gNumber allows you, in under 30 seconds, to place a new bid over your cell phone by voice, when you're not at a Web site. And if you're still not the high bidder it will tell you immediately.

It is eBay certified by the way.

Finally, if you're sitting in the back of a taxi with two colleagues and you wished you could conference them in to the mission critical call you have on your cell phone then Callpod is the solution.

It works with both tethered and wireless headsets and allows users to set up and share voice and data on the fly.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on September 23, 2005 11:13 AM