by Josh Bernoff

Charlene and I had a chance to test out Telepresence last week. Telepresence is a new product from Cisco -- essentially a new form of videoconferencing that's designed to be as realistic as possible. I sat in a specially designed room on Boxborough, Massachusetts while Charlene was in a very similar room in San Jose, and we met for nearly two hours to collaborate on projects including Groundswell. Isaac Asimov introduced this idea decades ago in a novel called The Naked Sun in which the people were phobic about meetings in person, and instead met by a virtual image -- they called it "viewing" instead of "seeing" -- and now Cisco has tried to make "viewing" a reality.

First, what it is: telepresence is designed to give participants as much as possible the impression of being in an actual meeting with each other despite being in different cities. You sit in a room sitting at half a conference table, and in front of you are three large 1080p high-definition TV screens showing an identical table in the other city. It requires a steady Net connection of 5 to 20 MB per second, and Cisco will set your company up with telepresence rooms for around $250K per location. Forrester's official writeup of telepresence offerings from Cisco and its competitors is here.

Second: why its different. If you've used regular videoconferencing (we use it all the time at Forrester) it has some serious flaws. Quality of the image varies based on the connection. The size of the screen varies and so do the size of the faces on it -- you can zoom in and out. The sound quality is also variable. And finally, a time-lag of a half second or so often makes the interaction unnatural.

Telepresence is different. The room is set up so you always see the person actual size -- there is no panning or zooming. You hear their voice coming from where their image is. There is no time lag. Subtle cues (the room on the other end is painted the same color as the room you're in) reinforce the idea that you're together in one place. There is also a feature that allows you to see what's on each others' laptop screen, which Charlene and I used to good advantage. (The computer screen projection, interestingly, is projected below the big screens that show the other person.)

My subjective impression is that this is not like meeting in person, but it has some important psychological differences from any other meeting technologies. It's inbetween a real meeting and phone call.

Charlene and I know each other pretty well and typically give each other a hug before we get together -- that was obviously out of the question (although the fact that we thought of it was interesting -- you'd never feel that way about a phone call or a typical videoconference). Both the small talk and more substantive interactions felt more relaxed than a phone call.

One key thing you can do with this system is to interrupt each other. That's surprisingly important to a real, powerful interaction, and it doesn't work with a time lag. (Those speakerphones people sometimes use that aren't full duplex, won't let you talk when the other person is talking, should be banned -- they drive me crazy!) We move fast, and interruptions are a key part of that. Your mom told you it's rude to interrupt people, but that's highly dependent on the social status of the people conversing. If Charlene doesn't interrupt me when I'm blathering, she's wasting my time.

The other thing I found interesting was this: Charlene made some suggestions about pieces of the book that would require significant rewriting and rethinking. All writers know the internal resistance that this provokes, and it's involuntary. On the phone, when this happens, I just "go along" and figure I'll prove her wrong later, or maybe come around to her point of view. But with telepresence, I found her much more persuasive (and harder to ignore). That is, look someone in the eye and if you're right, they can see it. Telepresence can be persuasive. This should be interesting to people who need to persuade: salespeople and managers, for example. (Politicians?)

The system still has a few flaws. For one, strangely, the transmission of the image from your laptop doesn't quite keep up with full-motion -- when one of us was looking at YouTube, the other saw very jerky motion. This is strange, given the laptop information is fully digital and the screens just above it were showing full motion HDTV images of people with no problem.

Second, we had to conference in a colleague at one point. The phone on the desk is for telepresence only, and can't make phone calls. There is another phone in the room but it's on the wall, 10 feet away. So we had the absurd experience of using my mobile phone, on speakerphone, with a scratchy  disembodied voice coming out as we looked at each other in hyperreal detail. Less than ideal.

We're looking forward to trying out HP's similar system, HALO, and we'll provide you with an update when we do.

Tags: telepresence, Cisco, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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By Charlene Li

Twitter has been hailed as "a total waste of time" to "the next generation IM". The site allows users to easily and frequently update what they are doing, through a Web browser, IM, or text message. It's been quite the buzz among early adopters -- Hitwise has some data on Twitter's growth. Robert Scoble calls it "blogging mated with IM" and is a frequent user. I've set up an account too, but I find it darn hard to remember to Twitter (I've set it up to nudge me every 24 hours, but I usually ignore it, my bad). And Mat Balez has a great post on why he thinks Twitter will be dead before the end of the year.

Here's our take: Twitter is going to be overused, overload people, who will then get turned off. There is just simply too much noise and not enough valuable "signal" to be worthwhile. I run into a case of TMI - too much information -- in that I don't really need to know that you're heading to the bathroom, etc.

Yet, I think there is real potential for a service like Twitter in several areas: 1) for small, trusted groups to keep up to date with each other; 2) publishing information easily; and 3) as an aggregator of information. Here are some more details:

1) Keeping in touch with people that matter. This is a service that my mother would love -- she always wants to know what I'm doing. The same thing applies to the workplace where team members can provide regular updates on their activities. This would be especially helpful on a project where fast communication can be a real advantage. For example, Disney has used blogs to track engineering activities - what if they could use a Twitter interface to do quick updates? There are several other enterprise ideas (collected by Kim Bayne) including a feedback channel for customer service, marketing ticker for press, and monitoring of system status. Crucial to this is the ability to segment your Twitter life into different areas -- my co-workers don't really need to know what I did over the weekend with my kids, and vice versa. Permissions make this a hairy nut to crack, but I think it's essential to make the Twitter pages more relevant to each of my social circles.
2) Easy publication. Up to now, user-generated content took a lot of work. But with Twitter, the idea is to make it so easy that you do it all the time -- you only have 140 characters in which to do this. But this is still hard, so some of the more promising innovations include TwiTunes that adds the current track you're listening to in iTunes to Twitter. My favorite is autotwit, which allows you to schedule future posts. But I can see a time when I could simply have Twitter updated from my Outlook Calendar. Permission controls again, will be essential.
3) Information aggregation and mashups. I can get Twitter Weather, as well as Tube Twitter which gives updates for specific London Underground lines. There are also mashups like Twittermaps.com, which uses specific tagging in Twitter to map your locations -- you write a post "L:94404" or any other geocodable location and you show up on a map. Cool, but not that useful. Even more interesting is Dealtagger.com, which allows any deals that you tag on the service to also show up on Twitter.

Intrigued? I certainly am. I still take the current Twitter-mania with a huge grain of salt, mostly because in its current state Twitter is going appeal only to a small subset of people who enjoy publicly sharing what they are doing. But watch out -- I think that like IM, blogging, and social networking, services like Twitter will evolve with new features and functionality to actually become useful communication and information tools.

Want more examples? Check out the Twitter Wiki for the latest. And please, let us know how you see a service like Twitter evolving.

Tags: Groundswell, Forrester, twitter

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by Josh Bernoff

Home stretch time. 18 more companies ... selected reviews follow.

Boorah (2:08pm) -- Personalized restaurant guide. Aggregates restaurant reviews from across the Web, then synthesizes a rating and pulls out a few of the best comments into a compilation review. If you believe in the wisdom of crowds for restaurant reviews, this site is for you. (Only in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York so far . . . more markets coming later this year.) Also includes a mashup map from Google maps. This is part of a trend of companies trying to go above the whole Net experience -- the Google News for restaurant reviews, you might say.

Me.dium (2:28pm) -- "Reveals the hidden world of people and activity behind your browser." Open a window to see other me.dium users when visiting a site -- your friends and others. Then can start a discussion with those other visitors. This is one of those network ideas that only works when it hits a critical mass. Doesn't seem compelling enough to draw people into this world.

CircleUp (2:34) -- I like this idea since it solves a problem we all have (and so many of the ideas here don't). Namely -- you need to communicate with a group, like a little league team, a bunch of friends traveling, a volunteer organization -- and assemble answers to questions, address lists, stuff like that. Sort of like eVite for every question you might have of your group. We all have deal with sending out these sorts of emails and getting a blizzard of uncoordinated responses back, so this just makes sense. There's more to it than this, maps, pictures, etc -- that leads me to believe they're doing this right, and going to get better.

Nexo (2:40pm) -- "Myspace for groups." At this point the number of demos has become mind-numbing -- and yet there clearly is a need for this. Add feeds, pictures, polls, shared calendars, etc. to a site for your group, all of whom can collaboratively build the site. Integrates with email so group can keep in touch with what's happening.

DesignIn (2:56pm) -- Web-based design and product selections for remodeling. If you've ever done a remodel, you know how useful it would be to have a tool like this to get started. The quick drawing is plus, as are the ability to drop in and link to real products (sinks, stoves, etc.). The plan to add social aspects so you can see layouts used by other users in the system. Looks promising, may not be quite ripe yet.

My-Currency.com (3:02pm) -- Social predictions for real estate. To leverage the wisdom of the crowd you need a crowd. I think the crowd for this site is now on Zillow. And it's not clear how they can protect the site against gaming from, for example, people who want to drive prices down.

Aggregate knowledge (3:16pm) -- While you're browsing, take advantage of the browsing patterns of other people who've visited the same site. (Their "discovery window" was part of overstock.com.) On editorial sites, "user generated editorial" provides links to sites viewed by others who were visiting a news article (in use at washingtonpost.com). Can they make this available to individual users, not just sites?

Zoominfo PowerSearch 2007 (3:25pm) -- Semantic search -- info on companies and people. This engine is the search that a salesperson needs, surfacing the information businesspeople need to evalauate companies and people. Speaking as a researcher, I need this. Way better than the information in our company database.

Trailfire (3:29pm) -- Like del.icio.us for chains of pages. Mark page, highlight to a reader what's important on a page -- the specific point on the page. Then add another mark by marking another page with the same name. (Needs to download browser extension.) Others can discover -- the trail guides you to what others have discovered on the Web. You can rate others' trails. Trails even show up in google searches. I think this is a worthy next step beyond del.icio.us -- I've often wanted to mark specific points on the page and links to other pages.

Helium (3:40pm) -- A user-generated news site, and a good one. As a user generated news site, it's similar to what you see on agoravox.fr or gather.com. The difference here is that contributors generate a bunch of articles on the same topic. Visitors who do ratings see a pair of simliar articles and pick the one they like the best -- which causes the best articles to bubble to the top. Now they are adding debate on issues like "Should cellphone use in cars be banned?" Maybe Web dialogue won't just be shouting any more. Contributors with highly rated articles get paid. Does this have the potential to displace real content sites created by professional writers? Well, yes. And unlike Wikipedia, it's not a collaborative effort, it's competitive -- a different dynamic, better in some cases. Try it.

Textdigger (3:48) -- A new search engine that's supposed to be better than Google. Uses semantic knowledge of search tems to reorder Google search results. You can look under the hood to see how the semantic search is working. (You need a passcode to try it out for now.) Like blinkx, clearly an acquisition candidate for one of the big boys.

blinkx (3:58) -- I've talked to these guys a lot since I started writing about how video search stinks. Now they are releasing blinkx it. Post some code into a blog or any other site -- pops up video that matches the text in the site (a la Google AdSense). A quick way to get video into your site, would be better if the video search was better.

What a show! Look for these companies to change the way people interact. See you in the Groundswell.

Tags: Boorah, me.dium, CircleUp, DesignIn, Nexo, my-currency.com, Aggregate Knowledge, Zoominfo, Trailfire, Helium, Textdigger, blinkx, Demo07, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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by Josh Bernoff

Demo 2007 is an incredible overload of new stuff -- 48 six-minute demos in two days. But I've had a blast breaking it down for you. So here we go ahead, day 2.

Devicescape (8:45am) -- Devicescape Connect automates connections of devices to WiFi networks. Configure your devices from a Web-based control panel on your PC. Thirty hotspot providers in their service now, more coming. Especially useful for WiFi phones. Not clear if this is defensible -- might be easy for somebody else to duplicate -- but either way this type of service is needed for WiFi phones to take off.

WHISHER (8:52am) -- Social networking meets WiFi. Users mark WiFi hotspots virtually with info about the signal so other users can get access to it. (This used to be called "warchalking" but now it's online.) Users also share files with others on same WiFi -- and see who they are. This is a community they should have success building on -- people will get value out of being a part of this club.

Boston Power (9:11am) -- Strangely, started with an endorsement from HP instead of an actual demo. Everyone knows batteries suck and they haven't improved nearly as fast as other technology. Boston Power's laptop batteries charge in 30 minutes and last three years vs. a 6-month fade in many laptop batteries. Plus they don't explode or catch fire. How fast can they scale up manufacturing?

BUZ Interactive (9:19am) -- Mixes voice and popular music to leave mobile phone voicemail messages for people. To leave it, you open up a Web site, pick the music, and then record the message on the PC or on a phone. Can do the same for your own voicemail greeting. Free during beta. I think this could catch on -- next step beyond ringtones. Their app isn't working right now on my PC, so I can't tell you how wide a variety of music choices they have -- that will make a big difference in the success.

Jyngle (9:37am) -- From Brevient Technologies. Quickly send a voice message or SMS to groups. You set up the groups on a Web site (of course). The key here is the groups -- Jyngle hopes to create social networks for mobile phones. An interesting application -- businesses will create opt-in "phone mailing lists." Would you sign up?

[Interstitial note -- looking at all these mobile applications it's clear anything's possible, technically. The main question is 1) are the mobile operators going to allow, encourage, or block any of these, and 2) how will the user determine what's actually useful to him or her? ]

Tags: devicescape, WHISHER, Boston Power, Buz Interactive, Jyngle, Demo07, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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by Josh Bernoff

More notes from Demo07 . . . as they happen.

support.com (2:06pm) -- Order a system tuneup from home. Geek squad without the geeks. As long as your computer is online, they can diagnose it and fix it. What's not to love?

panjea.tv (2:40pm) -- "embeddable personalized video channels" -- can update and publish video streams. Choked during the demo. Clips pulled from YouTube, Google, etc. are sequenced into your own channel. This is an example of a growing phenomenon I'm calling "MySpace furniture" -- Web 2.0 products designed to create objects to put on your MySpace page. Buttons allow people to share, subscribe, embed a channel. Compare to SplashCast below.

ClipSyndicate (2:46pm) -- Syndicating video clips on the Web. Lots of suppliers, including local TV stations (news clips). A crowded space -- Brightcove, NBBC -- this is an idea many have had. Syndication of video will spread video broadly across sites all over the Web.

Magnify.net (2:53pm) -- Build your own TV channel. Type in the keywords, it assembles the video. Searches Google, YouTube, Revver, blip, etc. Community wisdom builds the site even better. Example: yousurftubes, a surfer video site. At weather.com, allows people to submit their own videos and vote on them. www.demotv.magnify.net is the demo channel they built on the fly. What's the business model?

Followup next day: Magnify read the post and explained their busines model -- ads in their sites.

Yodio (3:00pm) -- Put audio and photos together to make a "yodio." Record your own audio on the phone. Then add an image or images to create a "YodioCard" or "YodioCast," including adding description and tags. More MySpace furniture.

ink2 (3:23pm) -- For sites with a collection of graphics -- add a "make a print product" button to your graphics. Then generate a card, poster, etc. and have it mailed to somebody with your personal message. Print cards at www.ink2.com/demo. Nice, quick idea -- and retro, making printed material from the Web.

VUVOX (3:28pm) -- Destined to be a leader in the MySpace furniture space. Combine your photos, audio, videos (from flickr, Youtube, and your hard drive) and the like to create a video "experience" that combines them in creative ways. Goes beyond the normal combinations to create a wide variety of different-looking and attractive formats. Then publish to MySpace or wherever you want. Advertising partners can integrate their messages into these vuvox objects.

Splashcast (3:34) -- These guys prebriefed me, too. Still more MySpace furniture. In this case, they create a player that instead of showing one video, shows whatever video collection is currently being fed into it. That is, a viewer can subscribe to a creator's "channel" which will show whatever text, photos, video, and audio the creator is currently feeding to it. Sort of "podcasting" meets video streaming. I think both this and VUVOX are likely to catch on with the MySpace crowd -- creators get to create with more variety, and collectors get to subscribe to or display that content very easily.

OurStory (3:49pm) -- Create online timeline with photos and stories for your kid, your parent, or whomever you are documenting. Then publish online or as a hardcover book. (SharedBook, which also presented, also allows you to create books from online content.) Add commentary from others online. Also includes ability to create a community around the "story." The encouraging thing about this is that story is a fundamental element of how people communicate -- and one that's not now prevalent on the Web. OurStory tries to fill that gap.

MixPo (3:55pm) -- Still more MySpace furniture. MixCards combining photos that you can drop into your blog or MySpace page. All of a sudden this space is crowded. Just announced distribution deal with Microsoft.

Tags: support.com, yodio, magnify.net, ClipSyndicate, panjea.tv, VUVOX, SplashCast, OurStory, Mixpo, Myspace furniture, Demo07, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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By Josh Bernoff

Posts on interesting stuff at Demo (completely subjective definition of "interesting"). . .

Zink Imaging (9:00 am) -- "printing without ink" -- replaces dot matrix ink with treated paper, allowing for a very small photo printer. (Smaller than a pack of cigarettes.) A Polaroid spinoff. This has real potential to unlock all those billions of photos stuck on digital cameras. They are licensing, including licensing it to be included in cameras (an instant-print camera -- it's Polaroid all over again). The key question how much does the paper cost?

Qtech (9:12am) -- "Reqall" -- use your phone as a dictaphone. Leave yourself a message. Can create text transcripts and deliver to you by email.  Needs some tagging features, but could be great for nearly-50-somethings like me who are always forgetting!

Eyejot (9:26am) -- quick and easy record and send video mail. Once recorded, easy to put into email, social network pages (like MySpace), in iTunes, mobile devices. This looks like a winner -- low overhead, slips easily into the matrix of technology that everybody is already using. Look for this to spread rapidly. Go to eyejot.com/join.

[Interstitial insight . . . the pitches at this conference and their acceptance or rejection have an awful lot in common with what I saw on American Idol last night.]

Worklight (10:10am) -- This one surprised me. RSS feeds from your corporate databases. Greatest invention since screen-scraping. Clash of cultures -- Web 2.0 meets your corporate apps. How hard is it reallly to integrate? Worth watching -- corporate America needs a dose of Web 2.0.

Norton Identity Client (10:16am) -- Protect your personal information while transacting online. Audacious attempt to stake a claim on your ID and managing it. How will the commerce sites react -- will they play along? More importantly, will Microsoft eventually crush this with Passport? If anybody can do this, Symantec (parent of Norton) is positioned well to do it.

Quick update after a conversation with these folks. This is better than I thought. First, they'll create a special email address for your interaction with commerce sites -- the email gets forwarded back to you, but this makes it easier to track down spam and its spread, and even cut it off. And second, they'll be bundling this into Norton products, which people subscribe to anyway -- a great way to roll it out and make it popular.

Jaman (10:22am) -- "social cinema" -- These guys prebriefed me. HD player, library of indie and foreign film, and community. Uses P2P technology. A very challenging area to succeed in -- problems include the fact that very few TVs are connected to the Net, and previous entrants like MovieLink, CinemaNow, and Starz Vongo haven't taken off. I'm not convinced the community will take off.

Tags: zink, reqall, Worklight, Jaman, Norton Identity Client, Demo07, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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