Demo Conference 2005 - Arizona

A new crop of tools aims to help turn the Web — be it on the public Internet or a company network — into much more than a collection of documents one visits like a museum: Look, but don't touch.

The idea is to make it easy to quickly post and remove stuff from digital bulletin boards where the online communities of the future will gather to catch up and trade ideas, images and work.

"We're turning the Web into a conversation," said Glenn Reid, chief executive and founder of Five Across.

Reid's startup and several other companies will offer their visions for accomplishing that on stage at the DEMO conference in Arizona, an annual showcase of tech innovation.

All are trying to address in one way or another an emerging trend of making the Web less disjointed and more democratized — a richer, more organized forum for gathering and sharing information.

Voice over IP provider Teleo demonstrated a new low cost Internet telephony solution Monday that will allow users to receive VOIP calls over their cell phone or regular telephone. Users will also be able to make a call simply by clicking on a telephone number in an e-mail or on the Web.

The Teleo service will cost $4.95 USD per month for 250 minutes of calling time, or $2.95 USD each month for a "Lite" version that includes 150 minutes. The company will also offer a 30-day free trial that includes 25 minutes of access.

Jambo is their solution. It advances the idea of "social networking" Web sites like Friendster, Orkut and LinkedIn by using software to take location into account and wireless technology to alert you when people you might want to meet are nearby.

If two Jambo users are within 300 feet of each other--and if they share a few common interests--they might be talking face-to-face within minutes, says Young.

Most of those in this class on entrepreneurship are young enough and comfortable enough with Internet technology to fit the profile of the kind of user that Young, 33, and Ribaudo, 32, are going after. Yet the audience is underwhelmed. They don't seem to get what the software is for or how they might find it useful.

I used to go to Demo all the time. It was the best place to go see new companies.

But somewhere along the way, a lot of the most interesting companies got funded before they got to Demo. And the audience is full of VCs, so the unfunded ones were funded pretty shortly thereafter. So it became an exercise in frustration for me.