Rated: Eight new technologies from DEMO 07

Palm Desert -- Wednesday morning's Demo sessions spanned the usual startup gamut from the useful to the useless and a few in-between. In order of appearance here's what the demos in the desert had to offer today. Ferran Moreno, CEO and founder of Whisher.com hopes to bring some order to the chaotic world of free Internet access where users freely share their Wi-Fi connection with other users. With the Whisher cl

Palm Desert -- Wednesday morning's Demo sessions spanned the usual startup gamut from the useful to the useless and a few in-between.
In order of appearance here's what the demos in the desert had to offer today.

Ferran Moreno, CEO and founder of Whisher.com hopes to bring some order to the chaotic world of free Internet access where users freely share their Wi-Fi connection with other users.

With the Whisher client installed, when a user finds a typical list of available networks Whisher adds its logo to those networks that are accessible.

Even though the network indicates that it is locked, the Whisher logo indicates that someone on that network is willing to allow the visitor to essentially use their user name and password to hop on board.

The actual log on details are not revealed, rather the Whisher software takes care of the log on in the background.

The software also allows users to exchange files--using drag and drop, in the Whisher environment-- as well as see a list of local users willing to chat.

It also can create message boards for user comments like rating the quality of the coffee in the cafe you may be sitting in.
MY TAKE: if in a perfect world there were millions of Whisher-enabled Wi-Fi networks this would be extremely useful. However, its survival depends on whether or not it can indeed market well enough to accomplish that goal.

Nuvoiz, says founder and CEO Chong-Jin Kah, is Skype for the enterprise.

"Skype is a wonderful consumer software but it is also a nightmare for IT managers. It is non-standard and has no management system to provision users."

Nuvoiz sits both on the client device, on a server platform and is connected to the IP-PBX system in the office.

It offers the typical call control buttons like chat, call recording, call hold, mute, call conference and call transfer.

The provisioning server can monitor and configure users among its many management features.

It also connects to standard SIP and Java servers on the backend.

MY TAKE: Nuvoiz has the right idea. Either a large company will buy Nuvoiz and use the technology or create their own.

In either case, I think Nuvoiz as a brand name will not exist for too long.

The timing for the introduction of Boston-Power's new battery for laptops couldn't be better considering the promise that its batteries won't explode or catch fire in your lap.

Introduced by the other Woz, John Wozniak, Master Technologist in Hewlett-Packard's Personal Systems Group, Wozniak said HP is very excited about Boston Power's Sonata product.

[By the way, I asked John Wozniak if he was related to Apple's creator and he said no.]