This conference definitely lived up to my expectations. Out of 77 products, the majority deserved to be there and I think we’ll be hearing more about these over the next several months. While most were impressive, my personal favorites included Visible Measures, Jodange, Leapfrog’s Tag Reading System, SpeakLike and Green Plug.

Congratulations to the following companies for winning the DEMOgod Awards:

• xtranormal, Inc.
• Flypaper, Inc.
• LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc.
• Education.com
• Vidyo, Inc.
• Ecrio, Inc.
• Sprout, Inc.
• Green Plug, Inc.
• Livescribe, Inc.
• BitGravity, Inc.
• atlaspost.com (People’s Choice Award)

Thanks again to Tech Confidential and Josh Jaffe for helping me obtain a last-minute pass to the Conference and a special thanks to DEMO Executive Producer, Chris Shipley, for organizing a great conference and making sure those of us with press passes had access to plenty of caffeine and candy!

With a single click, TubeMogul allows video producers to distribute videos online to a wide variety of video sharing sites. Then, from a single TubeMogul dashboard, these producers can track on which sites their videos are most popular and how many people are watching them. According to the CEO, Brett Wilson, TubeMogul currently has 15,000 video producers using the Site. At DEMO ’08, the Company launched a premium version of the software for $500 per month that offers the ability to deploy more videos each month and additional analytical tools for measuring video performance.

Visible Measures just debuted VisibleSuite, which hosts videos for online distribution and offers producers the ability to measure audience behavior, such as how often the videos are viewed and for how long. Other analytical data available includes geographic location, which segments of the video are replayed the most, and where videos are syndicated across the Web. The Company just closed a $13.5 million Series B round led by Mohr Davidow Ventures and joined by return investor, General Catalyst Partners.

Perry Wu, Founder of BitGravity was on stage this morning at DEMO ’08 debuting BG LiveBroadcast, a platform that offers real-time and live high definition video broadcasting via the Web. This will offer users the opportunity to watch television shows, movies, and even live sports broadcasts live on the Web. BitGravity is currently streaming the DEMO ’08 Conference live. Click here to check it out.

Filing my way through the packed exhibition hall at DEMO ’08 can be challenging, but it was well worth the effort to spend time with Larry Levy, Co-founder and CEO of Jodange. The Company is launching it’s first-ever product tomorrow, Top of Mind, which allows users to analyze positive, negative and neutral opinions posted on the Web about companies.

According to Larry, current users include large financial institutions primarily for investment research. Jodange has also developed a widget and has hinted at a possible partnership with Google Finance to promote Top of Mind at the consumer level.

From my 5-minute intro from Larry, it seems that most of the opinions are extracted from articles written by financial analysts with only a few originating from the blogosphere. Using a patent-pending set of algorithms, Top of Mind can analyze these articles and blogs, even when they are written in first, second or third-person.

Users can track historical information about companies, including stock prices (with historical charts) and opinions that coincide with the daily activity. Below is a good screenshot showing this:

The Company has already received capital from angel investors and is currently seeking its first round from institutions.

NotchUp, an internet startup that helps companies recruit top-tier employees told a great story about its beta launch during its DEMO ’08 presentation. On January 21st, the Company invited 250 people to join a private password protected beta. One of those people then invited 100 of their friends and one of those people then invited 300 of their friends. For the demo today (8 days later), the Company told us that they now have over 50,000 users (and that they had to find a new dedicated host). Now that’s the power of the Web….

Ribbit, a Silicon Valley startup has just launched Amphibian, an online platform that acts as an extension to your mobile phone. You can send and receive calls, check your voicemail, and much more, all without requiring your mobile phone in-hand. All you need is access to the web.

As you’re on the phone with the caller, Ribbit will pull information about the caller onto the homepage, including recent news, blog postings, and twitter, flickers, and birthday information associated with the caller. And if you don’t want to use the Ribbit desktop, you can use one of thousands of developer apps based on Ribbit’s open APIs. These apps will allow you to pull Ribbit into your iGoogle, Facebook and MySpace pages. There is even a Ribbit desktop phone that looks like an iPhone called the AIR iPhone (pictured above).

The Company has received funding from Alsop-Louie Partners, Allegis Capital and KPG Ventures.

SpeakLike is one very cool technology being debuted at DEMO ‘08. The software offers real-time language translation while you type (primarily for chat purposes). During the 6-minute demo, the Company featured a chat with three people who all speak different languages (Chinese, English and Spanish). And it worked! It also translates slang and idioms.

LeapFrog announced the launch of Tag Reading System this morning at DEMO ’08. The Tag Reading System allows children to use a handheld device to help them learn to read. The device can recognize images and text from books just by tapping on them. Parents can download the audio onto the device and can even monitor their child’s reading progression and learning trends using the computer-based application.

As I was leaving the DEMO ’08 opening reception, I ran into Brian Del Vecchio from good2gether. His team is launching a site that will allow charities to list volunteer opportunities, upcoming events and in-kind donation needs and have this information syndicated online to newspapers and media partners. The Site will also offer a widget allowing the same information to be posted on the nonprofit’s website. 

I’m not the only one to think that good2gether a clever idea. According to the Company, it has already raised $1.5 million from private investors. 

Here’s a sneak peek of what to expect during the DEMO ’08 Conference

A Packed Opening Reception

The Demo ’08 Presentation Room

Tonight is the official kickoff of the DEMO ‘08 Conference out here in Palm Desert. For those that aren’t familiar with this event, DEMO hosts a series of conferences each year to provide a launching pad for innovative technology products. To be selected for the show, a product must:

• Make its public debut at the DEMO conference
• Make a significant contribution to the state of the art in its target market
• Change the dynamics of the marketplace into which it is introduced
• Be backed by a management team capable of delivering the product to market

This show in particular will feature 77 new tech products that will be debuted over the next couple days. Each company will have approximately 6 minutes to do live demonstration on stage in front of venture capitalists, angel investors, journalists (and bloggers), and tech-geeks.

I was fortunate enough to land a press-pass last minute (this morning) with the help of Tech Confidential and will be covering the Conference for the next couple days. Be sure to check back regularly for updates from the show.