The second day of Demo got off to a much better start than Day 1, with a couple of promising semantic Web applications starting off the vendor presentations.
Ensembli is a simple but potentially effective Web site for finding news stories across the Web on specific topics of interest. Even more powerful was Evri, a Web-based service that can be installed on sites to automatically pull in links and other information relevant to the content being viewed on the Web site. Evri also has a browser plug-in that helps users find relevant information on topics while surfing Web sites.
Probably one of the most useful products shown in the morning session of Day 2 was Presto, from Xandros. Presto is a simple application that can be installed on any Windows system. When booting the system, users can choose to boot into Presto instead of Windows; since Presto is lightweight and runs in memory, the system boots in seconds and runs very efficiently. Presto includes most of the applications needed to surf the Web, view media and communicate with friends, and it’s designed to run well on old hardware.
Also of some interest in these presentations was Purewire, a security Web service that alerts users to both Web sites and users of social networks and other services that may not be trustworthy. Also nice was that Purewire can detect problems on legitimate sites, such as banner ads that might be infected with malware.
With the smaller and revamped schedule for this show, the morning sessions marked the end of new product presentations at Demo. The rest of the day is being used for panel sessions and discussions and the evening will see the awarding of the people’s choice awards for the best products at Demo 09.