A select group of digerati arrived in Huntington Beach, Calif. this week for the DEMO fall conference, which focuses on many brand new technologies and has served as the launch pad for many successful products and services. Here are some of the highlights:
Startup company Phantom Technologies is demonstrating its patented audio processing technology called Ss3®, which is designed to bring studio-like audio quality to the Apple iPod and other digital music players. At its core is an audio circuit that reveals subtle spatial cues, improves the separation between instruments and voices, and enhances three-dimensional realism for surround sound-like effects. The buzz from the show has it that Phantom-based iPod accessories will be hot during the holiday season. Targus already has a small Phantom circuit-based product for the iPod called SoundUP.
At most businesses, protecting PCs from malware means installing software patches and rebooting—often at disruptive times. At DEMO, security software firm Determina is unveiling a new kind of software for fighting malware before reboots, until a convenient patch time arises.
Rather than patching vulnerable programs on disks, necessitating a reboot, Determinas LiveShield technology, part of its Vulnerability Protection Suite and based on MIT research, inserts replacement code for programs running in memory as soon as IT staffers become aware of vulnerabilities, until a reboot is convenient. “Determina VPS closes the exploit window,” says Yankee Group analyst Andrew Jaquith. If it works dependably, thats a lot of downtime saved.
With a new spin on online hiring, H3.com is demonstrating its cash reward referral hiring application at DEMO. Co-founder and CEO Hans Gieskes was formerly president of Monster.com. Like Jobster.com, H3.coms system works by encouraging referrals in order to identify the best candidates. However, H3.com is unique in that the company earns no commission and charges no fees whatsoever unless an employee is actually hired, in which case the fee is typically 10 percent of the reward the hiring company offered. “We dont get paid until there is a hire,” emphasizes Gieskes.
