Demo Fall2011-- WeVideo Rocks my World, OMYMeds.com Keeps me Safe from Dangerous Drug Interactions, And I-Postmortem Could replace Obits

Executive producer Matt Marshall’s demonstrator picks for Demo Fal2011 came from all over the world and clearly show that the technology community is still unbridled.

Demo has always been a time-sensitive snapshot of the entrepreneurial economy and the image of that ecosystem was razor sharp at Demo Fall2011.

One of the first companies I sought out at this years show is a medical related website aimed at consumers called OMyMeds.com.

The OMyMeds.com website is a visual database of commonly prescribed pharmaceuticals and over the counter drugs. The displayed images are linked to database information on why the medicine is prescribed, how it works and most importantly, known side effects and conflicts with other medications a patient may be taking.

The new website also can link it’s users to the prescribing physician or pharmacist.

With millions of baby boomers moving into Medicare coverage every year, OMYMeds.com has a huge potential audience. I found it easier to use than my HMO’s website and think the information on drug interactions makes this a go to Web site for credible data. And, OMYMeds is not funded at pharma companies, which was one of my fist questions to its President and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Eugene Spiritus, who is also chief medical officer of the University of California Irvine’s Medical Center.

The more I use OMYMeds.com, the more I believe this start-up could be sitting on a gold mine-- if it chooses to license or sell its technologies to large HMOs hoping to forge strong bonds with their patients/members.

 

Demonstrator I-PostMortem, was at the opposite end of the spectrum fromOMYMeds.com, with two products, I-Tomb and I-Memorial. This European startup did a great job of explaining its market and how it would serve that market with products that can be used to memorialize the approximately 15 million people who pass away in North America and Europe yearly.

I-PostMortem’s fit nicely into a market that’s become a money maker-- paid obituaries.

In the recent past, newspapers routinely carried pages of staff-wriiten obituaries. With shrinking editorial budgets, however, the number of obits have diminished and have been replaced by classified-display advertising memorializing deceased lives. I-tomb and I-Memorial are memorial sites contained within a “virtual cemetery” where personal messages, photos and other info can be securely stored could replace of obituary pages.

But how this developer intends to attract markets was not explained in its presentation and changing consumer expectations can be a daunting task. Also here in the US, I-PostMortem faces an entrenched competitor-- Legacy.com, which has already dug a wide niche in the obit/memoriam market.

WeVideo is yet another example of something Demo excels at; spotlighting a new company or technology thst transforms an existing category. Video editing software is a category that’s been around for a long time. But with one exception-- it’s been an application that’s expensive and which has a sky high learning curve. WeVideo breaks this mold and runs very well on out of the box Wintel desktops and notebooks. on consumer-grade broadband connections.

I love WeVideo’s dashboard controls and use of drag and drop for simple editing tasks such as adding music or text overlays.

The gold standard for this category is Apple’s iMovie-- which is bundled with Macintosh. WeVideo is on a par with iMovie, but is cloud-based and unlike Apple’s product, it can simultaneously post edited videos to multiple social media sites.

This application is currently being used by more than 250,000 students and its developer reports they are close to signing deals with camera and Wintel hardware makers.

Of the 80 products I saw at Demo, WeVideo is the one application I believe I need to have. The reason: in today’s market, book proposals need to include ideas for using social media and the topic of the book I want to write includes California vistas, rugged individuals working alongside fast flowing streams and bright shiny yellow metal that photographs well. my choices are a handycam or a heavy Bellieu camera and 15 pound battery pack. WeVideo lets me do the video I need to include with a one pound handycam.

Demo Fall has come a long way since it’s beginnings as DemoMobile in the Mid 1990’s. I have additional demonstrator posts I’ll put up in the coming days. My final thoughtl Matt Marshall did a great job!--Jim Forbes on September 15, 2011.

(disclosure: I was the founding producer of DemoMobile.)