DEMO: Today's Web becomes a two-way street

The opening sessions at the DEMOfall conference in San Diego were kicked off with an interesting take on the evolution of the Web by executive producer Chris Shipley. Since the beginning of the Web, it's grown from a mostly-text online inventory of information to a transactional Web, a place buying and selling occurred. Later, it shifted again, into a social platform that we commonly refer to as Web 2.0. Now, the next shift is coming, morphing into what Shipley calls the "distributed Web." Some of the emerging technologies being showcased at DEMO look at the distribution, syndication and integration of content, which basically means we want to create, find and access content on the Web (even if it doesn't look like the standard Web site) from anywhere, at any time and using any device.

The first DEMO session on Monday featured a number of examples that fall under this theme's umbrella:

Alerts.com: This is the first service I signed up for today and am anxious to see how it works during the Monday Night Football game I'll miss tonight because I'll be tied up with the conference. I asked for an alert to be sent by SMS text to my phone, notifying me every time the score of the game changes. Last night, I was launching my mobile browser to stay updated on the scores but tonight I'll wait for the scores to come to me.

As of now, the company has about 30 pre-configured feeds - everything from traffic and weather alerts to craigslist listings and neighborhood gas prices to headlines and press releases. And I can customize the alerts however I want. I think I'll take sports scores on my phone but headlines via email. And the company is utilizing an open source platform so that developers could create alerts for anything else they can imagine. (My mom will love the lottery results when that launches soon.) The company is also making the platform available to any school in North America, to create a system that delivers important messages to parents who cutstomize how they should be reached. (That will come in handy for those folks who deal with snow days.)

RealDVD: Real Networks introduced RealDVD, a product that will put the home DVD collections right alongside the music CD collections - in the attic. What it does is "rip" the movie to your computer - either on the hard drive, an external drive or even a flash drive for portability. The software, which will be $30 when it goes on sale later this month, will give the user the license to make a single copy of a DVD, playable only on the Windows computer that ripped it. But, for an additional $20, users can authorize playback on another computer, up to 5. The user interface is pretty easy to follow and the ripping process includes all of the extras that come on the DVD. As cool as this is, it's also likely to be controversial, given Hollywood's historical response to CD ripping and resistance to breaking encryption on DVDs.

The New TV: And speaking of digital video, there were several launches that surrounded the discovery and viewing of  video - some TV, some on the Web.

BeeTV has created a personal TV channel product best described by the company through its slogan: Don't search for content, let the content find you. The technology recalls what you've watched, what your interests and tastes are and searches broadcast television to see what's on that you might like. That kind of beats scrolling up and down that on-screen channel guide, looking for something good. Another product, called RemoTV allows you to take your own content - videos, pictures, music - and place them into "channels" that can then be streamed from any Web-connected platform - be it a Web site, a Facebook page or a mobile phone.

Aggregating Web video: Increasingly, the video content on the Web isn't just the YouTube skateboarding tricks - obviously. Web video aggregators Channels.com and Invision.tv have created products that help users sift through and discover Web video in a way that makes it easy to sift through.

So when you want the latest news clip from, say, ZDNet, you can find it quickly - just like you would in your on-screen program guide.

Photos: One of the coolest things I've seen with photos so far has nothing to do with manipulation, tagging or editing. Instead, it's all about selling. My wife has become quite the amateur photographer and we've even taken a few of her shots and had them enlarged, matted and framed as artwork for our living room. But most photos end up in the computer photo album - and that's where they stay. Photrade - which promises not to be another photo site - allows users to price and sell their pics or a license to use them.

And, in also incorporates an advertising element (think AdSense for photos) that allows users to publish them on a blog or Web site free of charge in an exchange for a clickable ad under the photo. It's a good business model that could really turn everyday folks into small-time entrepreneurs - just like eBay did for some people.

DEMO continues today and tomorrow.