Here are a few interesting products I saw yesterday at DEMO.
Cloudmark (formerly SpamNet) showed off a browser add-on called SafetyBar for Internet Explorer. It’s a logical extension of their SafetyBar for Outlook and Outlook Express, which uses a community-based filtering system to very effectively block spam and viruses. The idea behind the SafetyBar for IE is simple: You install the add-in, which puts a new toolbar in the IE window (sorry, this product doesn’t work with Firefox). Every time you visit a Web site you can rate it as safe or unsafe. Meanwhile, an entire community of other Cloudmark users are doing the same. If you receive an e-mail with a link to a Web site that’s “phishing” for personal information, chances are the site has already been rated unsafe, which means you’ll see a warning message when you click the link. My take? It’s still a reactive process. This sort of checking should be done at the ISP level, and it shouldn’t be up to the user to install yet another piece of security software. I’m also concerned that the overhead of checking URLs against the Cloudmark database will slow down browsing.
Photoleap showed off a very interesting free application that solves some of the inherent problems with sharing digital photos. E-mail is a terrible way to share photos, especially hi-res copies of multiple images. Online services add an unnecessary layer of complexity. Photoleap (available in Windows and Mac versions) lets you open what looks like an ordinary e-mail window and drag in a bunch of photos. You add the recipients’ addresses and your message and click Send. The program converts the photos into thumbnails and sends a link to the recipient, who can then install Photoleap to pick up the full assortment of pictures you sent. I definitely want to try this one out. The free version limits photos to 2 megapixels and 25 photos per message and also displays ads in a sidebar. If you want to send or receive larger photos or send more than 25 at a time (and get rid of those pesky ads), pay $29 for the Plus version. You can try the Plus version free for 30 days.
Teleo has a new voice-over-IP service that gives you a personal phone number for $4.95 a month and the opportunity to make free PC-to-PC calls and receive unlimited calls from anyone (with or without a PC) or send calls to any number (including land lines) for a pretty low cost. Generally, the cost was very low – in the 2–cents-a-minute range for outbound calls from the U.S. to land lines in Europe. I haven’t been tempted by the Skype hype, but this one sounds like a tremendous deal. (Update: Stuart Henshall has a longer evaluation of Teleo and calls it “a real winner.” I found the link via his Skype Journal.)
I’ll have more later today.
Ed Bott 