Latest and Greatest Technologies from DigitalLife

I was invited to the DigitalLife Conference last week to see the latest and greatest technologies. It was a great conference, kudos to the organizers! I used my press pass to go to most of the keynote presentations and special announcements and for the most part the presentations were great

I was, of course, focused on the tools that are out there to help professionals, our members, to work more efficiently and effectively. Below is a list of companies (with a brief description of their products or services) whose representative I spoke with, that are offering products and services that can make us all more productive.

Tools to help us work more Efficiently and Effectively

Simulscribe – It is much easier and time efficient to read or visually scan your voicemail vs; listening to it. You won’t have to replay it to try to get a number or to figure out what someone was saying. In addition to the text version, SimulScribe will also send you the .wav file so you can still hear the message. – Their words – SimulScribe utilizes cutting edge voice recognition technology to convert your voicemail messages into text. They deliver your transcribed voicemail, along with the original audio, to your mobile phone, PDA, and/or email account. This process streamlines your communication flow, saving you both time and money

IRIS – How many of you networkers have stacks of business cards with rubber bands around them…thinking that you will enter them into your contact database one day? You will probably never get to it. I visited the IRIS booth where they showed me the IRISCard mini4 and pro4 card scanner. Their words – The IRISCard quickly scans your paper business cards, captures the information they contain and instantaneously creates electronic contacts to be sent to your favorite contact manager, such as Outlook, etc.

Yousendit – When your file is way too big for email or you need to get a large file to your client right now, use Yousendit.com. There is no zipping or compressing your files. With Yousendit, you can FTP your important documents to a secure server and they are available to download instantly.

Circleup – If your team members or group members are spread far and wide Circleup helps you connect easier and communicate more effectively with everyone on your team. Their Words- CircleUp is a social communication service that turbo-charges email and instant messaging for information gathering, collaboration and decision making in online and offline groups and communities.

Keynotes and Presentations

Just in time for the Holiday Season, Ed Colligan, CEO of Palm introduced the Palm Centro Smartphone with their strategic alliance Sprint. The Centro is a feature rich mobile phone with a great design and all of the functionality one would want in a phone. Their words – Palm Centro gives you voice, text, IM, email and web,1 all in a phone that’s a lot smaller than you think. It even has a touchscreen and a full keyboard and all at $99 exclusively with Sprint service.

From Hewlett Packard, Philip McKinney, CIO of Personal Systems Group, presented about and demonstrated their new Blackbird 002 computer one of the quietest in its class. It is liquid cooled and has toolless access for maintenance. Perhaps more interesting to me was Conversa – Mobile video conversations. Their words – It is video streaming technology. It is like a Yahoo! Group. But instead of text conversation it is video…in almost real time. My words – The demo was great. Conversa is purely experimental but I can see a lot of real world applications for it.

Microsoft – The Microsoft Media Center capabilities were pretty cool in that it helps to organize, optimize and synchronize the way people can watch their various forms of media from TV to movies to digital photographs and home video etc. Also, having access to your entertainment from anywhere in your home via your wireless or wired network was great.

IRobot – Perfect for my mother or actually for my nephew, iRobot introduced the Looj, a remote controlled robot that will clean your home’s gutters. It is better for larger roofs or roofs that don’t have many corners but it seems to me it would be a great time saver and keep my nephew off the roof.

All in all it was a great conference. I met a lot of great people and there was a lot of innovation. Check out all of the products and services above and see which ones will work for you.