Palm Desert, California: Exactly one year ago at the DEMO 2007 technology conference, Adobe showcased Adobe AIR (then code-named ‘Apollo.’)

While many software developers have been focused in recent years on ways to move desktop applications onto the Web, Adobe Air makes it possible to move internet applications to the desktop.

Technically speaking, Adobe Air is a cross-operating system application runtime that enables web developers to use their existing web development skills in HTML, AJAX, Flash and Flex to build and deploy rich Internet applications for the desktop.

At Demo 2008 now underway in Desert Springs, California the first batch of applications based on Adobe Air are being unveiled.

They include:

Acesis which is using Adobe AIR and Adobe Flex to create point-of-care applications for its target market of small medical practices with up to 10 doctors. The company’s physician information system provides two interfaces – an AIR-based interface for physicians designed to replace pen and paper, and a browser-based interface for patients.

Fabrik’s next generation online service, Joggle, uses Adobe AIR to provide a single, aggregated view of a user’s personal content, no matter where it resides. Joggle finds and catalogues digital content whether it is stored locally or remotely on a web-based server and makes it easy for people to find, mange, access and share their photos, music, videos, and files.

2Win Solutions’ KonoLive is instant collaboration software that aims to make it easier to collaborate with colleagues and share knowledge. The service uses Adobe AIR and Flex to facilitate instant and uninterrupted collaboration across a wide range of systems.

Among the advantages, Fabrik’s CEO Mike Cordano claimed using Adobe Air had enabled the company to build a desktop application without forcing the company to hire a new team of desktop developers.

The Demo technology conference underway in Desert Springs, California always throws up a few standout start-ups – along with lots of ‘me-toos.’ Among the standouts this time around were a couple of communications start-ups with practical and interesting products and services that have the potential to disrupt.

My favourite was Toktumi (pronounced talk-to-me), whose product (also called Toktumi) provides small and home office businesses with a full-functioned PC-based office phone system at really low cost. Toktumi – described by one of my colleagues here as ‘Skype for grown-ups” – is actually a hosted PBX (private branch exchange) service running on the company’s servers in San Francisco.

“There are 40m people working in small businesses with one to nine employees, half of who work out of their homes,” says Peter Sisson, CEO and founder. “This market segment has been ignored by by most providers .”

The basic Toktumi software is a free download and runs on virtually any PC turning it into a powerful yet simple to operate office system complete with call transfer, voicemail, conferencing and auto attendant in less than five minutes. The software requires no special hardware, but helpfully Toktumi also offers an adapter that enables users to plug any standard analogue desktop phone into a USB port completing the setup.

The free version of the service comes with a free phone number (likely to be an out-of-the-way rural area code so don’t expect a 415 or 212 number) voicemail and free calling and conferencing with other Toktumi customers worldwide. For $13-a-month and 2-cents a minute, users can upgrade to a premium version that allows outbound calls to regular phones worldwide and allows customers to select their phone number or port their current POTS (plain old telephone service) number over to Toktumi.

None of this functionality is really new, but the way Toktumi puts the PC at the centre of the office phone system is unique. There is also one really cool feature called ‘Search Dialing’ which enables users to place calls from a PC simply by typing in the name of the person, company or category of company you want to call. Toktumi then trawls through your PC contact book and then the web to find the number you are looking for and presents them on screen ready to click and dial.

The Toktumi service is currently available as an invitation-only beta form but Sisson hopes to make it generally available shortly. In the meantime, he notes, about half of those signing up for the beta are overseas.

The other comms company that caught my attention at Demo was Ribbit which describes itself as “Silicon Valley’s first phone company.” Ribbit’s Amphibian technology platform is designed to bridge the gap between a mobile phone and an internet-connected PC.

Among its features, Amphibian enables users to manage mobile voicemail as though it is email on your computer and on your mobile phone, convert voicemail into text to make voice messages shareable and searchable, and make mobile calls from any browser or web page - such as iGoogle, Facebook et al. The interface is smooth and polished and because Ribbit’s APIs (application program interfaces) are open, the technology is already attracting a host of cool third-party add-ons.

One of the consequences of the evolution of the web from a text-heavy to an increasingly video centric medium is that search tools also need to evolve.

UK-based Blinkx and AOL’s Truveo unit led the way with video search tools that enable users to track down and watch video clips by entering search key words in a browser window.

Clipblast takes video search one step further by making it possible to search and watch video through a widget without having to launch a browser or visit a particular web site. As Demo presenter Chris Shipley noted, delivering online content directly to users bypassing the standard browser is an emerging trend worth watching.

Clipblast’s founders claim the service has the largest web video index and that its web video crawler identifies and indexes most new video uploads within minutes. The privately funded company hopes to tap into the growing demand for video search advertising revenues - a market expected to reach $3bn by 2010.

It is always good to kick off a conference - particularly a tech startup beauty show like Demo - with a splash. That is just what DemoFall’s longtime organiser, Chris Shipley, did with Digital Fountain, the kick off demonstrator at today’s event in San Diego.

Digital Fountain, a privately funded Fremont-based digital video infrastructure startup, showed off itsDF Splash technology which cleans up "lossy" IP-delivered video guaranteeing near broadcast quality video even when a sizable number of packets are dropped.

Digital Fountain demonstrated the technology’s rather impressive performance by deliberately dropping one tenth of one percent of the packets in a video stream, then half of one per cent and finally cranked the packets lost up to 20 per cent. Even with one fifth of the packets dropped, the video looked smooth and the accompanying audio was clean - pretty impressive.

In theory the technology could remove the need for Akamai-style edge video servers enabling companies to host video content wherever it is cheapest and makes most sense. Digital Fountain is actually using Amazon Web Services on a pay-as-you go basis so the technology could be rather disruptive for established players like Akamai and Limelight Networks that have invested fortunes in hardware-heavy content delivery networks.

Motorola had been hoping to make a big splash tomorrow morning with the announcement that five US mobile carriers will launch customised versions of its flagship next generation Razr handset, the MotoRazr2.

But somehow the carriers, led by Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, lost the plot and broke the news embargo on Friday spoiling Motorola’s show  - a pity because the struggling US handset maker has a lot riding on the success of the Razr2.

Motorola, which has been losing market share hand-over-fist to rivals including Finland’s Nokia since changing its strategy to focus on margins and profitable growth at the start of the year, is betting that the Razr2 - one of its first 3G-enabled handsets - will help halt the slide.

Tthe flip-phone-style Razr2 is slimmer and, Motorola claims, stronger than its predecessor, and includes several interesting innovations including a touch-sensitive external screen, ‘CrystalTalk’ technology designed to improve voice quality and stereo Bluetooth connectivity for that ‘wire-free music experience.’

Aside from Verizon and Sprint, Alltel, AT&T, T-Mobile USA and US Cellular will launch versions of the Razr2 over the next few weeks mostly priced around $250 with a new service agreement. Each of the carriers has a slightly different take on the new phone with some emphasising its music or video capabilities while others focus on its text messaging and voice features.

No word on how Ed Zander, Motorola’s beleagured CEO, reacted when he was told about the embargo breach, but I can’t imagine it was pretty.

If you are a musician, organising, travelling to and setting up practice sessions with other band members can be a hassle, particularly if the jam-session participants are geographically dispersed.

Pulling together a virtual music session over the internet would seem to provide a solution, but the problem until now has been that varying network latencies (delays) has made it impossible to stay in synch with other band members. EJamming believes it has the solution.

The company’s proprietary technology all but eliminates latency problems, enabling musicians to practise together in real time and in synch. Certainly, the live demo eJamming gave on stage at Demo 07 was impressive.

EJamming’s founders say the technology works best over relatively short internet hops up to about 200 miles, but they have managed to host transcontinental and even transatlantic jam sessions successfully.

EJamming’s software integrates with the company’s web portal, which includes musician profiles, music postings, blogs, job listings, an education centre, classified ads, backing tracks and music distribution, making it a must for all those budding Claptons, Hendrixs and Joplins out there.

Not to be confused with eJamming, Jaman’s services enable film buffs to discover, download and share their thoughts on independent films from around the globe that might otherwise never reach a wide audience.

Jaman combines a better-than-DVD-quality broadband download service with social networking features, enabling its users to compare notes on films, share experiences and make recommendations.

The potential market for the service, which charges $1.99 for a movie rental and $4.99 to own the film, is enormous. Apparently less than one per cent of films produced ever get distributed in the US. Film buffs take note.

Despite the proliferation of desktop and embedded video cams, video messaging/video email has not really taken off.

Eyejot, one of the startups showing their technology at the Demo 2007 conference, plans to change that with a simple to use video messaging service that uses flash technology and requires no complicated downloads, enabling anyone with a video cam to create video messages.

To create a video email, you go to Eyejot’s webpage www.eyejot.com, log on, record a video and press send. The intended recipient is alerted via an email message that a message is waiting and logs onto the Eyejot site to view it. Eyejot messages can also be viewed on any email and browser-equipped mobile device. The service is free initially but Eyejot plans to launch an enhanced $30-a-year service shortly.

Interestingly, users can also send video messages from a blog or embed them in a MySpace home page. Consumers can also view their Eyejot mailbox using Apple’s iTunes or via an RSS reader. Overall, Eyejot is impressive and could just be the service to turn video email into a mainstream service.

Meanwhile Brevient Technologies’ free voice and SMS messaging service dubbed Jyngle, combines real-time mobile technology and online social networking to facilitate group communication. Jyngle users create, send and receive mass messages using either a Web interface or their cell phones and, by joining public groups or creating their own, they can remain up to date on social activities and business information while on the go.

Sign me up! Jyngle looks like a cool way to stay in touch with family, friends and potentially colleagues.

San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds made a cameo appearance at the Demo technology conference today on behalf of a company called Bling Software that has built the industry’s first - and supposedly only - AJAX-powered client for mobile applications.

The admirably named Bling Player enables anyone who can build a regular web page to author a rich mobile video site quickly and easily while viewers get smooth video without the slow response times that plague most current mobile video offerings.

That’s all well and good, but what the Demo audience really wanted to know was when Mr Bonds planned to sign his new contract, which reportedly gives the Giants an out should the baseball star end up being indicted on steroid abuse charges. Sadly he wasn’t taking questions….

Some of the smartest ideas in technology are also the hardest to explain until you actually see them in operation. Adobe’s ‘Apollo’ technology, which made its debut at the Demo conference today, is a case in point.

Adobe describes Apollo as "the code name for a cross operating system runtime that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills in HTML, JavaScript, AJAX, Flash and Flex in order to build and deploy rich internet applications to the desktop."

Roughly translated, I think that means Apollo enables developers to build really cool applications that combine the best features of online services like eBay, MySpace and Google Maps with offline desktop applications to create dynamic, interactive services beyond the constraints of a traditional web browser.

In effect users get the interactivity of the web with the performance of the desktop with Apollo providing the bridging technology between the two.

The demo Adobe gave on stage was of a dynamic eBay software package that ran on a desktop but pulled in real-time information from the online auction service and combined it with analytical tools, like an Excel spreadsheet. All in all, it certainly looked pretty impressive.

Adobe (and incidentally eBay) looks like it has a winner - if only the company can find a better way to explain what Apollo does.

Demo 07, the technology showcase where start-ups deliver six-minute pitches to would be investors, potential partners and the media is off and running here in Palm Desert, Southern California.

Second up on stage was Zink, a technology spinout from the old Polaroid instant photo company. Zink, which stands for ‘zero-ink’ has developed a new way to print full colour digital images without the need for ink cartridges or ribbons. The secret sauce is in the special paper that uses proprietary formulated layers of colour-dye crystals embedded in the paper that change from white to one of three basic colours – yellow, magenta and cyan – when a precise dose of heat is delivered by a low-cost thermal print head. The resulting prints are bright, high quality and durable..

Zink believes the first application for the new technology will be to enable camera phone and digital camera owners to carry a small business-card scanner around in their pocket, load up packets of 10-sheets of Zink paper and liberate some of those 300bn images that would otherwise probably never see the light of day.

Zink’s founders claim the price of the resulting prints will be about the same as regular ink-jet prints and that pocket-sized printers should cost around $100.