High-Tech Showcase Combines Infomercials, ‘Gong Show’

Predicting the future is one of the popular but perilous pastimes of the high-tech industry.

Guess right and your company could become the next Amazon.com, Akamai or Red Hat. Guess wrong and you’re thrown onto the dust heap of history along with such fads as push technology, hourly Internet access fees and paid Web sites.

The trick has always been to catch the right wave at the right time, and for the last four years one event that has tried to capture a glimpse of the horizon has been the Upside Showcase--a two-day, nonstop frenzy of business pitches to about 700 venture capitalists, reporters, investors and entrepreneurs.

“It’s a good look at what will be coming out in the next six months--and these people pay dearly for the privilege,” said Gina Smith, the executive producer of the event, held at the upscale Westin Mission Hills Resort in Rancho Mirage. “Beyond that point, it’s impossible to predict. In this industry, anyone who says they can is lying.”

From the start of the event Wednesday, the Showcase gave a rapid-fire presentation of products that were either in the testing phase or had been on the market for only a few months.

The products ranged from exercise machines connected to the Internet, created by Netpulse Communications, to the funeral products and services of Webcaskets.com, which allows people to choose their caskets, flowers, cemetery plots, urns and monuments online.

Altogether, about 145 companies were selected by a group of judges to demonstrate their products.

Of that group, 45 were chosen to present their products onstage, in which they each had eight minutes to describe the product, the technology behind it and how they planned to make money.

If Comdex, the sprawling trade show in Las Vegas, is the Boston Marathon of high-tech conventions, the Upside Showcase is its “Gong Show,” complete with flashing lights and the booming voice of a game show announcer bringing on each new act.

In fact, one part of the presentations was called the “Gong Show,” in which companies presented their ideas and were either cheered or gonged off the stage.

Everything is fair game as long as you can do it in eight minutes. Webcaskets.com, for example, burned 30 precious seconds by having a group of pallbearers carry a casket onto the stage, although it got the attention of the crowd, which by the second day of nonstop presentations was beginning to look ragged.

The crowd is one of the most demanding on the convention trail, pitiless in the their questioning of how companies intend to make money or intend to survive in a world where they may have dozens of competitors.

Even keynote speakers, such as Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison and ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson, were jabbed for any perceived transgressions.

In one grueling segment of the show, start-up companies make an eight-minute presentation to a panel of venture capitalists, who later vote on whether they would invest in the projects.

While Showcase is mainly focused on consumer products, this year brought a new wave of Internet business tools in response to the enormous growth in e-commerce in the last year.

LCI Technology Group of the Netherlands demonstrated a digital pen that verified identities by measuring the speed, acceleration and force used to sign a signature.

Los Gatos-based Vyou.com demonstrated a new technology that allows companies to lock up the contents of its Web pages, including video, sound, text and images, so they cannot be copied or printed without authorization.

There were also plenty of new ideas on how to put the Web to work. HandShake.com, based in Fullerton, showed its Web site for finding home and personal services such as housekeeping, plumbing and dog training. The site now has listings for 35 cities around the country.

BestOffer.com of San Francisco demonstrated its Internet marketplace for used cars. The company sends a mechanic to inspect every car and posts a detailed report on its Web site so buyers have a better sense of what they are buying.

The company, which launched its service in the Bay Area in December, charges a roughly 2% commission on every sale and charges the buyer for the $99 car inspection.

One of the most interesting products at the show was the ITag from Burlingame, Calif.-based Xenote.

The tiny device could be used to mark a song played on the radio. Later, the information could be used to retrieve more information off the Web. The company said that future versions will allow people to scan bar codes, mark geographic locations using satellite information and even mark other people wearing the ITag.

However, the winner of the “Best of Show” award was Mountain View, Calif.-based BeVocal Inc., which has created a group of services, such as real-time traffic reports and driving instructions, that can be accessed over a mobile phone using voice commands.