Collaborative Technologies Conference: Demo Pavilion

Just finishing up here for today. I've been wandering the Demo Pavilion area, chatting with the various vendors. There's a nice reception sponsored by Intercall and Microsoft Office LiveMeeting. It seems like so many of the people I spoke to are pushing the same thing, some sort of conferencing software. I feel like asking everyone "But what makes yours different from that guy? And that guy? And those twelve other guys?" At least I got a lot of free shwag HiPath OpenScape V2.0 software, while giving me a retractable phone extension cord and light-up keychain. They showed off the call-to-click by grabbing two people and hooking them up on their cell phones on their system. One smart idea: If you're making a call on their system, it knows to say you're busy in everyone else's buddy list. They say they are working with cell phone carriers so that the networks report your status, so the program can note whenever you are on a call, or when you have no service. I also got a retractible extension cord from Reader Comments... InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.