Last night I attended the Connector Showcase at JP Morgan’s offices up in San Francisco. The event was designed to give invited guests an opportunity to etwork with each other and see some cool product demos. My hunch is that many of the people in the room were familiar with a good number of the products being shown (clear evidence of this was the number of hands that went up when the Slingbox presenter asked how many people owned or were familiar with the product and nearly every hand shot up). That being said, the event was a great opportunity to catch up with some people I haven’t seen in awhile and to see some products that were truly new to me. There were two products that caught my attention because they aren’t like a lot of other things I encounter in my daily life:
Zoomsystems – When was the last time you got excited about a vending machine? Yeah, me too. But this thing was actually very cool. Think of it as a vending machine for the 21st century. Instead of stale candy and old chips, the Zoom Shop can have anything from an iPod to CDs to 5-minute massage kits. The team from Zoom demoed the machine and the interface (as well as the ability to pay by credit card) were both very cool. I can see lots of interesting applications for this technology in hotels, malls, convention centers and other high-traffic areas.
Playaway – The other company that I found surprisingly interesting was Playaway. Playaway makes a small device that comes pre-loaded with content and a set of earphones. I think the idea of a low-cost (writeup on the event. Max Kiesler has the podcast as well.
Technorati tags: connectorgroup