13 Dec An early Christmas gift
For children, December is full of excitement and anticipation of what may await them on Christmas morning. For me, December is equally exciting, as I screen the final onslaught of companies vying for a place at February’s DEMO@15 show. While you have to wait until February to “unwrap” the selected 70 or so companies that will debut at the show, there are a few gems along the way that just won’t wait until the conference — gems we can unwrap now.
One such gem I came across last week. WebPasties has launched to the market, so it misses out on DEMO on a technicality. Still, the site will be useful to lots of folks who want to build more functionality into their Web sites, but don’t have the programming skills to sling the Java code to do so.
The site serves up several customizable Java applets, from a simple visit tracker or Web polling widget to more complex scrolling news and event registration apps. Each is easily customizable, with lots of help windows to guide you along. Once you’ve customized your “pastie,” the site generates the code you need to add it to your Web page. A simple cut and paste (thus the company name), and you’ve got professional-class features on your site.
The applets are stored and served from the WebPasties site, so site builders need not worry about data stores, app servers, and the like.
WebPasties is the brainchild of Bill Berik, who before founding this company worked at Borland on the JBuilder team. Berik wanted to make it not just possible but “dirt simple” for Web site builders to add interactive features to their pages. He’s achieved that goal and made the Pasties easy to buy. You can sign on for a free trial, and if the applets work for you, you can become a member for $20 for six months, a small price to pay considering the costs of coding and hosting services.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing with you other gems from the DEMO search. If you’re seeing interesting things, please let me know, too.
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Chris Shipley is the executive producer of NetworkWorld’s DEMO Conferences, Editor of DEMOletter and a technology industry analyst for nearly 20 years. She can be reached at chris@demo.com. Shipley, has covered the personal technology business since 1984 and is regarded as one of the top analysts covering the technology industry today. Shipley has worked as a writer and editor for variety of technology consumer magazines, including PC Week, PC Magazine, PC/Computing, and InfoWorld, US Magazine and Working Woman. She has written two books on communications and Internet technology, has won numerous awards for journalistic excellence, and was named the #1 newsletter editor by Marketing Computers for two years in a row. To subscribe to DEMOletter please visit: http://www.idgexecforums.com/demoletter/index.html.
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