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The twice-yearly DEMO conferences, now in their 17th year, are known for seeking out and showcasing important new technologies that usher in new methods of computing. [DEMO is produced by Network World Conferences, a unit of tech publishing giant IDG.]

DEMOfall '07 is taking place September 24-26 at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina. It will introduce 69 carefully vetted products and services (see below) to "an audience of investors, business development executives, media, pundits, and fellow entrepreneurs."  I would expect attendance in the neighborhood of 700, based on past experience. Presenters include both early-stage and established companies.

Diigo as a Teaching Tool I’ve recently started using a new social bookmarking service called Diigo to collect and share online resources with my students. (Diigo has features similar to del.icio.us, which I have also used for teaching, but it’s substantially more powerful.) The appealing thing about Diigo is that it allows me not only to create a list of links but also to highlight and annotate webpages. In other words, I can point to and comment on specific sections of a webpage. Diigo works really well for sharing, but I also think that it could be very useful for doing research online, because you can essentially highlight and annotate much as you do on paper. To get a better idea of what Diigo can do, take a look at my annotated collection of links on “Race, Culture, and Politics in the New South,” or access my links collections

In my early days of Living in the Clouds, I was using Delicious as my cloud based bookmarking tool. It was my favorite Web 2.0 era tool. I loved it so much that I refused to look at any other social bookmarking apps. When I started blogging here at Cloud Avenue, Zoli recommended us to use another bookmarking site called Diigo for our research purposes. I agreed to use this app very reluctantly and I never looked back since then. Diigo is not just a social bookmarking site but it is also a very good research tool including options to highlight, annotate, comment, share, etc.. This tool has changed the way I do research on the web with its powerful set of features. In fact, I have stopped using Delicious completely. This is much more powerful than Delicious in my quest to organize my information in the clouds.

Pros: Highlight and Annotation. This is a powerful feature for anyone who is using Diigo for research purposes. The best part of this is the finer privacy control for annotation. One can keep it private or share with a group or make it public. Ability to create groups to share with others interested in a particular area or lists to organize information better for yourself. Ability to send to friends who are not members of Diigo through email. Ability to expand/collapse highlights and annotations in your Diigo bookmarks page. Powerful toolbar Ability to extract all the annotation in a particular page. Comes handy while researching on any topic. Here, the network effects can make this feature more powerful.

Cons: Lack of browser button that could hide/unhide the Diigo toolbar similar to Stumbleupon toolbar. This will come handy for those with smaller monitors/netbooks to use the space occupied by the toolbar to see the webpage.