Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- In the high-tech world, the Demo conference is a rite of passage.

Twice a year, nervous developers and entrepreneurs pay for the privilege of standing before several hundred investors, peers, potential competitors and the media to unveil their new products and technologies in presentations that are allowed to last no more than six minutes.

Occasionally, stars are born: In years past, Demo provided the launch pad for TiVo Inc.’s digital video recorder and Palm Inc.’s seminal Pilot handheld computer.

This week’s Demo, in San Diego, seemed to have few such breakthroughs, while showcasing a cascade of apps for Apple Inc.’s iPhone, add-ons to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and online-meeting software that might help save some travel money in tough economic times.

While big companies sometimes use Demo for product introductions -- Hewlett-Packard Co. was here with Skyroom, a $149 program for high-definition corporate video conferencing and real-time collaboration -- the main focus is on smaller outfits that may be aiming their presentations as much at the venture capitalists prowling the aisles as at potential customers.

One of the hits was Emo Labs Inc., which showed off its “invisible speaker” technology, called Edge Motion. Edge Motion replaces the traditional, often tinny cone-and- magnet speakers used in flat-panel televisions, computer displays and laptops with a clear plastic panel that overlays the screen and generates stereo sound based on vibrations at its edges.

Clear, Rich

The result is clear, rich sound that comes from the video image itself -- rather than underneath, next to or even behind the display, which can sometimes be disconcerting when watching movies or TV. The company says it is in talks with device manufacturers but hasn’t yet announced any partnerships.

Emo has so far created speakers up to 42 inches (107 centimeters); it isn’t positioning the technology as a replacement for fancy home-theater set-ups, but rather as a way to bring better sound to second TVs, computer displays and the like.

Emo’s speaker system was one of few new devices to debut at Demo. Software and Web services dominated the 56 six-minute presentations and 14 90-second “alphapitches” from startups (translation: “Dear early stage investors, please send money”).

Buy or Squash?

One buzz-generator was Micello Inc., which is launching an iPhone app best described as “Google Maps for indoor spaces.” Micello is building a database of public venues such as shopping malls, college campuses and convention centers that can be searched -- now where is that Cinnabon stand? -- and works with other applications like, well, Google Maps. It’s such a natural idea that it ends up raising the question: Is Google Inc. more likely to acquire Micello, or squash it by doing something similar?

Another interesting mobile app -- and about the only one aimed at users of devices other than iPhone -- was Rseven, which calls its service “lifecaching.” The Rseven application provides a backup service that captures, analyzes and saves to a Web site the contents of your mobile phone -- text messages, contacts, photos and, most crucially, recordings of your phone calls. (The software provides an audible beep as a warning to the person you’re talking to.)

The app is currently available for phones running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile software and for Series 60 Symbian phones from Nokia Oyj and Samsung Electronics Co.; the company says it is working on versions for iPhone and for devices running Google’s Android operating system, though at least in the iPhone’s case, it isn’t clear whether the call-recording functionality would work.

Creepy App

The champion in the unofficial category of queasy-tech was Date Check, a free mobile application from Intelius Inc. for iPhone, and due next month for Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and for Android phones.

The idea behind Date Check -- quickly dubbed “stalkerware” among conference attendees -- is summarized in the tagline the demonstrators used for their presentation: “Look up before you hook up.”

Enter a person of interest’s name, phone number or e-mail address, and the app will conduct a quick, basic background check. “Sleaze Detector” looks for records of sexual offenses and other criminal convictions. “Net Worth” checks property and tax records; “Living Situation” finds other people living at the same address; “Interests” scours social networks and professional and educational references.

The quality of the information Date Check reviews can be highly variable, as anyone who has run an online search about themselves can attest, and the app is a bit creepy; it’s almost as easy to imagine ways it could be misused as ways it could be useful.

Still, for better or worse, the information is already out there anyway, and Date Check makes it instantly accessible. I’ll leave to others any discussion of whether it does more to take the romance out of technology, or the romance out of romance.

(Rich Jaroslovsky is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Rich Jaroslovsky in New York at rjaroslovsky@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 24, 2009 21:00 EDT