More highlights from Demo 08

I already told you about Livescribe, Leapfrog, iVideosongs, and HubDub, all introducing new products or services at Demo 08. Here, in no particular order, are a few others that, for me, stood out from the herd.

GreenPlug. GreenPlug has developed a chip and software that enables one power supply to charge multiple devices with different power requirements. The devices talk to the power supply, telling it what DC voltage they need, and when theyâ''re done charging. Besides being a boon for road warriors (much less hardware to carry), GreenPlug conserves energy; it doesnâ''t continue to draw power when batteries are fully charged. The company plans to sell the chip to companies building power supplies; it will give the software away to consumer product manufacturers.

BitGravity. BitGravity announced a service to allow live video to be compressed and then streamed over the internet, with, the company says, just a four second delay from video capture to the end userâ''s screen, at high definition resolutions. The company says it be used to reach millions of viewers at a time.

MoBeam from Ecrio. MoBeam aims to replace paper grocery store flyers with a keychain-attached gizmo that downloads coupons from a computer and then, using a pulsing LED, transmits the coupon codes to a standard supermarket scanner. Not too much more cumbersome to carry than a supermarket loyalty card; they just need to make it double as a flashlight (for reading theater programs) and theyâ''ve got me.

Eyealike. Eyealike has developed image analysis techniques that enable it to pull an identifiable signature out of standard video, and then automatically compare that signature to the scads of videos on the internet, whether theyâ''re on video sharing sites, social networks, or blogs. Content producers are going to like this one, if Eyealikeâ''s claim of a 95 percent detection rate with no false positives is true.

Ntrainer. Neither a business or consumer product, Steven M. Barlow a professor in Neuroscience, Biology, and Human Engineering at the University of Kansas demonstrated a pulsing pacifier that helps solve feeding problems in premature infants. Some premature infants havenâ''t developed the sensory circuitry needed to organize an efficient sucking pattern; the Ntrainer, in three minute sessions, three to four times a day, simulates a typical pattern, and, usually within a few days, the infant picks up the pattern and can feed normally. â''In experiments,â'' Barlow said, â''we can trim two weeks off a (hospital) stay.â''