After I wrote a questioning bit about the Bitty Browser ("Picture-in-picture for the Web: Is it needed? Doesn't it compete with RSS?"), that I saw at PC Forum, I got a quick e-mail reply from the company's CEO, Scott Matthews. He has answers for my questions, which I've edited for length. Note that Scott references a column I recently wrote, stating that the Web is becoming a collection of modules, not pages. Clever, turning me against myself like that.

Q: Is it needed? A: "First, regular 'full-size' browser navigation is useful. Second, people like to build sites out of blocks of content (I don't need to convince you of that). Those two are not mutually exclusive. And navigable blocks have considerably more potential than flat blocks."

Q: Doesn't it compete with RSS? A: "It provides you with another way to work with RSS content; for example, people often add RSS feeds to their sites (that is, in a block, as mentioned above) but you typically just get a list of headlines, and clicking them takes you away from the page you're on. With Bitty, you can point it at an RSS feed, and then browse and read the contents of the feed while remaining in-context."

I stopped by Scott's exhibit at PC Forum and got a full demo of his technology. I came in thinking that pop-up browser windows, tabs, and framed Web pages did enough for us, but I now think he's onto something. He's built a way to embed one entire site into another, which could be useful as the modular Web gets built out.

I think he has a lot of work to do with design, though. If you embed a site designed for a full PC interface into a tiny window, it looks awful. However, you can easily embed a WAP or cell phone site (such as CNET's Mobile site, m.cnet.com) into a small window, and it's a pretty cool effect. Another person watching the demo thought Scott should modify the look and feel of his window frame to look like a cell phone, which would telegraph to the user that there's a micro Web site embedded within it. I thought that was an excellent idea.

Final verdict: Very cool idea, needs some artistic and business development.

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At PC Forum 2006, one of the coolest new services I saw was Spot Runner, a company that aggregates unsold television ad spots and resells them to small, local businesses. Apparently it costs much, much less than you might think to buy a prime-time ad on a cable channel, such as the Outdoor Life Network, or even CNN: as little as $18 a spot. (Except in Manhattan, Spot Runner CEO Nick Grouf says.)

Since the cost of television advertising also includes the production of the content itself, and since that can be prohibitively expensive, Spot Runner also has generic video ad templates that customers can use.

There's a full write-up on News.com.

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Stewart Baker, assistant director for policy for the Department of Homeland Security, speaking at the PC Forum conference on lessons learned from Katrina: The best way to handle disasters is personal responsibility. People driving away from hurricanes is what saves lives. We're bad at letting them know they need to bug out. Yet nearly everybody has a cell phone. So why aren't we adding SMS emergency alerts to the cellular system? Even when voice cell towers fail, Baker says, text messages may still get through. Hey, Stewart, you work at DHS. Make it happen.

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Bruce Spector's company, ATTAP (All Things To All People) is trying to change the "locus of control" for consumers. Today, Spector says, we are obliged to navigate the consumer world via Amazon, eBay, Google, and such. But there's a better way.

The first product he showed off here at PC Forum was Riffs, an online service that lets users write reviews on various items--music, cities, food, celebrities, and so on. As a reviews site, Riffs looks easier to use than Epinions. And as a site to create an online persona, it's more focused than a wide-open personal page like MySpace. Although, watching the demo, it was not crystal clear that this focus is what's called for: Riffs enables users to create an online persona based on everything external to them--what they buy, what they like, where they live, what they eat. Everything except who they are. For that, personal blogs and sites like MySpace and TagWorld are more complete.

On the other hand, Riffs also has a form of collaborative filtering. As you rate items, the system can return other items that you might also like. Thus it's a discovery service for users. And given the size of its database (15 million items, ranging from music to universities), it could return some very interesting and useful results.

Spector is also rolling out a personality assessment site, PersonalDNA. This service taps into the fact that people love to take tests (compare to quiz-giant Tickle).

Riffs and PersonalDNA are designed for users, but the database of preferences they create will feed into another service, Lifeio. This service will be the "management console" for the preferences database, and, if users give their permission, vendors will be able to subscribe to feeds from Lifeio users to create marketing programs. For example, a vendor could use the service to reach people who like Johnny Cash and not Britney Spears.

Ultimately ATTAP is based on a universal human desire: people like to talk about themselves. The question is, do they want vendors and marketers to listen?

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We just got a rundown on the start-up companies that will be presenting demos at PC Forum today and tomorrow. Here are the cool ones:

Kosmix. A specialized search engine. It does health care, travel, and politics right now. I've used the health-care version. It's excellent. It possibly competes with Healthline, also presenting here.

Tacit's Illumio. Tacit does knowledge mining for large businesses. In other words, it can tell you who knows what in your company. Now the company is bringing that function to your friends and family, with a new product called Illumio. I can't wait to try it out.

Edgeio. A new way to create classified ads. Edgeio is getting a lot of press, including some from me.

Spot Runner. Makes it easy, fast, and affordable for small companies to run local television ads--in prime time, they say, and for only a few bucks. Since the cost of producing commercials is too high for most small companies, Spot Runner also has video ad templates. Brilliant.

Novatium. Has created a $100 network computer and a cheap online service to go along with it. Is trying to bring computing and the Web to "the next billion users."

ATTAP (All Things To All People). A grandly named company that's trying to create a new way for users to share opinions and reviews of products and services. Like Epinions, but more Web 2.0-ish.

Iovation. An online reputation company, except this one focuses on tracking the reputation of computers, not people. I have to learn more about this later today.

Bitty Browser. "Picture-in-picture for the Web." It's a tiny Web browser you can stick into any Web page. Clever. But is it needed? Doesn't it compete with RSS?

iMeem. Instant messaging with pictures. Company has been around a while. Most notorious because the CEO looks like he's 17 years old (he's actually 26).

Riya. Searches and categorizes pictures by face. Has gotten a lot of press. Very eagerly awaited service, just now rolling out to the public. News at PC Forum: A feature that will let you search friends' archives for pictures of, say, yourself, at their parties. And a new monetization strategy, for things such as dating services, where you can say: "She's cute, show me more like her."

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A fascinating product was pitched by Don McLagan here at PC Forum: Upromise, a downloadable toolbar that watches your surfing behavior and pays into a 529 (college savings plan) when you buy stuff (it's like Amazon A9, but pays you differently). The company makes money by selling your click-stream data to the merchants you're buying from. About 3 to 5 percent of your purchase is put into the 529, and Compete, the company that runs Upromise, makes even more than that from collecting and reselling your data. Which indicates to consumers what their behavior is worth: something more than 5 percent of their purchase.

Upromise thus puts users in charge, sort of, by making it clear to them that their personal data is worth something. It doesn't give them complete control, just a glimpse into the financials of their click-stream data and a bit of a bribe for giving it up.

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The theme for PC Forum this year is "Users in Charge." It's a noble and interesting challenge. But like the Demo conference I went to a month ago, I'm reminded how tenuous our individual commands are: without the capability to connect to the Web, our authority is nonexistent. Here at PC Forum, the wireless network isn't working reliably. So I can't post my opinions when I want. Meanwhile, The Man is hardwired into the Net, posting whatever he wants, exercising his command. Me, I got bupkis.

One alternative is to bypass the cute little Wi-Fi networks that keep people like me in touch, and arguably in charge, and get a cellular data connection, such as one by Verizon. What price this command? Eighty bucks a month. Ouch.

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I'm at PC Forum, listening to Barry Schwartz talk. He's author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. The data he's rolling off is frightening: The same store that offers 29 jams sells less jam than when it offers six. For every 10 401(k) funds a company makes availalbe to its employees, participation in the plan itself goes down 2 percent. Too much choice, Schwartz says, leads to paralysis, which leads to misery. Which leads to bad business, obviously.

Although people want choice (he has data to prove that, too), it makes them unhappy and lowers engagement in life and in commerce.

"The secret to happiness," Schwartz says, "is modest expectations."

So one secret to good business is a defined, reasonable product set. Don't bludgeon people with choice when it's not necessary. Focus on function and design (iPod), not feature bloat (Microsoft's Origami). To that end, at CNET we should probably take a look at our own front page...

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