Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz » Barry Bonds does a surprise walk-on at Demo

January 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Barry Bonds does a surprise walk-on at Demo

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Barry Bonds made a surprise appearance at Demo this afternoon to help promote both his new mobile Web site, www.barrybonds.com and Bling the company powering the site, the first to use an Ajax client on a handset.

The pics, by Brian Solis of briansolis.com:

SF Giants' Barry Bonds makes his surprise visit at DEMO in Palm Desert, Calif.

Barry and Roy Satterthwaite, CEO and co-founder of Bling.

More Barry.

BarryBonds.com

Here's a link to Bonds' desktop site.

Bonds didn't stay long on stage but some of the sharper-eyed attendees did get to say hello prior to his appearance when he was spotted sitting outside the auditorium before he went on.

Roy Satterthwaite, CEO and co-founder of Bling Software was asked how much Bonds was paid to make the appearance at the Palm Desert event, but Satterthwaite said Bonds did it gratis in order to promote his new mobile site.

"Bonds was one of the first professional athletes to have a Web site. He saw its importance years ago," Satterthwaite told me.

Bling brings two new pieces of technology to the mobile
environment which will, according to its founder, give users a more fluid, desktop-like experience on a handset.

From the looks of the demonstration it appears to be true. A video of Bonds hitting his 715 home run was in full motion with no latency problems.

To do that Bling is using JavaScript processing and the Ajax client.

The platform runs a JavaScript interpreter that connects to a Java Virtual Machine embedded in many handsets.

The beauty of JavaScript, said Satterthwaite is that for developers it is far simpler to write in than object oriented programming languages.

Bling is also the power behind the new Hip Hop music site GoTV.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 31, 2007 05:44 PM

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