This week we’re going to see dozens of companies launch new products. Here are a few of the companies presenting this week at DEMO that are showing some strong potential:

ffwd:

In most cases, choice is a good thing. But when it comes to online video, the abundance of content available on the web can be overwhelming. ffwd (pronounced fast-foward) deals with this by picking your videos for you. The site uses video meta data as well as user behaviors to create virtual “channels” of video, which are essentially dynamically updated playlists.

Whenever the site presents a video you aren’t interested in, you simply hit the “ffwd” button to play a new selection. The system learns from your choices to help provide more relevant channels, and if you don’t want to spend time “training” it you can simply follow a like-minded friend.

The site is launching to the public with content from Hulu, Comedy Central, YouTube and a large number of other sources. For more details, check out our introductory post on ffwd.

Rudder

Rudder shares a lot in common with Mint, a personal finance site that debuted last year at TechCrunch40 (and won the conference’s top prize). Both sites present financial data in attractive, intuitive graphs. But Rudder is taking a slightly different approach: while Mint analyzes your past spending habits to help you adjust in the future, Rudder is concerned with telling you how much you have available to spend on a given day.

The site keeps track of recurring payments, like bills and groceries, and subtracts the money you will soon owe from your income to tell you “what’s left”. The site emails its updates on a daily basis, and allows users to customize their emails with a selection of widgets.

Photrade

With image piracy rampant on the web these days, a number of startups have sprung up to help users easily obtain legal pictures. Photrade has a similar goal, but it also manages to help casual photographers make some cash in the process.

Most photo directories are filled with images from established photographers - not a bad thing, but there isn’t typically room for amateurs. Photrade allows users to upload their images, which they can then offer for free to others while appending a contextual advertisement. Photograhers keep a cut of the ad revenue, giving them an incentive to keep uploading quality images, and other users get to use the images legally free of charge.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Google announced Chrome yesterday and the company has already offered Windows XP and Vista owners the opportunity to try it out. And although I’ve only been able to use it for just a little while, Google Chrome is not only one of the fastest browsers I’ve ever used, it’s easily one of the best.

The Google Chrome install was quick and easy. In a matter of seconds (literally), I downloaded the application from the company’s site and installed it on my PC. Once up, Chrome asked to import the data from Firefox and I was off.

The first thing that will strike you about Chrome is its soft, yet elegant interface. Unlike other browsers, which sport clutter, Chrome doesn’t do anything of the sort. Instead, it makes tabs the primary element of the software, which can be dragged around and moved as needed on the fly. You can already do that in Safari, but in Chrome, it’s simply much easier.

Chrome also offers the “Omnibox”, which lets you input a web address or search the web in the address bar. You can do that now with Firefox, as well, but if you’re visiting a specific site like Amazon and you want to search that site, it features smart search engine detection to let you search Amazon instead of Google. I did just that on Amazon.com and it worked extremely well. In fact, it was much easier to search through sites and pages than any other browser I typically use.

My favorite feature so far in Chrome is the homepage. Unlike every other browser on the market, Chrome gives you a list of all the most-visited pages you’ve been to. I found this to be extremely useful. Instead of wasting time sifting through favorites or trying to find a specific page, I had all my most visited pages at my disposal when I opened Chrome up.

But perhaps more than anything, you’ll notice just how fast Chrome is immediately. After just ten minutes of jumping from site to site, I was amazed by how quickly I was able to get around. And unlike some browsers (I won’t mention any names), opening a slew of tabs doesn’t matter — it’s just as fast with or without tabs.

For those that want to shop for their girlfriend’s engagement ring without them knowing or just want to do, um, other things, Chrome also features an incognito mode, which will stop the browser from recording your activity. I tried it out and it works as advertised, and was delighted to see that I could turn it on and off in a flash.

One of my biggest problems with Firefox is that I have a tendency to lose my downloads when I get a little overzealous in my software tastes. Granted, you can go to the “Downloads” tab and find everything there, but Chrome makes it easier: it has a download box at the bottom of the screen that lets you access your downloaded files and put them where they need to go. I doubt I’ll lose anything again.

All in all, Google Chrome, after just a little time using it, is superb. It’s not only fast, but it’s useful. It’s not only elegant, but it understands what you really want to do with a browser. Download Chrome. You won’t regret it.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Housing prices continue to slide, and analysts see more declines ahead. Should you hedge against a housing crash by betting on a futures market?

The stock markets want to know everything about the Fed’s deliberations, but they don’t always digest the information well

While most recruiters are still seeking MBAs despite a shaky economy, many B-school students are hedging their bets and accepting early offers

As lenders cease making small, second loans, the homeownership rate is starting to decline, and the outlook for the housing market could worsen

One industry player says the low point for the housing market is "very near." But credit problems and other issues have many contemplating further gloom

Desperate sellers are paying brokers supersized commissions, which get incorporated into the price ultimately paid by buyers

I don’t have a Phoenix fetish, honest — I write about the place because I see the metro as the capital of the home-building industry. Here I’m betting that it was a major contributor to the job losses I posted about on Monday, and that what came out in last Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistic report is going to snowball.
When I say that Phoenix is ‘Housing Central’ I don’t mean it in the same sense that Hollywood is the capital of the movie industry because the six major studios are based there, or in the way that Manhattan is a capital of finance because the big banks and brokerages are headquartered there. The head offices of the  major U.S. home-builders are literally all over the map — Pulte/Del Webb (PHM) is outside of Detroit, Continental/Deitz-Crane (DHI) is in Fort Worth, TX.

Stubborn sellers in Phoenix

But Phoenix is the industry’s number one […]

Original post by noemail@noemail.org (noemail@noemail.org (Paul Kaihla) and software by Elliott Back