It's time once again for people on-site here at DEMO and back at work to ask me, "What was cool at DEMOfall?" The show (produced by Network World's events team) took place last week in San Diego and featured 72 companies offering the latest in technology products.

Check out our slideshow of 15 cool new technologies at DEMOfall 08

As in recent years, the focus was on Web sites and services more than hardware. Social networking, collaboration, collaboration through social networking, security and Web searching continue to be themes that weave through lots of the products offered. Still, for guys like me looking for "cool stuff," there was plenty to impress. Here are two of my favorites:

Plastic Logic wins the award for best hardware offering for its prototype device that aims to bring the term "plastic electronics" to the collective conscious. Thinner than a pad of paper, the electronic reading device is designed to bring a high-quality reading experience to the world of business documents, such as magazines, newspapers, presentations and business plans.

At first glance it will be compared to Amazon's Kindle e-book reader, but it's a lot lighter and thinner, and uses electronic ink and a touch-screen that's impressive to look at. Along with USB connectivity, the device will have a Wi-Fi connection, but after seeing the device you don't want anything else to add bulk to it. Plastic Logic is scheduling to ship the device in the first half of 2009 (no pricing announced yet).

RealNetworks got a lot of buzz surrounding its RealDVD software offering, mainly because a lot of us are wondering whether the company will get sued by the motion picture industry. RealNetworks says it’s all legal, and here’s what the software does. It allows users to copy DVDs that they own onto a PC's hard drive, and then view the content on the PC without the DVD in the drive.

The encrypted data on the hard drive remains encrypted (they don't decrypt, then compress, then re-encrypt), and multiple PCs are allowed to view the content (up to five devices, RealNetworks says). I got a sneak peek at the software and it works well (there's a cool feature that lets you watch the movie and save it to the hard drive at the same time). Another nice touch – you can attach an external hard drive to the PC and save a bunch of movies there. The software is squarely aimed at mobile travelers who want to watch movies on notebooks when they travel and don't want to bring along their DVDs. As the parent of a toddler, I also like being able to store a movie on the hard drive, allowing me to spare the already thumb-print-ridden DVD from further abuse. It also ends the frustration of having to re-buy movies or episodes of content that I already own. The software will be available later this month for an introductory price of $29.99.