Don’t they know that texting is just the tip of the iceberg? Your phone is about to distract you in so many new and exciting ways that you may never look at the road again. Take a look at the three apps I just saw at the DEMO conference this month. I think they’re out to get me.

Waze is a free app that allows you to build maps, update other drivers about traffic, police traps, and other potential gotchas. It’s available on Android, iPhone, RIM, and Windows. In all fairness to Waze, they get their dynamic traffic information in two ways. If you’re just driving around, your GPS is updating other drivers about where you are and whether you’re stuck in traffic. You can take a more active role as a traffic reporter by sending people messages about your commute. At that point Waze becomes a social-networking mobile driving application. Yikes. It’s a free app, but should be labeled “handle with care.”

TravelTrac, maker of MotoTrac, lets you build a website and update it constantly, keeping an in-depth, multimedia log of your vacation, your car pool, or any other road trip. Used wisely, MotoTrac provides the tools to build a travel site, open it to others to share, chart your route so friends and family can see you, add photos and real-time voice reports. The company’s demo reminds me of a multimedia twitterer on road trip. Great app, but take it from me, you’ve got to balance documenting your life with getting out of your car, right? There’re also versions of the product for sailors and for hikers.

Traffictalk is a voice-based traffic information sharing system. Your phone gets updates from other drivers in real time It’s meant to keep you talking, not texting. But the company demo showed that there are still plenty of buttons to press when transmitting and receiving. The new word for apps like this one and Waze are “crowdsourcing” — using the wisdom of the crowd to get your information. It may be new to us, but truckers have been doing it on CB radios forever.

Here are a few highlights and observations for those who love to know what’s coming down the pike.

Here’s the most memorable of what I saw for different reasons:

Personal Fave

The crowd was with me on this one as EMO Labs got the People’s Choice vote for its demonstration of invisible speakers. Emo Labs has a technology that obviates the need for chunky external speakers. Imagine a membrane of clear plastic that’s put over your LCD screen. That membrane is your sound system. No extra speakers or cables required and the sound is amazingly good. Emo is not meant for you to install on your TV, but it’s expected that you’ll see TVs , notebooks, and other screen devices with the speakers built right into the screen. COOL!

School’s Helper

The US Dept. of Education says that 4.5 million children experience sexual misconduct between kindergarten and 12th grade. These stats have been taken to task and the definition of sexual misconduct is still a bit loosey-goosey. But, regardless, the school is “in loco parentis,” which means that they are responsible for managing all the shenanigans that go on, oftentimes even if it occurs after school. A school administrator could spend a lifetime figuring out the law and liabilities that pertain to sexting or bullying. MicroAssist developed an online course called Preventing Sexual Misconduct and Abuse in School. Every school employee is encouraged to take the course (at $8 a head).

Who Knew That Online Dating Needed Improvement?

Online dating is a big market and yet it hasn’t changed much since the simple “enter your profile and see who else is around” period. Date Check, whose motto is “look up before you hook up,” does a comprehensive search on the guy (or girl) you may have just met. Let’s say you meet a cute guy in a bar who tells you his name Tom and he’s 35 years old. You sneak to the bathroom, pull out your iPhone, and enter a name, address, or phone number. Now the real (or not) Tom shows up. Based on Intellius data (a large aggregator of information) you can check out a lot more than if his age and address are accurate. You can check marital status, prior arrests, sex crimes, and even where he lives and what he’s worth. Good product. A sad statement on our times. As the presenter said, “Even your dad wasn’t as hard on these guys.”

In a softer look at the world of dating, there’s Gelato Dating. Instead of laboriously building your profile like on the other dating sites, you quickly put together a stream of “you” built from your online life: Facebook, Twitter, Pandora…what better way to let someone know you and find someone who shares your tastes.

More reports from DEMO 09 to come.

There’s something really creepy about paying your kids to learn…or is there?

The New York Times recently ran an interesting piece on whether or not kids learn better when they’re given material incentives. Historically, educators have frowned on rewards. They want very much to believe that education, the pursuit of knowledge, is reward enough.

The concept of education as its own reward is starting to feel a bit dated in a world where everything is measured on the immediate return on investment. In an era when life is about accumulating stuff–coupons, trinkets, friends, and more–for many kids, it’s starting to look as if rewards for learning might do the trick. As parents, we give our kids everything from allowance money to toys/games/clothing as a way to reward their good behaviors. The hope is that these extrinsic rewards will become intrinsic as the kids grow older. Purists argue that kids are born explorers and their love of exploration translates to the love of learning, but let’s face it: Multiplication tables and fractions are not exploratory territory. They require route memorization tasks and most kids find this sort of learning far less compelling than just about anything else they could be doing.

As I ponder, I’m at a conference called DEMO 09 that showcases new products and start ups in the technology space. I just watched an exciting demo of a SmartyCard, an online learning world for kids ages 7-12 where they get rewards for learning. The creators of the system aren’t being subversive, either. The company’s slogan is YOU LEARN, YOU EARN.

The content is mostly in the form of online quizzes with colorful graphics, simulations, and videos included. The content is grade-specific and compartmentalizes skills according to activities like “space” or “America” rather than the old “reading/math/science” classification.

As the child plays they earn points. The rewards are all virtual and they’re precisely the type of reward every 7-12 old covets: Club Penguin membership, iTunes music, WebKinz stuff, and more.

I’m loving the idea of virtual rewards for many reasons. First, kids learn to purchase their own virtual stuff–their currency is learning. Second, a virtual reward lets them personalize how they decide to spend. This makes them better consumers of all media. Finally, learning basic facts has never been scintillating stuff . Do you remember playing eraser tag in your classroom or any one of a number of other games to make memorization a bit more memorable? SmartyCards does the same thing, as did so much of what we’ve despairingly called edutainment.

I’m not advocating a Skinnerian education where material goods become the reason for learning. But kids’ work is schoolwork, and their job is to do it well. Everyone expects compensation for a job well done and that means both the knowledge that they’ve done good work and a little salary, too.

You go, SmartyCard. You learn. You earn.

Healthy skepticism is required when you’re looking at products that claim to make it “quicker, better, faster.” Often, many hours into your investment in a new solution, you come to the one thing the product can’t do that you definitely need done.

How many of these new products from DEMO do you really need in order to be more productive?

BitGravity: It’s a high definition world for those with fast connections and good gear. BitGravity showed how they can send HD quality video streaming live over the Internet.

What you can do with it: Point your HD camcorder and start recording. Publish your live feed to the web. You can have your own broadcast network, and in high def.

What I’m thinking: I’m not to crazy about watching things on my PC, high def or not.

Pixetell: A Pixetell is an easy-to-create multimedia email. Ontier, the creators, give you tools to combine voice, video, and diagrams into an email.

What you can do with it: Give a walkthrough of your project idea (a magazine layout? architectural design?) with your narration. According to Ontier, the product eliminates the need for real-time meetings since you can create an email and have the person respond on their own clock.

What I’m thinking: I’m the kind of person who likes to call when people aren’t home so that I can leave a message and be done with it. Pixetell seems like a great idea for people like me who prefer to work in UNREAL TIME.

RallyPoint: From out of the catastrophic events of New Orleans comes a program for our times: RallyPoint is about simple end-to-end data disaster recovery.

What you can do with it: You can monitor your company’s assets (including people) and communicate with the appropriate people during a crisis.

What I’m thinking: We need a consumer disaster recovery application.

Vokle: For those who can’t stand a silent social web of just keystrokes and typed messages, Vokle makes it easy-to-add audio and video.

What you can do with it: You could use it to create an easy-to-use web conferencing platform, but Vokle is stressing the social network. Similar products like ooVoo and Paltalk are alternative solutions.

What I’m thinking: There are lots of video conferencing and chat packages; the folks who put the winning package together are going to have to offer “meetings” as a one stop solution.

Technicopia Gwabbit: It sounds a little Bugs Bunny-ish but Gwabbit is one of those truly useful little add-ons for MS Outlook. It’ll scan your incoming emails for names and addresses and store them in your Outlook Contact folder. It replaces the cut and paste of addresses from email into the Outlook contact folder.

What you can do with it: Stop cutting and pasting into your address book.

What I’m thinking: Bring it on. A truly useful utility.

CCBetty: An email organizational system that finds the content in your emails (video, photos, attachments, etc.) and organizes them. Think of it as a personal email assistant.

What you can do with it: You can look up “Mom” and see her conversations, photos, Facebook feeds, and everything else she’s done online. Time will tell if it can work or if it’s just one more thing to get in the way of you and your email.

What I’m thinking: Sometimes working with the “Betty” in your life is tougher than slugging it out alone.