The exhibit hall at SXSW was much smaller than I would have expected, and I was largely underwhelmed with the offerings. However, there were a few techno-geek products that I thought were really cool. I've already talked about Jambo, and I'll ring in on Music IP after I've had a chance to dig deeper into it.

But, I was instantly blown away by Sitckam. Stickam is a service that allows you to upload video, audio and photos and display them live on your website or MySpace page via a customized player. You can also use that player to chat with visitors to your site, whether or not they are Stickam users. You can even communicate via a live webcam, if you have one.

You don't have to be anything resembling a techie to use Stickam. I went to the site tonight and within twenty minutes created an account, uploaded pictures ,video and audio, and popped the player into the space below. Stickam provides copy-paste code that will work anywhere you could place HTML code. (Our blogging software is particularly persnickety, so the fact that this works is a testament to the simplicity of Stickam.)

I had picked up a plug-n-play USB webcam from Stickam's booth, and was in a video chat within minutes. If you read this post while I happen to be online at home, you might be able to see me staring back at you in realtime, if that happens to be your thing.

The service is free, and Stickam provides users with 500MB of storage as part of the basic deal, with premium accounts (with more space) available. While there are plans for paid premium accounts, bands can get more space for free, and use it to post videos and live performances -- either recorded or streamed via webcam.

I spoke with company COO Hiro Zusho who told me that while premium accounts might bring in some revenue, Stickam is an advertising play. Eventually ad clips will be appended to video and audio files. I also imagine that the player skin itself could carry an ad.

Stickam is the product of a Japanese company that has been providing video conferencing for some time. Because of the time difference, their considerable bandwidth had been going to waste at night, which happens to be daytime here.

Despite the great promotional features for bands and music fans (our primary readers), I think the real news here is in Stickam's social and commercial applications.

Check out this screenshot of a Stickam chat room. Those kids are all on webcams and chatting in type and audio, with no lag. It's a lot more compelling than a MySpace bulletin. Not to mention that the video and audio load a lot more quickly and reliably than a static MySpace page.

You can also have private conversations with friends or folks who come to your website.

On the commercial front, remember why everyone said Ebay bought Skype for a gajillion dollars? So sellers could speak to buyers? Stickam delivers that NOW. Plus video.

And although the company is very firm in its policy against lewd or graphic material, the test of all modern communications technologies is in their ability to deliver porn. I don't know how they're going to police against that, because the technology is tailor-made for it. (Perhaps a second adults-only site?)

I'm the first to point out that technology quickly commoditizes these days. But I think Stickam has a real edge, because their service doesn't even require a software download. I gave up on Skype because I couldn't get enough of my friends to download it. Stickam's admin is entirely browser-based and the end user only needs to have Flash installed.

Although Stickam's site copy occasionally betrays the fact that it wasn't written by native speakers, it has one thing going for it that few month-old sites do: It works. And God love 'em, they didn't call it "beta."

The only real weaknesses I could find were some very minor confusion in their GUI and a dearth of users in the chat rooms. The latter will be remedied with time, and that will be the real test of the company's bandwidth. MySpace was probably fast for the first month too. I don't like that the player makes clicking sounds when you hover over its buttons, but unwanted/unexpected sound on the web is a pet peeve of mine.

This is a killer app if I ever saw one. Yeah, Google and Yahoo! might be able to replicate it, or buy it. In fact, I'd be shocked if one of them didn't do so within the next six months. But having seen both companies' Web 2.0 offerings, I doubt they would do as good (or simple) a job. If Stickam does get bought, I hope they'll hang on to their greatest strengths: simplicity and universality.