DARTDevices - Universal device interaction platform

By Vivek | January 30th, 2007 at 10:05 am ET         

Today DARTDevices will launching a groundbreaking technology which will change the way we use and interact with all of our gadgets. Be it mobile phone or digital camera or PC or Mac or psp,…..you will be able to introduce new apps, features, and services on each of them without the need to consult manufacturers or install separate software on each of them. With 3+ years in “stealth-mode” development and 23 fundamental patents pending, DARTDevices was co-founded by Rich Mirabella, CEO, and Dan Illowsky, CTO. Rich has previously co-founded GLOBEtrotter that was sold for $700 million to Macrovision, and Dan had worked on writing parts of the Windows 95 core OS for Microsoft. A well funded startup, DARTDevices has backing from Matt Christiano, co-founder along with Rich at GLOBEtrotter, Ray Sidney- fifth employee of Google, Michael Abrash– co-author of Quake, and Jay Rosenbluth– retired VC, and Bedrock Capital. Besides this, DARTDevices had also received funding from Motorola Ventures in March 2006 as part of its Series A-1.

Coming back to what DARTDevices exactly does- All of the application developers know how big of a pain it is to develop applications for all their target devices, keeping developed apps continuously compatible with newer releases, and then hope users one day will download/install the app. Compared to PC and Mac, downloading part happens rarely on mobile phones and other gadgets, and most the device capabilities go unused. So, only deep-pocketed companies can aim to target greater number of devices, while others pick and choose their battles letting an important share of the market slip-by. DARTDevices plans to change this. DARTDevices will help application developers and users overcome these issues. When officially launched, adding a DartPlayer application to each device will expose all its hardware, software and content to all other such DARTDevices, making one virtual device. An application on any device can directly access the combined resources of all devices. Let’s take a use case. Imagine you have one of the Nokia N series multimedia smartphones that has hundreds of images and videos taken by you. You want to move each of those files to your PC, Mac, iPAQ, and printer without bothering to install compatible software on each of them. With a DartPlayer installed on all devices, all you will need to do is add a SlideShow Dapp to your mobile device. This SlideShow Dapp will than work with DartPlayer to locate all the devices in the vicinity it can work with and automagically transfer files using any of the network protocols available.

DARTDevices startup off by introducing 5 dapps including DD Slideshow, DD Control(control your new device using an existing devices), DD Crew(“Automagically” places the right content on the right devices), DD Jukebox(Social Music Sharing application), and DD Pong(enabler of multi-device, multi-player games). From here on, developer and user imagination is the limit. With number of dapps in works, consumers will soon find themselves using their mobile phone to control car audio system, or you playing Battleship your N93 while your counterparts are on a PC, Palm, LG, Mac, settop box….

Personally I think DARTDevices will have profound effect on the way applications are developed for each of these devices and the uses to which each of them can be put to. In particular I like the business model DARTDevices is working towards. DartPlayer & dapps licensed to device manufacturers like mobile phone companies (charging a small fee per device), while they will be free for PC & Mac. Partners will be able to license DartPlayer for their server. Developer will be able to take advantage of the DART platform using the free application developer SDKs. They will also be looking to sell premium Dapps directly on web & channels.

Besides the applications working seamlessly and flawlessly, a lot will depend on DARTDevices establishing relationships will various device manufactures to embed Dartplayers, and also the acceptance of DART platform by the development community. Next couple of year should be an interesting time for DARTDevices and also for us as consumers.

Links:
DARTDevices

DEMO coverage

By Vivek | January 30th, 2007 at 09:51 am ET         

Past few days have been really hectic out here. Have been spending long hours talking with number of startups participating at DEMO conference. As expected startups chosen to present are from a wide area of technology presenting some of the most exciting products that have been released in the near history. Some of the startups I spent time talking with include DARTDevices, 6thSenseAnalytics, Serendipity, Nexo, TextDigger, Nextumi, Circleup, Eyejot, MissionResearch, My-Currency, Yodio, Bling, and Splashcast. You will hear more about each of them from me soon.

Mac fans can be FONeros and more

By Vivek | January 29th, 2007 at 09:22 pm ET         

FON’s partnerships and reaching out to newer platforms just seems to go on. Latest from FON is access point software for Macs. Not available for download immediately, users can email FON team to get access to the software. Interesting thing about the release is that Mac users can also connect to their 3G, EVDO or HSDPA connection and offer FON WiFi. If I understand correctly it means offering your 3G connection as a WiFi hotspot. Haven’t seen that for windows platform though. I have heard Verizon kicking out people for overuse of EVDO network, so users need to be careful. Meanwhile FON also is entering into partnership with Spotigo to enable smartphone users to connect to FON hotspots. Based out of Germany, Spotigo WiFI hotspot locater and also provides a mobile broadband connection suite that enables wireless signal based localization of end-users. After the contract officially goes through, users with windows mobile and Symbian phones will be able to piggy-back on FON access points to power their devices.

Links:
FON

Skinkers funded for p2p alerts network

By Vivek | January 29th, 2007 at 12:39 pm ET         

Skinkers, developer of brandable desktop alerts delivery network and clients, has secured £2/$3.9 million from its current shareholders including NewMedia SPARK, the London based venture capital firm. Skinkers will be using the funding to launch Skinkers Live Delivery Network, a p2p network to support live video streaming and real-time notifications.

Skinkers currently offers Windows XP and Vista based desktop clients for delivering news alerts from the likes of Financial Times, BBC, CNN, among others. The white labeled clients can be downloaded from the respective sites. News updates are delivered via Ticker and Alerts with users having the option to choose the news channels according to their interest. Skinkers sites also gives details about how it takes advantage of Vista to deliver enhanced user experience.

I am not sure about Vista, but on XP users can end up having 10 different Skinkers programs installed on their machine for each of the 10 Skinkers enabled sites they want to get updates from. Not a great option if you want to track hundreds of feeds. Although I am sure, but customization and rollout of each Desktop client can be big drain on Skinkers resources. Automation of the creation of Desktop Alert client, just like Conduit does for IE/Firefox toolbars, should definitely give Skinkers a broader exposure.

Related:
DEMOfall: Eluma introduces desktop communities

Links:
Skinkers

UGC-Show me the money

By Vivek | January 28th, 2007 at 07:12 pm ET         

After a long period(which equals few months in web-age) of an expensive marriage with pre-nupt in place, Google finally tells Youtube - What the heck, where is the money? After all the implementations, plans, and expenses for pre-rolls, post-rolls, in-rolls, top-rolls, bottom-rolls, mobile-rolls, sue-rolls, contract-rolls, bandwidth-rolls, what Google can earn from the deal is everyones guess. Operations can’t practically run this way. So here comes the new plan- kill Revver, Metacafe, and other lesser mortals in the meantime by offering content creators share in the revenue.

While Youtube plans it out, lets look at how much a user can make from Youtube if and when the feature is implemented. Take the case of poster-child of UGC - Coke+mentos videos. A quick search on Youtube gets 400 results. Don’t know which video really came first, but Diet Coke+Mentos=Human experiment: EXTREME GRAPHIC CONTENT has 3.6 million views, Nobody’s Watching Diet Coke & Mentos has 2.8+ million views, and many more comfortably having more than 100K views. How much will Google/Youtube pay for each of those views? CPC or CPM or CPA? Lets assume CPM with a high rate of $1/1000 views. With that rate, Human experiment gets $3600 and Nobody’s watching gets $2800. I don’t think Google will shoot for $1 CPM rate. 25 cents/1000 views feels more like Google. Recalculating - Human Experiment gets $900 while Nobody’s watching gets $700.

What else? These highly successful user-created videos, can serve as excellent for inventory for Google Adsense. Google can negotiate between the company(Coke in this case) and the creators and drive more page views and $$s for all 3 involved. In-roll buy the product idea from VideoEgg will look attractive in this scenario but can potentially go against Google’s principle of automation.

Not bad for a video that has near 0 production cost. and this is just the direct way to make money. Count Revver, Metacafe,….you can earn much more at the end of the day.

Revenue for Google aside, I won’t write-off Revver, Metacafe…… If the site doesn’t work in US, follow the social networking lead and spread to other countries. You never know which idea clicks with which demographic. These startups already have team, infrastructure, content in place that can take them places. Bebo and Orkut are some of the best survivors to learn from.