I know I know, how good of a VP of Marketing can I be if I do not even write about the launch of my own product on my own blog. But the good news is that we have had such a great reaction that I have been swamped with work!
So here it is (check out the video bellow). The cat is out of the bag. The project startup that I joined and have been working on and off for the past year or so has finally come to fruition. I would like to belatedly announce to you all the launch of Flyscreen, Cellogic’s premier product.
We launched Flyscreen at the TechCrunch50 where we were selected to be in the demo pit. I cannot even begin to tell you how amazing the TC50 event was, not just for us but for all the companies. Even if you did not get selected as one of TechCrunch’s top 50 companies the attention we got just being in the demo pit was astounding. I have never been to a conference like this. The fact that no one pays to present really shows in who presented. Whether on stage or on a table TechCrunch50 had nothing but quality companies showing very very very innovative stuff.
So, about what we are doing. First lets end the confusion. The company is called Cellogic, the product is called Flyscreen.
Cellogic is a US and Israeli based startup founded by entrepreneurs (and my buddies) Itamar Weisbrod and Avi Elias, and backed by Israeli angel investor Yossi Vardi.
Flyscreen is a dynamic mobile platform that provides always on access and streaming content to the mobile phone’s sleep screen. Essentially, we let user put and use their favorite web services on their phones sleep screen to act as a kind of dynamic screen saver.
What does that mean? Oddly enough it appears to be hard to explain but once people see it in action they get it right away. The reaction is usually, “thats so obviously brilliant I cannot believe no one else is doing that.” Even Jason Calacanis who stopped by said he loved it and wanted it right away. Unfortunately we did not have his model phone ready.
The concept of the product is quite simple. When you are not using your phone the screen either turns blank or renders a dim image of the date and time. It probably looks something like this:
This screen is called the sleep screen or power save mode screen. Not to be confused with the idle screen, standby mode or home screen which looks like this blue home screen with the 12:52 time on it:
Many companies have tried to figure out what to do with the idle/home screen.
Flyscreen is not one of them. Simply put Flyscreen reinvents what happens on your phone while your not using it, while its sleeping. What was once a blank screen or dimmed image with the time and date is now a dynamic screen that renders constantly updating content that is relevant to you.
This puts the content that you want to see, such as weather, blog feeds, twitter or any RSS literally zero-clicks away. So, if you want to take a glance at your twitter feed all you have to do is pick up your phone and look at it. Wanna see the headline that everyone is talking talking about then just slide over to your TechCrunch widget. Thats it. We make getting your mobile content easy.
And the magic of the technology is that it does all this while remaining in power save mode. That means it does not effect the battery life (well, very minimally). How do I know? Well, for one thing, I helped build and test the product. For another thing it lasted three days of demo pit duty without a charge.
Users simply sign up at myflyscreen.com, choose which widgets and content they want, save, and then they next time Flyscreen updates on their phone they will be able to see what they want to see at an eyeball away.
Its also good for brands in that it help them leverage their mobile marketing experience on a valuable and untouched space of phone real-estate. Flyscreen is fully compatible with click to call, click to text, click to application and click to mobile web. In other words, with Flyscreen being the first thing people see on their screen, it can help drive a brands many other mobile marketing plays.
All in all its a pretty simple product made for a simple purpose, to make getting the stuff you want on your phone simpler. That’s a lot of simples!
Flyscreen is currently launched on Symbian so if you have an updated Symbian phone you can go to http://www.myflyscreen.com to get on the alpha invite list. If you use the code MOpocket we will speed your invite along.
If you do not have a Symbian phone do not worry! Other versions will be out shortly! Make sure you sign up for when Flyscreen will be ready on Blackberry, WIndows Mobile, Android and iPhone.
This past Monday while I was enjoying Niagara falls the company that brought you viral referral distribution for mobile applications and games, Cascada Mobile, launched a new service called Breeze which, according to the report, will allow anyone to create “globally distributed mobile applications in as little as fifteen minutes.”
Taking a crack at it myself it became apparent rather quickly that anyone with basic html and javascript can use Breeze rather easily and easily port their ideas to over 130 mobile devices. The application, which you download to your desktop, allows you to build and then test out your application using its handset simulation program. You can than upload your application to their site and use their proprietary sharing technology to let the word know about your app via a plethora of new media ways. As Alan Lysne, Cascada Mobile’s CEO put it, “we are leveling the playing field.”
When they say that anyone can do it they really mean it since the service will be ad supported and free to the user. “We are really just trying to help people who have ideas get into the [mobile] space” Alan told me last week. “We will cover the cost with small ads in each application relevant to phone type and geography.” If a persons application begins to really fly of the shelf, Alan assured me, then Cascada will talk about monetizing it, turning off ads and working off of a per install basis. “Right now we just hope people will use it to attract people to their product or website.”
At the Cascada home base engineers have already hacked away twitter applications, Flickr API’s and Facebook stuff. Its built by developers to make it as easy as possible.
The combination of do it yourself mobile applications combined with an in house easy to use viral distribution plugin based on a ad revenue model is a really great and organic idea.
In a world with more than 2 billion mobile phones already in use around the world, and tight control over operating systems and networks this is no easy task. But Cascada is a step in the mobile user generated revolution that, just as with the PC, is and was an inevitability.
IAC joined forces with WaveMarket to create Ask Mobile GPS, a GPS-enabled lifestyle application featuring the best of Ask.com, Citysearch, and Evite.com, along with instant location finder and turn-by-turn navigation powered by the Global Positioning System. With this application, you’ll be able to easily find the nearest starbucks without first having to figure out where you are, view the address and get directions to your evite party you are on your way to, and broadcast to your friends your location.
“With Ask Mobile GPS, your cell phone is like the remote control for your life. With the bundling of GPS with our lifestyle brands, your phone knows exactly where you are, so there’s far less hunt-and-peck entering of information on the keypad when you’re out and about,†said Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com. “We’ve adapted our brands specifically for mobile phones – we’re not force-fitting content that should be read on a computer screen onto a cell phone.â€
Before you get too excited, its currently only available on like 5 Sprint phones. Check here to see if you are one of the lucky ones. Maybe its just me but, I think they should have waited to have at least a few more carriers before they rolled out the application.
I once read that if you want a promotion at work or just want to improve your life, go traveling.There is just something about it.Maybe it’s seeing something for the first time or problem solving your way out of situations while traveling that makes it so beneficial.I’ve been on the road for just over a week straight now and had two instances where I really needed to use GMaps.
I know the Google Maps application for phones has been out for a while now, and I have played with it a few times before (you know, to find cross streets in DC and such), but I never really used the application because I had no other option. I think these real life tests reveal much more about the application than just playing around with the tool.
The first part of the trip was out in CA.Actually, it was my first outing to Silicon Valley! I didn’t know the area that well at all, went out to the burbs, had dinner with a few people, and lost track of time. Long story short, I missed my train, didn’t really want to, but I had to stay.I am not one for unexpected sleepovers (being able to brush your teeth is nice), so woke up early the next day, pulled out my phone, found my way back to the BART train and easily navigated my way back to my destination. I must say, i was quiet impressed that trainstations were on the map! Without Google, there is NO way I would have found the station.CA is not much of a walking state, I mean, there are no sidewalks, many steep hills, and not a cab in sight!
After a mix of trains and planes, I thought it might be nice to take the car up to the City for the second half of my trip.Parking your car in Manhattan does not need to be difficult or expensive (There are plenty of spots in Harlem and the 2/3 express train stops at 125th).I was running late the morning I was going to drive out to long island from the City and completely forgot to print out directions!Luckily I remembered GMaps Mobile app offered directions.
Now, the nice thing about GMaps Mobile is that it imposes the directions on top of the map.So if you don’t quite understand what the directions are saying, you can visually see that specific step.The other great feature I found was that it estimated with current traffic conditions, how much longer my trip was going to be.It always sucks to be stuck in traffic, but I would rather be forewarned than surprised.
But, this is in the leg of the trip where I saw a few faults with the application:
First off, with Google Maps Mobile there is no way to just view the written directions all at once.Instead, you can ONLY view the directions one at a time.IDK about you, but before I go somewhere, and if I have time, I like to read out all of the directions.That way, if I have to make a snap decision, in my subconscious some names or exit numbers ought to be familiar.
Second, I think it might be useful for GMaps Mobile to add a voice component.When your steps are coming one right after another in a busy place, it is difficult to take your eyes off the road and focus in on your tiny phone screen.Now, if there was an automated voice reading the directions that would make for a much safer driving experience.
Third, every time my phone turned off the screen to save on power and I clicked any button to bring up the screen again, the application would not pick up where it left off. I was forced to press the number 3 to return to the previous entry.Mix this with heavy NYC traffic, directions happening in less than .1 miles from one another and you found a very stressed Kathie.Fortunately, I made it safe and sound to my beach town.
Thanks to Google Maps Mobile, I was able to navigate an unknown city on my own and drive out to LI with out printing directions.
I ran into Yahoo! at CTIA… and man, I am pretty impressed.And no, it was not just because of a sugar high from the free ice cream they were handing out.Yahoo! has really taken a few big steps in mobile with the mobile phone user in mind.
oneSearch
oneSearch is a search engine designed specifically for mobile phones.“People don’t want links when they search with their cell phones, they don’t want 10,000 websites.They tend to be looking for answers to specific questions.†– Yahoo! Mobile Senior Director Ojas Rege.oneSerach gives mobile users snacks of relevant information.For example, if you search for the term “Pizza†the results will not only give you web links, but also and ad for pizza (usually a coupon), nearby pizza shops, ratings, photos, web links, and news articles.All in all, chances are, within these results is the answer I am looking for.Also, it may not be a big deal to you, but it is to me… oneSearch organizes the results in a very visually appealing way, whereas a competitor like Google doesn’t.
Test it out for yourself by going to http://m.yahoo.com/onesearch or text your search term to 92466 (spells Yahoo).
There are just two things I wish Yahoo! would reconfigure:
1. They provide users with two ways to access oneSearch: SMS or on the web.Through SMS, they instruct users to text a term like “pizza” to their shortcode. The user then gets and SMS back with a link to the URL. The user then must click on the URL and then has to reenter their term on a WAP page.
Why have the SMS step if you are only going to redirect the user anyway? Why don’t they make that link show the results of the query? Why don’t they accommodate people who don’t have data plans?
2. I am certain that they are currently working on this… but just to point it out, oneSearch should already know my location. If I type in the term “Pizza” on the URL they sent me… why doesn’t it do a GSP look-up of where I am? That way, I would not have to refine my search after it has already been processed.This would make it an AMAZING feature for those traveling.
Yahoo! Go
Yahoo! Go is the first application optimized for the “small screen†of a mobile phone that truly makes it easy and fun to access the Internet.They have added widgets to give you what you want with the fewest clicks possible.Widgets include your own personal channels for email, local info & maps, news, sports, finance, entertainment, weather, Flickr and search. I highly recommend trying out the turn by turn directions and city guide (great for your hometown or your vacation spot).Since Yahoo! Go uses advanced caching and background loading technology, your widget content is automatically and continuously “pushed†to your phone, so it’s always right there when you want it. You don’t need to endure lengthy downloads or navigate loads of links to get to what you want (though i wonder, does this affect battery life?).
Key features of Yahoo! Go 2.0 include:
Be local, no matter where you are - The Local & Maps widget gives consumers quick access to comprehensive local directory information for businesses across the US, enhanced with ratings and reviews from the millions-strong Yahoo! community. Interactive maps feature the ability to directly search for local businesses, get driving directions and real time traffic updates.
Rich, highly personalizable content from millions of sources - Current headlines and a breaking news ticker in the News, Sports, Entertainment, Weather and Finance widgets keep consumers connected to the information that matters to them. Consumers can customize to receive content from the millions of sources on the Web that publish in RSS.
Photo sharing keeps consumers connected to their community - The Flickr(TM) widget integrates one of the Web’s most innovative and prolific photo-sharing communities, making it easy for consumers to upload(1) and manage images from their camera phone. Consumers can also easily share photos, view their friends’ pictures and browse or search the millions of images.
Streamlined e-mail keeps consumers in sync - The E-mail widget allows consumers to quickly respond to, delete or compose new messages or view attachments with a single click - all automatically synchronized with their Yahoo! Mail account in real time.
Right now, Yahoo! Go is only supported on 77 handsets.Check if you are one of the lucky ones here.They will be rolling out a few more handsets later this month, so check back or sign-up for an alert when Yahoo! Go is ready for your phone.
M-Grade is a new mobile-based electronic grade system that was designed to replace the traditional paper-based methods of managing grades in the school system within the Gulf Region. With today’s rapid growth of information technology, the system capabilities will be endless. The new system provides many features that assist teachers record and manage students’ performance assessment. By using a PDA device, teachers are capable of entering and processing student grade data into their electronic grade sheet at anytime and from anywhere. A survey was designed and conducted to assess and measure the usefulness, usability and effectiveness of the software. The results of the survey have shown that the new tool is very useful, easy to learn and use, and effective.
I have waited for a long time to be able to get back at all those damn companies that try to get me excited about their stock by sending me emails with weird subject lines like “Prime Minister” and email address’ that make it look like they are from friends.
I get lots of emails from PR people asking me to look at various wireless companies so this one almost slipped by me when I started reading it this morning (although the subject line “Prime Minister: should have give it away). The email was about Microsoft certified Mobile Airwaves a company that develops innovative software solutions for secure, real-time, wireless access to corporate data and applications.
The world has gone wireless and Mobile Airwaves (MBWC) is in the right
spot with a Red Hot Product!
We are expecting financial results to be announced by the company any
day. With all the new contracts they have acquired we are expecting
record earnings!
MBWC is currently tradding at around 3 cents. With the company being so
tightly held we expect the influx of buying to push the price off the charts!
Get in on this breakout winner early!
Apparently, from their website, the “red hot” product they are talking about is their Aqivo® Wireless Information Server which “leads the industry in ease of use, speed of implementation, features and functionality.”
Then, at the bottom, in order to slip it through spam filters Erika Hunt added
In his speech Benedict quoted two previous pontiffs including his predecessor Pop
e John Paul II who referred to the spiritual bonds between Christianity and Islam in a 1979 speech in Ankara
He also quoted Pope Gregory VII an 11th-century pontiff who talked about the charity that
Christians and Muslims owe each other because we believe in one God albeit in a different manner
All of which is very important to the stock information they are trying to get across, especially when they hire a company like a3design to do their spam marketing. The email came from doylehlobemolea@a3design.com. An example of a legitimate company embracing spam.
I never heard of Mobile Airwaves before and now I never care to.
The funny thing is TocMaG PR people sent me the bellow memo to me as letter of a problem they where trying to fix and save name with. Now, I am not a pusher of pot or anything but I actually think that what they did as a form of censorship and completely against the very concept of what social networking self publication user generated applications are all about (not to mention a violation of freedom of speech, but hey its the UK what do I know about freedom of speech in the UK).
I think it was a bad move on there side. It shows who side they are really on. This is a good way for TocMag to loose trust in its users (at least teenagers for that matter).
What were they afraid of? The carriers? The government? They are just a tool. If they are not truly user generated they should not pretend to be.
Tocmag apologises after thousands of UK teenagers download mobile joint video - I guess this means there will be no “High Times” TocMag coming soon.
An instructional video demonstrating how to ‘Make the Perfect Joint’ has been removed after thousands of UK teenagers downloaded the tutorial to their mobile phones.
Tocmag – the free user-generated mobile content service – moved quickly to delete the offending mobile magazine after a Bristol secondary school teacher alerted them to the problem.
The Tocmag was live for three days and generated over 5000 downloads to UK mobiles, mostly thought to be school children. Tocmags are automatically stored on mobile phone memories so it is impossible to know how many times it has been viewed.
The Tocmag video, entitled ‘smoke-weed’ by its anonymous author, was accompanied by a six-page ‘mini-magazine’ listing the ‘top ten activities to try when you’re caned.’
As anyone can create and upload content onto mobiles free of charge, Tocmag employ a team of human censors to filter-out inappropriate material. However, given the surge in the service’s popularity since its launch a little over one month ago (more than one million Tocmags have been downloaded in the UK already), some publications have inevitably slipped through the safety net.
‘We unreservedly apologise for this oversight and we’re doing everything in our powers to ensure it doesn’t happen again,’ said Tocmag founder Brad Ells. ‘From the outset of this project, we realised illicit content is a serious problem with user-generated material. We have conducted a review of our censorship process and ramped-up the resources we devote to ensuring Tocmag is a clean service.’
I have been waiting for a long long time to finally blog about this. Sharpcast today introduced a powerful new version of Sharpcast Photos mobile edition, delivering a completely new way to view entire photo collections on mobile phones, share desktop PC and web photos from anywhere, and get camera-phone photos automatically to a person’s PC and the web where they can be enjoyed more easily. The new Sharpcast Photos mobile edition, available today as a free download at www.sharpcast.com/download, gives consumers fast, fully automatic synchronization of their photos between their mobile phone or wireless PDA, all the PCs they use, and the web. Sharpcast Photos is the debut service built on the company’s patent-pending universal push synchronization platform, which marks the first instance where Blackberry-like push synchronization capability is available to the average consumer, outside of an enterprise setting. It automatically backs up photo collections online, organizes them into web albums, and keeps the collection constantly up to date across all of a person’s mobile phone, all their PCs and the web. Sharpcast eliminates the every-day hassles of manual uploading, tedious sharing processes, forgotten backups and sync cables so people can get on with creating and enjoying their media.
Sharpcast Photos mobile edition currently supports Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphones, including popular devices such as the Samsung Blackjack, the Palm Treo 700w, the Motorola Q, and the HTC Star Trek (Cingular 3125) and the UT Starcom 6700, among dozens of others. I tried downloading it on my HTC Excalibur but apparently my Microsoft.Net Compact is not update. Anyways, more phone platforms will be supported in 2007
With the new Sharpcast Photos mobile edition client, photos taken on a person’s phone are instantaneously sent to the web and to their desktop PC, in the background, with absolutely no intervention required on the part of the user. It is true invisible computing. The gentlemen at Sharpcast are always wary when talking with me because they think I focus to much on the mobile side. It is true and I do see there point. The magic thing about Sharpcast is that it does not matter what device you have with you… your pictures and information will always be there.
Photos on the person’s desktop PC and in their online web albums are automatically visible on their mobile phone in full-screen view, without having to rely on sync cables or a mobile web browser. The organization of the albums are kept perfectly intact on the phone, and photos stream instantaneously down to the phone as they are viewed, as if the entire collection is on the phone at all times. The mobile edition is a client customized for mobile phones that allows people to share albums right from their phone directly to other people’s desktop PCs, in such a way that neither the sender or the receiver ever has to worry about the hassle of sync cables, mobile web browsers or cumbersome registrations or sign-ups. It’s faster and simpler than mobile photo sharing has ever been.
Sharpcast Photos is unlike any other photo service due to its continuous multi-way synchronization which keeps a person’s PC in perfect sync with the web and with their mobile phone. For example, when photos are edited in one location such as a home PC, the change is made everywhere else instantaneously and automatically on the person’s other PCs and in their online web albums. If photos are added through a web browser while away from home, those photos automatically appear on the person’s home PC and on their mobile phone.
Because Sharpcast Photos includes powerful desktop software and does not rely solely on web access like most services, people have access to their entire photo collection from anywhere even when they don’t have web access. Changes made to a collection while offline, for example on an airplane, automatically synchronize the next time the person connects to the internet.
Now, To add to this Sharpcast and Alltel Wireless today announced that Sharpcast Photos has been selected as the standard and exclusive photo sharing and synchronization application for Alltel Wireless’ line of Windows Mobile-powered smartphones, including the new Palm Treo 700wx and the UTStarcom PPC6700. Sharpcast Photos will be available on most new Windows Mobile smartphones from Alltel Wireless. Any existing Windows Mobile phone owner can download the application and sign up for their free Sharpcast Photos account at www.sharpcast.com/Alltel.
This is an extremely powerful tool and one that I would definitely keep my eye on.
So, as many of you may or may not know I am doing work for Rave Wireless, a Wireless company specializing on integrating the mobile medium into the campus life for millions of students in Universities and Colleges across the country. Rave has a very powerful application and UI, not to mention an amazing business model.
But they also have a pretty interesting blog called “Rave Thoughts: Mobile Campus Life” which really is one of the few mobile technology weblogs focusing exclusively on the relation between the mobile medium and higher education… and it explores this relationship on many interesting levels. The other blogs in this category include Stephanie Riegers Ketai Blog and Judy Brecks GoldenSwamp.
So, if you are into issues relating to how universities, students and colleges can harness the power of the mobil medium I strongly recommend you bookmark this blog and keep your on eye on it. As part of working with Rave I will of course be contributing to the blog. But the blog already has some pretty talented bloggers on board/
I know I know, how good of a VP of Marketing can I be if I do not even write about the launch of my own product on my own blog. But the good news is that we have had such a great reaction that I have been swamped with work!
