GigaOm (Katie Fehrenbacher) picked three neat mobile newbies and wrote about them:
Vringo: I really wanted to dislike this video ringtone service the idea itself isnt so new7, and how much more content are we expecting consumers to buy to personalize their ringtones? But the service is actually an interesting way to help kick-start mobile video sharing. Using a mobile application (only available for Symbian now) friends can use Vringo to show video clips (Vringos) to each others phones that play during the ring session CEO Jonathan Medved, who founded Israel Seed Partners and invested in Israeli startups for over a decade, says the trickiest part of the technology is waking up the phone during the ring. The technology does not use MMS and uses data services, so if you ever try it out make sure youve got a data plan.
Mobio Networks: Like Vringos execs, Mobios CEO Ramneek Bhasin, is pretty convinced that the rich client experience has won out over WAP browsing… The client offers 50 different web-based applications like OpenTable reservations and finding and purchasing movie tickets. Its interesting because its an easy way for smaller web sites to go mobile, and less sophisticated phones like the Motorola RAZR and Samsung BLADE can use the simple-enough data application. Like Vringo GetMobio uses data services, so dont get killed on data charges if you dont have unlimited data.
TeleFlip: Unlike Mobio and Vringo, TeleFlip is hinging its service on text messages…[Their service] helps average phones without data connections send email and other text-based content to the SMS inbox. Its kind of like a Blackberry-style email service for basic phones but relying on the text message inbox. Theyre offering a free service for 5,000 messages a month, and plan to offer an ad-based and premium service. One issue, is that youd better get yourself an unlimited text package, because youll be pretty unhappy if youve got limited per month texts used up by email spam or unimportant email messages.
Rafe Needleman (Webware) picked his top 5:
Vuvox: Gorgeous multimedia presentation creation tool, designed for the MySpace and MTV crowd. Best demo of a Web app I’ve ever seen.
Jaman: Indie film site. What makes this service so good? Is it the HD quality, or the community? Nope. It’s the content. The team is jetting to all the good film festivals and buying up the streaming rights to the good movies.
Adobe Apollo: Very important cross-platform software platform that will get Internet applications out of the browser. Apollo apps should start showing up this year.
Zink: Prints without ink. Printers can be small enough to fit on a camera. The founders don’t want you to say “thermal paper,” but that’s what it is. Just in color. Or put another way, “Polaroid 2.0.”
Eyejot: Supersimple video voice mail. No client required. Both Erica and I are actually using this new service.
Tomorrow: Demo-ing, Proto.in
TECH TALK Demo 2007+T
