Sharpcast

location based services

Sharpcast, currently in public beta as Sharpcast Photos, stands to be the “ultimate mobilizer of any kind of data”. A big claim, I know, but having tested Sharpcast Photos and having had numerous conversations with Gibu Thomas, CEO of Sharpcast (who incidentally was a key member of the team that built the original Palm Blazer Browser), I do believe that what Gibu says is true and that Sharpcast has the potential to radically alter a number of things - from how we manage backups and data migration when changing computers - to our ability to share, acquire and manage all different kinds of data.
In some ways, Sharpcast is a little bit difficult to appreciate until you’ve used it; kind of like TIVO - people that don’t have it wonder what all the fuss is about while people that own one can hardly imagine watching “old-skool” TV at all. Part of the reason that Sharpcast is difficult to appreciate is actually due to the company’s choice of data-type for the beta; photos. There are a lot of good photo sharing applications out there and the differences between them aren’t so great that anyone but an experienced user would distinguish among them. However, if you’ve used the Sharpcast Photos Beta and you are paying attention you will see something that should excite you; regardless of which device you happen to be working with; mobile, PC, PDA, etc. you will notice that you have the exact same workspace across all your devices.
If Gibu and company had launched with “Sharpcast Outlook Beta” there’d be no question about how different this is, especially for people like me that have too many email accounts (especially POP3 accounts that don’t sync at the server), and get that email on a multitude of phones, PC’s, even a Mac. If you’ve been here you know what I’m talking about. Repetitively deleting the same messages from four or five devices, trying to use the intellisync utilty to get all your data to agree and sometimes watching as the device with the least current data overwrites all the ones that have the stuff you need. Arrggghhh! Data replication failure hell. But not with Sharpcast.
And this is what makes it so special. Not only does Sharpcast mobilize data effectively, it does so automatically. If you’ve ever used a “crack”berry you understand what this means. For those of you that haven’t, the reason for the addictive behavior of Blackberry owners (and for the desultory nickname) is the way in which the device simply acquires all new messages without the user having to do anything. You don’t even have to hit “send/receive” your new mail just…arrives. Sharpcast does this too; only with everything.
Basically what this means is that Sharpcast’s team has built a “Universal Push Synchronization Engine” that allows you to select whatever data you want synched across multiple devices and have that data pushed to the web and to whatever other locations you specify. Unlike other applications that allow you to have ad-hoc access to your data; and which I view as “desperation data acquisition applications” because they work but they’re so un-userfriendly that the only reason you’d ever use them is when you are desperate to get your hands on a file and this is a method of last resort; lifesaving to be sure, pleasant? Hardly.
Not so, Sharpcast. Treo users, especially will see this with the Sharpcast Photos beta - you’re not dealing with a stripped down UI that presents you with a long list of filenames and forces you to guess which file you want; no you have the exact same UI as on your desktop. Delete an image on your mobile and virtually instantly that same photo vanishes from all your other connected machines as well.
Extend the functionality beyond photos to all the personal data on your mobile device and migration to a new fancier phone is suddently painless. Simply “Sharpcastize” the original device, take the new device and install the Sharpcast application, log in to your account, and within moments the information that would have taken you seemingly forever to have re-entered by hand is populating your new device almost as if by magic.
Backups will be fundamentally altered by Sharpcast too. No more need to run separate special backup software for the average consumer (Enterprises and people that need instant by instant data snapshots, security and granular recovery capability will still need to use other tools); Sharpcast’s ability to replicate exact copies of your information across any connected devices means that if you have more than one computer your need to have a suite of backup software and an additional harddrive to save data to is dramatically reduced. Further, recovery is as simple as installing Sharpcast and logging in.
For me though, it’s the mobile potential of Sharpcast that is most exciting. When I was talking with Gibu I called Sharpcast the “ultimate mobilizer” of any type of data; what the application does is leverage the strengths of your various devices and allow them to work together to give you the best possible experience. Mobile devices, for the most part of excellent at acquiring data -particularly photos, contact information, videos, sound-clips, whatever; however they’re terrible for data management (have you ever tried to edit a spreadsheet on a mobile phone?) and only average for data consumption (I don’t know about you but I’d rather watch a DVD on a Cinema Display than my two by two smartphone screen). Using Sharpcast I can simplify tasks that today I find painfully inefficient.
As an example; I frequently take my own photos for blog posts. I especially like to do this to show how a new mobile application looks on one of my phones. This means that I end up shooting the photo and then having to locate the photo on my phone, send it via MMS or Bluetooth to the PC on which I’m working, locate it on this PC and then add it to the blog post. It’s a lot of steps simply to add a photo. Sharpcast would eliminate all the steps between taking the photo and adding it to the blog. Multiply this savings across nearly all data acquisition/management activities and you can see how much efficiency this has the potential to bring to your digital domain.
According to the company, over the next few months they’ll be introducing the ability to “Sharpcastize” additional types of data beyond photos and they’ll also be developing wizards to support guided migration of data from device to device as well as other wizards to help users set up back-up strategies. Very cool, I’m waiting; impatiently.
My only complaint with Sharpcast at the moment is their limited functionality across operating systems. I want a Mac Client almost as badly as I want (and need) a Symbian client - a point I think I made overtly clear during my ride home with the Sharpcast team from their recent fete with OM Malik and again on a conference call to discuss this post. I don’t plan to hold my breath for the Symbian client but I do intend to pester the heck out of them until I get one.
The company recently closed a B-Round of $13.5 million in additional VC from a cadre of some of the world’s most prominent VC’s so they’ve got plenty of cash to execute on their initial product road map. They’ve also done a very nice job on their website which not only does an excellent job of explaining the product but is also clean, run and has a very nicely done corporate blog that gives some great insight into Gibu and some of the other executives at the company.
Two final notes; beyond the application itself which is truly notable, there were two other things that really set this company apart for me: first, the accessibility of Gibu and his team. I never had a problem getting an answer to a question, a response to an email or a time for a meeting (least of all an invite to a party), secondly their PR person, Renee Blodgett is exceptional. I’ve seen her in action before and for people running a start-up; her variety of hand holding, relationship cultivation and quick follow through can make a real difference in how you are perceived. I’ve seen lots of money wasted on PR Hacks, it’s great to see the opposite in action too.