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May 14, 2007
Wavestorm Wins Starbucks, Meccano, What's Next?
There are not many wireless software startups in Europe that can count both Starbucks and Meccano as customers. But that is the case with Wavestorm, a French startup founded by Alexander Casassovici.
We've been aware of Wavestorm for a while and are impressed with how its founder is quietly getting his firm's patent-pending wireless software into new markets that have high volume potential.
First Wavestorm developed a solution to make offering Wifi hotspots cheaper and more manageable, winning big name customers like Starbucks in France.
Soon after that, Casassovici realized that "the next big thing won't be computers connecting to the Internet", but rather it is that "billions of things become wireless".
So then Wavestorm got its software into Spyke, the new spyrobot erector set from Meccano.
Now the startup, which recently raised a business angel round of financing, is developing Ki'i, a new wireless digital photo framer that runs on Wifi and an online service to support it.
It's at the proof of concept phase.
Philips was the pioneer of the wired digital photo framer, according to Casasovici who has one of the units on his desk in the office, but WaveStorm's innvovation is making it wireless, open, and offering the hosted online service to support it .
The whole thing is at a fairly early stage right now, but the founder has a clear view of why the alarm:clock's Mom would like this new consumer oriented gadget:
With this device, I could offer it to my mother and on a regular basis update personal pictures that are on my flickr, the ones that I would like her to see. The updated pictures are retrieved live by the Ki'i frame.
The business model is to license IP, both hardware and software. And to offer professionnal services to help our clients to integrate it to their products, Casassovici told the a:c euro in an email interview this weekend. "We see ki'i frame as a way to help digital imaging go mass-market," he added.
He's currently negotiating with brands to produce and distribute the Ki'i frame either on their own frame version, or on a TV-plugin version.
How the service works:
Users can choose from video, widgets, photos, and audio formats to play out in their digital photo frame. Based on a user-defined profile (e.g. "show me the latest pictures from the diving group in Flickr" or "show me the latest video from my blogger friends Loic or Rodrigo", radio podcasts and the like) the frame lists the matching hits. You then select one and the frame retrieves the contents one after another and plays it back.
View mobitrends (Casassovici's blog)
View Wavestorm
Posted on May 14, 2007 07:17 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
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