In an interesting bit of synchronicity, two companies that are pioneering a new concept of media file web storage receive high-profile press treatment today. The first is Transmedia, the company that has just unveiled Glide Effortless, which received this glowing review in the New York Times. Glide Effortless allows users to upload photos, MP3 files, video clips and other files, such as Word, PowerPoint or PDF documents, to a personal website. Once the files are uploaded, the user can organize them in a friendly format or send out invitations to share the files.
Glide offers a free service for 100 MB storage (not much if you’re talking about video and audio files), but also offers a $5/month plan with 1.5 GB of storage and a $10/month plan with 3 GB of storage, along with video and audio conferencing. The company has “half genius, half nuts” plans, in the words of writer David Pogue, to launch a full-fledged music store and more. Pogue, however, is clearly enamored with Glide:
Glide’s core idea is unassailably fresh and useful: a centralized, Web-based scrapbook of so many kinds of files, with the ability to share it without actually giving up control of the files. If TransMedia’s plans for world domination fall into place, maybe it won’t need an elevator pitch. Maybe “you gotta try this” will be the only pitch it needs.
Oboe, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same grand visions. Founded by MP3.com pioneer Michael Robertson, Oboe aims to be a “digital locker” for music.
Oboe, which is available at Robertson’s MP3tunes.com, allows user to “synch up their files and playlists to multiple computers, personal digital assistants and, eventually, mobile phones and other devices.” It’s also a way to protect the safety of a user’s music collection if a PC crashes.
The service, which costs $39.95 per year, also offers an iTunes plug-in that allows users to upload directly from iTunes. The goal of all this is to allow users to listen to music with the greatest flexibility.
The fundamental goal of Oboe is to make all your music available to you on all devices. Rather than lock you into a Microsoft “Plays for Sure” or an iPod monopoly, I want a world where you can play your music on products from any vendor and even across vendors. The first version of Oboe makes it possible to have your music on any PC - Macintosh, Microsoft Windows or Linux - and works with any music software. Before the end of the year, we’re going to publish the Oboe APIs making it possible for your music to be zapped to any phone, PDA, tablet, game console or any other device with speakers.
Robertson is one prolific entrepreneur — he also heads VoIP company siphone and software company Linspire, among other activities.
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:29 AM|Comments(0)
Blogs We Read
