The Vision I share with the folks at SharpCast got me blogging in the first place. Delivering fusion – web services and convergence – in a user centric way is where my heart is. Too bad SharpCast doesn’t really deliver on it’s own promise. At least not yet.

I’ve been following SharpCast for a while. They have managed to put together attractive investments - over $16.5 Million - before launching their first alpha application. Very impressive. I was also impressed with Gibu Thomas, their CEO, and his interesting and refreshing view on data synching and common languages. Share and access your data from anywhere at any time –without resorting to “file exchanges” – couldn’t agree with that more.

I was obviously intrigued when I read about their app going public this morning at TechCrunch. I immediately went to their site and downloaded the application. SharpCast chose to go “the client way” – a downloadable Windows client instead of a web based approach. A debatable approach? Maybe. Do we expect much out of 12 Megabytes of downloaded software? Absolutely.

The application itself is very mature technically, definitely for a first run, but not very intuitive. While the interface is simple, clean and even slick, it takes time to found your way to creating a new album and to sharing it. It currently offers two use cases – sharing of photos and of contacts. The contacts sharing option is not really ready yet (no contact collection and filtering, for example, which makes it kind of useless). The photo sharing feature looks like the intended killer penetration use case. It does look nice – classier then Picasa and much better then MSN, but still a bit too much of a “me too”. I opened my first album, imported a few photos and looked to access with my mobile. And here I found the real problem.

I searched and searched and could not find a hint on how to “share with my mobile”. anywhere! After 15 minutes I gave up and backtracked to the online help (I’m a man, I have to try the hell out first). Then it struck me! I must have a mobile client! And SharpCast offers one for – get this – Palm and Windows Mobile only!

Wait a minute! You just created all that noise, raised all that money, got me to download and install 12 Megabytes of software on my aging and moaning laptop…and you leave me hanging with a useless application? As a matter of fact, you offer a mobile solution for the fraction of mobile users that for some reason purchased a Palm or Window Mobile phone? How Not user centric is that?? This ain’t convergence!

So here goes guys – I own a RAZR! None of my friends or family member, or anyone I would like to share photos with, owns a Windows Mobile or a Palm! Check out SoonR – they offer WAP based sharing which WORKs on my phone. Maybe it doesn’t take $16M to build it, maybe it’s not that classy looking, maybe it has shortcomings, but it WORKS. I understand the approach behind a higher end application, but come on! Build a Java client or grant WAP access. Just give me something I can actually USE!

To me that’s a killer right there. I do have other reservations, though. Photo sharing and contact synching are too exhausted and saturated use cases. I wont even start counting the companies I know that offer similar services. It really takes a fresh approach to make it worth it. The client is too heavy and is available only for windows right now. I couldn’t tell if SharpCast is ready to deal with data transcoding – from media files to work documents – a key barrier before going mass market. Right now SharpCast is a niche service for traveling professionals and their applicative message is a bit overused. I’m not sure this is what they have in mind, but that’s where they are right now.

Now I have a lot of respect to the SharpCast fellas. This is also why I expect more. They clearly know how to build a company and how to develop a product, which is why I’ll come back for the next version. At my next visit I hope I’ll see they will have gotten the user centric and marketing angles right too.

      

I ran into Fo.rtuit.us on Techcrunch. In a nutshell, a service for meeting new people NOT based on typical matching algorithms but on random matching that you opt to accept …or not. A friends matching service based on serendipity.

Innocent match making service? I wonder…

Is Fo.rtuit.us  Fa.bulo.us?  OR  us.ele.ss? 

Does any simple, clean service deserve traction or do you actually have to try hard, build something complicated, find three barriers to entry and a viable business model to deserve a mention? And does Fo.rtuit.us meet the right criteria?

I call that “Actionable Brainstorming”. Build what you can and let people decide whether it’s useful or not. The basis of any brainstorming session is that you let any idea – as stupid or crazy as it may sound, out in the open. This is the only way unrelated hooks, mediocre or crazy ideas meld and mature to solutions that wouldn’t have been created if the ideas were censored to begin with.

Its not just about the ideas, but about the way they are carried out. If they are simple enough, flexible enough and harmless enough they will probably develop into something else, merge with other existing services or just fade away. The point is not to hold back because you never know.  I believe these type of products can create change, bring about innovation in much the same way as a well designed “heavy duty” idea.

A few months ago Michael Arrington covered i4giveu.com  - a web2.0 confession site. 
Is i4giveU  - Fa.bulo.us?  OR  us.ele.ss?  depends on who you ask, and many people criticized Michael for even giving it a mention on Techcrunch. I4giveU is another “actionable brainstorming” type of service. As I also know its founder (Alon) and even gave him a tip or two regarding how it should work – I know it was a quick set up, “walk the walk” and not just “talk the talk” type of idea. As with Fo.rtuit.us, I say bring it to light and let people decide.

Some, if not most, of “these” services will just fade away, others remain under the shade of the long tail and the rest will see more light under the ‘main stream bell’. The point is:

No one holds the keys to the “gateway” of good ideas except the public at large.

Fo.rtuit.us doesn’t strike me, but I can imagine a good take given its simple and clean philiophy. Who knows. We’ve all seen colossal ideas and projects fail only to prove that:
Time+Money+Many people+Detailed_design_+Big_corporate_name  does NOT EQUAL Success.

I personally will try simple services that I can register to in a second and use. Much more then yet another My Space clone or other Big mama.