Live From Essential Web 2007 (3)
So, another few sessions have come and gone and I am seriously getting tired. This conference is realy, realy VC oriented and this is most noticable when you consider the abnormal VC vs startups ratio. The last session we enjoyed was about Enterprise2.0 with the guys from Yuuguu and G.ho.st presenting their products. Although the panel liked them I was actually anoyed by how “small” all these companies where thinking. The only company that really earned the respect was Trampoline Systems who realy offered a web2.0 approach to solving business issues without “just” introducing the standard web2.0 concepts to business. I hope to upload more photos later, for now you will have to do with the ones in the previous post.
Zvi Schreiber http://g.ho.st
June 27th, 2007I presented G.ho.st which you referenced above (http://G.ho.st) - we are providing a full Web-based alternative and competitor to Microsoft Windows (!) which gives every Web user a free Virtual Computer available from any Web browser - so that your desktop, data and apps are available from everywhere. It that’s thinking small let me know what is thinking big!
Zvi
Charles Armstrong http://www.trampolinesystems.com
June 27th, 2007Thanks for the kind words, Cristiano. We designed Trampoline’s products specifically for enterprise needs so this has definitely led us down different paths from the usual consumer web2.0 technologies. It always seemed to me it was naive to believe that successful consumer technologies would be effective if you just shifted them over into the enterprise. The next five years are going to see some big disruption in enterprise software and I hope Trampoline will be right at the centre of it. It was frustrating the video in my presentation screwed up today. Guess the curse of PowerPoint strikes everyone sooner or later!
Reinier http://zwitserloot.com
June 27th, 2007Hmm, g.ho.st doesn’t appear to work in safari, which is bad, because while the marketshare of safari is normally very low, amongst early adoptors its much higher. In a time where notebook sales are exploding, in combination with the explosion of web-service based translations of old concepts (gdocs/gmail/greader etc), what’s the basic market?
Thinking bigger would involve something that might actually work, like e.g. an OS on a stick, or a tiny, no-install required program that can be run without admin access on as many platforms as you can think of that actually gives people their real desktop with all the features that they are used to. It’s not as easy, but, then, you did enter an oversaturized market.
Cristiano Betta http://ibbydibby.com/
June 28th, 2007Ok, talking about g.ho.st and being small I was actually focussing on this: doing something disruptive. Most companies where trying to do something that was much like other products but “better” or “technically more advanced”, but in the end it is about creating totally new ideas like Twitter, Jaiku, TipIt.to, etc.
G.ho.st, besides simply not working, has a lot of problems including the fact that I still NEED an OS to run this OS, it DRAINS my battery of my laptop in normal use (97% cpu load on 1 core) and it simply doesn’t run in any browser anywhere.
In the end I had a talk with Jyri from Jaiku and many of the interesting issues whe discussed was about NOT offering a rich client but a client that just works. Although technologically very nice, G.ho.st will simply NEVER be considered by my mother as a nice idea that she will actually want to use. Sorry, but my mom is hard to please.
Philip Hemsted http://www.yuuguu.com
June 28th, 2007to paraphrase e. f. schumacher ’small is beautiful’ at Yuuguu we’re trying to make virtual working as easy and intuitive as being together in the same place. we started out by trying to solve our own problem working virtually and finding WebEx v expensive and not easy to use. with 500m knowledge workers globally there’s plenty to go at. please come and say hello if you are ever in manchester.
Cristiano Betta http://ibbydibby.com/
June 28th, 2007He Philip, I had a nice talk with Anish yesterday so no need to go to Manchester. I covered Yuuguu a while back already so I knew the product and even played with it. In my talk with Anish I discussed my issues with the talks, in that most of them seemed to be existing products done either technically or socially better. My point in this is that in the end both MS and Apple have good products lying around that people have a lock in with, and in the end they will stick with this product. Take Mac OS X Leopard for example which really upgraded their user experience of Screen Sharing considerably.
In the end, Yuuguu is very aiming at a niche, very focussed on providing those few (business?) people or techies with a good solution. Ocassionally some mere mortal might understand the issues, but not too many will to create a real change in the online community.
In the end, my mother would never even understand why this would be handy, and again I’m sorry but my mother rules in these kind of issues. I just wished there were more disruptive companies, that created either new things to do (read entertainment, but also Jaiku for example) or solved issues that really mattered to people. Most companies were nice to watch, kinda funny, but in the end there were a few that I would become adicted to or willing to invest money in.
I am sorry, but Yuuguu is one of these, unless you expand in a direction that REALLY adds value.