WarpShare™

Ugly Babies

Earlier today I noticed that we’ve been pretty quiet lately… and we’ve been especially quiet about the business/vision side of things. Perhaps that’s a bit of a problem. Perhaps not.

I can say that although I personally put a lot of time into Tarzan, it’s not our only product. I know it may seem that way with as much as I’ve blogged about it over the past few months and how little we’ve blogged about anything else, but we’re definitely working toward a larger goal.

Like most companies (and DEFINITELY like most startups), we’ve been squeezed for cash and resources for quite some time now. This isn’t a secret with tech companies laying off over 50k employees in recent months, and Citibank laying off nearly 60k alone. We’re still pre-funding — major funding, anyway — so we’re building as quickly as we can with extremely limited resources. People have asked us if we’re going to keep going even if we run out of money, to which I explain that we’ve been out of money for most of our company’s history. It hasn’t stopped us yet, and it’s not going to stop us now.

We still have a long way to go before we reach our vision. In the meantime, however, we’re planning to have our alpha-quality “ugly baby” release in March 2009. It’ll be enough to show our friends-and-family investors, and long-time watchers, that WarpShare isn’t vaporware. We’re excited to see the progress that’s been happening lately, and we hope to have something for you to begin checking out in the next few months. From there, we hope to attract some cash and talent to help us build out what we believe is the next game-changing business in digital media and advertising.

“Game changing? Sure thing, Ryan.” I know, I know. Every startup thinks that they have something game changing… which is a big reason why they do it. But when it comes to digital media and advertising, it appears (from what we’ve seen so far) that everybody is still thinking inside the box. They’re not re-thinking the proposed solutions. They’re still putting the consumer/end-user last and Big/Old Media and Advertisers first. Tsk, tsk.

If you’re curious to know more about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, get in touch. We’d love to talk to you.

Categories: The Future and What we're doing

Introduction to Tarzan

We’ve been quiet here lately because we’ve been hyper-focused on fundraising, but I wanted to take a moment to properly introduce some code we open-sourced last spring, known as Tarzan. (more…)

Categories: Tarzan, The Future and What we're doing

The Saga Begins…

Today begins a new era. Or maybe it’s the same era with one more player. Time will tell, I suppose.

Microsoft was “one more player” when they released MS-DOS®. Apple was “one more player” when they released the iPod®. Google was “one more player” when they released their now-ubiquitous search engine. Foleeo is “one more player” in digital media. And like Microsoft, Apple, and Google, Foleeo has a passion. We see all sorts of problems with the current state of digital media, and we believe we know how to fix them.

It shouldn’t be so hard to show off the things that you like. It shouldn’t be so hard to watch videos, listen to music, or look at photos on more than one computer or more than one device. People who want to do the right thing shouldn’t be punished while those want to do the wrong thing have all the advantage. Artists and record companies should be fairly paid for the work they put in to create the music. People should be able to enjoy the music they pay for without all the hassle of Digital Restriction Management. Although that’s a very legally sticky situation right now, we believe that we have the ideas and tools to solve this problem in a way that is legit and allows people on all sides of the equation to be happy.

We’re launching today with widgets — a window into the music you like. Over the coming months, we’ll be updating and upgrading the widgets making them better, cooler and more useful with each update. We’ll also be unveiling a new technology this Fall that addresses the problems consumers, artists, and record companies have faced since the dawn of the digital music revolution.

But more on that later. For now, we’re just happy to be here.

Categories: The Future