Coming soon to Nokia

It's been a busy month here, after our win at the Amazon Funding Universe event, we were asked to pitch at the Open Angel Forum event here in Seattle.  It was another great evening, and watch this space for news about it.  Sadly the Poker Game was more than a little rich for this start up...

We've also closed some new customers.  The most public we can discuss is with our good friends at Nokia where we're working on creating a travel app for them based on our partner, TripIt's services, and also we'll be delivering our News Application, ViaNewz, to the OVI store for QT enabled devices.

We're also working hard on our own partner program to enable 3rd parties to use our backend server system for their own apps.  More on that later!

News! Or Should I Say NEWZ!

Well, in addition to landing an exciting new customer - I can't say who yet but it's a big one.  We're ready to go public on the Newz Reader and the Local Search App.  Both will be available for Windows Mobile 5.x/6.x and soon other platforms.

For now this is a free Beta so you can download and use the interface.  There's some features coming, including OPML import.  But you can use the interface to manage RSS feeds, Podcasts and Twitter with direct interaction between the web interface and the client.

We're also launching our Search app - a simple to use local search app.  Simply set your favorite searches up on the web and everytime you sync the client you are given the 4 or 8 closest hits to your location.

We're working on the iPhone, Android and Widget releases right now.

ViaNewz

ViaSearchz

Please give 'em a whirl.

CTIA Prep

In a little over a week it'll be time for one of the big events of the North American Telecoms calendar, the early CTIA event.

We're thinking of doing another App "for that" - at least for WinMo - we'll be aiming to have our iPhone demo to show then, but it's touch and go at the moment.

At the very least we're intending to launch our first 2 apps, ViaNewz and ViaSearchz, and also probably, announce our second significant customer deal and the target platform.

As always, if you want to meet, let me know.

The Bravado of the Start Up CEO

Coming from a BizDev background with just enough technical understanding to be dangerous gives me the fun without the object horror associated with having to do things...  at least until I have to micro-manage the deadline :)

Actually, I'm kidding a little.  But it does mean I get to have insane ideas and then act on them while dumping most of the hard work onto other people, and today I've had a good one.  It comes from a post from a friend who is one of the world's few remaining Windows Mobile users who notes that the apps for Mix seem to be iPhone focused.  Highly amusing when you read that one of the big things for Mix will be a phone to beat the iPhone.

Anyway, this got me thinking about a challenge for us.  There is a Mix App out there for the event on iPhone - why don't we see if we can put something our using our technology which matches some of the iPhone App functionality using our ViaEventz stuff and see if we can get it out there before the event and with some interactive and dazzling functionality...

I've not spoken to the CTO yet, but I know he loves a challenge...

I'll get back to you later...

ViaFo Update

Getting a new solution to market is always an interesting experience and at the moment we're in the middle of a significant number of core engineering tasks and have started the work on our non-Windows Mobile clients.

So, I'm looking at a number of interesting options for both funding and our public beta launch.  It's not clear at the moment if we're going to do that in July or wait until the autumn - there's a significant strategy decision we have to take, so keep watching.

We can be followed on Twitter (ViaFoCEO) or you can follow my personal Twitter (daveon) where I discuss a lot of mobile and wireless issues.