Dazzboard, An 'Open iTunes'. We Have Invites

    dazzboardWe all know and love Apple for giving us the almost seamless experience to manage content between the web, our laptop and ipod or iPhone via iTunes. Only problem is that it’s as closed system as it gets. Linkotec, a Finnish startup is aiming to come to rescue with Dazzboard.

    Dazzboard wants to become a non-proprietary, web-based personal portal for storing, organizing and sharing (via different of social networks) songs, photos, videos and other media content. Ideally, with Dazzboard you can sync anything with a memory to store your content.

    Dazzboard overview from getdazzboard on Vimeo.


    Now, part of why we have all fallen in love with Apple’s products and the effortless integration between devices and the web is exactly because they have been so anal about keeping the system closed. Once you allow for variation, numerous formats and technologies to interact the user experience normally goes south. Take Windows and Nokia. It’s not that they have not tried to make it an effortless and great experience. Nor it is about the people. For example, there are just as smart and capable people at Nokia as there are in Apple designing these experiences.  It just doesn’t work like it does if you tightly control every node in the system, and the number of devices and technologies that need to talk to each other is pushed to minimum.

    Linkotec states that their ‘target market is the 2 billion mobile phone and media device users worldwide that are currently poorly supported in the arena of media management.’ A respectable market, but this is where the problems come it. No matter how great a product Dazzboard is, there is still the user experience of those 2 billion devices that Linkotec can’t influence versus one Iphone that Apple has 100% influence over.

    All this does not of course mean that Dazzboard won’t be a big success. Naturally many individual products running on open platforms are big successes even though they don’t sync flawlessly with every single device. And in this context Dazzboard really is promising. For starters Dazzboard with Palm Pre does not sound that bad at all. Only set back is that currently Dazzboard supports only Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows “with support for more browsers and platforms coming in the near future.” So I am left waiting to see it in action.

    We have 50 beta invites for Dazzboard here. Go check it out!