PhoneTopp extends web conferencing to the iPhone
Today at Dealmaker Media’s Under the Radar conference, one presenting startup stood out from all others to win the audience choice award: PhoneTopp. I got a chance to sit down with company chief executive Tom Barsi earlier in the day to go over the online conference and collaboration tool built to use with select smartphones.
The company’s goal is “extending and enabling desktop conferencing on your smartphone,” Barsi said. It does this through a mobile application (it will initially be available for the iPhone and the Blackberry Bold) that allows you to dynamically participate in conference calls. And I’m not just talking about being able to speak while everyone else gives/gets a presentation, you’ll be able to see the presentation and add to it all from your mobile phone’s screen.
PhoneTopp’s software runs on Amazon’s EC2 (cloud computing) servers. This means that all of the intensive data processing doesn’t have to be done on the phone itself, which is still much less powerful than a computer (yes, even the iPhone). It’s then sent to the phone and works with a latency (delay) of only about 5 seconds, which is solid.
Of course, for this to work, someone is going to have to be on the other side also watching/giving the presentation. PhoneTopp is in talks with current leading collaboration tool makers including Microsoft (with its LiveMeeting software) and WebEx about connecting their software with PhoneTopp.
If you think the porting of these existing services might make for an awfully cluttered iPhone or Blackberry screen, consider that PhoneTopp smartly segments the various screen such as videos, text and slideshows into different areas, accessed by one click to switch, so you can actually see what is bring presented.
Also interesting is that PhoneTopp caches the previous few slides on its servers so that a user on a mobile device can go back — while the presentation is still live — if they missed something. The entire presentation is also archived using PhoneTopp.
While pricing for such a service isn’t set in stone yet, Barsi believes PhoneTopp should end up costing around $9.95 per month for all-you-can eat data usage.
PhoneTopp will begin private beta testing in December, before opening up to a public beta test in the first quarter of 2009. The hope is to also have support for more smartphones by then. And yes, they are testing it on Google’s Android platform.
Also of note is that Barsi hopes to have an option to do straight mobile-to-mobile conferencing by the third quarter of next year.
The San Jose-based company is in the process of raising a $1.5 million first round of funding. The win today will undoubtedly help.
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About the Author, MG Siegler
MG Siegler writes about technology trends and new media for VentureBeat, with a focus on mobile topics, social elements and key news stories. Before that, MG wrote about technology on his blog, ParisLemon. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan where he studied film. He's previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where he did web development. He now lives in San Francisco.
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Web Conferencing Provider