I've been rooting around looking at photo services lately. My new phone (T-Mobile SDA) has a decent camera and I've been travelling a bit so the issue of what to do with my camera phone pix is a real issue.
The current solution means syncing my phone to my PC and then doing something with the pix - email them, uploading them to Flickr, etc. A tedious process which frankly leaves the vast majority of pictures on phones.
Shozu is a service brought to you by Cognima, a small UK compnay that has been around for few years. In my pre-Microsoft days, when I was at a small mobile company myself, I would bump into them at the same trade shows, each of us with our little table and one page datasheets. At one show they gave away some electronic music CDs as a promo - not sure why, but it was entertaining.
It's good to see that they hung in there and created Shozu, which provides a "zero-click" way to get pictures off your phone and onto a service. First, you download the app for your Windows Mobile phone. Set it up to point to your photo service of choice (Flickr, Buzznet, Webshots, etc.). Next, every picture you take will get zapped up to the service automagically - no muss, no fuss. You can add titles, tags, etc.
The service is free, which begs the question of what the end game is here. It certainly showcases their technology and I trust they will monetize it somehow. It's a good example of the Windows Mobile eco-system coming to the rescue and solving an obvious problem with mobile phones.
Well done guys.
Glad you remember Cognima from the old days! Windows Mobile is a good platform for ShoZu, allowing us to create a really nice user experience.
Andy Tiller, CTO Cognima (creators of ShoZu)
Posted by: Andy Tiller | February 24, 2006 at 01:52 AM
Had to loan out my Smartphone for a couple of days so I can't ShoZu right now - but it is cool!
Posted by: Jeff McKean | March 14, 2006 at 03:32 PM