Another presenter in the photo-sharing business that got some buzz at Demo 2006 was Tiny Pictures, though you won’t learn much at their web site. They’ve received Series A venture funding from Mohr Davidow (maybe now they can afford to buy a real .com domain?), but they’re one of the companies for which the date of Demo appears to have fallen a tad bit early: they’re only taking “signups” at their site. The pitch was sure good, though! Their planned service is called “Radar,” and it’s for Java phones, said the company’s CEO and founder, John Poisson. Later, however, he said the service is “for regular people with regular phones.” (Is Java regular?) But then, at the end, he said the service will also come in a version that will work with “any phone and any carrier that supports the mobile browser.” So, you guess, friends. The company bills the service as “a dramatic shift in the way consumers use photography.” How does it work? How do you get your cell phone pix on their site? “One click and it goes directly to your account,” said Poisson. Or will … when it’s available … maybe. You invite people to see your “channel,” and you can look at all your friends’ channels. “A simple and addicting way to stay in touch anywhere and everywhere,” says the company.

A company that led with photo-sharing but really appears to be about much more than that is Sharpcast. They got $3 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, so they can’t be all bad. But again, folks, this is futures: I heard later their product is months out, and the on-stage demo didn’t work from what I could see. Sharpcastlogo So take this all on faith, would ya? They call it a “connected applications platform,” which lets you synchronize your digital content on multiple PCs, mobile devices, and the web. So you can get at all your stuff with whatever device you’re using at the moment. But it’s not just about accessing and sharing — this looks essentially like a backup company, if you ask me, directed at consumers. It’s focusing now on media files like photos (who isn’t?), but it has its eye on a lot more than that, I suspect. Think synchronization. Maybe a Plaxo or GoToMyPC killer. Please wake me when it’s over…I mean available.

All this writing about what might be is making my brain ache, friends. And I was gonna write about GarageBand.com, SmileBox, TagWorld, Zingee, and LocaModa, too — oufits that all have stuff now! Oh well, that’ll have to wait. Watch for my next post, “Yet More Content-Sharing,” I guess. I still have a few more Demo nuggets to share with y’all….

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[Written at breakfast in Bloomington, MN, just a few miles west
of the Mall of America. And it’s freaking cold here, people.]