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Glide Effortless to Compete in File Sharing Market
Dotnaught writes "InformationWeek is running a story about a new consumer application suite called Glide Effortless that's slated to be released in mid-November. Think of it as iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iCal, Mail, document sharing, shopping, and a few other apps all in one seamless application hosted as a service on the Web that could be accessed by any browser on any computer. It allows file sharing without the risk of illegal copying. It might prove a viable competitor to iTunes, if it works as advertised and if it can scale to handle millions of users."
In fact, Leka explains, the system is smart enough to identify copyrighted music that has been uploaded by users into the system.
Err, how exactly?
Does it listen out for generic beats, mixed with generic vocalizations of generic lyrics, flavoured out by massive over production?
Does it work in lynx? :P
I prefer to store data on my own computer, for privacy reasons. I will not use these services for sensitive, private data, because I do not know who else has access to said data. And I see no point in using their service only for non-sensitive needs, while returning to my existing solutions for private matters.
I doubt their service offers anything beyond what is already possible with a solid Linux or BSD setup, while costing far more and lacking the security I've come to expect.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Personally, I think this looks very impressive, and it will be interesting to see how it pans out.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof'
Will run on any browser, phone, mobile device, set top box.. and will do everything office, itunes, windows etc does... and magically solves music piracy on the sidelines by magically knowing what's legal and what's not.
Same old story... Noname company comes out of nowhere, claims their product will cure cancer, end hunger and guarantee world peace all in one go. I call 'bullshit', until presented with real proof of the claims laid out.
I know you're kidding, but the fact of the matter is that they probably won't. They'll probably just scan for filenames containing a name of a famous artist or band. A threatening letter will be sent automatically, even in cases of non-infringement.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
From TFA:
The software, disclosed in mid-October, is called Glide Effortless. It's a set of 12 applications for content creation, communication, E-commerce, and sharing. The apps are Glide Photos, Glide Music, Glide Video, Glide Docs, Glide AllMedia, Glide Contacts, Glide Calendar, Glide Timeline (Glide's search engine), Glide Mail, Glide Cast (audio, text, and video conferencing), Glide Share, and Glide Shops.
Sounds like a "jack of all trades, master of none" situation here. Purely speculative, of course, but these individual apps would take quite a long while to polish to the level of their competitors, requiring a huge staff that a start-up just wouldn't have. It would be nice to have an all-in-one, platform-agnostic, Web-accessible solution, but it reminds me too much of those multi-function printers and mobile devices where the sum is less than its parts.
There's also the Google Mail syndrome, where people don't get on board en masse because they already have a Yahoo/MSN/whatever email address. Not only does the Glide suite have to be compelling, it has to make the user say "I need the whole thing" in the face of him or her already possessing individual programs they're already familiar with and are paying for. If I were TransMedia, I would have released demo versions of their individual apps, rather than cramming everything into one high-profile release. I think that's just asking for trouble.
The subliminal association would undoubtedly boost sales.
Promises are cheap. Slashvertising must be cheap too.
.Mac/Google's offerings so- anything new to see here?
Do these people have any track record? It's a startup? So I guess not.
Why is this making news before it comes out?
All I'm reading here are big promises on a product that a cross between
Oh wait....
From TFA:
"Not only is TransMedia selling Glide to end users, it's also licensing the software to media companies [b]so they can sell it as a branded service.[/b ] As a result, companies like Comcast, Disney, SBC, and Verizon will have the opportunity to offer an integrated, monetizable service that, at first glance, look significantly more compelling than the offerings from Internet portals like AOL and Internet software services like MySpace.com."
Gee, what I wanted, along with those Disney and eBay branded credit cards I don't have nor want.... just the corporations I trust with my personal info.
Simply because you have all these features does not necessarily mean that you're going to be a successful competitor against products like iTunes. iTunes has been marketed so well that it has become almost synonymous with online music shopping. Without support of the major labels and strong advertising companies you simply will not be successful against a product like iTunes in the mainstream market. Furthermore, many people use iTunes as a simple player and therefore when they do feel the need to shop online for music it's just so easy for them to do so through the iTunes interface.
Also, it seems that they're striving to have a lot of features however many sites that do this do indeed come out with many features however they don't perform any of those features exceptionally well. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but a startup company boasting this many features doesn't exactly give me a lot of confidence in the quality of all these services. This service, from what I can see, is also only available in a subscription based service model which quite frankly the majority of this market is not interested in. Their free plan also only comes with 50MB of space which is not going to persuade people to yet again switch service providers.
Most of the features they're boasting are also fairly standard and people are not going to switch to a new service unless it offers significant benefits. For example, why would I switch to use this email service when they only give me 50MB of space and other free services give me 50 times that amount? Switching these services is also a pain in the ass for myself and everyone who communicates with me.
"A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing." - Alan Perlis
Some things work well being able to be accessed online (Mail and schedules are the best examples I can think of.)
I feel that alot of the service components are going to go to waste with underuse.
The era of the laptop doesn't combine well with the all-online paradigm. The most successful approach I have seen with online tools, are ones that download to your device, and sync/update when you get back to an internet connection. Simpler models of this are music download services, and video download services (rather than video streaming services.) Basically so you can carry your content with you, and back it up quickly to devices. Consumers want freedom over their data.