I met with Pinger founders Greg Woock and Joe Sipher last week to see a demo of their new mobile product launching later this year.
This is a serious company with a dead simple, viral product in the mobile voice messaging space. Pinger, which was called Project Edgar at the time, raised $3 million from Kleiner Perkins in November 2005, and Kleiner partner Randy Komisar joined the board of directors.
The founders both came out of Handspring (Greg was VP Sales and Joe was VP Marketing) and also worked together at Virgin on a project that never launched.
There’s not much we can say yet about the product, but I will say that this is one of the few mobile applications that I’ve seen that I’ll use every day. And the private beta is more buttoned up than most non-beta services we’ve tested. More on this as soon as the company gives the green light. Sign up to be notified of launch on the Pinger home page.
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hey mike> on that one i spotted it before you
http://ouriel.typepad.com/mybl.....s_2_s.html
Nice to be told, but a rather useless post at the moment…. Let me know when it has some more information as I am not signing up to yet another site for a product announcement as I don’t even know what this one is yet….
What’s the point of a post that says nothing???
Like everyone else — what was the point of this post?
just a teaser…company won’t let me say more for now. But I recommend signing up. And…a big part of this blog has always been notifying people of interesting companies coming down the pipe, even if there isn’t much information to give.
Why am I keep getting errors on techcrunch:
This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at localhost. This could mean your host’s database server is down.
* Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
* Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
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If you’re unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host. If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress Support Forums.
So why notify people of “interesting companies coming down the pipe” when there’s obviously no interest from the readers (see previous posts)?
Anywho, keep up the good work, no one get’s it right all the time
As much as I dearly love commenters, Lurker, they are not necessarily representative of the interests of the entire audience of this blog. I write about what I love. The rest works itself out.
JamesM - yep, its a big problem and getting worse. We’re on top of it, will have new servers soon. I apologize.
Sounds to me like they need pimping for another round of funding.
Other than that play “guess what it is then”. Got to be voicemail related, probably some sort of group voicemail. Podcasting by recording a phone call, and then people pay to listen to it?
I love what you write about too, but this is non-news really. This it only the 2nd post I have had a problem with. The first was that danged video interview you did with the “porn” music.
Keep up the good work, but keep the quality filter on
The only thing I learned from the post is that there is some company out there with some mystery product in the mobile industry and that you like it and recommend we sign up for the private beta. Hell, even the web site doesn’t tell me why I should sign up. For all I know, it could be an email harvesting app. Really, Arrington, what was the point, even if you say “It’s really cool so I recommend signing up”. This reminds me of the grade school “I know something you don’t know”.
what a waste of time.
My guess is that pinger allows people to record a voice message for one or more people by calling into a telephone number. This recording is stored on a voip server and text messages are sent out to notify recipients that they have a message to listen to. Each one of them then dials in to get the message. Messages could also be sent out as wav attachments to emails as well (like the old trekmail.com).
The sender of the message probably sets up an address book online to enter all of the names, text message addresses, emails, preferred notification method, etc. If pinger is well designed, then when the sender dials in to record the call, the system will have a voice-activated address book (using speechworks or nuance voice engine) that will allow the person to simply speak the name of the recipient or group so that the text message(s) or email(s) are then sent out to the name(s) automatically.
If the dial-in number to retrieve the voice message is a local number (not 800), then the business model could be a rev share with the CLEC (like freeconferencecall.com) where the termination fees from burning the free long distance minutes are shared with the traffic generateor (here, pinger). Alternatively, they could provide an 800 number (not needed, in my opinion) and throw ads on it, but that would be a more cumbersome system. If, alternatively, pinger has found a way to deliver the wav file directly to the phone, that would be a big improvement over dial-in systems.
I look forward to seeing what they’re built. Right now, this is all just a guess.
“The founders both came out of Handspring (Greg was VP Sales and Joe was VP Marketing) and also worked together at Virgin on a project that never launched”
hmm… their last product never launched. therefore maybe today’s tech crunch actually is a product launch. they are launching nothing.
this “were a cool startup with special people” and presumptuous notion that we minions should care is getting really, really old.
Like Mike, I’ve seen/used Pinger
It rocks
Dave
The best part is, if ‘Pinger’ doesn’t work out, they can always start Woock.com (named after one of the founders), which has a very nice 2.0 ring to it.
Pointless. Write about it when you can tell us what it is. I don’t care who the founders are and who the VCs are.
Remember Segway (aka IT)? It was going to change the world. Entire cities would need to be redesigned. But nobody knew what it was. Years later, cities haven’t been rebuilt and the world of transportation hasn’t been turned upside down. My point: save the hype for people who actually care. We’ll care when we know what it is. People are ultraskeptical these days and tooting the horn for what for all purposes amounts to vapor right now just gives the impression of nepotism.
Is this a blog or a PR firm?
I think the blog provides valuable service by enabling startup info to get wide circulation.
If people are upset about these sneak previews Mike, maybe you should just put a “Sneak Preview” tag in the name of posts such as this. Readers can skip them if they want.
I’m shocked! Shocked to discover that techcrunch is shamelessly plugging companies.
Of course, that is what techcrunch is. We all know it, but we come here anyway because the info is valuable.
While speculating with “Just Guessing”’s post, I imagine this might be a service that also translates voice mail into text that allows you to search through your messages.
That’d be cool, although not as cool as how Zixxo is in trouble now that Google local does coupons.
i smell payola
ridiculous.
Rough crowd.
You can’t please everyone.
To say Virgin Electronics didn’t launch is a big stretch of the truth.
CNET story here http://news.com.com/Virgin+Ele.....;subj=news
Hope Ping isn’t another “thud” like the 5GB Virgin MP3 player.
Parody time… Now is the time for the Michael Arrington Hot Air Generator (TM).
“I met with X founder Y last week to see a demo of their new product launching later this year.
This is a serious company with a dead simple, viral product in the mobile voice messaging space. X raised $3 TRILLION (three trillion united states dollars) from Morons & Partners some time ago, and they are rumoured to have at least one director.
The founders both came out of their own arses and also worked together on other previous vapourware.
There’s not much we can say yet about the product, but I will say that this is one of the mobile applications that I’ve seen every day. Sign up to be notified of launch on the X home page. And I’m being paid for this article in free hot air balloon rides.”
I’ll bet they pitched this as the “mobile Skype” to the VCs who then wet themselves to invest. I already have a voice call function on my phone and voice mail both of which work fine, push to talk hasn’t taken off anywhere other than the US on IDEN. Voice down the data channel even on 3G is rubbish quality and there are a ton of companies doing voice instant messaging so its nothing new.
It could of course be nothing to do with any of these things, and it could be a genuinely groundbreaking mobile idea….it could……
Have you guys tried out Rocketalk?
It is at rocketalk.com. I use it on my Symbian Series 60 phone and my friend uses it on a Windows Mobile phone.
Rocketalk lets me voice message from my phone to her phone.
Very similar to what SMS or MMS might do except these guys
seem to have actually met the promise of MMS.
All this with addition of text and pictures and videos. I can always
leave a voice message for any phone number or any email address
as well. They also allow me to publish to my personal web page - sort
of a easy going blog that allows text, pictures, videos to be publised
to my blog straight from my mobile phone.
Do you know the companies PINGER and SNAPVINE?
Pinger and Snapvine are highly INSECURE!!!!
What this means: I can break into your Pinger and Snapvine phone accounts. I can listen to your messages. I can send out messages as you.
How do I do this? Easy. I mask / spoof CALLER ID / ANI. Anyone can do this, amateur hacks, etc.
Well, there are others, but suffice to say that these companies are doing new things with social networking sites and phones that help to connect people.
The problem is that these companies have a scalability problem based on inbound calling.
You see, if you have hundreds of thousands or millions of users, you can’t give everyone a unique dial in phone number.
SECURITY PROBLEM
What these companies have done is based user identification on Caller ID / ANI – meaning that you call their service, and their systems recognize your phone via Caller ID.
The problem is that Caller ID is highly insecure and can be faked.
The problem that these “dial in” companies are trying to solve is one of scalability. They simply cannot have enough dial in numbers for each user.
Therefore, they have architected a way to recognize each caller by Caller ID and to base the entire user authentication system on this insecure method.
This can easily be hacked.
SOLUTION
The solution is funny – both Pinger and SnapVine make you enter in a PIN CODE when you dial in without validating your phone.
After you validate your phone, you no longer need to enter the PIN CODE.
So in effect, when you validate your phone, you make your account INSECURE.
What Pinger and SnapVine need to do is always require the PIN CODE.
don’t see the point here.
anything and everything in the world can be bent or broken, even biometric sensors including retina scanners (carry the eyeball or finger with you)
lol. right?
this has to be balanced, you can please everyone.