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August 20, 2007

France’s Jooce Enters WebOS Space

Michael Arrington

26 comments »

New Paris startup Jooce says they are targeting the “cybercafe generation” with their new Flash-based web operating system and sharing platform.

Jooce is most like Goowy, another Flash based web OS/desktop. But Jooce is different enough to merit a closer look. They says 500 million people a day log on to the Internet from a cybercafe, and they are the target of the Jooce product. They want access to core customized applications like instant messaging, storage, media player, email and widgets. Jooce offers all of that, and is also a private sharing network among friends.

Every user has their own private desktop for IM, email, storage, etc. But they also have another desktop that friends can access and grab shared files, or drop off a file that they want to share.

The company has raised an initial seed round of financing from Mangrove Capital Partners, one of the original investors in Skype. It is currently a closed platform, but they will be releasing an API in the near future.

Jooce enters a crowded space but is targeting a clear audience. Being backed by Mangrove doesn’t hurt either.

Israel-based G.ho.st, another web OS startup that recently launched, is taking a different approach from Jooce. They’ve built some basic applications to show off the platform but are counting on third parties to do most of the heavy lifting via their API.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 11:21 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Deals and Coupons

    August 20th, 2007 at 11:26 am

    Isn’t Facebook dominating the WebOS space? But good luck to Jooce.

  2. Rajesh Shakya

    August 20th, 2007 at 11:44 am

    Jooce Looks cool. Flash based RIA OS/platform will have more demand in future.

    Rajesh Shakya
    http://www.rajeshshakya.com
    Helping technopreneurs to excel and lead their life!

  3. Mario Ruiz

    August 20th, 2007 at 12:29 pm

    Hello Micheal,

    I am thinking hard about the future of the Webtop. Give one ability that Facebook can’t. I guess for young people in a cybercafe the most interesting is to go online and see the last comments on their MySpace, Facebook or another applications with power.

    Mario Ruiz
    @ http://www.oursheet.com

  4. Chris

    August 20th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

    Hm, I think it looks nice. I signed up.

    And Mario - Unfortunately that seems to be all some people care about… who’s commented on their Myspace recently. Sad world, if you ask me…

    When those same people could be really blogging and organizing and participating in the interweb BEYOND Myspace. It IS only one website, after all. And if Myspace is going to become the monolithic singular ‘website’ upon which the whole world will conduct it’s communication…. then, well, I better just hang myself now and get it over with.

  5. James Cartwright

    August 20th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    I’ve been using Desktoptwo, another of these WebOSs (although Sapotek, the developer, makes clear its refusal to use the term WebOS b/c they feel it’s “premature”) for nearly 4 months and I’m quite pleased with it. I live in the UK (London), travel to NY frequently (where I am at the moment) and also go to Paris quite a bit for business. I find Desktoptwo quite helpful for PIM and for keeping all of my files in one place. It also has file sharing capability and many other nifty functions. I believe is has come the closest to replicating the desktop in cyberspace and it also relies on Flash for its GUI.

    It’s also an open source outfit and linked to a free software community called Sapodesk. I’m neither a programmer nor a designer so I’ve admittedly not joined the Sapodesk community, but the number of projects underway (including those that will translate Desktoptwo into languages as varied as as Chinese, Italian, French, Thai among others) tells me that the service is growing globally at an impressive rate.

    Some have questioned the utility of this space (the WebOS space, that is) but as one who travels frequently and who likes his files and apps with him, I can tell you that I’ve benefited greatly from using Desktoptwo. I can’t speak to the other services mentioned (indeed there are many) although I have looked at them just now and don’t reckon I’ll be switching services as I’m quite please with Desktoptwo. It’s free, it works, it looks good, it’s web-based (therefore universal) and it’s open source (so the sky’s the limit). What more could a tech geek like yours truly ask for?

  6. Edwin Khodabakchian

    August 20th, 2007 at 2:00 pm

    The total immersion into a new desktop is a little overwhelming for me because iI am not sure how I integrate it with my existing desktop environment and keep those 2 environments in sink. If they had more an instant messaging form factor, I think that it would be easier for me to adopt. I think that Groove when through the same evolution: started as a full application and evolved into more of an assistant/sidebar.

  7. Anatoly

    August 20th, 2007 at 2:21 pm

    So let me see here, based on the screenshots — the ideal profile customer is someone who depends on internet cafes - having saved up the money from purchase of a laptop and internet connectivity, I can now afford to spend it on buying copies of Shrek and Ratatouille.

  8. Coleman Foley

    August 20th, 2007 at 3:43 pm

    What’s the point of using these small, nonstandard web OS’s when there’s already one everybody is already signed up for– it’s called Google. If you use iGoogle and Google Services, you are using the best web operating system.

  9. Susan Cole

    August 20th, 2007 at 4:40 pm

    iGoogle is nice, but lacking in the presentation a bit ( google has always been quite minimalistic, perhaps a throw back to 56.6kbps? ). There seems to be a trend towards presentation and its importance for some users. Aesthetic plays a big role for some people.

  10. fake webos

    August 20th, 2007 at 5:24 pm

    It’s not really webos. It’s web AJAX shell.

    There is no system running webos.

  11. Cheater

    August 20th, 2007 at 5:32 pm

    To Jooce:

    You cannot use FLASH based as WEBOS.
    That’s cheating… It’s not really full operating system. It will not operating under internet & server.

  12. Team Jooce

    August 20th, 2007 at 6:49 pm

    Very true Cheater. WebOs is a bit of a misnomer, see our blog post:

    “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, assume it’s a swan”
    July 6 , 2007
    http://www.jooce.com/blog/?p=158

    To be technically precise, webOS’s should really be called meta computing platforms, but google popularized the term webOS or cloudOS several years back and it kind of stuck, what can you do? If google tells you the world is flat; it just well might be.

    So to clarify, operating systems as we know them are the low level software that handles IO to peripheral devices, schedules tasks, and manages memory. Neither Flash nor AJAX can do this.

  13. Alina Barbuceanu

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:58 pm

    Here’s a list with all the web OS es I found : http://www.iterating.com/productclasses/WebOS

  14. David Mackey

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:36 pm

    Its funny - Jooce immediately reminds me of Joost (the name I mean). But anyways, I like web OS’es, but they need to offer more storage - probably 25 GB or so.

  15. D Huang

    August 20th, 2007 at 9:04 pm

    Gmail, Google Docs, Facebook, Yahoo web IM and iMacros for Firefox (for automating all this). This is all I need when I am in at a Cyber Cafe. Not sure if there is a market for a dedicated webOS.

  16. Yakov

    August 20th, 2007 at 9:20 pm

    Congrats to the Jooce team! Internet cafe is a huge market and they need to go after large chains.

  17. Adel Hazboun

    August 21st, 2007 at 1:53 am

    To Haung,

    I’m really glad you mentioned those. Actually, the main purpose of a “WebOS”, or what ever you want to call, is to integrate and aggregate all those services in one place with mobility. This actually what G.ho.st is up to: Single sign-in to those services and later on Interoperability! Image being able to drag your Google Document to your Facebook friends with in one place!

  18. Nic

    August 21st, 2007 at 5:33 pm

    Signed up, logged in, entered my MSN login, and it promptly screwed my MSN contact list.

    Logged off, haven’t gone back.

  19. Team Jooce

    August 22nd, 2007 at 4:26 am

    Hi Nic,

    Sorry to hear you had problems signing into jooce. Since we launched private beta two days, we’ve been regulating the number of people allowed onto the system. We’ve also been carefully monitoring the system for any such bugs and attending to them as fast as our little start-up resources will allow.
    We don’t have a record of the problem you encountered - but obviously we want to avoid a repeat of it. There is a bug report feature built into the platform, and we would encourage you to use it. We rely on user feedback to build a system that is responsive to user needs (and as bug-free as possible). Please don’t hesitate to make contact with us directly and we will do our best to sort out any problems you are encountering,

    teamjooce@jooce.com

    Regards

    Team Jooce

  20. Cameron

    August 23rd, 2007 at 4:29 pm

    I guess this is web2.0, where the developers burn out seed money keeping th buzz alive as long as possible, all the while hoping for a buy out. welcome to the future …

  21. Mikael Bergkvist

    August 28th, 2007 at 10:50 am

    Check out http://www.widgetplus.com , working now, avaliable API, tons of apps.

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