Switzerland-based deskNET is debuting the public beta version of Sobees today, an application that aims to bring the web to a personalized desktop environment. We first came across Sobees when they presented their project in the DemoPit at the TechCrunch50 conference.
While many startups are heading in the opposite direction by trying to take the best of the desktop experience inside the browser, Sobees’ goal is to aggregate various web applications and services into a customized desktop environment instead, including search, weather updates, RSS feeds, YouTube videos, social networking sites, etc.
The bootstrapped startup wants to provide a seamless user experience fit for a mainstream audience when it comes to accessing online content or handling repetitive internet tasks, without the need to constantly switch between browser windows, tabs and multiple desktop apps. Customizable start pages like Netvibes, iGoogle / Google Desktop and MyYahoo are the biggest challengers, as well as the widgets you can add to your Mac or Windows Vista desktop.
Sobees also boasts a number of social features like interacting with friends, sharing data and news articles, as well as integration with video and photo sharing services. Sobees allows you to update your status messages across Facebook and Twitter, and also enables you to drag and drop media files and easily transfer them to a variety of services, e.g. dragging pictures to the desktop environment and uploading them directly to your Flickr account. Ubervu has a similar approach.
Sobees plans to make money from search monetization, advertising and selling branded modules.
Sobees sports an excellent design and has obviously paid much attention to the usability of the service (the ribbon menu is really cool) but one has to wonder if there’s a real need for this type of service. As fancy as it may be, it doesn’t solve a real problem, not one I’m aware of anyway.
Another barrier to take into account is the fact that Sobees can only be installed on machines running Windows Vista / XP with the yet-to-be-distributed .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for now, although a Silverlight build is currently on the roadmap. I also experienced some problems launching and accessing the application after installing.
I embedded a demo video below which gives a good overview of the main functionalities (sexy voice over included).
So lame, why not just start your web browser?..
Would be a bit easier would’nt it?
Because many beginners end up with a single application window on their desktop and it’s the browser. There’s some logic there.
Deadpool
Actually, fairly interesting, if you recognize how much time you waste in a day calling up your browser to check on update x/y/z. I’ll agree that a lot of the options here are probably overkill, but one also can imagine a scenario where non-Techcrunch readers, i.e, my mom, can get useful/interesting updates by just glancing at the desktop rather than launching something to access something else.
Finally!. they took their time. great .NET app. it could be made cross platform with Mono if they wanted. they should go with that first since they have already developed the app. looking forward to try it out.
Sobees is more like Klipfolio. just that they went the opposite direction and they want to offer something really featured.
I’m going to try this
“I can search the web easily.”
Microsoft should just make Internet Explorer a kind of “integrated browser”. Do away with the Windows desktop, Windows Explorer, and Internet Explorer being separate. Mash ‘em up into one. They could call it Window … saving money on that last “s”.
Great comment
“While many startups are heading in the opposite direction by trying to take the best of the desktop experience inside the browser…”
Since browsers are going the replace the OS, I’d say they are heading in the exact same direction
Let me know when browsers replace the OS, I wouldn’t wanna miss it
ask your boss
“Expect to see millions of web devices, even desktop web devices, in the coming years that completely strip out the Windows layer and use the browser as the only operating system the user needs. That was going to happen anyway, but Chrome + Gears just made the decision a whole lot easier for hardware manufacturers to make.”
http://www.tech...windows-killer/
Yeah, ask your boss Robin. You’re fired after this week. Nothing but trash posts and commentary out of your end. Go join duncan in australia.
not sure how useful this can be
After watching the video, I know less about them than before I watched the video. Maybe I’m not the only one who is confused here…
Just start your Firefox and run a pre-recorded imacro. No desktop app required (except Firefox and the iMacros addon)
Funny, checking out the site I got an error message that suggests they are running their homepage with Joomla on an XAMPP installation. That screams amateur, if not to say FAIL in a big way.
Same here… How can one allow such a bug when featured at TechCrunch?!?!
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded in C:\xampp\htdocs\libraries\joomla\filesystem\folder.php on line 395
Ahahaha..
The idea of having a single interface to access, publish to, filter, and control the vast universe of fragmented apps is definitely worthwhile (Google: Metamee), whether Sobees or someone else gets it right.
uberVU used to do some of this stuff a few months ago, but right now we’re doing something completely different, as in we’re mapping the conversational graph around a story on the Web. So for each story, we tell users what people are saying about it on a dozen different services.
We’re not a publishing platform anymore, though that stage was fun
its looks good.
has anyone got an idea & execution for the my domain http://www.humanbin.com
“Sobees can only be installed on machines running Windows Vista / XP with the yet-to-be-distributed .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for now”
And that’s the problem right there.
Nice product, nice demo, a couple cool features. But old habits are hard to die and people like that sense of freedom to go or not to go to a web site.
How is this better than Flock?
Alredy viewed but innovation to be welcome. Good luck!
deadpool
What usability?
In the frontpage of soobees, you can’t tell which ones are text, which ones are link until you move the mouse pointer over. This clearly and defintely violates the basic usability design principle of web sites.
Watch the video…seems pretty cool!
Check out http://www.orsiso.com. A brilliant deskop application that allows you to merged contacts from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Friendster, Msn chat, yahoo chat, AIM chat. the albums slideshow is sliiiiick.