Yesterday, both the New York Times and Robert Scoble unveiled publicly for the first time what a company called Kiha Software has been working on for about three years in stealth now: a piece of software called Aro Mobile. With $20 million in backing from the likes of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, they’re obviously getting a lot of buzz. And that should continue when they fully show the system off in a few weeks at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. But for now we have a video sneak peak of it in action, and 1,000 exclusive beta invites for TechCrunch readers to try out the software themselves.
So what is Aro? Currently, it’s a piece of software that runs on top of Google’s mobile Android OS. But it’s not just another layer like some of those awful skins that OEMs design for Android. Instead, it weaves itself into the OS and uses AI and machine intelligence to make sense of what you’re doing with your phone. It natively ties into your email, phone, calendar, address book, and browser to make them potentially much more useful to you when you’re on the go.
Maybe someone sent you an email mentioning an address, the Aro system can recognize that and with the click of a button give you all kinds of actions you can do with it. The same is true with names — of both people and companies. And dozens of other things.
But it really is one of those things that’s better when you see it in action. So watch the videos below. And if you’re interested in signing up to test it out, use this link. The first 1,000 people who do will get priority access to the beta program (though it is still rolling out in waves as they ramp up).
Aro is an intelligent mobile experience that delivers better email, connected contacts, smarter calendar and improved browsing. Aro Mobile was created by a team with a simple mission: we wanted to make it easier to manage our business and personal communications and our increasingly complex lives from the mobile phones we carry. Aro’s goal is to make you more effective. To make our vision a reality, the team of dedicated professionals at Kiha Software developed a system that uses machine intelligence...
Kiha Software is developing a mobile platform that couples an innovative interface with machine intelligence to produce a highly intuitive and efficient user experience. Kiha was founded with a simple mission: intelligently connect information, and surface insight when you need it, where you need it. Their goal is to streamline your mobile life, seamlessly connecting you to the information that matters.
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