Silicon Valley based Sharpcast, which closed a $13.5 million round of financing in early March (and $16.5 million total over two rounds), is now open to the public. The official announcement is tomorrow – Wednesday – but the site is open now for new registrations.
Sharpcast is important, but hard to understand at a glance. The basic idea is to remove the hassle of syncing data across computers and mobile devices. The first product, Sharpcast Photos, showcases the technology quite well. In the future we’ll see products from Sharpcast that allow auto syncing of contacts, calendars and documents as well, all from their native applications (outlook, ical, etc.).
Sharpcast Photos, though, allows users to upload photos to a desktop application. It is available only for Windows machines today, with a Mac version promised soon.
Once the photos are in the desktop application, users make a few option selections and the photos are then placed on the web, synced to other computers and synced to a mobile device. The process works all multi-directionally, too. Upload a photo the web and it syncs to the desktop (and mobile device). Take a picture with the mobile device and it syncs to the web and the desktop.
I saw a demo of Sharpcast at the DEMO conference in February, and then again a couple of weeks ago from CEO Gibu Thomas and Marketing/Business Development Director Allen Bush. The application is extremely well done and the syncronization is near instantaneous to a mobile device. If anything, the Sharpcast guys have waited too long to launch the product. I found distressingly few bugs to complain about.
This is the future. The question is whether Sharpcast will be part of it or not. If they execute, they will be.