The Next Web

Apple to Fruux: When I look at you, I see myself

Written on December 16, 2008 – 12:09 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

Fruux, the free alternative to MobileMe, has been deemed too similar to Apple’s own MobileMe solution. The developers behind Fruux submitted their desktop App to Apple months ago to be featured in Apples’ Software Download Page. Yesterday they received this short but clear message:

Hi,

fruux’s feature-set is too similar to Apple’s MobileMe (http://www.me.com).

Regards,

Apple Downloads

Duh. That IS the whole point!
Fruux is similar to MobileMe except for one notable difference: it is free!

Fruux was planning on offering an iPhone version of its software too but is seriously reconsidering that now. If they can’t even get a link from Apple’s Downloads page they can be pretty sure they won’t be accepted in the iPhone store either. Why spend money, time and sleepless nights on a product you know won’t ever be officially accepted?

Apple thinks competition is good. Except when you are competing with Apple’s own products.

I hope you like that post!

The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our 'About' page and subscribe to our RSS feed.

Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!

Apple, competition, denied, fruux, mobileme

5 Comments »

Fruux - MobileMe sync without MobileMe

Written on September 22, 2008 – 11:54 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

MobileMe just works for me. But if you take a look at the blogosphere sometimes I seem to be the only on in the world who has a positive experience. Either way, some companies are using MobileMe’s bad rep to launch their own and competing products.

You could use Gmail, Soocial, Plaxo and, since last week, give fruux a try if you are fed up with MobielMe.

fruux is the latest entry into this market. It is a small and convenient system preference pane, that syncs your AddressBook between different macs. fruux supports sync conflict resolution which will help you when you changed a contact on more than one machine.

fruux is a Germany based student start-up. They launched their public beta before the weekend and it is currently localized to German and English. Calendar and bookmark syncing will be added in one of the next updates.

It’s still beta software, so (although nobody managed to kill his AddressBook with fruux yet) we strongly recommend having an AddressBook backup. On the other hand we strongly recommend having a backup even if people don’t try fruux! When was the last time YOU back-up your AddressBook?

Their Road map looks pretty interesting too:

- Bookmark Syncing
- Calendar Syncing
- Preferences Syncing
- “Social Syncing”
- iPhone Sync Client
- fruux Webapp (Addressbook/Calendar/Bookmarks on the go from any internetconnected device)

Download the App for free at the fruux blog or check out this gallery with a few screenshots:

AddressBook, Apple, fruux, mobileme, plaxo, soocial

2 Comments »

Soocial will “totally obliterate” Plaxo and MobileMe

Written on August 8, 2008 – 9:53 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views.

This time we’re interviewing Stefan Fountain from Dutch start-up Soocial. You might remember the David Hasselhof incident at The Next Web Conference. He was the guy behind it. They’re infamous for their own style, and if you’re not familiar with it yet, you’ll be after reading this article. So what does Soocial actually do? Simple, it’s syncing your contacts between web services, your computer, and your mobile phone.

The guys from Soocial, Stefan is in the one with his arms in the air.

How did you come up with the idea of Soocial?

“SEX! Well not really but we figured you’d read on if I start my answers with sex. I’ll throw random words in my answers to see if we can retain readers attention. HORSES! FIRE! FOES! So how _did_ Soocial start? It was actually when we needed a bunch of new computers and migrating the address book was such a hassle. Then we thought, wait a minute, in order to really solve this problem we need to solve it for our phones too. SWEDISH CHEF! Then after a while we abstracted the base-line idea that you need an address-book solution everywhere you use contacts. In a “nutcase” that is the essence of what Soocial is aiming: to be the de-facto standard contact platform, that enables you to finally have one connected unified address book. Or simpler: we want to supply your address book on the Internet as OS.” (more…)

contacts, five questions for start-ups, mobileme, plaxo, syncing

3 Comments »