@PhoneHalo: #demospring10
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Always Be Coding
The product, which sells now on their site, it compatible with the iPhone and any BlackBerries and Android phones with bluetooth. The phone sees the keychain and stays in constant contact. Once the devices part, thats when the magic happens. When you leave the house with one and not the other, the devices will beep, vibrate, or display a message letting you know based on your settings. (They are also planning a money clip for launch later this year). The phone will remember the gps location where it last saw the other objects, so that it can help you track it down. The keychain can even make the phone audible when it was previously set to silent. And here's the best part... the application tweets too... You can send your friends text messages, yourself an email, and your social networks an update with the gps location that your phone was last left at, as a last ditch effort. If you left it as the club, your friend can see this tweet and pick it up for you. What a great idea!
Of course, this could be a bad thing as well. Especially if you forget your keys or cell phone somewhere embarrassing. (Like a Hanson concert).
The great thing about the company is actually the team behind it. Picture the Dining Commons at UC Santa Barbara. Two students trying to come up with the best idea for the Technical Management Program's Annual New Venture Competition. One shows up late, and he forgot his phone again. And thats how they came up with pro.Found. Luckily since then they have discovered a new name while they spent the past year bringing the product to life.
The CTO, sees the device as a starting platform. This is the fresh approach that a young team takes, versus companies rooted in the tradition of an upsell or product replacement for every new feature and model. The unit itself is software upgradeable, and the software on the mobile devices has a lot of useful options for power users. This reminds me a lot of a device that was similar in its infancy, the Eye-Fi wireless SD card. Eye-Fi made the mistake of leaving early adopters out in the cold but since has found new and useful features to try and command the price of a new card for existing users.
When I asked their CTO about special features such as what he referred to as "dual wielding" for those of us who leave the house with two phones he was optimistic that everything could be accomplished in the design of their current product and free application. The application can even track the last location you were connected to another Bluetooth Hands Free device. This can be used to see where you left your headset, or more importantly as I suggested, to track where you left your 2 ton bluetooth headset, commonly referred to as a car.
So help out an amazing team as they fund themselves to a device in every pocket, and intelligent keys that remember when you left them. They have fully thought out the hardware, and now your gadget losses are only a software program, and those with iPhone envy can get the functionality of Apple's "Find My Phone" features (which costs more per year than this device will ever cost).
PhoneHalo Team: Christian Smith, Tyler Crain, and Chris Herbert
Site: phonehalo.com
Price: $59.95
Tweet #demospring10, and get an early prerelease version at a special conference discount (tweet me for the code @bound008).