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At SXSW, I had the opportunity to meet Sobees founder François Bochatay. Sobees is a Swiss startup that has taken the start page and moved it outside of the browser and back to the desktop. Sobees calls itself the, "next-generation multi-functional platform" — some will call it a Webtop. François took me through a demo and others in the blogger room came over and it seemed to be a hit. I’ve had a chance to play with the Sobees app a bit more and I could see this as a good mainstream application.

Sobees reminds me of Yahoo widgets or any desktop widgets that one might install. The difference is that Sobees widgets talk to each other and Sobees is synchronized to the Sobees server which makes multiple setups easy (work/home, desktop/laptop, etc.).

There are a variety of widgets in the Sobees system including a slick RSS reader, photo viewer, integrated browser, weather, stock, etc.

The tool currently works with Windows XP/Vista and I understand a Mac version is in the works. An API is coming in the second quarter that will allow for even more Sobees to be created. The installation process required me to install .NET and a SQL compact server. I’d prefer to see the installation process be a bit smoother.

I like the way Sobees lets you share items. You just drag and drop an item from your Sobees page onto a friend and it will be sent to him or her.

At the beginning of this review I noted that Sobees could become a mainstream hit. I could see my mother using this application and being able to connect to my writings, family photos, and keep connected to the things I want her to see. Why? Because I can setup Sobees for her and manage it remotely. It would certainly reduce the, "Allen, I lost the link to the mahjong page, help me" calls.

Sobees is currently in private beta. Leave a comment if you’d like a beta key and I will speak with François about getting one for each of you.

Check out the printer we used for our business cards:

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Reviews, Sobees, Switzerland, webtop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.