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September 15th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

Company Name

20-Word description

Fidj.it is a free service that lets you share posts, links and more with your friends, family and co-workers.

CEO’s Pitch

It’s a micro-blogging site where users can share posts of an unlimited length, links to websites and files. Users have a 200MB sandbox which is accessible by both users and applications.

So far, so Pownce. However, where we really differ is that we will be offering SMS updates and support for uploading files from your mobile. We are also building an advanced API that will allow applications developed on it to be run from inside Fidj.it (similar to Facebook) as well as outside.

Mashable’s Take

Fidj.it is a micro-blogging service that’s like a Twitter and Pownce mashup. There isn’t a 140-character limit as members can post messages of unlimited length. Also, you can share links and files that you upload ala Pownce style. The size limit for files is 50 MB. The limit for maximum number of people that you can follow is a meager 1,000 at this time as they continue to develop their new service and plan to increase that limit as soon as they can.

Behind the scenes, Fidj.it has some rather ambitious plans for the near future. They plan to differentiate themselves from Pownce and others by providing SMS access and file uploading from mobile devices. They are also working on providing a rich API for developers who want to build applications that can actually work from within Fidjit much like applications work within Facebook. By default, every member gets a 200 MB sandbox to store files and applications which could make this a very useful service for the mobile crowd, especially iPhone users.

I was disappointed to see that the links you share on Fidj.it are not handled the same way they are on some other services such as Plurk or Rejaw. For example, when you share a link to a YouTube video on those micro-blogging platforms the actual video is displayed within the message itself so members can view it there and don’t have to go to YouTube to watch it. Plurk does the same thing with links to photos from sites such as from Flickr (Rejaw doesn’t). On Fidj.it when you share similar items they are displayed as a link.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if Fidjit can actually establish a new platform for storing files and hosting micro-blogging apps for mobile users.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

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Today marks the launch of a new aggregator and collaboration tool for college students - Wiggio. Wiggio is designed to take the scattered aspects of a student’s life and pull it all into one place. It does many of the same things that existing Web 2.0 tools can already do, but it claims to be easier to use, with a shorter learning curve.

Wiggio takes things like listservs, text messages, voice mail, conference calls, online document sharing, calendars of events and meetings, group chats, polling and more, and aggregates it all into one place. The most practical use for this I see is in group projects. No matter what you study in college, everyone eventually has to do some kind of group project. These are usually torture as everyone in the group has different majors, class loads, jobs, schedules, interest levels in the subject, and other obstacles to a successful project.

If Wiggio does what it says, this eliminates the need to have everyone physically present and allows for better group collaboration remotely, freeing everyone to keep their usual schedule intact. That feature is in itself something that makes giving Wiggio a shot worth your time. I would be interested to hear from students farther into the semester who successfully complete a group project using Wiggio to see if it truly works as advertised over time.

Wiggio is not the first social media application to try and tap into the education market. There are Facebook applications geared towards students that come and go with varying degrees of success. Google Apps has a whole education edition that has seen adoption by several colleges, including The University of North Carolina Greensboro, Clemson University, University of Texas San Antonio, Kennesaw State University and Arkansas State University, to name a few.

Sites like HotChalk offer a way for students, parents and teachers to interact and all be involved in the education process, similar to a site called WizIQ. ScLiPo offers webcam-based online tutoring. Yahoo! Teachers offers a place for teachers to interact and compare notes on what works best for their students. CampusBug offers a place for students to have a more comprehensive experience online, from writing papers online to getting help and doing research, a kind of Facebook for education with a terrible interface.

Probably the closest in concept to Wiggio out of the myriad of tools for education online is CampusBug, but Wiggio seems to offer a more useful service. Wiggio definitely has a better user interface than CampusBug, that’s for sure. Facebook also comes close but requires installation of several applications, which many are leery of since several apps were discovered to be invading user privacy.

If Wiggio works like it should, it could be very helpful to the busy college students of today. It may not be the first time someone has tried the concept, but if it is easier to learn and use, it will win.