Today’s Startup: Winston

Today’s internet startup Winston is a smart digital voice that gives you information direct from your smartphone. It is a personal assistant like Siri, but unlike Siri, Winston doesn’t listen. He just talks. Where Siri lacks in personality the Winston founders have spent a lot of time making their app polite. They gave Winston a British man’s voice, like the butler many people dream of having.

Winston, at the moment only available on iOS, sucks down your social feeds and networks, cuts the content to size, and then reads you the news, saving you from the work of physically reading a single thing.

Winston can decipher disjointed tweets. It can tell if your friends broke up with someone, or someone passed away by reading Facebook status messages. The app is programmed to identify feelings while scanning for the latest, relevant news. It sorts every bit of content it receives through semantic analysis, and it pays attention to the content you interact with. Basically, it’s always getting smarter.

Winston was build by Reactor Labs and they have plans to eventually allow Winston to access your daily agenda and add voice commands, both of which will make Winston not only sound like a bultler but also make it act even more like a loyal butler.

I’ve tested Winston with my dutch Facebook and Twitter accounts and though the names of my friends do sound a bit funny in Winston’s accent, the semantic analysis is spot on every single time. It would be great if it came available in more languages and on more platforms. But for now I can already say that I like waking up with Winston at my side.

Winston (Winston Network Inc) was founded by Aaron Ting and Jarod Steward and holds office in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Today’s Startup: LazyPub

Today’s internet startup LazyPub is a low cost solution that allows anyone to easily publish your PDF, EPUB or HTML publications on mobile and tablet devices. Whether you are publishing ebooks, a magazine, a catalogue or a brochure in a regular basis LazyPub can help you reach a large audience. In app purchases are implemented and additionally if you are offerring subscriptions to your readers you can use LazyPub’s Newsstand application. Currently only iOS is supported but soon more mobile and tablet platforms will be added.

The iOS app is the front end of LazyPub service where readers can download free or paid publications in PDF, HTML or EPUB formats while it supports in app purchases and subscriptions. Users can read publications, add bookmarks or share what they are reading on Facebook and twitter.

In the back end, there is a content system for publishers, allowing them to manage publications, add new ones and have access to detailed statistics and insights about their readers reading habits. Publishers can even use the backend to add interactive elements to any page of a PDF publication without having any programming skills. Supported interactions include YouTube videos, Vimeo videos, .mp3 files, image galleries and web links.

Why using an app like LazyPub?
A recent study by Pew Research Center found that nearly a quarter of Americans regularly get their news from a mobile device (smartphone or tablet). Not only that, those using mobile devices for news consume more content and return to the news site or app more frequently than they do on computers. The Apple App Store is capitalizing on this new consumer trend, by organizing the world’s digital news into a virtual newsstand. 

Over the past five years, Apple has built an audience with the sales of over 316 million iOS devices, more than all the Macs sold in 28 years of Apple business. Consequently, the iOS Newsstand has seen an impressive revenue growth of 407 percent since it launched. It’s clear that Apple’s user-centric and simple approach to design is making it easier for readers to reach into their virtual wallets and pay for content.

But another big reason is that LazyPub makes cloud publishing very easy.

LazyPub was founded by Antonis Frigas in september 2012 and holds office in Athens, Greece.

Today’s Startup: Maily

Today’s internet startup Maily makes email for kids secure, simple and fun. Maily is email re-invented for kids and allows them to control their own email account, with a little help from the parents. For example the Maily accounts are created and constantly supervised by the parents who also decide who your children can communicate with.

Kids have their own inbox where they receive mails from friends and family, and can reply right away. They can create emails using five tools adapted to their needs: pencils, brushes, photos, backgrounds, stamps and their own words.

Paint
The paint brush lets kids to freely express themselves on white canvas, and unleash their creativity in their own e-mails.

Write
This pencil is ideal for kids to share their thoughts in their own words, or use it to draw anything they want.

Take photo’s
With the Maily camera, kids can take instant shots and add, rotate and scale them into any e-mail they are creating.

Backgrounds
Over 30 amazing backgrounds to apply themes in their e-mails. If it’s their birthday or if they are leaving on vacation, Maily has the tools to create the mood for any story they want to tell.

Place stamps
With over 30 cool stamps, carefully designed for kids, they can create stories in their e-mail.

As a parent you have complete control over what your child sends and receives. If you need to, you can check and approve messages silently using the Maily dashboard, and your child will never notice. If an approved contact receives an email from your child, it will be send to a normal email account. Them if someone wants to reply they have to login on Maily and form a reply using the Maily editor.

Maily was founded in 2012 by Tom Galle and Raphael Halberthal