DoubleTwist Corporation, the company formed by infamous hacker DVD Jon, unveiled its first product today, described as a platform "devoted to helping consumers liberate their media".
Founded in March 2007 by Monique Farantzos and Jon Lech Johansen (DVD Jon), DoubleTwist claims that its intention is to allow consumers to access digital media on the widest range of devices.
The widespread adoption of electronic devices has enabled consumers to create and consume digital media on an unprecedented scale.
But the process of sharing and moving media between the desktop and devices such as mobile phones, gaming platforms and set-top boxes has become increasingly painful.
The initial DoubleTwist offerings include DoubleTwist Desktop, an application
for sharing, consuming and synchronising personal media, and Twist Me, a social
network application that allows users to share media directly from their profile
page.
The Twist Me beta enables consumers to share media with
Facebook
friends and provides synchronised support for
Sony's PSP,
Nokia's N
Series,
Sony
Ericsson's Walkman and Cybershot,
LG's Viewty and
Windows
Mobile smartphones such as those from
HTC and
Palm.
Users of Ap ple's iPhone will soon be able to view content they receive from friends by accessing DoubleTwist from the Safari mobile browser.
"When you receive an email, you can read it on your BlackBerry, web mail or Microsoft Outlook. Email just works," said Farantzos.
"With digital media such as video from a friend's phone or your own iTunes playlists, it's a jungle out there. It can be an hour-long exercise in futility to convert files to the correct format and transfer them to your PSP or your phone.
"The digital media landscape has become a Tower of Babel, alienating and frustrating consumers.
"Our goal is to provide a simple and well integrated solution that the average consumer can use to eliminate the headaches associated with their expanding digital universe."
DoubleTwist Desktop, which currently works on Windows XP and Vista, is available as a free download. A Mac OS version of the desktop application is expected in the second quarter.
"We have built a format-agnostic solution that handles the complexity of file and device compatibility so that consumers don't have to," said Johansen.
