Fuugo Creates A New Kind Of Watching Experience
By Antti Vilpponen
Fuugo is a new kind of television product created by Axel Technologies, a company based in Turku. You can't really call Axel Technologies a startup as it has been registered way back in 1988. However, Fuugo is a very interesting concept that requires more analysis into it. Fuugo claims to be the next generation TV application for mobile and handheld devices.
The application pulls in content from many different sources to create a new watching experience. It pulls in content from broadcast TV, mobile TV, Internet TV and on-demand video services. It blends all this together with social media services and even includes functions such as recording (at least according to the promotional video).
There are two things in my opinion which make Fuugo a very interesting concept. The first one is that it seems they are able to tap into the advantages of watching television on a mobile device without carrying onward too many legacy factors from other channels. By this I mean that you are able to watch content from any source whenever you wish. Secondly, the point that has already made many television services unappealing is the factor of national borders. Content is heavily restricted on many levels and if Fuugo is able to crack this issue to the favor of consumers they are well on their way to success. They claim the service will be global from the start so you'll be able to watch what you want, wherever you want.
Fuugo is currently looking for beta testers. They will get access to the service in April and Fuugo aims to become commercially available during the second half of 2010.
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Looks great. If they really are able to crack those 'national boundaries' (based mainly on IP address detection) to access TV content, it will be an extraordinary hit.
What about those broadcasters that still insist in getting paid for their contents on a membership basis? More than a technical issue for Fuugo tool, may it become a legal one?
Hopefully proliferation of tools like this will convince them little by little to liberate their content access.
Good luck to them, but it's not a promising start if their website doesn't even work on my mobile device: just shows a white "<" on a black background.
There are known issues with this flash based website, especially with iPhones. The whole website will be regenerated in next month before NAB 2010 show... Sorry about the inconvenience!
Keep an eye www.fuugo.tv or join us on Twitter for further info about Fuugo!
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