Andres and Antonio Rodriguez are brothers who own a start-up company called Memora. The company has been selling a standalone machine, the Servio, that lets users organize digital photos and videos into albums that can be shared, listen to MP3 music while at work (even if the files reside on a computer at home), create & manage their own e-mail accounts and those of family members, and split a broadband connection so it can be shared among multiple computers.
According to a story on DigitalMass.com, a Web site serving New England’s tech community, the brothers will announce a software-only version of Servio that’s compatible with Mac OS X. It will sell for US$200.
“Our premise is that everyone is moving toward digital photography, digital music, digital video and those things, because they’re digital, deserve universal access,” Andres Rodriguez told DigitalMass.com. “You’ll want to share them with others, and be able to get to your content from wherever you are.”
The Servio Personal Server extends the power of personal computing beyond the personal computer and brings the power of Internet sites to individuals, according to info on the Memora Web site. Activities such as video or music processing are beyond the capabilities of Internet sites. Personal Servers supplement the value of Internet sites by increasing reliable bandwidth, offering high-volume storage, and providing instant access to dedicated computing power. This is the next revolution in digital content management, according to the Rodriguez brothers.
By deploying servers locally in homes and providing the service to administer, back up and upgrade those servers remotely, Memora offers the user the power to store information from every channel, and access that information from anywhere within their home or on the Internet. Owning a Servio means owning a piece of the Internet, the company said.
“In a demo of the Mac OS X software version, the Rodriguez brothers have shown how Servio can be used to invite others to listen to an MP3 track, view a child’s finger painting, or watch an entire ‘Star Trek’ episode,” according to DigitalMass.com “(They insist that such sharing is legal, because, unlike Napster, it’s more analogous to lending an album to a friend than offering it to anyone on the Net.) There’s even a feature Antonio created called WebJay, not yet included in the current Servio product, which can grab articles from Web sites, turn them into MP3 files read by a voice synthesizer, and load them onto a portable MP3 player so he can listen to them while running.”
Memora hasn’t yet received any venture capital investment, though they’ve had conversations with potential investors, the story said. The brothers’ goal is to get a hardware maker to produce and market machines with the Servio software on it, as well as make the Mac OS X version a success. (Thanks to MacCentral reader Steve Lessard for the heads-up on this one.)
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