This is a year and a half’s worth of work.
I recently launched the main website for Moonsync and it’s gone down extremely well. Moonsync is a project me and a colleague Ian Kelly have been doing in our spare time. It started off as a general idea Ian came up with which has now developed into a full scale platform for Android devices.
Think iCloud for Android, but better. Dear Apple:
One of the main gripes I have with iCloud, being an iPhone/Mac/iPad user is its fragmentation of services. The photo galleries I’ve created on my phone using the app, can’t be viewed easily online.
- Why aren’t they on iCloud.com?!
- Why can’t I share photos and galleries easily from my iPhone?
- Why does iOS6 copy that functionality of iPhoto for iOS?
- Why can’t I send an iMessage from icloud.com?
- Why do I have to download Messages and have a Mac?
What Moonsync does
Moonsync aims to combat all this for Android. I know Google has some synchronising stuff but again it all feels separate. Picasa is ugly, Google Talk isn’t integrated or widely used enough to send messages from the web etc etc.
We give you access to your phone, from anywhere in the world. If you’ve left your phone at home you can still send messages with Moonsync. Login to The Dock and continue your conversation. Easy.
You can also share amazing photo galleries. Moonsync gives your images the stage they deserve. Whack one button in your share dropdown in your gallery and it’s instantly shared. You don’t even need to upload anything as Moonsync has already synced your photos.
View your Android phones galleries online too. Anything you have on your phone will be instantly and securely backed up to The Dock. You’ll then be able to view them without touching your phone or make them public to share in the click of a button.
On top of that we have contact synchronising so you can get your mums phone number when you’ve lost your phone and send her a message or call her with your mates phone, our protect feature which allows you to find your phone on a Map, remote wipe it, get it to play a loud sound (so you can find it down the back of the sofa) or display a message on the lock screen so a good samaritan can return your phone.
You should really check out the features in detail if it sounds good or signup for our beta testing.
The Moonsync User Experience
Quite often new startups are developer driven. These guys often come up with the best ideas and are best placed to make them a reality. There’s often a problem though (especially on Android) that design gets neglected and the app falls over with usability problems. Users get fed up and delete the app as they can’t use it. We’re trying to be different.
We started by thinking about what mobile users need, what’s missing and what is required to create a great application. Here are some of our design principles:
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It has to be quick
It’s no good having an app which is slow to load, slow to upload information and is out of date with The Dock. Data has to be quickly uploaded and if it’s not, we need to give obvious status messages to indicate what the problem is.
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It has to work as expected
This might sound simple but a key principle is for it to be intuitive and work as expected. If you press a button you should already know what it’s going to do.
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The Dock (web browser) must reflect whats on the phone
If there is a message conversation on your phone, it should also be in The Dock and vice versa.
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Continue the experience everywhere
We should ensure we keep consistency throughout the experience. Simple things like icons and language should ensure that the users understand things easier and signposts should be clear throughout the applications.
I hope that’s given you a good insight into the first phase of Moonsync. Remember, we’ve not even launched yet but we’re still challenging everything on Google Play and even Apples iCloud, and there’s only two of us.
Big things are yet to come. Watch for us launching our BETA programme in the next month or two.