Animated entrepreneurs let mobile users tune in to a cartoon network
KEVIN Bradshaw, the wireless media entrepreneur, has teamed up with the computer game pioneer Lesley Keen in a new company that will enable mobile phone users to create and send cartoons.
KEVIN Bradshaw, the wireless media entrepreneur, has teamed up with the computer game pioneer Lesley Keen in a new company that will enable mobile phone users to create and send cartoons.
Mixipix, of Glasgow, is developing a set of tools which will allow users to make moving colour pictures on a website and then send them to friends over mobile networks. The pair are looking for £1m (€1.6m) to recruit a team of animators, developers and marketing staff and will present their idea at the Connect conference on Monday.
The company was started this year with a loan from Scottish Enterprise and informal funding from Dr Bradshaw and Ms Keen, the company's two shareholders.
Dr Bradshaw, a non-executive director, set up Digital Bridges, Scotland's most high profile wireless media company. He left last year and is chief executive of Machines That Go Ping, a wireless consultancy, and chairman of the MX Alliance, the mobile industry association.
Ms Keen, the chief executive, founded and ran Inner Workings, a computer games company which was quoted on Aim and won a landmark victory against Microsoft.
She said: "Text messaging is big at the moment, partly because there are no intermediaries and no publishers. In order to make new phone services exciting, you have to give people the ability to create for themselves."
Users with less artistic ability will be able to choose from a set of predesigned cartoons.
"There have been a lot of credit cards melting in the background," Ms Keen said.
Mixipix's technology will work on so-called 2.5G mobile phones with colour screens which are expected to become mainstream next year.
The service depends on mobile phone companies improving interoperability between different networks.
Third-generation (3G) phones which will be able to send and receive full video will be introduced at the end of this year, but are not expected to have a major impact on consumer markets for some time.
Inner Workings, once Scotland's leading computer games company, floated on Aim in 1995. The company was valued at £21m in 1998, but it was unable to find a backer to make up its losses and it closed down in 1999.
The company won a rare court victory in 1999 when Microsoft agreed not to use images of a character called Rocky, which resembled Inner Workings' Lemon Dog.
Dr Bradshaw is also a non-executive director of Freeform Technology, a company which is developing a billing system that will allow companies to charge people when they pass on mobile phone games.
douglas.friedli@businessam.co.uk
Link: www.mixipix.com
Hillington Centre of innovation
MIXIPIX is based at the Hillington Park Innovation Centre between Glasgow and Paisley, which is becoming a major centre for Scotland's wireless technology sector.
Other companies in the incubator include Ascom, the Bluetooth specialist, and Alpha Bravo Charlie, the mobile business application developer.
