Kyle
A new startup based in Miami, called Guide, promises to bring technology that will turn online news, social streams and blogs into videos guided by 20 different anchors or avatars. Included in the 20 anchors are a dog, a robot, and anime characters.
These characters will read articles, and present photos and videos like your personal guide to the content you’re looking at. The animated characters are the driving force behind the technology. If you’re thinking this sounds rather silly, well think again, as Guide has already raised $1 million dollars in funding from some credible heavy hitters in the video and entertainment industries.
The Knight Foundation, Sapient Corp, Bob Pittman (MTV founder), and Google’s employee 13, Steve Schimmel.
The Gui.de team is headed by Freddie Laker a former executive at Sapient with who’s been dabbling in startups for some time. Leslie Bradshaw, the company’s Chief Operating Officer, has a rock solid resume including being named one of the top five female executives in the technology industry by Fast Company magazine. Bradshaw was listed alongside Cher Wang of HTC, Marissa Mayer of Google and Mary Meeker of KPCB.
The demo on the gui.de website looks like they paired Siri up with some video animation and use her to read the news. The technology may not quite be there yet, but with the team they have in place they should be able to put something spectacular together.
Gui.de is headed to SXSW to debut their product and strike up some buzz at the conference that’s known as the launch pad for Twitter, FourSquare, Zaarly, Ban.jo and more.
Find out more here.
