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PALO ALTO, Calif. (AFP) – The originator of an online penalization assist snapped up by Apple more than a assemblage past is discover to weave smartphone users into unprompted communities through instant image sharing.

Color, which Bill Nguyen plans to move Thursday, lets owners of Apple or Android smartphones automatically share pictures with any added nearby users of the service.

"It takes the construct of Twitter to a full new disturbed place," Nguyen told foetoprotein patch demonstrating Color at his startup's office in a pair of rented storefronts in the Silicon Valley municipality of Palo Alto.

"Every instance you turn on this app, it's like a bat, it connects into every added sound around you," he continued, bat cufflinks in the sleeves of his shirt.

Bain Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank hit tense $41 meg in assets money into Color, which Nguyen said was inspired by Apple heralding the move of a "post-PC era."

Nguyen's preceding move was online penalization site Lala, which was purchased by the maker of iPhones, iPads, iPods, and Macintosh computers in Dec 2009.

Lala hosted digital penalization collections on the Web, allowing access from varied locations in what it described as "music in the clouds."

Lala also scanned iTunes collections and then equipped Lala statement libraries with the same songs on the premise they had already been purchased.

It remains to be seen what Apple has planned for Lala, which it winking last year. Nguyen mitt Apple in September to move Color.

"If I could do a commendation to Apple and what I learned, this would be it," Nguyen said of Color. "We are creating something brand new; the meshwork is feat to be created meet by grouping existence around apiece other."

The post-PC (personal computer) era is marked by a agitate from desktop computers to smartphones and paper devices, Apple visionary Steve Jobs has proclaimed.

"What I saw in Apple products was that this was a concern unvoluntary by actually using aggregation patch you are up and about doing things," Nguyen said. "It had the possibleness to be ethnic in a artefact very assorted from the artefact the Web was."

Nguyen shunned a Facebook model that he saw as a large ethnic meshwork conjunctive far-flung friends or family, opting instead to let grouping with smartphones intend to know those nearby.

"I desired to build a system that would provide you almost a small municipality see again," Nguyen said.

Free Color applications for iPhones and Android devices module let grouping in close proximity to one added communally capture pictures, videos, and text messages.

Smartphone users activate Color applications and devices do the rest with no requirement to upload, index in, or refer users.

"Basically, every camera around you is your camera, instantly," Nguyen said.

Color software taps into smartphone gyroscopes to amount discover whom in a crowd, feature at a structure rock concert, is closest to the bicentric magnet and which cameras are given to hit the best pictures.

Concertgoers in extreme artefact intend images from grouping nearby, doable friends, as substantially as from those in the front row.

Color users crapper ready all mutual images condemned at gatherings, with course between smartphones severing after they leave.

"When you place photos to Facebook, there is this weird single perspective to it; it is meet your analyse of your life," Nguyen said. "We intellection that was lame; we crapper do better."

Friends or kinsfolk using Color crapper verify plus of a feature that lets them analyse one another's smartphone pictures in actual instance no matter where they are.

Color also lets users ready "visual diaries" of regular doings by automatically action pictures in a calendar.

Color users crapper peer into apiece others' seeable diaries.

"You're feat to move using it and actualise your neighbors and co-workers are really cool and you should secure discover with them" Nguyen said. "And, you module hopefully spend a lowercase less instance on Facebook informing grouping from broad school and college how enthusiastic you are doing."

Color identifies phones, not people, so no individualized data is concentrated from users. Abusing the assist module result in a sound existence closed from Color.

The move plans to attain money by letting businesses offer deals or promotions to Color users erst they are inside establishments.

"Color module alter the artefact grouping transmit with apiece other," said Sequoia Capital partner Doug Leone. "Once or twice a decade a company emerges from Silicon Valley that crapper modify everything.

"Color is one of those companies."

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