Below is an email from a brilliant friend, Gregory Dicum. I hope he goes to TED some day. He'd give an amazing talk! truly a grand polymath slicing and dicing economics, travel, art, writing, coffee,... He was one of my references for becoming a Fellow in 2009, so I'm thrilled to share his latest venture:
Hi There;
I suppose you're wondering why you haven't heard much from me lately--and why when you do, it's in a form letter. Let me explain...
Five years ago, when my Window Seat books were published, I got together with my friend Tyler Sterkel to try and figure out how we could make an interactive version of the books for airline passengers to enjoy in their seatbacks.
We found out that to get anything flying like that would cost buckets of money and would be seriously limited by existing technologies, so we shelved the idea and moved on.
Until last year, when we revisited the concept in light of the ongoing rollout of wifi on board airliners. All of a sudden, we had a way directly to the passenger, without relying on the airline gatekeepers and legacy systems.
We started to research things in earnest in the summer, and by the fall we had formed a company. Now, we are on the verge of unveiling the beta of MondoWindow.
MondoWindow works
like this: You get on a plane, you take out your laptop, tablet, or smartphone, you log in to the onboard wifi, and you go to mondowindow.com. There you find a map that tells you where you are as you fly, and what’s going on below. It’s layered with points of interest, audio, video, games, and social media.
It is the first of its kind, ever, and it is going to be amazing: we have an incredible team of designers, developers, and writers working all out to launch our beta for South by Southwest in March (sxsw).
This is full-on startupland madness, and if you want many, many more details, just ask! (Like, as an example, if you'd like to receive information on how you can get in on pre-money investment.)
And in the meantime, here are four things you can do right now:
4) tweet/update that you are excited about @MondoWindow and have just signed up for the #sxsw beta
Can't wait for you to try MondoWindow on a flight this spring!!
