CTIA: Surfkitchen finally gets very very sexy - demo with CTO Dave Evans

I don’t want to keep being nice about companies and I thought when I met Surfkitchen I would be bored and remain unimpressed about the ODP marketplace. It would make for good reading writing that SurfKitchen had gotten it wrong again.

This time, however, after tracking Surfkitchen for years – Dave Evans CTO came up with a brilliant user interface and sleek design. The new 2.0 ODP with widgets and a number of easily executable options was class.

I nearly fainted. I wasn’t being cheeky but I had to ask Dave if Surfkitchen had started to employ younger people!

He laughed and said, “actually the technology has just finally got to a stage where we can get creative fast”.

There is a new widget service and a storefront for music or any content purchase that is just sex on device portal legs. My mouth was permanently open and I must say that this was the best ODP I have ever seen.

Damn. I really didn’t want to write that last sentence – but then maybe I did. I actually, (sigh) feel slightly proud of Surfkitchen as I have been following them and have been quite mean about them – saying the technology wasn’t there and the ODP lacked flavour.

At the time when I said that, it wasn’t to be mean but it was to help the company and I think that Surfkitchen has climbed out of any lull that there might have been.

In fact, I had a drink with one of Surfkitchen’s investors in February and she told me that fabulous things were coming. At that time, I didn’t believe her – but I was wrong.

Great things have come. Operators will LOVE this ODP. I love it. The widgets also take only 14 days to create. This is brilliant. Last time I met Surfkitchen an ODP deployment could take over six months (now its about 3 months).

But I have saved the best to last.

I scream and shout regularly about the difficulty users have finding services especially on device portals. So Surfkitchen has embraced the idle screen.

Thank-God. This was the missing number in the equation.

Congratulations Surfkitchen.

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3. 3GSM: Jumptap and Surfkitchen showcase mobile search on on-device portals
4. Rome Burns during CTIA Mobile Search Panel (part 1)
5. The future of on-device portals