Like many fathers, Harry Sangha of Jersey City routinely uses his cell phone to record videos of his kids.
While he owns a video camera, he most often uses his smart phone for those special moments. And like with most phones, his also runs out of space.
A resident of downtown Jersey City, Sangha has four kids.
“My story is like many people’s,” he said. “My phone was always running out of memory. I thought there must be a better way.
So Sangha and his friends Deepak Khanduri and Krishna Kumar brainstormed. From this basic need, they developed WeVoo.com, a mobile app that allows ordinary people to save their videos to “the cloud” or, in more layman’s terms, to save them to an internet site where they can be retrieved later or shared with friends, family or even business associates.
“We have come a long way in how we deal with photos. Why can’t we do the same for video?” – Harry Sangha
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The app is available for iPhone and Android mobile devices. The signup is user-friendly and requires no user ID or password once you’ve registered. Once registration is complete, the app automatically populates contacts from your mobile device so you can see which of your contacts are using WeVoo.com and you can follow contacts that most matter to you.
‘You own it’
Sangha is an electronics and telecommunication engineer professional who has worked for large pharmaceutical, e-commerce, telecommunication, consumer behavior prediction, and cloud computing companies for over 20 years.
Sangha said the app has a number of potential uses, from sharing memories among family and friends to establishing video meetings. There is also a potential, he said, for creating video chat that is simple and easy to use, and can do away with a lot of sore thumbs from texting.
He said people can also attend events remotely in real time that they might not be able to attend otherwise, such as weddings, graduations, school plays, or simply watching a family member at a cook out.
“Once you save it to the cloud, people can see it at the same time,” Sangha said. “And you can share it with whom you want. This is private. You own it. Facebook and other social media don’t own it. It’s authenticated to your phone, a private network.”
He said you might have hundreds of contacts, but want to only share certain material with a few. The app allows you to pick and choose.
Storing it in the cloud also allows you to save memories for posterity.
“A few years ago, we used to have to print photos, and with my kids ages 4, 6, 11 and 12, that would be a lot of pictures or video,” he said. “We have come a long way in how we deal with photos. Why can’t we do the same for video?”
The business use of this app soon became obvious, since many people need to do things remotely.
“Sometimes you’re working as part of a team and need to share information and this has the ability to do that as well,” he said. “This can be business, technical or even social.”
He said it’s still early in the process, but sees a lot of potential, including uses by colleges and other institutions.
“So far, people know about us through word of mouth,” he said.
But he eventually wants to make it available in 120 countries and 35 languages.
“People have the same issues everywhere,” he said.
So far, the app is still being test marketed in the New York Metro area and in India, and has already more than 11,000 users.
The app can be downloaded free through the usual app providers. Users get five gigabytes of storage free. But people can buy increased memory, depending on the amount of memory.
For more information go to http://www.wevoo.com/
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.