Tired of pictures snapped only to send to others stocked up in your smartphone's photo library?
Ex-Kayak Co-founder and CTO Paul English hopes to solve this problem with his new snap-and-share app SnapDog.
Slightly resembling the design of SnapChat, SnapDog has a main capture button at the bottom of the screen and a search that allows you to scroll through your contact list and select recipients, who can receive the photo via text message or email.
The big difference comes in the design, which bears – you guessed it – a dog theme. The app appears on your home screen as a brown-and-tan puppy with a shiny black camera lens for a nose. The capture button bears the shape of a paw print; press it, and you hear a sharp, but not unpleasant, bark.
Though English doesn't have a pup of his own, the app has bits and pieces of four-legged friends in his life.
"The bark is recorded from my daughter's dog, and the paw print is a slight modification of my son's football mascot," English explained, laughing.
Perhaps even more interesting than SnapDog itself is the information that it comes straight from English's hush-hush side project, Pemberton Software Company. The Pemberton team is currently composed of a designer in New York City, a Boston iOS engineer and English himself, though he notes that he'll bring on more people when the time demands.
"The goal of Pemberton is to kick out really small iPhone apps and utilities," English told BostInno in a conversation, noting that he plans to do this for around the next 10 years. English assured, however, that consumer tech-focused incubator Blade will take up the majority of his mindshare in the future.
In December 2013, English stepped down from his role as chief technology officer at Boston's hallmark travel software company to begin in a new chapter paying it forward with Blade. Word got out that the former CTO had something of an "incubator-meets-nightclub" in the works in August; three months later, English had banked nearly $20 million for the Fort Point space.
While Blade is under construction, however, English has been busy spinning apps like driver safety app RoadWars, released in early November, and Thursday's SnapDog.
"I find that a lot of the time, I use my camera if I see something and think I need to send that to my architects," explained English. Of course, the architects in questions are those involved in the former CTO's main endeavor at the moment: consumer tech-focused incubator Blade.
BostInno has been closely following the creation of Blade, so stay tuned in the coming weeks for even more news on Boston's up-and-coming incubator.
