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Red Herring | October 13, 2006

Intel to Put Glide OS on PCs
Chip maker teams up with TransMedia to run its software on ultra mobile PCs in Microsoft diss.

Intel is teaming up with an upstart company, TransMedia, to put its Glide operating system on a series of ultra mobile PCs that the chip maker plans to introduce with hardware partners, in a further sign of the chip maker’s rift with Microsoft.

At the DigitalLife show in New York City on Thursday, Anand Chandrasekher, Intel’s senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s ultra mobile group, showed off his company’s designs and previewed some of the software that will be running on the portable machines.

“We were really surprised at how far they are willing to go to support our system,” said Glide Chairman and CEO Donald Leka. “We’re collaborating with Intel to produce a great experience on ultra mobile PCs. We’re contributing the really cool software to make these devices really sticky and much more exciting for consumers. Quite frankly Windows is not the most exciting environment.”

Glide will be designed to take advantage of the touch-screen interface like Microsoft’s Windows XP Tablet Edition software.

“The best thing about these devices is the touch screen, which gives you a tactile experience that your iPod doesn’t give you,” said Mr. Leka. “We designed Glide to be optimized for a touch screen. You can actually drag your finger across the screen to move your music and web sites. I call it finger painting with media.”

Along with showing off partners like Yahoo and Volkswagen, Mr. Chandrasekher promoted the updated version of TransMedia’s Glide Effortless system, now known as Glide OS 2.0, which debuts this month (see Next Gen of Glide to Launch).

TransMedia is calling the web-based version of the system Glide 2.0, with a version aimed at consumers dubbed Glide Next, another version for students called Glide Campus, and Glide Business for corporate users.

Gliding into Rivals

TransMedia has been steadily building up the capabilities of Glide over the past year to challenge Microsoft, Google, and Adobe Systems (see Glide Takes on Microsoft). The system originated as a way to store and share files, such as music, photos, and videos, and has evolved into more of a social network with lots of extras.

The New York City-based angel-funded company has developed a web-based word processor, Glide Write, and is testing a spreadsheet program, Glide Spreadsheet, that rival both Google’s Writely and Google Spreadsheets, as well as Microsoft Word and Excel.

It has also developed presentation graphics and project-planning software to go after Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Project.

TransMedia’s graphics-editing suite, Glide Online Photo & Print Shop, is aimed at Adobe’s photo-editing software.

TransMedia executives demonstrated the software running on an ultra mobile PC at an event in Manhattan’s meatpacking district Thursday evening, next door to a Microsoft pre-launch party for Windows Vista.

Folding Origami

Microsoft too has been working with hardware makers on developing ultra mobile PCs that would run its software in a project code-named Origami.

But Intel has its own initiative under way for ultra mobile PCs, many of which still run Microsoft software. Intel has been steadily moving toward alternative platforms like Apple since January when Apple debuted the first Intel-based Macs.

Right now, Glide’s software runs over the web on both Mac and Windows-based machines. The company will move even further away from Microsoft when it comes out with a Linux version of the Glide OS early next year. The company is also developing software that will automatically start when a user boots up a PC, so it will function more like a real operating system when it comes out around the third quarter of next year.