Ontela snaps up funding for imaging solution

Seattle-based mobile imaging technologies start-up Ontela announced it secured $4.5 million in funding from Hunt Ventures, Oak Investment Partners and Voyager Capital. The company plans to transition its PicDeck mobile imaging platform from closed service trials to market deployment in 2007.

The PicDeck solution is a response to studies that claim 98 percent of all photos snapped with camera phones never actually leave the handset. "Using a camera phone should be a passive experience--you take pictures, and they should show up on the web or on your PC or wherever you want them to be," Ontela CEO Dan Shapiro said in an interview with FierceMobileContent. "The problem is the existing software is insanely difficult to use."

Ontela promises the PicDeck installer provisions new users in less than 60 seconds, and following set-up automatically transfers all photos from handsets to the user's PC or online image hosting service of choice. "Wireless carriers want you to take pictures and make better use of your phone," Shapiro said. "They can turn those digital images into cash, but without getting the pictures off the phone, they can't make any money. We're licensing this service to carriers and image service vendors. We're talking to dozens of companies who need this and want an off-the-shelf solution."

For more on Ontela's funding announcement:
- read this release

Related article:
- Report: Users love camera phones...but don't take many photos