San Diego’s OpenCandy has a new name today—SweetLabs. The change coincides with the beta launch of Pokki, a new platform the company has developed to provide desktop users with an “always on” experience more commonly found among apps for smartphones.
“We’re spoiled by having all these incredible apps on our mobile devices,” says Chester Ng, a SweetLabs co-founder and director of business development and sales. He says the desktop experience nowadays “seems prehistoric” (stone knives! Microsoft Office!) and “Pokki is all about bringing the app experience to the desktop.”
While SweetLabs is showcasing eight apps, including Google mail, eBay, Facebook, LivingSocial, The Wall Street Journal, and other popular Web-based services, the company’s primary focus appears to be making its Pokki software developers kit widely available to third-party software developers. The company says web developers using standard web languages such as HTML5, CSS, and Javascript can use the SDK to create new apps. The platform includes a built-in distribution channel through a “Pokki store,” which opens in a desktop window (see below).
The corporate name change came about partly because the Pokki application platform represents a new product category from OpenCandy, a Web-based network that provides a site for downloading open source software—and recommends related software that the user might want. The system and corporate namesake allows a software publisher to advertise its
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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