San Diego’s Human Engines Makes Commercial Debut with Mobile Visualization Tool

Human Engines has assembled its diverse expertise in graphic design, software, chip development, mobile operating systems, and video gaming.

Yet even with its first commercial product, Human Engines is not targeting consumer markets. Rather, the company is selling Influx as a white label technology to smartphone and tablet makers. Influx is not software that can be installed by downloading a file, but requires some integration with the mobile device. The big selling point, Elmieh explained, is that Influx offers device makers a way to dramatically differentiate their Android-enabled mobile devices from all the other Android devices out there.

The competition in the Android market is so fierce that user experience is really the only way to differentiate devices, Elmieh says.

Human Engines says Influx already has been commercially deployed as “SocialTouch” on the Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet K1 and ThinkPad Tablet, which were introduced in late July. Both of those tablets are based on the Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) operating system.

For the time being, Elmieh says it’s only possible to install Influx on an Android-based device. Still, the technology is basically device-agnostic, and as Elmieh puts it, “There are plans for other types of devices and operating systems.”

But Human Engines has not put Apple at the top of that list, even though its iPad is the runaway market leader in mobile tablets. “While I think [Influx] would add a lot of value to iOS, we see a more significant advantage for companies that are developing their own devices,” Elmieh says.

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

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.