Locally-developed Web publishing engine, Synthacite, yesterday released its beta version, with the aim of capturing a share of the global personal publishing and social networking craze.
Synthacite is a spin-off from Incubeta, an Internet marketing firm that has made a local and international name for itself through its ability to interact with Google's search engine.
Vinny Lingham, Synthacite and Incubeta CEO, says the publishing engine is targeted at anyone who needs to set up a Web site quickly and is aimed equally at individuals and organisations.
"Synthacite integrates application programming interfaces from third parties into a single environment that allows users to drag-and-drop content into their Web pages from multiple sources, without requiring any programming experience," he says.
Lingham says the Synthacite beta platform includes free hosting and sub-domains, widgets from multiple platforms and services, templates with dynamic menus, image hosting and layouts.
Synthacite supports drag-and-drop functionality from content providers such as YourMinis, YouTube, SmugMug, FlickR, Revver, MetaCafe and Google Video.
Global input
Michael Leeman, Synthacite chairman, says the application was alpha-tested by about 9 000 people worldwide, including users in the US, Europe and Japan. Feedback has been incorporated into the latest release, he notes.
"There has definitely been a surge of interest from the international online community. I suppose it is because the online community is really a global one," he says.
Leeman says three programmers/software engineers in Cape Town are developing Synthacite, although the team has been as big as 12 members, depending on issues that have had to be tackled.
"It was developed using PHP and Java, with Ajax being used to create a rich and responsive user interface," he says.
Synthacite has been in the making for more than two years. Lingham and Leeman are both shareholders in Synthacite, with staff members, Incubeta and other private investors holding various stakes.
Synthacite has culled an idea to reward beta testers with "virtual shares", because of regulatory issues, particularly in the US.
"However, our users are important to us and we are trying to find a way to reward them," Leeman says.
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