Local tech guru Jack Templin and his brother Chris took their free data-encryption service on the road last week, unveiling the Web application at the Launch Conference in San Francisco on Feb. 24 and catching the eye of the New York Times’ Venture Beat and ReadWriteWeb.
Lockify, designed to help people send sensitive information over the Internet, was previously displayed at a March 2010 Providence Geeks meetup.
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“Lockify is making strong encryption for communications accessible to every business and individual, and through our forthcoming API, to every application as well,” its website explains.
“With Lockify, you are in control of your private information, including where it’s encrypted/decrypted: on the client, our server or your server.”
Particularly useful when, for example, sending credit card information through e-mail, the Lockify link – similar to a link-shortening service such as Bit.ly – expires after it’s viewed three times or a day after it’s sent and recipient can choose to terminate the link early. Senders can see whether the recipient opened the link and how many times it was accessed.
One of the Launch Conference judges, Digg founder Kevin Rose, said it seemed like the service would be easy to replicate; Templin explained that the service was designed to look simple and is more technical than it seems.
Lockify began in “alpha” testing with about a 1,000 users and is currently in its private beta version, slated to be tested by about 10,000 people. Its public period is “coming up quickly,” Templin said without wanting to disclose a specific date. The startup has four other workers beside the Templins, who are Rhode Island-based programmers.
The startup kicked off its fundraising round at the Launch Conference is currently in talks with investors, which are going “very well,” Templin said.
Also was also at the conference was Betaspring graduate Green Goose, a company that uses tiny sensors and accelerometers on stickers or credit cards to track everyday behavior and record it online.
ReadWriteWeb said Green Goose “wowed the crowd” and inspired two members of the panel of investor judges to put up $100,000 while the company was still on the stage; a third judge, Bill Warner, had already invested.
Jack Templin says Rhode Islanders will get priority access on Lockify’s private beta waiting list; sign up at Lockify.com and drop him a line.
