MiMedia sits on the border of Fairfield and Westchester counties, but its hope is to reinforce the media of the evolving digital public across the country.
Based in Port Chester, N.Y., MiMedia Inc. is part of an emerging trend of smaller digital media firms springing up along the Westchester-Fairfield portion of the Interstate-95 corridor.
Three friends, Erik Zamkoff, Fred Clark and Christopher Giordano, founded the company after Zamkoff”™s friend lost an entire archive of photos, videos and music through a home burglary.
“They lost the first year of their child”™s life,” he said. “That shouldn”™t happen. The train left the station eight to 10 years ago on digital media, and it”™s been a constant struggle to rein in your collection ever since. It”™s going to grow perpetually as a priceless asset; you can”™t replace your wedding photos and you can”™t replace your kid”™s graduation video.”
Through angel investors the three partners were able to raise $4.7 million to start the business last year. The initial funding supported financing of the IT infrastructure, data centers, equipment and commercial launch of the service.
“We”™re working hard to create a really beautiful product,” said Zamkoff
Zamkoff, a Fairfield resident and former analyst for interactive media markets, had watched the growth of media file space and need for more over the years.
“I was watching the world go digital,” said Zamkoff.
Digital content continues to grow
According to Stamford-based Thomson Reuters, today the average consumer in the U.S. has 60 to 80 gigabytes of information.
“That”™s today,” said Zamkoff. “Each generation will have continually more. Your digital content is going to grow for the rest of your life. You don”™t keep all your money under your mattress, so why would you store your digital media on a hard drive right next to your computer where it”™s susceptible to fire, flood, theft or device failure?”
Zamkoff said as public perception of the lifecycle of digital media devices becomes more mature file protection rather than device protection becomes the main concern in a digital life.
“Having 20 hard drives over the course of your life and hoping the one that”™s the oldest survives is ludicrous,” said Zamkoff.
Once secured, media accessible in one place
MiMedia optimizes the initial upload process and secures digital media and other files online in multiple tier one data centers. Zamkoff said the ”˜geo-redundancies”™ create another level of security. Once online, the platform presents and organizes the digital media logically by media type in a single user interface, called MiMedia Online. Users can login to MiMedia Online from any computer or iPhone to listen to music, including playlists, watch videos and view all of their photo galleries. The company also has a “share” capability allowing users to privately share photos and videos with friends and family.
Zamkoff said a major issue with digital media libraries is the upload time created by the bottle neck from the asymmetrical structured broadband service.
“You typically get one tenth to one fifteenth the bandwidth up stream as you do downstream,” said Zamkoff. “Even on a really good connection it”™s very slow, typically taking weeks. The network providers were not rushing to improve upstream speeds since upstream traffic is not as profitable as downstream traffic, there was no new compression technology available that could solve the problem.”
MiMedia has invented a device called the “shuttle drive,” an external encrypted hard drive-like device that is mailed to customers, who then upload the content, and send it back to MiMedia. One the core library has been uploaded users can upload smaller data files through their online login account.
A subscription-based service, MiMedia offers monthly and annual options, starting at $5 per month or $50 per year for 25GB storage. MiMedia is currently in beta testing and will be formally launching its service soon. A Mac version is also in development.
