Here on PC Mechanic, we are going to be starting a routine interview series where we get direct input from leaders and shakers in the tech community. Today I am starting this out by posting an interview of David Geller, of Eyejot.com. Eyejot is a video email service which is web-based. And it is quite cool. Email is one of those mediums that is so prevalent that it is taken for granted and one may not think the nature of email can change any more. David Geller is leading this new service to try to expand email beyond the written word.

Signing up is free, and feel free to give it a try by sending me a message. You will notice that our “Ask a Question” page is using the Eyejot widget for people to send us video email.

So, without further smoke blowing of my own, I bring you David Geller, of Eyejot.

What work have you done in the field of email before you started Eyejot?

I founded a company named WhatCounts in 2000 that’s one of the leading permission email firms. We’ve differentiated our solutions by offering, very early, an extensive set of APIs and, later, an appliance solution for customers wanting to get away from the metered pricing models typical of email ASPs. Today WhatCounts services such well known organizations as Costco, Alaska Airlines, The Seattle Times, The Chicago Sun Time, Voice of America (in dozens of languages), and hundreds of other media and retail firms. Before WhatCounts I was an investor and CTO at Altrec.com, an earlier etailer in the outdoor and recreation space and prior to that was a Director at Starwave, a Paul Allen company famous for creating ESPN.com, ABCNews.com, TheStreet.com and many other high profile sites. Starwave merged with search vendor Infoseek before being bought by Disney. And, before that I was at Traveling Software, famous for Laplink. In all of these positions email campaign management has played an important role – either as something I had to develop or use.

How did Eyejot get started?

I was sitting around one day lamenting the fact that email sometimes plays a role in complicating conversations between people. We all use email, of course. But, quite often, especially in business situations, it’s too easy for the wrong message to get conveyed simply because it’s hard to properly impart tone in the typical emails we write. I was thinking how easy, and natural, video chat conversations have always seemed. The problem with them, of course, is that it’s often challenging to get both parties connected at the same time – and using compatible solutions. I like to tell people that video chat is great for parents with small children in that it gives distant relatives the chance to see one another – especially grandparents. However, good luck finding compatible times – and times when four year olds, especially, feel like chatting! So, Eyejot offers a real solution to a real problem – marrying email and video to provide an asynchronous solution that’s convenient but still affords the sender and receiver the chance to exchange and enjoy complex sentiments. Put another way, Eyejot video messages are easy and, for many people, fun. Good for families and, it turns out, businesses connecting distant works and service providers wanting to put a more “human face” on their messaging.

Eyejot is currently a web-based service. Are there any plans to provide better integration into an email client application like Outlook?

That’s a great question, and one my friends at Microsoft ask often. Surprisingly, it’s not one we hear through other channels, especially among consumers. I think it may be due, in part, to the dramatic rise in the number of browser-based solutions and tools we’re all using. Whether that means consumer and social platforms like Facebook or business oriented tools like Salesforce.com. Clearly, though, integration with traditional email clients has a place, and I think we’ll address it when we have a chance. We have so many features we’re working on. That’s just not one of the top ones, right now. I can say, though, that Adobe has made our job of creating desktop applications much easier with their AIR platform, and we’ve done some experimenting. Stay tuned!

What would you say is the leading barrier to people using video email rather than the traditional written word?

Getting in front of a camera too early in the morning or on a bad hair day! Joking aside, though, I think it depends upon context. If you’re, for example, sending an Eyejot to a college buddy or close family member, it might not matter that you’re wearing a sweatshirt, have a cap on or look, well, casual. They expect it. It’s natural. Of course, if you’re sending an Eyejot as part of a business introduction or to a team or group of colleagues, it’s important to be less casual. I’m confident in suggesting that sending video messages will grow in popularity. Probably dramatically over the next few years. Voice mail evolved in similar ways. Email, too, went through a growing phase when people said “why don’t you just pick up the phone and call.” Of course we know, today, that the very asynchronous, passive aspect of email is what contributed to it being so powerful and widely used.

Do you have any interesting examples of people using Eyejot?

One of the early surprises we discovered was that Eyejot is used by the hearing impaired community as a way of delivering messages using sign language. That wasn’t just surprising – it was satisfying knowing we were helping make it easier for some people to communicate. We also like to hear about distant relatives now having a new way to communicate or families with loved ones serving in the military now having a better way of exchanging very personal messages and feelings in ways email simply can’t.

How do you see the use of email evolving in the future? Has the medium pretty much topped out?

I don’t think it has has topped out at all. It certainly has evolved, and will continue to do so. The iPhone is a great example. Here’s a platform that, very quickly, has given email exposure to a broad base of mobile consumer users. Of course, business users have benefited from Blackberry devices for years. But now you have average people picking up devices, like the iPhone, and getting access to their email. And, in the case of iPhones, Blackberry Pearl and Curves, and Windows Mobile devices video messages through Eyejots! We launched mobile Eyejot (http://m.eyejot.com) last month. Right now it’s one-way; basically a video inbox on a mobile device – but we’ll deploy enhancements to that soon.

It would be great to see Eyejot integrated into something like Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail. It would all be web based. Any thoughts?

Agreed. And, I’m confident functionality like Eyejot will appear in all of those platforms, in time. We can’t be the solution for all of them, but we intend to play a major role in providing video messaging for ISPs, email providers and social networks. We’ve already completed some integration projects of this nature which will be revealed, publicly, soon.

Are you a Mac guy or a PC guy, and why?

That’s like asking an audio guy if he buys Bang & Olufsen or Radio Shack. Mac, of course! It’s funny. I made the switch when my five year old daughter was born. I had been a Unix guy in the early 80s and then a hard-core Windows programmer (building Windows applications starting with version 2) for many years. I had, at the time, nothing bad to say about Windows – especially as it matured through Windows 95 and then XP. But, even back in 2002, I thought that the Mac and OS X were better, more elegant and more stable. I wanted to try doing some home movie and photo projects when my daughter was born and thought the 12″ Mac portable would be better than my Sony Vaio. It was, and I’ve never looked back. Today I use a Macbook Pro with 4GB RAM for pretty much everything – even running XP sometimes. Its built-in camera makes using Eyejot really easy! And when I’m not on the Macbook Pro, I’m reading email, using Facebook and Twitter, and browsing the web on my iPhone.