“Pablo Calamera was announced as the new lead tech for Thumbplay, a cloud-based data-syncing product for Macs, iPhones and PCs. Starting March 8, Calamera will work from the company’s headquarters in New York,” AppleInsider reports. “The recruitment of Calamera comes as the company recently launched its own all-you-can-eat music subscription plan, Thumbplay Music, currently available to select users in beta form. The company was previously focused on ringtone sales.”
AppleInsider reports, “Calamera worked with Apple for 10 years, where he oversaw MobileMe. He also spent six years at mobile services company Danger and two years with WebTV, both of which were acquired by Microsoft. In all, he has worked for more than 25 years in PC, mobile, set-top box and cloud computing.”
Full article here.
Thumbplay’s press release, verbatim:
Pablo Calamera has been appointed to the newly-created role of Chief Technology Officer for Thumbplay, the leading mobile entertainment company in the U.S. Calamera joins Thumbplay from Apple Inc. where he oversaw technology development for MobileMe, a pioneering, cloud-based data-syncing product for iPhones, PCs and Macs. As of March 8, 2010, Calamera will be based in New York, reporting to Evan Schwartz, Thumbplay CEO and Co-Founder.
Calamera brings with him more than 25 years experience in PC, Mobile, set-top box and cloud-computing–this includes a total of 10 years at Apple, six years at Danger (acquired by Microsoft) and two with WebTV (also acquired by Microsoft). Calamera will have oversight of all technology initiatives for the company, including its recently launched Thumbplay Music. Thumbplay Music is a cloud-based service that provides unlimited, on-demand access to millions of songs and is now offered in the U.S. in Private Beta by invitation-only.
Commented Schwartz: “We are thrilled to have Pablo join our team. He has unique experience with Apple, Danger and WebTV in delivering and syncing content across multiple platforms for a scaled customer base. He has also managed major integrations with U.S. and international carriers; an area of ongoing strategic importance for us. Over the course of his career, he has done an extraordinary job of building state-of-the-art consumer products and services from concept to completion. Technological innovation is paramount to Thumbplay, and Pablo’s talent, experience and commitment to excellence will play a vital role in keeping us at the forefront of mobile entertainment offerings.”
Remarked Calamera: “Thumbplay has an incredible talent pool, and they have done a remarkable job in building robust, feature-rich services that deliver beautifully across multiple platforms. This is a very difficult thing to do, and I have been consistently impressed with the energy, smarts and creativity on display. I am greatly looking forward to working with Evan and the entire Thumbplay team to deliver against our very ambitious goals for the future.”
Calamera most recently served as Director of Apple’s MobileMe, a mass scale premium consumer service providing client/server solutions that are integrated into devices, operating systems and desktop applications. MobileMe supports millions of worldwide active users on a daily basis. Prior to Apple, from 2001–2006, he was the Senior Director of Service Engineering and Support for Danger Inc., where he lead the service engineering team for the first real consumer smartphone – the Sidekick. Before that, he was at NotifyMe Networks as CTO and Vice President of Engineering for a trailblazing voice alerting application service provider (ASP) which, for the first time, brought the dynamic/interactive power of the Internet to every telephone. He has also served in critical roles at AT&T Labs, WebTV Networks and also held previous positions at Apple early in his career.
Thumbplay’s latest offering, Thumbplay Music, is currently available on select BlackBerry smartphones and its companion app for PCs/Macs is available through a downloadable Adobe AIR version. Thumbplay Music is a next generation service, built by experts in mobile content delivery and will be available for BlackBerry, Android and iPhone smartphones within the first quarter of 2010. Today, the service has more than 8 million tracks under license from EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group and more than 25,000 independent labels.
Thumbplay Inc., which enjoys sustained profitability, has an award-winning service centered on delivering millions of pieces of mobile content to 95 percent of U.S. devices among every major carrier. Thumbplay will leverage its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.
Source: Thumbplay, Inc.
GREAT!
No maybe they can find someone to make it work right…. and make it work FAST
jltnol beat me to it… this has to be good for the beleaguered MobileMe customer – I’m one and I can tell you, we are the stepchildren of Apple! Damn.
The “vocal minority” has spoken.
I have a feeling a lot of peoples’ knee-jerk reactions to this news will be, essentially, “good riddance!”
And while the botched MobileMe launch is no doubt a prominent stain on his resume, keep in mind he *was* with Apple for the past 10 years – in other words, through the bulk of Apple’s resurgence to where they are today.
Oops, my mistake – looks like he’s worked a total of 10 years at Apple, but not consecutively, as they mention he was at Danger from 2001-2006. D’oh! That’ll learn me to read all the big chunks of italicized text first before firing off a comment…
One more thing. Apple will never achieve the level of greatness that MDN and so many posters on this site claim it is until they have brought MobileMe around to be worth the price they charge for it. Never.
For the dissenters to this statement, let me ask you: AppleTV? iMac 27″ yellow screens? New Aperture launch that renders elements of iLife useless? MobileMe? Stuff like that.
“Apple will never achieve the level of greatness that …”
It already has. Now move along.
MobilMe is an absolute JOKE. Easily one of Apple’s greatest failures.
I’d rather pay for a service, get it sans advertisement, etc. and have usable interface than get something for supposedly free and have to work around all the advertisements and have a difficult interface.
Apple has had some weaknesses in its product lineup, and I would agree that MobileMe is not nearly where it could be (or should be) in terms of functionality and integration with the Mac experience.
If AppleTV is a hobby, then MobileMe is a casual interest.
By publishing that statement, I have probably guaranteed that Apple will roll out a fantastic update to MobileMe in the next few months that will make me look like an idiot. But that’s OK.
I am one of the first users of the .Mac service, now MobileMe. I signed up within an hour of it being available. Other than providing push services for the iPhone I am not at all impressed with what Apple delivers for that price lately. You would think that they would have delivered something having much more value for their customers by now.
But there is one other technology severely broken: iChat. I have also been using that since it came out and it seems that every year the failures are becoming more prominent.
So we got 2 technologies that are not up to the quality that we as Apple customers would expect from them: MobileMe and iChat.
@Good Move
What exactly is wrong with the Apple TV? Do you own one, have you used one?
You failed to mention the TREMENDOUS success of the iPod and the iPhone, iTunes. The resurgence of Apple Macs, and 5 years of record braking sales that have translated in Apple being bigger the HP, Dell and any other PC manufacturer as far as Market Cap. Apple is addressing the iMac 27 problem and it has addressed Aperture with a patch. Now, you want to explain Vista, LMAO. Now there was a dud.
@Jeeve Stobbs
I disagree with you. And I am right, without any shadow of doubt!
John
I’m somewhere between the naysayers and the fans on .mac.
On the one hand, .mac works well enough and and I find the value acceptable. Generally, I guess I’d say I’m pretty satisfied.
On the other hand, it seems like it could be so much more. It could be another thing that makes using Apple products together “killer”; another must-have. Like the computers or iPhone or iPods, it could be the thing you’re happy to spend the money on because it’s just that kick-ass. But, it’s not.
It’s gotten better, but I’d still say it’s just OK, and certainly not up to the quality or desirability of most of Apple’s other products.
I have had MobileMe since it was iTools… I keep it just cause I like it when System Preferences says I have been a member since 2001.
I like it, push works great.
I love how easily people throw around the word “failure” when talking about Apple TV and MobileMe. I’m assuming we’re grading on a curve, where the definition of “success” is skewed into the stratosphere by Apple’s other products?
@ Good Move – Speaking of grading on a curve… can you provide the correct context for Apple’s “failures” by comparing how they’re doing against their competition?
For example, you mentioned the 27″ iMac screen issue. Is Apple doing better or worse than their competitors in the area of screen reliability? For software updates, is Apple doing better or worse than Microsoft when it comes to breaking stuff?
This is not to absolve Apple of these problems – obviously, they shouldn’t happen – but in case you hadn’t noticed, this technology stuff isn’t all that easy. Apple just makes it look easy much of the time. If Apple starts doing significantly worse than their comparable competition, then sure, you’ll have a valid point.
But I’m not sure how any of that relates to whether MobileMe is worth $8.34 per month.
I’ve had MobileMe ever since it was iTools, and free… For life.
So much for that.
Although I would have preferred it if Apple would have allowed their iTools members to keep their email accounts at no charge, I upgraded to .Mac when it came out, and now MobileMe.
I use the features, and I will continue to subscribe, but I would like to see the benefits increase.
I would love to keep my music in sync over the cloud. iHope.
GREAT NEWS! Maybe now they’ll bring someone in who will make the http://www.me.com email experience worth a darn. As is, it sucks so badly. And also, photo galleries on MobileMe are a disgrace.
I can’t upload my iWeb pages to moblileMe today. Is anyone else having this problem?
I have been a member since Jan 27 2000
Brilliant news. Now they can hire someone to make it actually work. And maybe hire some more people to sit on the other end of phones and let you talk to them when it doesn’t. You know, it’s called ‘customer service’. Presumably the lamentable efforts of MobileMe in this area weren’t included in any of those surveys that have Apple coming in at or near the top. Because *man* is MobileMe *rubbish* at looking after it’s customers.
His new job sounds alot like his old job.
I saw a big ripple in the reality distortion field about a month ago. Apple needs to step it up. For the first time in many many years I have begun considering alternatives for getting out of the apple / iTunes ecosystem.
Why?
iPad, MobileMe, appletv
they need to connect the dam dots already. They are sitting on so much potential and I’m getting tired of waiting for them to do the things I expect them to do. There is still a month to go before I get my hands on an iPad to see what it does and doesn’t do so for now I will just keep hoping that apple does something fantastic with it all.
How long before Thumbplay gets acquired by MS?
armchair experts are in abundance on this website…