About

Kamida has created unique tools, applications and experiences that adapt to the environment, interests and relationships of their users. We like to call this melding of location and socially aware media - "locative social media".

Most importantly, Kamida is the company behind Socialight, the best platform for connecting people with trusted content at places nearby. Our mission is to enable you to feel like a local wherever you are.

Our offices are in New York City's Greenwich Village (lat: 40.734617 | long: -73.992555) - feel free to drop by for a visit or anytime.

Principals

Dan Melinger, Co-founder, CEO

Dan is a communications theorist and technologist. He has worked as a consultant to companies developing and implementing wireless data technologies and has experience in the production of radio and television. Dan holds a Master's degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and a Bachelor's degree in Communications from the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to his responsibilities at Kamida, Dan's latest research interests include exploring new consumption models for peer-to-peer distributed media.

Michael Sharon, Co-founder, CTO

Michael is a media artist, writer and programmer whose work runs the gamut from mobile social software to gestural music interfaces to big games and everything in between. He is an Adjunct Professor at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, teaching a class called Mobile Application Design.

His work has been featured in a number of outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Discovery Channel, The New York Times, Wired, The Guardian, The London Times, Business 2.0, Time Out NY, Smart Mobs, and Engadget, among others. His writing has appeared in The Feature, Brainstorm, ITWeb, SL Magazine, and African Expressions. His quarterly column on technology and culture appears in African Communications magazine. He holds a Masters from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and a Bachelor's in English and Law from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

Socialight

Socialight is a content platform that lets any publisher or person create and discover media and information placed in physical locations such as schools, shops, and parks around the world. Anyone can find the content, whether on their mobile phone when nearby or by browsing a map on the web. With Socialight, we've created an entirely new media channel that's place-based. Video from Discovery Channel Recent press release Launch Socialight site .

Past Projects

Mobile Treasure Hunt: Kamida helped to bring a massive treasure hunt to 5 US cities. For this project, Kamida provided technical development and administration services, translating game logic into software that coordinated and tracked the players and their mobile phones. In each city, 125 students from 5 area high schools competed to win $5,000 for their school by running around their city/game-board carrying around giant, inflatable animal totems and using mobile camera phones to collect treasure in the form of 2-dimensional barcodes called semacodes. Learn more.

Superstar Tokyo: Superstar is a massively multiplayer real-world game launched in Tokyo during Fall 2005. The game uses Japanese purikura sticker-clubs as a starting point for a playful experiment in social networks, automated phonecam image analysis, and urban visual culture. The goal of the game is to see and to be seen, using swarms of microscopic images woven into the complex fabric of Tokyo streetlife. Launch Superstar site .