Bluega takes web-based HTML5 touchscreen interface across platforms

Touchscreen user interfaces look pretty cool, but why does every device have to come with a different one? With Bluega’s pieOS, you can get a well-designed touchscreen interface that’s usable on every one of your mobile devices.

The secret to Bluega is that it is designed using HTML5, a programming format that is the lingua franca for the web. With HTML5, Bluega lets you you store your preferences in the cloud so that even if you customize your user interface on one device, you’ll still be able to use it on your other PCs, smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. Bluega is unveiling the user interface, dubbed pieOS, at the DEMO Spring 2012 conference today in Santa Clara, Calif.

The pieOS user interface is based on the Korean startup’s own Web OS Shell Framework, dubbed Bluega Coral. The core of that framework is a web-based operating system, not unlike the Chromium OS. It is designed to let you access your files or data easily. It has icons, folders, widgets, wallpapers, favorite pages, and most of the other things that a good user interface has. But in contrast to many user interfaces, this one is designed for use with touchscreens. You can move around the icons to your preferred order.

“pieOS provides a truly cross-device new user experience of browsing web.” says Sechul Hong (pictured), CTO and co-founder of Bluega. “pieOS is developed with standard HTML5, so it runs on any device and any browser using one source, without requiring synchronization or conversion [and it avoids] the struggle of managing client programs for each device.”

“Think of it this way: When you open your refrigerator, you know where the milk is,” Hong explained onstage at DEMO. “pieOS keeps it that way across all your devices.”

Bluega has also developed its own game engine that can be used to create HTML5 games capable of running on any web-enabled device. While speed is often an issue with HTML5 games, Bluega has built a platform that can run games in a speedy fashion, said Jay Park (pictured below), marketing manager at Bluega, in an interview with VentureBeat.

“pieOS is the best interface for the web format,” Park said. “It’s very new and very convenient to use. We create a web page, but it looks just like a smartphone screen.”

Bluega is based in Seongnam City, near Seoul in South Korea. The company has 16 employees and has been self-funded to date. The company is already generating revenue from other mobile services.

Bluega’s chief executive, Junho Lim, said, “The web is certainly a solution to the cross-platform issues, but in addition to that, the web can offer services that are only possible on web. Bluega will deliver web service that was never seen before.”

Bluega is one of 80 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.