Mountain View, California-based DARTdevices, which last week received funding from the VC arm of handset and network heavyweight Motorola Inc, developer technology that enables devices including cellphones, desktop and laptop PCs, computer peripherals and consumer electronics gadgets to share apps, regardless of operating system and in accordance with their individual capabilities (storage capacity, B&W or color display, etc).

It does this by deploying a software client called the DART Player on the device, with a footprint that maxes out at 300 kilobytes. Apps written in C++ and using what the company terms the DART Framework can then run on any device with a Player, which serves as a common execution environment, said Dan Illowsky, its CTO. While any app in C++ can be shared across the Players, those written using the Framework get the added benefits of managed execution and a single runtime.

While asking ISVs to write apps, or indeed port existing ones, to its Framework may on the face of it appear an ambitions project for a start-up, when major players like Microsoft, RIM, Nokia and Cisco (with its set-top box business) are out there doing much the same for their platforms.

However, the fundamental difference with what DATAdevices is proposing is the promise of interoperability across a wide range of, or potentially even any devices that can receive the miniscule Player. The idea of write once, run anywhere is what DARTdevices will preach to the ISV community.

If that sounds vaguely familiar, well of course it is, because the same kind of rationale was behind the development of Java. However, as Illowsky explained, Java is a binary portability rather than an interoperability technology, putting a virtual machine on all devices to hide their specifics, but that means Java must have multiple versions of each app, as happens with games.

DARTdevices, by contrast, actually exposes the device characteristics, though to do so it has to go for the proprietary Framework. What he company means by app sharing in reality requires only a subset of the app called a procedure to be sent to the execution environment, whereupon it uses any two-way comms protocol, including TCP/IP, Bluetooth and USB for the app to run on the device.

Illowsky said the company is talking to handset manufacturers, telcos, CATV players and set-top box manufacturers for them to adopt the technology to enable interoperability. It’s also developing a handful of what he called compelling applications for launch in the coming months as practical demonstrations of the technology’s potential.

The first of these will be DD Crew, whereby an app starts to run on one device and auto-propagates onto all the other Player-enabled devices in the vicinity, as defined by the user of the first.

It will show you all the potential devices that can be used and allow you to select the ones you want, respecting rules such as the obligation to always wipe data from HDD-constrained devices, said Illowsky. It also overcomes any versioning issues, since all the code comes from a single binary file.

Other planned apps include DD Jukebox, whereby groups of devices can share music on an ad hoc basis, DD Portal, which is a file transfer app, and Docking, whereby a PC or Mac can be used to do full-screen edits of data, content or settings on a mobile phone.

Though the company spends most of its time talking about CE applications, Illowsky said DARTdevices also sees potential for its technology in enterprise.

The DART Player can also expose back-end services, with the further advantage that the client works on all devices, he said. Furthermore, the disintermediation our technology carries out between client and back-end enables access to a range of services, such as multiple email services that can be mixed and matched.

From a security perspective, furthermore, the fact that every memory access and every file access are on a virtual processor, as Illowsky put it, reduces the potential for virus propagation, he argued. The Player acts as a sandbox, and the sandbox only needs the processor to be secured.