But they're in a situation where they need a compelling application first. You can't get the data without multiple people opening up the application. Color is really not compelling.

This is a classic problem I have in my own research at a university: in order to test the cool stuff, you have to convince people using stuff they already get. The convincing is way, way harder.

Maybe Color is just one of a suite of apps. Maybe the idea is to license the patents to Apple or Google so it all happens transparently (but the idea that my phone is silently collecting and transmitting data about me all the time makes me want to puke). However, what they've got is going nowhere fast.