You just moved out of your previous home and you are now out looking for an apartment where you can move in. The above statement covers it all especially the part where you searching for an apartment to move into. If there is one thing that you need to know about finding an apartment is that it is surely not an easy process and you are sure to get confused or even frustrated. I remember some time ago when I was out in search of an apartment. I must admit that those few days were some of the worst days in my life. I moved from apartment to apartment, just looking for that one apartment that I would really love. It is very important that you love an apartment before you think of moving into the apartment.
Maybe my definition of an apartment is not your definition of an apartment and this is just why it is so hard to find an apartment that really suits your needs. What we really need is a way that makes the apartment hunting process much easier and turns it into something that you will smile about. I’m really happy that I can now say that there is a way out of it all through livelovely.com. I just wish that this site was up and running before I moved into my apartment. You really should thank me for sharing this with you.
So what does livelovely.com do? With the help of livelovely.com, you will find the apartment that you are looking for hassle free. Would you imagine the whole process being completely scrapped off and all you have to do is to move into the apartment that you have always wanted the apartment that you so much love. Believe me; you need to make sure that the apartment that you finally move into is an apartment that you love. This is exactly how livelovely.com works; it gives you access to tens of thousands of rental listings from across the web which are updated in near real-time. This means that what you see is exactly what is there. If there is one thing that I really love about the site is the fact that you can even opt to be notified about new rentals through your email account.

If you are a landlord and you are wondering if there is something for you in livelovely.com, then don’t worry about a thing. With livelovely.com, you, the landlord also stand to gain. You will get to view renters resume. It is with this resume that you will be able to make the decision of whether or not to let a renter to live in your apartment. With the resumes that you get from prospective renters you will be able to get the best renter to live in your apartment as the resume includes a detailed rental history of the prospective renter, his or her employment information and any other relevant personal information. The advantages are two fold, for the renters; you will be able to stand out from the rest of the renters, depending on how good your resume looks like. When you look at this idea critically, you can’t help but be thankful of the good that this idea holds for you and many other people.
As for my opinion on what the future holds for livelovely.com, I must admit that I really love the idea. Livelovely.com is one site that you can be sure will draw in many renters and landlords alike. For the landlords, they can be sure to get great renters for their apartments. The system that livelovely.com brings to the table is great. The renter can be sure to get an apartment that he or she loves. With the number of apartments being on the rise every day, livelovely.com gives many a chance of getting an apartment that they will love and be happy with the easy way.
In conclusion, we all must admit that the idea behind livelovely.com is really great. We can only be thankful to Leslie Chicoine, Blake Pierson, and Doug Wormhoudt, the co- founders of livelovely.com for their great contribution in removing the frustrations that are common to the apartment hunting process.

Related articles

• Lovely: A Sleek Tool To Make Your Apartment Search Slightly Less Painful (techcrunch.com)
• Lovely wants to help you find the perfect apartment, without the hassle (thenextweb.com)
• Renters Week 2011: Introducing Renters Week 2011: Curbed Might Pay Your Rent! (curbed.com)

It is about time that we saw an application that made taking pictures more interesting. With kooba.com application, déjà vu, we are sure on the right track to seeing greater things in the near future. With the application, you will find it a lot interesting to take photos and even share the same photos with your friends. The application works in a really interesting way, it uses image recognition for automatic labelling of your snapshots. This really saves you a lot of time and energy, from the sound of things, it really sounds like a great application. Let’s take a deeper look at how it exactly works.

If you just love taking pictures and keeping all those precious memories then kooaba.com’ déjà vu application is the application for you. Designed to operate on iOS phones, it will turn your iPhone into your visual memory. The déjà vu application goes a step further and makes sure that your experience is much better. This is mainly by automatically labelling all your snapshots, this means that you don’t have to worry about the number of photos that you take. All that you need to worry about is the quality of photo that you take. This surely sets a huge smile on a lot of faces. The great thing about it all is that you can also can go ahead and edit the labels as you would wish.

If there is one problem that many have identified while taking photos is that the applications they use do not allow for fast picture taking and easy navigation through the photos. With the déjà vu application however, the above problems are fully addressed. The déjà vu application came about from the need of a better photo taking experience. Since the integration of the camera in the phone, we have seen a lot of changes in the way we take pictures. Though this has been the case since 2006 where we saw the first phone with an integrated camera, there hasn’t been so much change in the nature of the photo experience. The only difference between then and now is that the phones now are much more sophisticated and much more efficient. The need for an application that helped people with photo taking and managing their photos increased day by day. This need saw the birth of the déjà vu application. It is through this application that you can effectively organise all the photos that you have.

The number of photos that many individuals have is overwhelming. From this assertion, one thing that is clear is that we need a system that will see us saving our photos and organising our photos in a much easier way. This is what kooaba.com déjà vu application does. Once you take your pictures using the application, the application will label all your snap shots and keep them in an organised format. If your phone is out of memory and you need more space to store all your special memories, kooaba.com déjà vu application has a way out for you. After taking your photos, the application synchronizes with your personal account on cloud. On cloud, they are stored safely for as long as you would like. Though they are synchronised with kooba.com cloud application, you can always access the photos from any device.

As for my personal opinion on what the future holds for kooaba.com déjà vu application, I can only say that the future for the application is quite bright. The application is set to gain a lot of popularity since it is the only application that integrates image recognition for automatic labelling of your memos, the profits that kooaba.com is set to get from its exploration in this particular field will really reward the whole team behind the déjà vu application which they deserve. I am sure that with time, we will be seeing a lot of changes in the way we take photos and the ease with which we can organise all our photos, thanks to kooba.com déjà vu application.

With the déjà vu application, we can only pray that things keep going in the right direction. With the current success that the application is having, things are looking up. We might just see something new from the application.

Related articles

• The Android Déjà vu (webtropic.cc)
• Deja Vu uses image recognition to organize your visual memory (thenextweb.com)
• Kooaba’s Paperboy app makes printed newspapers digital, partners with over 2000 titles (thenextweb.com)
• Déjà Vu app adds image recognition capability to Evernote (intomobile.com)
• Déjà Vu – Your Visual Memory (swiss-miss.com)

Anyone who has been on FaceBook for a while will know that one of the most successful app-game onthe giant social networking site has been Farmville. But as popular as Farmville has been, the reality today is that many people hardly know where the food they eat comes from.

This is especially so when you consider the growing transition from majority rural nations to majorityurban. The concept of how and where the food was grown and processed before it ended up on storeshelves seems far removed for the typical urban dweller. This knowledge gap and distant reality does not serve the best interests of the future of humanity as faras food security and eco-sustainable agriculture is concerned. The UK’s single largest farm land owner-administrator, the National Trust, has embarked on an experiment that seeks to change all that that.

Dubbed My-Farm.org.uk, it is an online project that seeks to enlighten people about farming and food production via a participatory approach that incorporates a real farm. Participants are engaged in all key decisions around the farm in Cambridgeshire, on Wimpole estate which is administered by UK’s NationalTrust.

At the core of each My-Farm.org.uk decision is the monthly voting. At the beginning of each month, theMy-Farm.org.uk community is asked a series of questions regarding the farm such as which crops toplant or what type of animals to keep. The questions are originated by a full time farm manager. There is also a community manager whoserves as the eyes and the ears of the participants on site. The community manager uses webcams, blogposts, photos and videos to keep users informed about the goings on.

A team of experts are on hand to provide project participants with any additional information they need to make their voting decision. The vote is then conducted and the winning option implemented on thefarm. The analysis and discussion before and after the voting is a powerful way of keeping participants fully engaged in the process. National Trust is targeting 10,000 participants for the Wimpole farm. If more people request to join beyond this number, National Trust will take that as a sign of the project’s viability and will create a new farm from the 250,000 hectares in the UK that are under its custody.

Each participant on My-Farm.org.uk is required to pay a 30 sterling pound subscription fee. All the income earned from the subscription fees is used in the project to finance staff costs and cover the expenses that must be incurred if the farm is to continue running. And it is on the number of subscriptions that the My-Farm.org.uk project will succeed or fail. Unless theproject can attract at least 6,500 subscriptions, the money raised will not be adequate to keep the farm running and will force National Trust to refund all subscribers.

Related articles

• FarmVille Comes to Life! Real Farm in UK Run By Internet Vote (video) (singularityhub.com)
• MyFarm takes “cow clicking” into the real world (gamification.co)
• FarmVille Comes to Life as MyFarm (weinterrupt.com)
• “National Trust’s MyFarm – Farmville Goes Real” and related posts (geeknewscentral.com)
• FarmVille Inspires Real Life Farming Experiment (mashable.com)

While technology has served a crucial role in directly advancing the frontiers of medicine, one
organization has ventured into less conventional waters. HopeLab is a not for profit organization that
uses technology to find ways of improving the health of kids grappling with some of the most common
debilitating medical conditions.

Established in 2001 by Pam Omidyar and headquartered in California, Hopelab.Org is geared towards
the development of innovative solutions founded on rigorous research.

For years, the role of the mind and positive affirmation in how fast a patient handles or recovers from
an illness has been recognized by health professionals. This is the reason why even though doctors and
nurses are under obligation to fully disclose medical conditions to each patient, medics must also ensure
the patient receives positive affirmation and continuous encouragement. HopeLab.Org simply takes this
concept a little further.

The organization’s first project was to find ways of healing process of cancer patients. As someone who
enjoyed using computer games to relax after a hard day’s work and with a software engineer husband,
Pam believed that computer games may be just what young cancer patients needed to not only get their
minds off the pain and treatment but to also strengthen their self belief in overcoming the disease.

This marked the birth of Re-Mission.Net, a video game that creates a virtual world where one can travel
throughout their body exterminating the cancer cells. The video game is provided free of charge to
cancer patients.

The second of Hopelab.Org’s two most prominent projects so far is Ruckus Nation. While Re-Mission.Net
was primarily a project for kids with cancer, Ruckus Nation fixed its eyes on another fast growing and life
shortening medical condition – obesity. While hereditary factors may play a role predisposing certain
kids to obesity, the two main causes of obesity can be drilled down to a poor diet coupled with little or
no exercise.

In this regard, Ruckus Nation was a worldwide competition that invited ideas on ways through which
children could be more active and therefore reducing the likelihood of gaining excess weight.

Ruckus Nation was a resounding success with over 400 entries received from 37 countries. Winners
were announced in March 2008 and Hopelab.Org has already hit the ground running to find ways of
implementing the best ideas from the competition.

Cancer and obesity are just two of the medical conditions Hopelab.Org has devoted its efforts to. The
not for profit organization also has its eyes on autism, sickle cell disease and major depressive disorder.

As long as the organization can muster adequate funding and volunteering man hours, Hopelab.Org.
And if the Vivendi, Cigna and LiveStrong partnerships the organization has so far managed to muster are
anything to go by, the organization can only look up.

	Zamzee Explore the online rewards platform for teens powered by physical activity.
	Re-Mission Discover the groundbreaking video game for young people with cancer.
	Ruckus Nation See how Ruckus Nation, HopeLab’s international online idea competition, generated new ideas for products to get kids moving.
	Digital Storytelling Workshop HopeLab held a workshop that encouraged children with cancer to utilize their storytelling skills.

Related articles

• Using game mechanics to solve healthcare problems (news.cnet.com)
• Games for Health: Benjamins, Fundreds and Exergames…oh my! (gamification.co)
• Let’s Game Physical: Fighting Obesity with Game Mechanics (blogs.cisco.com)
• Gamification of Health and Events at Internet Week New York (gamification.co)

The human brain is one of (if not THE) the single most complex organs in the body. Its memory banks still surpass the capacity of the fastest computer processors manufactured to date. Scientists have devoted years of research to establish and understand how this organ works but there is always a new and interesting discovery on its working that comes up.

The brain is one mega-processing center for signals from all other the body – from the eyes and ears to the knees and toes. These signals are then decoded and an appropriate response or reaction triggered if necessary. It is from these signals that we are able to feel pain, appreciate beauty and recognize different smells.

One link that a number of scientists have discussed for a while is that between exposure to light and the onset of depression. Persons subjected to dim or dark conditions for a long time are more likely to experience depression than those who spend time in bright, well lit environments.

It is this linkage that has spurned Valkee, a brain stimulation headset. Valkee uses light stimulation to tackle and bring under control conditions such as stress, anxiety, fatigue and depression. But Valkee does not work the way most people would expect of a light stimulator. This is because previously it was thought that the eye was the only medium through which light could get to the brain.

However, some researchers have cited the less discussed but, in their view, potentially equally effective path through the ear tube. The argument is that the skull is thinnest at this point. Valkee thus capitalizes on this ‘weakest point’ by channeling artificial light to the brain through this route.

What has been the result? Valkee’s manufacturer has indicated that the gadget has provided relief to persons with brain disorders after as little as four weeks of consistent use. Users were more alert, energetic and cognitive.

For best results, the Valkee headset must be used for about 8 to 12 minutes continuously. As an easily portable device that can be carried anywhere, travelers will be glad to hear that Valkee significantly reduces the effects of jet lag.

But Valkee has not escaped criticism. The first is the unclear nature of the research that backs the product’s science. While research on darkness-induced depression is well known, the research on how light shone through the ears can have the same uplifting effect as light that goes through the eyes has not been proven beyond reasonable doubt. Could the users’ experiences of Valkee be the result of a ‘placebo’ effect?

Without getting this one elephant in the room out of the way, Valkee may not be able to gain widespread use

.

Related articles

• Mind controls: Running electricity through the skull (newscientist.com)
• Mind controls: Electrodes sitting on the brain’s surface (newscientist.com)

In the past, the primary source of accommodation when one embarked on long distance travel was a hotel; outdoors camping or crashing at a friend’s place were the other significant alternatives. But in recent times and thanks to the internet, there has been a drive for alternative, low cost and more culturally connected accommodation. Airbnb.com is one of the major players in this new space.

Airbnb connects people that have room to spare with persons looking for accommodation in the same location. Unlike the coldness, formality, seclusion and monotony that is characteristic of hotel rooms, guests that find a place to stay using Airbnb can develop genuine friend connections with the person hosting them, have access to facilities they ordinarily would not in a hotel and have the opportunity to savor the day to day culture and practices of their destination.

The range of accommodation options and pricing are as broad as they come. One can find anything from a city apartment to a medieval castle in the countryside.

The process of booking on Airbnb is relatively simple. Guests enter their intended destination, the dates they need the property and then proceed to browse the matching properties by availability. Guests can send a request for clarification or additional information to property hosts.

Once the guest is comfortable, they key in their credit card information to book their space. Hosts must approve the booking within 24 hours. With the booking confirmed, the host’s contact information, the property’s actual address and any other vital information will be disclosed to the guest.

The next step is for the guest, to finalize their travel itinerary and share these details with their host with the most important being their arrival date. If you are the guest, note that at end of your stay and when you get back home, you can post a review of your experience. The host will also be able to give a review of your time as their guest.

That’s the process if you are a guest. But what if you are a host? The process is just as easy for the host – you log in, fill your profile details before listing your property. The details should include the type of accommodation (e.g. whole house versus one room), its availability and your price per night.

From there on, you wait for guest enquiries and approve or disapprove reservation requests as you find appropriate.

Whereas, guests are required to pay before the reservation is made, as a host you will not receive the funds immediately. Instead, the funds will be held for 24 hours after the guest checks in. This is done to reduce the likelihood of scamming e.g. guest arrives to find accommodation that is completely different from what they paid for.

Airbnb.com has a number of extra features with one of the most popular being the Social Connections. This is a service that allows users to locate and connect with people from their past or present who are members of Airbnb.com.

So popular has Social Connections become that there are currently over 20 million connections between Airbnb.com users. Connections span everything from former class mates to colleagues working with the same multinational organization but in different countries.

Comparison with www.couchsurfing.com

Airbnb.com is onto something – but it is clearly not the first crowd sourced accommodation website on the internet. One of the earliest and most well known crowd-sourced accommodation websites is Couchsurfing.com. While the concepts are strikingly similar, there are some distinct differences between Airbnb.com and Couchsurfing.com that one should look out for.

The first is on cost. If you are looking for the lowest cost, back packer type of accommodation, Couchsurfiing.com has it in far greater abundance than Airbnb.com. In fact, accommodation is presumed to be free though guests are encouraged to part with a token to their host as a sign of appreciation and goodwill.

Yes, it is true that Airbnb.com has relatively wide range of alternatives including low cost options. However, you are less likely to find a ‘-room-with-mattress-on the-floor-available’ type of listing on Airbnb.com although this is a very real possibility (in fact almost ordinary) on Couchsurfing.com.

The listings on Airbnb.com tend to have a more conventional, homely feel in comparison. Also, some of the properties listed on Airbnb.com are in fact more expensive than an average hotel room in the same location.

Thanks to its more personalized and informal approach, Couchsurfing.com provides more search options when you are looking for accommodation including gender, age and activity level. The site also has a database of hundreds of Couchsurfing.com member-organized events in different parts of the world. And unlike Airbnb.com, there is no registration fee required for one to join or participate in Couchingsurfing.com.

But Couchsurfing.com’s advantages in being a forum for extremely low cost alternatives are counter balanced by its higher risk and less controlled environment. Though no money is expected to change hands, you are more likely to be ‘scammed’ on Couchsurfing.com than you would be on Airbnb.com in the sense of someone posting one thing only for you to meet something different on the ground – there are really no obligations on Couchsurfing.com.

The rule in Airbnb.com that funds are not released to the host until 24 hours after the guest has checked in makes it more difficult for unscrupulous persons to advertise one thing but actually present another. In addition, you are less likely to have privacy in accommodation sourced through Couchsurfing.com – shared spaces are far more prevalent than on Airbnb.com.

Among the common strands between the two sites is the use of host and guest reviews to show the credibility of site users.

Comparison with www.wimdu.com

If Airbnb.com is the commercialized version of Couchsurfing.com, Wimdu.com is a clone of Airbnb.com. Other than the fact that Airbnb.com is US-based, has been in operation for longer and has a much larger number of location options and users, there is not much to choose between it and Wimdu.com. The interface is strikingly similar and even the font used on the Wimdu.com logo is almost the same as that used for the Airbnb.com logo.

Wimdu.com is a German based startup with an eye on the European market and Asia too. There are already national versions of Wimdu.com in Spain, France, UK, Italy and of course Germany. Wimdu.com had made an attempt to enter the Chinese market through a subsidiary Airizu.com (again, an uncanny resemblance to Airbnb.com) but the Airizu.com URL now redirects to the main Wimdu.com site.

Wimdu.com currently runs a number of voucher campaigns in an attempt to attract more users to the site. Another key difference with Airbnb.com is that Wimdu.com ensures that if for some reason a booking request fails to go through, the customer service team will make every effort to ensure that the user gets a similar or better quality accommodation at no extra cost. The site also sends its own representative to every property listed to ensure an accurate representation of the property’s quality.

Even though the owners of the site are keen on exploiting the absence of a significant player in the European market of the same stature as Airbnb.com, the borderless nature of the internet means ‘home grown’ alone will not be a selling point that is sufficient to sway European users away from Airbnb.com.

To Wimdu.com’s credit, even though Airbnb.com still leads in Europe, Wimdu.com is growing quite fast in Europe and is already the leading player in the Asian market.

Make sure you give a look at www.housetrip.com too:

http://smartideabox.com/blog/housetrip-com-the-smartest-way-to-rent-a-holiday-flat/

Related articles

• Wimdu – the international expansion of an Airbnb-clone (eu-startups.com)
• Kodesk Is Like An Airbnb For Office Space (techcrunch.com)
• Airbnb Buys German Clone Accoleo, Opens First European Office In Hamburg (techcrunch.com)
• Airbnb moves ‘aggressively’ into Europe (ft.com)
• Airbnb is growing fast, adding 1,000 listings every day (thenextweb.com)

Life is hectic – and that can very well be considered by some as an understatement. Due to the busy schedules characteristic of modern day living, one of the areas that suffers the most is our nutrition – there is hardly any time to plan and cook. Eating out is tempting but eventually becomes boring, costly and unhealthy. On the other hand, even the best establishments may not necessarily offer the healthiest of food anyway.

In order to save you from this persistent cooking headache, there is a solution in the form of Muncherry.com. Founded in early 2011, Muncherry.com works every simply. You place an order for a meal and once the meal is ready, it will be delivered where you live. You have the option of placing a single one-off order or place a one-week meal order.

Muncherry.com handpicks the participating chefs carefully and takes them through thorough quality and competence vetting. Each chef must have the requisite practicing licenses and operate their own independent eateries. Meals are restricted to ingredients that are easily, locally available so certain special dishes are not covered.

If you like one particular chef’s meals in your area, Muncherry.com allows you to settle on meals from that one chef only. And when you sign up for say a one week plan and are not satisfied with the first few meals, you can cancel and get a refund on all remaining meals.

Muncherry.com effectively allows you to enjoy the services of a personal chef but at a fraction of the cost you would incur to hire your own chef. No need to struggle with developing a meal plan and menu.

The profiles of participating chefs are available on the site and you can always look them up to see who you believe is likely to best meet your culinary preferences. The profiles are a statement of confidence by Muncherry.com in each chef that makes it to the panel.

At present, Muncherry.com serves a section of San Francisco. Plans are already underway to spread services to outlying areas. This is one idea that has huge potential for growth if handled correctly. If people buy fast food in such large quantities every day, getting what is effectively a home cooked meal prepared remotely and delivered to your home is not something people will find difficult to embrace.

That said, Muncherry.com’s winning proposition must not only be hinged on variety of the meals but on the hygiene standards observed during meal preparation. In such a sensitive business, it only takes one or two people to prove that they fell sick from food prepared in unhygienic conditions for the business to see its fortunes rapidly decline.

Related articles

• Munchery Wants To Bring Personal Chefs To The Masses (techcrunch.com)
• Le Chef Mobile Offers Cooking Classes for Couples in the Boston Area and Cape Cod (pr.com)
• Dylan’s Got Your Chance To Dine In Chicago From MasterChef (fresh1027.radio.com)
• Gobble offers ‘peer-to-peer lasagna’ takeout twist (sfgate.com)
• “Gobble” Helps You Order Take-Out From Your Neighbors’ Kitchens (treehugger.com)

Dating can be and should be fun. But conditions are not always conducive to help us meet the right person at the right place at the right time. And many singles still squirm at the thought of registering on a singles website so they can be matched with someone they like.

Such fears are well founded since just because two people claim to like travelling does not mean they both necessarily like the same thing.

How about a faster and more real way to catch a date with someone whom you can indeed tell that you share the same interests? Think if it as speed dating but with none of the pressure and pre-arranged meetings. That in a sense is Mojomapp.com for you.

Launched in San Francisco, Mojomapp.com is a smart phone app that simply shows users exactly where to locate singles in different recreational places in the city. Mojomapp.com even shows the concentration of each gender at that location.

Unlike dating sites that ask for so much information that it often feels intrusive, Mojomapp.com keeps things simple and discreet. Each user need only indicate their gender upon logging in before they proceed to choose their gender of interest.

It is this sum total of ‘anonymous’ logins that allow the app to calculate and show the gender distribution of single people in a given area. Simple colored icons are used to distinguish between male and female singles.

Since gender alone may not be pointer to each person’s sexual orientation, Mojomapp.com uses the information that each user provides to indicate the orientation of each person in a given site. This reduces the likelihood of awkward moments where one is approached by someone who is not compatible with their sexual orientation.

Armed with this wealth of real time information, all you would then need to do is walk into a place frequented by the singles you prefer. Then, find ways of breaking the ice knowing full well that you have a higher chance of meeting someone with whom you share some common interests.

Users of Mojomapp.com can use the app to chat anonymously with an interesting date before they move on to a face to face conversation.

To attract more users, Mojomapp.com is currently free but it is likely to start levying a fee once it has sufficiently caught on in the market. Dating is meant to be fun and it is not improbable for Mojomapp.com to create a buzz in the singles crowd.

What might give some cold feet is just how much anonymity can Mojomapp.com give you if you are say, in a restaurant where your fiddling with your phone might quickly give your (at least facial) identity away.

Related articles

• Big Buy: IAC’s Match.com Wants To Acquire European Online Dating Site Meetic (techcrunch.com)
• Six Reasons To Rethink Your Online Dating Site (businessinsider.com)
• Meet Hitchie: speed dating for business contacts [Video Interview] #TNW2011 (thenextweb.com)
• Get Daily Dates Instead of Daily Deals With InboxCupid (mashable.com)

“From Google to Social Bookmarking”

The worldwide web is the richest and most complete source of data ever built by human kind. Anyone can research, learn or sell almost anything but that is the case if they can actually find what they are looking for. At first, the answer came from a small start up called Google, which grew to be amongst the largest tech firms in the world. If you knew exactly what you were looking for then Google was the perfect solution, in the matter of seconds you could reach your content.

The web grew to become even larger; Along with Google which became even more efficient with better algorithms, localized search, Maps and so on. But there is one thing that Google didn’t manage or try to achieve: “Recommendations”. Some might argue that Google’s Adwords is somewhat links to the recommendation business, but at the end there it isn’t a breakthrough technology. Companies out there all know the value of online recommendations especially when focusing on online businesses, we saw Amazon & Netflix spend millions to develop their in-house recommendation systems.

Those recommendation systems are doing the job but they are very limited. Limited by the fact that they were designed for a specific domain and are mostly based on simple algorithms or on other user’s behaviors. In recent years, the importance of social networks became a major part of the web , with this phenomenon social recommendations emerged. Users have now access to perfect tools to communicate therefore they are able to share content with their peers easily.

This is when everyone realized the potential of social bookmarking. Forms of social bookmarking existed since 1996 but it’s only around 2003 with Del.icio.us that it took of. People used it to bookmark their personal interests while surfing on the web. But is only 4 years later that users actually started sharing content, with the appearance of Digg.com and the Facebook share feature (2005 ).

This phenomenon became huge and other major player like Stumblupon.com, Reddit or even twitter took part in this craze. What is revolutionary about this is that real users are actually indexing content that they feel has value. Thus Opening new doors on how to find precious content amongst the “junk”.
History of Hunch: “The Decision Making Engine”

Hunch emerged from an initial idea from a Women entrepreneur Caterina Fake. She was previously known for being the Co-creator of Flickr.com along with Stewart Butterfield in 2004, which was later sold to Yahoo in 2005 for 35 million dollars . She is one of the first to use the notion of “user generated content” publicly, she is passionate by the fact the individuals can create amazing content when put into a community.

The idea of Hunch came on the basis that decision-making is difficult. Sometimes the simplest questions are hard to answer. Here are examples of questions than Hunch aims to answer for you: “What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a Porsche? Does my hipster facial hair make me look stupid? Is Phoenix a good place to retire? Whom should I vote for? What cologne should I buy?” . Before Hunch other antic techniques were used for this matter like Coin-flipping, Rock-Paper-Scissors or maybe asking your girlfriend.

Hunch aims be the best ever decision making tool customized specially for each user. Of course it’s not going to tell how to run your business or other very complex questions. But everyday questions that might not be bothered to think about or maybe decisions we don’t attached to much importance too.

At this point the whole Hunch was trying to map users taste based on series of random questions in order to create a “Taste Profile”. Those questions are called “THAYs” which translates to “tell hunch about you”. Here is a sample of these “THAYs” :

• Where do you live?
• Would you setup a new home theater on your own?
• Which fries would you prefer to munch?
• Alien abductions are they real or fake?
• Are you a mac person or a pc person?
• Do you generally prefer your sandwiches to be cut vertically or diagonally?
• Which lettuce would you usually prefer on a salad?
• Do you like to dance?

By analyzing all those answers, linking them together and comparing them to other users hunch is able to link tastes and personalities that no one ever thought about before. The second “Layer” used by hunch where simple ratings on different type of objects, actions, thoughts enabling yet another range or correlation and associations.

For example when looking and political ideologies and food preferences: “Conservatives like meat, comfort foods, cheeseburgers, deep dish pizza, and wooden, country-style kitchens. Liberals are vegetarian brie-lovers who enjoy wine, international food, and sleek, stainless steel-style kitchens.”

Hunch Now: “From Social Bookmarking to Indexing You”

The current online trends provide the perfect environment to study people’s interests and personalities. With the growing capacity of channels to rate and share media Hunch is able to add more “layer” to its recommendation system.

Towards the end of 2010 Hunch had to take a different direction. It had to move away from being a simple decision engine to focus on providing personalized content recommendations powered by behavioral data. This change of strategy is logical as companies targeting behavioral data start make real sense for big businesses , as they seen to become a very valuable tool to increase sales.

The Hunch Taste Graph

Hunch incredible knowledge on users taste already used the opportunity to merge this date with “Public Social Data”. This data can be found in forms such as the Facebook like or share or shared links on twitter. So much data is available in the social cloud and hunch is capable of giving it some structure. A localized layer can also be added with the emergence of Geo-localized data from “check-ins”.

Check-ins are basically people notifying where they are and what they are doing there. Platforms like Gowalla or Foursquare, which is set to reach 10 millions users in the coming months , are growing in popularity. This trend is highlighted with the recent launch of the “Facebook Places” feature .

Monetization:

Hunch’s Taste graph has great value but it has to find ways to monetize this rich data. Businesses need to able to the added value of using such a service. The Business Model can be separated in two; revenues from the actual Hunch.com website and the revenue linked to the API.

The website is the primary distribution channels with an average of unique 30’000 visitors per day . Some of the content on hunch are products such as dvds, books or restaurants. Using affiliate programs with Amazon or Barnes & Noble is the first and most logical way of generating benefits. The better Hunch gets in those fields the higher the probability of users shopping through those links.

Furthermore, with the introduction of company profiles hunch encourages users to rate and recommend products also making it easier for companies to publish on the platform. Those companies are considered as individuals and will be pictured on the same level as a individual user in Taste Graph. Engaging companies to participate will be key for hunch in the near future.

The other possible revenue channel for hunch is though its API to enable developers to benefit from those recommendations in their applications. Would benefit large or independent online stores, they could increase average checks by recommending better content. Hunch can either sign large deals with heavy users or find a system to charge a percentage for each recommendation converted into a sale.
Funding and Value:

Today it difficult to estimate Hunch.com’s real value if we look at their funding history we can see that the change of direction has help them raise another 12 million in March 2010 in Series B funding (CrunchBase). We can conclude that this illustrates renewed confidence that Hunch will manage to use its Taste Graph to generate revenues. It is difficult to estimate the real value of the company, Google was rumored to have made acquisition offer of 60 million in 2010 but it doesn’t mean much.

Business Model

Opportunities & Threats

Hunch is it’s 4th year and has made significant progress in those years, becoming a very abstract service to something that can add real value. The partnerships and the way they treat their users will be key for the future.

We have seen companies like digg.com completely loose user loyalty due to sudden design changes . Hunch has made decision to remove feature like that made them a fun decision making engine, users have been disappointed. The user experience needs to create engagement otherwise hunch might just become a new social bookmarking site or a twitter for content. They need to carefully manage their content in order to maintain consistency and avoid content pollution like on twitter. Treating their users with care is key as they are the real value of the service like most web 2.0 communities.

In order to attract companies, which of course are more skeptic than individuals, solutions need to be found to prove that recommendation really are of high quality. Data is needed to prove this, as it cannot only rely on users appreciations.

Hunch has a great potential; mapping people’s taste and personalities is extremely valuable raw data. The main threats for the company it the company itself, as it must remain focus on key objective. With such a product it would be easy to loose track and jump onto every opportunities.

References:

Alexa. (n.d.). Hunch.com. Retrieved May 16, 2011, from Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/hunch.com#

Barbierri, C. (2010, August 5). A new Hunch points to the money with behavioral targeting. Retrieved May 15, 2011, from Venturebeat: http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/05/hunch-web-personalization/

Carlson, N. (2009, October 25). Not For Sale: Hunch Has Turned Down Three Offers, Including One From Google Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/not-for-sale-hunch-has-turned-down-three-offers-including-one-from-google-2010-10#ixzz1MWJzLm7z. Retrieved May 16,

2011, from Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/not-for-sale-hunch-has-turned-down-three-offers-including-one-from-google-2010-10

Carr, A. (2010, September 23). Digg Redesigns, Loses More Than a Quarter of Audience. Retrieved May 16, 2011, from Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com/1690829/traffic-plummets-26-after-digg-redesign

Facebook. (n.d.). Company Timeline. Retrieved May 14, 2011, from Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline

Fake, C. (2009, Mars 27). Hunch. Retrieved May 14, 2011, from Catrina Fake’s Blog: http://caterina.net/archive/001169.html

Netflix Prize. (2009, 9 29). Retrieved 2011, from Netflix: http://www.netflixprize.com/sg=AFQjCNE4osxOTLm7WzZnXnD0qsZwBJcrNA

MERAJI, S. M. (2010, October 10). Hunch.com Might Know Your Personal Tastes Better Than You Do. Retrieved May 15, 2011, from NPR:org: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2010/10/04/130327569/hunch-dot-com

SCHWARTZ, A. (2009, November 12). Hunch Confirms that Liberals Enjoy Vegetables, Conservatives Like Fried Chicken. Retrieved May 15, 2011, from Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ariel-schwartz/sustainability/hunch-confirms-liberals-enjoy-vegetables-conservatives-fried-chic

The Next Web. (Saturday, May 14). Correction: Foursquare currently at 9.3 Million users. To cross 10 million “soon”. Retrieved May 16, Monday, from The Next Web: http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/05/14/milestone-foursquare-hits-10-million-users/

The Nielsen Company. (2009, 2009). Global Faces and Networked Places. Retrieved from Nielsen Wire: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/nielsen_globalfaces_mar09.pdf

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Brought by Mode Studio, The Sitcklebook is a innovative design idea around a very old piece of furniture that’s been arround for hundreds of years: The BookShelf. It’s a simple rack that enables you to “hang” you books on the wall creatin the illusion of a line floating line of books.

They claim It is totally secure and fall-proof.  It simply consists of an aluminum bar and small silicon spikes, you can screw it on any wall. The spikes will grab the books pages making it hang securely on the wall here is a video:

You want to acquire a property but you can not affort it ?
Or You have some good investing ideas but you require extra funding ?

Sharedspaces came out with a brillant idea : finding co-owners .

Let’s start with co-buyers.

You can now be more ambitious when buying a new home by joining forces with someone else. Sharedspaces gives you the opportunity to afford somewhere bigger, more prestigious and with a higher return on investement.

The idea is dead simple, just like a dating website you write down exactly what you are looking for in order to find your perfect match out of the thousands of registered potential Co-owners. The Process is simple and really aims to connect people with the same vision.

Keep in mind that before being able to acquire the House of your dreams loads of external player and extra costs come within the pictures such as solicitors, surveyors, lenders, brokers and more to pay. And it is just the start of it . Indeed once the home is yours the running costs kick in; bills, mortgage, service charges, repairs, home improvement, insurances, and many more.

Co-buying means spliting every single cost .

In addition , co-buying will help you to make your dreams come true . It is proven, two bedroom flat is often far less than twice the price of a one bedroom property. As a result , you will aspire to a place you could not have considered before cost-sharing.

The next point is : Co-investors .

Investing in property has grown to be a very lucrative hobby .

First of all, co-investing will give you the opportunity to come across other people’s great investing project with great return potentials. On the other hand, if you are the one who has a great investement project, it will help you to team up with co-invester to realize your investments.

Being willing to take higher risks is one of the keys to achieveing massive profit . Being a co-investor means that you are sharing responsability .That is why it will provid you a decision-making support and will help you to take the plunge into an expercience you will have never been able to do on your own .

Last but not least you can even imagine Co-investing with a first time buyer or even with a friend (who will live in the property) . This way you can invest in bricks and mortar , on the same time renting your place, and reducing costs of maintenance .

To sum up , sharedspaces has design a perfect way of sharing cost in order to make an unimaginable project conceivable by working with someone you do not know yet.

Share your ideas , your projects and find your other half to reach success !

Official Website

For instance, making a decision to drink at least eight glasses of water each day is easy – consistently sticking to that routine for consecutive months and years is the hard part. Worse still is not having any quantitative data that can show you how well you are faring against your target.

Greengoose.com is a start up that uses wireless sensors integrated with a web based platform all of which are meant to help you automatically track progress on the realisation of your lifestyle goals. The sensors communicate with an egg-shaped wireless receiver each time you perform an action. The receiver is plugged into a port on the router. The receiver battery lasts for 1 year.

There are different types of sensors each meant to track different types of lifestyle actions. The ones meant to monitor exercise are the same size as a credit card and so can easily fit in a purse or wallet. Water or energy drink bottle sensors on the other hand are stickers that are placed on the side of the bottle. The tooth brush sensor is egg shaped and with a slot where the stem of the tooth brush can be slipped through.

Each time you perform one of the actions, you earn ‘lifestyle points’. If you remain consistent, you get bonus points. Greengoose.com also allows for the exchange or sharing of points with partnering organisations in return for a reward. Similarly, the information can be shared with other applications. You can even integrate it with a reward system for the kids. The strength of Greeengoose.com lies not only in its functionality but also in its ability to appeal to persons of all ages.

Greengoose.com incorporates fun and play even into those activities that have a serious impact on our health. The sensors can be just as home with the kids as they would be with parents. True to its name, the Greengoose.com encourages people that have no more use for the receiver and sensors to send them back. The company will then recycle them ready for reuse. Other than being a gadget for individual use in the home or office, Greengoose.com has a bright future as a tool for business.

The best prospects for Greengoose.com will probably lie in future partnerships with health services organizations and other institutions that would naturally be drawn to customers of Greengoose.com. Such partnership may range from simply co-branding Greengoose.com sensors and receivers to investing in the development of new types of sensors to measure an even broader range of activities.

The practice of brewing goes back more than 5000 years. While any mention of the term beer brewing today is mainly associated with global, multi-billion dollar conglomerates, it is important to always remember that brewing as we know started as home brewing before it went commercial.

Home brewing is still practiced today with new home brewing machines models and brands constantly being released into the market. But many have failed to take off only attracting an initial excitement before eventually being consigned into the dustbin of history.

WilliamWarn, a New Zealand company, intends to change all that by developing a personal brewing machine. The device tackles many of the issues that off-the-shelf home brewing solutions have been plagued with for years.

Past impediments to home brewing include the long carbonation process, poor temperature control thus extending fermentation time, long clarification process, lack of a sediment removal functionality, laborious process, absence of technical know how to make good beer, poor temperature control during fermentation etcetera.

The WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery is designed and built around 6 key features. The stainless steel pressure vessel, the temperature control system, the sediment removal system, the clarification system, the gas dispense system and the draft dispense mechanism with flow control.

With the WilliamWarn Personal Brewery, it takes just seven days for one to successfully brew commercial-standard beer. Realizing the negative impact that oxidation has on the final quality of beer, the device is designed to ensure oxidation is kept at minimum.

The WilliamWarn device targets the New Zealand market first, but the founders of the firm intend to later push the product globally starting with Australia, then the US before moving onto other countries.

There is strong potential for the product in countries such as the UAE and Qatar where the cost of ordinary beer is prohibitively expensive. With its compact size, the WilliamWarn personal brewer will be at home in a bar and cafe just as much as it would be in the workplace and in the home.

What does the future look like for the WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery? On the face of it, prospects seem bright. However, there is one element of the machine that might make this device crash even before it lifts off the ground – cost. With a single unit going for NZ$ 5660 (US$ 4538), WilliamsWarn’s Personal Brewery is clearly not targeting ordinary home brew drinkers.

To their credit, the company has acknowledged that the cost of each unit is indeed high. This is primarily due to their initial approach of only developing 25 machines in order to gauge market reaction. The company could thus not enjoy the economies of scale especially since the concept for the machine had to be developed from scratch.

In this light, the company is thus banking heavily on the rapid uptake of the device in order to gradually pull down the cost per unit.

For many people, the dawn of the New Year presents opportunity for new beginnings. This is what drives the practice of New Year’s resolutions. But the statistics are not good – few people manage to sustain the momentum on their resolutions beyond March.

Even worse is that this is not a problem bedevilling New Year’s resolutions alone but also many other day to day activities people purpose to do. The Getupp app for the iphone has been developed by a German start-up precisely to increase the completion rate of one’s commitments. Getupp does this by introducing a human element that has long been known as a powerful driver for goal realization – peer motivation.

Set a goal that only you know and chances are, you will struggle to meet it. On the other hand, if you make a commitment jointly with 2 or 3 friends, the camaraderie will reduce the likelihood of you giving up along the way. The very notion of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ is evidence of how seriously people instinctively consider the opinions of those around them.

How does the Getupp app work? First, you commit to performing a certain action that requires you to be physically present in a specific location at a specific time in order for you to perform it. For instance, you can commit to go to the gym on Monday and Thursday at 1800hrs. Or you could commit to be home for dinner by 1900hrs.

When you make the commitment, the details are automatically shared with your Friends on Facebook. Your friends have the opportunity to vote on whether or not you are likely to fulfil your pledge.

Once you arrive at the site of the intended activity, launch the Getupp app and it automatically flags the commitment as fulfilled notifying your Facebook friends in the process. Getupp is location based, meaning you cannot flag a task as complete unless you are physically present (or at least the iphone is) at the location you indicated you would carry out the action.

If you fail to be at the activity’s location at the time specified, your Facebook friends are notified of your ‘failure’ and are free to mete out any other ‘punishment’ they deem fit.

Getupp addresses a real need. But while many people will not mind using it once in a while and mainly for fun, few are likely to use it daily. This app appears mainly geared to young adults. Even in this demographic though, it will have to struggle with a ‘juvenile-ish’ perception. This is regardless of whether one is actually succeeding or failing in fulfilling their commitments.

The very thought that one’s information is being distributed to all their Facebook friends (who are often of very varied temperaments, ages and convictions) can create a fear of embarrassment that may reduce uptake and ultimately, the Getupp app’s use.

You get to your favourite restaurant only to find the place packed and a long queue of people waiting for a table to be available. Ordinarily, you would have three choices – walk out and look for a less crowded restaurant, leave and come back later when there might be less people or simply join the queue and patiently wait for your turn.

Think about the many things you could be doing during that time. What if you could book your place on the waiting list and leave so you can be alerted when it is your turn? Sound perfect? Then you will like the WalkIn app.

A joint winner of the 2011 StartUpBus competition, WalkIn uses QR codes. Most smart phones have the inbuilt capability to read QR codes. WalkIn harnesses this functionality and all one needs is to scan the QR code once they arrive at the restaurant. Participating restaurants will have placed the QR code at an easily accessible location outside or inside the restaurant.

After scanning the QR code, the next step is to go to the WalkIn app on your phone and select the ‘Get on the list’ option. This will automatically add you to the wait list. Note that you do not necessarily have to have the WalkIn app on your iphone or Android phone in order to perform the scan and join the list. You can still use Red Laser for the QR scan and you will be directed to WalkIn’s mobile web application.

Once this is done, you are free to leave and do what you please as you wait for your turn. While you are away, the WalkIn app allows you to monitor progress as you inch your way up the waiting list. That way, you do not have to wait till it is your turn for you to start to make your way to the restaurant.

The app also provides an estimate of how long it is likely to take for you to get to the top of the queue. All this helps you plan your time and activities while you wait. When you get to the top of the queue you get a message confirming your table is ready. You have the option of accepting or cancelling. Cancelling will prompt the restaurant to automatically move to the next reservation. If you accept, you then return to the restaurant and head straight to your table.

Walkin is in many respects a simple app that performs a simple task. But one can only underestimate this app at their own risk. The very fact that it is a simple solution to a common problem can make its use catch on rapidly as long as its marketing is executed well.

Still, WalkIn has a significant downside – the striking similarity to Textaurant (a service launched way before WalkIn). Textaurant might make it difficult for the WalkIn app to shake off the ‘copycat’ perception and this may damage the brand.

When you think about it, setting and meeting our goals in life always requires pushing against some form of resistance. Often, our resolve to push through with what needs to be done boils down to its correlation with our ability to meet our financial obligations.

In other words, even though working in a career you like is a powerful driver to get up and go to work every morning, the reality is many of us do so because going to work makes the difference on whether we can pay the kid’s tuition, the mortgage, the car loan or a vacation.

This is precisely why ‘do good’ goals often fall by the wayside. The absence of any form of reward and recognition for accomplishing a ‘do good’ activity makes it fall to the bottom of any list of priorities.

Dailyfeats.com is a start up that has created a reward system for encouraging its users to perform positive activities that are consistent with each user’s values and life goals. The positive activities are predefined in the system and are referred to as ‘feats’. Dailyfeats.com currently has more than 200 types of feats but the number continues to grow.

The types of feats are broad. They include taking a brisk walk at the end of a tiring day, volunteering to tutor a child, eating fresh fruit, waking up early, taking the stairs instead of the escalator, spending time with the family etcetera. After performing each feat, users log into Dailyfeats.com via their smart phone or computer, register the feat and earn the points associated with the particular feat.

For persons that want to check in their feats without logging into Dailyfeats.com, there are a number of options. One can send a phone text message, send a Google Talk chat, email the feat or link their Dailyfeats.com profile to their Foursquare account. When one’s profile is linked to Foursquare, certain actions can be registered automatically based on location. These include attending classes or going to the gym.

There are two approaches to checking in a feat – registering each feat immediately it occurs or checking in the accumulated feats in bulk at the end of each day. There is no harm using either. However, members are restricted to only registering feats they have performed within the preceding 24 hours.

The member can share with other Dailyfeats.com members what tangible and intangible value performing the action created for them and thus encourage others to emulate the same. In return, the appreciation and reward one experiences from other members after registering their feat on Dailyfeats.com spurs them on to continue to do even more good.

Even though registering the feat earns a member points, ‘props’ or positive votes for the feat from other members earn the member additional points. Points earned on Dailyfeats.com can be redeemed for rewards or discounts. Dailyfeat.com has partnered with a number of commercial and not for profit organisations who sponsor feats that reflect their own values.

Bolefloor  has brought a new innovative way of looking at wooden flooring. They’ve managed to ally efficiency, design and sustainability by simply rethinking the aspect of traditional floorboards. This process seems simple but it’s always with simple things that innovation struggles. This Dutch company found a way to revolutionize how we can approach the us of wood for floors ( and later probably for other type of furniture).

It’s going against years and years of traditions and habits, things that we never think about as they seem to be a given. For flooring the given was and still is “Rectangular” you can go to a shop and find thousands of different type of squarish material but none just like bolefloor. The reason is simple it’s efficiency and the abundance of wooden ressources in the past. Logistically square is easy to transports and the waste created during the process wasn’t a real problem. And finally lack of technology was also a hurdle to change this process.

How did Bolefloor achieve this? Simply by inspiring themselves from nature and using technology to apply it to our needs. Bolefloor use complexe scanning and calculation  system of the raw wood cuts, mostly focused on the natural shape of the wood veins. Then they use this data to determine the most efficient way to cut the wood to minimize waste while making sure the peaces fit together. The trick to this is that each peace has it’s spot, its a huge jigsaw that fits perfectly together. They have made something that seems like it would have to be tailor made in to an industrial products that can be produced for the mass.

The Feel and Look of this flooring is amazing. Nature creates the deign and the technology brings it to your feet. These type of companies that manage to ally modern design products that fit a real need while being focused on sustainability are the real way forward in helping the society to actually act for the environment.

They also have the perfect moto: “Life is not a straight line”

Bolefloor Company Website

Punctuality, task coordination and organization are all vital habits for anyone intent on having a productive life. But even the most meticulous person can fall short once in a while. Think about boarding a train on a long journey, taking a nap and eventually missing your stop. What about planning a dinner for friends and family but getting caught off guard by the guests’ arrival? A businessman may miss a crucial appointment simply because the taxi company forgot to send the cab on time.

Geotick is a recently launched smart phone app that promises to ensure you are never late for an appointment, never get caught off guard and never miss your destination. It is a location based application that relays time sensitive, user determined, notifications to the apps users and their peers before the users arrival at a pre defined destination. Geotick uses the GPS capability of the smart phone to trigger a message to one or more people of the app user’s impending arrival.

So for instance, during a dinner event, guests that have the Geotick app would simply configure the app to notify the host once they get within a certain distance of the dinner venue. The long distance traveller that wants to take a nap but is not completely certain of the exact time the bus or train will arrive at their destination can configure the Geotick alarm to ring once they are close to their stop.

At the moment, Geotick is only available for iphone users. The free version has the basic features such as setting the alarm and defining locations. The $2.99 version has extended functionality that includes the ability to send text to a spouse or cab driver as well as customize the audio alarm. iPhone users can use the free version to test the basic functionality of the application before they eventually make the decision to buy.

The Geotick app deals with a problem that has plagued man for generations. Diaries, wrist watches, alarm clocks and phones are all tools that can be used to help one meet their punctuality, coordination and organization goals. While Geotick goes a step further than these other tools by incorporating GPS-triggered alerts, it will probably be an uphill task to get this app widely embraced by the mass market as is envisaged by the $2.99 price tag.

Geotick’s developers may need to incorporate a couple of more capabilities to the app if it is to immediately resonate with the iphone masses. That said, the success of Geotick all boils down to how well the apps owners execute its rollout and respond to the feedback of initial users.

Spam email may be the single biggest and most stubborn problem plaguing the internet today. Various studies have estimated email spam as comprising 78-97% of all email worldwide. One study estimated that about 260 billion spam mails are sent each day. Spam is the reason many internet users are hesitant to publicly share their real email addresses online or to register on a site.

Bouncr.com is a new service that allows internet users to create a temporary email address to mask their real email address. One can then publicly share their Bouncr.com email address without the fear of their real email address being known. Emails to the Bouncr.com email address are automatically forwarded to the user’s real email address.

If the Bouncr.com email account starts being inundated with emails the user is not comfortable with, all they need to do is to cancel the address and the account will be automatically closed. There is nothing that prevents the user from creating a new Bouncr.com email account tagged to the same real email address.

Spam protection has come a long way and many email service providers have achieved significant success in nipping spam in the bud. However, even the best spam protection system cannot guarantee protecting its users from all spam. And closing one’s real email address because of spam is often impractical. Bouncr.com makes closing an account much easier. When faced with unsolicited email, all one needs to do is delete their Bouncr.com email and start over.

Bouncr.com also protects the user’s privacy. Some email addresses are too revealing and may serve as an easy clue for identity thieves. For instance, the email john.peterson@placeofwork.com reveals the name of the email address owner as well as where they work. Using Bouncr.com ensures such information remains hidden.

Bouncr.com is a convenient way to protect email users from unsolicited email. However, it is not the first time that creating an alternative email address has been used to net spam email. Craigslist, the online ad site, creates an email account that lasts the life of the posted advert. The email address forwards to the advertisers real address. Once the advert expires on the site, the email address is automatically retired. The only difference is that Craigslist accounts are restricted for use in its adverts.

There are also numerous free internet email services such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Hotmail. Many internet users often create one or more ‘dummy’ email accounts on one of these services with the intention of using them for a specific purpose or for a specific time frame. They would then either abandon the address, request the closure of the account or (where such feature is available) enable forwarding to their real email address.

Bouncr.com’s competitive advantage here is that it automates the process of creating ‘dummy’ email accounts. With Bouncr.com, internet users no longer need to go through the arduous process of creating a new internet email account. All that is required is for them to key in their real email address and a new Bouncr.com email address is created with automatic forwarding to their real email address.

Over the last 10 or 15 years, the term corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained traction worldwide as an integral part of the responsible business’ strategy. However, the growth of CSR has inadvertently created the impression that activities to make the world a better place are difficult or near impossible to monetize.

Of course, nothing could be further from fact – there are numerous business that are solely involved in social activities and are returning a profit from doing so. 33needs.com is an online crowd funding website that connects social entrepreneurs with investors.

33needs.com serves as a platform (the only one of its kind) for ordinary people to invest in social enterprises and reap financial and emotional reward. The emotional reward is in knowing that one has contributed to making a difference somewhere in the world.

Financial reward is in ‘Impact Points’ awarded by 33needs.com that can be redeemed in any one of a network of ‘Impact Partners’ around the world. There are 6 classes of social enterprises that the 33needs.com helps organise funding for.

• Health – Businesses that provide products and services that help people live healthier and longer lives.
• Sustainable food – Enterprises that use sustainable farming and processing practices to make more food available to meet the need of the world’s burgeoning population.
• Opportunity – Businesses that equip men and women with the skills necessary to provide for their households.
• Planet – Entrepreneurs whose goal is to ensure a cleaner world.
• Education – Individuals or institutions that create the environment for more people to access a good education.
• Community – Enterprises that work towards the protection and preservation of unique but endangered cultures.

The social entrepreneur must indicate a specific target amount that they would like to raise. The funds are only released to the entrepreneur if the contributions from investors reach the target amount. If the total amount invested does not reach the target figure, the investors get a full refund of their money.

The rationale for refunding investments when they fall short is to ensure the entrepreneur has all the cash they need to achieve the goals they had outlined. This is good for investors as it reduces the likelihood of failed enterprises or projects.

The accrual purpose for the money will differ for each business. The cash may be for starting up a new business or to expand a going concern. The funds may go towards building a website, increasing inventory, research, marketing etcetera. 33needs.com helps social enterprises address their operational needs so they can focus on delivering their product.

The fact that investors are individuals who are attracted by the cause the social enterprise stands for means the social entrepreneur enjoys support from persons that are passionate about their business. This alone serves as a powerful drive for entrepreneurs to achieve the goals they commit to at the point of sourcing for funding.

While 33needs.com is quickly making a name in the crowd funding arena, its difficult-to-understand and widely-varying reward structure might be an impediment to more investors signing up. However, it has the potential of making headway among persons that would like to make a difference without necessarily expecting anything in return. This is because there is no collateral that the investor can redeem if the social enterprise goes bust.