When it comes to travel, maybe you are on a vacation or just on a business trip, we are always out to find some adventure, something that is far from the norm, something new. For you to get the best experience from a place, then you need to have everything planned out quite well. It is at this point that many people go wrong and eventually wind up not enjoying their visit as much as they should. With getyourguide.com, you can get all that you need online. This means that you will not only find an experienced guides to show you all the exciting places in the area, but you will also get the best guide who knows the do’s and don’ts in the place.

It does not mean that you will only be getting a guide to guide you around the place of visit; you will also be able to book for tours, attractions, and even activities. This is quite a great idea. To be able to complete all your booking in one site is amazing. If you are a constant traveller, you do know how hard it is to have everything that you want planned out for you in advance.

Let’s say you are going to Kenya on your vacation, all that you will need to do is to log onto getyourguide.com and you will be able to book for everything you need. You can book a camel ride, you can also book a visit to the Maasai Mara, and you can also book yourself a stay in one of the exquisite hotels in the country.

Through getyourguide.com, travel has been made hassle free at pretty favourable prices. With getyourguide.com you will get the best deal for the best experience. This is because getyourguide.com works with local travel companies who will be out to make sure that you get to experience all that your place of visit has to offer. If you would love to visit Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, Oceania or even south America, all you need to do is to log into getyourguide.com and all your needs will be addressed. By getting rid of all the intermediaries, you will be sure to get the best price, guaranteed.

Founded by Johannes Reck and Pascal Mathis, what getyourguide.com has to offer is quite unique to the market as it works with local providers so that you can get the best experience. This goes beyond what we are usually used to. We are usually used to individual providers providing booking for their services online, with getyourguide.com; you get everything in one place. If you would love a spa treatment during your visit and some rock climbing at the same place of visit, getyourguide.com will help you make all the arrangements with the best providers around. All you need to worry about is the important stuff; having the time of your life. If you are out to find the perfect visit, where you practically have everything worked out for you then Johannes and Pascal have it done for you through getyourguide.com.

As for my personal opinion on the whole idea, I must admit that I love the idea. Too many times we find our holidays and vacations getting all messy due to some few mishaps here and there, which are all as a result of not finding the right provider for the service you want. Previously all we had were many providers from different parts of the world that offered online booking, now with getyourguide.com; you will get all that you need in one site. The one thing that really intrigued me is a provision that they have. It states that if you happen to find your booked tours at a lower price elsewhere, they will make sure that they refund you the difference. This will be done without any questions. I guess that getyourguide.com is what we have all been looking forward to when it comes to having a great experience while travelling to exotic places all over the world. I sure know what to do the next time I want to visit the pyramids to get the best experience.

In conclusion, getyourguide.com is for sure a great idea. The one thing that we can expect from getyourguide.com is more growth in terms of service. This only means that we will be seeing even much better deals than the ones that we currently have. If you do love travelling then getyourguide.com will let you enjoy your travel with all your needs being addressed no matter how diverse they may be.

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)

UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) equipped with cameras have found broad application in a number of
fields both commercial and research. There is though one inherent limitation with the images captured
via UAVs – the images are non-continuous and are not 3-dimensional.

But all that seems set to change with the Pix4D technology developed by EPFL. Pix4D allows you to
convert your UAV drone’s two-dimensional photographs into a detailed 3-dimensional map.

The process is relatively straightforward – at least on the front end. All you need to do is upload the
photos from your UAV to the Pix4D. The UAV images would contain the appropriate GPS geo tags for
each photo.

The location of the Pix4D app that you will upload the UAV photos to will depend on the
implementation of Pix4D you have signed up for. The Pix4D implementation options available are: a
cloud version, a server on your network and a minimalist installation that can run on a laptop or desktop
PC.

Once you upload your photos, the process of converting the images to the 3D map takes no more than
30 minutes. To create the map, Pix4D will determine the internal and external orientation of each
image.

The cameras on ordinary UAVs are of lower resolution than the cameras used by sophisticated satellite

systems. In addition, the UAV cameras are of varying power depending on each UAV. Ordinarily, this
would mean the Pix4D app would have to be recalibrated each time photos from a different UAV are
uploaded.

But this is not necessary since Pix4D performs an initial analysis of each set of photos uploaded to it and
uses this data to estimate the internal parameters of the camera. This estimation factors the variation of
the lens between photos as well as variations occasioned by temperature changes.

You might be wondering why the application is called Pix4D whereas it produces a 3D map. The answer
lies in Pix4D’s ability to integrate the time factor. In other words, you could take photos of the same
area but on different times of the month, week or year and create a 3D map of each using Pix4D.

You can then use Pix4D to overlay the 3D maps allowing you to see any changes to the landscape
that may have taken place between the times each set of photos was taken. This functionality can be
particularly useful for farmers with large ranches who may want to keep track of the progress of their
crops’ growth.

Related articles

• Uav,Uas,now comes the aerostat (via SMARTPLANE) (crufc.ca)
• Successful Launch for Elbit UAV (israelnationalnews.com)
• Batcopter UAV observes anti-collision bat behavior, crashes into ground (video) (engadget.com)
• Making a Real Batcopter, With Parts From the Hardware Store (science.slashdot.org)
• ‘Batcopter’ studies bats in flight (gizmag.com)

When making the decision to go out most of the time you don’t really know wich bar to choose from. Usually you walkabout try a few places and then settle for the one that is the most lively or maybe the one with the most girls. No days more and more people use Geolocalizing apps to check-in to different places, this give the opportunity to take this data and make estimations on the bar’s atmosphere.

SceneTap take advantage of this trend to bring us an app that can make going out a different adventure. First of all, You can check the surrounding bars and see how many people are there or even check out the male to female ratio. This will help you make your decision and maybe discover cool places that are maybe more lively than the ones you know.

The application doesn’t stop there! it also creates chat rooms for each bar where people can discuss and maybe meet. Imagine you see this amazing girl at the other hand of the bar, you see her on the chat and text her “A Glass of champagne is waiting for you 10 meters on your right!”. Great! well I guess it’s a bit lame but you never know it might come in handy.

SceneTap also takes advantage of the couponing trend and integrated the options for bars to include special deals through the app! this is a marketing opportunity. Imagine you getting a notification from the bar next door (which is pissed off about the fact that the are empty) that tells you there is an sudden happy hour and all drinks are half price! that would be great! ( maybe not for you liver but you know:)).

On top of that the application give the possibility for bar manager to check the clientele they tap into. That a amazing tool to get information on what type of costumers do you attract and what events make your bar more popular. With todays flow of real time information it can also give you real time data on how the bars around you are doing for exemple.

If this application could be connected to the Tabbedout app that could be great! especially if you can integrate the fact that you could send a drink to someone from your phone!

Well to conclude this concept is interesting but it needs a lot of data to make it relevant. And where I leave nobody really checks into bars so there will be no value in such an app. A strategy must be created to push smartphone users to use this technology, maybe through deals and promotions on drinks. On other side of things is that it might take out all the fun of going out in town not knowing where you go! I love that feeling of unexpected experiences!!!

Related articles

• Time to Tap In: Foursquare Testing NFC At Google Conference (mashable.com)
• Coming To A Bar Near You: Facial Recognition & Real-Time Data (empressoftheglobaluniverse.wordpress.com)
• SceneTap: On-site cameras find happening bars (news.cnet.com)
• Mojomapp.com – A Geolocalisation Dating Application Shows You Which Bar To Go To (smartideabox.com)
• Tabbedout raises $3.7M to simplify bar and restaurant payments (venturebeat.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)

Car sharing is a concept that has been explored in many different ways. The issue of congestion and the high ration of car per inhabitant keeps on increasing. Most cars are designed to transport 5 people, but most of the time they hardly occupied by more than 2 people.

Most concept of car-sharing up to date requires booking your car in advance and having a limited amount of choice or on the other hand they embrace the concept of hitchhiking trying to fill cars to their full capacity.

GetAround.com is bringing car-sharing to the social web. We all know the success of such companies like Zilok.com in france for exemple which focus in facilitating rentals between individuals. GetAround.com is focused on making car rentals as faster and easier than ever before. By Creating in intuitive platform that enables individuals to easily register their cars making them available to potential costumers. Basically they call themselves a a peer-to-peer car sharing service. You are going to actually rent a car from someone that lives near you, or rent your car out to someone in your area.

They claim the rental process takes around 60 seconds! They also make sur to provide legal backup for both parties with an  Insurance coverage that  includes liability, collision, property damage, and uninsured motorist protection. Their process can be completed with simple iphone no paperwork needed!

This car rental market is dominated by big players such as Zipcar but founders are confident that their innovation will help them to quickly penetrate the market. They’ve been awarded the Most Disruptive Startup at  this years TechCrunch’s Disrupt Conference 2011. Here’s is one of the stats that makes this company so disruptive, 2 days after their official launch they already had 1600 cars available for sharing – that is 20% of ZipCar’s market acquired in a single day!

They also offer devices that you can plug in your car enables smartphone holders to directly access the car without having to pick up the keys, just like state of the art rental companies. They however hold a totally different position by only playing the role of the faciliter for peer-to-peer rentals taking a percentage on the transaction. On the website they claim that lenders can make up to 350 dollars a months by lending their car around 15 hours per week! I guess the only downside of the service is that you will have to return the car to it’s initial location, You wont be able to drop it in Las Vegas if you came from San Francisco.

I’m curious to see how things will evolve they’re in private beta at the moment but have made an impressive buzz with this award from Techcrunch.

Related articles

• Car-sharing service RelayRides raises $5.1M from Google Ventures (venturebeat.com)
• Interview with GetAround: Revving up car sharing with an awesome app (thenextweb.com)
• Getaround Signed Up 1,600 Cars In A Day; That’s 20 Percent Of Zipcar’s Fleet (techcrunch.com)
• Startup Turns Anyone’s Car Into Part Of A Zipcar-Like Fleet (mashable.com)
• Getaround app takes car sharing peer-to-peer on the iPhone (tuaw.com)

We Know the popularity of Yelp, Google or TripAdvisor maps when it comes to choosing restaurants on the fly. They are amazing tools and everyone uses them to get a insight on which place they should go try out. The concept is dead simple “get reviews from real people that are always up to date”.

But there is one issue, one of the biggest issues when going to a restaurant is actually knowing what you should eat. With current rating websites you might get a review saying “you should try the roast duck with red wine sauce!!! amazing 5 stars” but this is very rarely the case.

FoodSpotting aims to change the process of rating the restaurant industry by strictly focus on rating food items or dishes. Mening that the focus is not on the restaurant but on what the restaurant offers. This is a radical change because when choosing a restaurant usually we have a small idea of what we want to eat. No days or thinking is pretty simple I want Mexican, pizza or a steak for exemple but when you only have an abstract idea of what you want to eat its not that simple.

Because of how Foodspotting is structured is enables you to browse dishes and snacks just like if you where window shopping in a bakery. This is a radical change in the way those online recommandation work. Further when we look at “real” life when a friends tell you about a place he often tells you about what he ate there that you should try. This means its very natural to recommend specific dishes.

The process of sharing has been made as easy as possible: take you iphone snap a picture of the food and rate it, you Geo-localisation will detect where you are and you’re done!
Business like Zagat in New-York have themselves added pictures of foods you can buy for other people to rate. When I think about Zagat I realize how useful it could when you walk in a store where there are too many things to choose from. Or simply when walking in a restaurant with a 4 page menu.

We all know how Yelp struggled to launch at the beginning by going global, then they had refocus and San Francisco to great a buzz and improve quality of the content, then we all know the story. Will FoodSpotting be able to find a spot in this market or will it be a new hype that will slowly die. They need to make a huge marketing effort and focus on user engagement to make sure the community grows. THe quality of their recommandations will also be crucial ( why not implement the hunch API into this application?).

Happy FoodSpotting and don’t Forget to Spot Ideas Too!

Related articles

• BonApp, a delicious new Foursquare hack suggests dishes at restaurants (thenextweb.com)
• TopDish: A new social network for foodies (thenextweb.com)
• Zagat for BlackBerry updated with restaurant reseverations (intomobile.com)
• Meal review app Chewsy adds photos to share your food porn (venturebeat.com)
• Hit iPhone app finds the foods you crave (money.cnn.com)

Location based content services are fast becoming the point of focus of new web technologies.

FourSquare is probably the most recognisable such service and can in fact be credited with opening
up the market to several other niche local services. To a large extent, the phenomenal growth in
smart phone sales has also provided impetus for individuals and businesses intent on developing
internet-powered location-based services.

Hunch.com and its Hunch local iPhone app is one of the new entrants that is making a significant
mark. Established by Chris Dixon and Caterina Fake, a co-founder of Flickr, the Hunch local app
allows users to make recommendations and discover locations that are consistent with their stated
tastes. You can find everything from museums and spas to grocery stores and restaurants.

To place the practical use of the Hunch local app in context, think about sitting in an office and
craving a cup of coffee or an afternoon cocktail. If you are a travelling businessperson that is new
in that part of town or you are a local who simply wants to explore a different restaurant or bar, all
you need to do is go to the Hunch local app on your iphone and you will get suggestions on the most
popular coffee shops and bars in your area.

The suggestions are not just listings of places or products. Rather users can leave a review of a venue
that other users can read in order to get better informed on what they can expect to experience
when they do go there. Hunch local also uses an intelligent iterative algorithm where a user’s
recommendations and responses to random questions are used to tweak the user’s future search
results of the same keyword(s).

Users of Hunch local can sign onto the service directly or through Twitter or Facebook. Given that
Facebook boasts more than 650 million users and Twitter having a substantial user base as well,
this ‘single sign on’ functionality adds to the convenience of the site. Naturally, the quality of data on
Hunch local depends on the number of users that participate. For this reason, the service is currently
most accurate and informative when in urban areas. As the number of users grows, so will the
quantity and quality of recommended locations in rural and remote locations.

Where does Hunch local stand now and where is it likely to go? The service is currently limited to
the US and major non-US towns. The Hunch service initially did not require one to log in to access
the data. When Hunch enforced the log in requirement in May 2010 the number of unique users fell
from 750,000 in May to 250,000 in June. However, Hunch substantially recovered with unique users
bouncing back to 350,000 by July 2010 and has been on a growth trajectory since then.

One of the key things that the developers of Hunch local might consider incorporating is the ability
to see one’s followers that are currently in the suggested restaurant a la FourSquare. Hunch.com has
already stated its intent for deeper cooperation with FourSquare so this functionality might not be
long in coming.

Gigwalk is an iphone application that aims to use the growing “smartphone workforce” in crowd-sourcing effort to complete mini-tasks. Today’s world is very dynamic and everything changes at a very fast pace: Shops, Roads, or services etc…Google and other companies send a lot of money and time to try and map our world but it’s an effort that will be continuous and with big risks of quickly being outdated.

The idea is this: If you need something simple done at your store or other physical location, as long as it’s something almost anyone can do, you can put a job up on Gigwalk for people to grab..

Gigwalk classfies the tasks (Gig is how they call it) into 4 different categories:

Mapping

Mapping tasks range from Verify Roads & Signs to Transportation or even for people who want to Create their Own Map. More precise tasks exemples:

Local

Shopping

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.

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Whether it is for purposes of computing tax returns, preparing yearend accounts or to help you have better grip of personal or business expenses, recording and keeping track of expenditure is important. But considering the sheer number of receipts the average person piles up in a month or year, it is clear that maintaining order is no mean task. It is not unusual for one to spend hours each month organising and adding up receipts.

Plendi.com is changing how people manage receipts by making the process more efficient. Plendi’s process is simple. First, install the Plendi app on your smart phone (the app is available for iPhone, Android and Blackberry). Use your phone to take a photograph of the receipt. The image is then securely transmitted to Plendi.com servers.

The sooner you can take the photo after the receipt is issued the better – the receipt is still in pristine condition and not a crumpled state as is likely to happen after it is handled for a while. Taking the photo early is also important in safeguarding the record just in case the receipt is lost shortly after.

On receiving the digital image, the back office staff at Plendi manually key in the important fields from the receipt and upload the data by the end of the next business day. The data captured includes date, currency, vendor, net amount, VAT and total amount.

All the information can then be accessed on Plendi.com by the client. The records (including the images) can be exported to Excel and PDF files. With Plendi.com, there is no longer need to worry about lost receipts. Plendi.com stores your records for an indefinite time frame for as long as you are subscribed to the service.

This archive can come in handy during a tax audit, external audit, internal audit or a dispute. Remember that tax authorities in several countries including the US, the UK and Ireland accept receipt images as legitimate supporting documentation for tax returns. The digital records ensure accountants have much less to do and save valuable time – they no longer need to sift through, organise and record tons of paperwork.

Plendi.com automatically converts the currency of the receipts to your home currency thus saving its clients the headache of manual conversion of foreign currency-denominated receipts. Using Plendi can see one significantly reduce their tax bill. For instance, one year’s parking receipts can bump a significant chunk off one’s overall tax obligations.

One of the key areas of concern with Plendi.com will be data accuracy. After all, the data is manually keyed in by humans. Plendi do admit they can make mistakes. However, their recommended course of action in the event of an error might not come across as reassuring – that is, users should use the web interface to correct any such errors that are inconsistent with the receipt image. This may be translated to mean that clients are ultimately responsible for the accuracy of the records.

In order not to appear as though they are absolving themselves from blame for typing errors, Plendi.com would probably create a stronger case for the quality of their output if they could indicate their current error rate (as long as it is impressive). For instance, a 99.8% error rate will give users the confidence that errors are the exception and not the norm.

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.

This presents a headache when one needs to connect to someone else on each of their social networking profiles. Separately logging into Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, Flickr and Blogger to connect to the same person is time consuming to say put it mildly. If one is connecting to more than one person, the time it takes to connect to each individual’s multiple profiles is itself multiplied several times over.

Fullyfollow.me addresses this problem by enabling one to connect with the service user’s entire spectrum of social networking profiles via a single click. All a user needs to do is to create a profile on Fullyfollow.me (this is free) then specify all the social networks that they are a member of and that they would like to be part of their Fullyfollow.me profile. Each user profile gets a unique user defined URL (e.g. www.fullyfollow.me/peterjohnson) that they can then provide to anyone that wants to connect with them.

The service is flexible. For instance, when anyone visits the user’s Fullyfollow.me profile page, the visitor has the option of selecting which of the user’s social networking profiles they would want to connect to. They can choose to connect to their Facebook and LinkedIn profiles but leave out Twitter.

In addition, this service does not automatically connect or add the requestor to the Fullyfollow.me user’s LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. Service users still retain the authority to vet and accept or decline requests. For Twitter, this is automatic which is consistent with requesting to follow someone on Twitter directly.

Another strong point of Fullyfollow.me is that visitors to a service user’s profile page do not have to be members of Fullyfollow.me in order to connect to the user. Once visitors to the profile page indicate the social networking sites they want to connect on, they are redirected to a confirmation page for each site they selected.

At launch Fullyfollow.me only covers the top three – Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Plans are likely in the pipeline to integrate other sites so as to accommodate the networking needs of different internet users. The more sites Fullyfollow.me can incorporate the better its chances of success.

The service addresses a real problem and can gain wide acceptance if the business model is executed well. Its target market is vast – tens of millions of internet users have profiles on more than one social networking site.

It is this high cost of medical care in the West that has spawned medical tourism. Medical tourism is where a person travels to another country in order to access health care at a fraction of the cost they would incur for the same care in their home country.

It is not all rosy though – medical tourism has its risks. For instance, most potential medical tourists start their research on the internet. But the internet is full of difficult to understand information, contradictory claims and unclear accreditation standards. The reality is that medical quacks are just a few clicks away.

Tripmedi.com, a joint winner of StartupBus 2011, has developed an online service to steer medical tourists away from these and other pitfalls they are often exposed to. Tripmedi.com creates an intuitive way for people to get the information they need to make the right decisions when going for surgery overseas.

It has a friendly user interface that allows users to evaluate different medical choices overseas. The parameters the different choices can be evaluated against in Tripmedi.com include quality of service, reputation, cost of surgery and location.

In particular, Tripmedi.com focuses on 3 pillars in helping medical tourists make the decision to travel abroad. First is statistics on the doctor’s past performance. Such statistics would include the number of procedures the doctor has carried out versus the number of complications or infections that have resulted from the surgeries the doctor has participated in. Most world class hospitals routinely record such information.

The second pillar is the doctor’s resume as well as the reputation of the hospital. How many years has the doctor been in the practice? What qualifications do they hold? What are their areas of specialisation? What nationally or internationally respected awards has the hospital or the doctor received?

The third pillar of Tripmedi.com is probably the most important – community recommendations. This is born of the recognition that statistics alone (however detailed) do not provide the necessary level of reassurance that one needs to select the country, hospital or doctor to go to for the procedure.

Unanimous word of mouth still trumps statistics. Through community recommendations, users that have had experience in a given country or hospital or with a particular doctor can give their own view of how the country, hospital or doctor measures up.

Tripmedi.com is wading into an area that has a huge market and potential for growth as long as the cost of world class medical care continues to differ by as wide a margin as it does today between countries.

As long as Tripmedi.com can ensure that the information is up to date – a tall order considering the number of countries such medical institutions are spread out in – it will rise to the top as one of the most authoritative sources of information for medical tourists.

To say that travelling can be a nightmare is an understatement. What comes to mind first is the strenuous check in process at many airports. But airport red tape is just one of the key hassles that travellers must grapple with.

Another major pain is finding accommodation especially when one is looking for short term accommodation. Hotels may have rooms available but the cost can be prohibitive. This is where short term rentals (sometimes referred to as home stays) can be ideal.

However, anyone that has tried it knows that finding a good quality, decently priced rental especially on short notice is not easy. HouseTrip.com tries to give some method to this madness by serving as an intermediary between hosts on the one hand and travellers on the other.

Launched in January 2010, HouseTrip.com has had resounding success with about 20,000 persons using it to find short term rentals last year. 90% of traveller reviews so far have indicated having a positive experience.

HouseTrip.com provides benefits for both travellers/guests and hosts. For guests, cost is probably the largest incentive. One can get an entire apartment for the same amount (or less) than they would spend on a modest hotel room.

Staying in a rental provides a more authentic experience than staying in a hotel room. The guest gets to see and be a part of the day to day life of the locals. The third advantage is HouseTrip.com ensures the security of the guest’s money each step of the transaction – no need to fear falling prey to scammers.



For hosts, the main advantage is the ability to enjoy a steady of income from letting their property. Second, a host enjoys the economies of scale that looking for guests through HouseTrip.com presents.

It would take a lot more effort and present many risks were the host to look for guests on their own. HouseTrip.com works hard to ensure that properties listed on the site appear among the first pages on search engine results thus increasing the list’s audience and the likelihood of getting a guest.

Another benefit is that the host ultimately has the last word on who stays in their house and who does not. It takes a simple mouse click for one to reject or accept a booking. Getting one’s property listed on HouseTrip.com is free. The host determines what price to charge and also decides when they want to rent out the property.

HouseTrip.com is not the first website that has sought to connect rental apartment hosts with guests. However, HouseTrip.com has sought to distinguish itself by developing a more careful and systematic approach. For instance, HouseTrip.com covers only a certain number of countries – the site does not list rentals from every country in the world.

This is in contrast to the go-for-broke methodology employed by other sites where there is little or no control to ensure that guests and hosts get value and are not swindled. That said, it is expected that with time, HouseTrip.com will cover ever more locations. As long as the site sticks with its stringent but efficient process, such expansion is not likely to see deterioration in the quality of service.

The rapid rise in smart phone sales is quickly moving the smart phone from an elitist status symbol to a mass market product. According to global research firm IDC, global smart phone sales will be up 49% in 2011 – 4 times faster than ordinary mobile phones.

This growth is in turn creating opportunities for business ideas that were previously unfeasible and impractical. Crowdbeacon is one of the latest such services to hit the market. It builds on the successes of Yelp and what is arguably the most well known location based service today, FourSquare.

However, Crowdbeacon differs from FourSquare. Even though Crowdbeacon is a location based service, it mainly focuses on providing information to users depending on where they are and what they require. This is unlike FourSquare which is centred on venues, event planning and has a strong social networking element.

Crowdbeacon differs from Yelp as well. It serves a similar role to Yelp but takes the service a step further than a simple search – it creates engagement. That said, some of the information made available to Crowdbeacon ‘askers’ is drawn from Yelp using an API.

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Here is how Crowdbeacon works. First, one must sign up for the service. As the user signs up, they are required to indicate at least one topic they consider themselves an expert on in their locality. So when a user asks a question, another Crowdbeacon user within the same locale (e.g. the same city) and who indicated they were an expert on the subject the question relates to, then responds.

Users of Crowdbeacon can use the service to get response to questions ranging from where to buy roses, the top museums in the city, the location of ATMs and the best restaurants. The response to the question is delivered via SMS, push (iphone), email and voice. Crowdbeacon employs an algorithm that ranks users by tested influence in their category and/or neighbourhood based on the number of positively received responses they provide.

Crowdbeacon is not limited to individuals – businesses too can sign up. When a business signs up, they are required to indicate one or more keywords that they would want to receive questions on and respond to (usually related to the product or service they sell).

If a response is required in real time and there is no one immediately available to provide the information, users do not necessarily have to wait for an expert user’s response. Crowdbeacon invokes APIs that draw down relevant data from other location based services.

At present, Crowdbeacon draws the data from Yelp, Wishpond and FourSquare. Plans are in place to expand this information pool to include Facebook, City Search and Twitter.

In the event that there is no one available under that category to answer the question and the APIs do not provide satisfactory data, Crowdbeacon’s own staff take up the question and attempt to get an answer on the end-user’s behalf. That said, given the infinite number of possible questions, Crowdbeacon staff do not guarantee providing an answer to every such question.

If smart phone sales maintain their steep climb, Crowdbeacon has huge potential for future growth. At present, the Crowdbeacon application and service is free. The product’s creators have intimated that their goal at the moment is to provide a unique, quality service that meets their user’s need before they attempt to monetize Crowdbeacon.

Location based apps are all in the hype at the moment. But to be honest it is a small revolution, people can be connected to places to areas which means they can be provided with much more relevant information on their surroundings. People want to be connected to people locally and want information about their very own environement. Google already understood that a long time ago, when you are based in Siberia you are more likely to be directed to siberian websites logical.

What anttenna does, as they call it, is to facilitate person-to-person exchanges in real-time. What you must be thinking now is well Graiglist already does that. One difference is that antenna is more focused on day-to-day small exchanges or events, some exemples are:  Got an extra ticket? Need an extra ticket? Lost your dog? Having a yard sale or an open house?

It turns traditional classified listings into geo-tagged twitter sized microlistings. Which makes those listings more efficient with a nice push notification which alerts you when something is happening close to your location . The real innovation i think is the it considerably reduces the length of  the traditional exchange process. Please see bellow a video that illustrates the app and an illustration of the 3 step it takes to make a successful exchange.

How Anttenna Works – Mobile Advertisements.

furthermore the guest would benefit from the rest of the multimedia capacities