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Suite Arrival Makes Sure You Never Forget You...
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CenterNetworks Feb-07-10, 325 words
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Many of the startups I speak with do a good bit of traveling around the country and the world showing off their services. I am always forgetting some toiletry item when I travel. Typically I forget a fingernail clipper – I have so many of them at home I could open a store selling clippers. A new startup wants to make sure we never forget to pack a toothbrush, toothpaste or in my case, a clipper. Suite Arrival allows you to order a pack of travel toiletries and have them delivered to your hotel on the day you arrive. You select whether you want a kit for a man or woman along with the length of the trip and Suite Arrival provides a customized toiletry kit for you. The kits are available for overnight, short trips, week-long trips and a “road warrior” pack which is for trips of more than 7 days. The toiletry kit includes: shampoo, conditioner, soap, body wash, deodorant, mouthwash, razor, shaving cream, hairspray and moistureizers. You can also add some medications including aspirin, stomach aids, allergy and even sunblock lotion. Pricing ranges from $14-28 and shipping on the first order is included in the price. The product categories can be customized (or upgraded) for $0.50-$2.00. I’d like to see more options available in the kit. For example, let me order some cookies or candy. What about local maps? I think Suite Arrival could become the best welcome kit for a person arriving at a hotel. Suite Arrival and, travel planning service, TripIt were made for each other. Both services are aiming to make traveling easier and the demographic on TripIt are probably those who would buy a package on Suite Arrival. Suite Arrival could also partner with travel agents and provide a commission when the travel agent sells a kit. What do you forget when you travel? CenterNetworks Partner: Get your business cards scanned and transcribed with CloudContacts.
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Mayor Bloomberg Announces Big Apps Winners
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CenterNetworks Feb-04-10, 453 words
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Tonight at the IAC headquarters building in NYC, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the winners of the Big Apps competition. Below is a list of the winners. We covered the Big Apps competition extensively here on CN so you may already be familiar with the winners. Congrats to the winners and to all of the developers who participated. It was simply awesome to see all of the creative ideas using the city’s data feeds.
Best Overall Application: - Grand Prize: WayFinder NYC – an application that allows users to find the nearest and best directions to New York City subway and New Jersey PATH stations on Android phones. It was also selected as the Grand Prize winner for the "Data Visualization Award." Team members: Victor Sima and Steven Lao.
- Second Prize: Taxihack – an application that allows users to post live comments on New York City taxis and their drivers via email (alert@taxihack.com) or Twitter (@taxihack). Users send messages to the system, which are then posted on the appropriate pages for public viewing. Team members: Randy Meech and Sam Cole.
- Third Prize: Big Apple Ed – an education application that provide residents with an easy-to-use guide to schools in the City, including school searches, top ten lists, analyses, comparison charts, and detailed school profiles. Team members: Adda Birnir, Jonathan Soma, and Kate Reyes.
- Five Honorable Mentions were also awarded for Best Overall Application including: Actuatr, UpNext 3D NYC, Trees Near You, PushPin Web, and NYC Way.
Investor's Choice Award for the application with the highest potential for commercialization: - NYC Way – an iPhone application that bundles more than 30 New York City resources and provides information sorted by the user's current location. NYC Way was also selected as the "Popular Choice Award" Grand Prize winner. Team members: Puneet Mehta, Archana Patchirajan, Sonpreet Bhatia, Arun Arunachalam, Vivek Mehta, and Shariq Siddiqui.
Data Visualization Award for the most visually appealing and user-friendly application: Popular Choice Awards: - Grand Prize: NYC Way
- Second Prize: Bookzee – a library book search application that allows users to enter a book title or author to find the nearest library currently holding it. Team members: Mike Cavaliere, Veronica De la Pen?a, Timothy Murry, Michael Boski, Will Schenk, and Fernando Guillen.
City Talent Award for employees of the City, the New York City Economic Development Corporation or their families: - New York Parks and Recreation Online (NYCPRO) – an application that allows users to search for parks and recreational opportunities in New York City by neighborhood and by certain recreational activities. It can also be used to locate bike shops, restaurants, hospitals, landmarks, and multi-use trails. Team members: Josh Pierro, Gary Bushek, Robin Dropkin, and Robert Murdock.
CenterNetworks Partner: Get your business cards scanned and transcribed with CloudContacts.
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Want to Run Location-Based Ads in Your iPhone...
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CenterNetworks Feb-04-10, 285 words
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The Apple iPhone developer’s blog has an interesting entry from yesterday that discusses location-based advertising in iPhone apps. The usage of GPS functionality to deliver local information must provide “beneficial information” to the user. The entry notes (my emphasis), “If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.” MacNN has a good look into what this decision means for developers and for Apple. “Many analysts believe Apple is preparing to launch a mobile advertising network that will serve ads through free apps on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The company recently acquired Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising specialist, after reportedly failing to sign a deal to purchase AdMob. The latter company was later picked up by Google,” MacNN notes. Developer Craig Hockenberry mentions the change in a tweet last night, “Looks like Apple is going to keep location-based advertising to themselves.” The use of the word “primarily” makes me believe that some level of ads will still be allowed. I’m not sure I agree with MacNN in that Apple would tell developers no, only to tell them yes if you use our advertising network at a later date. What does this mean for location-based services including BrightKite, Loopt, Foursquare and Gowalla? Would an offer at a local merchant based on a “check-in” qualify as an ad? CenterNetworks Partner: Get your business cards scanned and transcribed with CloudContacts.
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Monster Acquires Yahoo Hot Jobs for $225 Million
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CenterNetworks Feb-03-10, 289 words
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Monster has announced that they will be acquiring the “assets” of Yahoo HotJobs for $225 million in cash. I’m not going to scrape the press release, you can read it here. I wonder what will be left of Yahoo after all of their consolidations, partnerships and sales. Yahoo says today’s sale will allow them to focus on their core businesses and, “delivering exceptional experiences to users, partners and advertisers.” Here are the specific particulars regarding the agreement on top of the HotJobs acquisition, “Monster and Yahoo! have also entered into a three year commercial traffic agreement, to take effect upon the closing of the acquisition, in which Monster will become Yahoo!'s provider of career and job content on the Yahoo! homepage in the United States and Canada. The traffic agreement calls for performance based annual payments calculated by clicks and expressions of interest, subject to annual floors and ceilings. In addition, the traffic agreement provides Monster with an exclusive right for a period of time following the closing of the acquisition to negotiate similar traffic agreements with Yahoo! properties on a global basis, including countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America, subject to certain limitations.” The job aggregators including SimplyHired and Indeed are doing well because they pull in jobs from multiple sources. But many of the jobs that the aggregators pull in come from Monster and that means Monster most likely made money on the initial job posting. The interesting thing here is that Web 1.0 is still alive and kicking. It’s also interesting that when you look at so many categories, the Web 1.0 site in that category is still the biggest player. CenterNetworks Partner: Get your business cards scanned and transcribed with CloudContacts.
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SeeClickFix Helps You Report Issues In Your Hood
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CenterNetworks Feb-03-10, 329 words
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Last night at the NY Tech Meetup, SeeClickFix provided a demo of their service. The service is pretty simple in concept but has the chance to be very powerful in terms of actual value to communities around the country. SeeClickFix describes their service as, “report(ing) non-emergency issues and receive alerts in your neighborhood.” My simple description of SeeClickFix is, “see something, report something.” If you see graffiti on a building, a pothole, street lights out of service, running hydrants, or even prostitution, you can easily use SeeClickFix to report the issue to the local government for handling. Many times the local government won’t know something is out of service or a condition needs to be corrected unless someone reports it. SeeClickFix makes the reporting process easy and adds a community layer. The more people that report the same issue, the likelyhood for a speedy fix rises. SeeClickFix takes the reports and then sends them to the local government in the affected area. Mobile will be huge for SeeClickFix for instant reporting rather than trying to remember to report the issue later. There are SeeClickFix mobile apps for the iPhone, Blackberry and the Android version is coming soon.
Here’s the page from Philly — there are issues reported ranging from potholes to prostitution to vagrants to a broken stop sign and broken garbage cans. Once the locality “acknowledges” the issue, a note is posted — this is the first step to getting the issue resolved. RSS and XML feeds are available to monitor any location or topic you are interested in. I know the next time I am near Queensboro Plaza where the road is so busted I am glad that I am in a rented Zipcar, I will snap a photo and report the 8,000 potholes. Here’s an overview video of how SeeClickFix works: CenterNetworks Partner: Get your business cards scanned and transcribed with CloudContacts.
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