The entrepreneur that brought you a wealth of hilarious and embarrassing text messages is now devoting her time to Banters, a platform for sharing quotes. Cofounder Lauren Leto started the site, then called Bnter, in 2010. It recently changed its name to Banters and launched a new iPhone app that integrates with Siri for recording…
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In the rapidly expanding world of incubators and accelerators, TechStars stands out as the Yale of law schools or Harvard of business schools. More than 1,200 companies will apply for the 12-15 spots available in the New York 2012 spring class. This past Saturday, about 70 companies were invited to participate in TechStars for a Day (TS4AD),…
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Conversion is king, at least in the land of online sales. You can run all the multivariate and A/B testing in the world, but when it comes to turning a prospect into a customer, there’s no replacement for a salesperson’s ability to overcome a buyer’s hesitations. Chat& makes this possible. With features such as live…
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Deaftel, a new iOS app, aims to ease phone communication for those who are hard of hearing. Currently, all available services for those who are deaf or hard of hearing (such as IP-Relay) involve the assistance of a relay operator. Although this effectively allows those who cannot hear to communicate via telephone, because an operator must deliver the message,…
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Last March at SXSW, Tim O’Reilly called Fluidinfo his favorite startup. Three years earlier, Robert Scoble said it was “unfundable” but “world-changing” – yet Fluidinfo has since raised $1.3 million from investors including Esther Dyson and O’Reilly himself. Why is Fluidinfo garnering such praise, and why is it so hard to understand? Fluidinfo is basically…
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WITNESS, a nonprofit focused on documenting human rights abuses, has long been distributing cameras and training citizens to use them. But with cameras now available as software on smartphones, WITNESS has an opportunity to create a camera specifically designed to capture photos of human rights abuses, war crimes, and social justice issues. The first version…
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Leave it to Google to give the perfect illustration of a problem we forget we have. In the video below, Google asks, “What if real-life purchases were like online checkout?” – with all the confirmations, questions about contact info, and even timed-out sessions – to explain why online sellers need Google Analytics. But the video…
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Curated monthly subscription services took off in 2011, with sites like Lost Crates, Umba Box, and BabbaBox sending out packages of stationery, women’s products, and kids’ arts and crafts. So it’s no surprise that a startup is finally aggregating those services – and giving them the tools to take off. Memberly is an online marketplace…
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In late 2009, Sonpreet Bhatia, Puneet Mehta, and Archana Patchirajan had a moment of inspiration – create a useful tool for discovering New York City. It was the dream of creating this tool that led all three of them to leave their VP-level technology jobs on Wall Street. Unlike a lot of ex-Wall Street folks,…
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Is 2012 the year you take on learning to code? I hung up my coding shoes in 2006, but that hasn’t stopped me from hacking on a project here and there over the last few years. But over time, my skills for specific programming languages have become outdated with the slew of new technologies available….
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When I first checked out Remixt.us’s beta, I was a bit skeptical: it looked like a bunch of nice image collages, but I wasn’t sure why users would create them. But talking to cofounder Angela Min, I began to see how it could be beautiful and meaningful. Remixt.us’s bookmarklet lets you grab content from all…
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Have you been bouncing an idea for a great new product around in your head for a while, but unsure of how to get started to bring it to life? NYC-based startup Quirky is a social product development site – or online idea community – that gives anyone the chance to become a great inventor. …
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appssavvy, the New York-based activity advertising technology company and their platform advtivity, have announced the completion of their Series 1-A funding today- a new infusion $7.1 million. This added capital comes from a host of former investors of the company, including True Ventures; The New York Times Company, founder of About.com; Scott Kurnit, co-founder of StockTwits; Howard…
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What if food experts reviewed the best restaurants in your city and gave you a discount? Blackboard Eats is doing just that in LA, NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco, with plans to launch a new city in the spring of 2012. “Don’t consider us a deal site; instead an intersection between motivating perks and journalism,”…
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If the holidays are sneaking up on you this year, consider giving your friends a “cling.” iOS users on Clingle, a location-based social network, can now send holiday gifts – like $5 for a latte at Starbucks or $10 Fandango movie tickets. Best of all, they can make the gifts a “surprise,” so they don’t…
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New York Entrepreneur Week wrapped up last Saturday, featuring CEO coach and investor Mac Lipscomb as a keynote speaker. The 20-person organization now has its sights on Chile, where they are sending a delegation in January. This initiative is part of Entrepreneur Week’s expansion to South America, the Middle East, and Europe, which began with…
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