Imagine this: you wait too long to buy a plane ticket to Austin for SXSW, and now you need to drive 1,500 miles or so. From, like, Washington, DC. But that’s OK, you just recruit friends who also waited too long to buy their tickets and turn it into a road trip – a mobile…
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It’s Friday. Your plans just fell through. It’s 8pm – the night isn’t getting any younger. You’ve worked hard all week, and you’re determined play. You don’t know what to do. More accurately, you don’t know what there is to do. Sponto does. This DC-headquartered, location-based social networking mobile app allows users to see what…
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Do you ever have days where you feel tremendously busy but when 6pm roles around you look back at your day’s productivity, and there’s not much to show for it. I have. You get stuck on what’s urgent rather than what’s important. Your day is spent in meetings, answering e-mails and responding to texts, you…
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Logan LaHive wants you to get rid of all those pesky loyalty cards stacked in your wallet. You know.. the ones with the frayed edges that you usually forget you have until after you get home from the coffee shop. LaHive, formerly of Redbox in Chicago, left the company to take on the role of…
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Think of the last concert or major sporting event you attended – did you check in via Facebook, or maybe Foursquare? Tweet about it? Post a clip to YouTube? Chances are good that you did. And if you didn’t, guaranteed there were people who did. A lot of them. That shared content has become an…
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London-based product development startup BERG introduced the Little Printer today, a new product that takes your digital news, puzzles and updates from friends and prints them out with a smile. It is definitely a step in the retro direction – the device prints those mini updates on what resembles cash register receipt paper. Little Printer…
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Seattle-based Glympse is an app for the always-running-10-minutes late, the socially inclined, and the worried parent. Glympse is a location-sharing device with an innovative map that lets you share your exact location with friends, family, and business associates. You don’t have to download the app to use it, and you can customize the duration of…
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Founded in 2010, Jiepang’s location-based check-in service has attracted more than 1.4 million users. Those users can earn badges and mayorships, share their check-ins on Chinese social networks, and interact with 300+ partner brands. “We learn a lot from Foursquare, Gowalla, and a lot of location-based apps in the US,” Jiepang CEO David Liu told…
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Anybeat, a discussion-based social network founded by former MySpace Music CTO Dmitry Shapiro, launched yesterday out of beta. Previously called Altly, which we covered in June, the site received $1 million in seed funding led by Freestyle Capital and with participation from MySpace founder Tom Anderson. Anybeat lets you browse people by filters like interest,…
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Three NYC-based, entertainment-related startups we have covered previously – 2 focus on food and drinks, 1 focuses on social TV watching – shared some fun updates with me over the past month: BiteHunter, which we covered in April when they demo’d at Tech Cocktail NYC, launched its second mobile app to add a few user-requested…
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Smartphones have opened many new channels for mobile communication. In the old days, you could either call your contacts or text them. Today there are endless ways to communicate and even more ways to follow your contacts: email, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn…and the list goes on. Contapps, a popular free Android app, helps users manage…
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With the number of social platform options for sharing your status, location, photos and more, there is an opportunity to leverage the existing data to create interesting new experiences. If this sounds a little vague then let me explain. For example, if you own a coffee shop, it may be interesting to showcase some of…
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It is true that some things – shopping or bar hopping, for instance – are better with friends. In college, almost everything is done with friends, even the mundane and necessary thins, like laundry, running errands, and studying. Bloomington, IN-based Swarm is leveraging that group mentality of 20 somethings with their mobile social network that…
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Smartling, the language translation service for websites and apps that we previously covered, has launched a new service for small businesses today. The New York startup updated its platform with new features, like a style guide and a glossary for translators, and a new interface targeted at small businesses and non-technical staff. “The meek and…
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Imagine strolling into Starbucks for your regular morning coffee and seeing a message on your phone: “Would you like to buy a tall iced coffee with skim milk?” An app has detected your location and the time and noticed that you’ve bought the same drink five days in a row. You click yes, click to…
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Google announced earlier today it has acquired ratings company Zagat. Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering – delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world. The collaboration will likely focus on integrating…
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There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More
Coming off of one of our biggest Tech Cocktail mixer events in Chicago this past week, which showcased 14 early-stage start-ups, we thought it would... Read More