iOS Archives - Page 3 of 9 - Serious Startups

Cincinnati Startup ChoreMonster Makes Chores Fun For The Whole Family VIDEO INTERVIEW

Cincinnati startup ChoreMonster makes chores fun for the whole family. The Cincinnati based startup, founded by Chris Bergman and Paul Armstrong was one of the standout startups in the 2011 class at the Brandery Accelerator in Cincinnati’s Over-The-Rhine neighborhood. The startup was designed around monsters that Paul Armstrong had created and shown to Bergman. The two decided that they really needed to do something fun, positive and profitable with the monsters.

Bergman tells us in the video interview below that he didn’t have the best home life as a kid. He didn’t delve deep into that but you can tell that he is very passionate not just about starting a tech company,but the good that ChoreMonster is going to do for families and kids. He loves the idea behind incentivizing chores and of course the gamification of them as well.

So how does it work?

Parents sign up at ChoreMonster.com. While it’s in beta right now Bergman tells us that all you have to do is share it with your Facebook friends, through a one-click process and you’re into the beta. He also tells us you can find beta invite codes everywhere. At this point the beta is more about putting the finishing touches on the product rather than limiting users at this stage in the game.

After you sign up, you create a profile for your child (children) no worries though the parent controls everything that the child sees.

From there you start setting up chores. You can pick from the list of chores or make up your own. Once you’ve selected a chore you fill out the chore form which asks you to assign it a point value.

The next step is to set up rewards which your child can redeem for points. The parents create the rewards themselves. For my daughter we created a chore “pick up toys and books” we assigned it a value of 5 points and that it needs to be done every day. At 50 points our four year old daughter can redeem it for a new My Little Pony. We added a variety of other chores along with a bunch of awards including things like movie night where we will go see a movie in the theater, after school ice cream trip, and after school trip to the park.

There is an app that we downloaded for her on her ipod touch which tells us she’s completed a chore. Once we verify the chore she gets the points in her point bucket.

The best part may be when the monsters come into play though. Armstrong has designed a great group of monsters that each kid can redeem. They plan on adding a virtual market so the kids can add virtual items to their monsters, buy premium monsters and interact with other kids and other monsters.

Original ChoreMonster artwork like this fills the 3rd floor at the Brandery where ChoreMonster works. It's referred to as the "Alumni Penthouse" (photo: nibletz LLC)

Sure ChoreMonster isn’t going to last forever in a kids life. The average family will probably get great use out of ChoreMonster from the time their child is four to about 12 or 13. They may grow out of it by then, but heck it’s around that age that the chore chart comes down as well.

From a startup business standpoint, with their core set of users theres barely any attrition. After the family has the big family meeting about ChoreMonster, and once the kids start using it, it’s not something that can be easily tossed to the wayside like an app or game you may have gotten bored with.

Bergman tells us the next step is to add an app for the parents so that they can verify chores, track chores, and check up on their child’s progress from their own app.

The two co-founders are filled with heart, soul and laughter and of course creativity. They work out of the top floor of the Brandery which has been dubbed the “Alumni Penthouse” from some of the companies that work out of the space. From the middle of the top floor of the Brandery Bergman and Armstrong can see all the way down to the bullpen where the current class is working hard on their startups.

Both co-founders can often be found mentoring the new startups as well. You can also find them very active in the social, community parts of the Brandery whether it be a Reds game, basketball, beer pong or one of the Brandery’s social gatherings. They’re both as committed to the Brandery community as they were when they were going through the same rigorous program.

Check out the video below where Bergman talks more about what drove him and Armstrong to create ChoreMonster and you can just tell from the discussion this is something he believes in. Investor’s believe in them as well. In 2011 they took the $25,000 top prize in the Cincinnati Innovates competition. They also closed a round of funding at the beginning of the year for $350,000 dollars from private investors and CincyTech.

Linkage:

Go sing up for ChoreMonster here

Here’s a great piece on the Brandery

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”

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Can This Florida Startup Feathr, Get Rid Of The Traditional Business Card?

A gang of young twenty somethings from Florida have started a new startup to eliminate the business card. CEO, Aidan Augustin, along with cohorts Neal Ormsbee and Gabriel Busto are in the process of launching an app called Feathr.

Augustin says that while he was interning in Silicon Valley he attended a networking mixer with young entrepreneurs. Admittedly the attendance was the top echelon of future entrepreneurs, millionaires, Stanford students, graduates and drop outs. Augustin said in an interview that none of these young professionals had a traditional business card. By the end of the evening they were trying to take each others information down by downloading bump, passing phones around to input information and any other means that they could. It seemed ridiculous that there was no app to handle this process, so they created it.

Feathr allows the user to create an interactive virtual business card, that can link to a persons website, portfolio,email address, phone number, social networking channels and more. Then, through a graphically pleasing UI, users can share all or as much of the information they want with someone new.

The real benefit to Feathr lies in the fact that both parties don’t have to have the Feathr app installed in order to exchange Feathr cards. Augustin explains that if the receiver doesn’t have the Feathr app they get a text message with a link to where the virtual business card resides in the cloud. This is one of the big differentiators between Feathr and other similar apps in the space.

Another big difference between Feathr and their competitors is that most other apps in the business card, and networking space are about input and intake of information. Feathr is focused on sharing.

On the user side, once you’ve got someone’s Feathr card in your Feathr contact list, you have one click access to whatever means you want to communicate with that person. If you want to Tweet to them you can. If you want to send a text message you can. If you want to call you can. You can even view their portfolio and flip through their work. It’s that robust and at the same time that easy.

Feathr is still in private beta. You can follow the link below to request early beta access.

Linkage:

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Louisville Startup: Impulcity Smooth As Butter Event Discovery Now In Beta

Impulcity is one of the standout startups at The Brandery in Cincinnati. We finally got a chance to talk with Hunter Hammonds and Austin Cameron face to face about the disruptive mobile app they’re building.

When someone who does what I do hears the words “location” and “discovery’ we automatically think FourSquare, Google Places, and checking in. We think the space is crowded. We think “sure you’ve got something different”. Well with Impulcity, Hammonds and Cameron have something different. As soon as we arrived at the Brandery Hammonds immediately set up the private beta on my phone and for the rest of the evening I got a guided tour on Impulcity right from the co-founders.

After a night on the town, Hammonds challenged me and our co-founder Cameron Wright to name one event discovery mobile app, that served up local events, allows you to check into them, invite friends, and had a great UI. We couldn’t even name one, not like this.

As you can see they have a great visual user experience. From the main screen you see a highlighted event in visual form and then a grid of similar pictures promoting events around you. The top featured event can be swiped from left to right so that you can see all the highlighted events.

Once you’re in the event you can do a number of things which are all explained in easy detail. There are big inviting buttons for sharing, and what network you want to share with. There is a timeline feature for each event where people can chime in on their experience at the event and share pictures and text.

While Impulcity is from Louisville and building at the Brandery in Cincinnati they’ve already got over a million events in their database that will populate in the same beautiful visual way.

Impulcity says they help you discover, attend and interact with events around you and that’s certainly true. But you can bet on our road trip that we will continue to test and use Impulcity.

Linkage:

Find out more about The Brandery here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” and we’re road-tripping everywhere else click here

Interview With New Jersey Startup: Clipix, Pinterest For Everything

Bookmarklets are nothing new, however Pinterest turned the concept of bookmarkletting into a world wide phenomenon. Pinterest has turned itself into a company with an astronomical valuation and no direct revenue, by simply bookmarkletting “Pinning” photos on interest boards. Heck even President Obama and Mitt Romney are doing it.

But what if you wanted to go beyond just pictures. What if you wanted to pin websites, articles, heck even word documents and pdfs? Well you would turn to Fort Lee, NJ based startup Clipix. The company, founded earlier this year has already attracted the attention of both TechCrunch and Mashable and now we’ve had the chance to interview them.

For starters they’re very very feature rich and the features don’t just sound great they work great. One of their most popular features is “Price Drop”. Clipix knows when you’ve clipped something that’s from a retail website and notifies you at set variables when they price either drops by percentage or to a certain dollar amount. Sure there are other services that do this but it’s all in one.

The other big feature is the ability to clip things from documents and pdf’s which can come in handy later on. Then you can view the items you’ve clipped via mobile device. It’s actually rather amazing.

You’ll see in the interview below, why Clipix is considered the “Pinterest for the real world”.

Interview With Atlanta Startup StoryMark, A Novel Idea For Photo Sharing

I was just telling StoryMark founder Dana McIntyre the story about when my mom turned 60 five years ago how all the kids got her one of those groovy digital photo frames that allowed 30 second narration on each photo. It was a cute idea and we were able to get photos from each couple in our family and the grandkids. We were then able to narrate what the photo was about.

Well, the reason we are writing about another photo sharing app is because StoryMark does virtually the same thing, but now instead of a clunky novelty digital photo frame, it’s on your iPhone or Android device where it will be way better utilized. In fact this year in September we are getting my mom an iPhone (yes she’s ready) and StoryMark will definitely have a place on her phone.

StoryMark allows you to take photos and then add up to 30 seconds of audio to send with the photo. It’s great for pictures that tell a story. Say you go on vacation you can send those loved ones back home a great photo and an audible description. Maybe your son or daughter is just laughing away, now with StoryMark you can audibly annotate the photo for years to come.

StoryMark has so many use cases it’s absolutely ridiculous (in a good way) McIntyre tells us in the interview below you can use it for those family moments, doctors can use it to get advice and collaborate with other doctors, even the know it all leader of your neighborhood organization can use it to audibly talk about how your grass is a smidgeon too high. Teenagers could use it to pitch their parents on that must have shirt, sweater, or video game at the mall. Again this is one of those ideas so good you think, “why didn’t I think of that” well that’s because McIntyre did.

Check out the interview below

Interview With Austin Startup: NOOM, Next One’s On Me

Late last week we brought you the story about Baltimore startup BeerGivr which allows people to buy their friends beer using their mobile phone from a remote location, at participating beers. The concept is easy, if you can’t join your friends at the bar you can still pick up a round or buy the birthday girl/boy a shot or beer. You sign into the app, and let it know how many beers and voila its done. BeerGivr has partnered with bars in their hometown for testing. If you buy a friend a beer and they’re not at a participating bar or restaurant they can have that beer converted into Paypal dollars.

Well an Austin startup has taken a similar concept and expanded it to a wide variety of offerings primarily in the under $10 arena. With NOOM (Next One’s On Me), you can buy a gift for a friend using your mobile phone. Ideas include cupcakes,coffee, beers, lunch etc. You simply send your friend a virtual gift certificate through NOOM and they actually get the gift.

NOOM co-founder Sara Rodell gives us a great use case example in our interview below. Say you just met a great new friend or business colleague, it would be very awkward to shake hands and give them $5 or $10 and say “hey the next coffee is on me”, but with NOOM it’s a gesture appreciated, and used.

Right now NOOM is available in the Apple iTunes store and exclusively for Austin area merchants however they are expanding quickly and plan on bringing Houston on in the very near future. NOOM currently has 20 Austin area merchants participating including bakeries, ice cream shops, coffee shops, restaurants and bars.

Check out our interview with Rodell below

Estonia Startup: Oddspotter Is A Cool Art Appreciation Game For iPad INTERVIEW

If you’re wondering where the heck Estonia is, no worries they have a thriving startup scene there. In fact when talking with Tanel Teemusk the founder of Estonia based startup Oddspotter, he tells us that Estonia may have the largest number of startups per capita of any European country.

You may be familiar with their biggest startup, it’s called Skype. Of course with Skype, like many other startups that have had huge exits or gone public, they have a venture arm too that’s churning out great startups. One of our favorite European startups Hail-o is also backed by Skype founders.

So what is OddSpotter, it’s an art appreciation game. It’s got great graphics and Teemusk isn’t afraid to call it “edutainment”. Of course we’re not talking about edutainment for kids it’s edutainment for adults, and if you’re not careful playing OddSpotter, you may actually learn something. We did.

We got a chance to interview Teemusk in depth and we’re not going to knock him if he does in fact come and stay in San Francisco for a few months. Oddspotter was raised in Estonia so it’s an international startup from everywhere else.

Check out our interview below:

Was It Too Soon Ann Droid (Android)

***Editors note, the edit staff here at nibletz have pointed out that there are 8 drafts of a story like this so now its time to finish it***

Do you remember the first bad break up in high school. You know the one where you broke it off with your first, (what you thought at the time was a long term relationship), maybe it was a couple of months, maybe a year or two but inevitably most of you had that moment. The awkward stares, and whispering in class; the passing in the hallway; maybe that moment when the other person was really sick, injured or had a traumatic moment, and it was just awkward?

I had that moment on Friday. You see, when you create your own content vs regurgitate others, you can go on just about a full vacation and no one realizes you’re gone. That’s what I’ve been doing the last week (and technically there are two more days to go but I needed some closure). Friday I took a meeting with a college student that wanted to start an Android blog. I thought I was ready to sit and talk shop for an hour or two over a burger at my favorite burger spot. For the most part the meeting went well. The guy was nice enough, I agreed that I’d help him out a little bit with advice and best practices, and he would help me out with a couple little coding issues here that need to be fixed.

We talked about Android for a while but of course the first thing this new Android blogger noticed was my white iPhone 4S. It was resting on the table next to my drink when he walked in. It was totally unintentional. “Oh so you’ve gone to iOS”, was the first thing he said. And yes, yes I have thank you.

(photo: Google)

My relationship with Apple started many many years ago. In fact, thedroidguy was always written on a mac, an iMac, several MacBooks, a couple MacBook Pro’s and towards the end a MacBook Air. The photo above was actually captured and ran on some very popular Apple blogs from Google IO 2011.

I often told people that my use of Macs went back to my school newspaper days, as it does for many journalists. But in talking with this new blogger I realized, I was wrong. My relationship with Apple computers goes back to the third grade. My Maryland public school had an awesome, all Apple II computer lab. Yup we could play educational games, learn to type, do a few basic programs, play Zork and print out 8 foot banners with our four letter names on a dot matrix printer, that if you’re lucky would finish before the bell rang (often not).

Since Apple computers were what’s hot in the schools my great suburbanite parents quickly got us an Apple II which set them back a few thousand dollars with that dual floppy drive and same dot matrix printer. I remember hearing that the Howard County library had gotten a new Apple II GS, I had to see this thing it had all the great features of an Apple II and it was in COLOR, wow.

We had just about every iteration of the original Macintosh line at home and school. Every newspaper I ever laid out was done on a mac. I owned every iteration of a powerbook, than a macbook, we had the all in one colorful computer in a greenish blue and I had the colorful macbook in an orange I believe. Yes, my entire experience on computers going back 20+ years has always been Apple.

Before thedroidguy I had the original iPhone and then a GS. I also had several models of Blackberry if it makes you feel better. Then, I wanted a change and had really liked Google and Gmail. I got exposed to the G1 pre-launch from some contacts in the wireless industry and thedroidguy was born.

It became incredibly popular. We did a great job of offering some original content but we had to regurgitate news as well, that was the nature of the beast. Through an email log, and an internal document we tallied it just a week or two ago, thedroidguy tested over 200 different Android devices. I was changing phones and devices more often than even some people change underwear.

I was always careful to distinguish the iOS fan boys from the Apple fanboys it would be hypocritical to down the Apple fanboys, but you see that’s the problem.

I was a longterm (and stil am) Apple user. Not a fan boy. Why? Because it was what I was exposed to as a kid and I never ever had the problems that many of my PC using friends had. In fact, before I went on vacation I took my macbook air in to Best Buy under Black Tie because I was having major trackpad issues. That was the first time in 25 years of using and owning Apple computer products that I had EVER had an issue of any kind. Let me say that again, July 2012 was the first time in 25 years of using and owning Apple computer products that I had EVER had an issue of any kind.

I’ve never thrown an Apple product away because it was broken. I never upgraded because I really needed to. It was always because I saved money to upgrade when I wanted to. That retina display Macbook Pro is looking sexy as hell but alas the battery is not removable nor EPEAT compliant and I love my Mac computers but not $2500 worth.

So back to Android.

I would shout things my love of Android from the rooftop. I wore an Android beanie to every public facing event since October 2010 where I was representing thedroidguy. The beanie made it easy for folks like Ralph DeLaVega and Dan Hesse to say “Hey Droidguy” when they saw me at a convention.

I was the one sitting there listening to every word Steve Jobs or Tim Cook said in regards to new iOS features, saying “Yup we have that already” In fact when the 4S came out, with it’s Siri (Talk to text, Vlingo Nuance), Notifications, and still lack of turn by turn navigation, was released I was posting as fast as I could type.

But then as Nibletz started to grow, things started to change. It was like that pre-breakup period. Where you know something isn’t right and you don’t want to answer the phone or the door, or “talk” because you know the inevitable is coming.

As Thedroidguy I always, always, always carried three phones and a tablet (or two). I never thought anything of it. In fact it was cool to have three of the latest Android phones to show off and evangelize about. Sometimes, no wait most of the time, I had an Android phone in “pre-release”. On more than one occasion I would walk into a carrier store and ask for an accessory for a phone I had on my belt, in my hand or in my pocket that wasn’t even out yet.

Playing with the newest Android toys was a great benefit to being thedroidguy. I loved unboxings and I loved doing reviews.

In January, that “pre-break” period hit. I did CES with two phones and multiple batteries. I had the phones to use back at the office if I wanted to but I no longer felt the need to carry three devices. Half because of nibletz and half because of this “pre-break” period with me and Android, at CES 2012 Brent and I spent more time in Eureka Park and checking out the Phillips booth than any Android manufacturers booth. The love was fading… fast.

Why, for the most part (and we’ll cover this later), Android was awesome, many people were using it, it was adopting fast, but to get the overall experience of the top tier and newest features in both software and hardware that I wanted I needed to carry three phones, not one phone. Not only that but emphatically I would need to do a battery pull, a factory data reset or some other jury rigged trick to get the phone back to normal. Android as a whole was great, Android as one device, at least to me, was a prosumer nightmare. I didn’t root, I didn’t have time for that. I’ve got things to do and a business to run I don’t have hours on hours to tinker in my parents basement.

At South By Southwest I noticed there was a little problem. I couldn’t check out all of these cool new apps on one device because I didn’t have an iPhone. The Android versions of some of the apps were superior on one Android device and not the next. I still wore the Android beanie with pride and wrote every day on a Galaxy Note (which was probably the last cool Android device I used daily). Except I needed to charge it more than use it, luckily I had a power bag with enough batteries to light up a runway.

My cofounders had been begging me to ditch the other site and work full-time on this and at SXSW that’s what I started doing. I switched completely. See I only need (or should I say take) 4-5 hours of sleep. So I would spend the bulk of my workday on the android site and two hours or so on nibletz. Starting at SXSW it was all nibletz all the time and I could regurgitate news fifteen minutes before bed.

Something had to be done and I didn’t want to see the brand die. So I sold it to a content syndicate in New York. They actually seem to be doing very well with it. They don’t source at all though which drives me nuts.

When we got back from south by I bought the iPhone 4S. I also bought a “the new iPad”.

So here’s why. It’s not a big F-U to Android they have a lot of great technology in Android that is still earlier than iOS. With that technology comes flaws and caveats though that only the loyalist of Android users can tolerate.

I went back to iOS because it just WORKS.

Period. That’s it. Sure my iPhone is only 3G but my iPad is 4G so that makes things just peachy, and battery life on both devices is spectacular. I mean phenomenal compared to what I’m used to.

Case in point, my cofounder Cameron drove back from Memphis to Philly a few weeks ago and reported using 16,000mah worth of battery over three devices. Do you know how insane that sounds to an average user. I’m not knocking Cameron at all because a year before that I would have done the same thing and thought it was quite normal.

I customize my lock screen with pictures of my kid and my wallpaper with cool pictures I’ve taken. My apps are organized the way I want them and they always open when I want them to and close when I want them to.They never freeze up, I’ve never had to reboot, I can’t battery pull because the battery is locked in the phone, but I’ve never had to, ever.

So back to that blogger, he had a great theory as to why Steve Jobs hated Android so much. The theory also speaks to why Android gets features before iOS. You see Apple makes 5 and 10 year plans, not just the next device. Many of these things that are coming out for Android are probably ideas for future iPhones. Perhaps Eric Schmidt sold Steve down the river and said why wait, we will do it now.

So I’m not exactly saying that iOS features are better when they come out then Google features. Sometimes they’re not. In fact this new siri like feature in Jelly Bean is a heck of a lot better than original Siri. Of course Siri is going to be upgraded and the Android fan boys are going to say that Apple copied. And perhaps they did. There’s a lot of that going on these days.

My final thoughts…

There are a lot of people who have smartphones now. Smartphones make up 2/3 of the new phones being purchased in the US alone in 2012. There are three types of smartphone users

– People who WANT access to their email, web and apps on their mobile device
– People who having access to their email, web and apps on their mobile device makes life easier
– People who MUST have access to their email, web and apps on their mobile device.

Whether you want to argue with me or not, I am in category three. I live and die by this website. We’re totally sneaker strapped right now and eating depend on this site (and before this site the other site). I need to be able to access the site, my content flow, my other writers, and everything else having to do with the site, startups and content everywhere and all the time.

Being committed to staying on the road through September 2013 means that during a travel week 90% of the content is created and uploaded on a mobile device.

For that I need durability, reliability and battery life. 4G/LTE, turn by turn navigation and widgets on my home screen are more than a fair trade off.

So was it too early, I guess not because a lot of my old readers who’ve come to the new site deserved this post.

Please help us with our mission and our road trip, info here

Indianapolis Startup: Trensy Makes Doing Good Deeds Fun INTERVIEW

A hot new startup in the vibrant startup community of Indianapolis Indiana is gamifying good deeds. The startup, called Trensy, makes it easy to earn points for just about any kind of good deed.

Good deeds ranging from volunteering, to much easier tasks like taking the bus or using a reusable grocery bag at the grocery store can help you earn points on Trensy’s good deed platform.

The platform ties into your Facebook account for 0-auth verification and then a way to share your good deeds socially and invite others to participate as well. One of the cool parts about Trensy is when you sign up and look at the available good deeds, you’ll probably find that you’re doing some to these things already. (if not most of them).

The two founders that met at IU (Alma Mater of Mark Cuban and Nick Tippmann) didn’t set out to do a startup together. They first became roommates and friends, and then went off into the real world. When they realized they wanted to start something, and something good for the community, they naturally turned to each other as co-founders.

Trensy co-founder Kyle Robbins told us:

“After graduating, we both moved to Indianapolis to begin careers and worked independently for several year before connecting on trensy. Bryan worked on the service side of an educational software company and I worked as a developer. The decision to venture together on this journey all came down to the trust and confidence they had in each other. Fate got us together to work on changing the world”

Trensy is available for both iOS and Android. The good deed app platform can be a lot of fun especially when you challenge yourself or friends to get more points.

Here’s our full interview with Kyle Robbins below.

Interview With Kentucky Startup WhyWait

There are a lot of discovery apps out there. This year at SXSW discovery was the biggest space represented by new app startups at SXSWi.

So now with hundreds of discovery startups popping up all over the place, the features, UI, UX and user benefit are the biggest parts to insuring the success of a discovery startup. Kentucky startup WhyWait has all of those elements in pace.

WhyWait is about serving the user the best local restaurants and then letting them know when things are going on at those places. WhyWait features event calendars, menus, specials, happy hours and even provides restaurants the ability to use push notifications to send out great deals to users.

The startup has even incorporated local events in addition to events at restaurants like Karaoke night, live music and big specials.

Kentucky has a flourishing scene of startups. They have an active Startup America Partnership and several hubs like Northern Kentucky (and Cincinnati), and Louisville. WhyWait started in Bowling Green and recently moved to Louisville.

We got a chance to talk to WhyWait co-founder and CFO Jon Matar in the interview below:

Los Angeles Startup: 80sBrickphone Bringing Back Iconic 80’s Motorola Dynatac

A Los Angeles startup founded by designer Brad Helmink, is bringing back one of the 1980’s most iconic pieces of mobile technology.

The Motorola DynaTac was first introduced in 1983 for a price tag around $4000 in 2012 terms it would be closer to $9000. The phone was one of the first mobile phones that didn’t require a bag to be attached to it. The DynaTac had about 30 minutes of talk time and 8 hours of standby.

The phone was spun into popularity by the savvy Wall Street tycoon Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street. Our readers, just a little younger may recall the phone having a prominent place at Bayside High School where saved by the bell’s main character Zack Morris (played by Mark Paul Gosselaar) carried one to school.

If you’re too young to remember either, well just trust us, it’s freaking cool.

The new 2012 model is not an actual phone but rather a bluetooth speaker system that Helmink insists, sounds far more superior than the original during a call.

The Bluetooth version will give you the average bluetooth battery life, about 5 hours of talk time and tons of hours of standby. It also works with any Bluetooth enabled smartphone.

You’ll be the talk of the office, trading floor, party, pool,mall or wherever you go when people see you actually making and receiving calls on the new 80sBrickphone. In this day and age where the “coolest new” Android phone is released every two weeks and hundreds of millions own an iPhone 4s, the 80sBrickphone will be a status symbol of epic proportions.

To get the project off the ground Helmink took to Indiegogo. He’s looking to make $55,000 to cover the costs of an initial production run. He’s collected a little over $4000 just enough to buy an original back in the 80s.

If you want one (and we know you do) there’s a link below.

Linkage:

Want an 80sBrickphone? here’s it’s Indiegogo Page

You can find more info on their website

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”

We are crowdfunding click here

NY Startup: Emotish Lets You Share Pictures With Emotion INTERVIEW

Emotish is a new mobile app startup in New York City. They’ve taken a twist of the standard photo sharing app and added an element to it that makes this app special. The element is emotion.

With Emotish you take photos of yourself or you and your friends and you can tag it with what you’re feeling at the time and then share it via Facebook and Twitter. Users will soon be able to keep tabs on the photos and tags and see what feelings are trending, how everyone was feeling in a given area, favorite photos and contextual tags.

Emotions bring a whole new life into photo sharing. Instagram is great with it’s filters and likes but with Emotish not only will you see photos and a smile but you’ll have a better context of what the smiles about, or even what the long face or frown is about.

What makes Emotish even cooler is this isn’t just about great coders or a cool mobile app development startup. Emotish Co-Founder Ryan Wegner is actually a PhD candidate in the clinical psychology program at Columbia University. So like Smurks in Chicago, there is actual real psychology behind this app and what emotion brings to the table in people’s every day lives, in context and in photos.

We got a chance to talk to Wenger in between saving the world and developing great apps, check out the interview below:

Apple Fixes Issue With App Store That Caused Thousands Of Apps To Crash

Apple is a company that usually doesn’t have very many issues when it comes to iTunes or the App Store–at least as far as malware and large coding errors are concerned. However, this week has been a tough one for Apple, users, and developers alike as one of Apple’s servers had an issue delivering DRM code to the apps updated or downloaded. This faulty coding caused apps to misbehave and crash upon opening in many cases–nearly thousands in the App Store were affected. While this was just for a very brief period of time, a lot of uneasy customers were afraid their iPhone was either being attacked by malware or completely malfunctioning when it came to third-party apps.

The company issued a fix today however, that took care of most of the issues that we know of, and a few we didn’t. First, Apple fixed all of the apps added to the App Store or updated, and then pushed an update to apps that were affected for users to download. They also took care of the developers as well, by reviewing not just 1-star reviews, but all reviews published about an app that was affected. Ensuring that both users and developers have been taken care of, Apple again shows why they have the reputation of some of the best customer service around. If you have an iDevice that was suffering from any of these crashes or issues, be sure to check the App Store and receive the necessary updates.

Madison Startup: SeatSwapr Facilitates That Airline Seat Swap For You

Last week, when we stopped in Madison Wisconsin as part of the Nibletz sneaker strapped, nationwide startup road trip we took office hours with 10 hungry entrepreneurs and startup founders. One of those founders was Thomas Mueller who is hoping to take something that happens on lots of airlines, streamline it and execute it through an app.

Seat swapping is nothing new. A lot of people get on an airplane and realize for some reason or another the seat that they picked or have been assigned isn’t going to work out. At that point, if the plane is full, the passenger is stuck. Sometimes when this happens you’ll hear people trading seats or even selling their seats. In fact I’ve done this a number of times. I often select an exit row seat and then someone really tall comes along and wants the seat with the extra leg room. More often than not I’m offered between $20 and $60 to swap seats. (as long as they’re coming from an aisle seat I typically do it. I don’t do window seats, you get out of the plane quicker on the aisle).

Well Mueller is also very familiar with this practice. Every now and then you’ll see seat swap requests on major flights happen on Twitter. Typically the bi-coastal NY/SF or NY/LA flights have the most traffic on Twitter. Tweets will read “I’m on NY/LA Flight XXX and need an aisle seat $50”.

Interestingly enough the flight attendants don’t seem to care as long as you don’t delay them starting their safety instructions, and of course don’t interrupt the flow of other passengers getting to their seats.

Well Mueller realizes that websites like seatguru and seatexpert already know which seats are the best. Other sites like tripit know what flight your on and of course all the airlines offer viewable maps online of the inside of the plane so you can see where your seat is.

When you put all this information together and then tie it in with a mobile app you have the opportunity to create a seat swapping app.

Now it’s not as easy as it sounds and Mueller is ready to face the challenge. Of course with any mobile app the first thing a founder wants to do is build scale. Mueller has to build tremendous scale because for the app to work, two people need to be on the same flight. In addition as Mueller told us “If a plane is half full there’s no market for us”.

That doesn’t seem to be a problem though because since 9/11 airlines have reduced their number of flights and have tried to fill every plane to capacity. The load factor right now is 83% full while some of the more popular flights like New York to San Francisco are 98% full. Those are the flights where people would really benefit from an app like SeatSwapr.

Mueller is hoping to partner with some of the other travel sites to implement his technology.

Linkage:

Check out SeatSwapr here at SeatSwapr.com

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from our sneaker strapped nationwide startup road trip

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