iOS Archives - Page 9 of 9 - Serious Startups

Instagram For Android, Why Did We Even Need It?

Instagram for Android came out today, and by searching Twitter, you could find either utter stupidity in the hatred or joy that it’s finally on Android. Both views though are utterly stupid. For one, those iPhone users are idiots and need more proof just reread what was said above, or click on Twitter in the first sentence and just follow the stream of stupidity down to your local Apple store.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Instagram isn’t a “good” application, it’s just Android really never needed it. We have applications such as Paper Camera, puddling camera , Retro Camera Plus . Just to name a few. What Instagram did for the iPhone is something that has been done since Android first came out. Third party Camera applications with trendy filters that the camera couldn’t do on it’s own.

Flud The “Instagram For News” Raising $8 Million Dollars Heads To Android

San Diego based startup Flud, a social news reader app for iPhone is does a great job of differentiating itself from other news readers like Taptu and Pulse.

They do this by allowing users to create profiles join the platform and share their news with others in their network. The UI is very polished and some in tech circles are calling Flud, the Instagram for news.

Sure everyone has access to the same internet and the same news stories but the way people curate the news is what makes some blogs and most news aggregates so popular.

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Startup Quick Byte: Buddy Beers

For Startup Quick Byte we’ll take a look at Buddy Beers based out of Berlin Germany. Buddy Beers takes being a friend to the next level by enabling people from even countries away to buy drinks for their friends. The concept is pretty easy, you buy a drink for your friend with the app, they’ll then receive an email and link to the app, if using an iPhone. Show the bartender at the bar in question, then hit redeem and you are now just waiting for the bartender to make the drink your friend just bought you.

Meshin Recall: A Valuable Tool For Startups, Business And Everyone Else

Meshin, a Paolo Alto based s tart up and part of Xerox’s Paolo Alto Research Center, has released a valuable tool for startups, business and everyone in between. The tool called Meshin Recall, is currently available for Android smartphones and is in beta for iPhone.

Meshin Recall leverages your calendars and Evernote and ties them together to give a consistently flowing, easily indexed and accesible way to recall your notes in Evernote. By tying Evernote notes to your calendar you have an organized way of recalling the notes later, and of course that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Meshin’s founders Chris Holmes and Kristen Galliani, are doing vast amounts of research on semantics and the way people use the tools that they use everyday and making them more productive. Categorizing notes may seem like a menial task but so far it’s been the most effective. Everyone can tag notes in Evernote but the tagging system in Evernote is about as effective as hashtagging on Twitter. What do I mean by this? Well with Evernote you can tag a not any way you’d like, but once you have the freedom to so broadly tag your notes, it gets as hard to recall as the note itself.

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Charlotte Based Startup Rawporter Putting A New More Viable Spin On Citizen Journalism

Rawporter made a pretty nice impact at South By Southwest in Austin Texas earlier this month. This two person start up out of Charlotte NC is bringing a new concept to citizen reporting. With Rawporter, not only can a citizen report the news via video, they can also get paid for it.

Rawporter came about when friends and co-founders Kevin Davis and Rob Gaige were hanging out and then saw a horrible accident. Of course everyone on the scene of the accident had their camera phone out and were shooting the entire scene, but when they got home and turned on the 11:00 news, Gaige tells me that the only shot they had was the reporters stand up at a cleared scene.

Gaige and Davis knew that there had to be someway for those people who too that video, and the hundreds of thousands of people who take videos of incidents like this everyday, could both get sourced and make money.

Gaige has a background in marketing. Davis has a background in news radio, and then changed careers to marketing. They both met in the marketing department at Bank of America. As they see first hand that the biggest companies in the world are cutting back staff, and Davis knows that news media jobs are eliminated every day, citizen reporting can easily become a huge source for news stations.

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Colorado Start Up Answers: Dude Where’s My Everything

Steamboat Springs Colorado startup Ugrokit was founded by the wife and husband team of Carrie and Terry Requist to answer one of life’s most important questions: Dude Where’s My Everything.

Key finders have been around since the 80’s. There were some that worked like the clapper while others responded to a whistle or even others that required you keep track of a button in case you lose your keys. The idea has been refined over and over again. The ZOMM is a great iteration of a keyfinding device but that one uses BlueTooth technology and is relegated to a circular disc like device that is fastened on your keyring.

Ugrokit is different. Ugrokit uses RFID tags that are cheap, flat, washable and can attach to just about everything. The system comes with a Grok which is an orange RFID scanner that attaches to an iPhone (Android later?). You then use as many tags as you would like and you scan them into your iPhone. Once an item is scanned it’s stored and if you can’t locate that item you just wave the scanner around where you think it might be and a series of beeps tells you whether your hot or cold.

Start Up Hearty Spin Releases iOS App For Autistic Children

A Singapore start up called Hearty SPIN has released a new app meant for helping autistic children communicate to the Apple app store. The SPIN in Hearty Spin stands for Solutions for People In Need. Hearty SPIN’s website describes them as a “social enterprise that creates special education, learning and communication assistive technology apps for individuals with autism and other special needs worldwide”.

Their first app for autistic children, called Picture ACC, and uses visual learning strengths to help children communicate more effectively. The app, which is available in English and Chinese, is designed for iPads and iPhones.

ACC stands for augmentative, alternative communication. This app allows autistic children to communicate by using the pictures on the screen.

“Picture AAC app enables children with autism to learn effective communication by utilizing their visual learning strength.” said KhengWah Koh, Founder of Hearty SPIN

Parents of autistic children are very aware of the PECS binder which allows autistic children to pick from a number of pictures to help communicate with friends, family and loved ones. The Picture ACC app effectively takes the idea behind the PECS binder and puts it into a touch screen app format.

You can find out more about the Picture AAC app here

Texas Start Up Blurtt Let’s You Make MeMes And Have Fun With Photos On The Fly

After a background in Finance at big name financial houses like Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs, Texas based entrepreneur Jeanette Cajide started to work on something beautiful and fun. After a long twisty road she has finally launched Blurtt.

Blurtt is an iOS app that functions as a “tool that allows users to express themselves” with text overlaid on photos. You can use photos that you take or photos off the web. Although it’s not integrated (only hipstamatic is), you can take a photo, instagram it, bring it through Blurtt, re-instagram it with no filter and add words while it’s in Blurtt (I promise it’s a lot easier than it sounds).

Cajide started Blurtt with the idea of sending beautiful postcards to people. When she started it she had a co-founder in Nikhil Sethi who moved on. Cajide finished Blurtt on her own and with help from Archimede’s Labs acceleration program.

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Berlin Company wahwah.fm Is Turning Music Sharing On It’s Head

Berlin’s wahwah.fm was in Ausitn Texas for SXSW for the second year in a row. Last year, the new iPhone app start up took home an App Circus award. This year they were showing off WahWah in the SXSW Interactive trade show in the Berlin/Germany row.

wahwah.fm is a new kind of music sharing app that is available for download throughout the world. What it does is allows you to broadcast the music you’re listening to on your iPhone to other iPhones in close proximity with the wahwah.fm app installed.

Because the end user or listener to one wahwah.fm station isn’t controlling the music itself they aren’t under the same scrutiny as in-demand listening apps like Pandora or Spotify.

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16 Year Old Secures $300,000 In Venture Capital For Summly

16 year old founder of Summly, Nick D'Aloisio Is Said To Be The Youngest Person To Ever Secure Venture Capital

At London’s Web Summit being held this week in the UK, it was revealed that Nick D’Aloisio, the creator of iPhone app Summly, had received $300,000 in venture capital from Asia’s Horizon Ventures. Horizon Ventures is led by Li Ka-Shing, Asia’s richest person. It’s being reported that Aloisio is the youngest person ever to secure venture capital.

Summly is an iPhone app that summarizes and condenses search results and web pages. D’Aloisio developed this app out of necessity while he was studying for a history exam for school. He started to notice that his Google searches weren’t yielding quality results.

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