Flinja The Place To Find Free Lance Ninjas SXSWedu Video Interview

There are so many reasons we like Flinja. First off, their name is short for Freelance Ninja, and any startup with the word Ninja in it rocks. Secondly they are connecting college students with ways to make money by sharing their service as free-lancers with college alumni.

The startup, founded by Rebecca Bahr and Victor Young, is a market place for current college students to find free-lance employment opportunities from alumni. Bahr says they’ve pivoted several times. When they first set out on the free lance ninja concept the platform was closed to each students actual school. Well Bahr, who went to college in Montreal, found it hard to find people to connect with when she needed a service provider in California.

Now, any college student can be a service provider to any college graduate from any school in their network.

Students are utilizing Flinja to offer videography services, photography services, wedding planning services, tutoring in a variety of subjects and anything else that they could do for others for a little money on the side (legal of course).

The hope is that the alumni or college graduates that hire the students as freelancers may be a gateway to more stable employment.

The Flinja marketplace is self contained. When a college graduate is looking for a service provider they can search through Flinja, see a provider (students) feedback and ratings, set up the service, agree to pay and actually finish the transaction. Flinja takes a small percentage from the person hiring, not from the college student.

UCLA was the first school to adopt the Flinja platform. Students are being hired as videographers, editors and tutors.

Flinja is a finalist in the LAUNCHedu competition at SXSWedu in the higher education category. They will appear in the showdown later this week.

Check out our video interview with Bahr below and for more info visit flinja.com

We’ve got more SXSWedu coverage here.

NY Startup: Slate Science Launches SlateMath, Closes $1.1M Angel Roud

With a fresh $1.1 million dollars in the bank, New York EdTech startup Slate Science has announced the launch of their newest STEM educational product, SlateMath.

SlateMath can be downloaded in multiple languages and is available now in Apple’s App Store.

The SlateMath series was conceived to address a global frustration with math learning. The company’s breakthrough learning methodologies tap into children’s natural and intuitive learning processes, and help them acquire knowledge and competence constructively, using self-guided as well as teacher-guided exploration. “SlateMath has two purposes,” said Prof. Shimon Schocken, one of the company’s co-founders, “to teach math proper through self-paced and engaging discovery, and to expose children to the ways mathematicians think and reason about the world. We see a tremendous opportunity to use tablet technology and constructive pedagogy to endear math to children, and to help them develop into confident and competent thinkers.”

The SlateMath series was designed from the ground up for an environment consisting of tablets, cloud computing, and standardized curricula. The series is based on a huge portfolio of modular, richly-indexed, and recombinant educational apps that Slate Science is now developing. Subsets of the SlateMath portfolio can be assembled to support existing textbooks and learning programs as well as the new wave of emerging digital textbooks. The software also adapts the contents dynamically, to address the learner’s revealed strengths and weaknesses in real time.

“SlateMath is a game changer because it offers a new and innovative approach to teach math. The product is based on an experiential context, hands-on learning, and self-discovery, making the best utilization of the tablet’s touch interface I’ve seen thus far in educational apps. This approach allows children to acquire and understand math ‘in their bones’. The Slate Science technology and learning methodologies are applicable not only to math, but to many other STEM subjects as well,” said Robert Scoble.

In conjunction with the launch, Slate Science announced the closing of a $1.1 Million angel round of funding led by private investors. The funds will be used for continued product innovation, marketing and operational costs.

Slate Science was founded by an A-team of educators and engineers with more than 100 years of combined experience in science education, instructional software development, and mobile platforms. The company developed a proprietary technology and a field-proven methodology for teaching STEM fields. Rather than oferring frontal videos and drill and skill practice, the company is focusing on crafting constructive learning environments that guide children through a rewarding process of self-discovery and intuitive exploration. The company’s proprietary authoring technology enables it to develop and deploy its learning apps in a remarkably efficient and timely manner.

Slate Science builds portfolios of educational apps designed to support standard STEM curricula while allowing students to develop, deeply understand, and experience hands-on conceptual learning. The company’s first series of products is SlateMath, intended for the consumer market and aimed to support math instruction according to the Common Core Standards. A school version of SlateMath, intended for classroom use and equipped with a suite of teaching aids, will be released soon.

For more information visit: slatescience.com

See The Evolution Of SXSW In An Infographic

We’re gearing up to start covering SXSW on-site. Our coverage actually begins tomorrow at SXSWedu. The educational shoulder festival is gaining momentum and is now a full four days of programming. We’re covering SXSWedu and SXSWi this year. We’ve covered their other big shoulder event SXSWeco in 2011 and 2012.

This is my 12th year attending SXSW. It started for me as going for the music festival when I worked in radio. I’ve spent the last four years covering SXSW as a tech journalist, the last two as nibletz the voice of startups everywhere else.

SXSW began in 1987 as an alternative music festival. In it’s inaugural year there were 700 registered attendees. Last year the music festival portion of SXSW saw over 12,000 registered attendees and since 2010 SXSW interactive has drawn more attendees than the music festival. SXSW music is the largest festival of it’s kind with more than 2500 “official” performers and over 100 venues participating.

The team at activ8social, a creative marketing agency that specializes in social media put together an awesome infographic that shows how SXSW has evolved since 1987. They humbly suggest that the infographic is awesome and after checking it out, especially for along time attendee, I must concur.

The highlights of the infographic and activ8social’s research are:

Since 2010, SXSW Interactive has boasted more attendees than SXSW Music.
Most of the attendees of SXSWi are between the ages of 21-40.
More than 50% of the attendees work in creative or management.
People at SXSWi have deep pockets! A quarter of the attendees have a combined household income of $100,000-200,000.

Some of the biggest names in startups have launched at SXSW. Most notable are probably Twitter and Foursquare in the past few years. However, the 2006 SXSWi keynote panel included Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and Craig Newmark the founder of Craigslist. The infographic also highlights Sarah Lacy’s biggest interview faux pax when in 2007 the audience turned on her while interviewing Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, her now good friend, contributor and confidant Paul Carr actually spoke very critically of her during that particular interview.

We’ve got more SXSW13 coverage for you here.

TechStars’ Katie Rae On What Drives An Entrepreneurial Community

Entrepreneurial and startup communities are growing everywhere across the United States. The recent everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference event highlighted entrepreneurial communities “everywhere else” outside the major hubs like Silicon Valley and New York.

We’ve recently started up our “Sneaker Strapped Nationwide Startup Road Trip Part Deux”. During our first journey, that started at SXSW 2012, we visited over 60 startup communities across the country. Since going back on the road we’ve visited Atlanta for Startup Georgia’s kick-off, Nashville for Spark Nashville and Arkansas for Think Big Arkansas and the kickoff of Startup Arkansas.

Last month, Katie Rae, the Managing Director at TechStars Boston, spoke at Grid New Haven. Gris is a hub or startup community catalyst, that’s part of Connecticut’s “innovation ecosystem.” They hold several programs including CEO Boot Camp, Startup Weekend New Haven, Launch New Haven and several speaker sessions designed to help entrepreneurs on their journey.

On January 24th Rae spoke at Grid New Haven and offered what she thinks are the four backbones to a great entrepreneurial community. In addition to being the managing director at TechStars Boston (one of their most successful accelerators) she is also a founder of Project 11 a firm that invests in and helps early stage startups.

Check out her video below and add these things to your list of important things for startup communities.

See Startup Community Activist, and Startup America CEO Scott Case on the importance of Startup Marketing here.

Check out the LAUNCHedu Higher Ed Startup Finalists at SXSWedu

Earlier this morning we told you about LAUNCHedu a new startup initiative going on now at SXSWedu. The educational festival as part of SXSW continues to grow and now offers four full days of programming, panels, keynotes and startups. The biggest startup portion for SXSWedu is the LAUNCHedu event.

LAUNCHedu celebrates the convergence of “today’s dynamic educators, and entrepreneurs transforming classrooms and revolutionizing schooling.” Four great educators and entrepreneurs will emcee the LAUNCHedu festivities. They are: EdSurge co-founder Betsy Corcoran, Trinity Education Group partner and CIO Clyde Boyer , GSV founder and managing partner Deborah Quazzo, and Trinity Education Group founder and CEO Hugh Norwood.

The criteria the LAUNCHedu startup finalists were judged on was:

Creativity (Originality of Idea)
Potential (Longevity, Actualization and Profitability of idea)
Functionality (Usability of interface for idea)
Team / People (Who is your team and how will they make your company a success?)

Here are the Higher Ed startup finalists from the LAUNCHedu website:

CollegeSnapps

collegesnapps.com
CollegeSnapps™ is a mobile communication platform that facilitates students’ progress to-and-through college by pairing an innovative mobile app that delivers just-in-time, high quality information and alerts to students with a multi-functional web-based dashboard in order for high school counselors and college advisors to effectively communicate with and support their students.

Flinja

flinja.com
Flinja is an exclusive, college-centric marketplace where students, staff and alumni can hire and be hired. We provide a vetted, freelance workforce of talented college students and alumni. Our mission is to innovate the hiring process by connecting user participation with college affiliation.

Kahoot!

getkahoot.com
Kahoot! is a platform that enables learners to play with knowledge in a collaborative and social manner. A web-based, mobile and tablet friendly educational platform, with a core emphasis on user experience design in a social, fun and game-like environment.

LRNGO

LRNGO.com
LRNGO.com is a marketplace where people can teach their skills and connect through learning. On LRNGO, you can buy, sell or trade what you know for leisure or achieving your goals. Teach. Learn. Share. LRNGO, INC. is a company that develops social learning utilities to accelerate the transfer of knowledge.

Matchbox, Inc.

matchbox.net
Matchbox disrupts undergraduate and graduate admissions by replacing outdated software with an iPad app. Our streamlined system gives customers a competitive advantage by arriving at decisions faster and gaining visibility into the incoming class. This insight enables universities to proactively adjust their recruitment efforts improving yield and increasing tuition revenue.

MediaCore

mediacore.com
MediaCore’s video learning platform is the fastest way for anyone at any institution to easily capture, manage and share media content securely and privately. Currently it serves over 500,000 students at 300+ schools and universities worldwide.

More Than Money Careers

morethanmoneycareers.com/
MTM Careers helps college students and graduates get clear, get connected, and get hired for well-paying jobs in CSR, sustainable business, and social enterprise. Since 2010, over 30 universities have leveraged our process and resources via our online staff and faculty training programs or our ‘Netflix for Impact Careers’ library.

School Yourself

schoolyourself.org
We’re reinventing math textbooks by making them more fun and affordable. So far, we’ve launched three e-books (most recently “Hands-On Calculus”), each of which we wrote and published ourselves. Unlike almost all other textbooks on the market, our books make math come alive with engaging content and touch-based interactive demos.

scrible

scrible.com
We make useful online reading and research apps that enable you to annotate/comment on webpages in your browser and then save, share and manage them in the cloud. Our Student Edition adds academic features (e.g. citations, bibliographies, reports, etc.). Instructors use scrible for thoughtful and collaborative e-reading assignments.

SpeakingPal

speakingpal.com
SpeakingPal is an innovative education company with a unique focus on teaching English speaking skills using automatic speech recognition on smartphones, tablets and Smart TVs. Founded in 2009, SpeakingPal’s multidisciplinary team has created highly engaging and interactive educational products that are used by over 1M people worldwide, and growing.

MapStory

mapstory.org
MapStory, a compliment to Wikipedia, is a new dimension to the global data commons that empowers a global user community to organize knowledge about the world spatially and temporally. Perhaps more important, MapStory is an infrastructure enabling ‘MapStorytelling’ as a means of communicating important issues to a global audience.

USEED

useed.org
USEED is re-engineering philanthropy in Higher Education. We provide universities and colleges with an innovative online fundraising solution specifically tailored to the unique challenges within the industry. USEED builds a large pipeline of new donors for the institution while simultaneously empowering students to pursue their dreams and discover their passions.

See These LAUNCHedu K-12 Startup Finalists At SXSWedu

South By Southwest’s education event, sxswedu, continues to grow. This year they have four full days of programming beginning today and running through Thursday March 7th. SXSWedu takes place at the Austin Convention Center and surrounding hotels, and is quickly gaining popularity.

While many startups are participating in SXSWinteractive, EdTech or educational startups are launching at sxswedu as part of the new LAUNCHedu event. Startups in the LAUNCHedu finals will be presenting at the Hilton Austin Downtown in room 404 throughout the event. The complete schedule of presenting startups in the LAUNCHedu Startup Showcase can be found here.

Here are the 2013 LAUNCHedu K-12 Finalists from the SXSWedu website:

Actively Learn

activelylearn.com
Reading is the bedrock of education, but two-thirds of eighth graders cannot understand what they read. Actively Learn has created a reading environment to teach students to be advanced readers. Educators are empowered with tools for personalized instruction and analytics of student learning within the context of Common Core standards.

Classroom, Inc.

classroominc.org
Classroom, Inc. prepares struggling middle and high school students for success in and beyond school. Acting as bankers, editors, and lawyers in our workplace simulations, students use their academic, critical-thinking, and 21st century skills to solve authentic problems.

Clever

getclever.com
Founded by a teacher tired of chaos in the computer lab, Clever solves a common frustration with educational software: logins. Clever automatically syncs student accounts from a school’s information system (SIS) into programs students use. Over 50 companies and 3,000 schools use Clever to make their classroom software “just work”.

Common Curriculum

commoncurriculum.com
Common Curriculum is building the Google Docs of education. Our free site lets teachers collaboratively plan units and lessons while aligning them to the Common Core. Teachers and districts will be able to sell their work through our online marketplace or purchase new material by dragging it into their plans.

DigitWhiz

digitwhiz.com
DigitWhiz is all about making sure kids master foundational math skills in a fun and effective way. We evaluate, prescribe individualized games and guide kids to master the skills they need. Play on desktops or iPad. Teacher-built and kid approved!

Duckie Deck

duckiedeck.com
At Duckie Deck we provide smiles. Over eight million toddlers played our games and smiled. We teach things that are important for their future, things that matter to their parents. We explain why sharing with others is so important. Why we should brush our teeth and what does friendship mean.

instaGrok

instaGrok.com
instaGrok is a research engine: we make it incredibly simple to discover, learn, and share information. Users explore graphical concept maps that show how ideas connect. They can also customize the maps (with key facts, links, and images) and then share them with friends, colleagues, and classmates.

Learnsprout

learnsprout.com
LearnSprout simplifies systems integration and reveals key insights on student performance and engagement with the first universal API to pull live data from leading student information systems. Free to schools and districts, LearnSprout is the easiest and most secure, FERPA compliant method for integrating an SIS within the edtech ecosystem.

Slate Science

slatescience.com
Slate Science is transforming mobile devices into interactive, adaptive learning platforms for K12 STEM education. Our platform enables rapid, multi-platform development of modular learning units, designed to offer performance-based, student-specific learning experiences. The SlateMath CC-compatible portfolio includes hundreds of recombinant learning units, each imparting a specific mathematical skill or concept.

Teaching Channel

teachingchannel.org
Teaching Channel is a community of educators focused on self-improvement that attracts 250,000 users/month. Visitors to the website find a high-quality video library – featuring exemplar teachers – paired with intuitive annotation tools. With TchTeams, Teaching Channel’s private collaboration platform, schools and districts can now enable their teachers to learn together.

ThinkCERCA

thinkcerca.com
ThinkCERCA is a Chicago-based company passionately committed to improving the quality of K-12 education. Developed by a team of nationally recognized literacy experts, the online platform allows teacher teams to design, deliver, and assess lessons using the CERCA argumentation framework. The expert lesson library delivers rigorous, personalized learning across disciplines.

zondle

zondle.com
A games-based learning web and mobile platform grounded in neuroscience that enables teachers and students to create, play and share games to support teaching and learning. User-created questions (multiple formats, any language, any age group) can be combined with multiple casual games for students to play and practice.

We’ve got much more SXSW13 coverage here!

Baltimore Startup Woofound; Psychology & Personality Based Discovery

Discovery apps are nothing new. There are hundreds of event discovery apps, career discovery apps and even people discovery apps. Most of them simply match your interests with other interests. They may take your social graph into consideration or a short survey. Discovery apps were hot last year at SXSW.

Glancee was one of the hot apps going into SXSW 2012. The people discovery app matched people based on things they liked on Facebook. While the company was later acquired by Facebook, it failed miserably in real life applications. For instance at one point I had liked a picture of Mark Zuckerberg’s dog Beast. When I powered up Glancee at SXSW it matched me to 20 or so people who had also liked Beast.

Baltimore startup WooFound is doing things differently, and more efficiently. Their personality driven platform is built on psychology and personality assessment.

“It all started when co-founder Josh Spears had a blind date and realized he had no way to determine what kind of things he could do with his date that they would both enjoy. Spears and Sines agreed that it would be great if there was a way to match people based on their interests based on common personality traits.” Daniel Waldman, the startups PR guru told nibletz.com in an interview.

The company has launched two products and a mobile app to date: “We recently launched Compass and Compass Lite, a web application with Facebook integration that offers personalized career recommendations based on the user’s personality. Both are image-based personality assessments that deliver a personality profile within minutes and instantly make recommendations. Compass is our private-label solution for colleges and university career centers, while Compass Lite is free and open to use by anyone. Last summer, we launched a mobile app last year called Woofound Explore, which matches people to places and things to do based on personality.” Waldman said.

The personality assessment tool is extremely accurate, according to Woofound they give accurate results in “98.5% of all cases”.

The company has raised $2.2 million dollars to date including a $75,000 investment from the Maryland Technology Development Corporation. They aren’t the only startup finding success in Charm City,

“Baltimore has a thriving startup scene. There are a lot of new companies that have sprung up in recent years with a handful of highly visible successes such as mobile ad platform Millennial Media. Baltimore also sports some highly venerable technology companies, such as Bill Me Later (which was acquired by PayPal) and AOL (formerly Advertising.com). Additionally, there are an amazing amount of networking events for startups locally, and with our proximity to DC, Philly and New York, Baltimore in many ways an ideal location for startups. ”

So what’s next for Woofound?

Woofound’s ultimate goal is to provide a personalization platform for our day to day lives. We have a few other projects cooking to expand the use of our personalization technology to other verticals and we are always looking to add new features and expand our current applications. We are preparing for a major update of our Explore application that will really skyrocket its relevance and open up its usability to people everywhere.

We covered Woofound earlier here. You can also find out more about them here at woofound.com

Cincinnati Startup Nugg-it Raises $250,000 For Audio Nuggets

A Cincinnati startup called Nugg-it has created a new wearable technology that insures you won’t miss those spoken nuggets of wisdom you or your friends may utter at any moment.

The device, called the Nugg-it is designed to record audio continuously from a wearable device on your wrist. When someone says something note worth you just click a button and it’s automatically saved. These “nuggets” will be uploaded to socia media and preserved to compliment the current methods of social media and make your social media life more immersive.

“When you look at the whole social media landscape and what people are doing, pictures and video are extremely well covered in terms of people creating their own personal content. Audio we see as not well covered, and we felt (nugg-it) had a very good feel for the moments that people want to capture through audio and an intriguing way to do it,” said Douglas Groh, CincyTech’s entrepreneur-in-residence told Cincinnati.com.

Nugg-it raised $100,000 from Cincy Tech and another $150,000 from Design 2 Matter (D2M), the Silicon Valley based company that has developed the product. Nugg-it is hoping to close a $600,000 round in all and it looks like they shouldn’t have any trouble.

Mike Sarow, a former brand manager for Proctor & Gamble and Matthew Dooley, the founder of Dooley Media are the co-founders of Nugg-it.

Find out more at the source

Tech Cocktail Hosting SXSW Startup Celebration Saturday March 9th

Tech startup blog and event powerhouse Tech Cocktail is hosting a startup celebration at South By Southwest 2013. If you’ve ever been to one of TechCocktail’s events you know they do a fantastic job of connecting startups with the public, the press and investors. The SXSW Startup Celebration won’t be any different.

This year TechCocktail is teaming up with CEA (the folks who put on CES) and .co.

The event kicks off Saturday March 9th at 7pm and runs until 11pm at The Stage on Sixth (508 East 6th Street, Austin TX). It runs until 11pm.

Frank Gruber and the team at TechCocktail know how to throw together an event and they also know how to find some of the best startups in the world. This years event will feature 30 great startups that will be named shortly.

This is the fourth year for TechCocktail’s big event at SXSW. Some of the startups that have showcased in years past at this event include: FitOrbit, Foodspotting, Khush, Mobile Roadie, Personal, Storify, Udemy, Tango, SaneBox, Sawbuck, Sifteo, Sonar, Sphero, Stitch Labs, Votizen, and many more. So you know this years event will be equally as epic.

Don’t take our word for it though, click here to reserve your ticket.

Don’t Launch At SXSW, Accelerate!

In the video above, Nashville Technology Council’s CTO of the Year Marcus Whitney candidly discusses the dumbest thing he’s ever done as an entrepreneur. What was it? Launching at SXSW.

His company MoonToast, has bounced back since that tragic sxsw launch and brought on huge clients for their social media and engagement platform, like Universal Music Group.

MoonToast actually has a great product but it’s not one for the masses of hipster startup junkees that are headed to Austin Texas in less than two weeks. It’s more of a B2C play with huge potential upside.

Moontoast lost over $100,000 dollars launching at SXSW. The real problem was the fact that prior to SXSW it appeared that they had all of their ducks in a row. They were ready to make a huge splash. Once they pulled the trigger though, they signed up three new users.

There are countless stories of startups that launch at SXSW simply because it’s the trendy thing to do. But even RackSpace’s celebrity statup guru Robert Scoble says not to launch at SXSW. In a piece on Quora that he originally published two years ago, and his since updated, he says don’t launch at SXSW, use it as an accelerant.

You want to launch ahead of sxsw and create an ear piercing buzz by reaching out to key influencers like Scoble, Leo Laporte, MG Siegler, Mike Arrington, or any of the other high profile journalists you can find on Scoble’s Twitter list or his Facebook list .

Scoble offers a great list of tips too for accelerating at SXSW and you can find that here on Quora (account required)

I’ve personally been to SXSW 16 different times. The first 12 years I attended the music festival during my radio career. The last four years have been as a tech journalist. I know how bad most startups want to launch at sxsw but unless you’ve got buckets and buckets of money that you’re willing to lose you may want to reconsider. Whitney humbly told us that going into their first investor meeting after sxsw was an experience he wouldn’t’ wish on anyone.

These gigantic balloons were part of Trover’s presence at SXSW12 (photo: NMI)

We saw some great startups in 2011 and 2012. At least year’s SXSW we saw Trover, while they’re still in existence they dumped over $50,000 into street team promoters, gigantic orange balloons, real estate at the foodtruck village and Tequilla infused walking tours of Austin. Rain basically ruined most of their promotions. Today, most people I talk to have no idea what Trover is.

Make people talk about your product and talk about you. Do something to stand out but don’t be obnoxious. Don’t forget to put your big boy pants or your big girl pants on and realize that there’s thousands of people just like you competing for the exact same thing.

Read Scoble’s tips here.

Am I The Only One On Earth Who Thinks Mailbox Sucks?

I stood in line to get the latest app phenomena mailbox. I’m an early adopter so I was able to get into the app about 36 hours after my text message saying it was officially ready. I went through the process of downloading the app that showed me how many people were behind me and how many were in front of me. When I actually got into the Mailbox app there were over half a million people behind me.

To that, the creators of Mailbox get a big fat well played. They created an ear piercing buzz and created hype that will never be replicated quit that way again.

I’ve heard and read so many stories about how impressed people are with mailbox. A couple of my journalist friends seem to love it, even ones with much larger publications than nibletz. I can’t seem to figure that out one bit.

I also just read this piece on Business Insider, it’s a love letter from Cablevision’s PR Guy Jim Maiella, who’s been using email just as long as I have. Again I can’t figure this out.

I would assume that some of my journalist friends at larger publications than nibletz receive more email than I do. Perhaps I’m wrong, but for the record on a week day I get between 300-500 new emails on my main account.

I try to separate accounts where my important account is one address and my account for PR folks to bombard is another, but I’m talking about my “important” account, that’s where I receive 300-500 emails per day.

I can’t see how Mailbox was designed for anyone who gets more than a handful of messages a day, or anyone who’s corporate account is with Gmail.

So let’s go over why I think Mailbox sucks.

long pressing and swiping right can take entirely too long for people who receive a high volume of messages.

Quick deletion

All of the promotional mentions before Mailbox was released said that it would allow you to delete email quickly. I’d say a good 90% of my emails can be deleted by just reading the preview line of the email.

To delete an email on Mailbox you need to long press to the right. This may seem cool and hipster but it takes a lot longer to long press to the right than it does to simply batch check a bunch of emails in the GMail app or the native iOS app and then hit trash.

There’s also the issue of the wrong swipe. I tried the first few days to use the long press and swipe deletion method but every once in a while I swiped too fast telling the app to take an entirely different course of action.

While later is a great feature, Mailbox doesn’t bring through the rest of your folders, again troublesome for someone who is more than a casual emailer

Folders Suck

When I installed the Mailbox app it added a few cool delegation folders to my GMail account. The later folder is the one I liked the best.

What it didn’t do is allow me to take the actual useful emails that I needed to keep and put them into the folders they need to go into. I found myself going to inbox 0 and then trying to keep up with Mailbox so I could use it but it wasn’t a pleasant experience to say the least.

The first two days using Mailbox I tried to keep emails I needed to delegate until the end of the night and then go back to the computer and delegate them accordingly but that just ended up being one more headache.

I’m definitely not one of those “email haters”. I love email I would much rather someone email or text me than actually talk on the phone. Talking on the phone takes too long and requires a secondary form of input if the person is talking about something important. For instance if I take a phone call from a business colleague about business, I’m most likely taking a note on a computer, phone or iPad so email takes out an entire step.

I was under the impression that Mailbox would improve my efficiency… not so much.

I’m still waiting for an email app that will allow me to one click and create a calendar item in Google Calendar and than click back to the contact, record and keep them all together. Yes I’m looking for a GMail CRM.

After this posting though, Mailbox is going into my trash box.

Listenup.FM Pitches At Spark Nashville

Listenup,Nashville startup,startup pitch video,startups,Spark Nashville

Listneup.fm CEO Mykas Degesys pitches at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)

Tennessee startup Listenup.fm just got back from pitching at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Their platform is designed to engage fans with their favorite artists and bands while also returning bands and record labels with valuable analytics.

Their streaming music platform is built on top of the highly successful Spotify platform and rewards fans for sharing the music they’re listening to across their social networks.

CEO Mykas Degesys explains that as the music industry moves from an ownership to an access model, bands need more and more ways to engage with fans and of course generate extra revenue.

Even just a few years ago it was important to own your music collection. Whether it be vinyl, cassette, CD or mp3, most people who loved music owned it in some media format or another. Now with services like Rhapsody,Rdio,Slacker and Spotify, and high speed internet, more and more people are turning to all you can eat access packages with libraries millions of songs deep.

Royalties are baked into services that range from $4.99 a month to $19.99 a month, all supplying some sort of unlimited listening.

Bands can now find ways to get to their exact target market. They can reward fans with prizes and Listenup.fm even allows fans to earn points to purchase prizes like limited edition swag and backstage passes.

Check out Degesys’ pitch from the Spark Nashville event in the video below.

Listenup.fm also pitched at everywhereelse.co 2013, don’t miss everywhereelse.co 2014 with tickets now at 2013 prices through March 27. Click here

NY Serial Entrepreneurs Danny Nathan & Chuck Masucci Are Bringing Date Night Back

Last April we reported on New York startup Iwannanom, a cookbook startup that was revolutionizing the online cookbook. Founded by Danny Nathan and Chuck Masucci Iwannanom took a different, more efficient spin on online crowdsourcing recipes.

“I Wanna Nom is a reinvention of the cookbook for the digital world. It’s a recipe bookmarking and discovery tool that allows the user to keep track of recipes they discover anywhere on the internet and easily share them, rate them, comment on them, and find new recipes and dishes by following friends and fellow foodies.” Nathan told us in an interview.

Nathan and Masucci met five years ago while working at POKE New York a well known innovation company that worked with clients like 19 Management, the firm that represent American Idol artists.

Masucci eventually left to join the team at Skedj, which we interviewed back in November. Now Nathan, and Masucci are back together again, along with Joni Goldbach to launch DateNight a new New York startup that’s designed to take the monotony out of dating, post honeymoon phase.

Goldbach met Nathan on a date where they bonded over discussing great marketing ideas. They’ve been together ever since, and admit that they will use their own startup to keep date night alive and well.

“Date Night is a million things to a million different couples. But there’s one common thread we’ve discovered across couples everywhere. Once you’re dating – once you’ve reached the point in your relationship where you start talking about us and we – you stop going out on dates. Candle-lit dinners become take-out containers and theatre tickets become DVD mailers. Date Night gives way to the ease and simplicity of routine” Nathan said of his latest venture. “We believe it’s time for an evening out that was actually planned in advance. It’s time to try something new together – something that fuels your sense of adventure and discovery. Hire a babysitter. Take a class. Party on a school night. Dress to kill, for no good reason but that you can. We believe it’s time for couples to start dating one another, again.”

Nathan, a designer by trade, has turned to advice from Ben Pieratt, one of his role models saying Pieratt “…is always one of the first people who comes to mind for me when someone asks this. I’ve been a fan of Svpply from the early days, and started following his personal blog, etc. to learn more about how he did it. His discussions about transforming himself from designer to co-founder and CEO of a successful startup have always been inspiring to me. He’s a totally down-to-earth guy who made it happen. I respect him for that immensely. ”

Right now the trio is bootstrapping out of their apartments where they are admittedly keeping the cupboards stocked with the simple startup things like Ramen. They plan on iterating quickly and adapting to the community that they’ve started to form.

Sure there are sites out there that recommend things to do, there are also plenty of dating communities but most are targeted towards couples still in that “honeymoon phase” no one has really thought of the post honeymoon phase period. All three founders hope that Date Night can take off and that couples that use the service will continue to have date night with each other for years and years.

Date Night is bringing Date Night back to couples everywhere, find out more here at datenight.is.

Atlanta Startup Plisten Is Bringing Pinboards For Brands VIDEO INTERVIEW

While we will stay away from calling Plisten, Pinterest for Brands, that may be a very good description of exactly what Randy Mitchell and Eric Yu are doing with their Atlanta based startup.

Mitchell tells us in this video interview that Plisten came about after he had some trouble with major brands. He gives us just one example, citing a problem he had with a major bank where he had been a customer for years. As his situation got escalated he became more and more frustrated with customer service and the way the bank was treating him. Finally, a customer service “manager” told him to get any further he would need to write a letter to the CEO. Plisten is that letter.

But, Plisten is more about good interactions with brands as opposed to bad ones. Facebook, Google+ and even Twitter have taught us that people will communicate about their favorite brands. People will tweet about great experiences and of course bad experiences with any brand from Best Buy to BMW.

Coca-Cola, MTV, Disney, Red Bull, Converse, Starbucks and McDonalds are just some of the top brands on Facbeook today. Those seven brands alone count for over 250 million likes.

Brands are definitely a big play, Yu and Mitchell are hoping to hit a homerun with Plisten, which is a pinboard specifically for brands.

Consumers will be able to talk about their favorite brands, like their favorite brands and communicate directly with those brands. This is a powerful tool for consumers and for the brands themselves. By cutting away the noise from everything else people like, and honing in just on brands, Plisten will be able to deliver captive audiences and in turn those brands will be able to market directly to their most active customers.

Of course in Mitchell’s case, when someone has a problem with a brand they’ll also be able to communicate that problem. Perhaps they’ll find that the problem is more widespread. They may also find it’s isolated, but either way, with the focus strictly on brands, brand managers will have a better way of finding those problems, and fixing them.

Check out our video interview below.

You can find out more at plisten.com