TechCrunch Disrupt Archives - Page 5 of 6

Israeli Startup: Drippler A Must Have App For All Android Users VIDEO INTERVIEW

We got to talk to the team behind the must have Android app called Drippler. Drippler has already seen 1.5 million downloads in the Google Play Store and has a 4.8 rating.

Drippler is a unique mobile app that provides all kinds of information about your Android phone. Once you download the free app from the Google Play Store it detects which Android phone or tablet that you have. From there it aggregates all the information about your phone.

Drippler finds information from manufacturer websites, blogs, app review sites, tech sites and forums and consolidates it into one easy readable stream for you. Now you’ll never be behind when a firmware update comes out or a new app comes out that works better on your device. You can cut through the clutter of the 8 million Android blogs out there (ok there’s not really 800 Android blogs out there, but there’s a lot).

Drippler blends a unique mix of all the relevant information about the phone or tablet that you have the app installed on. If you have multiple Android devices, Drippler will show you just the information for the device you have the app on. So say you have a Samsung Galaxy S II and an Asus Transformer Prime. Drippler on your Galaxy S II will give you Galaxy S II information and Drippler on your Asus Transformer Prime will given you info on that particular tablet.

Check out our interview with the founder below:

Linkage:

Download Drippler from the Google Play Store here:

See more of our coverage from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012

Nibletz is on a nationwide sneaker-strapped startup road show, find out more here

Plan Incredible Dates With Israeli Startup Dateini

Now you can plan incredible dates by using Israeli startup Dateini.

Dateini allows you to create an account. From there you select the kind of date you want to go on, is it movies, entertainment, wild or romantic? There are several different options for your date.

Dateini than finds three components of your date, dinner, an activity and an after activity place for a drink. If you’re looking for a subdued, intimate evening it may recommend a nice candle lit dinner, walk in the park and then a night cap at a soft piano bar.

One of the best parts of Dateini is after it selects the date for you, it plans out a walking route so you don’t even need to drive from place to place.

You can save your date settings for future use and if you would like you can share your dates as well.

Dateini solves a big problem that many couples have and that is “what to do”. The UI is intuitive and sharp looking and the aggregation is quick. You can also select to have your dates include coupons, deals and discounts to look like a rockstar and stay on a budget.

Dateini was showing off their app at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 this week as part of the Israel Pavillion.

Check out our video with Dateini, below:

We Talk With Sonar CEO Brett Martin One Year Later, Meet The Here Now Network.

Last year at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC we were out in full force to support Ocean City Maryland native Brett Martin. I city I practically grew up in and lived in for nearly 8 years of my formative years. Aside from that Sonar was the first of true social discovery apps and it was very cool then, and even cooler now after todays announcements.

We were totally stoked when Martin and the Sonar team made it to the finals where they came in as a runner up to high end peer to peer car rental startup, Get Around.

We wanted to know what it was like for the last year for the Sonar team. They didn’t win the cup last year but it seems that being a finalist was just as good.

They tripled their office size from 3-9 and they’ve added a whole new suite of features. They also launched an Android beta, which Martin assures me will be released to the public shortly.

Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 it was all about the Here Now Network. Back in March on a phone call with Martin I expressed some worry over the initial Sonar concept. It was fresh and new in May 2011 but by March 2012 there were apps like Highlight, Banjo and Glancee in the space. Martin kept telling me that they were working on things on their back end that he couldn’t talk about but they would blow me away.

Those things Martin showed off today at Disrupt, the Here Now Network, move Sonar far ahead of the competition again.

Sure there are plenty of apps that do discovery and proximity based discovery but Sonar and the Here Now Network are all about your own personal network of people who are here now. Your closest friends, business associates and family members who are in your immediate area are what matters most.

Martin describes some great use cases in the video below. For example when he steps off the subway on his way into work he checks in. He leaves a status “Just got off the subway, headed to Starbucks does anyone want anything”. That message is broadcast to the Sonar team (his coworkers) as soon as he passes by the office door just down the street from Starbucks. Now he can pick up coffee and bagels for everyone without picking up his phone any more than just checking in and looking at the order.

Another example he gives is that his team likes to go out to an outdoor food court sometimes. They all get different items from different vendors and if one of them finds a table they just check in and say “I found a spot in the shade, southeast corner”. The message is broadcast to his teammates.

There are endless things you can do with that feature.

Check out our talk with Brett Martin on the new features, life for the past year and where he and Sonar are going. We recently saw social discovery exit Glancee take an early exit to Facebook. Martin tells us he’s in it for the long haul.

Ukraine Startup: activegift, Never Get The Wrong Gift Again

After reading the headline you’re probably thinking that this Ukraine startup is just another gift registry platform, nope! If you had to give activegift some kind of label, a reverse gift registry may be your best bet.

Co-Founders Artem Sukhoroslov and Max Krylov have created a gift platform that insures you don’t get someone the wrong gift.

Here’s how it works:

Say your birthday, bar mitzvah or Christmas is coming up. You would sign up for activegift and let your friends and family know you have an account there. From there your friends would sign up too. After they sign up they would think of gifts they want to get for you. activegift then anonymizes the gift ideas and sends them back to the recipient. The recipient then gives the gifts a thumbs up or thumbs down.

The recipient can thumb up or thumb down multiple gifts so that they don’t automatically know everything they’re going to receive.

The gift purchaser then gets informed that the recipient has completed their activegift list and with a push of a button they can purchase the gift right there online. See insurance that you will never again buy the wrong gift.

We talk to Artem and Max about activegift and starting up in the Ukraine. Check out the video from TechCrunch Disrupt NY’s Startup Alley, below:

DC Startup: GrandStand Takes Social Engagement To A Whole New Level VIDEO INTERVIEW

We found a DC startup called Grandstand on #startup alley at TechCrunch Disrupt. What they’re doing will blow some businesses away. Watch the video for some great use cases and the technical explanation. I’m going to describe it in layman’s terms. If you’re a business looking to get real engagement out of social media pay attention.

What Grandstand does is takes aggregated social media data, pulls it and applies it to real world engagements. Think of the Twitter wall concept that burst into popularity around two years ago. Every conference you went to and even some company headquarters would show a hashtag or a Twitter ID on a big television screen for the world to see.

If you’ve ever been to a GDGT event they’re known for their Twitter walls where you’ll find people staring in awe at the Twitter wall waiting for their tweet to show up. The Twitter wall concept is all well and good but in the end you’re just looking at Tweets.

Grandstand takes the Twitter wall concept along with other social networks and for lack of better terminology at 1am while writing this story, makes the tweets, likes, check-ins, statuses and mentions do stuff.

For instance Grandstand has a display at Volkswagon’s headquarters in Germany that shows tweets, and checkins on a map of the globe, and in other unique ways on multiple floor to ceiling screens (check it out it’s in the video).

At South By Southwest in Austin Texas this year Grandstand had a lot of people talking about a refrigerator stocked full of beer. When 10 people checked into the venue the refrigerator unlocked and automagically opened. How cool is that.

Forget text to win, Twitter walls and “like us for a smoothie”, if you’re a company or brand looking to get the most out of your social media you need to check out this video and contact them… NOW!

Linkage:

Get more info on Grandstand here at get grandstand.com

Here’s more of our great TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 coverage

We’re sneaker-strapping it on a nationwide startup road trip, help the cause here

We Check Out NY Startup Knodes Social Context API At TechCrunch Disrupt

Ron Williams, the co-founder of SnapGoods and Knodes, caught our eye on the second day of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012. Knodes is a social data driven context API. You’ve probably heard the term SaaS before (Software as a service), Knodes is a BadasS startup (Big Data As A Service) according to Williams.

Now we’re accustomed to getting pitches. We receive hundred of pitches a week via email, Twitter, Facebook, Google plus and in person. We know what to look for and how to cut through the pitch clutter that most entrepreneurs have to use to get noticed and talk the talk. We’re 100% guilty of doing the same thing. However, Williams is a show me person, so today he showed me an amazing API.

Knodes takes social data form all the major social networks. We’re not just talking profiles, likes or interests, we’re talking about all of that and actual conversation data too, to find the relevant people pertaining to whatever it is you’re looking for.

At Nibletz I’m the Content Director. We decided we didn’t want an Editor in Chief and content directing, procuring and writing is what I do among a million other things. There are a few Content Directors out there but that’s the title on my personal Twitter profile. For the demonstration of Knodes Williams typed Content Director in the box and I was the second result listed.

I thought, wouldn’t it be great for startups to be able to use the Knodes tool. If they wanted to make a pitch for coverage they could simply check the word Editor, and of course it served up hundreds of editors, and notably, the ones that were closest to us first.

Williams sees Knodes as a very valuable tool and service for developers, publishers and many more. The foundation for it is solid and it’s very fast. Williams says it was born out of a need to better search things in his other successful startup SnapGoods. SnapGoods was one of the first peer to peer rental sites in the space. Many are copying his model.

Coincidently Williams shared with me the crazy story about how they came up with SnapGoods too. Since it’s not in the video I’ll tell you.

Williams had started dating his now fiancé, back in 2009. He wanted to impress her by taking her out for a motorcycle ride. The problem was he didn’t own a motorcycle, and you can’t rent them anywhere. Sure you can rent a Vespa but if you’ve met Williams a Vespa really isn’t his style. He wanted a hog.

So on a whim, Williams took to Craigslist and was able to rent a motorcycle from a complete stranger for $250. After he did that he decided more people good do things like that. It’s more experience driven than needs. As SnapGoods grew, Williams needed to build a better search and that’s where the original idea for Knodes came about.

Enough of that, check out the video below:

Linkage:

Find out more about Knodes here at knod.es (developers especially)

For more of our TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 coverage click here

Nibletz is on a sneaker strapped, nationwide, startup road trip, check it out here and support us if you can

New Orleans Startup: Red Ticket Games Shows Off Extreme Trivia At TechCrunch Disrupt VIDEO INTERVIEW

Here at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 we got a chance to meet Barrett Conrad, CEO and PlayerOne at Red Ticket Games. Red Ticket Games is based in the Silicon Bayou, New Orleans to be exact.

We talked with him a bit about their innovative trivia game called Extreme Trivia where you can become an expert on anything, especially because the user creates the questions.

The game is a break from traditional trivia games. One of it’s mean differentiators is the fact that the users create the questions. To conceptualize that idea, think of a it like this: You’ve got a group of friends and you probably have some common interests. Well most trivia games will have the generalized questions based on your topic, but with Extreme Trivia you can do relevant questions based on your knowledge.

Imagine if the guys from Big Bang Theory played a game like this. Obviously their intellectual ability far outshines the game writers at Parker Brothers, but with creating your own questions you have a better chance at stumping your friends, or helping them out.

As a special part of this interview our managing editor Cameron Wright talked to Conrad a bit about the thriving startup scene in New Orleans and what it’s been like to rebuild after the storm. Admittedly there wasn’t much of a startup scene in New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina. After the storm New Orleans was like an open canvas in their rebuild.

While New Orleans hip hop scene migrated to Atlanta, Houston and Dallas, their tech scene started to bubble. In fact there was just a launchpad event earlier this month right smack dab in the middle of Jazz Fest.

Whether you want to know more about Red Ticket Games, Extreme Trivia or the New Orleans startup scene, you should definitely check out this video.

Linkage:

Find out more about Red Ticket Games and Extreme Trivia Here

Check out more of our TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 coverage here

We’re on a sneaker strapped, nationwide, startup road trip, for more on that (and to support our cause) click here

Israeli Startup: Brayola All Bras Are Not Created Equally Video Interview

Here’s something you probably didn’t think I would say, I learned a lot about boobies at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012. Well, not so much boobies as bras. See as a dude, I’ve been wearing the same Starter brand ankle socks and Hanes brand boxers since high school (now a whopping 20 years), no not the same actual pairs but those are the brands I get. Women don’t have it quite as easy.

Now if you’ve ever been with the lady in your life on a trip to Victoria’s Secret you probably thought, man there are a lot of bras and panties in here. Well there are, but there are even more bras out in the world. How many? Well Brayola’s database of bras has over 5000 different bras in it.

I know, you’re probably thinking database of bras? Well Brayola founder Orit Hashay probably knows more about bras than Victoria herself. Hashay explained that she was in the mall in Israel looking for some really nice bras. She found two that she liked that were about $60 USD a piece, so she bought them. Well after wearing them a couple of times each they started to stretch and expand. She had to stop wearing these expensive bras. This got her frustrated.

Harshay didn’t understand why it had to be so hard to find bras. Well her startup Brayola, solves that problem.

In the video at the bottom of the post, she takes us on a step by step walk through of how Brayola works.

To summarize: A woman signs up for a free Brayola account. Once the account is established she enters in the brand, type and size of her favorite bras. Harshay is quick to point out that the user needs to enter the size of the bras not her bras size. As Harshay found out, all bras are not created equally. A 34D at Victoria’s Secret could be a totally different size at Fredericks of Hollywood, or any of the other hundred or more bras vendors out there.

Through data base information and crowd sourcing Harshay and Brayola have created a database that can account for different bras sizes and tell you what your size would be in another brand at another store, based on the size of your favorite bras.

There are several options for women and their bras and Brayola accounts for them all. It helps the woman select new bras based on her preferences. She can then store here favorite bras in her virtual door under categories for example sexy, sports bras, wire bras etc. You can choose to buy one at a time, or empty out your entire set of drawers.

When you’re ready to buy, Brayola takes you to the vendor that has that particular bras and voila, new bras on the way in the mail and you didn’t even need to get fitted.

Check out the video below. Harshay is very enthusiastic about Brayola and she knows a lot about bras. She taught me a lot today about bras (not boobies).

See more of our TechCrunch Disrupt coverage here

We’re on a sneaker strapped nationwide startup road trip, find out more here!

Boston Startup: About Last Night The Ultimate Night Life Social App

We love About Last Night for several reasons. First off the crazy Bostonian serial entrepreneurs who co-founded About Last Night are pretty awesome. About Last Night is one of several startups that are incubating in their own personal incubator. Brothers Darren Dodge and Derek Dodge have a bunch of their own startups “cooking in the microwave, we just open the door and check on them” says Darren.

But really, the great thing about About Last Night is the robustness of the platform. They left no stone unturned, but at the same time the UI is appealing and not too cluttered.

About Last Night is about sharing the good times you had last night. The About Last Night crew showed off good times spent Sunday night in Times Square, at Bubba Gumps and other fine establishments around New York.

The app allows you to follow people you don’t know (like Twitter), People you do know (like Facebook) and your favorite night spots and locations (like a reverse FourSquare), again it’s like leaving no stone unturned. It feels a bit like path, but it’s more about the jello shots you did at the Ale House, not waking up at 7:35 with a hangover and brushing your teeth.

They’ve been working on About Last Night for the last six months and they’ve come out with an easy and fun to use app. They’ve got plenty of time to work on even more startups, ya know with the Red Sox sucking and all…

Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Find out About Last Night here

More TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 coverage here

We’re on a sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip, check it out here (and support us please)

LA Startup: Lovvvit Video Interview With Founder Max Gotlieb At TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012

Hollywood producer turned startup founder Max Gotlieb had a genius idea in his head and started developing it into what is now known as Lovvvit. We reported on Lovvvit earlier this year. It’s a video review/recommendation platform for people to pronounce their love for their favorite things.

After a few minutes with Gottlieb I quickly grabbed hold of the concept and it’s indeed genius. I thought back on the past seven years (the youtube years) and how many videos I’ve taken and shared from my favorite places. The number is quite large, but none of them ever talked about the places I actually love.

Sure there are birthday party videos, bachelor party videos, playing around videos and other funny stuff at my favorite haunts but not once did I walk in and do a video saying, “I love this place”. Imagine how cool it would be to have crowd sourced video reviews of peoples’ favorite places. It would be genuine, and engaging for both the loyal customer and the merchant.

Right now merchants are growing tired of the group-coupon (Groupon) deal space. Merchants are finding that they are losing their ass in margin to attract one time customers. Now they want better tools to target their frequent customers. Lovvvit provides a platform for just that, and it’s engaging, innovative and fun.

There’s a reward benefit on both sides of the platform as well. If you’re the customer and you do a video review of your favorite places you can earn Lovvvit dollars and upgrade to a premium status. As with any site the more reviews you do of your favorite places, the more trusted you become in the Lovvvit community.

On the side of the merchant, they are granted access to the videos in Lovvvit. They can share them across their own websites and their other social media channels. They can also add coupons and deals to the videos as well.

All of that makes Lovvvit a three fold community of reviewers, people looking to discover places and the merchants.

Check out our video interview with Gottlieb below:

Check out more of our TechCrunch Disrupt NY coverage here

Video Interview With Diego Saez Gil Founder Of wehostels.com (formerly inbed.me)

Back in March we reported on a world traveler turned entrepreneur, Diego Saez Gil and his startup inbed.me. Inbed.me is a service that connects travelers to hostels across the world. In addition for finding, booking and discovering hostels, it has a back bone social network that helps users recommend hostels, suggest things to do and meet up while traveling.

Inbed.me was Diego’s second startup. His first startup was called Off Track Planet, the ultimate backpackers online guide to travel.

Diego recently changed the name of inbed.me to we hostels.com because it’s a little more politically correct. Inbed.me has some risky connotations.

Wehostels.com is exhibiting in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 check out our video interview below:

TechCrunch Disrupt: I Shot A 50 Caliber Rifle At A Fax Machine, Thanks To Twake

Twake, a new big data startup, had a great attention grabber at their booth at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC’s Startup Alley. Twake hired a man in a wooded area in a remote location with an arsenal of high-caliber fire arms and a junk pile of computer gear. Old cpus, monitors, fax machines, radios and other electronics were put in the pile for the man with the guns.

Meanwhile back at TechCrunch Disrupt Twake had an iPad app where passerby’s could choose a device they wanted to shoot, and the gun they wanted to shoot with. After they made their selections they would hit a button labeled “fire” which sent a signal back to the man with the guns to go ahead a fire away at the old computer junk.

This was very reminiscent of Tommy Jordan, the laptop shooting dad in North Carolina. Now even though I didn’t get to fire the gun myself, I could feel the thrill and satisfaction of popping a cap in that fax machines ass. The boys from Office Space would be proud.

So what kind of company goes through this much promotion to attract people to their booth? That would be Twake, a recently launched big data startup.

Twake is a secure, agnostic, scalable recommendation service. In their own words they describe Twake as:

“Twake’s cloud-based service maps anonymous referential data on customers, products and services with behaviors such as view, like, buy, and comment along with the sentiment and significance of each. Our wave propagation and interaction algorithms analyze patterns, recognize highly relevant items that are far removed from the source and synthesize recommendations that resonate”

We would say it’s a predictive recommendation engine. The idea of being able to recommend what a customer may buy next is often the competitive edge companies need, provided the data is right.

Twake’s platform is scalable to most industries. Their unique adaptive recommendation engine can handle e-commerce, app discovery, deep personalization, restaurant suggestions, smart pre-fetching, sentiment analysis, genome research, social discovery, travel planning, business intelligence, and network planning.

Is that too many verticals? Twake is so new that we’ll have to wait and see how it all comes together. It will be great to see what developers can do using Twakes API’s.

Check out the video here:

TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Interview With Connecticut Startup Shizzlr

Shizzlr is a new group platform social event platform with a website and cool mobile app to bit. In a way it’s similar to the startup we saw last year at Disrupt NY called “Salsa” unfortunately that startup had a very short life. Shizzlr has promise though, because of it’s unique feature set.

Shizzlr’s mobile app is available for both iPhone and Android. It allows you to discover local events and places nearby. After that you can share them into a group chat with friends and then decide what you want to do. Afterwards you can even run a poll and get feedback about the event or activity.

Shizzlr was founded by Nick Jaensch and Keith Bessette in the fall of 2009 while they were both students at UConn. They kept working on it after college and saw an official launch in 2010. Now both co-founders are here showing off Shizzler in TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Alley because they know its the shizzle.

Shizzlr is designed for smaller groups of friends between say 5 and 20. It aggregates local events from Facebook. Once the events are aggregated, users can decide which ones to do and make plans.

It’s an interesting new spin on the social event app. Check it out for yourself at shizzlr.com and watch our video interview below:

See more nibletz.com TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 coverage here

TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Interview With NY Startup hoppit

We got a chance to talk with the founder of hoppit at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2012. Hoppit was the winner of the best “Big Data” startup at the recent NY Tech Day.

So what is hoppit? Well hoppit is a discovery platform that lets you discover places completely based on atmosphere. Yelp, Urban Spoon and other restaurant recommendation sites use reviews that focus on cuisine to attract customers. With hoppit their engine takes into consideration keyword phrases that describe ambiance.

For instance, hoppit looks for multiple instances of groups of words like “romantic dinner” from there it would be able to dig deeper and determine that a restaurant is smaller and more intimate. This may be exactly what someone is looking for.

Right now hoppit lets you choose from eight different vibes; classy & upscale, hipster, watering hole, romantic, cozy & quaint, mad men,swanky & posh, trendy & chic, vintage & old world, and chill & relaxed.

After a long work week you know what you want and hoppit will help you find it. Check out our interview Steve Dziedzic below:

See more of our Disrupt coverage here