Driving a startup means little time for tech leads, founders, and supporting team members to have personal time. Entrepreneurship for many is work, work, and more work, while finding love isn’t as simple in the hectic lifestyle to hopefully attain Tumblr status. But for many the route to startup headquarters means shoving through shoulders to find a seat on the subway, opening up a laptop or book and learning to do and be better.
With that in mind, project planners in Prague are taking a chance to re-invent the transit system to cater better for singles during commuting to find love. Because building a startup and living in our tech heavy world shouldn’t mean the journey is one traveled alone. The single-only carriages will provide people that chance to entice fate to meet and form a relationship during what could be few moments of downtime during the daily grind.
Armed with a 720p video camera, a remote-controlled laser pointer, microphone, and speakers this four-inch cube lets users monitor, play and talk with their fuzzy companion using an app. There really is very few incredible moments like those that are captured when swirling a laser pointer for a kitty to chase in wonderment, all of that will be possible remotely in Autumn, when the Petcube is set to be released.
The stylish aluminum and glass box connects to Wi-Fi and has game-style controls to move a laser pointer around. But it’s not limited to just playing with your own pet. The Petcube community will make it possible to also play with other pets as well. Prototypes from the Ukrainian startup were first showcased at SeedCamp Week Berlin, but we’ll have to wait for the device to find its way onto Kickstarter for purchase in a few more months.
You leave your house as usual around 8am, a little early to avoid the inevitable delays, to jump on the subway and reach the office by 9am. Before walking up the steps a coffee stop in the lobby is not just necessary it’s essential, “two cream, two sugars – please”, just as you’re about to reach for the door to the office lobby with a steaming cup of java in one hand and your Anitgua satchel draped over the same shoulder, a stranger who was sitting on near-by bench approaches saying “here’s your package.”
That’s the hope of a newly derived crowd-platform delivery system coined TwedEx by Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research in Seattle. There are similar delivery concepts already existent as web and mobile apps, but this one has one essential difference: the service will be able to bubble up routes and destinations that are travelled frequently. The model calls for a package to be delivered amongst a chain of people, and an algorithm does the math to calculate the fastest route using location data compiled from New York tweeters.
The scrolling single player gameplay synonymous with Mario has been tried, tested and still beloved. Why? Because it’s simple, easy to understand, fun to play, and sticky beyond comprehension. But after you defeat every game’s “Bowser Level” that feeling of I can make a better game undoubtedly begins to creep up. But how are you going to do it? Learn native programming and hope for the best? That sounds great but what if coding isn’t your thing and design and creative conception is? Then head over to Kickstarter and back the Pixel Press project so it gets off the ground and helps turn design into actual scrolling games for you to share and play.
All you need is the app, a pencil or pen, and a good ol’ sheet of paper with your swirling brain of game mechanic ideas. Programming not required it’s already included. That’s the thought behind Pixel Press that makes game design an opportunity instead of a mountain of a task.
Need help around the house? Maybe cutting the grass or cleaning up your dorm for a special occasion. How about a handyman to mount a TV or build a fence? No matter the need there’s always people with the skills that can help. Kutoto is a service marketplace that connects people and/or small businesses needing tasks or small jobs done with local providers who can do it for them. At the same time, it provides an easy way of earning extra income to people who have the spare time to pick up these jobs.
If you need to outsource your errands, tasks or chores, the location-based iPhone app connects you with trusted local people (providers). With many sites offering platforms to offer and request services, Kutoto goes a step further with a thorough background check, interviews and trained professionals to ensure you’re meeting and working with someone you can have confidence in. The team told us about their first request posting using the app:
We first learned about Bang With Friends back in February, an app that helped those looking for more than just love get straight to it. You go through your friends list and pick the one’s you want to have sex with, but what makes it incredibly simple and prevents awkwardness is that the selections are only declared if they too pick up the app and select you.
Bang With Friends has now taken its successful Facebook model and brought their hookup app to the iPhone and Android. With over 200,000 successful encounters already created since the Facebook launch, by moving to mobile the startup will help even more people move from being “just friends”.
When first investigating this web game, we all thought it was going to be a needle in the world type of feeling. But it suddenly became addictive almost as much as the new app Dots. GeoGuessr drops you in a Google Street View in an unknown location and asks you to “figure out where you are.”
Once you familiarize yourself with your immediate surroundings you place a pin on the Google Map to best guess where you think you landed. Many of you may assume how in the world could one figure out such a thing with just a 360 view? The game takes that into account and lets you explore a bit more then what’s exactly around your landing point.
On a recent backpacking trip to Asia, our team was filled with joy, wondrous curiosity, and the untimely stomach problems (let’s not talk about it). The trip was filled with picture’s and life-altering self-reflection all while in the company of a team we are so lucky to be with regularly. However, on return back to Toronto some of our companions were hit with roaming bills that went from $800 to $1200. These usages were limited to just short minutes, or the users didn’t even know roaming was occurring; yet the costs were astonishing. After some verbal debating with their respective carrier’s these fees were reduced in half, but to pay $400 to $600 in roaming charges still seems outrageous!
This past year roaming bills were over $45,000,000,000 – to take revenge on these roaming costs a new app is set to launch this summer. Roamer is the first mobile app that reduces roaming costs by up to 90%, but keeps your same number and uses cellular, not WiFi. Using the handy cost savings calculator on their site, users that received 100 min of calls and made 100 minutes of calls when travelling from Canada to the US could incur roaming charges of up to $154, while Roamer would just charger $22, saving you $132 (that’s a 86% reduction).
