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Resultly is a Social Search Engine With a Twist

by on April 12, 2012 in Startups

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result-ly-robotTo describe Resultly, a new social startup about to launch its first iteration, would be an exercise in brevity. The best I can muster is, “Social Alerts Engine”, even though that description would be inadequate for the service’s actual promise. Resultly founder, Ilya Beyrak, on the other hand, draws an analogy with Google Alerts and dubs it a real-time social search engine.

So what exactly is Resultly?

In brief, Resultly is a real-time social alerts engine that helps you to create real-time alerts for keyword terms. What makes Resultly different is that you can set up alerts for specific categories and drill-down choices by various parameters to get accurate, real-time updates tailored to fit your requirements.

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The Boy Who Cried Bubble

by on April 10, 2012 in Opinion, Startups

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bubble-boyPardon me for spoiling your Instagram induced reverie, but I feel this needs to be said: we might be headed toward a bubble.

There. I said it. It had been gnawing at my heart and weighing on my skinny shoulders since the morning, when I, like the rest of you, learned of Instagram’s $1Bn sale to Facebook.

Perhaps it is jealousy. Perhaps it is rage. But in all likelihood, it is merely indignation at the audacity of a company that makes no money to have pocketed a billion dollars that has driven me to tear my hair out and scream “bubble! bubble!”  like a lunatic howling at the moon on a full-moon night.

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Projector Promises to Make You Fall in Love With Work Again

by on April 5, 2012 in Startups

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Besides running this blog and studying full-time for a Master’s degree, I also moonlight as a freelance writer occasionally. It helps put (better) food on my table and clothes on my shoulders. So when a new SaaS startup promises to help me manage my projects and clients better, I’m all ears.

Projector is a project management tool for – and I quote – “freelancers who want to love their work again”. That’s a peculiar statement to make – love their work again. But as a freelancer, I can somewhat identify with it: managing clients, projects, and the sheer act of waking up in the morning and checking off a to-do list of unchallenging, dull projects can get mind-numbingly repetitive, dull and discouraging after some time. Perhaps a better project management system could actually help me fall in love with my work again.

So I’m going to take Projector out for a spin.

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Rambler is a Travel Startup to Take You off the Beaten Path

by on March 31, 2012 in Startups

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It’s a problem as old as traveling itself: how do you escape the humdrum and dullness of ‘touristy’ things and experience an authentic local adventure?

Guidebooks are no help; The Lonely Planets of this world are written for tourists and are about as much fun as cold pizza and stale beer. Your best bet still remains to befriend a local and experience a city the way locals experience it.

Or, you could give Rambler a shot.

rambler-hq-home-page

The homepage is gorgeous with generous use of images.

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The Big List of Startup PR Resources

by on March 21, 2012 in Resources, Startups

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Public relations is a lot like screaming at the top of your voice until someone dumb enough listensI yap too much. I seem to have a neurotic condition that compels me to introduce seemingly mundane subjects with grandiloquent prose that eventually leads to an underwhelming response once said subject is eventually unfurled. So I’ll halt the drivel right here and dive head first into this rather large list of startup PR resources:

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MinuteFavors Wants You to Trade Favors for Karma

by on March 17, 2012 in Startups

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karmaA 2005 article on UTNE postulated that an ‘economic system based on reputation won’t long be the stuff of science fiction’. Paraphrasing a 2003 science fiction novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, it predicted that in the coming decades, it can be possible to imagine a post-scarcity society that trades not in currency, but in karma.

This might seem like a far-fetched fantasy in our materially obsessed, money driven culture, but anyone who has witnessed the tear away success of Reddit or Kickstarter in the past few years will attest that this idea isn’t perhaps as fantastical as it sounds. Reddit, especially, has been able to create a thriving community where the only motivation for sharing and adhering to community rules is to maintain and earn karma points.

This is exactly what MinuteFavors, a new website that lets you trade favors for karma, seeks to exploit. Read on after the jump to learn more.

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Stride Gets Major Press Love From TechCrunch

by on March 10, 2012 in Startups

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stride-appStride, a “CRM System Salespeople Will Hate (But Freelancers Will Love”, was featured by TechCrunch a little while ago.

Stride flies in the face of traditional CRM software that emphasize features over efficiency and simplicity. As Sarah Perez notes on Techcrunch: “Stride is about deal-tracking and high-level metrics only”

I won’t waste my time with a write-up on the app since TC has done a more than adequate job anyway.

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Ten Great Startup Offices

by on January 17, 2012 in Startups

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Stuffy suites and even stuffier cubicles: you’ll find none of these in a typical startup office. More than a few founders I know started their companies to crash their way out of cubicle hell with quirky, quixotic offices that embody their startup’s philosophy. A great startup office can not only boost productivity and employee morale, but also work as an excellent recruitment tool. From conference rooms named with names pulled from Batman comics to vast reading nooks and hangout zones, you’ll find them all in these ten startup offices.

 

 

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Making Games, Made Easy

by on January 11, 2012 in Featured, Startups

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Create The Next Angry Birds With Scirra’s Construct 2

quake3

In my early teenage years, nursing a debilitating Quake 3 addiction, I made a career choice: I would make games for a living. I announced so to my family at the dinner table, and as expected, pandemonium ensued. This was much, much before the era of Nintendo Wii and the iPhone, when John Carmack wasn’t blowing rockets into space, the original Half-Life was changing the first person shooter landscape, and gaming was still a hobby of the nerds.

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December Funding Report: $3.32Bn Raised by 275 Startups

by on January 11, 2012 in Analysis, Funding News, Startups

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piggy-bank I tracked a total of 275 startups in December 2011 that raised a combined total of a whopping $3.32Bn in funding through the month. The highest figure was a $300M investment in Twitter, the lowest a $15,000 seed funding in SoLatina.

Full report after the jump.

 

 

 

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