For those of us who have ridden in an Uber vehicle, it’s probably common knowledge that it can be a real party sometimes. I can recall times when I’ve requested an Uber town car to come pick me up only to be pleasantly surprised with an SUV coming by. And not an ordinary black SUV, but rather one with champagne glasses inside with privacy screens, reading lights, and a lot of fixtures that make you want to scream out “P-I-M-P”.
Well Uber has been known to surprise and be really great, so why wouldn’t they roll out a new program for one of the hottest concert tickets of the year: Lollapalooza. This Friday marks the start of this three-day concert event in Grant Park located in Chicago, IL. Over the course of the three days, there’s going to be a lot of people moving in and out of the area and you can be sure that public transit and taxi cabs are going to be booked up. But if you’re smart enough, you might just say “forget the cabs” and instead go after getting to and from in style…all in an Uber. C’mon, after an event-filled day with 8 stages, 150 bands, and dealing with over 300,000 party animals like yourself, the last thing you’re going to want to think about is just how are you going to get around. Let Uber take care of that for you…and they’re going to make it a bit more enticing too.
GAG, the world’s largest and fastest growing online comedy community, today announced a new mobile app for its wildly popular irreverent and hilariously funny content. 9GAG’s new mobile app – named “9GAG” makes it even easier for people to quickly discover, express and share visual entertainment through photos and videos by delivering seamless access from nearly any mobile device, including both Apple iOS and Android platforms. The only official mobile app from the creators of “9GAG” is available immediately from http://9gag.com/mobile and through the Apple App Store.
In addition to launching a mobile version, 9GAG today announced that it has received $2.8 million in seed funding from venture capitalists and angel investors led by early stage investment firms Freestyle Capital and True Ventures. Joining Freestyle Capital and True Ventures are First Round Capital; Greycroft Partners; returning investor 500 Startups; and individual investors Scott Banister (co-founder, IronPort); Chris Sacca (Lowercase Capital); and David Tisch (TechStars), among others.
We all know the statistics, or at least know the analysis about the statistics: People typically tend to buy things based on the recommendation on their friends and someone that they have trust in. But how would you know if someone would actually buy that item? Is there a way where you can use some sort of a viral social network or service that you can just post photos up there and all you want people to do is simply vote yes or no whether or not they’d be interested in that? Is there a need for a “Hot or Not” service for products where people can join in and share the items they are considering purchasing or perhaps even selling? And lastly, how can you further spread the news about your product by attaching it to the existing social networks like Twitter and Facebook?
That’s a lot of questions to be asking, but allow me to simply respond with three short words: Tip or Skip.
Managing photos in your own mobile application or developing a way to extract photos from services like Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, and many other similar services can be time-consuming and probably costly. But for services and companies interested in curating photos from around the Interwebs and displaying similar themed ones on their website or through their mobile application, there needs to be a simpler way.
And that’s where Chute comes into play. In February of this year, the service first launched and became highly touted as a developer-friendly way for applications to basically “curate, manage, and display” media files. To put it simply, as Rip Empson from TechCrunch described it, it’s the Twilio for Photos. It seems that both investors and companies have found that analogy quite appealing to them with many flocking to Chute for assistance with their media displays in their application and/or for their events and shows. Now, after initially launching at the Launch Conference in 2011 and then pivoting slightly from a consumer-facing service to a developer-centric one, before being a member of the Y Combinator family, Chute has certainly hit its stride and is moving forward to making big things happen.
Get ready America: the 2012 Olympics are about to begin! That’s right, in one week, the Summer Olympics are set to kick off in London, England and it’s attracting a lot of attention, at least from a technology standpoint. Whether it’s about their use about social media for its athletes or how it’s rumored to be the most social in the history of the Olympiad, or anything else, there’s a whole lot going on with this historic event.
But the Olympics are much more than just sports. It’s also about building a better community and to do some charitable good. This year is no different and even the tech community is getting involved with one of the Olympic’s global events to help promote tolerance, peace, and fitness in the world.
Known as the “Walk A Mile” event, this campaign is supported by the 2012 London Olympics and also the US State Department’s Hours Against Hate tolerance campaign designed to help showcase the potential of young people to change the world. To help promote the “Walk A Mile” event, InterAmerican Gaming, in partnership with Dave Stewart, Rock-it Media, Kiip Rewards, PayPal, and Xtreme Labs, just announced the release of their new fitness mobile application, SoFit.
