Funny Video Forex Gadget Hi-tech

Today at the RealTime CrunchUp , representatives from some of the top companies involved in location based services came together to talk about the current state and future of geo-based services. Participating in the panel were: Matt Galligan, co-Founder of SimpleGeo Ryan Sarver, Director of Platform at Twitter Tristan Walker, VP of Business Development at Foursquare Steve Lee, Group Product Manager Google Maps for Mobile and Google Latitude Justin Shaffer, Founder of Hot Potato Elad Gil, CEO of Mixer Labs Moderators were our own Erick Schonfeld and MG Siegler. Video by Ustream Early in the panel, the conversation turned to SimpleGeo , the new infrastructure for location that was revealed earlier this week. Shaffer spoke about how excited he was about the new service. When asked if anyone could copy what Foursquare was doing, Walker talked about Foursquare’s efforts to filter content (which is harder to reproduce). MG then steered the conversation toward bridging the gap between social networks and the real world, noting that mobile devices are paving the way for this change. But he wondered how services other than Foursquare (which has a game mechanic) would entice users to share their location on a regular basis. Lee addressed concerns over Latitude’s continuous location sharing, explaining that you can share your location with certain people who you specify, but that Latitude’s approach to constant tracking leads to the ability to offer interesting services. He says that without continuous sharing nearby alerts wouldn’t be possible (or at least as effective). He says that the check-in model and the continuous model will likely coexist (and that check-in can even help give more context about where you are) but that there’s things you can’t do without continuous tracking. Regarding Checking in verus continuous mapping, Elad Gil says he’s seeing about a “nine to ten” relationship between them. Galligan chimed in by saying that there will be a point when we know where everyone is, but that the context won’t necessarily be known. Galligan then revealed a new technology they are working on involving four dimensions of geolocation that SimpleGeo has created, which allows them to compress location and time stamps into a datapoint, allowing apps to look into the past for the same location. Sarver talked about why Twitter was interested in location, describing how it would help filter through the noise. He mentioned TrendsMap.com as a great way to visualize geotagged tweets. Shaffer said that HotPotato is looking to integrate location into their service, but that another key element is what brings conversation together. He says that just location data isn’t necessarily enough (he points out that people watching a baseball game may actually be at the game, or watching on TV.) In terms of advertising, there seemed to be a broad consensus that geo-based advertising had the potential to be extremley successful. Galligan brought up the potential of special ads and deals, pointing to Yowza as a great example. Saffer later commented that there’s a fine line that these services have to work with it would be a negative for ads to actually feel like ads (instead it would be better for them to feel like deals). Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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RealTime CrunchUp: The Rise Of Geo Streams

IVR and VoIP provider Voxeo has raised $9 million in funding from North Atlantic Capital and the Florida Growth Fund. Voxeo develops technologies in unlocked communications, including VoIP platforms, Interactive Voice Response, text and instant messaging, and unified communications. The startup has made numerous acquisitions over the past year, buying Motorola’s Motorola’s VoiceXML browser business, IM platform developer IMified, application server Voiceobjects, and VoIP platform Micromethod. Voxeo says that the new funds will be used to make additional acquisitions ad well as further internal development of technologies. It’s not surprising that Voxeo has been able to secure a large amount of funding. The startup has seen 1000 percent revenue growth over the past five years. And while Voxeo has steadily growing, the startup has flown under the radar since its founding in 2000. The company, which claims it serves half of the Fortune 100, but doesn’t publish a list of customers. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

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Voxeo Raises $9 Million For VoIP And IVR Technologies

For the past several weeks, we’ve been making improvements to CrunchBase to build a more engaging product for the people that drive it – which is to say, “everybody”. Since it was launched , Crunchbase has always been a freely editable repository of information about technology companies. Since February 2008, we’ve received over 100,000 edits from anonymous users in addition to the copious amounts of information that TechCrunch writers funnel to it on a regular basis. We’re excited to announce that these contributions no longer have to remain unattributed. Starting today, anyone with a Facebook account can sign up for an account on CrunchBase by using Facebook Connect. Edits will still be moderated (after all, this is the Internet we’re talking about here), but users who prove themselves to be trustworthy will, with time, start to see additional privileges associated with their accounts. All of these edits represent a treasure trove of information, so we’ve also been working on ways to better present the edits as they occur. Visitors to the CrunchBase homepage will now notice a list of recent milestones – a “stream,” if you will – that represents the most recent changes to the database. We’ve filtered out the more trivial edits in an effort to make this the kind of real-time information that even Paul Carr could love . These funding rounds, acquisitions, investments, IPOs, and other major milestones will now also appear on the individual pages that they relate to. Lastly, since it’s always better to let individuals choose what news they care about, we’re providing a way for people who sign up for a CrunchBase account to see a summary of these milestones only from the products, people and companies that are interesting to them. Logged-in users now have the ability to follow entries in the database and have relevant updates appear on their home page (sound familiar?). If you are a developer and want to use CrunchBase data, we’ve got a very open and flexible API . And make sure to let us know when you build an app that uses CrunchBase data , we like to highlight them. We hope you enjoy the new features, and are always taking suggestions for ways to make CrunchBase better. And if you like what we’re doing, by all means, be our friend . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

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Connect To The CrunchBase Firehose: Sign Up With Facebook Connect

When Loopt launched in 2006 it was ahead of a curve that is just starting to be recognized: Location. Now, with services like Foursquare , Gowalla , Brightkite , and even Twitter fueling the location-based services frenzy, Loopt realized that it needed to shift its strategy a bit. Enter Pulse, a new feature launching today. Previously, Loopt was more of a passive service you started it up on some device and it kept track of where you were. Other users could see where you were if they opened the app too, but generally it wasn’t about pinging your friends to let them know where you are and what you were doing. But Pulse makes Loopt much more of an active service. It recommends hot places, hot events, and lets you know what your friends are up to. This new feature is already live on Loopt’s website, but as we alluded to back in May , this will also be a part of the Loopt 2.0 iPhone app, which should be released shortly. But things have even changed since then. As you can see in the screenshots, a key feature of this new Loopt is the idea of the “Check In.” Obviously, this is a direct reaction to competitors like Foursquare and Gowalla which are built around that very idea. This is a key part of the new Loopt as checking in helps it recommend things for your friends to do. But Loopt is also using other data to recommend places. It has a partnership with Zagat to get restaurant information and pulls data from sources like Citysearch to further its recommendations. All of this data has allowed Loopt to create what founder Sam Altman refers to as a “local search engine.” And this is altering Loopt’s business as well. As we’ve previously covered, location is a potentially powerful tool for business models involving things like coupons. Foursquare is starting to delve into this, but it isn’t yet making money from it . This new version of Loopt is taking full advantage of this. The company has already struck deals with partners such as Jack In The Box to serve up virtual coupons when users of Loopt are nearby a restaurant. Fans of Loopt will still recognize many of the features of the service, but everything has been improved, Altman says. One thing not included however is Mix, Loopt’s service that helped users potentially find dates. That was spun off into its own app last month. Loopt also offers some things that Foursquare doesn’t such as the ability to see where all your friends are checked in on an actual map (rather than just a list of where they are). And you can also see not only that friends are at a particular place, but how others have rated it (with a smiley face or a frowning face). This allows you to see if a restaurant is not good, for example. The iPhone is proving to be a boon for location-based services, but it also has a very big weakness: Third-party apps cannot run in the background. This is one reason why the previous version of Loopt didn’t work well on the device; it kept track of your location, but only when you had it open. Loopt recently launched a new feature that allows you to get around this by pinging your phone to get your location with the help of the carrier. But that service costs extra money, a huge barrier. Moving to the concept of check-ins seems like a better way to keep people using your application. So can Loopt take on the younger location-based upstarts with its new features? We’ll see, but Loopt has a couple of big advantages: 1) It works on over 100 mobile devices (Foursquare, for example, works on only a few right now but any phone can access its mobile website). 2) Apple seems to love Loopt. They’ve included it in commercials, and routinely feature it in the App Store. Disclosure : Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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Loopt Shifts Its Strategy To Tap The Pulse Of Location

I’m currently blogging from a boat, rented by Belgian social network operator Netlog to host about a hundred of their closest business partners for a presentation about their freshly redesigned website and a roadmap of what’s in store for the future. In their presentation, co-founders Toon Coppens and Lorenz Bogaert introduced something other than the newly revamped site. The company has also been developing a separately branded social gaming platform called Gatcha! which was talked about publicly for the first time today.

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Netlog To Launch Global Social Game Distribution Platform Called Gatcha!

Apple wasted little time approving Wolfram Alpha’s new iPhone app, which we hinted at last week . Just a few days after they submitted it to the store, Apple sailed it right through the approval process with such speed that it even surprised the Wolfram Alpha team, which had hoped to get some feedback from testers before the approval. I was one of those people, so rather than send them feedback, I’ll write it here. There are two key points about Wolfram Alpha’s iPhone app: 1) It is pretty cool, and very nicely done. 2) They’re insane for trying to sell it for $50. I’m going to mainly focus on second point here, because if you’ve used Wolfram Alpha, you don’t really need much explanation about this app, which is a slick interface for the service. And while I get Wolfram Alpha’s logic behind selling the app for $50, I think it’s faulty logic. Here’s what they’re telling us: A note on price it is listed at $49.99, which is basically less than 1/2 the price of a graphing calculator with inferior functionality in comparison, which is how the company came to that number. Or, as weve been saying, the price of 12 lattes from Starbucks… Both of those points are true, but the App Store has created a different economic reality than say, walking into an Office Max and buying a graphing calculator. It’s no secret that most apps that sell well tend to be cheaper as in, free or $0.99. Apple has recently tried to de-emphasize this by adding a “Top Grossing” section to the App Store. That’s fine, but with the exception of the $90 Navigon GPS turn-by-turn app, all of the top grossing apps are under $10. And most are under $3. The reality is that you can probably count the number of iPhone apps over $10 that sell really well on your hands. Of those, the number over $20, you can probably count on one hand. And of those, if you remove the GPS turn-by-turn apps and maybe a few apps meant for doctors, you’re probably down to a couple fingers. And I’m sorry, but Wolfram Alpha does not yet have the clout of Navigon, nor is it in the hot turn-by-turn GPS space that would warrant such a high price. “We do plan to offer regular discounts and sales,” the team tells us. But if they really want this app to sell, they’re going to have to knock off like 90% of its price. Actually, to be honest, even at $10, I’m not sure how many people would buy this app. And that’s too bad for the team. As I said, the app is a solid one, but this is the reality of the App Store. Games that sell on systems like the Nintendo DS for $30, are $3 on the iPhone. Hell, there are even some games that sell on the bigger consoles for $60 that are less than $10 on the iPhone. They’re not quite as good graphics-wise, but I would argue that they’re every bit as fun. And don’t think for a second that studios like EA wouldn’t sell them for $30 if they could, but they realize that they can’t. Wolfram Alpha may have to figure that reality out the hard way. It’s fine that it can replace your $100 graphing calculator, but it’s also limited because it requires WiFi or a 3G connection to do so. And the iPhone already comes with a calculator, which can turn into a more advanced one, and both of those are free. And there are dozens of graphing calculator apps in the App Store that sell for a whopping $0.99. Okay, you might say, but Wolfram Alpha does offer a lot of interesting data far beyond graphing calculators. That’s also true, like giving you a detailed read out of how many calories are in a Big Mac, fries, and a Coke. But if you’re using this on your iPhone or iPod touch, you already have access to Google, and more to the point, the mobile web version of Wolfram Alpha, which is free. Clearly, the service had some insight into how controversial the price will be. They go on to note: The core WolframAlpha site will always be free. This is one of several premium experiences that the company will offer in addition. The app is targeted at the most serious users, and is priced as such. Likewise, we feel that the apps egonomics and speed make it well worth the investment. I can only assume they mean “ergonomics” there, but we’ll forgive them for that Freudian slip. The app absolutely does offer a nice experience, one that yes, is better than the free website. But $50 better? No. $10 better? Maybe. $5 better? We’re getting closer. Again, right or wrong, this is just the reality of the App Store economy. As we’ve noted previously, the iPhone app is the first example of Wolfram Alpha’s new APIs that they hope will extend their most valuable asset: Their data. But if you’re trying to get more people to use access your data, charging $50 is not a great play. A better one may be to get people hooked on your data, then charge down the road when they realize how valuable it is if they ever do, which is still far from certain with Wolfram Alpha. It’s also interesting to note that despite talk of a deal with Bing , the defautl web search in the Wolfram Alpha app is Google. Both Bing and Yahoo are options, but you have to change it in the settings. You can find the Wolfram Alpha app here in the App Store . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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Wolfram Alpha Miscalculates What Its iPhone App Should Cost

Dropico is a brand new service that allows you to drag and drop pictures from multiple social networks rapidly and seamlessly, without the need to upload photos and other imagery to each of them separately. Have any pictures stored on your TwitPic account that you want to share with your Facebook Friends, or want to bring a couple of your Flickr shots to your MySpace account? Just log on to Dropico, log into the services you use and start dragging and dropping. Dropico is currently in private beta, but 1,000 TechCrunch readers can try out the service via this link . Personally, I tend to simply send pictures to my Posterous account by e-mail and auto-distribute them to my blog, Flickr and Facebook account, but I can see why people might be interested in giving Dropico a whirl. It’s an easy way of organizing media across multiple social networks, but aside from that it’s also a decent media uploading service since it also allows you to fetch pictures from your computer or from any web page. Once you’ve imported images on Dropico, you can distribute them to your social network(s) of choice all in one interface. Dropico currently works with Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket, Bebo, Twitter, Flickr and Picasa. In the near future, the Israeli startup behind the service intends to add more services to the fray, and also make it easier for users to drag and drop other media like videos across social networks. There’s also an API in the works. The startup is currently operating on some $150k from its founders and some angel investors, but is currently talking to other investors about a bigger round. (Via Orli ) Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Dropico Lets You Drag And Drop Pictures Across Social Networks

I’m in Taiwan now and as announced last week , there will be a TechCrunch/CrunchGear meetup tomorrow (Monday, October 5) in Taipei at 7.30pm (open door at 7pm). We are holding the meetup with our partner and co-organizer Chili Consulting , a Taipei-based innovation strategy firm. Every guest should have received the invitation by now, and please remember the venue changed (the schedule remains the same though). Thank you very much for the incredible interest in the meetup, which is sponsored by Taipei- and San Jose-based hardware maker IPEVO . Please note you can’t register for this invitation-only event anymore – sorry. Special thanks again to Chili Consulting for organizing this meetup. Make sure to follow the companys Facebook page and blog for any last-minute updates (which are very unlikely to happen). I’m looking forward to seeing over 100 TechCrunch readers and a handful of selected Taiwanese demo companies tomorrow. Use the hashtag #tctaipei when twittering about this event (although I know Plurk is quite big in this country). Taipei 101 picture taken from Flickr Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Reminder: TechCrunch/CrunchGear Meetup In Taipei Tomorrow, October 5

The battle over your online identity rages on. Google Friend Connect, the search giant’s platform that lets you accept Google and OpenID accounts on your site, has just made implementing the service about as easy as it could be. And it did it exactly two days after Facebook released its own streamlined install process for Facebook Connect. Except Google’s is better. Up until now the install process for Google Friend Connect hasn’t been too difficult the site walked you through a handful of steps, asked you to upload two files via FTP to your webserver, and you were done. Up until very recently Facebook Connect’s install process was significantly more confusing, but two days ago they updated it to closely match Google’s flow (though you only have to upload one file instead of two). Today Google has managed to one-up Facebook once more: Friend Connect’s new install flow doesn’t require any file uploads, which opens the door to an entirely new set of users. Now all you need to do to implement Google Friend Connect on your site is visit this page , enter your site’s name and URL, and you’re done. Google will present you with a gallery of HTML widgets that you can copy and paste into your site. Aside from making things easier, this opens the door to a new set of users. Namely, people who either don’t know how to use FTP, or who run their sites through hosted services that don’t grant FTP accessand there are a lot of them. Looking at raw numbers, Google Friend Connect appears at first glance to be besting Facebook Connect by a large margin: Google reports over 5 million sites using Friend Connect, while Facebook Connect has around 15,000 . But those figures are misleading. In terms of mind-share, Facebook Connect is running circles around Google Friend Connect just look at how many mainstream sites use Facebook Connect but not Google. Facebook has made it clear that it’s trying to attract more small sites that don’t have development teams, so don’t be surprised if it strikes back with its own super-streamlined install process in the next few weeks. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Easy Does It: Google Friend Connect One-Ups Facebook Connects Install Wizard

As expected , Google is calling new feature that blocked users from exporting their Orkut contacts a “bug.” An update today on the Data Liberation Blog (the group we specifically called out last night when wondering what was going on) notes that while Google was in the process of “adding additional security measures to Orkut Friends Export” it inadvertently broke the entire functionality. If that’s actually the case, here’s what I love about this: 1) Google says it was trying to add security features to improve Okrut Friends Export, yet it apparently didn’t bother to test the functionality after adding said feature. If they had, they would have immediately realized it was broken, like so many users did immediately. Google is a company meticulous about its testing of things, so that seems a bit odd. 2) The fact that Google would add additional security measures immediately following the revelation that Facebook had a tool it was promoting in India to allow users to easily import their Orkut friends is interesting. And by “interesting,” I mean suspicious. Does Facebook’s importing tool still work? Anyone in India, feel free to let us know in the comment. I’m not saying this wasn’t, in fact, a bug. I’m just saying that the timing of said bug was interesting to say the least. And it certainly doesn’t seem like the usually careful Google cared very much about creating a bug that stopped the hemorrhaging of its Orkut users over to Facebook in India. Sometimes “bugs” are convenient until you get called out on them. Just sayin’. [photo: flickr/ the consumerist ] Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

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Google Fixes That Pesky Lets Stop Facebooks Growth In India Bug

Ruby-on-Rails startup FiveRuns has been acquired by WorkThink, according to FiveRuns’ site. FiveRuns provides a variety of monitoring products for Ruby on Rails and related open source and commercial systems. Built on Rails and delivered as a hosted service, FiveRuns products manage the complete Rails application lifecycle from installation to production.

Products include Install, a free Ruby on Rails stack powered by BitRock; Manage, which was an application that monitors your Rails applications in production (Manage was discontinued this summer); TuneUp (a debugging tool which we wrote about here); and Dash, which was a metrics, storage, reporting, and communication hub for applications connected to the web. According to FiveRuns, Dash’s services will be discontinued by the middle of October. It’s unclear if the other products will survive the transition.

Sean Parker is no stranger to Internet success. He’s 28 years old and has already helped start four very well-known services on the web: Napster, Plaxo, Causes, and of course, Facebook. And now he’s taking his impressive resume to Yammer, where he is joining the enterprise microblogging service’s Board of Directors, we’ve learned.

Yammer, which won the top prize at last year’s TechCrunch50, recently rolled out a bunch of updates to its web version, as well as its Adobe Air-based desktop client. We use the service on a daily basis for work, and those of us with iPhones are all eagerly awaiting the release of the new version of the iPhone app with Push Notifications.

We haven’t written about StickK, the company that allows you to put a contract on yourself in order to help you commit to improving your lifestyle, since the service was launched back in February 2008. Good thing the company got in touch with us and pointed out they’re doing quite nicely, which gives us a good excuse for an update on them.

StickK was founded by three Yale economists (two professors and a graduate student) and basically allows you to accomplish a goal by setting up a contract against yourself, whether it’s about losing weight, stop biting your nails, writing a novel or whatever else you feel you need to achieve in life. The site takes credit card information up front and charges it on a weekly basis should you fail to meet your self-submitted goal(s). You can designate someone to be your referee a friend, co-worker or spouse, for example but in the end, if they fail to do their jobs, StickK.com will take your word for it.

It’s not a Windows 7 Party without some tunes, right? Thankfully Microsoft has created a set of commercials with catchy beats, nice visuals, and no stilted, low-paid actors apparently preparing to get it on in the worst Cinemax late night movie ever.

Enduserblog has all of the videos for your perusal but I picked out a few more good ones after the jump.

Picking out the right gadget to buy is so difficult that an entire publishing industry (Cnet, Engagdet, CrunchGear, GDGT) has grown around helping people sort through the process. A new site in private beta called Measy is taking a different approach. You take a quiz answering questions about what you are looking for in a digital camera, flat-screen TV, or netbook, and it comes up with the gadgets that match your requirements.

We have invites for the first 200 people who redeem them here with the promotion code “techcrunchfriends.”

Measy’s CEO Ian Manheimer is the creator of Glassbooth, a site which helped voters pick candidates based on taking a quiz about their political views and then matching those up with candidates’ positions. Measy takes a similar approach to helping people make decisions about what gadgets they should buy.

Just like Web 2.0 start-ups have been spending much of 2009 trying to figure out how to turn users and community into revenues, so too have the last few years’ crop of Internet celebrities been trying to figure out how to make a business out of those over-used buzz words their personal brands.

Think of all the online fame thats been created in the last few years amid this hype of the Web democratizing celebrity. Now try to name how many of them crossed over to mainstream popularity. Tila Tequila got an MTV show and a record deal. LonelyGirl15 is on ABC Familys Greek. Andthe list dwindles from there. Amanda Congdons talks with HBO never seemed to materialize. Kudos to Julia Allison for snagging a Wired cover and starting a lifecasting site, Nonsociety, but that Bravo pilot never saw the light of day and even Gawker doesnt cover her much anymore. (She may consider that a blessing.) The people who get the most press for using social media are still, well, the real celebrities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher.

Its enough to make you a cynic that celebrity isnt really getting democratized at allits just getting fragmented into slivers of micro-fame. And the truth is so far micro-fame doesnt pay.

Seedcamp, the European startups programme a little (though not entirely) like YCombinator, has announced the winners of its year-long programme to find the best startups in Europe, finally judged over an intense week of mentoring by a long line of fellow European entrepreneurs.

Each startup has won 50,000 to develop their product, in return for Seedcamp taking a stake worth between 5-10% of the company. In each case the exact stake has not been released. As we wrote earlier this week, overall the standard was strong this year and many of the VCs and CEOs I spoke to during this week have remarked on how much the quality of startups in Europe has improved, especially as reflected in this year’s Seedcamp vintage.

So the winning teams are:

Hot London-based live music startup Songkick launches a new feature today allowing users to share their experiences of gigs. Users can now connect their Songkick account to their Twitter account and auto-tweet any gigs they plan to go to. That’s not that big a deal. What is pretty interesting however is how they’ve integrated Twitter to bring a realtime stream to their service.

When a user goes to a show, Songkick automatically pulls in tweets that they write during the concert as realtime, live reviews. The tweets are from actual gig-goers, making this way more valuable than just pulling in generic artist searches. This looks like the first time anyone has done this. Furthermore the tweets are then preserved for all time on the dedicated Songkick concert page for that gig, foiling Twitter’s annoying ability to lose Tweets after a week or so in search.

It is notoriously difficult for browser plugins to gain traction getting users to download anything massively raises a service’s barrier to entry. But Shareaholic, a plugin that makes it easy to share content across a variety of social and bookmarking sites, has been doing quite well: the company has seen well over one million downloads since launching less than two years ago. Today Shareaholic has annouced that it closed a seed funding round that includes investors Edward Roberts (MIT Entrepreneurship Center, Sohu), Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot), Eric Dobkin (Goldman Sachs), Brian Balfour (Viximo), David Cancel (Compete), Andrew Payne (FanSnap), and Brian Shin (Visible Measures Corp.). The company declined to share the exact amount of the funding, but says that it was “a few hundred thousand” dollars.

Travel site Localyte has a new twist on travel advicethe site tries to connect travelers with locals in their destination to serve as guides or just to get advice. Locals in communities around the world vary from professional tour guides who charge for the custom tours to everyday people who simply want to help folks enjoy their hometown as much as possible. Since late 2007, Localyte has accumulated 40,000 local guides in about 10,000 destinations across 160 countries. The site also offers reviews and listings of local activities.

Now, Localyte is furthering its mobile strategy by launching PocketSherpa, a free iPhone app that integrates its online platform onto a mobile device, letting travelers access local guides and information (from WikiTravel) on the go. The app lists tours and contact info in cities and also lists local travel guides in those cities who are available to answer any questions. For example, if you were traveling in Egypt, you could ask “Are there any hot air balloon rides available over the Pyramids?” Localyte’s CEO Guillermo Baensch says that locals answer the questions fairly quickly, within a few hours at most. You can also access threads of previous questions that were submitted in your destination. Localyte’s app has a built-in mailbox that lets you send and receive messages, and also lets you see local newspapers in the region where you are traveling.