I stumbled onto Entrip.com a while ago, but checked it out again recently as I’m planning my winter trips to Cuba and Thailand. I must say, the site looks much nicer aesthetically, and I see the guys behind it have been busy improving the functionality.
For those of you which have not tried EnTrip yet, its an online app where you can arrange your trip, and map it out using an easy map-based interface. You can then add photos, videos, and blogs to each location to document your trip for family and friends.
What I really like about the site is that you can add notes to pictures and videos, which you might have later lost track of. Plus its great to check out other peoples trips, as you can frequently get some awesome tips and ideas you wouldn’t find in a travel guide.
Whichever experience days or trips get you excited, you are sure to find travellers like you to help you plan your next trip, or give you some ideas to get you started.
As internet users become more and more cautious of where they spend their cash in light of the economic downturn, the bigger the impact of website and product review websites in the purchase process. Who will you trust Dell, or some smaller firm selling desktop PC’s online?
Well we’ve had a look at Trustpilot, and this decision might become a whole lot easier. This innovative UK startup have launched a reputation monitoring service based on user comments and reviews, which are then presented to users through their website and their browser app which overlays a trust rating on top of Google results.
Checking out user reviews for a website becomes as easy as reading the colour of an icon that changes from red to green will give you an indication of how trustworthy a given company is, and by placing your pointer over that icon where additional information is displayed.
The information provided includes the percentage of approval the company has, the actual number of reviews as well as a “TrustScore”
We all have moments in our life that we forget, but a new service called Memiary let’s you easily store those memories – every day. Sid Yadav a fellow indie-developer launched Memiary a few weeks ago, with the need to solve a very relevant problem; his bad memory. The site let’s you store five things per day, and will keep them a lifetime.
The concept of the site is very interesting, which comes along with a simplistic interface. Register a user name, make a password, and start remembering! It should be interesting to see how this site pan’s out down the road, we’ve sure pulled up a chair!
Fellow blogger and developer Jon Wheatly, recently let wild a quirky little tool called Intersquash. The neat little app let’s you convert the rss feed of any website into an iPhone/iTouch site instantly. After you enter the feed, and upload a 57×57 pixel thumbnail of your homepage you’re presented with a complete working iPhone version of your website.
Jon explains the simple four step process in the video below:
If only I knew about this web app when I was flatting it would have made my life a whole lot easier. Expensure is a awesome little application that helps you (and your flatmates) keep track of all living costs and works out how much each person owes.
For a more detailed description of the websites features you can take a look at the tour page.
I caught up with Andrew, one of the founders and he told me a bit more about the idea and how he came up with it.
We were sitting around one day trying to work out who owed who money after about three months of bills and expenses had been accumulated. We had each paid for loads of shared stuff, and owed money for many different bills. In the middle of trying to work it all out for the tenth time we thought, why don’t we just make an app that does it all for you?
I also asked him about his marketing strategy and his reply was so great I’m going to post it here as I’m sure it will benefit a lot of people.
I think this is a very interesting question because you are in a tough position to start with because you don’t have the budget to engineer a mass media promotion, nor do you have the public profile to engineer some free promotion off the back of who you are (see twitter).
The trick is to use your wit and skill to create a 3rd approach that makes use of the emerging social media landscape of bloggers, the social grap(h)evine and making contact with a few niche publications who have ownership of the social/business area that your app will attempt to make its home.
I did find the following blog posts to contain some pretty good practical advice, that is relevant to anyone launching a web app or business:
Thanks for the great information Andrew! This application definitely solves a problem that I’m sure most of the readers of this blog have experienced. Go and give it some love.
IndieStartups is a blog that covers ambitious self-funded or smaller scale startups. We're not all about venture funding and million dollar investments. We're about how others have done it and how to do it yourself.
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