Vi.sualize.us aims to do for images what del.icio.us did for websites. It’s the brain child of Victor Espigares and was created after a personal need to remember a particular photo within a portfolio. Not happy with the current offerings he decided to do something about it.

Built around similar features as del.icio.us, you see an image you like, you bookmark it (possibly using the firefox plugin pictured below), it’s saved to your vi.sualize.us account for future reference. You can also tag different images and share bookmarked images with your friends.

I’ve been playing around with the site for the past hour or so and there really is a lot of great content over there. I could easily sit for ages just browsing the different tag sections.

What i find most impressive is that Victor built the entire thing himself, to date spending $0, excluding his hosting bill. Almost 7 months old, at the time of writing people have posted more than 35,000 images and there are roughly 1,900 registered users. If you haven’t before heard of this started i suggest you check them out.

David Heinemeier Hansson, partner at 37signals recently gave a wonderful talk at the recently held startup school. In the video posted below he gives a refreshing talk on how so many people are blinded by raising funding and selling their startup people have forgotten how to make a solid, profitable business.

There were also some other great videos that are worth checking out. (Be warned, I spent almost an entire evening watching these so only check them out if you have some time to kill). You can check out the other videos here.

I’m sure you’ll agree, he makes some very good points. Make something people want, charge money for it, profit. Although it does make it sound frighteningly easy.

Remember: If you have any information on a bootstrapped startup please, please contact us.

FlyRig.com is a reasonably new (launched very late last year) NYC apartment rental listing service. The site has some of the best google maps API implementation i’ve ever seen.

After selecting the area you want to live in (Manhattan for example) you’re taken to a page clearly listing information on the different properties in that area. When you mouse over the different apartments google maps smoothly zooms to the apartments location on the map. It’s a wonderfully clear and concise way of looking for a place to live.

We’re trying to improve the rental process here in New York. The tight market
results in misinformation and opportunities for unscrupulous agents - things
that are frustrating to both renters and agents who work hard to build trust
with their clients. In addition, there lacks a modern solution for finding
apartments in the city - the most popular listing services either lack mapping
capabilities or supporting information commonly needed when deciding on a place
to live.

FlyRig was self funded by Adrian Liang. He works on the site full time along with one other part-time employee and two occasionally used contractors. Since launching in December 2007 they’ve signed up over 250 brokers from some of the largest agencies in the city.

It’s a really nice little service. The system could presumably be expanded into other cities without too much effort.

Oh, simple enough, a wonderful service called LunchBoxPal.
Have you ever been on a business trip, at a conference, or even in some city on vacation, and yearned to meet-up with somebody for a lunch break? A morning coffee, maybe? You know how it is, you’re sitting in your hotel room alone and wish you just had something to do before your flight back home.

Well, LunchBoxPal is here to help. Think of it as a more mature and targeted craigslist, and cross that with some common social networking features you’d find at facebook. 

“LunchBoxPal is going to be a new form of professional networking geared towards bringing people together in the physical world, rather than just in cyberspace.  With most social networking tools, it just allows people to become friends with others that you currently know, or have met once or twice.  We’re looking to create professional relationships that won’t exist online, but actually where people get out and connect.”

To this date, founder Brandon Dohman has paid a single $200 towards all development and work on LunchBoxPal. The now-tech-consultant-gone-serial-entrepreneur estimates future expenses of $3-5,000 to get LBP into the spotlight. When asked, Dohman replied he’ll either be making these investments himself, or possibly seeking a strategic partner to help out.

So far, Dohman hopes to connect colleagues and people meeting up through the site with restaurant and cafes, which I think is a wise and strategic model. Take a look at their advertising page to learn more about it.

The idea popped into Dohman’s head when, “…one day while I was sitting bored at my desk during my lunch break.  Many times, I end up sitting at my desk reading through some blogs, or reading up on new business concepts, which after a month got boring.  And one day I realized… It would be nice if I had a way to connect with someone who wouldn’t mind catching a lunch and talking some business, or politics, or the most recent Family Guy episode.”

Still in pre-beta development stages, Dohman reports a hopeful launch date of May 31st. We couldn’t get our hands on any invites or screenshots just yet, but Brandon said the service will be based (though very heavily modified) off popular open-source networking platform Elgg. Hopefully we’ll be able to send out a few beta invites once things come closer to being ready. Look out for more coverage on LunchBoxPal as it unwraps.

Tim Hussey sent me an email this morning telling me about a project he is working on called Pixifi.

Tim is a part time wedding photographer (as well as being a professional designer/developer) and after getting sick of using a combination of Outlook, Excell and Word to manage his clients he thought something needed to be done. Strangely enough this is how most really useful web applications come about, someone is in need of it, so they make it.

Tim was nice enough to let me have a look around an early version of Pixifi today and I was generally impressed. I could see how it would be a valuable resource for any freelance photographer looking fir an easy way to manage their work load. What impressed me even more was that Tim has designed and developed this entire thing himself. From the ground up. It’s very rare to find someone who can both design and program exceptionally well. So, to date he has spent $0 on the website. Although… (and this is a wonderful quote)

I had to sacrifice time with my wife and friends to start building it…
You can’t put a price on that kind of startup funding… it’s expensive unless you’re
willing to make the sacrifice in the beginning.

Below is a quick look at the app itself.