Archive for the ‘Startups’ Category
Posted on February 25, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton
What’s happening with @TriOut ? A Location-Based Social Network for NC.
If you’re live in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, NC area also known as the Triangle and/or follow me on Twitter I’m sure you have seen a few Tweets about @TriOut. TriOut which stands for Triangle Out is an idea that was first conceived in October 2009 by Lawrence Ingraham @Lawpower (founder of TriOut). Lawrence knew I was a fan of location-based apps and said we have the perfect community in North Carolina to launch our own location-based service. After a few meetings over coffee and iPhone app beta testing, I joined Lawrence in helping make TriOut go from an idea to a reality. Mostly in #vampiremode at night.
Fast forward 5 months later and last week we held a launch party at the RTP Headquarters with about 100 attendees and launched the website http://TriOutNC.com for non-iphone users and the community.
Ealier this week we emailed our first newsletter to our subscribers thanking everyone and announcing our first check-in special with 3 local Dairy Queen locations and a top 5 Empire Eats check-in contest. It has been a pleasure working with Lawrence and we’re excited about the future of TriOut. Thanks for the support NC and if you’re not subscribed to our email newsletter you can do so here and on our blog.
Take a look at our first email newsletter below from TriOut with more details about the launch party, check-in specials and our contest.
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TriOutNC.com launches
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Hello everyone
Last Wednesday, at the RTP Headquarters (@theRTP) around 100 people were in attendance from early TriOut beta users and bloggers, venture capitalists and, programers/developers, along with friends and family – as we officially launched TriOutNC.com and removed the invitation-only mode for the TriOut iPhone app. We would like to thank our sponsors and everyone who was in attendance. You can read the official press release here and recap post here. Also check out some the photos here by John Rees. |
Mad Treats, Inc, Dairy Queen Check-in Special
| Another announcement we made at the launch party was our “check-in” special with Mad Treats, Inc. at 3 local Dairy Queen Locations.The current specials are available at the locations:
DQ Grill & Chill (New Bern Ave) DQ Grill & Chill w/Orange Julius(Morrisville Carpenter) DQ / Orange Julius (Brier Creek) After you have checked-in you’ll see one of the following badges for either a Buy one Medium Blizzard, Get the Second Free or get $1.00 off any smoothie. From there just show the badge to the cashier to receive your TriOut “check-in” special. Be sure to join us at the Triangle FreezeUp! FreezerBurns Live! @DQ on Monday, March 01, 2010 7:00 PM – 10:00 at the DQ Grill & Chill w/Orange Julius(Morrisville Carpenter) location hosted by Gregory Ng. You’ll recieve 10 TriOut points for attending and you can RSVP here: http://freezeup.eventbrite.com |
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Top 5 wins free $25 Gift Certificate at Empire Eats via Check-in Contest.
| As some of you may have noticed every Monday morning the @TriOut Twitter account sends out a Tweet of the top 5 TriOut users for the week. With the new TriOutNC.com website you can see the leaderboard updating in real-time. We’re please to announce the Empire Eats Top 5 TriOut Check-in Contest for the week of February 22 – 28. The top 5 users for the week will receive a $25 gift certificate at one of the following Empire Eats locations below. You can read the full contest details including how to get points here. |
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Thank You Launch Party Sponsors
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Connect with us |
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| Blog | @TriOut | TriOutapp | TriDot pics | iPhone app | Feedback |
TriOut | 4501 New Bern Ave.STE 130-252, Raleigh, NC 27610 919.295.0824 | contact@TriOutNC.com| icons via http://icondock.com. |
Posted on January 21, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton
15 online customer support solutions for your startup
Ok here’s a post that includes Foursquare but not about Foursquare but is about Foursquare just not about locations. Now that we have that out of the way, like most startups using web apps to save time and money have become somewhat of a standard process. You can use Google Docs for all of your office application needs, you can use Phonebooth, Skype or Google Voice for phone service and instead of hiring teams for customer service, startups are using web base applications for customer support and ticketing. One of the most popular customer support platforms for startups is Get Satisfaction, which offers an instant way for companies to manage customer support, share ideas and gather feedback from customers as well. Get Satisfaction provides freemium services with paid upgrades for more options. We’re using it for customer support and feedback at TriOut. Since the launch of Get Satisfaction more platforms have lunched not to just focus on customer support but to focus on community feedback or collect ideas. Here’s a list of 15 online customer support solutions for your startup.
*disclosure I have no affiliation with any off the companies listed above.
Have you used one of the customer support platforms before? Which one is your favorite?
Posted on October 11, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton
Startups and Monkey Logos
Yesterday I went to see the movie Cloudy with a chance of meatballs and one of the key chacters is a monkey named Steve. (see Steve above). By the way, the movie is great. But back to Steve, the monkey reminds of a few web services that uses monkeys as logos such as.
Chatterbox:
MailChimp;
Brizzly: (really not sure what this is, but looks close to a monkey )
Paul Frank
Just a random thought, have you seen more monkey logos?
Posted on October 1, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton
Twingly launches Real-Time social filter channels. (Invites)
From http://blog.twingly.com
The realtime web is overwhelming us with information. Search is not social. RSS is a broken promise. Twingly Channels brings a revolution to these three areas.
A Twingly Channel acts as a social filter on top of feeds and realtime search, allowing you to set up a social memetracker for any topic or event. The underlying idea is that by aggregating feeds and realtime search results into a channel where many people sharing the same interest can discuss and vote on the content (while also providing a filter to solve the prevalent problem of information overflow) we lower the learning curve to the realtime web.
Twingly Channels provides instant user value without the user having to spend time finding the right people to follow. Following topics rather than individuals, you immediately tap into the collective intelligence of a group of people sharing your interests. Or you can create your own channel and invite others to assist you in picking feeds and keywords to monitor.
Invites
Twingly channels are in private beta but I have 15 invites for the readers of SocialWayne.com. Use “Wayne” as the invite code. I’m currently traveling and will write review about Twingly channels and how I plan to use them to monitor information/brands in real-time next week.
After you create your account let me know what you think about Twingly channels and how you plan to use it in the comments.
Posted on September 15, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton
5 new ways to filter, find and read blog content. Blogs are back!
It seems like innovation has hit the technology community again especially in the RSS / blogging / content aggregation sector. Just a few months ago everyone was talking about or how micro-blogging sites such as Twitter would kill blogs. People were saying RSS was too slow and everyone would be using people aggregation to find information in the terms of if something was important, people through social networks such as Facebook & Twitter would tell find information that way instead of reading blogs.
While that may stay true for some, new ways of filtering, finding and reading content have emerged helping users find relevant content to their interest. Let’s take a look.
1. YourVersion – http://www.yourversion.com
YourVersion continuously discovers new and personally relevant web content based on your interests, and lets you easily bookmark and share your discoveries with friends.
YourVersion was recently named DemoPit peoples’ choice winner at TechCrunch50
2. Google Fast Flip – http://fastflip.googlelabs.com
Google Fast Flip is a web application that lets users discover and share news articles. It combines qualities of print and the Web, with the ability to “flip” through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine. It also enables users to follow friends and topics, discover new content and create their own custom magazines around searches.
3. LazyFeed – http://www.lazyfeed.com
Lazyfeed is a web service that allows you to subscribe to any topics and get live updates. Just save any topic you are interested in, and forget about it. Lazyfeed will remember and let you know when there’s new content on that topic, just like an instant messenger. Lazyfeed allows you to stay on top of everything you care about, effortlessly.
4. Feedly (Firefox plug-in) – http://www.feedly.com
feedly organizes your favorite sites into a fun, magazine-like start page.
5. Alltop – http://Alltop.com
The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you.
While Feedly and Alltop have been online a lot longer than LazyFeed, Google Fast Flip and YourVersion, I thought they could be useful to the non-tech readers of SocialWayne.com.
Google Reader is still my preferred choice to read blogs but with features like auto discovery of new content LazyFeed and YourVersion are good tools for bloggers looking to find content or just to keep up with the latest news from the social web / blogosphere.
Out of the five tools which one do you use? What do you use to read blogs?
Posted on July 28, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton
Posterous: The who, why & how from the founders. Is it the next big platform?
I’m not sure if you have noticed but recently a lot of people have been posting various forms of multimedia content to their Twitter stream with the short url http://post.ly. That short url redirects to Posterous.com a Y Combinator startup that launched a little over a year ago. Posterous isn’t just a short url or multimedia content platform, it’s a social network, blogging platform that integrates with other platforms that allow you to post content via email and more. You can use Posterous as your blog which some have see: Steve Rubel , as a life-stream site or just post random pictures and photos to push to Facebook, tumblr or your other blogs.
At SXSW 09 Kipp Bodnar and I had a chance to meet and interview the founders Gary Tan and Sachin Agarwal about Posterous and upcoming plans for the platform. Also some have wondered how do you pronounce “Posterous” listen very closely as you’ll here it once from Sachin.
In the video the founders talk about how easy it is to use Posterous and upcoming plans for the platform.
Since SXSW I’ve created a Posterous site and configured it to post to a various social networks. As the founders stated in the video being that you can use email to post to Posterous I send pictures from my iPhone to my site. But since I have purchased the iPhone 3Gs I have used Posterous as a podcasting platform by emailing a voice recording message or for video blogging as I can send audio and video emails to Posterous and it automatically adds the necessarily embedded player.
If you thinking that Posterous is just another one of those here today and gone tomorrow startups, I suggest you take a look at some of the users and think again. Posterous users range from everyday bloggers to leaders in the social media marketing and technology space. Here are a few Posterous sites from users who you may recognize:
- http://chrisbrogan.posterous.com
- http://andybeal.net
- http://tedmurphy.mobi
- http://rah.posterous.com
- http://bwana.posterous.com
- http://ginnyskal.posterous.com
- http://georgegsmithjr.posterous.com
- http://idonotes.posterous.com
- http://jasonfalls.posterous.com
- http://jakrose.posterous.com
- http://tweetdeck.posterous.com
- http://ijustine.posterous.com
- http://holykaw.com
Recommended reading: Ten Tips to Get the Most Out of Posterous
Do you have a Posterous site if so let me know the url in the comments and how are you using it.
Posted on June 19, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton
Friday Fix: 5 online .TV shows to keep an eye on
So l missed last Friday Fix last week and no one noticed… hmm. Anyway this week on Friday Fix is 5 online .TV shows to keep an eye on or should I say to subscribe to.
1. Rock the Job - http://rockthejob.com
About: Rock the Job helps students understand the impact of social media on their careers.
2. Bwana.TV – http://www.bwana.tv
About: Reviews and discussions on gadgets, social media, blogging and technology.
3. This week in Startups - http://thisweekinstartups.com
About: Jason McCabe Calacanis is the founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, a human-powered search engine focused on the top English-language search terms, including verticals such as travel, products, news, entertainment, sports, food, and health.
4. North Carolina Wine TV – http://northcarolinawine.tv
About: North Carolina Wine TV is an online video show hosted by Jeff Cohen and Kipp Bodnar that is published twice weekly on Tuesday and Thursdays that is focused on reviewing wines produced in North Carolina.
5. From the Couch – http://www.from-the-couch.com
About: ‘From the Couch’ is an Online Video show, hosted by us brothers Marc and David Perel, which covers everything web orientated. We show you CSS tips, how to create websites from nothing and also chat about news in the web world.
Shameless Plug WayneSutton.TV is still in beta and I hope to have it launched by the end of June.
What are you favorite .TV shows?
Posted on June 19, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton
Weekly Pitch: BabelWith.me a group translation chat room web app.
The Pitch
BabelWith.me is a simple chat tool that allows you to hold conversations in up to 45 languages. Invite your friends through Twitter, Facebook and email to join you in a conversation without language barriers. Or you can simply share your unique chat room URL anywhere you would like.
As users from around the world join your chat room, they’re given the option to choose a nickname and their language. Choosing any language other than English will immediately translate the entire chat room into the language they choose, including the chat log and all static copy.
BabelWith.me implements Google Translate’s API and runs on Google App Engine’s Python platform. This offers BabelWith.me great reliability and flexibility as we continue to add usefulness to the application and expand the opportunity for real-time, multi-language communication.
LifeChurch.tv is the non-profit organization behind BabelWith.me.
My first impressions:
I’m very impressed with the design and the usability of BabelWith.me, it’s simple and it works.
Will I use it?
Maybe, but I don’t have to many international conversations but a free group chat room is nice to have around.
What features I like?
The speed of the site, and social networking integration to promote your chat room.
What features would I like to see:
Although I haven’t spent to much time with BabelWith.me I would like to see a login profile linked to a custom permanent chat room name.
You can find BabelWith.me on twitter as @BabelWithMe
If you would like for me to cover your product or site please email: pitches at pitches at socialwayne dot com . Disclaimer:, I have no investment or relationship with the creators of this site. Thank you.
Posted on March 31, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton
5 twitter apps from the Triangle: @idek, @tweetgrid, @easytweets, GeoTweeter & just launched @getencouraged
Once again, I’m devoting a blog post to twitter on SocialWayne.com. The next post will be about some social media tools, I promise. Nevertheless, if you didn’t know, I reside in Raleigh, N.C., and we call the area the Triangle, which includes Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and surrounding areas such as Cary, Carrboro, Apex, etc. We’re also known as the Research Triangle Park, aka RTP, which is home to companies like Cisco, IBM and Sony Ericsson. As for startups in the area we have iContact, ruzuku, Carrboro Creative Coworking, Bronto, Unblab to name a few and recently some Twitter web based apps have been created right here in the Triangle. Here are five that I know of.
1. idek.net @idek
idek.net is a url shortener, you have a long url, we have some short ones to spare. Sounds like a fair trade.
Created by: Adam Covati (@covati)
Location: Durham, NC
2. tweetgrid.com
Tweetgrid, creates a real time twitter search dashboard. Tweetgrid recently launched an iPhone version of their website:
Just go to http://tweetgrid.com/iphone/ on your iPhone.
Created by: Jazzy Chad @jazzychad
Location: Raleigh, NC
3. EasyTweets
EasyTweets is an online marketing tool to promote and grow your business by leveraging the power of microblogging.
Created by: Alexander Barbara @ayb
Location: Triangle, NC
Just launched is:
4. Get Encouraged</a>: @getencouraged
Send your encouraging quotes and thoughts to us and we’ll retweet them. Follow us and get a stream of encouragement all day long.
Created by: Rick Cecil & Abe Crystal of More Better Labs
Location: Research Triangle Park, NC
UPDATE: Let’s make that 5 twitter apps,
5. GeoTweeter for iPhone [iTunes link]
This cool iPhone app puts the ‘where’ into your tweets! Messages automatically include a ’schmap.me’ link, showing followers your exact location with a configurable map icon: say more about places you visit with an optional photo and star rating.
Created by:Donald McMillan @donaldmcmillan of Schmap
Location: Carrboro, NC
As you can tell I’m proud of NC and the teams behind each site and speaking of startups this weekend in Raleigh, NC we’re having Triangle Startup Weekend. If you’re in the area come by and let’s launch another startup.
Do you know someone who created a twitter app? If so what state or city do they reside in?
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About
Business development/marketing strategist for TriOut. Take a look around this site. I have some of informative post for you to enjoy. Leave me a comment if you read one that educates or inspires you. I can be reached via voicemail at 919-809-7328 or email at info at socialwayne dot com.
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