Archive for March, 2011

Add ChimpIt to your must-have fave Travel Apps

Friday, March 25th, 2011
National Geographic Travelers Travel App Round-Up

National Geographic Traveler's Travel App Round-Up

The Radar: Travel Apps Edition

By Giovanna Palatucci, March 24, 2011 9:00 AM

Navigation. Information. Communication. Travelers are syncing their mobile phones with handy tools and guides before they hit the road. Apps are a great way to tap into the local conversation or condense a stack of guidebooks into one slim device. Here are a few apps to consider downloading before your next trip [read more].
Photo: Rammesh Nav/My Shot
 
Got a favorite travel app? Let NatGeo know . Tweet your favorites to @NatGeoTraveler using the hashtag #ngtradar.  Better yet, tweet < @NatGeoTraveler #ngtradar @chimpit > to vote for ChimpIt as  your favorite app.  Here’s a comment on ChimpIt that we tried to share on The Radar’s site, but there was something wrong with their submissions form:
 
ChimpIt travel app makes your notebook location-aware

ChimpIt travel app makes your notebook location-aware

ChimpIt is a travel app that makes your notebook location-aware like a smartphone.  It works great in your hotel room or cafe while planning your outings for the day.  It automatically welcomes you to your hotel, displays its logo and location on a Google Map and builds a local portal with local news, weather, and deals nearby.  The Google Map is highly optimized for easy searches like “atm” or “pharmacy” or “museum.”  Amazingly, even the international movie listings seem to work in most places.  Unfortunately, the local deals nearby are not as reliable abroad due to the app’s dependence on Groupons.  This feature will improve with Groupon’s success.  There’s even a built-in feature that makes it easy to share your location/experience with your Facebook friends.  Give ChimpIt a try!

 

 

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ChimpIt joins StartUp Crawl at SXSW

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
StartUp Crawl presented by the Capital Factory

StartUp Crawl presented by the Capital Factory

Startup Spotlight: ChimpIt, Moodfish & StereoWagon are about you and discovery.  ChimpIt and Moodfish help you find things to do based on where you are and what you want right now.  StereoWagon takes your search for auditory bliss online. Ditch the industry and discover straight from the source. That’s the cool part.  The fun part?  Dunk-A-CEO.  Toss down a brew or two and see how quickly you can dunk-a-ceo at the startup dunking booth.  ChimpIt, Moodfish and StereoWagon will all be at Conjunctured (conjunctured.com) on the uber-hip East Side.  1309 E. 7th Street.

Easily tour these three cool companies and mingle with their teams by hopping the free StartUp Crawl Shuttle.  Shuttles travel a circuit from the Convention Center (3rd and Trinity) and depart every 15-20 minutes from 4-10pm.  Get more details on StartUp Crawl and the rest of the participating companies at http://www.atxstartupcrawl.com/

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Free Beer, Free Coffee, Free WiFi @ SXSW Interactive

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
Use ChimpIt's Great Local Deals Around You to find the secret location of valuable ChimpIt buttons

Use ChimpIt's Great Local Deals Around You to find the secret location of valuable ChimpIt buttons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ChimpIt will greatly enhance your WiFi experience by providing you with FREE BEER and FREE COFFEE during SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX. 

Everyday, ChimpIt users will learn the secret location where they can pick up their ChimpIt button.  Up to 100 buttons will be distributed to the lucky folks who find them. 

There will be 3 ChimpIt special events for button wearers.  One of the events will feature free beer for all button wearers.  The first 20 to arrive will also receive a free 22oz ChimpIt stein.  The other two events are caffeine-oriented to get your morning started with free coffee for all button wearers.  The first 20 to arrive will receive a free 15oz Chimpit ceramic travel mug.  These mugs are worth stealing!

To participate in this promotion, you will need to install Chimpit on your notebook and check the Great Local Deals Around You for the ChimpIt button location.  Arrive at the specified time.  New locations and times will be displayed everyday until all the buttons are gone.

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ChimpIt Walk-Through / SXSW 2011 Launch

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
ChimpIt. You are here. Here's what's near.

ChimpIt. You are here. Here's what's near.

Ever since Gowalla launched at SXSW 2009, notebook users worldwide have felt neglected.  While the check-in wars have waged on between Gowalla, FourSquare, and Loopt (who?), notebook users have sat on the sidelines wondering why smartphones get all the cool apps.

  
The wait is over.
  
For two years, the slowpokes at Less Networks have labored to bring the world a better WiFi experience and they call it “ChimpIt.”  ChimpIt is a small downloadable notebook check-in app with a few interesting characteristics.
First of all, you don’t need to check in.  ChimpIt is a convenient “no check-in required” app because it can automatically detect your location down to the business and street address–often without having to select from a list.  For those of you lucky enough to have stalkers, don’t worry.  ChimpIt doesn’t automatically share your location, but you can if you want.  And since you’re on a notebook, the “experience sharing” capability makes it very easy to type out a rant to your Facebook friends about why the coffee sucks or the mud pie is faboo.
  
At first glance, ChimpIt looks like a simple mash-up of the usual players, Google, Yelp, Facebook, WeatherUnderground, Fandango, etc, but on closer inspection you realize that the ChimpIt team has cleverly assembled and fine-tuned these trusted brands in a way that is surprisingly convenient.  There’s a video demo on the website, but here’s an example.  If you are a traveler and you just arrived at your hotel in a strange city, ChimpIt will somehow figure out which hotel you’re at and then build a neighborhood portal to help orient you to your new surroundings.  It provides the weather, local deals nearby (more on this later), local radio stations and movie listings, a Google map on steroids, and a curious list of strange faces.
There’s seems to be more here than meets the eye.  Let’s begin with the local deals nearby, apparently sourced by fellow Austin startup WantandFound.  WAF allows anyone to type in their favorite drink special, culinary discovery, or shopping bargain, and then syndicates it.  ChimpIt organizes WAF deals by distance from your location.  Since anyone can submit a deal, there’s no quality-control, but on the other hand, the user community can publish and share deals way more effectively than the businesses themselves.  It seems to work out and provides tourists and travelers access to some local knowlege that might not be readily available.
  
Just a big mash up, or more?

Just a big mash up, or more?

The Google map at first is a yawn.  I mean, what’s so special about putting your location on a Google map?  Well, let’s give ChimpIt some credit for figuring out your location first.  Even though you just checked into a hotel, doesn’t mean you actually know your exact street address.  That comes in handy when it comes to navigating to your next destination and ChimpIt has got that down in spades.  Simply search for something like “taco” or “ATM” or “gas” and it becomes clear that the ChimpIt dev team has optimized your Google search to your exact location.  Instead of taco recipes or the history of the petroleum industry, you see exactly where the nearest locations are and if you click you get a bunch of reviews from all the usual sources.  If you click some more, you’ll get specific driving, walking, or transit directions.  The Google map on ChimpIt is a real sleeper, but possibly the most useful of all of ChimpIt’s capabilities.  You may find yourself shifiting more of your searches to ChimpIt even when you’re at home.

Okay, let’s take a closer look at those strange faces trailing down the right side of the screen.  Those are supposed to be “strangers nearby” but when you click on them, they seem to be from random places.  The ChimpIt team says that as more people use ChimpIt the list will become more accurate, but in the meantime, they are casting as wide a net as is necessary to fill the list.  But that begs the question–why would I want to meet strangers?  Well, if I’m at a conference or an airport lounge, that could come in handy.  After all, aren’t we the socially mobile jetset because nearly every opportunity is a networking opportunity, the never-ending mobile mixer?  Interestingly (and not surprisingly), it’s apparent that some of these strangers have already begun the process of mixing because you can see their public shout outs.  You don’t need to be a nun to know that there’s some adult friend finding going on.  This aspect gives the act of “chimping” a whole new meaning…
  
So let’s wrap up this walk-through up. ChimpIt is a notebook app, not a smartphone app, although it’s clear that it seems to bring together some of the best features of the smartphone apps and bulks them up with meatier content. You can get just about everything ChimpIt does without ChimpIt, but it’s awfully damn convenient to have the little monkey pull everything together for you automagically.  The local deals are way cool provided they’re accurate.  The optimized Google map is exactly what it should be.  The strange faces make me feel funny on the inside (I’m married) because it feels naughty even though I can tell myself I’m simply networking for business.
 
The ChimpIt folks call their new toy the best “here you are” app for notebooks.  It might well be the best update to “here you are” technology since someone stuck an arrow on a map for the very first time.  Take ChimpIt with you when you travel.  You’ll know what I mean.

Posted in LBS, Social Media, WiFi, Wireless | 3 Comments »

ChimpIt launches at SXSW 2011

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
ChimpIt. You are here. Here's what's near.

ChimpIt. You are here. Here's what's near.

ChimpIt, the social location-based app  (aka “Here you are” app) for notebooks launches at this year’s SXSW in Austin, TX.  Users of ChimpIt will enjoy the benefit  ”no check-in required” as they use WiFi hotspots–ChimpIt will automatically detect their location and check-in for them.  They can optionally share their location or their experience at a location with their Facebook friends.  The benefits of checking-in or “Chimping” include:

  • Accurate nearby search results (find the nearest tacos, atm, or beer)
  • See local deals nearby (cheap eats and drinks that only locals know about)
  • Handy nearby Yelp reviews
  • Weather, news, gossip, movie listings
  • Discover and meet people nearby

Download ChimpIt and add smarts to notebook WiFi experience!

Watch the demo video here here:

http://www.chimpit.com

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