First day of #StartupBus 2012: 6am, after a meet and greet with the WashingtonPost at 6am, StartupBus #DC embarked on the fateful 72-hour SxSW-bound adventure.
With 29 buspreneurs on board; our conductor Derina Man & in-house coach Justin Isaf made sure by 8:30am ET, #DC was popping with energy, and first round of pitches (see whole list) was well underway.
Shortly after, our kick-ass team of 6 coders, and 3 all-purpose entrepreneurs came together. We decided to introduce the world to, what we called, tourious.
In short, tourious is a social travel platform, connecting parties with similar interests, and allows tourists to explore hidden alleys and hole-in-the-walls with liked-minded local ambassadors. We want to make tourism personal.
Throughout the day, we did customer developments (our latest survey), a lot of Twitter campaigns (1, 2, 3), troubleshooting our landing page, refining & defining ideas, wire-framing, and our results (as of 10:45pm ET):
- LaunchRock: 27 signed up / 121 page load (23.1%)
- A functional wireframe
- Node.js & Redis backend in the works (5 tables polymorphic)
- In just one day, we have crossed three or four states & multiple internet outages (we’re now in Kentucky?)
However, we need more of you! You can help us build a brand new travel experience by signing-up now!
Join us, before our launch tomorrow (3/7). There will be many more hurdles in true scrappy startup fashion. We have our eyes on the main stage at Startup Village @ SxSW!
(via tourious)
Telephone
Pinback - Good to Sea
Unabashedly fun summer music. This has been playing in my headphones too much. Much thanks to my buddy Bill for the musical intro.
Old ship
Diamond Rings - All Yr Songs
Heard this song the other day on turntable.fm*. Total guilty pleasure. To me this song sounds like it came out in 1998 (and it sounds like something I would have been listening to in 1998). If you’re feeling brave you can YouTube the strange and entertaining music video.
*I’ve tried to remember the last time I was as excited about a web site as I am about turntable.fm. It’s a ton of fun, and for a pseudo music snob like me, it fulfills this intense narcissistic need to have other people appreciate my taste in music. Everyone should try it. The idea is very simple. There are rooms themed around different types of music (or anything else for that matter). In each room there are five DJ slots in a lineup on a little stage. Below the stage there is space for the avatars of the people listening. Any time a DJ leaves and a new spot opens up, anyone in the room can hop up on stage. The app rotates through each DJ spot and plays the next song in that DJ’s queue. During each song everyone can click the “Lame” or “Awesome” buttons. If you click Awesome, then your avatar starts bobbing his head and the DJ gets a point. With points you can unlock new avatars! With new avatars you feel even cooler! It’s crazy awesome. I highly encourage everyone to try it, but for now it’s only if you have a Facebook friend (like me) who is also using it (oh exclusivity…).
Blue water
Beirut - East Harlem
This song just started making its way around and has blown up - for good reason. It’s quite a tune and I’m totally hooked. The onslaught of songs demanding to be played all summer has officially begun. My guess: it will take less than one complete listen for you to enjoy this song. And for a great value add, Google the lyrics if you can’t quite make them out.
Another rose wilts in East Harlem…
Anchor
Fort Lean - High Definition
Sometimes an indie rock band can just sound a little bit like a thousand other indie rock bands and that’s OK. I like this tune a lot. It lulls you for a bit with the nice jingly guitars and soft vocals and then it gets a little more serious, but even then keeps it’s pop sensibilities close by. And then at the very end, hey, let’s yell a little bit - why not?
Hat tip to Bitzl R, the newest tumblr blog providing me with audio entertainment.
Also, these guys are playing Glasslands on Saturday…
Faded wood
I live in New York. My interests are varied.
