The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Each weekend, Mashable hand-picks startups we think are building interesting, unique or niche products.
This week we’ve rounded up startups that are making new tools to help you shop, sell and run more efficiently.
Dibsie is a deal shopping site that learns your preferences, Lockboxer helps with pricing, inventory and sales, and Smashrun motivates runners with rankings and badges.
Dibsie
Quick Pitch: Dibsie is a visually pleasant shopping deals site that learns what you like.
Genius Idea: A new take on marketing discounts.
Mashable’s Take: Dibsie catalogs discounts across industries into one image-based browsing experience. As users hover, click and like items, it learns what they like and adjusts its recommendations accordingly. Users can also follow a particular business.
Many of the deals are non-exclusive sales, but it is nice to be alerted to them all in one place.
“Unlike unwanted ads in the margin of other sites, our visitors actually opt in — and want us to use their interactions on the site to make better recommendations,” explains CEO Garren Givens. “The products — which are essentially ads — become more like content (like a constantly evolving shopping catalog).”
Businesses can easily add their own deals with a self-serve dashboard (deals are reviewed by Dibsie before they are posted). It’s free for them to post up to 100 credits of deals while Dibsie is in beta, but eventually the site will charge companies either on a per-deal basis or for an unlimited membership.
Lockboxer
Quick Pitch: Lockboxer tells you how much your stuff is worth and helps you sell or donate it.
Genius Idea: Creating a log of possessions for insurance or moving purposes.
Mashable’s Take: At its core, Lockboxer is a price search engine. Users type in an item and the site returns both the prices it is selling for online. This functionality isn’t particularly handy, however, as the same can be easily accomplished on a site like Google Shopping, Amazon or eBay.
Lockboxer is aiming to take the process further by becoming an inventory management site for your stuff. As you look up prices, you can automatically add items to a master list. From here, you can select what you want to sell and post it directly to eBay or your social media accounts. You can also select items to donate and retain an estimate of their values for tax purposes.
Probably the most useful function of the site is a home inventory tool that encourages users to snap photos of each room in their houses and document their contents. This is something that can be done without Lockboxer’s aide, but the free site provides a template, cloud storage and prices for the items. Listing everything you own might seem low on the to-do list, but can become much more important if you need to use your homeowners insurance.
Smashrun
Quick Pitch: Smashrun is analytics for your running.
Genius Idea: Motivating runners with badges and rankings.
Mashable’s Take: For a relatively simple sport, running can involve a lot of data. Smashrun helps track distance, speed and duration of your runs by either connecting with a Nike+ product or inputting details about each run.
While other businesses like Runkeeper are already safely settled in a similar niche, Smashrun’s free service takes a different tone by rewarding runners with badges for milestone runs and showing them how they stack up against all other users in the database by distance, speed and frequency.
It also ranks individual runs against the user’s own history so that she knows, for instance, when she’s just run farther than ever before. Other fun data points include what day of the week and time of day a user most frequently runs and the longest break between runs.
It’s a fun way for casual runners to keep a log of their progress and share milestones.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Ed Yourdon
More About: bizspark, dibsie, lockboxer, smashrun, Startup Weekend RoundupFor more Startups coverage:Follow Mashable Startups on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Startups channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Sat, 20 Aug 2011 19:07:05 +0000 at http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/0R933pmx4XA/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/08/20/tools-shopping-selling-running/#comments
Each weekend, Mashable hand-picks startups we think are building interesting, unique or niche products.
This week we’ve rounded up startups that are making new tools to help you shop, sell and run more efficiently.
Dibsie is a deal shopping site that learns your preferences, Lockboxer helps with pricing, inventory and sales, and Smashrun motivates runners with rankings and badges.
Dibsie
Quick Pitch: Dibsie is a visually pleasant shopping deals site that learns what you like.
Genius Idea: A new take on marketing discounts.
Mashable’s Take: Dibsie catalogs discounts across industries into one image-based browsing experience. As users hover, click and like items, it learns what they like and adjusts its recommendations accordingly. Users can also follow a particular business.
Many of the deals are non-exclusive sales, but it is nice to be alerted to them all in one place.
“Unlike unwanted ads in the margin of other sites, our visitors actually opt in — and want us to use their interactions on the site to make better recommendations,” explains CEO Garren Givens. “The products — which are essentially ads — become more like content (like a constantly evolving shopping catalog).”
Businesses can easily add their own deals with a self-serve dashboard (deals are reviewed by Dibsie before they are posted). It’s free for them to post up to 100 credits of deals while Dibsie is in beta, but eventually the site will charge companies either on a per-deal basis or for an unlimited membership.
Lockboxer
Quick Pitch: Lockboxer tells you how much your stuff is worth and helps you sell or donate it.
Genius Idea: Creating a log of possessions for insurance or moving purposes.
Mashable’s Take: At its core, Lockboxer is a price search engine. Users type in an item and the site returns both the prices it is selling for online. This functionality isn’t particularly handy, however, as the same can be easily accomplished on a site like Google Shopping, Amazon or eBay.
Lockboxer is aiming to take the process further by becoming an inventory management site for your stuff. As you look up prices, you can automatically add items to a master list. From here, you can select what you want to sell and post it directly to eBay or your social media accounts. You can also select items to donate and retain an estimate of their values for tax purposes.
Probably the most useful function of the site is a home inventory tool that encourages users to snap photos of each room in their houses and document their contents. This is something that can be done without Lockboxer’s aide, but the free site provides a template, cloud storage and prices for the items. Listing everything you own might seem low on the to-do list, but can become much more important if you need to use your homeowners insurance.
Smashrun
Quick Pitch: Smashrun is analytics for your running.
Genius Idea: Motivating runners with badges and rankings.
Mashable’s Take: For a relatively simple sport, running can involve a lot of data. Smashrun helps track distance, speed and duration of your runs by either connecting with a Nike+ product or inputting details about each run.
While other businesses like Runkeeper are already safely settled in a similar niche, Smashrun’s free service takes a different tone by rewarding runners with badges for milestone runs and showing them how they stack up against all other users in the database by distance, speed and frequency.
It also ranks individual runs against the user’s own history so that she knows, for instance, when she’s just run farther than ever before. Other fun data points include what day of the week and time of day a user most frequently runs and the longest break between runs.
It’s a fun way for casual runners to keep a log of their progress and share milestones.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Ed Yourdon
More About: bizspark, dibsie, lockboxer, smashrun, Startup Weekend RoundupFor more Startups coverage:Follow Mashable Startups on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Startups channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Sat, 20 Aug 2011 19:07:05 +0000 at http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/0R933pmx4XA/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/08/20/tools-shopping-selling-running/#comments