EggDrop is a new mobile application for buying and selling goods in real-time with those in your local community. The idea is to improve upon the mobile commerce experience by using the technology that ships on modern smartphones. The app lets you use the camera for posting photos of items for sale, filter searches by location and receive push notifications to stay informed about the items you're watching, buying or selling.
In addition, EggDrop introduces an interesting pricing model - the "falling price auction." This enables so-called "frictionless" transactions that work without any haggling, bargaining, deals or discounts. It's as if eBay has been re-imagined for the mobile, social, location-based age.
Norway-based Opera has released the newest version of its Web browser today, promising faster speeds, a streamlined and lightweight user interface and several new extensions.
Opera has reconfigured its "Speed Dial" extension. Instead of static thumbnails of frequently-visited sites, now, when you open a new tab, you can embed websites that will update automatically, such as for weather or stock quotes. Opera has also partnered with several startup applications that give the browser a unique flavor in comparison to the competition.
Pogoplug, from a company called Cloud Engines, is the name of the external USB drive that makes all your files available on the Internet. But now, Cloud Engines is moving into the software space with a new personal cloud product that comes hardware-free. Like the previous service, Pogoplug will let you stream your photo, video and music libraries from any computer connected to the Internet. But in this case, the libraries are stored on your own computer, not an external drive.
How would you like to have a "cognitive prosthetic" that could "adapt to unexpected events" in situations of "intense information overload"...as a personal newsreader app online? That sounds pretty hot and it's exactly what startup TrapIt was when it spun out of DARPA's $200 million research project CALO (Cognitive Assistant That Learns and Organizes) more than a year ago.
TrapIt begins to open up its next-generation newsreader today (the first 500 people to visit this link can try it out for themselves) and I've been testing it this afternoon. My verdict so far? It's attractive, the user experience is pretty good, it seems like its smarts could deliver some meaningful value with ongoing use - but like so many newsreading services trying to go mainstream, the quantity of news it delivers is just too small.
I very rarely review a single mobile app these days - we prefer to do mobile app round-ups here on ReadWriteWeb - but I'm going to make an exception this time for Photogram. This new iPhone application, launched just yesterday, is deserving of a mention, if only for catching my attention among a sea of mobile photo app startups.
From the description, the app seems somewhat basic, maybe even a little boring: share photos via Facebook, Twitter or email. But it does so with a simplicity, elegance and ease that I've often found lacking elsewhere.
What if you could create content as quick as you write a tweet? That is what startup Webdoc wants to know and it has created a tool where building a micro website or digital flyer is a relatively smooth and pain free project.
Webdoc is not revolutionary, but it is an interesting step in do-it-yourself publishing. It gives users a frame that they can do just about anything in and then embed that frame anywhere on the Web. For instance, if you want to create a flyer for your band, add an audio clip and YouTube video and canvas the Internet, a Webdoc may be just the thing you are looking for.
The Chromebook is ready for the Web, but is the Web ready for the Chromebook? This is the fundamental question you must ask yourself before deciding to fork over $400 to $500 dollars for one of the new Google Chrome-powered notebook computers, available as of today. The Chromebook, with initial hardware coming from manufacturers like Samsung and Acer, is a vision of the future of computing where everything is done online, in a Web browser. The operating system it runs has no desktop, no way to install apps to a hard drive and no local folders to store all your personal files. It is a Web browser, and just a Web browser.
And it is pure Google.
Online and mobile cash-based payment service Dwolla has launched its first API (application programming interface), which the company calls "Grid." This tool allows for the integration of Dwolla's cash-based payments service within other platforms and applications. The operation works somewhat like a Facebook Connect for payments - instead of merchants holding your personal data on their servers, that sensitive information is stored within Dwolla. How much of your data they can access is up to you, the consumer. The benefit here is that with less access to this data, there's less risk of fraud.
Creation of an attractive and compelling web app prototype is no small task, but a new startup called InVision offers a framework to do so that looks easy, fast and like a real pleasure to use.
The service lets designers drop image files into its web interface, then create clickable hot-spots on each page. The next page each spot links-to is chosen from a drop down menu of images uploaded and the end result is a stitched-together series of pages that can be shared publicly with a single URL and commented on. It looks really nice and is priced from free for a single small project through $75 per month for up to 25 simultaneous projects with unlimited collaborators. I saw one error in the account creation flow (which the company has now fixed), but otherwise the service appears to work well as promised.
Today a new social game called VinPass launched. It's an application for wine lovers to "share wine reviews, win badges and earn real rewards." VinPass uses the 'check-in' paradigm popularized by location-based social network Foursquare and extended into other areas by the likes of GetGlue (entertainment) and Foodspotting (food). In a nutshell, you check-in to tasting a certain type of wine. If you write a review, you earn points and eventually unlock badges. VinPass promises that these badges have "tangible value" - including coupons on e-commerce stores, MP3s, ringtones, event tickets and more.
Foursquare is still a relatively geeky app, offering little in the way of tangible value in its badges. But focusing on wine should open up plenty of possibilities to offer value for VinPass.
