Our goal is to get our users to the “How did I live without this?” moment. But that can be hard to see before-hand. For example, people lived just fine without cellphones, but can you imagine living without one these days? Our goal is to accomplish the same thing by overlaying the virtual world over the physical world.
This video will explain what we mean with a specific example. Daniel Odio, one of our co-founders, had to get the oil changed in his car. Now, the real question is, when you’re driving down the street, why don’t you have immediate access to know:
What oil change places are around you
What each one of them would charge you for an oil change, and
(most importantly) Which one of them wants your business the most?
Take a look at the video to see in more details how we’re planning on resolving this issue…
o PointAbout Launches iPhone App to Help Voters Find Polling Place
Washington, DC — With the presidential election now less than a week away, DC-basedPointAbout, a developer of mobile applications, said that it has launched a downloadable application for the iPhone that allows voters to find their nearest polling place. The company said that it has taken an existing web service developed by Google and made it location-aware. Now, with one click, users of the company’s “Get Out To Vote!” application can find the closest voting station to their actual physical location. “Based on an informal poll of friends and colleagues, we’ve realized that many people don’t know where to go to vote on election day,” said the company. PointAbout said that it has made the tool a featured application on the front page of the PointAbout iPhone Application Gallery through Nov. 4. http://pointabout.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/find-your-nearest-voting-station-on-election-day/
PointAbout’s downloadable iPhone Application (link opens iTunes) allows you to find the closest voting station on election day!
Here’s how:
For those people not living under a rock, you know that the US presidential election is 8 days away. Based on an informal poll of friends & colleagues, we’ve realized that many people don’t know where to go to vote on election day.
Google has launched a great web service to help people find their voting location. And PointAbout has made it even better by making it location-aware, so with one click you can easily find your nearest voting station!
We’ve made the PointAbout ‘Get Out To Vote!’ app a “Featured By” application on the front page of the PointAbout iPhone Application Gallery through November 4th, 2008.
This will be the first use of the “Featured By” functionality, which lets us highlight applications that are especially relevant to certain events. Let us know what you think!
View Several Screenshots Below. You can download the PointAbout application here(link opens iTunes) to use the “Get Out To Vote!” application through November 4th, 2008.
PointAbout just surpassed 100,000 145,000 page views and 2,500 5,000 users in our first 5 7 days. We are currently averaging almost 2,000 unique visitors per day, and that number has been increasing daily.
Additionally, we’ve gotten requests from around the world, including the UK and Hong Kong, requesting PointAbout internationally. For example, here is one person’s request:
“Can I use this appl in Hong Kong?
Sent from my iPhone”
PointAbout is US-Only to date, but we’ll be working on International expansion in 2009. It’s nice to see the international demand.
PointAbout just released its first private-labeled application, called “DC Alerts”. This video shows the differences between the regular PointAbout application and the branded version.
The beauty of our branding approach is that it allows your business to quickly & easily “mobilize” your brand across multiple phone platforms, which right now include the iPhone, with BlackBerry and Android in testing, and WindowsMobile, Symbian and others to follow. We will have BlackBerry released within 2 weeks with other phones rolling out over the next 90 days.
All your business has to do is code to HTML, just like you’ve been doing. PointAbout takes care of the rest. All of the infrastructure investment you’ve put into your website or web application can be leveraged in the PointAbout application. We pass you the pertinent user information from the phone, including latitude & longitude, city, state & zip, the device ID, accelerometer information, etc. You can then use this information in your website, which is now “location aware”, because you are sitting inside the PointAbout thin-client springboard.
You also get the added benefit of having the PointAbout Application Gallery included, which vastly increases the stickiness and usefulness of your private-labeled application. You can filter which applications are included in the Gallery, so complimentary applications can be included to enhance the value of yours.
For more information or to discuss a specific implementation of PointAbout for your business, please Contact Daniel Odio at Daniel.Odio@PointAbout.com or 202.250.3846.
Click here to view the full Bisnow write-up. Bisnow writes, “Yesterday morning¸ we rose earlyto hear about a certain market that’s growing despite the economic downturn: mobile advertising. We joined about 30 others for an executive briefing at the Deloitte Tech Venture Center in McLean, where we learned the number of mobile devices in the U.S. will jump more than 32% next year. You mean there’ll be even more than there are Starbucks?
PointAbout co-founder Daniel Odio and Mobile Posse CEO Jon Jackson. Daniel’s three-month-old startup creates shell mobile applications that use the phone’s GPS to retrieve useful information. They even created a Metrorail app to show your nearest stop and scheduled wait time. (We hope the 2.0 version will help us find an empty seat on the bus.) Jon tells us Mobile Posse is a targetedmobile advertising platform and just inked a deal to carryGaithersburg-based Weather Bug’s info.”
We’ve been busy porting the PointAbout Thin-Client Springboard to our 2nd device, the BlackBerry. We’re almost done with it, and we already have several clients lined up who want to have us make them location-aware on the BlackBerry. We’ll definitely have it out within 2 weeks but it might be even sooner. If you have a BlackBerry and would like to be a beta tester, we’d love to hear from you at Feedback@PointAbout.com
It’s a big day here at PointAbout, as we were just approved through Apple’s Application Store (click here to go to the application – this will open iTunes on your computer). Now anybody can download PointAbout to their iPhones.
We’ve had over 600 iPhone users download the application in the first 12 hours with no marketing efforts! (yet ) Here are some other stats that are knocking our socks off:
Over 11,000 page views in the PointAbout “thin-client” native app in first 12 hours
An average 12.82 page views per visit
A bounce rate of just 5.79%
Average time on the PointAbout thin client of over four minutes
The top applications are “cheapest gas near you” and “weather in my area”
Here are some of the reviews we’ve been getting:
“The first benefit I see is that this FREE application could replace a half dozen lesser apps I have on the iPhone which would give us more room and less clutter on our Springboards.
Study the app store images and read the reviews to see if you agree with me that this application could simplify your life and iPhone. Couldn’t you get rid of apps like Where! and similar ones like gas buddy, Starbucks etc? Did you notice you can expand this application for new services and web sites?”
Listen to a complete audio transcript of the event here. Note – the voice recorder was set to pause during silence so some parts were cut out (so sorry!).
Today Daniel Odio was on Deloitte’s Tech Venture Center panel on mobile marketing, along with Jon Jackson of Mobile Posse, Michael Avon of Columbia Capital, and Kevin Bertram of Distributive Networks. The panel was kindly hosted by Carl Grant of Cooley Godward Kronish, LLP in lieu of Jason Siegel of Qorvis whose wife went into labor the night before!
Thanks to Ellen Mundell of Deloitte for setting this great panel up.
A 1 1/2 minute video blog about an idea: How to use PointAbout to create a “virtual world within the physical world” Second Life type game. If you’re interested in pursuing this idea, please let us know
*** PLEASE VOTE FOR OUR APP!!! *** INSTRUCTIONS BELOW.
Here’s a short video showcasing our first entry to iStrategyLabs‘ “Apps for Democracy” contest. Our first submission is a Realtime, location-aware DC alerting tool for the iPhone, which includes crime reports, building permits and more. This data is provided by Washington, DC and we’re making it “location aware,” meaning the crime alerts in your area, for example, show up first.
In fact, we can easily location-enable any RSS or XML feed that contains location data, and turn that into an application on the iPhone, and soon Blackberry, with many other phones coming. If you have an RSS or XML feed you’d like to have behave as a location-aware application, complete with your own custom-branded icon, just let us know!
Here’s a 2 1/2 minute YouTube video showing what we’ve been up to. Needless to say, we’ve been busy! The PointAbout springboard now has a Safari browser integrated into the application, meaning we no longer have to close the native app and open Safari. Everything happens inside our application now, which gives us much more control over the process of determining the user’s location and sending that data to the web.
I’ve just finished creating a 12 page marketing brochure for potential PointAbout clients. I call it “on demand marketing” where I’m creating the PDF collateral as clients are requesting specific information. That’s how this specific document was created — based on client requests for information. Since we’re still a small company, I’m handling both marketing and sales, so I’m getting to flex my Photoshop and InDesign skills in addition to being on the telephone all day. As we grow we’ll bring in a dedicated marketing person. Like any entrepreneur knows, the entrepreneur’s life is like a lake: A mile wide and a foot deep in various skillsets. Gotta know how to do a little bit of everything!
I’d love any feedback you have on what makes sense and what doesn’t. You’re welcome to email me anytime at Daniel.Odio@PointAbout.com.
October 16, 2008 at 3:20 am
· Filed under News Flash
PointAbout was one of 5 companies that presented at the Grubstake Competition. Click Here to listen to the audio of the presentation, or watch the video here:
Here are some pictures from the presentation:
*** ORIGINAL POST ***
We’ll be presenting PointAbout at the Grubstake business funding competition tomorrow. I’ll post a video of the presentation here after it’s done.
PointAbout is one of five companies selected to present out of a field of 30+ entries in front of an audience of 200+ people. Grubstake is the longest running competition in the region. More details on Grubstake available here.
) Here are some other stats that are knocking our socks off:
