Pursuit of APPiness: Detour, Be My Eyes and Status
The app world is very noisy! There are a bunch of apps being developed everyday and we carry a weekly App Fridays column to review the best of what is coming from India but even these are pretty early stage. This new series will feature impressive apps, from around the world that are stable and have impressed us by their use case, UI or UX. Here we go with the first bunch of apps featured on Pursuit of APPiness:
Detour is location-aware walking tour app. In a non-touristy way it guides users through different parts of a city to introduce them to new places and local people that reside there. Detour besides being location-aware, also connects the phones of a group as a mesh with Bluetooth low energy wireless pairing to syncs audio between two groups which are walking around on the same tour together. The people narrating the walking tour are storytellers rather than typical tour guide. For people who hate carrying a guidebook and read while they walk or follow a tour guy, this app comes as a rescue.
The app has been out for beta testing six month ago, now it’s ready to take users for a tour in SF. The Founder, Andrew Mason, hasn’t disclosed his international expansion plan yet. But he said other people can use this platform to host their content and organize a tour.
What I love about the app is that it is unlike other audio guides, and it is a technology platform-play as much as content-play. If Uber can know your location and send you a taxi, Detour’s innovative tech powered by GPS and iBeacons can push the right story at the right location at the right time. That is the magic of the app, how everything is neatly tied together. Uber forced the taxi industry to be technology players or go out of the game; Detour could do that for the tour guide industry. I won’t be that surprised if clones pop up in different geographies just like the Uber case. As AirBnB disrupted the tourism and travel stay, with some scale and luck Detour could to the same for tour guide industry worldwide. Read more.
Check: iOS, *Android coming soon.
Url: http://detour.com
Be My Eyes is an app that is providing crowdsourced help for the blind using video chat. It’s built by Hans Jørgen Wiberg, who is visually impaired. His app makes life easier for the blind by connecting them with sighted helpers via a smartphone app.
What I love about Be My Eyes is that for tasks that require normal vision, visually impaired people can request a sighted volunteer to help out while handling big and small tasks. The blind person ‘lends’ the helper’s eyes through his or her smartphone camera. It is a brilliant use of camera and voice. Volunteers earn points for part of a real change in people's lives.
It only takes a minute to choose the right tin can from the shelf, look at the expiration date on the milk or find the right thing to eat in the fridge if you have full vision that is. For visual impaired individuals smaller tasks in their home can often become bigger challenges. Be My Eyes hopes to change that! Read more.
At present 1,23,477 sighted people are in the network. And 32,716 sighted peopled have assisted 11,016 blind people.
Check out the app on: iOS & *Android coming soon.
Url: http://bemyeyes.org/
Status: The app’s main uses case is sending automatic status updates. It lets you see someone's status in real time while you are calling them with no extra effort on your part to tell people that you are in a meeting, driving or on a call. Set up notifications for when a friend leaves work.
It was built by Kulveer Taggar, birthed out of his own frustration. He reportedly said, “My phone died at an event. At the same time, my girlfriend was waiting to hear from me. She thought I was ignoring her. The next day, I was interrupted in a couple of meetings by phone calls. I wanted folks to know why I was unresponsive, but without having to message them or share my calendars. I wanted it all to just work automatically.”
That is what the app automatically does. When people call you they can see your status --, low battery, off the grid, driving, at work, biking, out of town, in a meeting, out or home. The awesome part about this app is you don't have to manually update the app, everything works in the background without affecting your battery life. Read more.
Check out the app on, iOS & Android
Bonus: On a lighter note, since it’s Valentine month, you might find use for Breakup Notifier. It lets you choose the friends for whom you want relationship status notifications. It then send you an email whenever their relationship status changes. Or you can try setting up a YO! to be notified when the girl/guy that got away is now back to being single? Happy Valentine week. :P
Let us know which of the three apps you liked the most?
Modified feature image courtesy: shutterstock.com
