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 handpicks a few startups that we think are building interesting, unique or niche products.This time we’re featuring three applications and services that will help you find more, faster.
Startup Brom.ly’s omniscient event-finding powers could make its web and mobile application your best friend on the weekends. With Know About It, you can sit back and relax as this web app keeps tabs on the most relevant and important updates flooding your social media accounts. And Famigo is designed to be an application-finding friend to families with young children.
Brom.ly: Your Local Concierge
Quick Pitch: Brom.ly is a personalized event recommendation engine, helping you figure out what to do.
Genius Idea: Your Facebook interests and activities help Brom.ly determine what you could be doing.
Mashable’s Take: As the Loverboy song goes, everybody’s working for the weekend. But, for those times when your weekend (or weekday) calendar seems a little too empty, startup Brom.ly could come in handy.
Brom.ly’s web and mobile applications serve as a local, personal concierge. Connect Brom.ly to yourFacebook account and it will use your interests to recommend things for you do and see in your neighborhood.
“Brom.ly indexes every single event in a city using natural language processing. Then we use a proprietary recommendation engine to personalize your suggested events based on your Facebook profile, specific interests, events attended, location check-in data, popularity of event, et cetera,” co-founder Chad Gallagher says.
The AOL Ventures-backed and New York-based startup just launched an Android application and will follow that release with an iPhone application in the week ahead.
Brom.ly reminds us of Alfred, but with a focus on events. Its only real downfall is that it’s limited to six cities: New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago.
Know About It: Discover What You’re Missing on Social Media Sites
Quick Pitch: Know About It helps you discover the most engaging and relevant content lost in your social streams.
Genius Idea: Status update discovery.
Mashable’s Take: Even if you have an ever-present eye on all your social streams, chances are you’re still missing a tweet, Facebook post or news item that’s of interest.
Know About It — co-founded by former Bit.ly engineer Kevin Marshall and Chalq fantasy sports site founder Will Cole — surfaces content relevant to you that you may be otherwise missing in all of those real-time updates flying by. It connects to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google Reader, LinkedIn and a few other social sites as sources.
“We built Know About It as users who were frustrated with trying to keep up in real time. We knew there were huge amounts of content we just never saw, drowned out in crowded dashboards,” Cole says. “With Know About It, users can relax.”
Know About It is certainly not the first startup to attempt to help users get the most out of their social streams, but the just-launched startup has a fresh take and seems to do a solid job at surfacing content.
Famigo: Find Family-Friendly Apps
Quick Pitch: Famigo aims to change the way families play together by making their mobile technology as family-friendly as possible.
Genius Idea: An application search engine just for families.
Mashable’s Take: Former Nickelodeon executive Q Beck, neuroscientist Matt Sullivan and software developer Cody Powell applied their shared passion for gadgets and family fun to create Famigo, an application curation startup that attempts to help parents and kids find great games, educational resources and ebooks that are safe to enjoy.
Famigo’s website serves up reviews on Android applications in four categories: featured, highest rated, staff favorites and most popular. The just-released Family App Review Android application also curates, recommends and reviews family-appropriate Android applications.
Created during a three-day startup event in 2009, Famigo is now a member company of the Austin Technology Incubator.
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
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