Likebetter Alternatives and Competitors Compared in Consumer Apps

Anyone can create their own beautiful catalog pages of products that they want to editorialize and recommend to others. Authors earn a portion of the referral bonus for products sold. Shut down in 2007.

Engineering tools should be as streamlined and smart as everything else in your life: as your phone, as your email, as all the apps that help you manage your day-to-day. Your work should be as efficient as possible so you can generate innovative ideas, design elegant technology, and manufacture at scale, all because you can focus on the right things. There should not be any distractions caused by poorly designed websites, unreliable data, or unwieldy spreadsheets of haphazard electronic component information. You should be able to compare components, find important technical information, and easily grasp the spectrum of parts that will be a match for your design. This is what Octopart strives for. Finding electronic component information should not be holding engineers back from bringing ideas to life quickly and efficiently. We believe that pricing, availability, technical specifications, and reference designs should be transparent, fast to find, and easy to understand. That’s why we create powerful, intelligent tools that streamline the engineering workflow and enable fast decision making. Octopart provides accurate and complete data for millions of electronic components in a way that makes it easy to find and compare parts. Focus on the important stuff: building the technology of the future.

Zenter is an web based presentation app that promises to really take advantage of being online. Users will have the regular functionality of PowerPoint, but with the ability to directly add content from the web (Google Images). Each public slide show will also be put into a public library, for other users to remix or just drop into their show. Zenter was acquired by Google in June, 2007.

Auctomatic, a Y Combinator company, offers an auction and marketplace management system for all of those individual sellers on such sites as Ebay, Amazon, Overstock and others. The application lets you list your items as well as manage your sales, but it also helps you understand how to best optimize your selling and maximize profits. The company also received an investment from Paul Buchheit, the lead developer of Gmail.

Writewith is a collaborative writing web app, enabling you to easily flow through the steps of writing, editing, and publishing a document with a group. A document is started by uploading an existing document (.doc, .txt, .rdf) or just typing away. After the initial draft is completed, you can invite other editors by email and assign them tasks. Writewith has full version control and even lets you post comments to each other, making it possible to edit together in real time. Currently Writewith is in beta testing with 15 college newspapers including Stanford and two of Canada's largest college papers (which even includes a national newswire).

Whitenoise is like a social network for the music industry. It comes with specially made tools for bands, agents, publicists, and venues to manage each part of their business. Bands will be able to manage their cross country tours by map, using a venue search to find gigs in any town they're passing through. Venues will get access to a full list of artists in their area along with samples and ways to reach their agent to book a show.

View 3, an active clad-alignment splicer with the world's highest fiber image magnification rate, is the most dependable fusion splicer.

Socialmoth is a community to post your thoughts anonymously. You can view postings (mostly gossip and secrets) from the whole community as well as get updates for when someone in your group of friends makes a post. The vast majority of their members appear to be women, with over 600 posts being made per day. These guys will also be taking a new spin on their idea, launching Disenchat.com, a place to post anonymously about your workplace. The system will verify your organization by email address (like Facebook) and let you start riffing. Outsiders will be able to see the existence of the forum and volume of posting, but not the specific comments.

Heysan was a free mobile messaging and community based in San Francisco, California. Initially Heysan provided free messaging between phones and computers, bridging IM with SMS. The service expanded into launching a mobile community and has over 1 million users doing tens of million of monthly messages. In the summer of 2007 Heysan raised a seed round from Khosla Ventures and Atomico, the venture funds of Vinod Khosla and Niklas Zennstrom. Heysan was acquired by Good Technology in May 2009.

Xobni makes your inbox and address book smarter. Xobni, and its Smartr product suite, discover all the people you've ever emailed, called or SMS'd, and instantly access a full view of each contact, complete with their photo, job title, company details, email history as well as updates from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. You can download Smartr for Gmail, Android or iPhone; and Xobni for Outlook and BlackBerry - or connect them all with Xobni Pro.

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Scribd

Consumer Apps

Scribd gives you access to millions of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, podcasts, and more, all in one place, for one price. OUR VISION Inspire the world through stories and knowledge. OUR MISSION Build the largest and most accessible library connecting storytellers with their audience. If you love working with smart, motivated people, you’ll love working at Scribd. We value our employees, we demonstrate accountability, and we take action. We’re one team with a common goal: helping our customers flourish.

OMGPOP is a leading developer of social games for facebook, iphone and the open web. With games on multiple social networks as well as its own destination site, the company is recognized as a leader in creating real-time game experiences. Based in New York City, OMGPOP is funded by Spark Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Jamglue is an online community allowing users to listen or mix music from a library of user-contributed music.

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Thinkature

Consumer Apps

Thinkature is a SaaS solution for businesses. Founded by Y Combinator alumni, this platform provides innovative tools and services to help companies streamline their operations and achieve their goals. Built with modern technology and user experience in mind, Thinkature offers scalable solutions for teams of all sizes.

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Shoutfit

Consumer Apps

We tried to build a social network around clothing. Also briefly built a search engine for clothing.

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Pollground

Consumer Apps

A social polling site. Pollground allows you to easily create surveys and allow the “wisdom of the crowd” to answer your questions. Questions and comments can be posted anonymously.

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Clickfacts

Consumer Apps

ClickFacts is a Malware Software Solutions company for buyers and sellers of online media. Its automated plug and play malware discovery solution tests online ads (SWFs & 3rd Party Ad Tags) and web pages within websites to ensure they do not distribute malware onto users’ computers (which can lead to identity theft). Its moderation software solution monitors websites to ensure the ads running on them are free of inappropriate content (e.g., nudity, racism), and its Ad Buddy product provides to advertisers real-time continuous monitoring and a complete history of where their ads have run. ClickFacts Inc. was founded in 2005 by Mikhail Ledvich, Mikhail Gurevich, and Greg Gurevich in Boston Mass, with initial funding by YCombinator. It is now based in San Francisco, California.

AudioBeta develops web-based applications that helps bands communicate with fans and make informed decisions when planning tours. AudioBeta is a U.S.-based company that was founded in 2006 by Altay Guvench.

Loopt, based in Silicon-Valley and backed by leading venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates, has created an interoperable social-mapping service that allows individuals to use their location to discover the real world around them, enabling them to find and enjoy the people, places, and events that mean the most right here and now using their mobile phones. With Loopt, individuals will always know who’s around, what to do, or where to go

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TextPayMe

Consumer Apps

Founded in 2005, TextPayMe is an SMS payment service that lets you send money to other people using cell phone text messaging. TextPayMe lets you send money to anyone else in the US with an SMS-capable cell phone, and while phone carriers may charge for the actual text message sent/received, sending and receiving money is free while TextPayMe remains in Beta. In July 2006, the TextPayMe team started working for Amazon and, as of 2011, the site redirects to an Amazon's mobile payment website. There was no press release related to this event but it's assumed the company was acquired. Sending and receiving payments through TextPayMe is easy: simply write a text message to [email protected] with "pay amount phonenumber" in the body (i.e. to send $5 to 123-456-7890, text "pay 5 1234567890"). The service is secure as well, as each payment needs to be confirmed by a user-created PIN. To fund your transactions, TextPayMe lets you add money directly from your bank account and now also lets you link your credit card as well. Currently, the maximum amount that can be sent or received per month is $500.

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Memamp

Consumer Apps

Memamp is a SaaS solution for businesses. Founded by Y Combinator alumni, this platform provides innovative tools and services to help companies streamline their operations and achieve their goals. Built with modern technology and user experience in mind, Memamp offers scalable solutions for teams of all sizes.

Kiko is a web calendar for anyone who wants to keep and share a calendar online. Kiko excels at three main things: * Universal access: Kiko integrates with your mobile phone and AIM and lets you access your calendar from any computer. * Share your calendar: Invite anyone to events (not just other Kiko users!) Let others view your calendar with just a click. * As easy as paper - or maybe easier: Write "Pay gas bill every month" onto your calendar and watch Kiko do the Right Thing!

Flagr enables users to share places, adding photos, video and descriptions from their mobile phone. They can then create maps and embed them on any website.

Simmery is a SaaS solution for businesses. Founded by Y Combinator alumni, this platform provides innovative tools and services to help companies streamline their operations and achieve their goals. Built with modern technology and user experience in mind, Simmery offers scalable solutions for teams of all sizes.