down the avenue

Voyij Adds European Destinations: Tons of Deals Under One Roof

Client Voyij.com, the most comprehensive site on the web for travel deals and sales, has now added European destinations.

For the first time, travelers now have one central location where they can discover the widest variety and largest number of European travel deals and specials under one roof.'

The concept behind Voyij is simple. Voyij fills a void on the web that people want: “what travel destination is on sale today?” With Voyij, you can explore and discover travel sales and deals you never knew existed independent of origin, destination or dates.

Other travel sites concentrate on real-time inventory and the few that do focus on deals have substantially less offerings, focus on one aspect of travel but not another, i.e., hotels, or do not include filters so you can narrow down what you want.

Travelers simply enter the city they are leaving from and Voyij does the rest. You can choose to review the deals and specials that are on sale that day, which is a compelling part of the discovery experience Voyij offers. Because the site grabs deals from hundreds of travel suppliers, you often learn about destinations and deals you never knew existed and from sites you never heard of.

Additionally, Voyij goes one step further. If you choose to narrow down your scope, a second step allows you to filter by region, time of year, popular destinations, hotel star ratings, beach hot spots and more.

These features are particularly useful for European destinations where popular hot spots are often more expensive and booked up months in advance during the summer months.

Rashtchy on Boomer Trends: Simplicity is Key

I took some video footage of Safa Rashtchy's talk at the Boomer Venture Summit's dinner sponsored by client Gilbert Guide in Santa Clara this week. Note that the quality isn't as clean as I had hoped since it was taken on a flip but you'll get the jist of his message.

He addressed the boomer and senior market and trends around investing, designing and marketing to this segment moving forward. He says we're moving into the "revolution of simplicity." He points out that while he feels the generation gap is in fact shrinking, part of this trend is because of improvements in design and productivity online. The simplicity factor, i.e, the iPhone.

It's easier than it was to navigate a mobile phone today. "Why would you do something on a mobile device or even on the web in 15 steps if you can do it in two?"

It's much more sensible to get from A to B today, hence the closing the gap between the generations. The video is in three parts: Part I, II and III (Q&A).

Part I

Part II

Part III (Q&A)

Boomer Venture's Movers-and-Shakers

This year's Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit held a Business Plan Competition where entrepreneurs and leading venture capitalists met with one thing in common: they invest in or serve the 45 year-old boomer consumer.

The Summit is a good place to learn where and why VCs are investing heavily in the boomer market and to learn from key analysts about how they segment the market and evaluate opportunities.

Client Gilbert Guide sponsored the sponsor and speaker dinner last night at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley.

Below a sample of shots I took at the gathering, which brought together vendors, VCs and service providers for all things related to the aging market.

Leading authority on the Baby Boom generation Mary Furlong speaks to the crowd

Aging in Place Laurie Orlov, SilverRide's Jeff Maltz, Gilbert Guide's Jill Gilbert and Renee Blodgett

Caring.com's Andy Cohen, Elisa Camahort, Jill Gilbert, Laurie Orlov, Jeff Maltz, Mary Furlong, Safa Rashtchy and AARP's Jody Holtzman

Foodie Mollie Katzen, AARP's Jody Holtzman and Mary Furlong

Jill Gilbert and Elisa Camahort

Dinner keynote speaker Safa Rashtchy

firstStreet's Bud Myers

Jill Gilbert and Andy Cohen

In addition, I connected with SilversSummit's Susan Ayers Walker and Michael Sarfatti - they run the SilversSummit at CES every year.

I also had a chance to see a demo of MyGait's new GO, senior computing made easy and chat with Christopher Carbajal about the market.

Others in the mix included speakers and finalists Karen Routt of Magnolia Prime, HeartMath's Catherine Calarco, TravelingHealth's Deanna Burnett-Keeper, and MarchFriday's Marfrisa Geronimo Gipner, to name a few.

Great New Travel Sites on MSNBC

Great new travel sites on MSNBC including client Voyij for travel deals and sales.

Shopping for Travel Deals

Client Voyij gets picked up in LA Times, Lifehacker and a smattering of Web 2.0 and travel blogs this week following their launch on Wednesday.

Voyij Brings People the Most Comprehensive Travel Deals Under One Roof

Client Voyij.com launches today to bring people the most comprehensive travel deals and sales under one roof. No more need to search hundreds of sites’ deal tabs. If you travel as much as I do, you know how much lost time is spent searching for bargains.

Voyij is designed for the flexible traveler. If you know your exact date and location, then sites like Kayak are better bets, but if you have some flexibility in your schedule and want to explore & discover or be able to refine travel offers that match your exact criteria, then it's definitely worth a visit.

The site is being launched by a crew of SideStep alumni, who sold to Kayak for nearly $200 million a couple of years ago. Veterans in this space, they developed the technology behind Voyij because they were frustrated by not having a way to easily search for and find just the best travel deals, sales and bargains on the web.

Says CEO Brent Stewart, "with Voyij, people can now find the best offers and specials on the web from one site, while learning about interesting new destination and vacation options from websites they never heard of and places they never thought of. It’s deal discovery and refinement in one place.”

Voyij fills a void on the web that people want: “what travel destination is on sale today?” You simply enter where you are and Voyij presents the most comprehensive list of travel deals, sales and offers on the web at a given time. Not every destination or date is on sale every day, but Voyij allows you to find what is on sale at the time you search. In the process, you will explore and discover new travel destinations to a variety of exciting places.

Rob Solomon, an online travel industry veteran who formerly ran Yahoo's Travel business and was CEO of SideStep says about the launch: "having worked with the founding team at SideStep, I know the Voyij team has the persistence, ability, technology, and experience to build a sustainable and differentiated online travel company."

In addition to finding new and unexpected travel possibilities, you can filter by criteria that matters to you most. Voyij provides complete filtering for what is important to each individual person including travel dates, hotel star ratings, location, activities, price, and more. Unlike other sites that may list random deals, with just a few clicks Voyij.com quickly finds offers that match your exact criteria.

It's meta-search at its best. Not only do we spend far too much time researching, planning and booking for that romantic weekend or summer vacation, but we have to go to far too many websites to do it. It is not uncommon for people to visit over 20 sites to research their travel needs and if you’re specifically interested in travel deals and sales, you need to navigate through complex deal tabs with no filtering capabilities and hope your destination and timeframe show up.

Voyij leverages their metasearch technology to solve the deal and sale search problem. Literally tens of thousands of deals across hundreds of suppliers are brought together in one place. From one central location, Voyij searches travel “deal” and “sale” offers exclusively, including last minute specials, sales, promotional rates and excess (undersold) inventory, so you get the widest selection of offers from any one site.

Below are Priyank Gandhi, Brent Stewart and Paul Kim at last week's Plug and Play EXPO in Sunnyvale, CA.

RepairPal for the iPhone

This week, client RepairPal is launching the first iPhone app to give consumers auto repair pricing transparency and roadside assistance while they're on the go, whether it’s diagnosing a problem, getting a fair repair price, or finding the right mechanic.

 

 

RepairPal for iPhone combines the features of the RepairPal.com website with the location-based functionality of the iPhone. RepairPal for iPhone’s key features enable consumers to save money and time through accurate and unbiased repair estimates so you know whether you're getting a fair price or not. Since RepairPal is not affiliated with auto manufacturer, dealership, auto parts provide or auto repair facility, users can be assured of complete transparency.

You can also easily find a recommended local mechanic you can trust, no matter where you are. You can also use the service to make an appointment, and plot an efficient course using GPS and instantly contact Roadside Assistance with one touch access to emergency roadside providers including most auto manufacturer help lines.

RepairPal for iPhone is available free of charge and is available for the iPhone or iPod Touch (with operating system version 2.0) at the iTunes App Store RepairPal: Auto Repair Expert. For more information about RepairPal for iPhone, please visit: RepairPal.com/Mobile.

Rebus Recollect Desktop Ships

Today, client Rebus Technology is shipping Recollect Desktop, the first search product to understand and retrieve content inside any scanned document, including PDFs, TIFFs, emails & more.

Unlike other similar desktop search solutions, Recollect Desktop combines desktop search, e-discovery, document storage and content management in one reasonably priced product that appeals to both individuals and businesses. What sets Recollect Desktop apart is that it searches all electronic documents as well as paper and fax documents previously stored in old fashioned filing cabinets, which is not a secure solution for storing important documents in case of a disaster, such as a flood, fire, or theft.

Recollect Desktop enables users to search the contents of a hard drive not just by document title, but will also search the words inside, even if they are misspelled or run-together. For the first time users can find and retrieve all kinds of documents including those that are optically scanned as well as PDFs, TIFF, JPEG and other unstructured files.

Today, 85 percent of content is in an unstructured format that is difficult to search, sort and organize. Recollect Desktop allows users to give structure to these types of documents, ending the painful shuffling and search process people go through as they dig into piles of misfiled papers to find the right document. There is no need to manually tag files either since Recollect Desktop indexes it automatically.

For individuals, users can scan using their all-in-one desktop printer / scanner devices a wide number of random documents such as faxes, medical records, legal contracts, insurance and trustee forms, home mortgage reports, receipts, bills, estimates, newspaper and magazine clippings, tax records, or college files and Recollect Desktop will quickly and easily recall and list the relevant information they need, even if users can not remember where the documents were stored on the hard drive.

For small businesses, Recollect Desktop solves the filing cabinets and reams of stored paper documents, but also for businesses which have a lot of unstructured electronic documents users need to access often or quickly. Recollect Desktop automatically indexes all of this unstructured data, helping companies and the SOHO market move closer and closer to a paperless office while improving overall worker efficiency.

Previously, if a user filed a PDF-image or scanned document on a computer or received via email, it could only be found if the user could remember the file name. With Recollect Desktop, users can search by any word, name, phrase or subject, just as they would search any Microsoft Word document.

Mashable's Open Web Awards Now Live

Mashable has kicked off their Open web Awards and client RepairPal is in "How-To" category. This industry seems to an endless series of contests, does it not? :-)

We'd love your vote. Consider this before you do and perhaps you'll be motivated to spread the word. Have you ever wondered what you should really pay for car repair but never known whether what you did pay was fair or accurate? RepairPal solves that problem for the consumer, any consumer who owns a car -- and its free to use. How can you compete with that?

To vote, click here. In the window below, you'll see "scroll down."

Use scroll down to go down to the "How To" category. Once you have selected it, scroll down in the Company menu to RepairPal and then type in your email address.

They will then send you a confirmation to your email address which results in one last step before you're done. They'll ask you to click on a link within your email once you receive it and this final step confirms your vote. Sounds complicated but its not, particularly with the easy screen grabs I just provided. And, it takes less than a minute to do.

Mashable's Open Web Awards is the only multilingual international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. Through an online nominating and voting process, the Open Web Awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories. Thanks and spread the word.

RepairPal Appoints Automotive Hall of Fame Inductee Mort Schwartz to Advisory Board

Client RepairPal appoints Automotive Hall of Fame Inductee Mort Schwartz to Advisory Board.

Schwartz was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame last month in Dearborn, Michigan, joined by Paul & Robert Galvin of Motorola fame, early Formula 1 driver Phil Hill, legendary automotive journalist Bob Irvin, and three others.

Schwartz's 40-year career includes directorships and chairmanships of several major industry organizations including APAA (Automotive Parts and Accessories Association), AWDA (Automotive Warehouse Distributors Association), and the California Automotive Wholesalers Association. He is a founder of the Global Automotive Aftermarket Symposium.

RepairPal was also just picked up by the Miami Herald and CBS News Los Angeles.