Good news, everybody! We just won the second stage of the renowned Swiss Startup competition Venture Kick! This means that thanks to private Swiss investors, we’ll be receiving 20,000 CHF as venture money to accelerate our product development efforts and drive user-growth. Here’s the little press release.

Thanks Switzerland, for being so awesome!

We’re nerds

We have one confession to make: We here, at LocalUncle, are huge space-junkies. No, not this type of space junkies. We’re space junkies in a sense that me and my co-founder are both Mechanical Engineers who are into Robotics, AI and all that fun stuff. Me in particular, I remember growing up in the 80′s watching Carl Sagan, observing Saturn’s rings at age 5 through our home-telescope (with the help of my dad) and playing with a toy version of Atlantis that you could launch 30 feet high using a compressed-air launch pad. Good times! But what does this have to do with LocalUncle you might ask? Keep reading.

Borders from Space

Ron Garan is one of the few people who have been lucky and brave enough to go into space. He returned last September to Earth from a half-year long stay on the ISS. During his flight, he snapped tons of photos. He says that Earth looks usually very peaceful from up there. He took, however, one photo that made him write a great blog post and put his opinion into perspective.

This photo shows the man made border between India and Pakistan. It’s as beautiful of a photo as it is sobering. A constant reminder of humanity’s division.

He then went on to say, surprisingly, something that captures the very essence of LocalUncle

We can look down and realize that we are all riding through the Universe together on this spaceship we call Earth, that we are all interconnected, that we are all in this together, that we are all family

- Ron Garan, kick-ass Astronaut

Ron, we salute you! We’re on this ride together and we know that the social web and services like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and LocalUncle are bringing these borders down. It might not be today, it might not be tomorrow. But sometime in the future, people across the globe and across borders, will be helping each other out, without asking for anything in return. Just like family. And photos like the one Ron took will be a thing of the past. This day will come. And we’ll be part of it. Ron, we’re on it!

- Your friendly neighborhood LocalUncles

If you’re a New Yorker, keep reading. If not, well then… you’ve been missing out.

Anyways, there’s this thing called Holland Tunnel that connects Manhattan to New Jersey. Not a lot of New Yorkers know or use it, cause, who goes to Jersey? Right? But for the ones who do, it’s a constant pain to know when to cross it. It’s constantly jammed at rush-hour.

LocalUncle is here to help. Check out Caroline’s answer to the question “When’s a good time to cross Holland Tunnel?”

Depends…I use the Holland to get into the city at 4pm but use the Lincoln Tunnel to come back to NJ…the Lincoln tunnel is poorly merged from NJ which causes delays but then the Holland is poorly merged on the NY side. I check the traffic report and whatever the delay is you can always double it and find the actual time you’ll be spending.

- Caroline, LocalUncle user

Thanks for that great answer, Caroline. You are magnificent!

Remember, Screw Google. We ask humans. Have a good one everybody!

You too?

Yes, yes, I know. “Gamification” is the new cool kid on the block. Or is it already so “January 2012″? Points, badges, ribbons, medals and whatnot is being given away by pretty much every consumer app under the sun.

The scary part is that “Gamification” is very often part of an answer to the question “How will you guys grow from 100 to 100 million users?”. The most important part is to have a killer product, i.e. create actual value for the user, before you slap any sort of points or badges on to your app. Lately a few services have popped up that got their game mechanics right from the get-go: Codecademy and Turntable.fm being two of my favorite.

Boost your productivity with beer!

Now, it’s relatively easy to gamify your app. But how do you gamify your inbox? I didn’t know that I already knew until Andrew from Brainscape made me realize it. In a typical Friday afternoon banter-session in our shared office space, I was explaining Andrew how I get through my inbox, which is my worst enemy, on Friday afternoons. It’s pretty simple: For every mail I reply, I get to take one sip of an ice-cold Corona. Not the best Mexican beer in the world, I know, but today it was the one that was available. And so when you hit that “Send” button and immediately take a sip, it refreshes your mind and motivates you to dive right into that next mail.

Try it out! It’s a cool feature! It costs a little money, but is very easy to install on your desk and to use!

So here it is. And if only a single person’s productivity on a Friday afternoon goes up because of this post, I accomplished my mission.

How do you get a bunch of Swiss Francs in this bad economy? Well, you need two things: A brilliant business idea and you need to be somehow related to a Swiss university. Turns out that we here at LocalUncle have both. We have our CTO Philipe who is currently finishing up his Engineering degree at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and we’re building the next iteration of local search that will change everything (we’re talking to you, Google!).

We’re super happy to announce that we successfully won Phase I of the Swiss Government’s initiative to fund disruptive business ideas. The organization behind it is called venture kick and they chose us amongst potentially hundreds of other concepts. Thanks Switzerland! We heart you long time!

Now, let’s get back to work and make LocalUncle as cool as the Swiss Alps! We’ll see us for round two and three, venture kick!

Christmas has come early for LocalUncle. About three days ago, after freshly joining the App Store and after sitting there for less than 3 weeks with our very first version, Apple decided to feature us up there. Where? There! In the “New and Noteworthy” section of the App Store! Holy Guacamole!

We can’t even begin to express how awesome this is! Our very first and raw version is sitting up there next to Starbucks, Etsy, Snoopy and Superman! Somebody pinch us, please. Needless to say that we’ve seen traffic spikes the size of the Empire State Building! And because it’s so nice, here’s how it looks on the iPhone

If you haven’t downloaded our app yet, shame on you! Even Apple thinks it’s “noteworthy”.

Go grab it here right now, in real-time. We’ve heard it’s where all the cool kids hang out.

We know, we know. We’ve been way too quiet for way too long. Some of you were actually worried that we had shut down shop. Rest assured that we’re here to stay. We’re like roaches: Able to live on garbage and really hard to kill.

Well, what have we been up to in the last four months since our last blogpost you might ask? Answer: A lot! We retreated into our bat cave and built some really amazing stuff. Out came these three amazing things:

1. We made our vision and scope bigger. Way bigger. (oh, have we mentioned that it’s BIG?).
2. We built an iPhone and web app that teleport you through space. (no joke!)
3. We created a smart, self-learning algorithm that automatically makes our product better. (think Skynet)

Let’s have a quick look at each of these points.

Big Vision

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be able to teleport through space? Our friends over at Star Trek have been doing it since the Sixties. Jumper proved that cool things happen to you if you’re able to teleport: You get rich, you fight dangerous villains, you meet cute girls and you star in Action movies. “Anywhere is Possible”.

May be you’ve caught us by now: We didn’t actually build a teleporter that lets you physically travel through space. However, we built one for your mind! The big vision is to let you know what’s happening anywhere in the world, right now.

Vision: Know the World. In Real-Time

We give you remote eyes and ears to any place or area in the world, in real-time. Kaboom! This is big. This is really big. This is way bigger than our initial idea of “getting local advice”. We give you the ability to see what’s happening at any place in the world – in real-time – whether it’s a bar in NYC, a hardware store in Yokohama or a remote beach in Bora Bora, your mind can “go” there in a instant, have a look around and “come back”. All without even getting off your lazy armchair. How do you teleport, you ask? You do it by asking questions about these places/areas on LocalUncle. We route your questions, using our patented Skynet technology, to other users who are currently there and/or have been there recently and/or have been there a lot and/or have been to a place nearby. You’ll get an answer, from a real human being (and not a soulless machine) in less than a New York Minute. Try it! It’s insanely great!

Some really interesting use-cases we’ve seen so far from our first users:

• “How long is the line to my favorite bar, right now?”
• “Is the store, I have to go to, open right now? And do they have a particular product that I’m looking for on stock, right now?”
• “Does anybody have floss in my office building, right now?”
• “How bad is traffic in the area I’m driving to right now?”
• “How are the waves at the beach I want to go surfing right now?”
• “Where around my office can I find a healthy lunch right now?”
• “I just heard gunshots. What’s going on in my neighborhood right now?”

There are many, many more use-cases that we haven’t even thought of yet! We’re really only scratching the surface of what’s possible with our new service. Think Twitter in its early days. We give you the ability to extract the current state of the physical world, in real-time. Our system will grow into a global, inter-connected, intelligent beehive that will make humanity as a whole smarter and the world a better place. Game-changing concepts like The Internet of Things will finally have a platform to build upon. It’ll be LocalUncle.

Now, this is something worth fighting for, right? This is our dream, our vision and our passion and we won’t stop till we made that dent into the universe. Remember, we’re cockroaches. We’re here to stay.

iPhone app

Before you continue reading, grab your iPhone, open the App Store, type in “localuncle” and download our app! Go ahead, we’ll wait for you. Seriously, we’ll wait till you downloaded it. Here’s the full iTunes link: itunes.com/apps/localuncle.

Next is our super nice looking app icon. What do you guys think? Double bonus-points to whoever can guess which famous park/area in NYC we depicted. Write your answer in the comments.

Get the app and tell all your friends to get it. It’s free and still warm! The more people that are on our system the more valuable it gets for everybody.

The only two things you need to have to use our iPhone app is a Foursquare account and you need to have access to the US iTunes store.

Why Foursquare?

We chose to build on top of Foursquare because we like to stand on the shoulders of giants. They’ve done an outstanding job at getting millions of users to share their location in real-time and they’ve built a remarkable, real-time, crowd-sourced venue database of the world. We took these ingredients and added our Q&A layer and our smart question routing (Skynet) on top of it. The result is magical! We see check-ins not just as a way to tell your friends “I’m here”. A check-in is so much more if you think about it.

A check-in is an access-point to extract the physical state of the real world, in real-time

Or a portal through which you can teleport, if you want to stay in the teleportation analogy. We took the concept of checking in and added real-world value to it.

You don’t use Foursquare? Don’t worry, you can either go and sign up right now or you can wait a little bit, till we add more networks to our system.

Why only in the US?

The iPhone app is currently only available in the US App Store and the web app can only process questions about locations in the US. The reason behind it is the fact that quality and speed of answers are our highest priority. Since we let you know what’s happening right now we have to assure that answers come within a few minutes after asking a question. We’re confident that we can pull it off in the US but want to improve the product in the US first, before we launch it worldwide. Please bear with us, if you’re not located in the US.

You don’t have an iPhone and you have questions about locations in the US? Just register with your Foursquare account on our web app and start using it!

Skynet

Once you ask your question, our smart algorithms immediately route it to a handful of users who are at that place/area right now and/or know a lot about that particular place/area. This is great news for you! We do the hard work of finding the most knowledgeable users and/or people who are standing at that place right now. This means that every single question you ask will be shown to real humans and answered by those who know the most about that place or area.

And as if it wasn’t good enough already: Our system learns! With every check-in you make, question you ask or answer you write, our system gets smarter and smarter. Let’s just hope it doesn’t become self-aware and revolt against its creators.

What’s next?

There’s a lot of stuff we want to do in the coming months

• Grow LocalUncle quickly to critical mass in major US cities
• Improve the product based on your feedback (we LOVE and need your feedback! Please, keep it coming!)
• Expand to networks beyond Foursquare
• Get our hands dirty with Android
• Expand our product worldwide

Now, it’s up to you

We know that LocalUncles is going to change the world. And we want you to be part of it! Get our app, visit us on the web, follow us and Like us. Tell all your friends and help us build the future. It starts right here, right now.

Good afternoon All!  Check out our new & improved features!

The Thank You Button

We’re big on manners here at LocalUncle so our brand new feature gives people the opportunity to quickly thank those who have answered their question by clicking ‘Say Thanks’.

This feature goes to the heart of the LocalUncle brand and like doting parents we are eager to encourage an environment where our kids can play in a helpful, honest and respectful manner (and no horseplay!) Our CEO Phil Reichen decided to bring in the feature after being inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk’s latest book “The Thank You Economy“.

In keeping with the theme of Vaynerchuk’s book, the Thank You button appears on all questions that you ask so now when you  get several responses from the community, you can automatically thank each person by clicking the button next to their answer. Not bad eh? LocalUncle is all about community and we thought it crucial to include features like this one in order to facilitate positive interaction between users.

The New Notifications Tray

The other new feature is less about manners and more about appearance. Because what’s the point in manners if you don’t look good doing it right?! After some great feedback from our users on the notifications which used to roll from the top left of your page we’ve decided to revamp how notifications appear in your browser. In an effort to de-clutter the layout we have introduced a new notifications tray which we’ve squeezed into the top right of your screen between the home button and your profile picture (as above). Now when you receive a new notification the message symbol will be highlighted with a red number. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!)

There are plenty more new features to come so stay tuned and keep asking those questions ;)

Like the article? Why don’t you like us on Facebook and hit us up with a follow on Twitter.

The mud-soaked Glastonbury Music Festival brought some of the worlds biggest stars to Somerset, West England last weekend – U2, Wu-Tang Clan, Beyonce, Queens of the Stone Age and, er…Jimmy Eat World. Anyway, we were so taken aback here at LocalUncle by the buzz of the whole event (we tuned in via Twitter and BBC iPlayer for pretty much the entire weekend) that we decided to vote on the best music festivals on this side of the pond.

1. Dance.Here.Now Festival / Governors Island NY 1-4 July

Happening this weekend! Although some of the line-up are a bit, well, naff, we just love the Day 2 line-up especially with the gifted James Zabiela (sort of like the Wayne Rooney of electronic music) and Fatboy Slim. We’ll be there with bells on and if you wanna meet up and discuss the intricacies of the NY rail system or whatever (!)  hit us up with a comment on Twitter.

2. Burning Man / Black Rock City, Nevada August 29-September 5

Does bartering for cutlery, old tennis shoes or rocking horses sound like fun to you? Doesn’t sound great when you put it like that but trust us this weeklong “celebration of community, art, self-expression and self-reliance” commands repeat visitors from all over the globe and really has to be seen to be believed. Life changing…

3. Summer Stage at Central Park, NY throughout the Summer

Enjoy the hot Summer nights in NYC knocking back Bud Lights to the sounds of Talib Kwali and Roy Ayers (to name a few). Most of these events are free, which is great news, however, to paraphrase Braveheart, “freeeedom, eh, it coms att a preece” (freedom comes at a price) – the price here being the large volume of crowds :( Still, if you can get your hands on tickets you won’t regret it.

4. Electric Zoo, Randall’s Island Park, NY, September 2-4

By far the best crowd in dance music, period, with an extraordinarily strong line-up year after year, this Labour Day weekend session gathers the best electronic artists from around the planet to play the the tunes that have been sizzling on Ibiza all Summer long. We will be all over this one however a word of warning – not for the faint hearted. And another word of warning – bring an inhaler. Oh, and another – pace yourself :)

You’ve gotta love festival season…

Advice is something that should be shared. If you need any more advice just ask us.

LU

Like the article? Why don’t you like us on Facebook?!

With the Summer well under way (and the question cropping up more and more on LocalUncle) the staff here at LU have decided to vote for what we think are the best rooftop bars in NYC. See what you think.

The Criteria:

The Music – is Barry Manilow on repeat? Automatic disqualification if so. Sorry Barry.

The Crowd – Abercrombie & Fitch or Levi Strauss?

The Drinks – Cosmopolitans for $25 or Pabst for $4?

So here it is – our top 3 Rooftop bars in NYC in reverse order, as voted for by the LocalUncle staff:

#3 The XVI Rooftop Lounge

251 West 48th Street at 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10036

Great views of the city, sumptuous international crowd, ample dance floor space, every Sunday they have top DJ’s (last Sunday they had Matthew Dear; the week before they had Joris Voorn) from around the world come in to wow the mature-ish crowd. We were up there last weekend and had a blast. A downside is that if you don’t like beer or promo drinks the tab can get a little pricey. Another point to note is that these events attract the ‘rollover troll’ – usually male, late twenties, still going from the night before. Bumping into everyone, knockin’ over drinks…Still, I suppose they add to the mix of what is a great crowd.

#2 The Standard Hotel Rooftop

848 Washington St (at W 13th St), New York, NY 10014

In what has to be the most misleading name for a bar in the history of the state, the ‘Boom Boom Room’ is located in the Meatpacking District and is widely regarded as the best rooftop bar in the city. They regularly have DJ’s spinning disco to house to electro to techno and back to disco again and any day / night spent here will be memorable. The queue is the only problem – on Fridays during the Summer you may be in it for up to 45mins. Once you get up there though it really is a quality night.

#1 for us is the Rooftop at Hotel on Rivington

Address: 107 Rivington St., New York, NY 10002

…where you get amazing views, a great, like-minded crowd, cheap drinks and outstanding tunes. On Sundays during the Summer (why Sunday?!) they have music labels / DJ’s come in and host their own nights where they showcase the best talent. We have spent many a Sunday on this rooftop and for nostalgia alone The Rivington gets the nod.

Enjoy, and we hope to see you at any of these 3 rooftops over the coming months :)

Like the article? Why don’t you like us on Facebook and hit us up with a follow on Twitter.

Kindest & sweetest regards,

LocalUncle

Exponential user growth over the last couple of months has meant an increase in the level and quality of questions asked. The questions are becoming more specific as users are learning that the more detailed the question, the more likely they are to receive a meaningful answer from the LocalUncle community.

“We have seen a clear categorization of questions on the site. People are asking about their holidays, cheap eats and even where to get second-hand synthesizers! It’s amazing to see repeat users on the site and even the first LocalUncle ‘addicts’.

- Philip Estrada Reichen, CEO of LocalUncle

On the eve of our 2 month anniversary we provide 5 examples to illustrate the observed main use-cases:

1. Travel

A large amount of questions are related to trips abroad or to other cities. Users are planning weeks and months in advance and are eager to get local knowledge on where to go and what to do. Scouring the web for this type of knowledge can take hours and can be quite frustrating. LocalUncle saves you time by providing reliable and relevant knowledge at the click of a button by somebody who’s actually done the trip or has insider, local knowledge.

Want to see what we answered? click here

Answers? Curious? click here

2. Food / Restaurants

Queries about the best location for burgers (eg.) in a certain part of the world are our bread & butter. People want to avoid the reams of results that you must trawl through on a Google search – and do you blame them?! They want real, local knowledge & recommendations, from people that have actually been in the establishments. Yelp is good for reviews but when the query takes on a subjective element (or is any way qualified) they become somewhat redundant.

Wanna see how our community answered? click here

Answers click here

3. Sport & Leisure

We observed that a large portion of users are looking for local sport & leisure services when they are in a foreign country or city. Services like short-term apartment rentals, free tennis courts or soccer pitches – knowledge that only locals would have. Have you tried googling “free tennis courts Berlin”? You won’t get very far…

Check out our answers click here

4. Product Recommendations

People want to know where they can find the best products (eg. coffee, cameras, cologne) or at least the places where they can find the best products for their certain needs. They want to short circuit the traditional online search which, again, can take ages and doesn’t always guarantee answers. You’ll notice the depth of question and realize quickly that traditional online search tools were not built to answer those deep queries.

Check out our answers click here

5. Local Business Search

Check out our answers click here

Check out our answers click here

The LocalUncle community consists of a group of like-minded people around the globe that see the value in providing much needed, honest answers to location-based questions. They see the value in helping each other out. As we expand our userbase we hope that this karma ripples through the community and becomes a hallmark of the LocalUncle brand.

On the way out, if you haven’t done so yet, why don’t you like us on Facebook and hit us up with a follow on Twitter. You’ll get a cookie for it!

- Your LocalUncles

Ah, I remember my first day at LocalUncle like it was only a couple of weeks ago. I remember walking along Varick St. and up to the revolving doors of #160. I remember thinking ‘God I wish I didn’t wear this sweater’. I remember on my final approach I passed by possibly the last person I expected to see at that moment in time – Eric Cantona. The Gallic, chest-pouting, fly-kicking, genius that is Eric Cantona (ex-Manchester United legend). He’s an actor now. So what?

We locked eyes. I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was trying to tell me that he knew that LocalUncle was the best place for local advice. He knew that I knew that he knew. With this in mind it is my great pleasure to welcome myself and Kegan Quimby, our Junior RoR developer to the LocalUncle team!! We also know…

How would you like to win Flying Lotus tickets for the Monday 20 June gig in the Bowery Ballroom?! All you have to do to enter the competition is answer the following question:

What is the single best piece of local advice you have received at home or on your travels and who/where did you get it from?

Write the answer on our Facebook page as a comment to THIS POST. Remember you have to LIKE us before you can enter :)

Prize

2 tickets to Flying Lotus at the Bowery Ballroom, Lower East Side, NYC on Monday 20 June, 2011 @ 8pm. To the uninitiated Flying Lotus mixes jazz, hip-hop, videogame sounds and IDM to earth shattering effect!!!

Deadline

Entries accepted until Sunday 19 June 2011, 11:59pm. We will announce the winner on Monday morning.

Selection Process

The winner will be the individual with the best response – it can be funny, serious, educational, whatever! It’s up to you!

To enter the contest just answer the question HERE.

Best of luck!

Twitter @localuncle

Christmas cometh early!? X-mas in June … ? Something like that. There aren’t any bright lights but we do have some new features for you. But don’t take our word it – see for yourself.

Improved “Add a place to the map” function

As you are no doubt already aware of, when answering a question you can also physically map the location of the place(s) you reference by typing the name of the place into the smaller box below your answer – the box that says “Google for a place here …” (i.e., the box to the left of the “Answer” button).

Previously when you typed in the name of a place you were limited to places within a certain boundary. This boundary was assigned by the user who posed the question when they selected a location to ask about. For example, in the picture below a question was asked about Berlin, Germany. Continuing with this example, previously only places located within Berlin would show up when typing them into the “Google for a place here …” box. When you typed a place pin would appear on the map showing the location of that place. (see image below)

Based on your feedback – as well as observations – we noticed that some questions have answers that list places outside of the “initial” boundary – but are relevant and useful none the less. This was preventing some users from physically mapping the location of a place and we decided to fix that. Now you are able to map the location of any place regardless of the initial boundary. When you start typing in a place the initial auto-suggestions will be places within the initial boundary. However if after typing in the name of a place you continue to type the city and/or state that the place is located in you’ll be presented with additional suggestions. These additional suggestions are no longer restricted to the initial boundary. Using the Berlin example above you can now physically map John F Kennedy Airport – which by the way is located in New York City as opposed to Berlin – as part of your answer when previously you could not. This is an extreme example and most real-life examples will not include places located in different countries. Most real-life examples will be for times when you really want to suggest a place and it lies just outside the initial boundaries.

New “Search locations” function

In addition to improved features we also have some new features. One new feature recently added is the “Search locations” function. At the top of the screen, in between the “Ask a Question” button and the “Home” link, is a “Search locations” box. This box allows you to search for all questions related to a certain location. Simply type in the name of the location and one or more locations will be available for selection. Select the proper location by clicking on it and you will be taken to a page with all the questions related to that location.

It’s that easy.

New Friends link

Another cool feature recently added was the “Friends” link. The “Friends” link appears when you hover your mouse over your profile link. Your profile link is the link just to the right of the “Home” link. It’s a combination of your profile photo and your profile name. By hovering your mouse over your profile link an additional drop down menu will appear.

Simply click on “Friends” and you will be taken to a page that shows you all of the people that you follow. Alternatively, once you’re on your “Friends” page, you can also view everyone who follows you by clicking on the “Followers” tab.

Well, three is our limit for one day. Hope you enjoy the new features. Signing off.

- Your LocalUncles

It was pretty busy here at LocalUncle last week. There were quite a few events that transpired. Some good. Some awesome. One of those events was our name change. Another was the goal of reminding everyone about our new Facebook page.

Which reminds us – could you be sure to like our new Facebook Page? Because we’ll be closing our old one soon and we don’t want you to lose your access during the transition.

So what’s been happening with LocalUncle?

A lot has been happening. But let’s focus on one of the big things. Here’s a quick update on the “Early Access to LocalUncle” situation … Yep, you guessed it. The situation is getting a lot better.

While there are still thousands of people waiting for their early access code (yes, we’re still in private beta) we’ve begun to let in hundreds of users a day. And if you’re concerned about why you haven’t received your access code yet we just want to let you know that we’re sorry and we also want to reassure you that we’re working around the clock to get things taken care of so that it’ll be perfect for when you do join us.

In the meantime – and as a reminder – there is an algorithm in place for letting new users in. It’s based on the time you signed up and the number of invitations you’ve sent out. So if you want to take control of fate and gain earlier access be sure to send out all your invitations to your friends and/or family members because that will bump you up the list to gain access quicker :-)

Cool. So what’s been happening inside LocalUncle?

That’s an excellent question, I’m glad you asked. Now would be as good a time as any to highlight some of the great questions that have been asked and answered this past week. If you haven’t already seen these questions but would like to chime in feel free to click on them so that you can add your thoughts:

One person who could really benefit from your help is Brandon Hall. Brandon asked, “Got any tips for a kid just starting college?” Brandon has already received several answers but questions like his are open to so many variants, viewpoints and suggestions that it really is “the more the merrier”. Could you add your thoughts? Because this is a crucial time in Brandon’s life – one you could help impact in an enormous way.

Lisa Pretti‘s question is another question that has received several responses but that could also benefit from additional feedback. Lisa asked, “I’m visiting NYC in July and I heard about this NYC Pass. Does anybody know that and could they recommend it?”

Come to think of it practically all the questions on LocalUncle increase in value the more they are answered. Would you please look through questions, whether on the home screen or by a specific location? Because that way you can find cool questions that you like and can share your thoughts and feedback on.

Oh and one other particular question that received amazing answers was “Where in the world did you go for your honeymoon?” by Kieran McMillan. If you had a magical honeymoon experience please be sure to share it. In other words, don’t be stingy with your awesomeness (that’s frowned upon here). And if you haven’t been on your honeymoon yet but are debating on where to go be sure to check out all the great responses as a way to get some ideas!

Awesome. So what’s been happening around LocalUncle?

TechCrunch Disrupt happened. What’s that? What is TechCrunch Disrupt?

TechCrunch Disrupt is a huge conference held annually in NYC that “gathers both Web innovators disrupting media and technology and also [the] executives successfully navigating [said] disruptions”. The purpose of TechCrunch Disrupt is to talk about future opportunities in innovation. In other words it’s the Who’s Who event among those in the tech world.

As for the recap, our CEO and Co-Founder Philip Estrada Reichen was there and in full effect. Not only was Philip rubbing elbows with the likes of Paul Graham, Dennis Crowley and Ashton Kutcher he was also mingling with all the cool techies. In addition to telling them about LocalUncle, which they absolutely thought rocked, he also got a chance to meet with a lot of other start-up founders – such as Sonar.me CEO Brett Martin and SpotOn Founder Gauri Manglik, just to name a few.

Anyways just wanted to give you a little of the inside scoop on what we’ve been doing last week at LocalUncle. If you happened to be at TechCrunch Disrupt and want to chat more with Philip about what we’re doing here at LocalUncle, or even if you weren’t there but want to chat with him, feel free to drop him a line or stop by the office anytime over the next few days.

Catch you later and glad to see you made it safely through another great Memorial Day Weekend!

- Your Favorite LocalUncles

Did you know that Google was originally named BackRub? Or that Nintendo was Marafuku? Or that Pepsi went by the name of Brad’s Drink? Or that Yahoo was called Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web? Or that LocalUncle was formerly known as loqize.me?

Needless to say there have been many historic name changes in corporate history folklore. LocalUncle is no different. And you can now add us to the list of famous corporate name changes. As of today we shall be known as LocalUncle!

Brief Explanation

So the billion dollar question is “Why?” Well that’s pretty simple. When we opened up our first US office here in New York City we quickly found out that people didn’t know how to spell “loqize.me”. And that wasn’t their fault, it was ours. It’s what happens when you have founders who are fluent in too many languages and grew up outside the US (i.e., non-native English speakers).

Once we realized we needed a new name we first looked to you and other members for advice. And we got some really great ideas! Looking at your suggestions we came to the conclusion that LocalUncle was the best fit. We realized that almost everybody has family in another city. And when you have a “LocalUncle” or a “LocalAunt” somewhere you feel at home even though you’re in a new area. Additionally your local family is able to provide you with great perks and additional benefits like local advice, food and sometimes even a little extra pocket change for when you’re ready to explore the city. And that’s exactly what we want to be for you! (minus the extra pocket change of course) We want to be the local family you can turn to for great local advice and food! Yes, we’ll have cookies for those who stop by the new office in NYC! Just make sure to tweet ahead and let us know when you’ll be stopping by and the type of cookies you like.

What do I have to do?

So the multi-billion dollar question, “How does the new name change affect you?” Are you going to have to register again? Are you going to have to create a new profile page? Upload a new picture? Make a new signature? Dress up as Spider-Man? No, no, no, no, and may be. Or in other words, it doesn’t really affect you because we’ll take care of all the hard work and transitioning you over.

The only thing you have to do (yes, you have to) is LIKE our new Facebook Page because we can’t change the name of our old one (thanks for that one, Mark!) and have to start from scratch there.

Click this LIKE button!

One last thing

Don’t forget to take down your loqize.me posters hanging above your beds and get your new LocalUncle posters! Also for those who already went out and got a loqize.me tattoo: we’re sorry. We’ll pay 100% of the price for a new LocalUncle tattoo (we’re not even kidding!). If you’ve been sitting on the fence and want to get a LocalUncle tattoo too we’ll also pay for yours. We’re in NYC after all, the city that never gets just 1 tattoo … or something like that.

- Your New LocalUncles

Just wanted to give you a quick update on future plans by telling you about a great new feature we recently implemented – place pages. While this feature is pretty exciting on its own it will be even more exciting in the future as we use the information implicit within these pages to help you pinpoint answers and questions most relevant to you. But before we do that we wanted to quickly explain the difference between places and locations as that will help make place pages even easier to understand.

Places vs Locations

On loqize.me locations refer to geo-spacial positions while places refer to specific addresses. The smallest location is a point of interest. And from there locations grow in size to include areas like neighborhoods, cities, states, regions, countries, etc. Places on the other hand refer to a particular point – usually in the form of a landmark or business. As a rule of thumb, locations are typically tied to questions while places are typically tied to answers.

Place Page

The new place page is a collection of all the questions and answers tied to a particular place. This is useful because you can now see all the conversations that have occured that reference the particular place.

Place pages can be accessed from answers. Simply click on the arrow to the right of any “Like-Answer” button (denoted by the red heart shape and included whenever a place is added to the map) to go to that place page.

As the late great William Dillard once said, “Location, Location, Location” … and man, what a location it is.

We’re super excited about our new office here at the NYU-Poly Incubator located on Varick St. in beautiful Soho. So excited that we would love to show you around if you are ever in the area. An email or a short message on Twitter, Facebook or our blog should do. There are some really comfy chairs up here that we could commandeer for a chat. Or, if you prefer, after we show you around we could always grab a cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Wow, I’m getting excited just thinking about it. So yeah we are definitely looking forward to meeting you in person!

As for a little background on the space we’re located in, it is an awesome joint venture between the City of New York and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (better known as NYU-Poly). The collaboration is all part of an elaborate plan by Major Bloomberg himself and can be found in his “Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan” from 2009. The Major and his staff recognized the need to keep all the amazing talent in the city – not just on Wall St. – as well as the need to make New York just as attractive as Silicon Valley in terms of getting start-ups and the brilliant men and women who work at them here as well.

Which leads me to the other thing we’re super excited about – all the awesome people we’re around each day. And for those of you not familiar with what a business incubator is it is essentially a large workspace that houses several different companies. This way companies are able to collaborate and share knowledge with one another, which is both important and beneficial for start-ups and other early stage companies, as well as be part of a culture geared towards being innovative and resourceful (i.e., there are a lot of MacGyvers in here).

So if you love being at the forefront or experimenting with location, technology, businesses, clean-tech, and/or fashion then you would absolutely love it here. I mean imagine being at your favorite type of art exhibition or your favorite science museum but being able to really interact with all the cool and amazing pieces that you are looking at. Not just looking but asking questions to the creators. Going hands on and actually playing with the pieces. Tinkering with the product. Providing suggestions on how to improve it. That is what it is like here everyday. It is like being a kid in a candy store.

Anyways it would be poor manners on my part if I told you how amazing it was here and left it at that. Therefore it is only right of me to also tell you that we are still looking for new team members who want to be a part of loqize.me. We’re looking for summer interns, ideally in marketing or with a technical background, with the possibility of extending it beyond summer. However if you are awesome you are awesome; don’t let words pigeonhole you. Send us your resume and a short cover letter if you are interested and tell us how you could make loqize.me even better.

Again, don’t be a stranger when you are in town and/or nearby. Be sure to drop us a line and come visit us at our new digs.

- Your loqize.me crew

Hiring is all about bringing on the best people for that particular position. But it is even more important to bring on people who fit into your startup culture. They have to live, dream and breathe for your startup (almost) 24/7. They have to believe in nothing more than a big idea and an early stage product.
We’re super happy to have hired another valuable addition to our team: Nate Hill.

He’s bringing with him the right amount of whackyness (as seen on the photo) and a rock solid Master’s in Social Computing and Incentive Driven Design from the University of Michigan. Paired with his data-driven personality and coding skills, Nate is a pretty much the Swiss knife (pun intended) for a social software startup.

Welcome on board! And by the way: If you’re interested in doing a Marketing internship with us and Nate, be our guest.

- Your loqize.me team

Lately, it’s been a little bit quiet around us because we’ve been busy opening up our NYC branch (blog post coming soon) and working on some great new features. Let’s look at the two most exciting ones:

Public Question Page

Until recently, the so called question page (this is the page where your questions and all the answers plus the map are shown) was completely private (as was the rest of loqize.me). We have been in invitation-only mode since our private beta launch and will continue to be so for the time being. This means however, that your questions can only be seen and answered by other loqize.me users and that you might only receive a few answers. To give your questions more exposure we just moved all past and future questions to the public space.

What does that mean? Well, it means that any question you ask, will be visible to the whole internet, instead of only the loqize.me community. BUT, only loqize.me users will be able to answer the questions (to maintain quality standards). If a non-user stumbles upon your question on Twitter, Facebook or gets the link forwarded by a friend, she will first have to sign-up for the waiting list and wait for access. Like that we’ll ensure quality answers while giving your questions more exposure! Win-Win. Cool, huh?

Share Answers

You can now share any answer – including your own – using the new “Share Answer” link on the question page. You can choose between sharing on Twitter, Facebook, via Email or copy/paste the Answer URL. Use this feature when you feel like your answer or someone else’s could interest other loqize.me users (or non-users). Remember that since the question page is now public, you can share any answer (or question) with anybody on the internet. Happy Sharing!

Have a nice week everyone!

- Your loqize.me crew

A million signups isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion signups!

Well, we didn’t quite get a billion signups (yet), but boy did hell break loose today after the amazing TheNextWeb article. (Kudos for that Martin!). This is what our subscriptions inbox looked like, a couple of minutes after the post.

We get an email, every time somebody signs up for our waiting list. The 50 invites that we gave away to super early TNW-readers were gone in a matter of minutes. To say that we are “happy” or “thrilled” would an oh-so-typical Swiss understatement.

We holy-mother-of-god freaked the f%&* out!!!!

And it keeps going! Even after more than 12h, the subscriptions are still pouring in. We just wanted to thank all you guys who signed up for our service and got on the waiting list. We also wanted to welcome the 50 new users on our site who skipped the waiting line by being geeks and reading TNW all the time. Oh, and don’t get us wrong, we LOVE geeks! We here at loqize.me are, after all, an engineering-only team up until now (but obviously looking for that non-tech talent, too!).

Gotta go now. Less talking and more coding!

- Your loqize.me geeks

Hiring developers for an early stage web startup is something really amazing right now. Something that BigCorp with their gazillion interview rounds (where you’re forced to wear a tie! YIKES!), case studies and endless online personality checks can only dream of. Today’s web startup’s hiring process has nothing to do with the “traditional” one. It is fast and simple. We just hired our first web developer Feyyaz as an intern. We went from his first tweet directed towards our CEO Philip

to first committed code in less than a week. That’s how we like it! Lean and mean.

After reading Feyyaz’s first tweet, our CEO tweeted back suggesting to meet for lunch at Einstein’s alma mater in Zurich together with Philipe, our CTO. After lunch and coffee, our CTO booted up his laptop and showed Feyyaz the product while our CEO explained him the vision and big picture behind loqize.me: Be the go-to service to get local advice no matter where in the world (literally) you are. Feyyaz didn’t hesitate long and before talking about any other details, he just said “I’m in! When can I start?”. Wow.

Feyyaz is currently studying a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich. He’s already had some startup experience, however never on the technical side of things. He’s officially loqize.me’s first employee and we couldn’t be happier to have him on board.

You can read about his first day at loqize.me and follow him.

Welcome to the crew, buddy!

And by the way: We are still looking for more talented web developers to join our team! You know now that we like to keep even our hiring process lean so we can get back to making our product more awesome as quickly as possible.

- Your loqize.me team

We just added a neat little feature which allows you to see all answers that a user has given. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s pretty simple: Just go to a user’s profile page either by clicking on her profile pic or her name and then click on the tab ANSWERS to see all the answers that this particular user has given. By clicking on either the answer or the question you’ll be able to see your good old friend the “question-page” including map, pins and all the other nifty gifties that you’re used to.

Why would you look at a user’s answer, besides for the oh-so-normal (web)stalking of nowadays? Well, you could look at a user’s answers when you received an answer from her and don’t know her yet. By looking through her answers you’ll be able to “gauge” the style, personality and preferences of this particular user so you can put her answer into perspective. I.e. does the user have a similar taste than you do? Or do your tastes differ (too much)?

We hope this neat little feature will not only be useful to you but that you’ll have fun using it, too!

Have a nice start into the new week!

- Your loqize.me product nerds

Well, I guess that most of you figured it out already: We haven’t been acquired by Groupon (just yet).

But thanks to all of you who actually congratulated us! And now enjoy your weekend guys, and if you don’t know what to do today or tonight, head over to loqize.me and get yourself a recommendation from a friend or local!

- Your loqize.me team

Wow!

Un.be.lie.va.ble!

+

Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason just faxed an acquisition offer to loqize.me! The founders called them back ,on their land-line phones, and accepted it!

Thanks to everyone who has made this possible! Thanks to our friends and super early users and to our 1 intern! The bags of cash are on their way via USPS to the loqize.me HQ in Switzerland.

Thank you so much for believing in loqize.me and God bless! This is the last blogpost since the founders will be too rich and famous to keep blogging. Expect them to start tweeting like a madman though!

Also, feel free to visit the founders on their private island in the middle of a tiny Swiss lake!

- The loqize.me guys

You spoke and we listened: We just released a neat little feature that allows you to search for and follow a location.

What does “follow a location” mean?

When you follow a location (like “New York City”) you will be able to see every question from any user who asked about that particular location. You can see all questions related to that specific location in a new tab called “FOLLOWED LOCATIONS”. We built this feature so you can stay up-to-date about the locations that matter most to you: Your hometown, the neighborhood you live in, your workplace, a location you ‘re visiting or a location you’re just curious about. You can follow as many locations as you want. You’ll see all the locations you’re following below the search-box as a blue tag.

A real-life example

We think that you should follow locations that matter to you at a specific moment in your life and unfollow them once they’re not important anymore. Let’s say you just moved into your new place in NYC on the Upper East Side because you found a new, amazing job as a web developer at a cool web-startup on Varick St. in Soho. You should then follow “Upper East Side” and “Soho”. If you like going out in the Lower East Side you should follow this location, too. And if you’re planning to go to Cancun, Mexico for Summer vacations, you should start following “Cancun” a couple of days before you leave, so you can see what other people are asking and answering about Cancun. Obviously you should ask your own questions that you’ll have about your own trip, too.

Pro Tip: By clicking on a location either on the blue tag below the search box or on any other location in the stream (the little flags!) you can go to the location page and explore all the questions and answers around this particular location.

Nifty, huh?

How do you find and follow a location?

It’s pretty simple: Just click on the text-box that says “Search and follow location…” and type in any location you’re interested in. A location can be anything “geographical”:

• It can be the whole world (try “World”)
• Parts of continents (“Western Europe” or “East Coast”)
• Countries, states, cities and even neighborhoods like “Tribeca” or “Soho”

While typing the first few letters of the location you want to find and follow, the system automagically suggests locations and once you see the one that you’re looking for, just click on it and you’re DONE! Congrats! You are now following a location.

If you want to “unfollow” a location (i.e. stop seeing questions asked about that locaiton) simply click on the “x” next to it and it’ll disappear. Remember, you can follow and unfollow any location as many times as you want. You won’t delete any questions or anything. Following a location is only a filter to be able to see stuff that matters to you more easily!

Popular Locations

Below the search box and your followed locations you see the most POPULAR LOCATIONS ranked by amount of questions asked. If you want to see your hometown on top, keep asking questions about it! You can follow a popular location simply by clicking on the “+” next to it.

Have fun with the new features!

Your thoughts and suggestions are super appreciated! Just leave us a comment or head over to Facebook or Twitter and talk to us!

Later,

- Your loqize.me Gang

The past two weeks have been an amazing ride! Since putting up our (little bit out of the ordinary) teaser page and letting users sign up for our waiting list, we’ve seen an avalanche of signups! Without spending a dime on advertising, the waiting list has grown so large that, soon enough, we’ll be letting in our first users. To all of you who signed up: A big Dankeschön and Merci from Switzerland!

As promised, people who got at least three other people to sign up will get access to loqize.me sooner than those who didn’t. Did we mention that the record for most invited people by a single subscriber lies currently at 16(!) people? Try to beat that! This particular (super)subscriber and everyone who got at least three or more people to sign up will get access to loqize.me in the coming days. For the ones who haven’t been able to invite three people, there’s two things you can do: Try harder. Or seek Master Yoda’s advice, you must.

Patience is the Way of the Jedi

So, now what?

What can you expect from us in the near future? Well, we don’t want to spoil the surprise. So let me answer your question with another question (important: do not try to answer a question with another question on loqize.me! the site could implode into a white dwarf). What would you build for a Q&A site that focused on location, places and things around you? Would you build a feature that allowed users to sell pet supplies to other users or would you build a mobile app so you could get and give local advice on the go? Vote for your favorite in the comments section!

New York, New York

In other exciting news: We are ramping up operations in our first US-office in Soho, NYC. New York City is one of the best cities in the world to build a world-class team and learn first-hand about user behavior in terms of location-based apps.

And by the way: We are looking to hire kick-ass webdevs who’d join our team either in Zurich, Switzerland or in NYC! Have a look at our job page if you dare!

In the meantime, keep inviting your friends and moving up on the waiting list. And for the few chosen ones who already have access to the site: enjoy the magic show!

- Your loqize.me crew

loqize.me is a new Q&A site for places. What does that mean? It means we are like Quora but completely focused on points of interest, i.e. questions related to finding the best restaurant in New York or the most authentic travel tip for Bangkok.

Like asking your friend in Tokyo where to eat sushi.

As of today we launched our little teaser page on http://localuncle.com and are super excited to see what happens next… The future is now and we’re building it!

Let’s go!