Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Sasha Pasulka
I’m spending the week at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco because someone over there made the enormous mistake of approving my press pass. That person obviously didn’t get the memo that I’m way too hypomanic most of the time to sit in the actual panel/demo sessions and take notes – being still and not talking have never been my strengths, although that apparently makes me highly fundable – so I spent five hours wandering through Startup Alley, chatting with founders and begging people not to give me pieces of paper. (“What’s your Twitter? Just tell me your Twitter. No, seriously, I will never look at your one-sheet again and if it goes in my purse it just becomes harder to find my lipstick. PUT. AWAY. THE PAPER.”)
Even after five hours, I still hadn’t chatted with all the companies — not even close. And, to be honest, a lot of the companies that have been getting conference buzz so far didn’t blow me out of the water (and I don’t understand how the 8000th geolocation service with a game layer still gets to be considered disruptive or innovative — but that’s another piece entirely).
Here are some of the companies I met on Day One that I thought were actually doing cool and useful and potentially disruptive things:
As a managing editor of several websites, I love CheckDog. It monitors a website for spelling errors, and emails you a daily list of spelling errors found on the site. It’s so simple, and so very, very needed.
“So I can just forward that daily email onto my entire writing staff?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Great. Can I keep track of which writers make spelling mistakes most frequently?”
“Yes.”
“Perfect. Can my competitively compensated staff of professional writers get badges for spelling things correctly?”
“Um, no.”
“You mean there’s no game layer at all?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I love you. No, no, I didn’t mean you could give me a piece of paper.”
I’ve written before about what an enormous pain in the neck it is to track any sort of meaningful data about the sales and usage of native iPhone and iPad apps. Apsalar creates a conversion funnel within your app or across multiple apps, then monitors the way your users move through the conversion funnel and when they drop out. It segments your users based on the week they signed up (and if you haven’t read Richard Luck’s piece about the value of doing this, you really oughtta) and tracks their behavior over time and through different releases, providing insights about how you can tweak your app to move users further down the funnel.
Apsalar is perfect for publishers of apps with free vs. paid versions, or apps that offer in-app purchases.
There are no badges at all.
