Category Archives: Live Show

BagsAway makes travel easier by providing a place to store your bags



BagsAway Luggage StorageFor many of us, when we travel there is one common problem that pops up: what do we do with our luggage on the first and last day? Before you can check in to your hotel when you arrive or after you check out before you leave, you are stuck either sitting somewhere with your bags or dragging them along with you wherever you go. There has got to be a better way, and that way has finally arrived in BagsAway.

This new platform allows travelers to find locations with a little extra space that are willing to store their stuff while they continue to experience their trip. The benefit for the people offering up space, in addition to a little revenue, is exposing new people to their place, whether it be a restaurant, cafe, store, etc. By working with BagsAway, however, they get something just as important: protection. The company provides the hosts with special locks to protect the bags, as well as protecting the hosts. This creates a level of trust between the two parties because there is a central protector. If something does go wrong, BagsAway also has insurance coverage for their hosts, covering $1200 per bag stored.

While many startups launch in a small area, BagsAway recognizes that travel happens worldwide, and the need goes with travels. Because of this, they have worked to secure locations in many of the top tourist locations, including Montreal, New York City, Tel Aviv, and more. This means that wherever you are traveling, you should check and see if there is a BagsAway host in your destination city.

The platform is live now and looking for both hosts and travelers to give it a try. To find out the cities where it is currently in action or to book storage, head over to their website.

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Crowdmark removes the frustration from the grading process in school



Crowdmark Grading PlatformThe grading process for teachers, teachers assistants, and professors can be a big challenge, especially as the student count per educator increases. For the students, receiving those grades is also a challenge, between having to get assignments to the teacher in time, then waiting an unknown amount of time to get back the score can be emotional. Some technologies have come around to try and enhance that experience, but as our host Daniele can attest, those technologies tend to come with a caveat: a lack of feedback. A new platform, Crowdmark, recognized all of these issues and set out to address them.

One of the big focuses of the platform is providing meaningful feedback to the students. This can be done in a couple of different ways. First, the teacher can create a collection of pre-defined comments, each with an assigned score. The teacher and their assistants can then use that as a rubric to score assignments easily and uniformly. However, sometimes something happens that just doesn’t fit into the pre-defined. Then, the grader can enter a custom comment and score it as needed. This makes the process more fair for students that are in a large group, including those submitting papers for competitions and contests.

For students, the benefit of feedback is obvious. If you get useful information about what you did right and what you did wrong, you can try to get better at that particular topic. The feedback received from instructors through Caremark has become so important to students that one of the schools using the platform has a dedicated channel on Reddit called “Caremark Flex” in which students share their biggest, most impressive feedback.

Caremark is looking to expand its reach to new colleges and universities. For more information about the platform and to contact the company about bringing it into your school, check out their website.

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MsBizWiz absolutely has a knack for making networking a lot of fun



MsBizWiz Jean ChowAs I’m sure most of our followers know by now, in between all of the long hours and hard work, our PLuGHiTz Live crew has a lot of fun while we are out and about, filming special events. It truly is wonderful to not only love the work we are doing but to also make an adventure out of everything that we do. And one of the best parts of our job is how we get to meet such amazing people along the way.

This year at Collision Conference 2019, we were very lucky to have had the most extraordinary volunteer in the Media Village, Jean Chow. Jean took such good care of us by not only escorting the guests that had signed up for interviews over to our booth but also bringing us suggestions for additional interviews as she met interesting people throughout her day. We quickly found out that Jean loves all of the same techie, start-up and production stuff that we do and is very active in her entrepreneurial activities. So as we got to a point in our day with an extra few minutes between guests, it was only natural to call her over to chat with us in more detail.

Jean has an extensive resume that includes being an Instructor at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. In this capacity, she can really let her personality shine. She has a special knack to help people learn that connecting with others is a valued skill that helps build relationships. Through her workshops, students can view networking as a tool to learn and grow, not just as a necessary evil. She puts into practice what she refers to as “The Five Hacks for Powerful Networking” in her classes and can do so in the most fun and interesting ways. She brings it to life through story-telling, improv, and sharing networking best practices.

Many of us on the team now follow Jean on social media and, again, love how she brings her personality into her daily journeys. Make sure to watch Jean’s interview and you’ll see just how contagious her energy is. And to find out more, you can check out her website and also follow all of her adventures on Instagram.

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Get Excited for a New World of Data Analytics with Corterix



CorterixLarge sums of data can be difficult to gather, store, and decipher. Luckily, Corterix is fit to do that for you. The big data market isn’t providing usable data to it’s customers so Corterix is determined to store all forms of unstructured data into a SQL database and transform it into usable, structured data without being disruptive to the industry.

Traditional formats were built on a search platform, not a big data platform. Current versions have merely been pieced together over time which has created more of a work around environment than a unified and easy to use platform. This is where Corterix is different because they are built on a new and radically different concept. The platform has been engineered from scratch to swiftly ingest data of all types as well as index, compress and load it into a single, easily accessible SQL database.

And the storage capacity is amazing. Corterix is able to store up to 64 terabytes of data in a single cell of a database and can also store other formats such as videos. Data is constantly growing and as it gets larger, it needs larger databases to query and Corterix can provide that service.

Check out their website here for more information.

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A Smart New Way to Monitor Your Nutrition



SustainabodyGetting the most nutritional benefit from our foods and vitamins is a common goal in today’s health plan. Sustainabody does just that. It is a smart nutrition tracking app that goes beyond calorie and diet tracking. It tells you not only what you are getting from your food, but also what you should be eating so you can get the most vitamins from your food choices.

It fits in with any diet plan and is especially beneficial for vegans or someone who is lactose intolerant. Body builders also find this helpful because they are very aware of their vitamin E intake and how important it is for their muscle growth and over all health.

There is a free, ad-supported version, and an ad-free version for $1.99 available for iOS, with Android coming in the near future. It is not only a fun app but it is very easy to use.

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Declare war on crappy earbuds and treat yourself to a better headphone experience with new Monster headphones.
Blast to the future with the Monster Blaster: the boombox reimagined.


Businesses Get a Boost with Belay Solutions



BELAY SolutionsIn the world of mountain climbing and repelling, the best friend you can have is called a belay. They assist the climber and enable him or her to climb higher. That, in essence, is what Belay Solutions does for small and large businesses alike.

Through remote workers, Belay Solutions is able to provide outsourced “virtual assistants.” These assistants can provide a number of functions including copy writing, web design and bookkeeping. This is particularly helpful to startups who often have only one or two employees.

They work with their clients so that they get the best placement of a VA by looking at their hard and soft skills. This service is wonderful for travelers, who themselves are actually VAs . They don’t really need someone in their office for a 40 hour work week. Belay Solutions have also been very helpful to pastors, speakers, coaches and authors, taking them from being individuals to a fully functioning company.

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Declare war on crappy earbuds and treat yourself to a better headphone experience with new Monster headphones.
Blast to the future with the Monster Blaster: the boombox reimagined.


Wimbify Provides Safe and Secure Travel for the LGBT Community



WimbifyMore than 50% of LGBT travelers do so all alone and that isn’t always safe nowadays. Now there is a mobile platform created for travel sharing called Wimbify. It allows you to find other people to become travel mates for safety.

In addition to traveling, you can be a Local Hero in your own city. These heroes are available to provide local tours for just a few hours or a couple of days. Wimbify has a recommended fee but the hero is allowed to set their own price. When you book a tour you pay a small booking fee and that is how they make their revenue. The Local Heroes are rated by the travelers who have used their services in order to be able to find the best match for you.

After being in business for 2 years the service is currently available in Milan, Italy and San Francisco, California with the next planned city being Berlin, Germany. The app is free and is available now for iOS and Android.

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Declare war on crappy earbuds and treat yourself to a better headphone experience with new Monster headphones.
Blast to the future with the Monster Blaster: the boombox reimagined.


TripHobo Lets You Explore the World Like a King



TripHoboPlanning your trip or vacation is getting a big boost with an app called TripHobo. It is essentially a detail planner that helps you to see all the famous and important things you always heard about. It can also lead you to a lot of unknown venues and special places not as well-known, that may very well turn out to be the pinnacle of your trip.

If you don’t care to pre-plan the trip yourself, there are literally millions of published itineraries just waiting for you to use as there are over a million trip plans for over 90,000 cities. These itineraries are available now and they are free to use. The planner is available on the web and the companion app is available for iOS and Android.

This innovative company has been around for 2½ years and is a very exciting addition to the travel planning experience because it connects 2 groups of people: travelers who don’t know and venues who need you to know.

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Declare war on crappy earbuds and treat yourself to a better headphone experience with new Monster headphones.
Blast to the future with the Monster Blaster: the boombox reimagined.


Fantastic Visuals Made From Hidden Data with Cinchapi



Cinchapi Data PlatformData, data everywhere but not a drop of reason.

As small and large business owners alike are looking to capitalize on the increasing amount of data that is available to them from multiple sources, it becomes increasingly difficult to properly analyze the figures to actually increase profitability. Let’s face it, it’s sometimes difficult enough to even try to figure out the raw data, much less turn it into something useable. The Cinchapi Data Platform has found a way to, as they put it, take your data “from cluster to clarity” by combining machine learning with human intelligence. Their approach makes it easy and intuitive to work with real time or conventional data for maximum results.

The software is able to decipher data from any source (including IoT) and quickly does the hard work of transforming it into usable information for your team to review without delay, while those conditions still exist. This enables businesses to make changes in design and process at the right times. In other words, strike while the iron is hot rather than resort to using dated information when it’s too late to capitalize on those conditions.

Cinchapi streams, examines, and stores definitive data generated in real-time, as well as from conventional, legacy, and proprietary databases and sources. Other features include a context aware, conversational interface; customized visualizations, data prep reduction and more.

For more information, visit their website at Cinchapi.com

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Declare war on crappy earbuds and treat yourself to a better headphone experience with new Monster headphones.
Blast to the future with the Monster Blaster: the boombox reimagined.


CES 2016 Primer



Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central gets our CES channels fired up with a primer of what is to come in the coverage department from the 20 team members of the Tech Podcast Network who start preparing to head to Vegas in a couple of days.