Vi.sualize.us aims to do for images what del.icio.us did for websites. It’s the brain child of Victor Espigares and was created after a personal need to remember a particular photo within a portfolio. Not happy with the current offerings he decided to do something about it.

Built around similar features as del.icio.us, you see an image you like, you bookmark it (possibly using the firefox plugin pictured below), it’s saved to your vi.sualize.us account for future reference. You can also tag different images and share bookmarked images with your friends.

I’ve been playing around with the site for the past hour or so and there really is a lot of great content over there. I could easily sit for ages just browsing the different tag sections.

What i find most impressive is that Victor built the entire thing himself, to date spending $0, excluding his hosting bill. Almost 7 months old, at the time of writing people have posted more than 35,000 images and there are roughly 1,900 registered users. If you haven’t before heard of this started i suggest you check them out.

FlyRig.com is a reasonably new (launched very late last year) NYC apartment rental listing service. The site has some of the best google maps API implementation i’ve ever seen.

After selecting the area you want to live in (Manhattan for example) you’re taken to a page clearly listing information on the different properties in that area. When you mouse over the different apartments google maps smoothly zooms to the apartments location on the map. It’s a wonderfully clear and concise way of looking for a place to live.

We’re trying to improve the rental process here in New York. The tight market
results in misinformation and opportunities for unscrupulous agents – things
that are frustrating to both renters and agents who work hard to build trust
with their clients. In addition, there lacks a modern solution for finding
apartments in the city – the most popular listing services either lack mapping
capabilities or supporting information commonly needed when deciding on a place
to live.

FlyRig was self funded by Adrian Liang. He works on the site full time along with one other part-time employee and two occasionally used contractors. Since launching in December 2007 they’ve signed up over 250 brokers from some of the largest agencies in the city.

It’s a really nice little service. The system could presumably be expanded into other cities without too much effort.

Oh, simple enough, a wonderful service called LunchBoxPal.
Have you ever been on a business trip, at a conference, or even in some city on vacation, and yearned to meet-up with somebody for a lunch break? A morning coffee, maybe? You know how it is, you’re sitting in your hotel room alone and wish you just had something to do before your flight back home.

Well, LunchBoxPal is here to help. Think of it as a more mature and targeted craigslist, and cross that with some common social networking features you’d find at facebook. 

“LunchBoxPal is going to be a new form of professional networking geared towards bringing people together in the physical world, rather than just in cyberspace.  With most social networking tools, it just allows people to become friends with others that you currently know, or have met once or twice.  We’re looking to create professional relationships that won’t exist online, but actually where people get out and connect.”

To this date, founder Brandon Dohman has paid a single $200 towards all development and work on LunchBoxPal. The now-tech-consultant-gone-serial-entrepreneur estimates future expenses of $3-5,000 to get LBP into the spotlight. When asked, Dohman replied he’ll either be making these investments himself, or possibly seeking a strategic partner to help out.

So far, Dohman hopes to connect colleagues and people meeting up through the site with restaurant and cafes, which I think is a wise and strategic model. Take a look at their advertising page to learn more about it.

The idea popped into Dohman’s head when, “…one day while I was sitting bored at my desk during my lunch break.  Many times, I end up sitting at my desk reading through some blogs, or reading up on new business concepts, which after a month got boring.  And one day I realized… It would be nice if I had a way to connect with someone who wouldn’t mind catching a lunch and talking some business, or politics, or the most recent Family Guy episode.”

Still in pre-beta development stages, Dohman reports a hopeful launch date of May 31st. We couldn’t get our hands on any invites or screenshots just yet, but Brandon said the service will be based (though very heavily modified) off popular open-source networking platform Elgg. Hopefully we’ll be able to send out a few beta invites once things come closer to being ready. Look out for more coverage on LunchBoxPal as it unwraps.

Tim Hussey sent me an email this morning telling me about a project he is working on called Pixifi.

Tim is a part time wedding photographer (as well as being a professional designer/developer) and after getting sick of using a combination of Outlook, Excell and Word to manage his clients he thought something needed to be done. Strangely enough this is how most really useful web applications come about, someone is in need of it, so they make it.

Tim was nice enough to let me have a look around an early version of Pixifi today and I was generally impressed. I could see how it would be a valuable resource for any freelance photographer looking fir an easy way to manage their work load. What impressed me even more was that Tim has designed and developed this entire thing himself. From the ground up. It’s very rare to find someone who can both design and program exceptionally well. So, to date he has spent $0 on the website. Although… (and this is a wonderful quote)

I had to sacrifice time with my wife and friends to start building it…
You can’t put a price on that kind of startup funding… it’s expensive unless you’re
willing to make the sacrifice in the beginning.

Below is a quick look at the app itself.

Not too long ago, a friend of mine (coincidentally a partner of mine, and what’s more, part of the indiestartups team) embarked on a wonderful journey through lands far and vast – more commonly known as the development phase. He decided, (not verbatim, I can only guess as to what was running through that imprudent man’s mind):

“Why are there no [well off] middle-class web-hosts?”

Some of you maybe confused, but before I dissect this, think about what this statement symbolizes. Yes! That’s right! Exploring the internet-pool-o’-niches. Here are a few questions to ask yourself the next time you may be trying to come up with a niche to strap your idea into:

• “Why does this service not exist?”
• “Well, it exists, but its not worthy of a mention. Can I out-do them?”
• “Would the competition in this market really be all that competitive?”

Et cetera… Great, hopefully I’ve stamped some meaning into a simple thought. Let’s move on to what the sentence denotes. The web is filled with web-hosts, everywhere you look, but typically there are two parts to this. (a) Large company or corporation that has lost track of caring for supreme quality because of the dollar being taken in, or (b) Small startup running a HostDime reseller account and marking up the invoice by 500%. Neither of these options are incredible, nor am I saying that these are the only two types of providers around, rather, I am simply opting that these are the two typical webhosting providers you will find.

David wanted to enter the growing, yet fairly unexplored, ‘option (c)’ or ‘mid-class’ hosting market. After some work, preparation, testing, and a four figure variable ($xxxx,-), it was finally launched. Its called This* Webhost, and its the new trendsetter host. Indie Startups is hosted with This*, and we’re loving it so far. And what’s better? As an IndieStartups exclusive, anyone who signs up with This* can receive a 50% lifetime price-slash off their order, just type in ” INDIE ” when ordering.

Now please, don’t take this as unwarranted advertisement. I’ve mentioned David is part of the indiestartups team, but let me put some thought into this kind of promotion (even more than the quick advise I gave just above). If you have little funds to pump through and into your startup, you may be trying to spend less money to get things done (IE, guerilla marketing)… and I have a micro-tip for you, seemingly a quite obvious one, though I’ve seen it overlooked too many time. If you have a relevant source of traffic on a property you own, or a friend or colleague owns, that you may be able to tap into (even if its at a discount), use it.

Enjoy the discount code, and be on the lookout for more start-ups and advice coming your way. 🙂