Pingg Archive

Here are today’s startup updates from the humid, moist New York City.

Worldwide startup updates

• Regator launches iPhone app – Regator
• How to create a mind map – Creately
• New templates added for invoicing – Invoicera
• Devver code tool moves into beta – Devver
• Freshbooks decorated their office for cheap – Freshbooks
• Tungle calendar app moves into Ning – Tungle
• Get tags and search now – Task.fm
• Tr.im URL shortener to be community owned – Tr.im
• A look at redesigning search – WebMynd

New York startup updates

• Pingg partners with Patrick McMullan for new designs – Pingg

Here are a few updates from a variety of NYC-based startups.

uTest

Last week we posted a demo presentation and some notes about uTest. This week the company announced the launch of mobile application testing. They currently have 15,000 testers from 150 countries available to complete the tests that companies setup although I am not sure what percentage are mobile testers. The company noted regarding the launch, "uTest provides real-time access to testers with a wide range of locations, languages and platforms, specifically important to mobile app developers; having many unique dimensions in a testing matrix is a reality (and a daunting task) for mobile developers."

KickApps

This week KickApps announced a new partnership with Hearst-Argyle Television which will bring the KickApps social media app to Hearst’s nation-wide network of television-station websites. The program is named "u local" and will be pushed out to 25 television websites during the first half of 2009. The first u local website went live in December 2008 in Manchester, New Hampshire. Check out all of our KickApps coverage.

Pingg

When we interviewed Pingg founder Lorien Gabel last month, we discussed the partnership Pingg has with Martha Stewart. Stewart is an investor in Pingg and this week they two companies announced the next step in integration. The release notes, "Martha Stewart and her team of expert designers have culled a special collection of diverse, stunning images from MSLO’s extensive content libraries that can now be incorporated into online invitations and e-cards."

We have covered a good number of event planning sites here on CN. Today I had a chance to catchup with the co-founder of NY-based Pingg Lorien Gabel to find out what’s going on with the event planning service.

Lorien noted that they decided to start Pingg because the space was underserved and most of the services were "bad looking or cheesy". He says that they have a strong artist community using Pingg and creating invitations for site users to utilize for their events.

I asked about the difference between Pingg and the other 8,001,141 event planning services. Lorien believes the biggest difference is their print service. Basically with Pingg you can choose to send your invites electronically or by postal mail. The postal mail invites provide a revenue stream for Pingg. The print pricing starts at $1.25/piece plus postage. The other big differentiator is that they focus on more formal events including weddings. He sees a time when weddings are using Pingg to send invites electronically instead of traditional paper invites. Another interesting stat…over 15% of the invites sent on Pingg are for business events.

Pingg raised $2.8 million in a Series A round of funding from Martha Stewart in late 2008. The biggest player in the event market is eVite, which even though it isn’t as sexy or as strong in services as Pingg (and a few others), still does 16 million invitations each month. I asked Lorien about how he plans to grow the service and he said they are working some deals to get more distribution via Martha’s networks.