Special Learning Uses Tech for Special Ed
Children and adults with disorders such as Autism have unique educational needs. While some companies have created and applied a great deal of technological innovation in education, there is much less innovation applied to the education of students with special needs. Special Learning is a startup that looks to rectify this by providing mobile apps and educational resources for the special needs community. In its designers’ words, it is a resource and education portal for parents, providers and educators for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and other developmental disabilities worldwide. One of the most effective methods in treating behavioral disorders or reaching people with special needs is Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) Therapy. Special Learning uses technology to utilize this method while providing information, tools and resources for anyone who works with people suffering from Autism or other developmental disabilities. Read more »
While mobile tech devices serve as a distraction to many students in class, teachers can also use them to make lessons more interactive, engaging, and interesting. Many schools are now implementing the use of tablets to do away with the old methods of tedious note-taking and uninvolved lecture. With GoSoapBox, a student can simultaneously interact with the rest of his or her class in real time by participating with any Internet-connected device. It is a web-based app that serves to encourage participation in study and engaging classroom discussion. Students can use it to post questions about a lecture, “vote up” questions their classmates have already submitted, let their teacher know when they are confused, and contribute to polls and questions posted by the teacher. 
Connecting every device in homes and businesses is quickly becoming one of the most popular uses of mobile technology. It makes accessing everything you want instant while allowing you to operate more than one device simultaneously. Typically, users can only achieve this with a great deal of money, often requiring a professional installation. When this is not the case, apps allowing this are typically simplistic and do not offer as much to the user. Now, however, there is iRule, a mobile app that makes home automation easy even for those who are not tech-savvy. It is also much cheaper and features an option to integrate other home controls into a complete cloud-based automation system. Thus, if you already have some form of home automation or different apps on your smartphone for lighting, TV, and more, iRule can control all of these from one place. 
There is a lot of time, effort, and work that goes into making a large event successful, whether for personal or business purposes. It can take a large number of people performing many different tasks over a long period, making it difficult to organize and ensure the desired result. Fortunately for event coordinators, now there is Messageblock, an easy-to-use cloud-based event management system that helps users communicate better with their event committees. It makes it easier for you to collaborate with everyone involved in planning, with the goal of strengthening your professional relationships, helping you increase participation at your events, and keep attendees returning. 
It can be almost impossible to find an expert specialist in a very particular medical field without a lot of struggle, time, and travel. 2nd.MD is a startup founded on the belief that everyone should have access to a specialist when necessary. Simply put, it helps to bring the world’s leading doctors to those who need them the most when they need them the most. Typically, paperwork, geography, or insurance can limit one from getting the professional help they need or even the second opinion they desire, and 2nd.MD specializes in connecting patients with doctors who can provide that second opinion on medical issues. In the past, for instance, a patient on the East coast who needed an organ transplant might need to speak with a specialist on the West coast. This would mean booking an appointment, often a brief one, then pay for a flight and accommodations only to have a doctor tell you to take a different approach. The service allows you to schedule a video chat appointment with a specialist from the comfort of your own home find out what he or she recommends. 
The Internet gives us an unprecedented ability to share information and ideas as well as buy and sell goods of any kind worldwide wherever we are. With this comes the increasing popularity of a sharing economy, whereby one person may trade physical assets or services for the assets or services another person has to offer. While few people view knowledge as a commodity, that is the idea behind LRNGO, a place, in its creator’s words, where learning meets the sharing economy. It is an open web and mobile marketplace for buying, selling, and trading online or offline lessons in almost any topic. It allows users in over 200 countries find experts and exchange skills and knowledge with each other at no cost, though they can earn money teaching what they love. Essentially, it serves as a sort of market exchange that puts buyers and sellers together, but strictly for educational purposes. 
With increasing focus on “going green” and minimizing paper waste, there are many services helping companies adapt. More and more companies are offering paperless receipts that customers can receive at the point of sale or through their email. TransactionTree is one startup offering retailers the ability to deliver paperless digital receipts with a few added benefits. It supports all point-of-sale, EFT (electronic funds transfer) devices, and ecommerce platforms for transactions completed on mobile devices or online. More than just a digital receipt platform, it offers digital marketing, data services, customer analytics, and social media integration as well. 
With the Internet, social media, and the mobile market, brands rely more than ever on consumer input. Conversely, that input is much easier to provide in a way that brands can see it than ever before. Plisten is a startup that looks to help strengthen the connection between customers and merchants. Its creator calls it the easiest way for consumers to communicate with the brands that they really love. The idea is to give customers more of a voice in what small and major companies alike offer and to genuinely lend a voice to the decisions they make. It can be difficult to organize all the information we receive from the companies we like when they are scatted across email lists, various social networks, blogs, daily deal sites, mobile sites, and more. Plisten gives users a space online where they can organize all that information in a way that is more fun and engaging. 
More and more restaurants are depending on providing online and mobile ordering, and many companies exist to provide them with the ability to provide just such a service. With all of the competitors crowding the market, a startup providing for restaurants to offer online ordering and apps would need to bring something unique. Splick-it is one such company that works to develop separate apps for each brand or merchant with a few differences from its competitors. It simplifies online and mobile ordering, payment, and marketing while adding convenience. It also works to strengthen its clients and connect them with their customers with customized mobile apps and websites on a platform powering mobile and online ordering, payment, and loyalty programs. 
While there are plenty of photography sites and communities, the ability to share on social media, and places to participate in photo contests, there are not many online services that combine all these things. Enter Pixoto, a startup offering an online community for photographers to compete for the best images in their category. It delivers more than other image sharing sites like Flickr, adding an element of gamification to the sharing. While some of these sites may feature contests, it can be complicated and take a long time to figure out, while Pixoto is extremely simple. Eventually, the best photos can even begin to make money, and there is an option for the best photographers to sell their photos.