Getting paid for taking pictures on the street?

Give a massive job to one person and he will not be able to do alone, distribute that work to hundreds or thousands of people and it will be get done and may be quickly. One Silicon Valley startup was conceived on the same idea and doing fine. GigWalk turns million of iPhone users to a mobile workforce that can collect valuable information for the subscribers of the company. In return, you get paid by walking on the street and providing gigs.
Check it out yourself... at gigwalk.com
Future generation will have one more occupation to consider...gigwalker? In a news story reported over weekend,  gigwalk claimed that it paid someone upto $1200 a month for gigwalk. Who uses the collected data and why... is no brainier in Google era. Information is everything and validated and relevant information is the gold every advertiser is after. It seems GPS makers want to validate street level information for accuracy and gigwalker  is serving them well.
Happy gigwalking !

Renting is hot - Silicon Valley Style

There is no shortage of disruptive innovation in Silicon Valley. The new breed of start-ups based on peer-to-peer renting are popping up. Take a look at these innovative companies that are creating news:

1. Rentalic - You have your garage filled with yard maintenance stuffs that you do not use anymore. Rent your lawn mower out to someone. Or rent the expensive bike and try before you buy. Check it out. 
2. Getaround - Peer-to-peer car rental.  Theme is - rent a car from someone nearby, you can rent on hourly basis. How about renting a Mini Cooper for $5.50 an hr or an electric Tesla for $50 an hr. Full insurance is included with rental. There is an electronic getAround carkit installed in your car which is used to get iPhone access to the car. 
3. Zilok -  Another peer-to-peer rental, started in Europe and now spreading in US
4. Roomorama - provides platform for short term accommodation rental. I searched for one day accomodation in San Francisco for 1 guest and found 17 results starting 60 bucks up to $1100

Good luck renting - all you need is your iPhone, no car keys needed :-)

Long sought freedom - from Local/Long distance phone company

Not being charged for local and long distance calls is indeed a long sought freedom for me.  We have been spoiled by so money FREE services being offered these days (skipping the argument about whether there is a huge indirect costs it comes with). We take free email service as our constitutional right, didn't we pay for every single postcard or envelop we posted letter or  holiday cards to our loved ones. We still do ...but they are negligible compared to amount of emails that we exchange every single day. This actually gave me an idea that would save our post office from bankrupty.
How about commercializing the postage stamps by advertisers. How about a Coke or Pepsi stamp. Pampers stamp for new parents or kellogg stamps for family. Every 44 cents stamp will yield additional at least 10 cents from advertisers, I guess. Anyway, this blog is not about saving our beloved Post Office, but setting up a free local and long distance phone service.
I have been using Vonage for more than a year and have been pretty satisfied. It offers free unlimited  international calling in addition to local and long distance phone calls in US for a reasonable 33 bucks a month(they advertise 24.99 but you really end up paying 33 bucks with all taxes and all). This is nothing compared to what I paid for my overseas calls back in 1998/1999 which was about $3.24 a minute.
Since, I was not utilizing my existing phone service to its fullest, I started looking for alternatives recently. Ooma was certainly an option which has an upfront $200 costs for its adapter. A lot of goodies come with it but I was really looking for something cheaper. While looking for cheap VOIP adapter, I came across the Google Voice blog which gave some neat idea about hacking some linksys voip adapter to use with free google voice service. I remember having signed up for GV when it was made public in July of 2009, I wanted to give it a try. Some more price comparison in ebay and amazon pointed me to a simple VOIP adapter by a less known company called Obihai. I was happy to find out that this adapter was made specially to be used with GV service. 134 5 star reviews on amazon, that's a great testimony for such a low profile, least advertised product. The maker of this product provides clear instruction on configuring GV with Obihai adapter.
Why did I need this adapter?
Well, I need something that I could plug my analog Panasonic phone, corded or cordless and use it like any landline phone. You could use Google voice to make calls from your computer, but that's not convenient and you have to keep the computer running 24x7. Obihai adapter allowed me to connect my existing analog cordless panasonic phone to it and that's it. Here is what you do to get it up and running when you get the adapter in mail:

1. Make sure you have a Google voice phone number activated. You need to make at least one outgoing call from your computer using this number. That activates your GV.
2. Connect your broadband or high speed DSL line and your phone to the Obihai adapter 
3. Go to www.obitalk.com and register 
4. Follow the prompt for enabling GV - enter your gmail credential 
5. Test both incoming and outgoing call

Comments/suggestions? share your experiences...have a great day !

FlipBoard - new way to browse social web

A must have app for your iPad. I am lovin' it !
The universe of beautiful, interesting content categorized and presented in most useful way that you can image.
The red ribbon on top right corner will let you go back to the category anytime you wish. Some of the content you should try:

• Wonderpolis (you will find this in science and education category)
• News - if you are a news buff like me then you get all good news sources here in flipboard format; The daily beast is my favorite.
• Business - Inc and Startup quote are my favorites. Get rich slowly is something you can add to your favorite.
• Cooking - The Daily Meal is the good one.
• Home furnishing & Designing - Houzz and Home are under Living section. 

Browse, have fun and share some interesting thing that you found and read.