It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything at Amaratech. Things have been very busy with NugoUgo and we’re beginning to get some traction.

We recently had a client suffer a hard drive failure. Luckily most of the important data was backed up “in the cloud”. This client used Dropbox and it was the perfect solution for her. She was using the free account (2GB of space) and the most important files she had were her quickbook files.

We were faced with replacing her hard drive or buying a new desktop. At this point, her old desktop was over 10 years old. It’s not a difficult decision. A new desktop costs $300-$400 and comes with a new lcd monitor. With a computer over 10 years old, parts are difficult to come by and other issues potential issues are looming such as the motherboard battery dying.

The rule of thumb is that if the computer is over 5 years old, you should probably replace it. If the computer is a server, you have to make sure all your software packages are compatible. Other than that, upgrading is the way to go. The amount of time spent trying to replace parts in an older computer usually isn’t worth it if you factor in cost of a consultant fixing everything.

It’s all about market segmentation and niches.  Do we focus on getting hotel subscribers or do we go for Destination Marketing Organizations  (DMOs)?  It looks like we are getting traction in both areas.  This and deciding  which features to develop are the constant questions.   Our app and base technology can accommodate both needs, it is just a matter of bandwidth.  DMOs would result in larger deals, but the sales  cycle is much longer and there are a lot fewer DMOs than hotels.  We should be able to make a decision by the end of October, until then, I’ll be stretched fairly thin.

After a few brainstorm sessions, market studies and meetings, we have reconfigured our app to focus upon the hospitality industry. Here are the first screen shots of our app.

This is a screen shot of one destination of an adventure called 2 Days in San Francisco. Each destination has a photo, text and GPS directions to the location. It’s coming together pretty well. The Hotel tab gives information on the hotel and its services. The FAQ tab answers the most common questions the hotel staff receives from their guests. The Essential Services is a listing of phone, address and directions for essential non-hotel services such as pharmacy, hospital and gas stations.

We are evaluating options about new business models. Our nugougo app has plenty of good content but is a community driven site the best way to leverage the content? What is the best way to monetize what we have? As we progress down the mobile app road, what is the best path to take? Stay tuned….

nugougo now has a review system implemented. The features for UGO 1 keep getting knocked out by Sam at a quick rate. There are only a few features left for the alpha launch of nugougo. In addition we do have quite a bit of content to bring in from our currently content partners and hopefully we will get a few more content partners. We are still trying to decide if we are focusing on becoming a professionally created content site or community created content site. We’ll see.

nugougo is ready for beta testing. Currently testers are limited to friends and family. Please send an email to info@nugougo.com if you are interested in participating.

Currently we have over 120 adventures within the bay area created by 4 professional writers as well as a few by the staff here at nugougo. Our adventure tag cloud looks pretty interesting. Check it out:

artery clogging barn dancing bbq beer brewing beer drinking berry picking biking birding bocce burlingame butter churning camping canoeing chocolate cocktailing cow milking crabbing cruising culture cupcaking cycling dating dining dog walking drinking driving egg collecting environment farming ferrying fishing flying food foraging gaming goat fainting goat milking hiking history horseback riding hot mud bathing hot springs hot tubbing kayaking kids learning maze solving motorcycling museum museuming nature outdoors park partying peninsula picnicing playground playground romping racing relaxing run sacramento valley san francisco scavenger hunting shingle making shopping sky diving sonoma south bay sports stumbling surfing swiming swimming tidepools touring tree climbing urban outing walking water whale watching wine country wine tasting

We understand our strengths lie in technology and business development not content creation.  We have a few content partners for our nugougo app and we are continually looking for more.   In addition, we are working with groups to pull in beta testers for our app.  It is apparent that newspapers are laying off more and more writers as they struggle to find a revenue model that works.  There are some great blogs out there, but it takes a lot of time to sift through all of them to find what is good and what is great.  In addition, even when the blog is great, searching for content in the blog is not a simple task.  Hopefully our app will solve some of those problems.  I have talked to a few mothers and most of them try to get ideas and plans from forums as well as mothers’ groups.  Luckily we are working on those groups as well.

Importing and converting the content from our partners is a bit time consuming currently but that will be fixed in later revisions.  Until then, we’ll crank them out.

We just received our first iPad. The functionality is great but the backlighting seems a little high and is a little difficult to watch for extended periods of time, more so than a laptop screen for some reason. Despite that fact, we have been testing nugougo on it and it looks better on the iPad than it does on a laptop screen. The 3rd revision of nugougo should be completed by this week. It just keeps getting better and better.

In other news, the vanity.com deal fell through. We could not come to agreement on compensation. We are looking for other methods of bringing in revenue while we develop nugougo. Every day has its little victories and challenges.