Tow Choice: tow trucks to better serve motorists in need

There’s no native app to download for one, since it’s sort of silly to force stranded drivers to deal with some protracted onboarding process. Instead, everything runs in an HTML5 web app that lets users plot there positions on a map and send out a distress signal to tow drivers within a pre-determined radius.

Those tow drivers do have to download and install a native mobile app, but once they’re within range of a stranded driver they’ll respond to that and provide two things — their ETA to the car’s location and a quick price quote. They’ve only got a limited amount of time to get their offers in, and once that window is closed, users can choose the offer that best suits them. To keep the process as simple (and as uncontentious as possible), all payments are handled right up front and Tow Choice takes a 20 percent cut from each of those transactions.

To be completely honest, I’m getting to be really tired of the whole “[startup name] is the [more established startup name] of [industry]” schtick but I won’t begrudge these guys since I’m basically smitten with this idea. While popular services like AAA serve over 50 million customers in the United States and Canada, that still leaves a considerable chunk of people who could stand to benefit from a simpler, more consumer-friendly way of flagging down nearby tow trucks.

Indoor Map Apps On the Rise as Aisle411 Raises $6.3M

Google Inc. and Apple Inc. have been investing in map technology in recent years, but most of the startups they’ve acquired–like Waze and Embark–help people get around cities and highways. Is the next frontier for map technology the great indoors?

A St. Louis startup with 15 employees,Aisle411 Inc., has just raised $6.5 million in Series A funding to help people find what they need in stores, especially at groceries, pharmacies, home improvement and big box retailers, says founder and Chief Executive Nathan Pettyjohn.

In order to give directions to smartphone users in search of an item in stores, Aisle411 integrates with the inventory software used by retailers and uses proprietary data management systems and mapping engines.

The startup’s clients include Walgreen Co., Home Depot Inc., Hy-Vee Inc., Schnuck Markets Inc., Shop ‘n Save St. Louis Inc. and Price Chopper (The Golub Corp.), and others. Such retailers use Aisle411 to power store-branded apps of their own, though the company does offer a consumer-facing app as well.

Will indoor mapping ever be as big a business as navigational apps for traffic and travel? A senior analyst with Forrester, Tony Costa, said that from a consumer perspective, “the need is simply not as crucial.”

But Mr. Costa also believes indoor mapping is becoming increasingly important to retailers and advertisers who want to bring powerful data measurement, analytics and marketing capabilities to brick-and-mortar stores and other venues like college campuses, airports or malls.

Retailers pay Aisle411 about $1 per store per day to be able to offer its inventory-meets-map tech. The company’s co-founders said they will use some of the new funding to roll out real-time information about what’s in stock and where, and new reporting capabilities for retailers.

Retailers lose about 20% of potential sales due to shoppers’ navigational woes according to aisle411 research. “The larger the footprint of a store, and the less frequently a shopper shops, the more of a problem that is,” says Mr. Pettyjohn, referring to some big-box retailers and electronics and home-improvement stores.  He added that navigation remains a challenge even for “regulars” at a neighborhood grocery, when they want to buy items that are not part of their regular shopping list.

Mobile industry analyst Chetan Sharma says so far, European retailers have used indoor wireless and mobile technology more often, and more masterfully than their U.S. counterparts. For example, Mr. Sharma said, European stores commonly apply smartphone-readable NFC tags to their shelves to give shoppers more information about an item there. They also use digital signage and digital shopping carts that display customized in-store ads or coupons, respectively.

Cultivation Capital General Partner Cliff Holekamp, an Aisle411 investor, says the St. Louis venture firm expects the company to ramp up sales of its software-as-a-service within retail, with the goal of attaining 25% market share among groceries in the U.S. in the next year.

He sees an opportunity for Aisle411 to go beyond mapping and to offer contextually relevant coupons and deals in stores as well as other location-based services.

Aisle411′s potential competitors range from Point Inside Inc. and FourSquare, to map software developers like Meridian, acquired by Aruba Networks in May this year

Drug Prescriptions Get A Mobile Update

Doctors' paper prescriptions come with two drawbacks: they're easy to lose, and getting the medication requires a wait at the pharmacy. ZappRx Inc. believes it can help with both.

The Cambridge, Mass., company aims to digitize the interaction between doctors, patients and the pharmacy the way that electronic boarding passes have automated access to the airport. It has developed a smartphone app meant to simplify and speed up the process of filling and tracking prescriptions, Chief Executive Zoe Barry said.

When a doctor decides on a prescription for a particular patient, he or she enters the relevant information in an electronic health record, Ms. Barry said. The ZappRx app, which is compliant with federal privacy laws, can take that information from the health record and make it available to the patient and the pharmacist.

The app enables patients to order and pay for medications electronically, and allows pharmacists to preprocess insurance information and other important data, ZappRx said, which could prevent a wait at the pharmacy for the medication.

The product represents the first real foray of mobile-payments technology into the pharmacy sector, according to the company and its investors.

In addition to sharing information among the various players, the app is meant to be used as an electronic checkout device that a patient can use to pick up medication.

While such technology has long been used in airports, where a passenger can print a boarding pass or use a mobile app to show it, there is no similar product at the pharmacy, the company said.

Ms. Barry said ZappRx recently raised seed funding of $1 million from Atlas Venture, Life Sciences Angel Network and other angel investors. With the funding, ZappRx plans to add additional staff to its six-employee company

Keeping Plants Running From Afar

Rockwell and other global suppliers of factory-automation equipment, including General Electric Co., Emerson Electric Co. and ABB Ltd., increasingly are selling remote monitoring services to help manufacturers fix or prevent problems. These services, which have become more feasible as factories have become more computerized, help companies deal with skill shortages. Those are particularly acute in remote places, such as the mill here in Ticonderoga or on oil rigs in the Middle East.

Billy Delfs for The Wall Street Journal

A worker at Rockwell Automation's engineering call center near Cleveland monitored activity at International Paper's mill in Ticonderoga, N.Y.

Emerson executives who sell monitoring services talk about the "four D's"—dull, distant, dirty and dangerous. Those describe conditions at some factories, mines or oil rigs. It is often hard to find skilled people willing to work in such places, a problem likely to worsen as baby boomers retire.

Under the mantra of learning from "big data," the monitors also would like to analyze information gathered from factory floors to advise their customers on how to improve efficiency. Cloud computing is making it easier to store and analyze vast amounts of data from machines.

But many manufacturers remain wary of giving suppliers too much inside information about how they make products, or of taking the risk that outsiders will inadvertently gum things up. "Some places have bought into it," Rick Dolezal, a vice president at ABB, said in an interview. "Others are just scared to death of it."

A U.S. unit of Germany's Bayer AG uses computerized controls made by ABB to run equipment at a plant making blood-clotting agents in Berkeley, Calif. "We love working with them," David Kavanaugh, a Bayer engineer, said of ABB. Even so, Bayer gives ABB remote access to the control equipment only when a problem needs to be resolved, not all the time. "Being in the pharmaceutical world, we have to be extremely careful about our access control," Mr. Kavanaugh said.

System suppliers still need to work on assuring customers that their data can be shared without major risks. "Some of these industries need to evolve from little data to big data to really prosper," said Charlie Peters, a senior vice president at Emerson. First, he said, "they have to trust us."

Some of the monitoring done by Rockwell is considered so sensitive that it takes place only behind locked doors. In other cases, equipment suppliers help customers set up their own remote-monitoring systems so they don't need to involve outsiders.

The International Paper mill is connected to Rockwell engineers in Cleveland via a dedicated phone line. When they spot a problem, the Rockwell engineers advise people in the mill on what to do. "They can do almost anything," said Mr. Bussey.

Without this help, International Paper probably would need to hire another engineer, Mr. Bussey said. International Paper won't say how much it pays Rockwell for the monitoring. "It's not cheap," said Mr. Bussey, "but we believe it justifies itself."

The goal is "to tell them they're about to have a problem before they have a problem," said Gary Pearsons, Rockwell's global head of customer support. Rockwell engineers in Cleveland recently were able to use pressure data gathered from inside an oil rig in Alaska to tell an oil company it needed to check an air filter.

Eli Lilly & Co., a pharmaceutical company, is installing electronic devices at an insulin plant in Indianapolis that will allow Emerson to monitor certain equipment there. Kurt Russell, an engineer at the Lilly plant, said the service will allow for constant monitoring of things that in the past were checked only now and then. That includes temperatures inside equipment, a possible indicator of trouble.

"It's almost what could be considered a full-time baby sitter," said Mr. Russell. He doesn't see any privacy threats: "They really can't see how you make your products and how you run your equipment."

Among GE's customers is a Lonmin PLC platinum mine in South Africa. Among other things, GE remotely watches the rate at which ore is being fed into crushing machinery.

ABB employs 330 service engineers to monitor automation equipment in the U.S., up 10% from five years ago. Many of them are based at centers in Houston, Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio. "I think there is a huge upside on it," said Matt Meka, an ABB engineer in New Berlin, Wis. "Not everybody understands what the technology can do for them," he said, adding: 'We've got to do a better job" of explaining that.

Could equipment suppliers actually run factory equipment remotely, rather than just monitoring it? "That will be the trend of the future," said ABB's Mr. Dolezal.

Unusual folding bike shrinks down to 60% the size of other models

The Germany-based team behind the Kwiggle has created a device that is apparently more compact and lightweight than any bike on the market.

If the Moveo electric scooter can be folded down to the size of a portable suitcase, it stands to reason that the traditional push bike could be squeezed into an even smaller space. Taking advantage of the existing market for foldable bikes, the Germany-based team behind the Kwiggle has pushed things even further by creating a device that is apparently more compact and lightweight than any bike on the market.

Those with experience of carrying portable bikes on their commute will know that, while they provide a satisfying ride, they still weigh a considerable amount and can be a pain to haul on and off public transport. The Kwiggle has approached the concept with a new design that utilizes smaller eight-inch wheels and a unique half-seated, half-standing style of riding. Described by the creators as a “pleasant mixture of
biking and fitness walking”, riding the bike also ensures users maintain good back posture. This unusual system and its patented gear system enable the bike to weigh just seven kilograms and fold down to the space of a typical backpack in under ten seconds.

Currently in the prototype stage, the company hopes to release the Kwiggle to the public by the end of the year, although pricing has not yet been announced. Are there other vehicles that could be given a stripped-down, lightweight version?

App uses QR codes to make payments easier

Now hoping to make invoices payments more timely for SMBs, the UK’s Zapper is an app that enables businesses to take payments through QR codes.

The company’s Scan-to-Pay platform first generates a unique QR code for each invoice that is created through the system. Companies can then include this on their paper invoices or online payment gateways. Customers or clients then need to download the app, fill out their details once and any code they scan afterwards will charge their card and instantly send a notification to the business being paid. The video below explains more about the service:

Zapper’s Scan-to-Pay system is free for businesses to implement – with no setup or subscription costs and no extra hardware required. However, businesses could benefit from quicker and more timely payments – Zapper claims that SMBs in the UK are currently owed GBP 36.4 billion in late payments. Are there other ways to make payments less painful for consumers and businesses alike?

App offers rewards to patients for taking their medicine on time

Mango Health is a smartphone app that help patients to take their medication at the right time, as well as offer prizes for those who keep to their schedule

We’ve already seen internet-connected pill bottle caps that help patients to take their medication at the right time. Now Mango Health is a smartphone app that aims to do the same, as well as offer prizes for those who keep to their schedule.

Users first enter the names of the drugs they need to take – whether its important medication or nutritional supplements – and their schedule. The app accesses a database and alerts users when the drugs they’ve entered have special requirements, such as diet or zero alcohol consumption. From the dashboard, users can see at a glance which of their medication they need to take that day. Points are awarded each time the user sticks to their schedule, which can later be exchanged for giftcards, discounts and donations at partners such as Gap, Target and the ASPCA.

Available for free on the App Store, Mango Health could improve the health of patients by offering helpful reminders and warnings, while the gamification aspect could ensure that reluctant users are more likely to take their pills. Are there other ways health professionals could harness patient smartphones to ensure they stick to recovery regimes?

Smart gates track passenger location to avoid flight delays

London’s Heathrow Airport has introduced a new system that lets flight attendants know if someone isn’t going to make their plane.

While travelers have been able to make sure they know the whereabouts of their luggage with innovations such as the hop! trackable suitcase, it’s much harder for airlines to know exactly where their passengers are when it comes time to board. In order to curb delays to flights when customers haven’t turned up on time, London’sHeathrow Airport has introduced a new system that lets flight attendants know if someone isn’t going to make their plane.

Installed in Terminals 1 and 3 at the major airport, the system involves gates that are placed at different points between the entrance and the final boarding gate. As customers progress through the different stages of boarding their flight – from check-in and baggage checks, to passing through security and entering the departure lounge – gates similar to those found in train stations require passengers to scan their boarding pass. When they do so, small screens offer instructions depending on the time left before the flight is due to depart and their location in the airport. For example, if they’re in the wrong terminal they’ll be offered directions to the correct one, and if their flight is due to board they’ll be told to go straight through to their gate. However, if they won’t have enough time to board they’ll be instructed to seek assistance and attendants will be alerted and can start unloading their bags from the plane.

The system gives more information to customers to help them get to the right place, while airlines benefit from avoiding delays that can occur when a passenger goes missing. Could this work in your part of the world?