PLUGHITZ Live Presents (Audio)

For many people, the hardest part of travelling is the planning of their itinerary and finding hotels. You can go to travel guides but they don't know what you like. Globaleur (formerly TheExplorer.io) is the perfect solution for that. It is a travel service to help to make your trip the best travel experience by enabling you to get the most from your travel.

You can log in three different ways: Facebook account , Google account or creating your own account. By creating your own account you can use their algorithms to personalize your travel preferences. For example, you can get recommendations on what types of hotels, restaurants and other destinations that will fit your personality. By adding your Facebook account, the company can look at your page likes, photos and even places where friends have been. By adding this data, you can get even more personalized recommendations.

Globaleur doesn't stop helping once the trip begins, as it is also able to monitor weather and social data to predict when one of your scheduled activities may no longer be possible. For example, if you were traveling to the Greek islands and you had a boat trip planned, Globaleur would monitor the weather and, if it is going to rain during your boat excursion, the platform can reschedule and find a new activity that will not conflict with the weather. The platform can also look at traffic, in addition to weather, so that you don't leave too late to make it to a concert in a busy part of town.

In addition to recommendations, Globaleur has a social networking aspect, where you can share your itinerary, photos and make friends all within the platform. By engaging people who have already traveled to your planned destination, you can get personal recommendations from those friends. The company is currently focusing on the US market, but plans on expanding its reach in the near future, using available data in those regions, including through Yelp and TripAdvisor.

The app will launch on the web and iOS first, with Android to follow shortly behind.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

For many, the age of Hi-Fi stereos is over. A lot of people have moved to smaller devices with everything built-in to a single device. But, for those who really love music, there can be nothing greater than a true, purpose-built, analog Hi-Fi system. Most of the high-end manufacturers have gone to fully digital systems, but some audio companies prefer to stick to the tried-and-true analog beauties. One of those companies is Margules, a Mexican audio brand with a long heritage of products. This family-owned audio obsession started in 1926 and has been focusing on high-end audio for over 90 years.

Among the various products available are amplifiers, speakers, and turntables. One of the things that really sets the Margules product line apart is the incredible look. The amplifiers and preamps both feature brushed aluminum and woodgrain finish with exposed glass tubes. The speakers have wood faces with exposed cones across the front. The turntable features what is arguably the most unique design, with a dark, brushed and rounded top, on which the platter itself sits. While the products each feature a unique look, they all manage to look like they belong together, and will make a great conversation piece for any audio enthusiast.

If the incredibly modern take on classic hardware isn't your aesthetic, the company also offers a couple of other product lines, including the Magenta line, of which the turntable is a member, which feature the rounded face and dark finish of the turntable. These pieces would look great in a more traditional home entertainment cabinet, as opposed to the more exposed nature of the Margules line. Either way, you can be sure that both the look and the sound will compliment your home.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

We were thrilled to see one of our favorite start-ups from Collision 2017 back again this year. It was great to catch up with Ultimatum Inc and learn about their progression. Since we last spoke, they have been working on their fascinating crowd funding platform for 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations and have gotten their beta version up and running.

This year we got a chance to speak with the CEO, Matthew McCabe. For those who had not yet heard of them, he explained that Ultimatum is a web platform that allows you to take action on social and political issues using event based donations to nonprofits. There are any number of issues that many of us have very strong feelings about. Using their platform is an excellent way to not only donate to the causes that we find important, but also make more than just a monetary impact. You can also help to raise social awareness in the process.

Individuals and companies alike can set up donation campaigns on Ultimatum. Instead of donating one lump sum to a particular cause, extra awareness is brought by setting it up so that small amounts get donated every time a specific hashtag is used. For example, one recent and special campaign was set up to donate a dime to The Dru Project, a non-profit that supports LGBTQ high school GSAs and college scholarships, every time somebody used #thedruproject. The campaign went viral after IGN Tweeted about the campaign. According to Keyhole, the campaign resulted in 5,000 posts, engaged 3,000 people, and had 17 million impressions on Twitter. So even more important that the donation was the increase in awareness that was created as a result of the campaign.

This platform is also perfect for generating brand recognition and can be used in so many creative ways. After watching the complete interview, head over to their website for more information and find out how to start your own campaign.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Although Michele has worked in the banking industry full time for many years, she originally went to school with a concentration in communications, advertising and marketing. She began her career in sales and retail management, selling electronics and computers. Her love of all things tech eventually brought her back into the electronics arena three years ago when she started with PLuGHiTz Corporation to help with special events as a Production Assistant. Soon she began to dabble with the audio and video and is loving her role as Producer. She's also one of our content writers and assists with product reviews. Looking forward, she is excited to expand her skill set into editing and helping the company continue to grow.

If you are not a math person, you know that getting through a math class in school can be challenging. Even more challenging is getting help for that class when you need it. Luckily, there's AT Now, a platform designed specifically to help students find math tutoring help when they need it. The instant-on capability of the platform means that when you're having trouble with a particular math problem, you can jump onto the platform, request assistance and be paired up with a live tutor to help you work through your block.

AT Now, which is founded by Mike Arnold who has been working in the tutoring field for a while, spent time finding highly qualified math tutors to work for the platform. The tutors, in addition to a high level of mathematics knowledge, also have to be personable and encouraging, traits that he found work best in his facility. Many of the tutors are math or business students from colleges and universities and try to show empathy to the student's problem and situation. For example, a tutor who understands the pressure of preparing for a test tomorrow is going to be more effective than one who doesn't.

For the students, the process is fairly simple. If they encounter a math problem that they cannot resolve themselves, they can simply grab their phone or tablet, open up the app and request help. From there, one of the tutors will jump on a call with the student and help them, not just answer the problem, but understand how to get to the answer. All of this and the cost is unbelievably inexpensive: $20 per month for unlimited questions. That's less than the cost of a single hour of personal tutoring in most locations.

To find out more about the platform, check out their website.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

For most companies, one of the most difficult challenges is understanding your customers' needs and responding to their likes and dislikes. People in multiple aspects of the company all interact with the customers, and a lot of data is collected, but it's difficult to bring it all together to make the best decisions possible. For example, your sales team probably uses Dynamics or Salesforce to track interactions, while your support team might use Zendesk, and your development team uses Manuscript or Jira - all to communicate with the same group of people.

Enter ThunderAct, an artificial intelligence platform that collects data from all of these platforms and more, and brings it together into one place. Once the system has all of the information, it is able to correlate users and show trends through easy to understand visualizations. For example, maybe the sales team communicates with a large number of prospects that all ask for the same feature in your product, and the sales team says that it is in the works when in reality it has been in the product for a while. You can now help coach the sales team on a more accurate feature set.

Now, what if the development team builds the feature in question, and the support team gets positive feedback on the new feature? Perhaps the management could decide to expand that offering into a larger part of the product. Or, maybe there is a related product that could be developed as a companion - after all, Microsoft didn't start out making Office. The best part is, this platform does not require any of your teams to change their system or their departmental behaviors in order to gain these useful new insights.

You can sign up now to see if the platform is for you by visiting their website.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Once thought of as downright taboo, finding a date using online apps has become completely mainstream. And although some still feel it's pretty strange, the sheer numbers who use them tells the story. Those who use to warn their single friends and family of the dangers of online dating are now not only counting the number of couples they know who met on an app but also using them themselves. But as good as the websites and apps have gotten, there are still quite a few hurdles while trying to find "the one." At this point, what could possibly be done to make the apps better? More checks and balances? More algorithms? Well, the founders of Pheramor say that the answer is truly in the chemistry.

Aslam Mirza, co-founder, and CEO of Pheramor, came by to explain this new approach that is designed to provide better dating matches. This exciting new dating app uses genetics and digital data to help make better connections and increase the overall efficiency of dating. Basically, the company sequences 11 specific genes that encode for your immune system. The more diverse these genes are, between two people, the more likely that they will be chemically and biologically attracted to each other. It's rooted in evolutionary biology because we are constantly trying to subconsciously find those that we're attracted to. It's such a great component to add to dating search criteria.

They also made the process really simple. For starters, they send you a genetic kit in the mail that contains a buccal swab. You merely complete a quick cheek swab and mail it back and they do the rest. The DNA that is specifically linked to your immune system is extracted. This human leukocyte antigen, along with the compilation of your digital data from social media will be used to create your profile. So your DNA is combined with all of your likes, check-ins, and hashtags to help you make the best possible connections.

Get the specifics on this exciting new dating app by watching the complete interview and then head over to their website if you're interested in giving it a try.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Although Michele has worked in the banking industry full time for many years, she originally went to school with a concentration in communications, advertising and marketing. She began her career in sales and retail management, selling electronics and computers. Her love of all things tech eventually brought her back into the electronics arena three years ago when she started with PLuGHiTz Corporation to help with special events as a Production Assistant. Soon she began to dabble with the audio and video and is loving her role as Producer. She's also one of our content writers and assists with product reviews. Looking forward, she is excited to expand her skill set into editing and helping the company continue to grow.

No matter what size the company, having projects to manage can become overwhelming. It's easy to get lost in the details and lose sight of the big picture. Multiple tasks and workflows create confusion and in many cases can hamper progress. And if there are customers making changes and requiring updates added to the mix, it gets even more complicated.

Dmitry Abramov, CPO of Kaiten, stopped by the studio to introduce their new product. Kaiten is a visual management platform that helps to conquer the complexities of project management for all sizes and types of businesses. It allows for visualization of the overall process flow and finds the various bottlenecks and problems along the way. It is then able to optimize the entire process with their unique analytical engine. It's a system that will see the big picture and then dive deeper when needed. A tool which can unite multiple departments in one place while having control of the whole picture.

Some of their clients are outsourcing companies. This type of company has very complex projects with various clients, different employees that interact with the clients and even multiple developers who are working on different aspects of the project. This often makes it difficult to keep things moving smoothly throughout the process. This tool allows for a seamless process while also allowing customized views for all who are involved, even for the client. This customization provides more than just a high-level overview and is better for providing deliverables on time. It also creates a new level of transparency from start to finish.

As for pricing, they are currently working on a subscription model, starting at seven dollars per user, per month. This would be ideal for the small to mid-sized company. Large companies with more security needs would require a private cloud and prices would go up according to their needs.

After you watch the full interview, make sure to head over to their website for more information and to view their demo.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Although Michele has worked in the banking industry full time for many years, she originally went to school with a concentration in communications, advertising and marketing. She began her career in sales and retail management, selling electronics and computers. Her love of all things tech eventually brought her back into the electronics arena three years ago when she started with PLuGHiTz Corporation to help with special events as a Production Assistant. Soon she began to dabble with the audio and video and is loving her role as Producer. She's also one of our content writers and assists with product reviews. Looking forward, she is excited to expand her skill set into editing and helping the company continue to grow.

There is no doubt that lawyers do not have a general goodwill in everyday society, and it's been that way for centuries. Shakespeare famously wrote in his play Henry VI, "Let's kill all the lawyers." In the time since that play was written, things haven't really changed, but one company hopes to change the perception by making the process of finding and working with legal professionals easier and more pleasant: IUSNOVA.

The name, which is a combination of Ius (Latin for law) and Nova (Latin for evolution), describes their lofty goal: to evolve the legal world. This is accomplished by putting together a marketplace of legal professionals where you can go and enter your issue and be matched with the most appropriate lawyer for your specific issue. For example, if you are looking for a patent attorney, you might be paired up with someone who is good at general patents, but if you are a chemical engineer looking to patent a particular chemical compound, you would likely need a specialist.

Once you've got your lawyer, how do you know what is being accomplished or where they are in the process? Understanding what the lawyer is working on and what you are being charged for is nearly impossible, despite the tons of documents that are produced every day. IUSNOVA gives both lawyers and clients a way to keep track of what is happening directly within the platform. As documents are created, they can be stored and shared with the client all without having to use another solution. This gives the client a better understanding of the process and their place in it, as well as giving a feeling of accomplishment.

Once the task is complete, you can then review your experience in the marketplace, giving future clients matched with that lawyer more information before making the decision to work with them. The service is available now in limited availability.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Leading a healthy lifestyle can be difficult. Sometimes it can be difficult to know what is a healthy decision, and often times the unhealthy choice gives a greater immediate reward than the healthy decision. For example, eating a few slices of barbeque brisket is likely to give a much greater immediate reward than eating a salad. But, there is a new way to begin to receive rewards for making healthy decisions: LifePoints.

Through this system, people can receive points for making healthy decisions. In the beginning, the app is focusing on fitness decisions, such as going to the gym. The app will track how long you spend at the gym and give you points based on that time. With time, the company plans to bring additional options to the platform to continue encouraging healthy decision making. Once you have these points, you can exchange them for rewards at various partners. These partners can give discounts or merchandise, depending on the partner and points redeemed.

This system is designed to provide a positive feedback loop for users to encourage them to make the healthy choice, rather than the unhealthy choice. To return to the previous example, you might be more likely to eat the salad instead of the barbeque if you know that you can get a discount on your gym membership or clothing.

The service is currently available for testing in the Niagra region of Canada, with two partners: Popeye's Supplements and Sky Zone Trampoline Park. If you are in that area, and currently own an iPhone, you can try the app right now in the App Store and start earning points to improve your health. The company plans to expand the partner lineup and expand the regions available as they conclude their testing.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Everything these days is being quantified. Corporations subject their employees to a myriad of reports on a regular basis. These reports not only measure sales and demographics but the timing and workflow that are involved in employee metrics. Of course, it's not only big business that uses this kind of data. Our news and social media feeds are full of surveys and research studies that focus on everything from health and politics to frivolous ways to spend our free time. And even local businesses survey their customer from time to time, in order to tweak operations for efficiency and growth.

This topic is something that is actually on my mind quite a bit as I struggle with the onslaught of big data that is taking over our business culture. Although my job as Executive Producer of Special Events for PLuGHiTz Live keeps me busy with things like travel schedules, event calendars/planning, and even audio/video recording and mixing, I also have a full-time job at a large bank. Of course, stats are important in both of these jobs but they are very different in how they are structured and measured. I often get frustrated with the ever-growing list of metrics that measure employee performance at the bank. They find a way to pull numbers from multiple processes and manipulate them in a way that supposedly measures our performance efficiency. One of the favorite quotes used by upper management is, "numbers don't lie." And although that statement, in and of itself is true, it can also be very misleading, in my opinion. Just because those numbers that they present to us are absolute, it doesn't mean that they tell the whole picture. After all, there is an infinite amount of ways to get from the number one to the number two. It's all in the extraction and presentation. That's why it was so refreshing to see the work that Carlos Romero and his team at Apex are doing.

Apex is a consulting firm that concentrates on program evaluation and health education social service programs. They recognized through their work that there is a lot more to the data that goes unmeasured. This additional information can actually be helpful to businesses and consumers. Through this new understanding, two new apps emerged. They are tied together by the premise that we have too much data and not enough insight. Brilliant!! Their newer app, which is being showcased here at Collision, is called Perspectives. It combines the more common survey style with a video element. It's an important addition because we have a lot of data but we need context to derive meaning from it. This could translate to more data or that we need the story behind the data. The app is about just that. How do we collect more stories and analyze them in more rigorous ways to work in conjunction with the quantitative data, supporting valuations for learning?

This added layer allows for a better analysis. You can learn from the qualitative data just as much, and sometimes more than from the quantitative data. It gives a much different perspective as it adds the words, feelings, and actions that can be acted upon instead of just the data from a specific set of questions.

Results can be very eye-opening. It turns out that the thing that you thought you were measuring, based upon the way that you are doing it, is not necessarily the same way it is perceived by your clients, etc. This added power, depth and richness from an actual interview is then combined with the efficiency of a survey. You can then see what patterns that immerge from the short videos, as well as other media. It offers so much more than just the traditional, what did you like? And many times you will get responses that you hadn't even considered.

The basic idea of the app is to braid together all of the existing technologies into one seamless system. And you can learn more about this exciting new type of analysis by watching our interview and also by checking out their website.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Although Michele has worked in the banking industry full time for many years, she originally went to school with a concentration in communications, advertising and marketing. She began her career in sales and retail management, selling electronics and computers. Her love of all things tech eventually brought her back into the electronics arena three years ago when she started with PLuGHiTz Corporation to help with special events as a Production Assistant. Soon she began to dabble with the audio and video and is loving her role as Producer. She's also one of our content writers and assists with product reviews. Looking forward, she is excited to expand her skill set into editing and helping the company continue to grow.