Our selection this weekend includes a trio of applications. There's one for wannabe freelance tour guides, another for the digital organizer and a third one for pure entertainment seekers.
Vayable: A Marketplace of Experiences
Quick Pitch: Vayable is an online marketplace where people can discover, buy and sell unique experiences, including tours, activities and extended trips.
Genius Idea: Sell your local knowledge to tourists.
Mashable's Take: Travel as we know it is in the process of being distributed by social media. Add Vayable's marketplace for experiences to the list of startups reinventing this category.
The startup takes an Airbnb-like approach to travel guides, so users can put their local expertise up for sale as independent for-hire tour guides, and anyone can browse and book available excursions. The site is also quite lovely to look at; it places an emphasis on art and photography to highlight tours and destinations.
"Vayable seeks to disrupt the tour and activity segment of the travel market by opening up the marketplace to everyone, not just traditional tour operators or travel agents," founder Jamie Wong explains.
Vayable launched in April of this year and is a part of the 500 Startups accelerator program.
Thoughtboxes: Organize in Style
Quick Pitch: Thoughtboxes is a simple and stylish way to organize everything you do.
Genius Idea: An elegant twist on online to-do lists.
Mashable's Take: To-do list applications abound on web and mobile, but Thoughtboxes' super simple approach will appeal to those looking for a fast and easy way to build lists that are visible a single screen.
Thoughtboxes allows you to organize lists by "trains of thought," which are essentially topic or project pages. Add boxes to your trains of thoughts, tasks to your boxes and invite friends to chip in with the planning and organization process. You can also manage, move around and color-code boxes, as well as star important tasks.
The free version comes with three trains of thought, but you can upgrade to the paid version for unlimited trains of thought and access to the group features.
Finders Keepers: Social & Mobile Hide & Seek
Quick Pitch: Finders Keepers is a treasure-hunting game where other iOS devices & Wi-Fi hotspots hold the treasure.
Genius Idea: Hide and seek for iOS.
Mashable's Take: With this quirky little application [iTunes link] from Tiny Tech Studios, iPhone users will unlock their own digital item that they can then drop anywhere in the real world.
The point is to hunt down and collect the items dropped by other users with the application awarding points as you go. Finders Keepers hooks in nicely with Apple's Game Center so there's also a variety of achievements to unlock with game play.
Kimberly Carrasco is the one-woman-team behind the app shop Tiny Tech Studios, which has released a handful of games and applications for iOS devices since its founding in 2009.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, BartCo
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
