Quick Pitch: Goby is a search engine focused on exploring new things to do with your free time, from taking a unique vacation to creating this weekend’s adventure.
Genius Idea: Goby is a dead-simple way to find activities in your city (or a city you are visiting) now or in the future. Just select the type of activity you are interested in, enter in your city, and select a time and Goby comes back with your options.
Goby's simplicity is what separates it from other event calendar services. Plus, because it searches multiple event databases (including Eventful and Yahoo!'s Upcoming), you get lots of different results.
For things like music or performing arts, you can choose sub-categories, like music genre or dance. You can also define the radius of your results by entering in a custom address or zip code. Goby's events come up in an easy to read manner and specific event information and provide links to the specific listing.
Goby also searches things like hotels, hostels, and vacation homes, which make it a nice option for either the would-be-traveler on a budget or anyone looking to spend time in a particular location.
The only criticism I can place on Goby is that because it scrapes lots of different services, sometimes duplicate events are listed -- having those events either combined or listed only once would make navigating results even easier. Still, Goby is a dead-simple way to find options for your weekend.
Spark of Genius Series Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark
