Wannabe Interview: George Decarlo part 2

Part 2 (see the first half here)
Yesterday, I talked to George DeCarlo about his online incubator, Hatchable.com and the latest idea to spring out of his head: Woobox.com

This serial entrepreneur had two other unique ideas that got their start through Hatchable.

George, first tell us about FreeAppAlert.
FreeAppAlert.com shows you all the paid iPhone and iPad apps that are temporarily free. It's a very simple concept but has turned into a very popular site.

How popular would you say it is?
The web and mobile versions combined get over a million visits a month.

What was the genesis for your idea?
I was browsing the iPhone app store one day and saw a $15 app that was running a free promotion for a limited period of time. I grabbed the app, and thought, wouldn't it be nice to know whenever a paid iPhone app runs a free promotion? So I built FreeAppAlert, sent it to a few blogs and watched the usage grow. Every day I update fans and followers with the best free apps for that day. Just today, I downloaded a Golf Rangefinder GPS app for free that is normally $5.

The final project that comes from Hatchable is called iAte. George tell us about this Twitter-based tool.
iAte is a destination site to find the most popular restaurants in a city with reviews sourced from Twitter. Whenever anyone tweets about a restaurant, iAte automatically stores the tweet and associates it with the restaurant the tweet refers to. For any restaurant, you can see what people are saying about them on Twitter. In less than a year, iAte has associated over 3 million tweets with restaurant locations.

Where did the kernel of this idea come from?
I'm always looking for great restaurants so I figured, why not organize all the information out there on Twitter.

This seems very comparable to similar local, review sites, yet is entirely powered by Twitter. What is populating the database?
Today the database is populated purely by Tweets.

How do you view iate versus the other local apps such as foursquare?
Ultimately, I see iAte as a destination where all available popularity data (Facebook likes, Foursquare checkins, etc) can be combined to answer the question, where are people eating?

Thanks again to George for taking the time to talk about all the ideas he has “hatched.”
Again, you can find George on Twitter here:@wooboxapp or @georgedecarlo
Or find George talking on Woobox's Blog.

New Life

It's weird, sad and slightly freeing. I've been headed towards a completely different life for a lot longer than I even knew. It took me a while to catch up to realize it was happening. Thankfully, I was cognizant enough to see it finally and mostly ready for it. It's amazing when you have the rug completely pulled out from underneath you. The adjustments are jarring. I made mistakes, but like most I learned from them, adapted, and tried my best to do better. The reason you see that truck next to a storage place? That's the sum of my life right now. Never take for granted that you will work hard for something or someone, and it will end up meaning very little. You are guaranteed nothing, owed nothing, promised nothing. Anything and everything can be taken away in a heartbeat. I wrote this to my kids a while back: I tried to be the best father I could be based on what I knew when I knew it and how I could. One of the lessons for your life needs to be: you n...

Todd Lyden

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