Organize Your Finances and Say Goodbye to Paper Clutter With Shoeboxed

Called “an essential tool for any size business” by TechCrunch, Shoeboxed turns your paper receipts into organized digital data. Founded in 2007, Shoeboxed has been helping over 800,000 clients in 100 countries streamline their finances, spend less time on paperwork, and do more of what they love.

Simply send Shoeboxed your receipts, bills, business cards, and other documents via the web, mobile, email, or prepaid envelope, and everything will be organized and scanned into a secure online account. All documents go through the company's signature high-accuracy scanning, OCR, and human data verification process. Your important financial information, including IRS-accepted images, can then be accessed and exported from anywhere. Using the same 256-bit SSL security as major US banks, Shoeboxed frees you from the time-consuming and tedious tasks of scanning and data entry.

The company is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, with growing offices in San Francisco, California and Sydney, Australia.

Extraordinary: Mobile App Helps You Discover Cool Experiences and Make an Impact

Extraordinary is an upcoming mobile app that lets you help make the world a better place while living an extraordinary life. Every time you eat or shop at any of Extraordinary's partner businesses, a fruit tree is planted on your behalf by single moms in Ethiopia. The trees are planted in eroded areas, reversing desertification and climate change. Furthermore, these jobs allow single mothers to send their children to school and eventually break the cycle of poverty.

Founder Julien Fruchier and his team believe there is too much time spent in front of screens, too much processed food, and too many products made with harmful materials and unfair labor practices. Hence, Extraordinary only features handpicked things and experiences that promote a more extraordinary way of life, including organic food, live music, eco fashion, and outdoor adventures. There are no large corporations on Extraordinary; just local artisans and indie businesses that are working towards a healthier, more sustainable world. To become a part of Extraordinary, businesses must meet at least three of its four-point sustainability criteria: healthy, local, community-minded, and planet-friendly.

Extraordinary also has a social feature that allows you to follow other users, see what they like, and engage in a friendly tree-planting competition. Everything is free for users; the businesses you support pay for the trees.

We all want to make the most out of life and do something about current issues such as poverty and climate change, but we don't always know where to start. Extraordinary's mission is to help people break out of the ordinary. It is scheduled to launch in Vancouver, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle this fall, with 15 more cities being added in 2015.

Extraordinary has been featured in The Vancouver Observer, Lonely Planet, The Vancouver Sun, Treehugger, the San Francisco Chronicle, and more.

Idée Enables Users to Search Images Using Images

Idée is a Toronto-based company specializing in scalable, innovative image search and recognition solutions. Perhaps its most well-known offering is TinEye, a reverse image search engine that lets users find out where an image came from, how it is being used, and if there are any modified or higher resolution versions of the image.

TinEye is the web's first image search engine to utilize image identification technology instead of metadata, keywords, or watermarks. Through web crawling and image contributions, TinEye has indexed more than 6 billion online images to date. The search engine has been featured in Boing Boing, the Los Angeles Times, ARS Technica, TechCrunch, Techvibes, and more. Jack Howard of Popular Photography described it as “a major player in the image-search arena.”



Aside from TinEye, Idée has created other image recognition products and services used by some of the world's leading imaging firms. These inclulde PixID, an editorial image monitoring service for the news photo industry; MulticolorEngine, a color search engine; MatchEngine, an automated image matching and de-duplication service; MobileEngine, an automated image matching solution for mobile platforms; and TinEye API, a paid version of TinEye for commercial, professional, and high-volume users.

Backed by a decade of research and development, Idée's products and services help users search through billions of images in seconds, accomplish large-scale image de-duplication and comparison, track the usage of millions of print images in thousands of publications, and more.

Idée was co-founde by Leila Boujnane (chief executive officer) and Paul Bloore (chief technology officer) with the goal of making images searchable visually. Together, they lead a team that is “obsessed with image search and recognition.” The company's technologies are used by millions of people each month; notable clients include Adobe Systems, iStockphoto, eBay, Associated Press, Splash News, Kayak, Agence France Press, Masterfile, and SecondStory.

SpyderLynk Makes a Better Bar Code

Based in Englewood, Colorado, SpyderLynk is a mobile activation and marketing platform company helping brand marketers connect to consumers. SpyderLynk offers the only QR code alternative that transforms logos and icons into interactive marketing tools. With SnapTag, SpyderLynk's proprietary mobile bar code solution, consumers with standard camera phones or smartphones can instantly access special offers and exclusive content through advertising, signage, packaging, or screens. Unlike QR codes that require a special app, SnapTags can be activated using any kind of camera phone. Simply take a photo of the SnapTag and send it to the listed destination. Meanwhile, consumers with smartphones may use the SnapTag Reader app.

SnapTag provides marketers with useful analytics data, including snaps, users, opt-ins, and repeat usage. In addition, marketers can manage and edit their mobile marketing campaign as it happens.

In 2012, SpyderLynk was named one of Entrepreneur magazine's “100 Brilliant Companies” and won the Mobile Marketing Association's Smartie Award in the mCommerce category.

Melon: Understand Yourself Better With This High-Tech Headband

Melon is a brainwave monitoring headband and mobile app that makes the invisible activity of your mind visible. By turning focus into something measurable and understandable, Melon helps you learn differently and know yourself better. The Melon headband uses EEG to listen to the electrical activity naturally emitted by your brain and then transfers the data to the mobile app. Along with information about your location, who you're with, and anything else relevant to your mental state, you can see what's helping or hurting your focus. Personalized real-time feedback lets you know when you need to take a break and teaches you how to improve.

Melon can also help you prepare for a performance or event. The app's Tune section provides tips that quickly guide you to your desired mental state, be it confidence, relaxation, or focus. Additionally, you can use Melon to train your brain to focus, meditate, and relax better. Melon's first training game lets you fold origami with your mind. The faster you reach your desired mental state and the longer you sustain it, the faster you can complete a fold.


The core Melon team consists of founders Arye Barnehama and Laura Michelle Berman and lead electrical engineer Janus Ternullo. Their goal is to help people understand themselves better through human-centered products. Barnehama, Berman, and Ternullo have combined their backgrounds in computer science, cognitive science, electrical engineering, and measurement devices to help people improve their focus and be more confident and productive in their daily lives.

Melon was successfully funded on Kickstarter in mid-2013 and is scheduled to ship this year. If you missed the Kickstarter campaign but would like your own brainwave tracking headband, you can still pre-order one for $149 on Melon's website. Melon has been featured in Inc., Forbes, Mashable, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, and Harvard Business Review.

Lionhardt Technologies, Maker of the World's Top Podcast Software

Lionhardt Technologies is a Canadian firm specializing in both established and emerging computer technologies. With products sold worldwide and available in different languages, Lionhardt is able to customize applications and create solutions for specific IT requirements.

Among Lionhardt's offerings is WebPod Studio, the world's leading podcast software. WebPod Studio lets both novice and experienced users produce high-quality audio and video podcasts for the Internet. Lionhardt Technologies also markets FileFly, Simple RSS Studio, and Lionytics, as well as distributes the Raspberry Pi. In addition, the firm provides custom website and software development services.

Lionhardt Technologies was founded by Dutch software developer Richard Eradus, who launched his first product, an HTML editor called TC-Director, in 1995. The first software of its kind, TC-Director went on to become a huge success due to features such as multiple documents, wizards, and W3C standard generated HTML. Eradus also created ASPEdit, an award-winning programming tool that has been adopted by leading universities and Fortune 500 companies worldwide. He currently serves as the CEO of Lionhardt Technologies.