HereO : A GPS Watch for Children

HereO is the world's smallest and most advanced GPS watched designed especially for kids. It looks cool and tells the time, but its most important feature is that it lets parents know where their children are in real time. The HereO watch connects to the HereO Family app, where mom and dad can view their little ones' whereabouts, as well as the location of all family members who have the app. Other useful features of the HereO Family app are group messaging and location alerts. With the latter, parents can create virtual fences around any area such as home, school, or work and receive notifications when a specific family member arrives or leaves that place.

The HereO team worked on the HereO watch for more than three years, creating several prototypes before arriving at the final trendy design. Built from the ground up with active children in mind, the watch is comfortable, water-resistant, and lasts up to 50 hours between charges. It also houses an accelerometer that sends an alert when shaken horizontally five times.

23snaps: Private Photo Sharing for Families

Called a “Facebook for families” by TechCrunch, 23snaps is a free app that lets you share your most precious memories privately with the people who matter the most. Not your online friends, not your co-workers, and definitely not strangers – but your family members and close friends. Based in London, 23snaps is a private photo-sharing app created by parents, for parents. It provides a completely safe and secure way to record the special moments in your life and share them with your loved ones, wherever they are in the world. The startup was founded in early 2012 by Ivailo Jordanov and Yury Tereschenko. With their wives both pregnant, they wanted their families to be a part of their children's lives even if they lived far away. Privacy was one of Jordanov and Tereschenko's top priorities – they needed a simple yet beautiful way to store and share photos, videos, and updates with just their families and closest friends.

The mission of 23snaps is to make it “incredibly easy” to create digital photo albums and help families feel closer to each other. Available on Android, iOS, Windows, and the web, 23snaps is accessible via smartphone, tablet, and computer. You can even invite not-so-techie family members to receive updates by email. And if you'd like to have physical copies of your digital memories, you can order photo books from 23snaps as well.

Recently, 23snaps added a “stories” feature that lets you combine photos, videos, and text in a single update. This was added after the startup noticed that 20 percent of posts contained multiple photos and 40 percent had detailed descriptions.

With over 500,000 users in almost 180 countries, 23snaps has been featured in The Guardian, BBC, CNET, The Marilyn Denis Show, The Next Web, and more. The company is named after the 23 pairs of human chromosomes.

Know Yourself Better With Reporter

Reporter is a new iPhone app that helps you keep track of your daily activities and better understand yourself. Each day, Reporter will present a few randomly timed surveys that will collectively shed light on aspects of your life that are otherwise immeasurable. The app includes a pre-defined set of questions, but you are encouraged to customize your Reporter experience by adding your own questions and editing or deleting the existing ones. You an also control how frequently and when they will appear. Question types include multiple choice, numbers, yes/no, notes, locations, tokens, and people.

Reporter is designed to capture the most information with the least friction. Surveys are lightweight and smart suggestions make completing them a piece of cake. The more you use Reporter, the faster the answering process becomes. As you complete reports, Reporter aggregates your answers into visualizations on the home screen, allowing you to see your life patterns. You can export your reports as CSV or JSON files or save them to Dropbox.

Find Cool Stuff to Do With Wingit

Bored and got nothing do? Use Wingit to discover cool stuff to do nearby right now. With just a few taps on your phone, you can see what's currently happening around you, whether it's a fun live performance a few blocks away, free cocktails in the bar next door, or a secret gig by one of your favorite bands. The app also lets you share your discoveries with your friends and make last-minute plans together.

Wingit is powered by a proprietary algorithm that continuously scans billions of pieces of information shared on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It then filters these posts to present only the coolest things to do based on your location, so you never see things such as your neighbor walking his dog.

In addition, you can create your own community on Wingit to share plans with your friends – tell them what you're doing, see what they're about to do, and never be bored again.

Little Pim Teaches Young Children a Second Language

Little Pim is an award-winning children's language program that makes it fun and easy for children to learn a second language. Scientific research has found that children learn best when they start early, and Little Pim is specifically designed for tots ages 0 to 6. During this period, kids' brains are hardwired to learn up to three languages with ease. Research also shows that bilinguals have superior reading and writing skills, especially if they learned a second language before the age of 6.



Little Pim is available in 11 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Children are guided through the videos, flashcards, books, and CDs by Little Pim, an adorable cartoon panda who serves as the “teacher.” Kids can learn over 360 words and phrases, giving them tools for future success – one only needs 500 words to be considered “conversational” in a language.

To help children naturally acquire a language, Little Pim uses its proprietary Entertainment Immersion Method to keep them fully engaged as they learn a second language. Each lesson has a child-friendly theme such as eating, colors, playtime, and feelings, and videos are kept short to accommodate a youngster's attention span. Little Pim has received over 25 accolades for its unique program including the Mom's Best Award, iParenting Media Award, The Toy Man Award of Excellence, Creative Child Magazine Preferred Choice Award, National Parenting Center Seal of Approval, and more.

Little Pim was founded by award-winning filmmaker and language teacher Julia Pimsleur Levine, whose father, Dr. Paul Pimsleur, created the Pimsleur Method. Inspired by her own bilingual childhood, she wanted to give her young son the same opportunity to learn a second language. Little Pim was born when she couldn't find any high-quality language programs for toddlers. Pimsleur Levine spent several years developing Little Pim alongside leading neuroscientist Dr. April Benasich, educators, and native language experts.

Small Improvements: Simple and Accurate Performance Reviews

Small Improvements is performance review software simplified. The Berlin-headquartered startup believes that performance review systems do not need to complicated to be effective. In fact, the longer the process takes, the more people hate it, and the less accurate the results are. Small Improvements believes that a short and sweet process achieves more. Designed for small to medium-sized companies that want to improve productivity and communication, the web-based software offers “really easy to use” performance assessments, anonymous 360-degree feedback, goal sharing, minimal reports, and reward badges.

Small Improvements is free for up to 10 users, while larger organizations can try the software for 30 days at no cost. Plans start at $4 per user per month or $40 per user per year. Customers include Pinterest, ModCloth, One Kings Lane, Atlassian, Opera, Quiksilver, Coursera, and more. Earlier this year, Small Improvements was named one of the “Top 5 European Startups to Watch in 2014” by VentureBeat.

Life360: Keeping Families Together Through Technology

Based in downtown San Francisco, Life360 helps keep families connected even when they're apart. The app is “part location, part communication,” with features such as messaging, location sharing, check-ins, and more. With Life360, family members no longer have to ask and answer, “Where are you?” and “Did you arrive okay?” several times a day. You simply open the Life360 map to see where everyone else is. Likewise, you check in with the app to let the rest of the family know that you had made it to your destination. Favorite locations can be saved so you don't have to check in every single time. In case of emergencies, an alert button sends an email, voice mail, and text message to everyone immediately.



Groups on Life360 are organized into circles, which require an invite to join. A family circle is created by default, but you can add more for the other people in your life. Create a circle for aunts and uncles, close friends, babysitters and dog walkers, the Little League team... You get the idea. Only circle members can see each other's messages and locations, and circle creators get to decide who's invited, who stays, and who goes.

Life360 is available on iOS and Android for free. There's also a premium version that comes with a host of extra features. One of them is a 24/7 life advisor, a real person who can direct emergency responders to your exact location, access your emergency profile, and provide personalized crisis care. Premium users also get $100 stolen phone protection, extended history, unlimited places, and unlimited location lookups – even friends and family members without smartphones can be located. Life360 Premium costs $5 per month or $50 per year.

Life360 has received numerous awards over the years, including the Google Android Developer Challenge Grand Prize, About.com Readers' Choice Award, Webby People's Voice Award, and more.