The Taste of Cambridge

This post was written by Rebecca MacQuarrie, EveryScape's Director of Marketing.

If you're a Bostonian, or have spoken to a grumbling Bostonian lately, you'll know that June Gloom descended upon our fair city. As a glass-half-full kind of girl, I haven't actually counted the rainy days myself, but local DJ's, facebook updates and various co-workers have told me that the count was somewhere around 24 days!

With that in mind, you'll understand why we were all a little nervous when last Thursday rolled around, when we were set to exhibit and attend the outdoor Taste of Cambridge event. The original date had been canceled due to--you guessed it--rain and the weather wasn't looking much brighter at the beginning of last week. The sun gods must have felt sorry for all the hungry Cambridge residents and the happy restaurateurs though because an hour before the event was supposed to kick off, it cleared up into the most beautiful weather we've experienced all month!

A view of the festivities at The Charles Hotel

With 61 Cambridge restaurants in attendance, there were food and drink samples for every palate. A few of my favorites included the refreshing Rhubard-Hibiscus Mouse with Yogurt Foam from Craigie on Main, Parmesan and Pesto Risotto Fritters from Tavern on the Square, and pretty much every dessert offering from Finale! Also, a big thank you to great guys at Iggy's Bread, who kept us company throughout the event and made the entire EveryScape office happy by sending us away with a big bag of their delicious bread.

Thanks Iggy's!

It was great to get out into the community, enjoy some tasty food and lively music and interact with EveryScape customers and site visitors. We introduced EveryScape to a number of Cambridge and Boston residents who are interested in using WebScapes to plan their next night out.

A big thanks to Denise Jillson and Robin Lapidus from the Harvard Square Business Association and Jeff Moy of the Hong Kong for putting on an amazing event. All proceeds went to Youth on Fire and Club Passim's Culture for Kids. If you didn't make it out this year, make sure you mark it on your calendar for next year as this event is not to be missed!

EveryScape and Northeastern Alumni

This post was written by Anthony Madrigal, EveryScape's Regional Account Manager, Boston.

Eyes were glued to the double projector screens suspended from the ceiling this week at the Northeastern University monthly alumni meeting, as EveryScape’s Director of Business Development, and 1999 NEU grad, Craig Kapilow presented to a packed house of 50+ members. The topic for the evening was “Local Search; How to Discern Where To Go Today and Tomorrow” and was as much entertaining as it was relevant to the mixed group of seasoned professionals and recent graduates. Addressing the transition that has taken place in Local Search since the dawn of the Yellow Pages and first wave of residential telephone users, to the emergence of Search titan Google, to the subsequent information deluge that a patron-to-be is faced with when choosing a business, the EveryScape team posed the question “How do you make sense of it all?” The answer from the crowd was simply that there is no substitution for “seeing it for yourself.” Kapilow briefly touched on the EveryScape product suite and moved on to address some of the marketing challenges facing business owners and users alike, and finished by touching on mobile and its relevancy moving into the next decade. Though the presentation was not intended to be a pitch for EveryScape, the questions from the crowd quickly moved it in that direction. “How do you do this?” “What’s your business model?” “How much did you do in revenue last year?” The end result was a 30 minute pitch, where a 10 minute presentation was requested (thank you Northeastern Alumi Association). After breaking for a networking opportunity and speaking to nearly everyone in the room, the overarching theme of the evening became apparent. Patrons and business owners, marketers and sales professionals all see tremendous value in allowing someone to experience a location before arriving. They also all want in on the EveryScape IPO, but that is a completely different post (sorry guys).

EveryScape around BeanTown

This post was written by Rebecca MacQuarrie, EveryScape's Director of Marketing.

June will be a busy month for EveryScape, especially here in BeanTown. If you're looking for something fun to do to enjoy some of the beautiful Boston spring and early summer, come join us at one of these events:

Brighton Pub and Grub Crawl on June 13th starting at The Last Drop

Weekly Wax at River God's on June 15th at 8:00 PM, where two EveryScapers will battle it out for best DJ

Taste of Cambridge on June 18th at 5:30 PM at The Charles Hotel

Taste of Allston on June 28th at The Murr Center of Harvard University

Hope to see you there!

EveryScape to Exhibit at Where 2.0

This post was written by Mok Oh, Founder and CTO of EveryScape.

I will be speaking in a panel called Mobile Reality at Where 2.0 this year. Definitely excited to talk more about our iPhone development and application that shows off our technology and content (which is a work in progress). Here’s the abstract of the panel:

An emerging class of smartphones including location-based services and persistent data connections are lenses by which we can effectively view data layers atop physical space. What was once only available from tethered desktop computers is now possible from pocket-sized companion devices that travel with us. We are seeing examples of this in their earliest incarnations – social networking, gaming, reference and commerce.

Opposed to looking far into the future, this panel looks at examples of this technology in use and available today to consumers on a variety of smartphone platforms, including the Apple iPhone and Google Android. Panelists will provide short demonstrations of this technology, followed by a topic discussion and Q&A.

We will also have a booth there to better connect with the Where community. Please come join us in San Jose!

"Do they know you have a mechanical bull?"

Emerson Students impress us with their marketing pitches

This post was written by William Ho, User Experience Designer and member of the EveryScape Marketing team

• 3-D glasses with stereographic images…
• Sidewalk graffiti branding…
• Animated MBTA ads…

These were just some of the innovative marketing ideas that Emerson students presented to EveryScape’s sales and marketing team on Tuesday May 5th.

We at EveryScape asked a graduate class in Integrated Marketing Communications at Emerson to come up with a go-to-market strategy. Rebecca MacQuarrie (Director of Marketing at EveryScape) and Douglas Quintal (Marketing: Undergraduate Program Director) organized this collaboration.

Their main task was to focus on the following problem:

“How can EveryScape reach the small local business owner who needs a web presence?”

For this semester long project, three Emerson teams pondered long and hard about this question. Their ideas led these teams to conduct user and market research, invent user personas, create print ads, and produce powerpoint slides in preparation for their final presentations. Each team had just one hour to prove they had the best marketing strategy for EveryScape. Not only were there prizes and bragging rights involved, their semester grades were on the line!

Here are some of the marketing creatives they produced

New Taglines:

“ Know your neighborhood. Know your World.”
“Step Inside!”

Ad Copy:

“It’s what’s inside that counts”
“Let people in 24/7 with no reservations.”
“Do they know you have a mechanical bull?”

Ad Examples:





After 3 hours of presentations, EveryScape chose Jane Agency as the winning team. This agency started off by giving every EveryScape member a bottle of sparkling water to put on top of a branded EveryScape coaster. Their slick narrative presentation, creative ideas, and attention to detail put them over the top.

Even though there was just one winner EveryScape would like to give props to all the effort put in by all the students and Professor Quintal during the semester. After the presentations we left carrying a 2 foot high stack of market research, ad creatives, and collaterals!

In the near future don’t be too surprised if you see an EveryScape street team handing over 3-D glasses at a local event or see an animated WebScape on the MBTA!

Mok goes to Xconomy's Forum on Mobile Innovation

This post was written by Mok Oh, CTO and founder of EveryScape.

Xconomy had their Forum on the Future of Mobile Innovation in New England yesterday, organized by Wade Roush (Wade rocks!). As usual (to how Xconomy rolls), it was a very well run event with relevant mobile players in the New England area. Most speakers represented smaller companies, which to me meant that there’s still lots to be figured out – these are entrepreneurs and innovators, both technically and biz-dev-wise, treading through the unknown and ever-changing territory of the mobile frontier. These are innovators who are going where no person has gone before (start music, play clip with starships flying around in space). There were interesting and noteworthy tweets (oh BTW, Twitter rocks!).

I particularly enjoyed Jeff Bussgang from Flybridge, where he moderated “The Changing Business of Mobile” roundtable. For example, one of the audience members asked him about the VC perspective of the mobile industry, and he deflected and put the focus back on the folks in the roundtable, saying that they were the innovators , and as a VC he follows them (something along that line). Very wise he is.

In general, most of the talk (from my perspective) was around Apple, iPhone, and the App Store, and how they really changed the dynamics of the mobile industry. But even with rising interest, companies who base their strategy purely on mobile products have a hard time growing (or getting big) in a B2C sense. Mo money on the mobile enterprise side of things.

Special Update: New Features

We have been burning the midnight oil around here to launch some new features that will really shake things up in the Real World Online. To give you a snapshot into what's to come in the next few months, here's a Top 10 List of New Features:

10. Partnership with Virgin Galactic to bring space content to expand "The Real World Online" into "The Real Galaxy Online".

9. X-Ray vision application that will allow you to morph directly from a street scene into a high-res X-Ray of any person or animal captured in the photo.

8. Scape of the Basement of the Alamo to help PeeWee finally find his lost bike.

7. ScentScapes that will allow users to not only see a new destination, but smell it as though they were there.

6. New Bar and Nightclub comprehensive tour of all pub bathrooms highlighting cleanliness to better help bargoers make their selection for where to spend their nights out..Not to be offered in conjunction with ScentScapes.

5. New E-Commerce immediate booking feature whereby you click "Go Here" and are instantly tele-ported to the destination of your choice.

4. Attractiveness optimizer whereby we automatically retouch anything that falls beneath the EveryScape attractiveness radar.

3. For every "slink" or orange EveryScape arrow clicked, we'll donate $0.05 to our favorite charity: Avenge Bambi's Death at the Hands of StreetView.

2. DogScape, whereby we lower our camera angle several feet to a dogs-eye-view, stopping at each fire hydrant, tree and fence post along the road.

And the number 1 new feature for EveryScape on this 1st day of April...Due to network TV cutbacks, we're announcing a partnership with Extreme Home Makeover where we virtually make-over homes so that families can see what the folks at EHM could have done, if their house was selected. We believe this sends both a heart-warming and green message!

Happy April Fool's Day!