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!

March Madness

So it's March, and if you're a basketball fan like this Duke grad (Go Blue Devils!), it is a WONDERFUL time of year. I'll most likely be spending the majority of the next few weeks camped in front a TV, bracket in hand, cheering my faves on to the Final Game (Duke/U Conn rematch with Duke coming out on top is my humble prediction this year.)

Go Blue Devils!

I know I'm not alone in this obsession. There are 5 million brackets entered in Yahoo's Tourney Pick 'Em. Last night I watched Duke trounce Binghamton and Villanova beat American from a local pub that was so packed, we could barely hear one another over the cheers from the surrounding tables. No sign of a down economy in that bar--at least not last night.

With so many games on the line and avid sportsfans nationwide vested in the outcomes, the selection of WHERE to watch each game is an important one. This weekend my boyfriend is getting together with a group of guys from his college for a marathon session of basketball watching, nacho eating, and beer drinking. With a group of 10 guys committed to hanging out in a pub for the majority of Friday night, all day Saturday and well into Sunday, there will be quite a decent bar tab to settle up at the end of the weekend. So which local haunt is going to benefit from their March Madness celebration?

Well, considering my house is an EveryScape household, that's where my boyfriend turned to for help with the pub selection. With a few clicks of the mouse, he was able to check the lay of the land at a few local sportsbars for the important things...How many TV's does each place have? What's the table layout? Is it a place that would appreciate 10 "enthusiastic" fans? The winning bar at the end of the day will easily earn themselves a $500 bar tab between food, drinks and tips--and that will just take care of Friday night. If they're the winner for the whole weekend--well, I'm not going to do the math to calculate how much these guys will lay out for a weekend of basketball but let's just say it will be a healthy tab.

When looked at this way, seems like a no-brainer for a restaurant or bar-owner to promote their business in this way. With a single group reservation, the owner could easily earn back their investment for their WebScape. In this economy, when marketing dollars are tight, a WebScape is a tool that pays for itself over and over again.

So what do you think? Are my basketball predictions off the wall? Have you used EveryScape to plan a night out or an event for your friends? Are you a business owner who has used your WebScape to get more customers? I'd love to hear about it.

EveryScape Facelift

If you're a long-time EveryScape follower, you'll notice that EveryScape got a little facelift over the weekend. Our homepage has been completely redesigned to better explain what we're all about to new and returning users, along with some key changes in other parts of the site.

As change is sometimes scary and not always welcome (check out what Facebook users had to say about the new Facebook upgrade!) I wanted to explain exactly WHAT we changed and WHY we changed things.

First, our homepage has an entirely new look and feel. Rather than immediately coming to the main portal landing page, where we used to announce what new cities had recently been added and made site visitors select a city to explore, we've broadened the messaging on this homepage. As we have a variety of people coming to our site each day for lots of different reasons, we wanted to be able to offer up different content to support different interests.

Old homepage

The new homepage explains why The Real World Online matters...We bring experiences of businesses and destinations to life online in such a way that online visitors can now confidently choose which restaurant they want to dine in, store they'd like to shop at, hotel they'd like to stay at, museum they'd like to visit. Now, within one click of our homepage, we offer information for business owners interested in capturing their business in The Real World Online, partners interested in using our visual search directory on their own site, job applicants interested in helping us conquer this enormous task. And, in case you were worried, you can still easily get to all of our city content by clicking on the EveryScape Local Search "Explore Now" button OR clicking directly on any one of the cities mentioned in the footer.

New homepage

Once you enter the "Local Search" section of the site, you'll experience a few other enhancements. First, we've organized our Destination selections in the left nav in a way that makes more sense: alphabetically, by state or country, and then by city. Our old navigation where we organized cities based on the order that they had been launched didn't make a whole lot of sense and I'm sure caused quite a few people to hunt and peck to try to find specific destinations.

Our other major enhancement is we now have a "Featured Business" category where we include links to all of the "WebScapes" within that city. A WebScape is the 3D experience of businesses and destinations that allow visitors to virtually walk around as though they were there in real life. You might visit a city that doesn't have a "Featured Business" category...That means that we haven't quite gotten there yet. Remember, building The Real World Online is a pretty massive undertaking so it's going to take us a bit longer to get everywhere.

So what do you think of our facelift? Does it make more sense? Are there things that we changed that you wish we hadn't? Are there things that you'd love to see us change? Let us know!

Inaugural Post

Aah...The inaugural blog post. It seems that there's so much WEIGHT to this--do I really have "Blogger's Block" already? Like anything new, I think the best way to attack it is to dive right in. Considering the stakes that our new President is facing and the fact that he has done just that since his Inauguration, I figure I should certainly be able to tackle this blog.

"Why have we started this blog?" you may ask...Well, here at EveryScape, we're tackling a pretty major feat--attempting to build The Real World, Online. Yep, that's right--the World. The whole World. Streets, businesses, islands, parks, walkways, malls, museums, hotels, restaurants...You name it, we want to capture it...So that you can experience it all online--and then decide if you want to visit these new destinations in real life.

There's certainly no lack of information on the internet. Google any destination in the world and you're likely to come up with hundreds if not thousands of websites that will supply you with information on that location...But how do you know you can trust that information? How do you know if the reviews or opinions offered up online reflect your own tastes?

That's where EveryScape comes in. By serving up 3D walking tours of destinations, hotels, restaurants and businesses, where a user can inspect every square inch of the location, EveryScape is empowering users to make up their own minds about the destination. We offer up an online experience that answers the questions not always covered in FAQs...Can I wear jeans to this place? Would it be appropriate for a business meeting? How far is it from public transportation? Is it romantic enough for my anniversary dinner?

When we first launched EveryScape, we thought that it would be a great service to show off hotels, attractions, restaurants and nightclubs. Now that more and more businesses have signed on to our WebScape offering, we're recognizing that experience matters for pretty much every place that has a physical location.

For example, yesterday we had a funeral home inquire about our services...On first thought, it seemed pretty morbid to me. But when I thought about it, and put myself in the position of having to deal with making funeral arrangements for a loved one, I realized that an EveryScape tour of the facility would really help that painful process. With one virtual look around, I'd be able to answer questions I didn't even know to ask--is there enough room? Will my family feel comfortable there? Is it going to be creepy? Certainly more helpful than reading a standard directory listing--and less painful than visiting multiple funeral homes in real life before making a decision.

What do you think? If you had the world as your canvas, where would you start? If you could experience any destination before you got there, where would it be? What business would you want to "test drive" before you spent your gas money to get there?

Hmm, so with this first blog post, I've touched on the President, world creation and funeral homes...Nice clear consitent thought process there:) As you'll find out, with the world as our canvas, we have a lot to say here at EveryScape. Keep reading--should be fun!