apps + your phone = money

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Have an iPhone, make some money. That’s the idea behind Mountain View startup Gigwalk, which connects iPhone owners with companies that pay them to snap photos of restaurants, street signs, stores and other places in urban areas.

Launched in May, Gigwalk’s customers include Microsoft’s Bing search engine and TomTom, which makes portable GPS navigation systems for vehicles and mobile phones.

Izzy Merritt, 17, of Oakland, downloaded the Gigwalk app to her iPhone in June. Since then, she has taken dozens of panoramic photos of restaurants, cafes and stores in Berkeley and Oakland for Bing.

“I just do as many as I can in the time I set for myself. So far, I’ve made $1,156,” said Merritt, a graduate of Bishop
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O’Dowd High School in Oakland who will start an unpaid internship at a graphics firm in a couple of weeks.

But it’s not just the money that turned her into one of the startup’s estimated 65,000 “Gigwalkers” nationwide. “It’s exciting. It’s kind of like the new economy of a mobile workforce and a whole new plane of possibilities. It’s fun to be on board with this so early on,” Merritt said.

Gigwalk is among a number of emerging crowd-commerce businesses that use apps to connect those who want a task done with those who are willing to do them. TaskRabbit and Zaarly, which are based in San Francisco, connect people who need things done like assembling furniture, shopping or other errands, with those who bid on the task.

“Crowdsourcing
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apps that can transform free time into currency and connections offer a smart response to today’s economic doldrums,” Andrew Wood, a professor of communication studies at San Jose State, said in an email.

Gigwalk makes it possible to link an on-demand mobile workforce to both small and large businesses needing knowledgeable, local people to take online photos for them, said Ariel Seidman, CEO and a co-founder of Gigwalk.

Red dots show active assignments on the Gigwalk app, which is operating in the Bay Area and the metro areas of Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia and Seattle. Payment, which can range from $4 to $7 per gig, is placed into the gigwalker’s PayPal account.

Payment is typically made within seven days of submitting the photo, provided it is accepted by the customer. Gigwalkers who earn more than $600 a year receive a 1099 miscellaneous-income tax form.

“You are earning a little bit of money using your device,” said Seidman, who previously worked as director of product management at the mobile search division of Yahoo (YHOO).

Currently, the Gigwalk app is available only on the iPhone. But plans call for making it available this fall on smartphones that use the Android operating system, he said.

The privately held company has venture capital backing from Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder and a partner with Greylock Partners, among other investors.

Nationwide, there are currently about 70,000 listed gigs, including about 14,000 in the Bay Area.

The company earns revenue, which Seidman declined to state, from fees charged to businesses after the gigwalker completes a task.

Some people are casual gigwalkers while others are more aggressive in terms of taking assignments.

“They can make a couple hundred dollars easily and other folks take a more casual approach. They do it for one or two hours,” Seidman said.

Jimmy Winterton, a 27-year-old full-time dental student at the UC San Francisco, takes the casual approach.

“It’s ideal for people like me. I can do it when I have the time. I’ll call up (my fiancee) and say ‘Let’s go out to dinner. I just paid for it with Gigwalk,’ ” said Winterton, who figures he’s made about $500 since July by mostly taking photos of restaurants near the school.

Zaarly, which also launched in May, has an app for both iPhones and Android-based smartphones to put out the word that people are looking for tasks to be done or have something to sell. And like TaskRabbit, listings can also be posted and access through the Web, not just on a smartphone.

“Using crowd commerce in general, the idea is that people are getting things they could not have gotten before,”said Bo Fishback, Zaarly’s CEO.

But isn’t that possible with online site likes Craigslist and (gasp) old-fashioned bulletin boards in stores?

“It gives a new spin, one, and two, it makes it accessible by everyone, everywhere. So this is like if you had a bulletin board with you that went everywhere you went, and you went and told everyone within a few miles what you were looking for,” Fishback said.

The history of the Dirndls

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The Dirndl is a world-wide well-known symbol of the entire German sprachigen area. Who would like to buy today a Dirndl, can umschauen itself with dirndlguenstig.org. The Dirndl existed originally in a robusteren, rougher form than those costume like we it today has. The Dirndl was in 19. Century the uniform of the Austrian officials. The complete name of the garb is from there also Dirndlgewand, which means as much as farm servant dress. Simple forms of the Dirndls were carried likewise frequently of employed women in uniform colors or with a simple Karrierung. Originally each village had its own style. The Austrian upper class made the High Fashion of the 1870er from the Dirndlkleidern years. Today Dirndl vary arranged very expensive Modellen.Das of dresses in simple style up to completely exquisit Dirndl particularly in Austria and Bavaria are carried. As everyday clothes are used primarily of older women in rural areas. Otherwise it (similarly as the Scottish Kilt) is carried to formal causes too in certain traditional meetings. It is also with young women to the Octoberfest in Munich (and with similar festivals in southern Germany, Austria, Brazil, Canada and even ind the United States) much likes, although many young women carry only the you DL style of dresses (country house mode so called), which deviate in many points and are often many cheaper. In Austria, Bavaria and in southern Brazil, is carried the Dirndl frequently also in connection with tourist occupations and of waitresses in traditional restaurants or beer gardens. The moreover one it becomes in these regions also of women from the people music business getragen.2011 © amg expert, 01:16 Uhrsimsalaseo.jpg (75.58 KB)

Practical and elegant accessories – thus the bath to the relaxation oasis becomes

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Everyone can be bath into an actual small retreat oasis to transform and with the correct bath articles is extremely simple this and goes also rather briskly. At the best one one keeps the bath with its mechanism simple and elegant, then one knows with some few, accessories purposefully placed the own bath into a Wellnessbereich transforms in which one ease daily correctly can. With products of the region one receives with Hardys and Hansgrohe Axor accessory for the bathroom, with which one will have long time much fun. Put with the production of a Hansgrohe armature for example value on high quality, also functionality and appropriateness in the everyday life are only of enormous importance. The most modern armature has which use, if it is to be cleaned unsuitable that it already works unattractively after short time and lime marks only under large effort be removed can. With a Hansgrohe bath armature does not happen such a thing, because Hansgrohe bath armatures are designt for the everyday life, not for beautiful Impressionen. If the bath offers to sufficient place, a free standing bath tub is surely a complete highlight. Together with Hansgrohe armatures such a bath tub can become to the center and eyecatcher of a bath and loads in such a way to relaxing moments between foam and simple elegance in. HSK shower cubicles do not complete the concept of simple and noble elegance and beside HSK showers insert themselves just as the HSK bath heating element perfectly into the picture also and stand out in this way under any circumstances unpleasantly. Some plants about and a few candles are often enough, over in the domestic bath almost just as well to relaxen to be able as in a Spa. But caution, too many accessories just like openly standing Kosmetika the bathroom lets look fast too full and make besides the necessary Reinigen.2011 more difficult © jenny_b, 19:00 clock