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Projects We Love: PrivacyWall

This is part of our series highlighting startups who share our mission of trying to bring data privacy back to users.

You’ve had a rough week, maybe it’s a relationship or health problem, but either way, you’re feeling down. Fortunately, your family is there for you, and reach out to console you through a few private messages on social media.

Mom: “I know it’s expensive, I’m sorry your health care doesn’t cover it, we’ll do what we can to help you pay.”

Dad: “Don’t worry sport, she’s just going through a phase, I’m sure you guys will work through it.”

Friend: “Hey man, let’s meet up for a drink this weekend, cheer up!”

After reading your messages, you lay down in bed to rest and start scrolling through social media to pass the time until you fall asleep, and you’re astounded by what you find.

Ads.

But not just the usual ads for food, or some new tech gadget.

“Lower your healthcare costs now! Save 20% off market rate plans!”

“Relationship trouble? Local family counseling is available!”

“Cheapest beer in town, and half-price shots on Fridays!”

Maybe it’s just coincidence, or maybe every single thing you say or do online is being tracked and sold to advertisers… That “free” social media website has to make money somehow.

And that’s where PrivacyWall comes in- a startup that is returning data privacy and security to users. By blocking unwanted data collection by everyone from Facebook to Google, PrivacyWall puts you back in the driver’s seat.

Why PrivacyWall?

Every website you visit, every search you type in, every message you send and photo you post, it’s all tracked, recorded, and monitored. PrivacyWall is the “off” switch we’ve been waiting for.

By blocking over 3,000+ trackers from many of the largest tech companies in the world you can once again browse the internet without fear of being tracked like the target of a CIA investigation. We expect privacy in our homes, and we should get the same treatment on the internet.

PrivacyWall even blocks Facebook Connect from building a shadow profile of your online activity when you are not on Facebook. If you didn’t know, that convenient “log-in with Facebook” turns that account you just signed up for into another data collection point for Facebook to build a profile on you.

If you didn’t know that, you aren’t alone. And that’s exactly why PrivacyWall blocks threats you don’t even know about yet. Because you shouldn’t have to become a security expert and worry about your private information being leaked just because you used Facebook to sign-up for a food delivery app, or a dating site, or anything.

You deserve privacy, and PrivacyWall is a step towards a more private world.

This New Startup Helps Non-Techies Use Machine Learning

**This is part of our series highlighting startups who share our mission of trying to make people’s lives just a little easier**

Machine learning sounds pretty simple, in theory. For example, if you want to create a tool that identifies faces in a photo, you input tons of pictures of people into the machine learning tool and, after a while, the software will learn what a face looks like in a photo and how to identify it.

But it’s more complicated than it seems. There’s actually a whole load of custom code, different software, and advanced data analytics that go into the recipe for a successful piece of machine learning.

Enter Lobe, a new startup that aims to make machine learning as simple as clicking together a couple of LEGO bricks. It got its name from the platform’s drag-and-drop visual coding interface (known as “lobes”) which manifest as card-based views that can be moved around, put together, and built upon.

Let’s face it, machine learning doesn’t sound like a simple concept you could chat about with your granny over tea. It’s a pretty complex thing that has taken years to develop and even longer for people to master the art of it.

Which leads most people to thinking that it’s not for them. But if you’ve had ideas in the past (and who hasn’t?!), they could probably benefit from machine learning in some way.

To get things started on Lobe, you simply have to add a load of images or sound files into the website and the tool will start processing them immediately to learn what it can from the files you’ve uploaded.

The goal? For any old non-techie person to make their wildest ideas a reality.

Mike Matas, founder of Lobe, says: “There’s been a lot of situations where people have kind of thought about AI and have these cool ideas, but they can’t execute them. So those ideas just get shed, unless you have access to an AI team.”

According to a recent survey of 2,500 developers, 28% of respondents named AI and machine learning as the technologies they were backing the most in 2018. Even non-techies are somewhat enamored with the idea.

But for the tech-minded lot, there are plenty of tools already out there in the developer world; tools that require the inputting of code and the knowledge of different software languages to build modules upon modules. Basically, they are exclusive in that only people with the technical know-how can use them, whereas Lobe aims to offer an inclusive tool for everyone that has an idea.

“You need to know how to piece these things together, there are lots of things you need to download,” says Matas of the tools that are “exclusive” to developers. “I’m one of those people who if I have to do a lot of work, download a bunch of frameworks, I just give up. So as a UI designer I saw the opportunity to take something that’s really complicated and reframe it in a way that’s understandable.”

How Lobe Works

The tech industry has fully embraced AI and machine learning, welcoming it with open arms and metaphorically feeding it up like the guest of honor at a dinner party. In the survey mentioned above, 73% of respondents said they were interested in learning about machine learning platforms, despite only 17% having worked with AI technologies in 2017.

The team behind Lobe have tapped into this idea that people want machine learning technology, but still find it a pretty confusing concept.

By taking the complicated, code-riddled parts of machine learning (we’re talking feature extraction and labelling here) and turning them into a simple, easy-to-use visual interface, Lobe basically offers machine learning for dummies.

Take the example below. Lobe’s platform allows users to create applications that can read hand gestures in real photos and match them up with signs in emojis without having to go anywhere near a single piece of code.

This makes the possibilities endless: a new dimension has opened up where people can create and build their own apps without having the advanced technical knowledge to do so.

Despite the potential it has, Lobe is still pretty basic in its execution and interface.

It relies solely on images and sensors. For example, existing blueprints include the ability to identify plants from images and create a tuner for different string instruments.

“As a UI designer when I first started, I made everything in Photoshop,” says Matas. “Everything I designed was through a static interface. So every solution was a button on the screen. Then I learned UX prototyping tools. With them, we could do iterative prototyping, and suddenly we could solve problems with motions, interaction, and gestures. And you get things like the iPhone X home swipe.”

What This Means for the Future of AI

For Matas, AI is bringing the next influx of user interfaces with it.

He compares the early days of machine learning with those of PCs, when only computer scientists and engineers could operate the new machines: “they were the only people able to use them, so they were the only people able to come up with ideas about how to use them,” he says.

It wasn’t until later in the 80s when computers became more of a creative tool for all, and that was predominantly due to vast improvements in the user interface making them easier for non-techies to get behind.

The aim is to bring machine learning to the masses and break it free from the tech world in some way. “People outside the data science community are going to think about how to apply this to their field,” Matas says. Unlike before, where they needed an AI expert to stand in and help build the learning systems, they will now be able to create a working model themselves.

For a long time, AI was the future of the tech world, but with tools like Lobe popping up, it now seems that machine learning and deep learning capabilities are the future for all industries.

How Virtual Reality Is Being Used To Put An End To Cyber Attacks

**This is part of our series highlighting startups who share our mission of trying to make people’s lives just a little easier**

The explosion of new technologies has seen a huge rise in the quantity and – more importantly – the quality of cyber hackers out there. Crude attempts to hack into systems are a thing of the past, and instead expert attackers are collaborating with governments and crime syndicates to do questionable things with data.

For digital businesses in particular, this is a big concern. Large, distributed networks that are scattered around the web lend themselves perfectly to cyber-attacks from sophisticated hackers, and those hackers are more savvy than ever before.

New Israel-based startup Illusive Networks was built to stop these attackers in their tracks – literally (albeit digitally).

Malicious hackers will find every entry point they can to wriggle into a network, often bypassing firewalls that companies thought would protect them and their assets. Because of this, Illusive Networks has said goodbye to firewalls and has instead gone for a different method of creating a new world for the hacker to disappear into (and get lost).

If it sounds like something out of Minority Report, you might be onto something. And, if it sounds a bit farfetched, you’re on the same wavelength as us. I mean, creating a whole new world simply to distract potential hackers seems like a lot of extra effort, right?

This is where it gets interesting.

You’ve heard of virtual and augmented reality, right? These are two new technologies that layer an alternate reality over the top of, well, real reality to bring participants new perspectives and new worlds entirely.

Illusive Networks taps into these technologies and creates a false version of a company’s network to either trap the hackers in an alternate “reality” or kick them out completely.

Isn’t Illusive Networks Just Like the Others?

The answer to this question is, of course, yes and no.

Businesses have access to thousands of different security products these days, and there seems to be a new anti-cyberattack startup popping up every single day.

Because of this, business owners and security leaders are resisting adding even more tools to their security arsenal – the last thing people want or need are noisy alerts every time a hacker tries to break through a digital barrier.

“But technologies that truly look at existing problems in new ways and are purpose-built to help companies deal with the unexpected can deliver significant efficiencies that reduce rather than add to the security burden,” says Illusive Networks’ Founder and CEO, Ofer Israeli. “Distributed deception technology is certainly one of them.”

How Illusive Networks Works

On its website, Illusive Networks says that it:

  • Maps potential paths attackers can take to get to the goods (a.k.a. your most important assets)
  • Finds and gets rid of risky areas that help attackers reach your assets
  • Cloaks your system with thousands of high-fidelity deceptions that trigger an alert when one wrong move is detected
  • Offers real-time forensic reports to help response teams stay in control

But what do all these things really mean? And what even is “distributed deception technology”?

“There will always be a phishing or drive-by attack,” says Israeli. “Humans are the weakest link and always will be and will continue to make mistakes. But once the hacker is in, now we have an attacker who needs to orient himself.”

Essentially, distributed deception means creating a series of fake journeys a potential hacker could take. The aim is to confuse, deceive, and catch them red handed.

Illusive Networks creates an “illusive” version of a company’s network (that alternate reality we were talking about earlier). And, once a hacker finds themselves in this parallel universe, the tool identifies the individual and either keeps them shut in there forever or kicks them out for good.

Think about it: to strategically plan a pathway to the main asset, a hacker needs to consider two things. They need to know what options they have for where they can go next, and they need to know how they can access the powers needed to execute that particular move. In the security world, this two-step process is known as orientation and propagation.

You see, to get to the coveted prize, a hacker needs to make a series of hundreds or thousands of tiny moves – something that Illusive Network aims to put a rapid stop to.

Say, for example, there’s a hacker who has the option to take three different paths towards their next step. Illusive Networks then swoops in with a further twenty choices, of which only three are real and the other seventeen are traps. If the hacker takes any of those seventeen options which, let’s face it, is highly likely with the law of probability, the system is alerted to an unwanted intruder.

Likewise, if a hacker needs to gain credentials to make their next move, Illusive Networks will supply them with tens more credentials than they need so that, again, if they pick the wrong choice the system goes into lockdown.

So, rather than shutting out hackers entirely like firewalls do, Illusive Networks deceives them so it’s almost impossible for them to reach their end goal. The startup has even brought several ex-attackers on board who have shared their perspectives to make solutions more realistic and useful.

Perhaps the most advanced thing about the startup is that neither the professionals working for Illusive Networks nor the hackers can see the deceptions until they walk into them head first. This means the deception sensors are only triggered if someone “bumps into them”, but it also means that it only takes a few moves (out of potentially thousands) for an attacker to be detected and kicked out.

What Does This Mean for the Future of Cyber Attacks and Data Breaches?

Illusive Networks plans to bring a new age of security to digital businesses that will see less hackers succeeding despite them getting more and more sophisticated every day.

Data breaches could be a thing of the past, as distributed deception means hackers don’t have to just navigate one obstacle like a firewall. Instead, there are obstacles all around them (think security lasers in a museum as a real-life example), and every wrong move can be quickly detected.

But while it might be comforting to know that our personal data looks to be safer than ever, the technology behind Illusive Networks might not be limited stopping hackers in the future.

What if hackers start using it to their advantage? These are people that are highly skilled in tech-endeavors, so surely they’re buffing up on this new technology as we speak and working out ways they can use it to their benefit? If they’re not, maybe they’re missing a trick.

Systems like the one Illusive Networks is using are groundbreaking in the war against cyber attacks but only time will tell if they’re victorious.

How This Machine Learning App Will Help You Become the Next Picasso

**This is part of our series highlighting startups who share our mission of trying to make people’s lives just a little easier**

“Earth” without “art” is just “eh”, claims the headline on SketchAR’s homepage.

But not everyone’s the next Picasso or Van Gogh. Not everyone can craft a masterpiece like the Mona Lisa – until now. Or, at least, that’s what this new augmented reality app hopes to change.

Augmented reality has become huge over the past few years – we only have to look at the mind-blowing success of the Pokémon Go app that integrated the user’s actual location with graphics from the game itself. The game was so popular that everyone from prime ministers, reporters, and law enforcement officers were all having a go.

Bridging the gap between the real world and the digital one has become a huge trend in the tech industry, with multiple different types of apps and industries venturing into this crossover territory.

Today, AR is helping people do far more than just catch ‘em all. It’s helping them learn how to sketch, which is great news if even your stick figures leave much to be desired, like mine.

How SketchAR Makes an Artist Out of Anyone

The app works by overlaying a virtual image on a real-life piece of paper which shows up on the phone screen. Ideally, users need to get a tripod involved, as it can be difficult to hold the phone over the piece of paper in one hand while sketching with the other.

With a built-in selection of pre-made sketches, users can get started right away on perfecting their drawing skills, or they can upload and convert pictures from their own camera roll and turn them into traceable images.

Then comes the fun bit.

Once the user has chosen which image they want to sketch out from their screen onto a sheet of paper, they need to draw five circles around the edge of the page so the camera can recognize the canvas.

After that, the image aligns with the five circles and displays on the screen, allowing the user to go right ahead and trace, draw, sketch, and be creative.

At the moment, SketchAR can only be used on A4 paper, but there are big plans on the horizon. Soon, larger canvases will be available as well as built-in sensors to detect a physical location so mural artists can get involved as well.

The Future of AR Technology in Apps

AR isn’t a new technology.

In fact, the first AR headset was developed by Ivan Sutherland in 1968 with the term “augmented reality” later coined in 1990.

It wasn’t until 2009 when AR was integrated with the internet that things got really exciting, though.

So exciting, in fact, that the AR and VR market size in 2021 is set to reach $215 billion – a massive increase from the $17.8 billion predicted this year.

While games like Pokémon Go make it easy to believe that AR is only good for entertainment purposes, it’s actually proving to be a huge hit in helping people develop new skills and advance in the workplace.

In a ISACA survey, 64% of US consumers believe that AR enhancements would benefit the workplace, while a further 69% believed that this kind of technology could help them learn new skills.

This is where SketchAR comes into play.

In the past, learning a new skill meant going to an evening class or taking a course. This equated to spending money and having to give up precious time, which probably put a lot of people off.

However, with the birth of AR apps like this, people can learn a new skill from the comfort of their own home whenever they want – it sounds like a win-win situation, right?

Most people would agree.

It could be argued that AR has opened up a new era for computing which goes beyond the limits of a small screen. Maybe in the not-too-distant future we won’t see workers at desktop computers anymore and will instead see them wearing headsets that let them interact with data and information in real-time right before their very eyes.

But on the flipside of this there are – as always – causes for concern. Just like there is with any new technology – especially ones that rely on mixed reality.

Because it is finely attuned to the real-world, AR usually has access to location information of its users. Take Pokémon Go again, which offered up different kinds of Pokémon depending on where the user was. This led to a spate of news reports about robbers who had used the game to lure unsuspecting players to specific spots to steal from them.

And, because AR operates in both the real and the digital worlds, there are concerns about the digital side of things, too.

The ISACA report shows that a large percentage of consumers are very or somewhat concerned that AR enhancements make their devices more vulnerable to privacy breaches.

It seems hard to equate hacking and data breaches with a seemingly harmless app that teaches people how to draw better. But when you think that new technologies like AR need new processes and new systems in order to keep operating at their best, there’s bound to be some pushback from the general public.

Sure, SketchAR may well make an artist out of you yet, but is that all it does?

So far, so good.

If you want a quick and easy way to sketch a picture of your dog for your mom’s birthday, SketchAR might just be the thing you need. But with AR technology advancing by what feels like the day, we’ll be keeping a close eye on what it’s going to help us do in the future.

Because after all, once we’ve mastered the paintbrush like Picasso, what’s next?

The AI-Based Startup That Knows Your Skin Better Than You Do

**This is part of our series highlighting startups who share our mission of trying to make people’s lives just a little easier**

Anti-aging. Miracle-cure. Dermatologically tested.

These are all buzzwords that regularly crop up in the beauty industry, driving women (and men) all around the world to spend thousands of dollars on skincare products that they may or may not need.

In fact, the global skincare industry is currently estimated to be worth around $130 billion by 2019 – that’s a lot of miracle cures. And we can only assume that the industry will snowball even further in this selfie-obsessed age.

People want to look good – fact. But with so many products to choose from, it can often be a quagmire of irrelevant creams and dissatisfying serums out there.

One new startup sees itself as the beauty industry’s knight in shining armor. Fed up with the BS spouted around skincare, Proven uses artificial intelligence to create individual skincare routines based on skin types and needs.

“The average person spends 45 minutes to 1.5 hours researching products before they buy any beauty products,” says Proven’s co-founder Ming Zhao. “And even after they buy based on the research that they’re able to do, 55% of people are still unsatisfied post-purchase.”

And, with all the lofty promises in ads and on billboards, is it any wonder that people are left disappointed when miracles don’t happen?

“No single person is capable of reading the amount of information there is in order to make a sound decision,” continues Zhao, going on to add that this was the reason behind building the largest database in the beauty industry. Using co-founder Amy Yuan’s computational physics background, the duo has put together an AI engine that sifts through reviews of skincare products.

How Proven Gets to Know Your Skin

To date, the engine has analyzed around eight million skincare product reviews, 20,000 ingredients, and 100,000 products using a sophisticated algorithm to eliminate any fake reviews.

When it sifts through this data, it can pick out general patterns and trends to determine what products are suitable for particular skin types.

“After trying numerous products and investing, nothing really worked for me,” admits Zhao. “Eventually what worked for me were customized products that were made for me by a few different facialists. So that’s how the optimize idea of tailoring products to exactly someone’s situation, someone’s skin, first came to my mind numerous years ago.”

And so Proven was born.

Now that the algorithm has large quantities of data in its clutches, the engine can be let loose on the public.

It works by encouraging people to take a skincare routine quiz that culminates in a categorization of what skin type you have before offering a selection of Proven’s custom skincare products (which are mixed on-site by a chemist).

Quiz-takers can then opt-in to Proven’s bundle of personalized goodies that costs $120 every two months.

Though the AI machine still needs input from each individual, like what products they can’t live without, whether they have an oily T-Zone, and skin allergies, it then uses the mammoth amounts of data is has sifted through to provide a customized solution.

Zhao and Yuan’s main idea was to tap into the power of deep learning algorithms to pick out useful, relevant information from millions of testimonials online and turn the overwhelming amounts of data into a formula to predict skincare routines that actually work – no miracles involved here, just cold, hard data and facts.

Why Use AI in Skincare?

“Why is the skincare industry not in great shape right now? Because everything is the same,” says Sue Y Nabi, founder of new skincare brand Orveda. “I’m fed up with ‘miracles’ and I don’t believe in focus groups – they’re good for telling you you’re not making mistakes, but they don’t give you the recipe for success.”

This is where AI swoops in and metaphorically saves the day (or saves the face of the whole industry – get it?).

While focus groups can’t provide a recipe or a formula for success, AI can. Or, at least, it has the capabilities to.

The traditional skincare model of business rests on focus groups, consumer research, and celebrity endorsements which, although are powerful in “speaking” to people who want to look good, don’t provide personalized information for each individual.

And, let’s face it, everyone is unique. No two people have the same skin, so it’s impossible to promote a product that is a one-size-fits-all. New startups like Proven are on a mission to disrupt these attitudes and outdated ways of researching and advertising in the skincare world.

What Proven Means for the Future of the Skincare Industry

Instead of helping women buy into the “dream” of miracle cures and skin that looks ten years younger, the co-founders of Proven are on a mission to bring a rational, logic-based approach to the skincare industry; an approach that systematically and sensibly figures out what ingredients are most appropriate for each individual.

But the main question that keeps cropping up around AI-generated beauty routines is whether the data scraped together can actually lead to useful machine-based decisions.

Again, the skincare industry is incredibly subjective and, while reviews might be a good way to determine if a product is for you on an individual level, large amounts of it might generate conflicting viewpoints.

So far, Proven has definitely had a good go at disrupting the current (and potentially archaic) narratives of the skincare world, where emphasis is placed on miracles and fancy buzzwords are used to exacerbate peoples’ need to look good.

Using the latest technology seems like a good way to bring those archaic notions into the present day, but is something like AI a useful tool for something as personal and as individual as skin?

As of yet, that remains unproven.

You’ll Never Want to Stop Traveling After Learning About This Startup

**This is part of our series highlighting startups who share our mission of trying to make people’s lives just a little easier**

It’s the post-holiday season and a lot of us are probably still slogging back to work and struggling to return to a regular day-to-day schedule.  Many of us have been traveling to see family, to escape the weather, or to take advantage of accrued holiday hours to spend a few days near the beach.

I bet some of you are wishing you could go BACK to that wonderful, far-away place, but I bet most of you are glad you don’t have to endure those long airport lines, gas station bathroom stops, or that awkward moment when security pulls you aside and has to check your socks (true story).

Because the truth of the matter is that within the travel industry, there is a lot of room for improvements. And even more specifically, there is a lot of room for enhanced customer experience within the hotel industry.

This is where Arrivedo comes in—a startup that is revolutionizing the way people travel and experience hotels. If you’ve ever had an unpleasant experience while traveling because of stress, boredom, or lack of information, then you’ll want to check this company out.

See it’s hard enough having to get up at 4 AM and drive all the way to your destination, so when you have to deal with strange beds, new faces, and that cracked wheel on your suitcase making a horrendous noise across the pavement….you end up wishing you had just stayed home in your PJ’s with your cat.

Why Arrivedo? Because a better hotel experience can transform the way you travel.

Approximately 35% of American families had plans to take a trip during 2017, with 30% of those families saying they planned on taking three or more trips. That’s a lot of people stopping in completely unfamiliar towns and sleeping in hotels with unfamiliar faces—which, in the end, makes for a lot of moments of travel discomfort.

Imagine the difference between staying at a hotel in a city where you’re pretty sure the only breakfast restaurant is McDonald’s, versus staying at your best friend’s house where she recommends her top five favorite coffee shops that you can visit for a fresh cinnamon roll and locally roasted coffee.

See the difference? One option involves frustrated Google searches on your phone while the other involves a moment of pure bliss as you take a bite of warm and cinnamon-y bread. It’s the difference between being a stranger and feeling like a “local” that really makes or breaks your travel experience.

This is the current problem for the hotel industry: making guests feel at home when, in reality, they’re far away from home.

It’s a problem that hotels are forever trying to remedy, and a competition that hotels have recently been losing with the rise of popularity in the Airbnb business.

Airbnb boasts a “local experience” because instead of a corporate building with busy employees, you’re staying in the home of a city local who can give you a personal tour of the area.

Hotels have been taking a big hit as more and more travelers are opting for an Airbnb instead in order to get that personalized, “at home” experience. A study conducted in 2015 showed that the lodging industry of New York had a negative impact of $2.1 billion because of the impact of Airbnb, and further showed $450 million of loss in direct revenues for hotels due to Airbnb annually.

But since the rise of Airbnb, Arrivedo has been launching an attack to better the name of the hotel industry and improve the way that travelers search, book, and enjoy their stay.

Get to Know Arrivedo

Arrivedo is a technological startup company with the goal of producing one “Neighborhood Guide” per hotel in the world. It was dreamed up by one of its co-founders, Alonso Franco, who wanted to create a way for hotels to connect with travelers in a way that focused on the communication and hospitality of a local. The company is composed of a dozen entrepreneurs who combine their strengths and skills to tackle the problems that are confronting the hotel industry. Their website serves as a platform to connect travelers to hotels—no matter where the traveler’s destination is.

Not only can you connect with hotels, but you can access a mine of information about the area you’re visiting. A hotel’s Neighborhood Guide can set you up for endless hours spent roaming the city or venturing into lesser-known spots. You get all the experiences of a local, all in one place.

The Neighborhood Guide

So what’s a Neighborhood Guide, and what role does it play in Arrivedo’s mission?

For every hotel in the world, Arrivedo plans on crafting a local guide that highlights restaurants, activities, maps, helpful tips, and city events within the hotel’s area—a “neighborhood” guide, because it enables travelers to get to know the neighborhood where they are staying. It gives visitors vital information that they would normally get if they were, say, staying at their grandma’s.

Where does this local knowledge come from?

Arrivedo’s team of writers collaborates with each hotel to include the best local events and information for a Neighborhood Guide.

In essence, travelers get to experience local cultures and have that “at home” vibe even when they are away. No longer do they have to feel like strangers at a hotel surrounded by unknown people and places, but instead, they can form meaningful connections as they travel.

Travel Like a Local

So maybe you’re taking a trip to Los Angeles, California and you don’t have any friends or family staying there but still want to get that “local” experience. Sometimes it’s hard to walk into establishments and get that information because it’s not always easy to immediately connect with strangers and, even then, sometimes you get the wrong directions or important details are miscommunicated.

Arrivedo presents a solution to that problem in the way that their Neighborhood Guides are made available so that travelers can be connected to their hotels and set up from the start for successfully living like a local. You can access clearly-written maps, extensive lists of the top places to grab coffee or a slice of pizza, find recommendations for the best night-life spots, and be in-the-know for important local celebrations or events.

How it Works

1. If you know your destination, go to Arrivedo’s website and type the name of the city into the search bar. This will pull up results for different hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, and hostels in the area.

2. Click on a hotel and check out its Neighborhood Guide. It will list places to visit and things to do that are nearby, as well as offer helpful tips about traveling within the city.

3. If you’re ready to book a room, all you have to do is click on the hotel name! You’ll be taken to a different page specifically for booking.

Arrivedo is a platform for all the information you need to transform your travels.

The desire of Arrivedo’s creators is to bridge the gap between “traveler” and “local,” and provide a unique platform to revolutionize the way we travel.

This is a startup company that we’ll want to keep an eye on over the next few years. With their team of writers reaching out to hotels across the world, perhaps soon our unpleasant travel experiences will be nothing more than faded memories.

And I bet that even though the holidays just ended, some of you are already itching to plan a weekend getaway, leave your cat, and explore a new place with the help of a Neighborhood Guide.