As the air conditioning kicks in at Colorado’s coolest tech offices and tech company t-shirts start showing up on your morning commute, it’s hard not to get excited for summer.
Maybe you’ve got a big trip coming up, or maybe you’re mostly kicking it in the city. Either way, you’ll definitely want to make sure you spend your weekends getting out and doing stuff. Here are some great apps that will help you make the most of them.
Utivity is an online marketplace that connects vetted professionals directly to their customers. Always wanted to learn guitar or perfect your downward dog? Designed to cut the middleman out of the deal, the platform brings affordability to things like personal trainers, language teachers and photographers. If you want to cross some weird stuff off of your bucket list, this is the place to find someone who'll teach you how.
Summer is all about vacation, and hotels aren't king anymore. It's all about vacation rentals, and Evolve Vacation Rental Network makes sure you have the best experience while you travel — with easy booking and awesome customer support. They have properties all over the world, so if you're a renter or have a property you want to rent out, Evolve will help you from start to finish.
Pana is an on-demand personal travel assistant that lives in your phone. You can message them while you’re traveling, and they’ll act like the concierge at a fancy hotel. You can, for example, tell Pana that you're hungry for Mexican food, and it will set you up with reservations. The coolest part of the service is that it is largely powered by machines, and you'll never know if you're talking to a computer or a human.
Have you ever been late to a big event because you couldn’t find parking? Yeah, us too. Parkifi is aiming to alleviate those parking nightmares not only for drivers, but also for the parking facility. The current way of managing occupancy in garages is to have an employee walk through and physically count the open spaces. But Parkifi is disrupting that by using sensor technology to determine the occupancy of each garage. The overall hope of Parkifi is to help garages determine pricing and save drivers time (and gas) when looking for parking.
Ever wish you had high quality, organic and healthy food without any of the hassle? Boulder-based Green Chef is here to make that wish a reality. They do all the hard work involved with cooking (measuring, chopping, etc.), and deliver every bit you need to your door. You then put it together and look like a world-class chef. When you're in the middle of a busy summer, this helps make healthy eating simple.
Dabble allows you to, well, dabble in new things. Always thought you could get into photography? Or making pasta? Dabble is a marketplace for classes just like these, without the individual treatment or commitment of a package. Learn something new, shake up your routine and meet new people. Classes start as low as $20.
Alright, so this one only applies if you're engaged, but summer is the season of weddings. If you're one of those brides-to-be who isn't so into the high prices of wedding dresses, this Techstars grad is here to help you out. Borrowing Magnolia is bringing the sharing economy to one of the most notoriously overpriced industries. Through their website, a modern bride can find the designer wedding dress of her dreams and rent it for a fraction of the price of buying it.
Images via featured companies.
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