What’s the best SXSW app? So far, for me, it’s LocalMind

March 12, 2011 By

I’ve seen a TON of different location-based apps in the past two weeks. But today I was introduced to one that actually is useful AT SXSW: LocalMind. What does it do? It lets you ask questions of people who are around town. “Are they still serving free beer?” you might ask, for instance. Back comes an answer.

Here founder Lenny Rachitsky showing it to me in the hallway.

What caught my eye about this? It’s like Quora and Foursquare got together and had a baby.

It shows you people who have checked in with Foursquare and have LocalMind open near you, in the past few minutes, and then you can ask them questions. Right now I’m using it and there’s dozens of different venues with people checked in right now at them. I can ask them questions, like, “how long is the line for the Mashable party?” and get an answer back right away.

After SXSW I can see asking things like “who is playing at the Ritz bar tonight?” or “how crowded is it at the Metreon?”

They have a web version, although the iPhone version is nicer.

Do you have a hot app at SXSW? Text me at +1-425-205-1921

Filed Under: Web
  • http://www.adelemcalear.com adelemcalear

    Typo in the post - “It shows you people who have checked in with Foursquare and have LiveMind open near you, …” Should be LocalMind.

  • http://robertscobleizer.com Scobleizer

    Thanks for the catch, didn’t get much sleep last night.

  • http://www.djcube.co.uk Cube1701

    Are there any plans for an Android version?

  • http://www.instigatorblog.com Benjamin Yoskovitz

    Yes there are. It’s definitely something the Localmind team wants to do ASAP.

  • http://twitter.com/DaniyalK Daniyal Khatri

    This could be great tool for emergency services as well.

  • Anonymous

    Sounds like a great place to troll.

  • Anonymous

    I know it’s a question that warrants some wise remarks, but any chance you’ll be rolling something out for Blackberry?

  • http://twitter.com/iconic88 iconic88

    Sounds like a great app Robert! Kudos to localmind.com ;)

    By the way mate, what camera did you use for this recording? Looks great!

  • http://www.advancedwebads.com/sc/164 Randy Addison

    Well it seems like it will be a great app really. I think this app will be useful for people who travels every now and then so they will be able to ask people about their destinations.

  • http://andre.io/ Andre Garrigo

    Has Hipster launched yet? It’s my understanding that they are looking to fill a similar niche.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=535011104 Jonathan Levitt

    Nice guys! Glad to see LocalMind getting some @scobleizer love!

  • http://twitter.com/markhachman Mark Hachman

    Sounds a bit like Ask.com’s new app.

  • http://twitter.com/fantasticmv Manish

    check out streamzoo - see #sxsw like you have never before http://streamzoo.com/stream/sxsw/all

  • http://brmore.posterous.com/ brmore

    If this app can get just a little bit of traction it’s going to crush it … uses other people’s location services as a feature of their app (a feature that could pretty easily be replaced if required, I might add). As Robert says, only one of a handful of interesting uses for location seen/discovered to date.

    The founder comports himself well also … predict good things.

  • http://twitter.com/krisrak Rakshith

    agreed, one of the best use of location based services, right now it does not have many users using it, it was great at sxsw since there were all early adopters (although there were some trollish answers), challenge is to get all foursquare or gowalla or facebook places users to sign up for it. To be honest this app has more potential than foursquare or other check-in services, wonder how this will play out if localmind starts getting successful

  • http://robertscobleizer.com Scobleizer

    I use a Canon 5D MK II with a 17-40mm F4.0 Canon L Series Lens and a Rode Stereo Microphone.

  • Anonymous

    great tool….we can get to know many thing from this tool

  • Frank

    I must say that Skyfer and Hashable are the 2 social apps that I got impressed with at SXSW 11

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