Both mobile warriors and casual travellers are all too familiar with the difficulty and expense that can be associated with getting an internet connection while travelling. A couple of years ago we covered RovAir's day-pass wireless mobile broadband service, and last month Finnish Zonga launched a like-minded alternative.

Zonga's mobile wifi rental service uses a 3G wifi modem that's compatible with any wifi-enabled device. There's no need to install anything, and the battery-powered device allows up to 5 simultaneous connections to the mobile broadband data network. Pricing is EUR 9 per day including unlimited data and all costs. Zonga's “All You Can Internet” service is currently available only in Helsinki, with pick-up and drop-off locations at the airport and downtown hotels.

Zonga aims to expand to other international airports over the course of next year, according to a report in Arctic Startup; one to partner with toward that end?

Website: www.zonga.fi
Contact: www.zonga.fi/contact

Spotted by: John Greene

The internet may have already brought new transparency, accountability and ease to myriad aspects of consumers' lives, but auto repair is not typically among them. Aiming to provide an alternative to the time-consuming process of driving from shop to shop collecting estimates, DentBetty is an online system that lets users upload photos of the damage to their car and receive competing bids from local repair shops in return.

Structural damage typically requires a physical inspection for a realistic estimate, DentBetty notes; for that reason, it focuses on dings, dents, scrapes and scratches instead. Users begin on the free system, which is currently in beta, by simply entering their ZIP code and uploading at least two photos of the damage to their car. Local auto body shops can then examine the photos and come up with bids for getting the repair done. Whenever a shop makes an estimate, DentBetty notifies the user by email; all estimates received so far (up to the maximum of seven) are presented together on a personal DentBetty page. The DentBetty Quality Scoreboard, meanwhile, keeps a running record of consumer feedback and other information about the various vendors involved to help consumers evaluate their reliability. When the consumer selects a bid, he or she then contacts the shop directly to schedule an appointment.

There are currently more than 100 shops nationwide in the DentBetty Network, each prescreened against DentBetty’s rigorous standards. Such members get notified every time a new consumer within driving distance requests an estimate. Since some repairs are difficult to estimate by photo alone, shops can indicate a level of confidence along with their bid. DentBetty's staff also prescreens every photo to make certain that it's from a legitimate consumer—“not just some teenager having fun with his camera.”

Of the USD 36 billion spent each year in the US on collision repair, some USD 3 to 5 billion takes the form of out-of-pocket expenditures for cosmetic damage. One to partner with or emulate in other parts of the world? (Related: Home-repair bidding site prescreens contractors — Premium tire chain focuses on transparency.)

Website: www.dentbetty.com
Contact: thebetty@dentbetty.com

Helping consumers around the world locate everything from mislaid car keys to runaway pets, Finnish startup FinderBase is a global social search engine for lost or found belongings, powered by its member community.

Built on a Google Maps foundation, Finderbase lets users post a listing for an item they have lost or found and geo-tag it to a specific location. Listings include the date an item was lost or found, a description and a photograph if available. Listings for lost items can also include a reward for the finder. The site uses a credits system to reward object finders and manage payments from object seekers. Finders can post found object listings for free and receive 5 FinderBase credits for every found item. Seekers pay 1 euro (20 credits) to place a lost item listing. Upon registering, all new users are given 20 credits, making their first lost item listing free.

Launched into public beta in May, Finderbase has already attracted hundreds of listings worldwide. It's big challenge, of course, is to become the destination for anyone in search of an object or its owner. (Related: Worldwide bicycle registration scheme — Lost & found in the 21st century.)

Website: www.finderbase.com
Contact: info@finderbase.com

Spotted by: John Greene

Cash may be increasingly rare as a method of payment in most transactions, but tipping remains one of those areas where it's still often the standard. Therein lies a problem for international travellers, who must juggle multiple currencies; Where's My Tip, however, aims to offer a solution.

Wait staff and bartenders should always be tipped directly on the bill, Where's My Tip stresses. Rather, it's focusing its cashless alternative on travellers who need to tip doormen, bellhops, housekeepers, valets and concierges. How it works? Users begin by paying an annual USD 100 membership fee, which entitles them to 100 free tip cards—additional ones are 50 cents each. Then, when they travel, they can hand out those cards instead of cash. Each card features a unique member ID number, which can be used by the recipient to request a tip online; there, they enter their name and Paypal email address as well as a suggested tip amount. Once that happens, Where's My Tip emails the tip request to the member, who can pay the requested (or other) amount with a credit card or Paypal account. Where's My Tip then forwards the funds to the person who requested the tip. All tips and tip requests are reviewed, routed and processed by hand to keep unwarranted tip requests to a minimum; at the same time, all members must maintain an extremely high ratio of tips paid to tips requested to ensure they don't hand out cards as a way to avoid paying a tip. Membership in Florida-based Where’s My Tip is currently by invitation only.

Paypal may not be many service-givers' first preference as a form of payment, but Where's My Tip says it's working on alternatives. At the same time, there's no denying the appeal of cashless tipping, particularly for international travellers short on local currency and unfamiliar with regional tipping norms. How about creating a brandable version that hotels can give guests for in-house or local tipping, with payments simply added to the final tab...?

Website: www.wheresmytip.com
Contact: pr@wheresmytip.com

Spotted by: Peter Yu

In the United States, more than 40 cents of every dollar patients spend on health care goes toward insurance billing and overhead. That means clinicians must see more patients each day just to make ends meet, resulting in longer wait times, shorter appointments and higher costs. Aiming to apply some fresh thinking to an area that sorely needs it, Qliance has developed a new model for health care that works like a health-club membership and excludes insurance from the process.

Qliance reminds us of Hello Health for the way it aims to make medical services friendlier and more accessible for everyone. With three clinics in the Seattle area, Qliance gives its members unrestricted access to its clinicians and services for a monthly fee of between USD 44 and USD 129. No long-term contract is required; rather, members simply pay a registration fee of USD 99 and choose from two types of service plans—one with remote hospital coordination, or one with bedside hospital coordination by Qliance clinicians. Services include checkups, vaccinations, pneumonia, minor fractures, routine women’s health exams, and ongoing care for chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension or obesity—the primary and preventive care, in other words, that accounts for 90 percent of the medical issues that drive people to the doctor, according to Qliance. For more serious problems, Qliance recommends that patients have wrap-around insurance plans; the company's providers also coordinate any necessary outside specialist or hospital care for their patients. The overall result? Shorter wait times, longer appointments (an hour for physicals, for example) and savings of up to 50 percent for patients and employers alike over traditional insurance plans. Open seven days a week, Qliance also reinvests in its clinics, electronic medical records and patient services the 40 cents of each dollar that would have been lost to billing and overhead, it says.

Qliance has already received USD 13.5 million in funding, including investments from Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell, and it's aiming to expand outside Washington as early as next year. One to get in on early? (Related: Doctor 2.0 uses IM & sticks to house calls — A simpler way to make a doctor's appointment.)

Website: www.qliance.com
Contact: info@qliance.com

Spotted by Susanna Haynie

Anyone who spends a lot of time online will have used a file sharing service to send large files to friends or colleagues, or maybe even to download a music track or two. While functional (and free), those services aren't harbingers of style or user-friendliness, bombarding users with off-target banners and frequent prompts to upgrade to premium services. Which is why Dutch startup WeTransfer thinks there's money to be made by offering a more appealing alternative.

WeTransfer's feature list isn't unusual: it's free and allows users to send big files (up to 2 GB) without registering. Files are available for two weeks, and can be transferred to up to twenty people. The main difference with other online file transfer services is WeTransfer's approach to design and sponsorship. Like its competitors, the company relies on advertising for revenues. But instead of running questionable banner ads, WeTransfer sells wallpaper advertising—those pretty pictures in the background. Since WeTransfer's own interface is minimal, that leaves a lot of space for a sponsor's brand. (The screenshot above shows a wallpaper for Blyk, the mobile network operator we've written about in the past.) In addition to buying wallpaper space on WeTransfer's main site, companies can also sponsor their own channels—Blyk, for example, can send its audience to blyk.wetransfer.com.

No stranger to this flavour of online advertising, one of WeTransfer's founders is lifestyle and music blogger Nalden, whose design-heavy nalden.net has sold wallpaper space to brands like Nike, Vodafone and Apple. The lesson here? Take an existing service, make it more enticing for consumers and, with a little coaxing, brands will follow. Oh, and don't forget the free love!

Website: www.wetransfer.com
Contact: advertising@wetransfer.com