I really hope this incident doesn't break her spirit. As someone who's been shot at, beat up, robbed, held up, and still trusts people: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
That said, I also rent out my place through AirBnB. (http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/106355) I interview everyone who stays with me through Skype before confirming any reservation. AirBnB, has a very classy membership, and we've had great experiences with all our guests, but due diligence is still a must. Communicating with your potential guests is essential, as is reading between the lines. You should also make an effort to look at their face at least once before booking. Skype is perfect for this and AirBnB doesn't block it.
The core service behind this is the Amazon Mechanical Turk. We've been working with amazon for years (on this and other projects) and they've helped us create a solution that keeps the user anonymous and helps return quick results.
We'll have the android app out probably within the next couple of months. In the meantime we're working on a submit by email utility which should be ready much sooner.
Besides extracting the data from the recipt we also keep the image.
From beta testers this has been useful for expense reports which require evidence, as well as for returning items at stores.
Of course returns depend on the original vendor, but we've had beta testers return stuff at grocery stores, brick and mortar tech stores, and such.
Ultimately this is useful for submitting tax returns come April.
Yup, we extract the Venue, purchase total, and assignit a category, in about 3 minutes.
We're working on an android app, but before that we'll probably have a submit by email solution. Would that be enough for you if it were available?
These are great observations. I visited your website, and you have a pretty cool, trajectory. I'm gonna shoot you an email, I'd like to pick your brain a little more.
Hi everyone I'm Pablo Tirado, the bald guy on the right with the glass of bourbon.
First of all I'd like to thank everyone who has voted for the story, and particularly to the commenters, which we'll be responding to individually; because we really want more feedback.
Second I'd like to give some background on what this is.
Last weekend we spitballed a list of 37 ideas which we thought could be made into something. Some were brand new, some we'd worked on for some time but most were harebrained.
This list of 5 are the survivors of our own elimination process. We made this landing page to send to friends in the industry whose opinion we trust.
Giovanni (flexterra) decided to post it on Hacker News to see what the community thought and here we are.
We have other projects that are very close to launch (receiptsloader.com [if your purchase receipts are a mess, you want this]) and this 5 piece voting site, is to help us decide on what to concentrate our efforts on next.
Again, thanks to everyone for commenting and voting.
I agree, the related article adds a lot.
Having free users is only cool if you can both; afford it and have it add to your bottom line.
But I think the old-fashioned idea of receiving income for delivering value, should make a prompt comeback.