I’m not much of a hiker, but if I ever had the guts to walk on a trail, I might check out an app like TrailBehind first. It’s a crowd-sourced application on Facebook, aggregating the trails that others have already mapped and experienced. A fbFund competitor, TrailBehind lets you learn from the hiking of others.

This application also features wiki-like map options, that let you add your own learned information to a map someone else has already uploaded. You can also upload geo-data, which is pretty handy when it comes to hiking trails (especially for novices like myself).
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Faith Feed, one of the Facebook applications competing in the current fbFund round, does exactly what its name implies. A status updating tool geared towards Christians, Faith Feed is quite similar to Twitter though it resides in Facebook and enables you to communicate directly with your friends. Similar to Twitter, you can post “what you’re doing” on your spiritual journey. You can also follow friends, reply to their status updates, and see what’s going on with the entire Faith Feed community.
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Bottle Rocket is a Facebook application currently competing for the fbFund $1 million prize. It is a wine-rating application aiming to provide you with the information you need in order to select a wine that’s right for you. Based on your continued participation, the BottleRocket application will recommend wine that fits your pallet.
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RealGifts is a fun application that bridges the gap between virtual gifting and real world gifting. A competitor in the current fbFund round, RealGifts lets you send tangible presents to your friends, which are delivered in the mail. The good thing about using such a gifting program through Facebook is that you can send and receive gifts without knowing or revealing your physical address–Facebook already knows this information.
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LuckyCal is the business traveler’s guide to getting lucky. You know, for landing sales deals and stuff. At least that’s what it was designed to do. For those business travelers that need to make a trip to a far away city, what better use of time than to find others in the area that may be available for a meeting as well? More meetings, more sales, and more savings for which your manager can take the credit.

LuckyCal is the tool that lets you keep track of the proximity of your colleagues and friends. Similar to Dopplr and TripIt, you can share your travel plans with others so that you can schedule a time to meet up with those that are in the same town as you–at the same time. LuckyCal works by syncing with your Google calendar, iCal and Outlook, so that there’s little manual work you need to do within LuckyCal, outside of adding contacts.
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Even though lower gas prices may give your wallet a little more wiggle room, there’s still an outstanding need to pinch a few pennies here and there! With all the price comparison tools on the web, there’s certainly plenty of help available, but what about when you’re actually at the store? Pongr is one of the finalists in round 1 of the fbFund competition, and it lets you do your price comparisons while you’re out shopping. How? With bar codes.

I know what you’re thinking. Aren’t there existing apps that take photos of bar codes in order to give you more information on a product? There are, and they’ve been slower to adopt in the US versus countries like Japan, due to the lack of standardized and inclusively distributed software on mobile phones. But Pongr gets around such constrictions by offering a number of options for submitting information about a product. Instead of taking a photo of the bar code, you can provide the UPC number and send it to Pongr via text message or email.
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Everyone likes a free drink. But if you have to pay for a drink (especially pay for someone else’s drink), nothing beats the rock bottom price of $1.00. fbFund competitor BarTab has taken a popular gifting strategy and set a single, low price for drinks purchased through its application.

The drinks can hen be sent to friends, and they can redeem them at a local bar. In order for a friend to redeem a drink, they must provide their cell phone number in order to have their redemption coupon sent to their mobile device which can be shown to the bar tender.So far, BarTab is restricted to a handful of bars in Arizona, but the development team is currently working on expansion.
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I don’t know many high school students other than those in my immediate family, but the high school students I do know are often able to get a good idea about what college life is all about based on the photos shared by their college-age friends on Facebook.  But if this isn’t enough, the CheckMyCampus application could shed some light on what really goes down during those formidable college years.  A finalist in the fbFund competitive round, CheckMyCampus offers a media “viewing station” to provide first hand accounts of how awesome college life is across the nation. Facebook users can upload videos and images to show their own perspective of college life.  The ultimate goal of CheckMyCampus is to give high school students a realistic portrayal of life on a college campus.
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It’s true, Facebook makes it pretty easy to connect with friends online.  But what happens after you’ve mutually agreed to be friends with someone? The Facebook news feed does a good amount to inform you as to what’s going on with those in your friends list.  But beyond the Birthday reminders, there’s not a whole lot that Facebook does to help you manage your online relationships.  If you feel like your friends are falling through the cracks and you just can’t keep up with all the things you need to do for relationship maintenance, Socialfly is here to help.
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In our continuing coverage of the fbFund second round participants, we’re taking a look at the Social Arcade application. Developed by Rick Vanner and Dave Milton of The Game Creators LTD, the application contains a library of simple games that you can play as well as “gift” to other friends. I went ahead and tested out a few of the games which reminded me of the days of playing the simple TI-82 games back in middle and high school.

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