Welcu Rescues Event Pros from Planning Hell, Attracts 80+ Top Brands in Private Beta

WHAT: Complete self-service solution for event planners. Manage guests, design and track invitations and RSVPs with consistent branding, etc. Integrates with Eventbrite for ticket sales. Coming soon: networking capabilities so guests can connect with each other before, during and after the event.

Welcu [ @welcu ], originally from Santiago, Chile, is focused on invitation-only and corporate events.

LAUNCHERS: Nico Orellana, CEO [ @norellana, LinkedIn ]. Sebastian Gamboa, CTO. [ @sagmor, LinkedIn ].

INSPIRATION: "We've been geeks and event planners for the last four years putting on the biggest tech conference for entrepreneurs in LatAm and we've discovered that

Click to read more ...

Get Your Room on Airbnb, Use 500 Startups-Backed Vayable to See Sights with a Local

WHAT: Travelers can book tours with locals anywhere in the world for an "authentic" experience. Vayable [ @vayable ] allows locals to share their culture and make extra money. Focus is on San Francisco and New York.

LAUNCHER: Jamie Wong, CEO [ @jamiejwong, LinkedIn ].

INSPIRATION: "I have always been passionate about discovering new people and new places and sharing those stories," Jamie told LAUNCH via email. "After traveling to more than 30 countries and sharing local secrets in San Francisco and New York as an impromtu tour guide and journalist, I wanted to find a way to help people share their stories, but...

Click to read more ...

Tinfoil Security Will Keep (Most) Bad Guys from Hacking Your Site

WHAT: Security as a service: regularly crawls your website like a hacker, looking for the most common vulnerabilities, and reports if/how Tinfoil Security  [ @tinfoilsecurity ] gets in and how to fix the problem. Currently in alpha.

LAUNCHERS: Ainsley Braun, CEO [ @ainsleybraun, LinkedIn ]. Michael "Borski" Borohovski, CTO. [ @borski, LinkedIn ].

INSPIRATION: "We were working for government contractors doing software security, and started realizing that a lot of the websites we use every day are insecure," Ainsley told LAUNCH via email. "Whenever we alerted those sites to their vulnerabilities, they would immediately fix them and...

Click to read more ...

Like Mama Used to Make: Immigrant Women Teach Their Cuisines at Culture Kitchen SF

WHAT: Immigrant women, skilled in cooking authentic ethnic cuisines, teach in-person cooking classes that include the story behind their cuisine. Culture Kitchen SF [ @culturekitchsf ] has classes on Nicaraguan, Colombian, Mexican, Ukranian, Thai and Vietnamese food. In beta with launch planned for fall 2011.

LAUNCHERS: Jennifer Lopez, CEO [ LinkedIn ]. Abby Sturges, COO [ LinkedIn ]

INSPIRATION: "We wanted to give people access to the best ethnic meals knowing...

Click to read more ...

Facebook (Again) Wants to Stop Data Exporting -- This Time via Google Chrome Extension

Facebook started removing users' emails from profiles July 5th to prevent users from exporting data, but some are still able to capture friends' email addresses using the Facebook Friend Exporter Google Chrome extension (see screen shots below).

The export process, which can take hours so as not to tip off Facebook to the activity, is set up so you can easily have all your friends in a Google+ "import" circle and invite them -- exactly what developer Mohamed Mansour told LAUNCH he set out to do when he created the open-source extension [ he's accepting patches on GitHub here ].

"The only way Facebook can shut down the app is by removing emails of friends," Mohamed wrote in an email. "And that is what they did, they throttled the display of emails."

The extension has nearly 55K users and...

Click to read more ...