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BOALT’s submission to the the Apps for Democracy innovation contest, DCHistoricTours.com, will launch this week as planned.  Please help us win People’s Choice Award by voting for us here.

The contest is being held by the District of Columbia’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) which is responsible for D.C.’s technology infrastructure and Peter Corbett of IStrategyLabs.  The contest just kicked off last month and has already received tremendous buzz amongst technology enthusiasts.

With over 19 million visitors each year to our nation’s capital, DCHistoricTours.com is destined to become a successful planning resource for the city’s tourists.  In addition, the timing of the website’s launch couldn’t have been any better with the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.

DCHistoricTours.com is integrated in real-time with D.C.’s data catalog, which provides real-time data from multiple agencies to citizens – a catalyst ensuring agencies operate as more responsive, better performing organizations.  The website which is comprised of user generated content allows users to create, view and vote on tours.  It is integrated with Yahoo’s Flickr photos, Yelp restaurant reviews and Wikipedia facts.

For the past couple of weeks since we decided to submit an application to the Apps for Democracy Innovation Contest we’ve been hard at work. After many sleepless nights, triple caramel macchiatos (or was that a quad) and more QA testing, our app is almost here.  I’ve been getting several emails from industry colleagues asking me how things are coming along and I decided to post a screenshot this glorious morning. The tempature is supposed to reach 70 today in D.C. and it’s the middle of November.  Wow, who would have known, I would moved up here a long time ago.  You’ll all be able to play with the app early next week, until then – sayonara.

The Wall Street Journal wrote an article about us in today’s paper and online edition.  Charles Passy the reporter who wrote the article put the top 4 passport expediters to the test and placed anonymous orders on their websites the week prior.  The results, we returned his passport in 24 hours where as the rest took approximately 3-4 days.  In addition, he praised us for our customer service in the article.

I received a phone call from Charles earlier this week and in interview we spoke about several things but in the end it came down to the fact that we had superior online technology which allowed for his passport to be expedited in such a short time.

As I mentioned to Charles, he hasn’t seen anything yet. Our new system which is scheduled to release in 2009 will allow consumers to order their U.S. passports and travel visas to any country in the world with very little effort. Our system will be fully integrated with Fedex and Google Maps which allow consumers to know where their documents are in real-time.   In addition, our new system will work with GPS enabled mobile phones to assist customers in locating the nearest passport acceptance facility where they can get their documents sealed.

For more information RushMyPassport.com or to order an expedited passport, please visit: www.rushmypassport.com.

We’ve finally decided on the application we will be submitting to the Apps for Democracy innovation contest.  After juggling around some different ideas, we were torn between the idea of building an application targeted towards businesses or consumers.  We felt that the application would get more use from consumers so we decided to build a D.C. Historic Tours application.

D.C. Historic Tours will allow for consumers to select from a variety of historical options provided by the D.C. Data Catalog including historic streets, structures, landmarks and sites.  After selecting the destinations that they would like to visit, the application will plot and route the most efficient walking or driving tour.  In addition to integrating with the D.C. Data Catalog, the application will utilize Flickr to provide images of the historic sites as well as restaurants and reviews along their route from Yelp.

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This summer we celebrated our 1st year anniversary for RushMyPassport.com.  RushMyPassport.com was BOALT’s first startup and we are extremely excited with the year-end financials.  We set, what I thought, was a pretty ambitious sales goal of $5 mil in our first year and we reached it with a few days left in the fiscal year.

After being featured on the home page of Forbes, MSNBC and CNN as “the passport pros”, we’ve quickly become a disrupter in our industry.  In the past year, I’ve also been interviewed by two talk radio stations.

We’ve helped over 25k people in 1 year receive their passport in 24 hours and we work with over 400 of the Fortune 500 companies. 

Stay tuned, we have a lot in store for our 2nd fiscal year.