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The Students Behind whereUp

, by Davide Ripamonti
Three students from Bocconi and one student from Politecnico have launched a new smartphone web app, which can be used to find places with the best offers for happy hours, lunches and free time

Milan is a big city, full of opportunities for recreation and fun. It's generally also an expensive city, especially as you move towards the city center. For people from out of town, maybe coming to Milan as a student, it's hard to work out the various options, while watching prices.

Three students from Bocconi, Federico Blundo, Leopoldo Giandola (both in the second year of the Bachelor in Business Administration and Management) and Andrea Nasuto (second year of the Bachelor of International Economics, Management and Finance), and a student from Politecnico, Laerte Saliai (Telecommunications Engineering) are coming to the rescue. The students have created an ingenious web application for mobile phones, which can be accessed by cell phone or PC at the website www.where-up.com. From here, bars and restaurants with special offers can be found in particular areas of the city.

"Owners of places where people meet up, such as restaurants, bars, clubs and other kinds of places, can use a website to upload special offers that are valid for a certain period of time, during a certain time of day, for a certain number of people," explains Federico. "This is available with a wide range of choices for administrators. It gets published online immediately and can be viewed on a smartphone or PC through the app in a 10km radius from the location, taking advantage of geolocalization. Of course users need to make sure that the localization features on the mobile phone or PC are turned on."

Users can register for the app free of charge, and can also use their Facebook account to do so. Owners can also register without any fees, and can post any kind of offer they would like. "Off-campus students especially can take advantage of this application," the students explain, "because it allows them to have a wide range of offers. There's currently nothing like it on the market."

The service began as a proposal for the Bocconi comminity, but future developments are wider-ranging, and "opportunities to capitalize on it make the service more sophisticated. But we are still working on this aspect, because there is such a large variety of possibilities offered by the mobile applications sector," they say.

For now the students are enjoying initial positive feedback: "Lots of places in the area have decided to register after hearing our presentation," they say. "In the next few weeks our goal is to expand beyond the Bocconi and Navigli areas, focusing on Brera and Corso Como."

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