Quattro’s mobilization services enable advertisers to create dynamic mobile landing pages and microsites that are optimized for all mobile

The Quattro Wireless mobile web network delivers a next-generation framework for easily and quickly launching adaptive, mobile-optimized web sites that pull content directly from a Publishers wired web source and are tightly integrated to a network of high-quality advertisers.
Quattro’s mobilization services enable advertisers to create dynamic mobile landing pages and microsites that are optimized for all mobile devices and browsers. Unlike other solutions in the marketplace that only offer a “templated” approach, Quattro ad pages and sites are fully customized to reflect the advertisers’ brand and unique campaign initiatives.
More at:http://www.quattrowireless.com/

Meeting Tomorrow offers business customers easy access to audio visual equipment. Hotels often charge extortionate prices for renting a equipment

Meeting Tomorrow offers business customers easy access to audio visual equipment. Hotels often charge extortionate prices for renting a projector or display screen, and other meeting venues don't always have the equipment needed for a presentation.

On Meeting Tomorrow, you choose the equipment you need, order it online or by phone, and the equipment is delivered to your home, office, hotel or meeting location on time. Advance orders are delivered the day before the meeting, and same day orders are welcome. (Meeting Tomorrow offers same day delivery to 95% of the US, and next day service to the rest of the country.)

The beauty of the concept is how simple it is for customers, who can rely on the equipment arriving on time and don’t have to go out of their way to pick up or return a projector. For returns, Meeting Tomorrow takes a cue from Netflix: pre-paid adhesive FedEx return labels are included with projectors and laptops.

More at:http://www.meetingtomorrow.com/

If you play the stock market daily or at least regularly, this site could be a good source of user-generated content for stock information

WallStPoP is a Web2.0 style website. The stock market news and blog articles are constantly updated via RSS. People read that news and Pop what they like best. If that news rock and receive enough Pops, it is promoted to the Front Page for the millions of visitors to see.

WallStPoP is all about stock market news and blog articles. The site highlights those blogs and articles voted the most popular by the readers, and encourges reader input and contributions. If you play the stock market daily or at least regularly, this site could be a good source of user-generated content for stock information. The site borders on overwhelming the reader with too much information in its sign design and layout. In this new consumer revolution on the web, this is yet another attempt to inform and educate the little guys.
More at:http://www.wallstpop.com/

Rated Tradesmen will help them find a reliable tradesman in UK

Seven out of ten people in the UK say they have been unhappy with the work performed by tradesmen on their homes. This site aims to change that statistic by offering an online service that matches UK tradesmen with customer-submitted jobs. Whether a homeowner in the UK needs a plumber, builder, gardner or carpenter, Rated Tradesmen will help them find a reliable tradesman. They submit a job, get quotes, hire one and then rate them. Simple. They rightly brag about having a 94% average customer rating. They also offer advice for homeowners, post recent ratings and experiences of customers, and rate suppliers as well. If this site doesn't exist in every city in the US, it should.


We're making home improvement better for everyone. There are thousands of honest, reliable tradesmen in the UK. But others aren't so good. How do you find one of the best?

A recommendation from a friend is great when it works. But Rated Tradesmen is even better?we have a massive network of carefully selected tradesmen who get 'rated' by their customers on every single job they complete.
More at:http://www.ratedtradesmen.com/

iQzone is a mobile classifieds service that lets you easily place ads in as easy as snap, send, and sell

iqzone allows anyone with a camera phone to take a photo or video clip of anything to post a classified ad in less than 60 seconds. Sellers can broadcast their mobile ad to a universe of free online classifieds, paid sites and print publications. Buyers can connect with sellers in real-time by setting mobile alerts for items or services they are interested in. They can also search for items using their mobile phone or the web.”

iQzone is a mobile classifieds service that lets you easily place ads in as easy as snap, send, and sell. You can create a classified ads from your mobile phone, take a picture of the item you would like to sell from your mobile or upload one, type in a blurb and selling price and send it into iQzone. Your ad will be displayed all over RSS feeds such as Yahoo! AOL, Google, and Windows Live. You ad will be disributed so that people will recieve updates quicker and they will find exactly what they are looking for in a more efficient manner. Now that people are going bonkers over Facebooks latest decision to allow third party application to be added to member profiles iQzone has taken advantage of this opportunity as well. You can add this featurer to your Facebook account, making it even easier for you and the buyer to connect in a whole new way. iQzone also enables you to share your own ads and even the ads of others, and functions as a mean to cut down time you spend creating and distributing ads to multiple locations and a wide audience.
More at:http://iqzone.com/

P-2-P (peer-to-peer) search engine which believes that searching really ought to be decentralized

Faroo is the p-2-p (peer-to-peer) search engine which believes that searching really ought to be decentralized. Internet architecture itself is decentralized, I personally like to think the WWW stands for Wild, Wild, West. Faroo scours the frontier based on what you, the searcher, thinks is relevant, with out any central institution gun slingin.’ Nothing stands in the way of the information you want and the searcher, because all pages are ranking based on user ranking. In the same manner, those who provide the content are to be sure their content will be found, since all Faroo search results are current, comprehensive and efficient.


“The collection of the whole, exponentially growing Web on a single central system is not successful on the long run. Despite constantly increasing investments in hardware the completeness and freshness of the search index will steadily decrease.
With the concept of a distributed peer-to-peer search engine the same users, who provide the content of the internet assure also, that it is findable too. Thus the search results may be provided more up-to-date, more comprehensive and more cost-efficient.
The searcher becomes a part of FAROO. The architecture is decentralized like the Internet itself. There stands no more central institution between the information source and the searcher.
With the tremendous growth of information the relevance of search results becomes more important. This is assured by an fully automatic ranking of web page content by the users of the peer-to-peer search engine.”
More at:http://www.faroo.com/

A1 Webmarks, stands for Anywhere 1 click away, and is a personal bookmarking site with additional social attributes

A1 Webmarks, (which musn't be confused with the steak sauce) stands for Anywhere 1 click away, and is a personal bookmarking site with additional social attributes. It allows users to categorize and tag personal webmarks for assignation to a topic; most used webmarks, or favorites, can be accessed instantaneously, and all webmarks are alphabetized and checked periodically so that you'll know which ones are no longer accessible. The social aspect of A1 comes in the form of recommendations; based on usage info of all A1 webmarkers, the site will point you in the direction of other sites you may enjoy. A1 also allows its users to see the most popular tags and the corresponding webmarks. There are lists of the most popular webmarks on a specific topic and users can create new ones. to add to your Webmark you have three choices available to you: you can 1) click on the "My Webmarks" button and enter the url of the page you want marked, 2) you can also use the "add" link if you're on the site, or in your own webmarks, or finally you can choose option 3) and download the webmarks bookmarklet. The site requires that you sign up to use it, but overall, it's pretty useful and easy to navigate.

"A webmark marks a location on the web, just like a bookmark marks a location in a book. It's a web page, whose address you want to remember for some reason. Webmarks are often called bookmarks or favorites, especially when the webmark itself is stored offline on your PC."

More at:http://www.a1-webmarks.com/

Geocommons takes Google maps and allows users to graph and chart particular data sets according to geographical location

Geocommons takes Google maps and allows users to graph and chart particular data sets according to geographical location. For instance, if you're interested in knowing how many windmills are in Holland, or if you want an idea of bottled water consumption within the inland Northwest, Geocommons provides the means to create an intelligent map that suits your needs. The site has ready access to a repository of high quality geodata which any one can use with a few simple clicks of their mouse. Demographics, environmental attributes, political info,crime rate, unemployement-- all of this information is available for your use, and it's still expanding. If you're moving for instance, you can use Geocommons to find out about your neighborhood, it's crime rate, schools, traffic, and pollution. You can create your own data sets and export them to Google Earth's KML and you'll get your own smart, customized map. Or you can use Geocommon's workspace and search their data archive adding it to your map as you go. Data is supplied by Geocommon users, NGO's, goverments, and neo-geographers. Currently to create your own Geocommons map you'll needn't spend a cent, however the site will enable private data in the future for an additional cost.

"GeoCommons is a place to explore, create and share intelligent maps and geographic data."

"If you work with geographic information (or have tried to), you know how difficult it can be to find data and how much of a hassle it can be to make data you find usable. On GeoCommons, you have access to a huge repository of high-quality geodata that is ready to use with a few simple clicks. GeoCommons includes a wide range of data in areas such as, population, environment, recreation, schools, crime, employment, traffic, politics, shark attacks and whatever wacky or edifying information the community contributes."
more at:http://www.geocommons.com/

Poly9 Free Earth is a cross-browser, cross-platform 3-D map viewer that comes with tons of great features.

Poly9 Free Earth is a cross-browser, cross-platform 3-D map viewer that comes with tons of great features. They are currently working with applications Twittervision 3D, Flickrvision 3D, and UFO Maps to help create the best platform for you to view your 3-D maps. Features include GeoRSS feed, mapstraction compatibility, solar system planets and maps, embeddable videos, pushpins, mouse control, and the ability to zoom and tilt to get a more enhanced view of your world. The application size is 189k, and developers are permitted to include Poly9 Free Earth on their website since they have a Javascript API. You do need Flash Player 9 to view the maps.

“Poly9 FreeEarth is a cross-browser, cross-platform 3D globe which does not require any download1.
Developers can learn how to include FreeEarth on their own site by reading about the JavaScript API.”
More at:http://freeearth.poly9.com/

XuQa is an online reality game in which you must climb the social ladder to become the most popular and riches person in the XuQa network

XuQa is an online reality game in which you must climb the social ladder to become the most popular and riches person in the XuQa network. There are game different rooms to play the game and you can create your personal own and invite others to play along with you. Users are ranked according to popularity; the more popular you are, the higher you rank. In order to increase your rank you can play poker, become a Xuqalebrity, post in the forums, and challenge friends. To get to the top level, level ten, you need to socialize a lot, and earn a lot of peanuts. Peanuts are the XuQa currency. They can be used to activate premium services on the site. Each XuQa member has their own profile with 5GB of storage space for photos, etc. There's a Crushlist for you to write down your loves without anyone knowing. If your crush adds you to their list a match is made. Actions, such as tinkles, kisses and bitch slaps allow your friends and crushes to know how you feel. To join you've got to register.
"What is XuQa? An exciting network of friends where you socialize and compete to become the Richest and popular person in the game."
More at:http://www.xuqa.com/

Must Watch 7 Websites If You Want To Make Money

Stuart Smith Says: "These 7 Websites Will Earn Me...
300 Maybe 400 Thousand Dollars"
I've researched, reviewed, tested and retested hundreds of "make money" programs on the internet. Now I'm going to reveal to you right here and now my findings.

Only 7 sites passed my tests and they're listed on this page. I've discovered these sites to be completely scam free, guaranteed.

Hope you find this web page helpful, as I've spent months researching these sites to provide this service to the public.
More at:http://www.nerdgetsrich.com/
http://www.forexenterprise.com/

A Big Opportunity for IT Vendors

In March 2007, the New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc., a provider of global market intelligence and consultancy services said that small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India were expected to spend around US$8 billion in 2007 to improve their IT infrastructure. This represented a 24% growth over the amount spent in 2006. In the past, some of the issues that constrained most SMBs from investing in IT infrastructure were cost considerations, inability to afford technical experts, and lack of awareness of the value of IT.

Analysts noted that though controlling costs still remained a priority for SMBs, they had begun to realize the opportunities provided by IT. The growth of the Indian economy and revenues of SMBs was a factor that was expected to result in an increase in IT spending among SMBs.

According to AMI, 93% of small businesses (i.e. businesses with 1 to 99 employees) and 86% of medium businesses (i.e. businesses with 100 to 999 employees) showed an increase in revenues in 2006.

Moreover, in a business environment in which they had to compete with larger domestic and international competitors, SMBs were increasingly viewing their investment in IT as a competitive strategy. This presented the IT vendors with a huge opportunity as this market had traditionally been underserved by most vendors.

In March 2007, Intel India (Intel) announced that it had started an initiative across the country called as the “SMB Advantage Program”. Through this initiative Intel aimed to assist its channel partners to increase their business with SMBs. It had identified 160 channel partners (comprising System Integrators, Original Equipment Manufacturers and Retail Partners) from 15 cities across India.

Intel had also identified five key SMB verticals – manufacturing (auto ancillaries, gems and jewelry, pharma and textiles), animation, stock broking and higher education. Intel would provide special training to its partners on the IT needs of these SMBs to help its partners adopt a consultative selling mode and deliver customized solutions. Intel also said that it had started this initiative as the target segment preferred to do business with local firms.

In collaboration with its partners, Intel also planned to host special events for these verticals where customers could purchase a complete solution. It had also tied up with ICICI bank to work with select partners to provide special loans to SMBs to invest in Intel’s solutions.

Some of the other initiatives in the program were focused on helping partners to establish proof of concept centers to help showcase its SMB solutions, and development of case studies along with partners that showcased how Intel’s solutions had made a difference to the SMBs.

There were also reward and recognition programs for outstanding partners. In addition to Intel, other IT giants such as Microsoft Corporation and HP had also adopted aggressive strategies to woo SMBs in India.

However, some analysts opined that these were significant challenges in targeting the SMBs. These businesses were spread throughout the country and across various industries and the IT needs of SMBs in one sector were quite different from that of the other.

The awareness level of the value of IT was still low among a high percentage of small businesses. Other challenges included lack of skilled and competent partners, and wide-scale piracy. The choice of an effective marketing communication strategy, media channel, etc, too posed a considerable challenge due to the diversity among the target segment.
More At:http://www.icmr.icfai.org/business%20Updates/micro%20casestudies/Business%20Strategy/MCBS0014.htm

FaxZero allows you to send a fax to any fax machine in the United States or Canada for free.

FaxZero allows you to send a fax to any fax machine in the United States or Canada for free. You don't need a scanner or fax machine. All you do is send an email with text or attach a PDF, Microsoft Word or an Excel spreadsheet, and FaxZero will fax it. The only hitch for a free fax is that the cover page will have an advertisement on it and you can only send 2 faxes per day up to 3 pages. If you don't want the advertisement, you can still use the site but pay a $1.99 premium and send faxes up to 15 pages. They don't recommend the site for those who send mulitple faxes regularly. The site is simple, easy and smart.

FaxZero lets you send a fax to any fax machine in the United States (including Puerto Rico) or Canada for free. You don't need a fax machine yourself, but you do need a valid e-mail address.
More at:http://www.faxzero.com/

www.zedoffice.net

The Anytime-Anywhere Time and Expense solution built for full integration with QuickBooks. Eliminate the need to re-key time sheets and expense claims into QuickBooks, now your employees and contractors can enter time and expenses through a internet browser, you review and approve and with one click they are downloaded in QuickBooks.
More at:http://www.zedoffice.net/

Exact Search feature to obtain what you want on the first page.

A search engine with a new twist. Check out the Exact Search feature to obtain what you want on the first page. This site is also listed for sale on ebay starting May 28, 2007 and lasts for 10 days. Starting bid $1000. Includes ownership of domain name and the intellectual property filed with the USPTO on the Exact Search feature.
More at:http://www.myexactsearch.com/

Stock Noise enables you to stay informed about what all the noise is about in the Market today.

Stock Noise enables you to stay informed about what all the noise is about in the Market today. Users generate news stories and are also enabled to start and participate in stock communities. As far as the user generated stories are concerned, any user may submit one if he deems it relevant, and then other users vote for the articles and confirm or unconfirm that is of importance. Stock Noise is the new place for investors to congregate and praise, comment upon, and analyze the symbols they work with all day. All stories are tagged so searching with keywords becomes even easier to find exactly what you are looking for. They also feature the most voted sites on their homepage, as well as published material.

Stock Noise is about user generated news! The Stock Noise community submits and votes on all of their favorite stock related stories.
More at:http://www.stocknoise.net/

The Entrepreneur's Tool Kit

When Myra M. Hart, the MBA Class of 1961 Professor of Management Practice, joined the HBS faculty in 1995, she wondered if the increased emphasis on entrepreneurship both on the broadest social level and at HBS in particular had changed the career paths of HBS alumni.

"In the early 1980s, [HBS professor] Howard Stevenson had done a survey of alumni to analyze the career directions they'd followed," Hart told New Business. "He believed that although many viewed HBS as a training ground for Fortune 500 CEOs, it was also a hotbed of entrepreneurship-that many alumni were entrepreneurs. He found that more than 30 percent of alumni called themselves 'self-employed.'" Hart's subsequent research revealed that more than 60 percent of alumni defined themselves as, more specifically, "entrepreneurs," and more than 40 percent were involved in entrepreneurial ventures at various points in their careers. "I got to thinking that it might be useful to talk to alumni who are just at the moment when they're ready to start a business, and I interviewed many of them individually," Hart says. "As I did that, I saw a need for a program that dealt specifically with 'how you do it.'"

Her ideas resonated with then-president of the School's alumni board, Ed Hajim (MBA '64), an accomplished entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and businessman. Hajim felt that such a program was so critical to the needs of alumni that he offered a unique financing option to anyone considering the program: He would provide a significant portion of the fee, and participants would only need to pay it back if they were ultimately successful in their venture. "I'm a big proponent of lifelong learning," Hajim says. "I believe that the educational process doesn't end with graduation-in many ways that's when it begins."

This was the beginning of what would become The Entrepreneur's Tool Kit, an Executive Education program designed specifically for HBS alumni. Geared toward those who have recently launched an entrepreneurial venture, or who are considering doing so in the near future, The Entrepreneur's Tool Kit is an intensive three-and-a-half-day program that provides participants with nuts-and-bolts perspectives on how to get their venture started.

Participants are matched in groups with fellow alumni who are interested in similar industries. They are encouraged to present their business concept to the group, and during formal and informal group meetings they exchange advice. "We tell them that this is their board of directors," Hart says. "They meet with these people every morning. Each person shares the issues he or she is facing, and the group spends 20 or 30 minutes addressing it." Faculty members facilitate these meetings, but they don't tell participants what to do. The strength of the program lies in this community of peers. By discussing the challenges they are trying to overcome, participants learn from each other and teach each other.

In addition to the board of director's meeting, each day's schedule includes case study discussions and information sessions presented by experts on topics such as legal issues for entrepreneurs, angel financing, and business-plan creation. "We deal with really practical stuff," Hart emphasizes. "These people are contemplating a very big commitment, and they have so many questions." Those questions tend to follow a similar pattern: What kind of legal firm do I need? Do I need a lawyer now? How do I protect my intellectual property? How do I go about bringing in partners and arranging compensation? Should I give everybody equity, should I give options? How much working capital should I think about? Should I make my projections conservative or best-guess-should I create four scenarios? "Participants build a network of resources and professional contacts," Hart says, "and they can continue to draw from this long after they complete the program." Hajim adds, "In three-and-a-half days you get the complete 'playbook' for becoming an entrepreneur."

Many of the prospective entrepreneurs have gone on to run successful ventures. Hart estimates that for every 40 individuals who take the program each year, 30 will go on to run a business. ......
"An Interview with Linda Applegate

Lynda M. Applegate, the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration, took over as chair of The Entrepreneur's Tool Kit (ETK) this year. Professor Applegate spoke with New Business about some of the ways in which the program will evolve under her leadership.

New Business: What are some of the new directions in which ETK may be headed?

Professor Applegate: Through the generosity of several alumni, we've gotten funding to create an international version of ETK. We are currently exploring opportunities to create a Latin America program. This will enable us to extend our research on entrepreneurship and building new ventures in very turbulent times to other parts of the world where entrepreneurship is critical to the development of the economy. We'll also learn how entrepreneurship is progressing in various regions, and what some of the issues are that we can take back to the ETK classroom at HBS and our entrepreneurial management curriculum in the MBA Program to provide a better understanding of the diverse implications of global entrepreneurship. Additionally, we'll bring in various academics from universities in Latin America, and after the program, we'll work with them to push forward research on global entrepreneurship and the use of some of the tools that we've been developing in other parts of the world. So this will be an exciting exchange of insights

New Business: I understand ETK will also be expanding its outreach to alumni

Professor Applegate: Yes, we're developing a lifelong learning program through the Alumni Office and HBS Publishing. There's a tremendous amount of excitement about this idea from ETK participants who want to stay in touch with each other and the School.

New Business: In what form might this lifelong learning concept be offered?

Applegate: That's still under discussion. Currently, the ETK participants develop an e-mail list and use it to keep in touch. We are very interested in building on the obvious interest for continuing to share perspectives and insights.

New Business: What has been some of the recent feedback on the Tool Kit?

Applegate: It's a very popular program, and the most recent session was extremely well rated by participants. We're also in the process of surveying alumni who've taken the program, to better understand how it has helped them with their carriers."
More at:http://www.hbs.edu/entrepreneurship/newbusiness/2003fall_2.html

Google Switch Could be Next Big Thing

"According to Nomura phone analyst Richard Windsor, the company has confirmed the project. 'Google has come out of the closet at the CeBIT trade fair admitting that it is working on a mobile phone of its own,' he said in a note. 'This is not going to be a high-end device but a mass market device aimed at bringing Google to users who don't have a PC,'" directtraffic.org reports.
Meanwhile, engadget.com also claims to have new info about the device, which it refers to as the Google Switch. The site even includes what could be a screen image of the phones contact program.

Google corporate, however, continues to neither confirm nor deny the report.
More at:http://www.directtraffic.org/OnlineNews/Google_admits_to_mobile_phone_plan_18094880.html

Customer Relationship Managment Tool

Relenta is a new CRM (customer relationship management) tool for small business. This hosted (on-demand) software includes email, contact manager, shared calendar, and email newsletter marketing -- all within "one elegant Web 2.0 application." They employ a (now familiar) "Less is more" approach. They call it the "90/10 rule": "Designed for usability and efficiency, Relenta CRM achieves 90 percent of the functionality commonly required by small business users with only 10 percent of the application weight."

Relenta is a winning combination of the power of salesforce.com and simplicity of Highrise from 37signals. It also includes one killer feature that none of us can live without but yet no other CRMs offers -- good old email:

"The majority of sales and customer service work is conducted via email. In case of traditional CRM systems, most of the business knowledge assets are trapped inside email messages within individual user accounts. Relenta CRM solves this problem by associating email history with customer records and making it accessible to all team members."

Relenta extends my website into the sales process by letting me automatically capture leads from webform, and assign them to sequential email followups/autoresponder, like Aweber.com or VerticalResponse.
More at:http://relenta.com/

Top Temporary Mailbox services It Will Help You.....

Mailinator is one of the best and top rated disposable email services that gives you a temporary mailbox on the following address format e.g. something@mailinator.com
MyTrashMail is another good temporary mail service that gives you a mailbox in the address format e.g. something@trashymail.com and also gives you secure temporary mailbox if you signup
MailExpire stands out in the crowd by giving you the option to have a temporary inbox ranging from 12 hours expiry to as long as 3 months
TemporaryInbox is yet another simple and easy to use temporary email service that gives you an email address in different formats
MailEater gives you a free temporary email inbox in the format e.g. something@MailEater.com
Jetable not only allows you to set the life span of your temporary email inbox but also allows you to forward the mails in your temporary inbox to your real email address
SpamBox gives you a temporary email address in the format e.g. something@spambox.us and also allows you to set the lifespan of your inbox
GuerillaMail lets you generate a temporary email which expires in a time of 15 minutes and also tell you how to offer a temporary email service on your site.
SpamHole provides you a 2 hour long temporary email inbox at the address format e.g. something@spamhole.com
10MinuteMail generates an easy 10 minute email inbox for your temporary email needs .
More at:http://www.sizlopedia.com/2007/05/27/top-20-temporary-and-disposable-email-services

Resources For Entreprenuers

Two weeks ago, The New York Times published a nice introductory article on how to get started with a small business. Author Barbara Whitaker notes that about ten percent of small businesses fail each year:

Success comes with education, careful planning and adequate cash flow, specialists say. And it has never been easier to lay the groundwork for starting a small business. Many tools are available on the Internet and at libraries to aid aspiring entrepreneurs. Whole magazines are devoted to the subject.

Whitaker’s article lists a number of web-based resources for would-be small business owners, including:

The U.S. Small Business Administration web site
SCORE (the Service Corps of Retired Executives) offers business advice to entrepreneurs.
The Small Business Development Centers provide “management assistance to current and prospective small business owners”. For an example of the assistance available, visit the San Joaquin Delta College SBDC web site.
Work.com offers a variety of how-to guides for running a small busines.
e-Venturing bills itself as “the entrepreneur’s trusted guide to high growth.
For advice about entrepreneurship from others who have been there before, visit StartupNation.
Bplans.com features business plan software and free sample business plans, along with other expert advice.
CCH has an amazing variety of ready-to-use templates and documents, as well as links to official government forms.
The U.S. Library of Congress offers The Entrepreneur’s Reference Guide to Small Business Information.
For more about these resources, and for an extended discussion, please read the entire article.

I’m under the impression that the failure rate for small businesses applies to those with employees. If you follow Andréa’s advice and become a consultant, or if you take the route I’m pursuing and work as a wholly independent freelancer, I think the survivability rates are much higher.

Obviously, this is more information than you’ll need if you’re simply trying to make money from a hobby. But if you have bigger dreams, if you’d like to boost your income by starting your own business, these sites are a good place to begin your research.

[The New York Times: Small Business 101: How to Get Started].


More at:http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://gk.nytimes.com/mem/gatekeeper.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26URIQ3DhttpQ3AQ2FQ2

Illumio is bringing you all the web information content you care about and delivering it to you quicker than you’d ever imagine

Illumio is bringing you all the web information content you care about and delivering it to you quicker than you’d ever imagine. Stop manually checking your social networking websites, your blogs and other content providers, let illmio update you on all the RSS feeds you belong to, and furthermore, let them discover new content for you that you’ll love. Illumios unique alogorithym for new content discovery and user matching. They search through your documents stored in My Documents, sent emails, contacts from Outlook and Thunderbird, what you have added as favorites, bookmarks, and general browser history. Illumio cares about your privacy, which is why they conduct research all from your PC, so you are protected. You can join communities of others who love the same web content that you love, and initiate a Q&A on any given feed to connect with other subscribers.

“illumio is a new way to stay informed and connected in a web world that is exploding with social networks, blogs, news, and other content. illumio frees you from manually tracking everything you care about on the Web: instead, illumio monitors the feeds you choose and groups you join and delivers to you only what's important to you. Because illumio runs on your PC, illumio can privately determine what information matches your interests and then alert you directly on your desktop.”
More at:http://www.illumio.com/

Home Commission

HomeCommission.com is uniquely designed to save both home sellers and buyers sales commission cost when buying or selling their home.

There are two type of auctions sellers and buyers can create:
Listing Commission Auction: Listing Commission auction created by sellers invites real estate agents to bid the lowest listing commission on the sale of their home. Lowest bidder wins, and is able to contact sellers to get their business.
* Cash Back Auction: Cash Back auction created by buyers invites real estate agents to bid the maximum cash back on the commission from the sales transaction of their new home. Highest bidder wins with this type of auction.
More at:http://www.homecommission.com/

Make Money With Pet Parties

Linda Franzblau began the party as she always did: by introducing herself to the guests; telling them about Petlane and its products for dogs, cats and birds; and talking about her own dog, Rocket, and her cats, Dot and Dash. Then she came to the point where every party differs--meeting the guests and learning about their needs. She asked each of them to introduce themselves and talk about their pets. A woman named Katy mentioned she had an older dog that she used to walk at night, but she couldn't anymore because the dog's eyesight was failing. Franzblau instantly knew how to help. As she handed out catalogs and order forms to customers, Franzblau took a moment to point Katy toward one of Petlane's newer products, the Pet Lamp, which attaches around a dog's neck and acts as a headlight. Katy's reaction? "She said, ‘It sounds wonderful; it looks wonderful. Sign me up,'" says Franzblau.

Her passion for helping pets like Katy's dog is the reason Franzblau, 53, decided to become a Petlane pet advisor in February 2006. She tries to help customers by not only finding products to fill each pet's needs, but also educating their owners on better pet care through the discussions and games at her parties. And Franzblau may be making money as the expert at her parties, but she's also receiving a valuable education. "Every day, I'm learning different things to make my pets' lives healthier," she says.


The Petlane business also allows Franzblau to mentor other entrepreneurs as she adds new pet advisors across the country to her sales team. She encourages and educates her team by having a group phone call each week and holding monthly training sessions online. Franzblau and her team also educate themselves through Petlane's annual conventions and its book clubs, in which they read a new book each month that's pertinent to their business.

While her Petlane business fulfills many of her passions, Franzblau also had practical motivations for getting started. She had just been laid off from her job in marketing and product development and needed a way to support herself and her daughter. Luckily, she has found that her passion and her pocketbook can go hand in hand, especially when that passion is part of a $38 billion pet industry in the U.S. She expects to easily make six figures in the next two years, all while doing what she loves.
More at:http://www.petlane.com/

Creative marketing goes a long way when you are an entrepreneur

Creative marketing goes a long way when you are an entrepreneur.

Take Jim Kukral. He is one of the most creative people I know in the online world. He’s always coming up with new ideas for getting attention online. The fact that I consider him a friend and he’s located here in the Cleveland, Ohio area makes it all the better. Who says everything innovative has to happen on the coasts, right?

I watch with interest whenever Jim launches a new site (he has 80 websites). For instance, he started Awesome Million, an entertaining little diversion where you can create a page for someone awesome. Then there’s something a tad more businesslike, called Ask the Blogger. There you can ask him a question about blogs for business and he’ll give you advice.

But his latest site is interesting in yet another way. It is called: I Pay Too Much for Hosting.
So I asked Jim about it. In a recent email exchange, this is what Jim told me:

Question: Jim, why did you start IPayTooMuchforHosting.com?
Jim Kukral: Rackspace came to me to test out being a preferred partner. They wanted to see how a marketer could take their product and spread it around and see if it could generate business. I said sure, but I wanted to do it creatively.

Being a customer of Rackspace for years already, I was already passionate about the service. You could say I’m their biggest fan already, so taking on this project was easy to accept, and fun.

Question: What does the name really mean?
Jim Kukral: I came up with the name because it’s true.

I pay too much for hosting — but it’s worth it.

Rackspace is for people who don’t want hosting problems, ever. It’s the Bentley of web hosts. It solves problems for you by not giving you problems.

So I figured, why not tell people how much I pay for hosting and tell them why.

Question: I know you’re an expert in affiliate marketing — but this seems to go beyond typical affiliate marketing. It’s almost as if you’re becoming a customer evangelist.

Jim Kukral: That’s exactly what I have become. Rackspace realizes that small businesses are a great target for them, and they’re taking a unique approach to marketing by asking their biggest fans (me) to go out and become customer evangelists for them and giving us tools to help spread the word. I know for a fact that the CEO of Rackspace has personally reviewed my efforts so far. They get it. Sometimes in order to sell to your target audience, you have to let your target audience talk to each other and let them sell for you.

Plus, with this exclusive 15% off discount they’ve given me, I’m able to offer small businesses the incentive to at least get a free estimate.

Question: I notice that a big part of the site is your custom video message, which lets your personality come out (not to mention being where I learned you have 80 websites!).

Jim Kukral: Yes, I’m using video in my site to help convince people. Not a lot of marketers are using video yet. I’m finding that by using a personal video message I’m able to help people understand more about me and the offer. It’s natural — more like a conversation where someone would tell you why they’re recommending a product. I suggest video for more small businesses.

Check out Jim’s latest creative endeavor: I Pay Too Much for Hosting
More at:http://www.smallbiztrends.com/

Make Money Through Selling Imported Games Via Direct Marketing

After working in product development and marketing for a game company, Gail DeGiulio, 49, started a consulting business to help early stage companies. Through this business, she met Matt Molen and Jeremy Young, 33 and 35, respectively, who were importing European games into the U.S. and translating them into English, but were struggling to get their products into stores. Then DeGiulio approached them with the idea of using direct sales to sell games, and it clicked instantly. "On the retail shelf, regardless of what your product line is, you're competing against a bunch of other boxes," says DeGiulio. "We knew this was a product line that would benefit from being experienced in someone's home."

Though the trio thought they had a great idea, they took their time making sure they were right. They spent the beginning of 2004 researching the direct-sales industry by hiring an industry expert, attending other companies' parties and making sure they could make money for both their company and their consultants. "If you can't figure out a compensation model that works to make it worthwhile for the consultants," says Molen, "you shouldn't be in direct selling." Then, starting in summer 2004, the three partners spent six months holding parties in their homes and at their office, testing prototypes of their games, figuring out how the parties should work and making sure people would want to come back for more. Finally, in January 2005, they felt confident enough in their products and their plan to begin offering a direct-sales opportunity.


Now Bellevue, Washington-based SimplyFun offers its own line of games, puzzles, puppets and other family activities. The exclusivity of the products is essential to direct-sales success, according to Molen and DeGiulio, because the products don't have to compete with any others and the consultants don't have to compete with retail stores. "We want to make it easy for the consultants to be successful," says DeGiulio. To that end, they provide training in person, online, by video and through conference calls; choose not to charge their consultants for their website or require them to keep any inventory; and offer incentives to encourage their consultants to reach certain goals.

More at:http://simplyfun.com/

Multichannel Ads Exchange Network

ADS-click is describing themselves as “innovative and disruptive.” Though, I completely agree that they are innovating, I can only surmise that they are disrupting your “regularly scheduled programming” with unintrusive ad campaigns. Actually, most of what ADS-click has to offer are voluntary skype-me buttons (both SKY-Click and SKIPI) which combine costumer service and voIP. They also offer advertiseing on two levels, white label and publishing. White label enables you to harness advanced contextual and search sponsored links inclusive backoffine and adsever capabilities. On the other hand, Publisher offers traditional text-based ad links. SKY-click is a voIP services which integrates with your SKYPE, allowing users to click the button so that your company may call them back. Likewise, there is also a few button which you can utilize on you site, your blog and in your email which allows users to initiate voIP straight from your site.

“ADS-click is an innovative and disruptive company developing technologies that unite online advertising and voice over IP.
By integrating voice with advertising, ADS-click has found a customer base all around the world. ADS-click supplies services to large media groups, small and medium sized companies and individuals who wish to monetize their editorial content and knowledge. The company's search and contextual advertising technology is used by major Internet players in Europe, Japan and Australia and serves over 3 billion pages views per month.”
more ; http://www.ads-click.com/

With Monetize Media, you will now be able to host videos f ree of charge, and then generate revenue through subscriptions

Don´t let YouTube and Brightcove be the only ones monetizing off the videos you create! With Monetize Media, you will now be able to host videos (and likewise, channels) free of charge, and then generate revenue through subscriptions, advertising, downloads, and syndication. The ad rolls are focused on the target audience, meaning they work in context with the video they are viewing. Monetize Media promises that monetizing your videos is as easy as drag, drop and monetize, so you will be receiving complete end-to-end solution, including encoding, customization, deliver and payment. This way, you will get your content to market even faster. You can elect a few different business models, PPV, Subscription or Free with Targeted Ads, and all of your content will be protected with DRM.


“Monetize Media, Inc. is a dynamic and rapidly growing technology solution provider for the digital media. We provide complete end to end solution for the media, entertainment and enterprise customers. We help our clients to create, manage, market and monetize media, direct-to-consumers by delivering world class broadband online services.

more ;http://www.monetizemedia.com/

Design your own T-shirt and sell it directly from your websites via our widget

Tshirt Takeaway is the new way to create tshirts and then get your design out on the market. You can sell your tshirts directly from your websites, blogs, and popular social networking sites, including MySpace, Piczo, Hi5, and others via a widget you can embed. Likewise, you can browse and shop for tshirts on the site featured in their online store. If you like a tshirt design, you can even grab their widget and place it on your site! You have some customization features for your tee, all the standard font, size, color and alignment, upload photos, and various tshirt types. Tshirt Takeaway will handle all of the payment and shipping, you can negotiate how much commission you will take.


“Design your own T-shirt and sell it directly from your websites via our widget. We handle the payments, make the T-shirts and send them to your customers. You decide how much commission you earn, come back and collect it.
More at:http://www.tshirttakeaway.com/

Photobucket

Photobucket, founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal, is an image hosting, video hosting, slideshow creation and photo-sharing site. VCs including Insight Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures funded the company.

According to comScore, January 2007 report, Photobucket has 17.6 million unique monthly visitors in the U.S. and over 27 Million unique monthly visitors worldwide. The site has over 40 million registered users. According to Reuters, Murdoch's Newscorp (owner of MySpace), is all set to acquire Photobucket for an estimated price of $250 million. Photobucket, with close to 3 billion photos, is the # 1 photo site in the world.
More at:http://photobucket.com/

CoRank

When CoRank launched in March it was a social news ranking site (like Digg) that filtered news based on your sources -- people whose opinion you value. Or, as CoRank founder Rogelio Bernal Andreo told us, it was "yet another boring bookmarking site." Today, the site relaunched with a new focus: allowing users to create their own, branded social news and bookmarking site based on CoRank's technology using a set of simple online tools.

Rogelio, who is also the founder of eGrupos, one of the largest Spanish-speaking social networks on the web, said that a trial run of the new CoRank on the Spanish version revealed some demand for this type of build-your-own-digg service (Rumoreame is an example of a customized CoRank running on the Spanish language version that is getting some use).

More at:http://www.corank.com/

Fly In 10$

Europeans have become used to flights for under 10 euros or British pounds, thanks to RyanAir and EasyJet, which use secondary and tertiary airports, and which provide barebones operations. Will a new airline do the same for the USA?

Skybus, which is launching its inaugural flights this week from Columbus, Ohio, to other secondary airports near major markets, such as Portsmouth, N.H. (near Boston), and Burbank, Calif. (near L.A.), says it is setting aside a minimum of 10 seats available for $10 on every flight (not including taxes and fees of up to $7.90, and the 9/11 security fee of $2.50). Reports are that it has sold 200,000 pre-flight tickets.
More at:http://soundmoneytips.com/article/36149

How They Become Entreprenuer....

Dappen, 39, was attracted to Two Sisters Gourmet in particular because of the unique way the business is run. At her in-home parties, instead of simply talking about the company's gourmet food products and passing around samples, she holds interactive cooking classes in which guests prepare various dishes using Two Sisters Gourmet ingredients. "People go to home parties so they can socialize," she points out, and getting together in the kitchen allows for just that. Home parties have the added benefit of showing the guests exactly how the Two Sisters Gourmet products can be used--and that anyone is capable of using them.

Though she knew she would enjoy it, Dappen did not have big plans for her Two Sisters Gourmet business. As a stay-at-home mom, she was simply looking for a way to make ends meet when she had fewer clients from her telecommunications consulting job, and she thought the parties would be a way to earn an extra $500 a month. She hadn't considered the other side of the business, though: sponsoring new consultants. A year after becoming the company's first consultant in upstate New York, Dappen now has 61 people in her downline, which has boosted her expectations for how much she can earn. Says Dappen, "I have every intention for this to be a six-figure income for me in a year."


Now that she sees her business's great potential, she's found creative ways to attract new customers and new consultants. She wears her Two Sisters Gourmet name tag wherever she goes so people will ask her what it is, and she has helped a variety of organizations with Two Sisters Gourmet fundraisers. After her team met its sales and recruitment goals last November, the corporate office sent celebrity chef Jon Ashton to host a cooking show in Dappen's hometown of Webster, New York. The event attracted attention from TV networks and the local newspaper.

Dappen's direct-selling business has greatly exceeded her original expectations and given her a chance to have a taste of her catering dream, all while allowing her to concentrate on what she feels is most important. "I'm able to work my business around my family, not my family around my business," she says. "That's what I enjoy most."
More at:http://www.twosistersgourmet.com/

Unype.com is an application that allows users to navigate images of cities, taken from Google Earth

Now you can tour the virtual world with your friends. Unype.com is an application that allows users to navigate images of cities, taken from Google Earth, as an animated character. The application, combined with the animated navigation function, links with Skype, enabling users to talk to other people using Unype. Therefore, users can walk the streets of Paris together, or stop and take a look at the Grand Canyon. Users can find out where their friends are located, and immediately be brought to there location, either as a follower of their movements, or as a leader. They also have the ability to see everyone using Unype at that moment, and can transport to a new persons location, and see if they would like to talk together on Skype. Best of all the application is free.


“Use your existing Skype account for a multi-user Google Earth experience.”
More at:http://www.unype.com/

Share Your World With TileFile.com

Are you tired of having to distinguish between a video, picture, and audio file when saving to your computer, or while organizing flies and folders? With TileFile you can combine all the pictures, videos and audio files into one folder, in the order you want. Users have access to all their files online in their account. It allows the user to create a digital postcard of a file/clip. For example, you can take a video clip from your files, write information on the virtual back of the clip for all to see, and share the clip with another user, who can also see what you wrote on the back and add comments. The files you create can be private, shared, or public; whereas, if they are public, any user can take a copy of your file and place it in their file, website, or blog. There is no download or software required, and the application is free. All user accounts can be accessed from any computer.

“TileFile.com is the home base from which you create and share "TileFiles". TileFiles are much more beautiful and social than emails, but just as easy to manage. Think of TileFiles as the "Postcards of the Internet". They can be private, shared, or public. This is a much richer way of sharing your photos, videos and animations (including Flash). You can mix your own TileFiles with TileFiles from another people and then share that mixture. You can take TileFiles from someone elses mixture and include them in your own. You can also publish TileFiles on web pages, blogs, and in your favorite communities. Instead of an old fashioned website of forms and links, we've designed TileFile to feel more like a desktop application. However you don't need to download any software, which means you can log in from anywhere. The way TileFile brings you and your friends together is simple and colorful. It may change the way you "Share Your World™".”
More at:http://www.tilefile.com/

All IT Jobs At One Place

Odin Jobs is about cutting out all the time you spend looking at the hundreds of job boards around the net, letting you access a great number of posting from one portal. Odin aggregates job postings from over 1000 sources daily to maximize you job hunting experience, saving you time as you will be viewing over 20,000 jobs a day. You are also garunteed that you won’t be viewing any spam or irrelevant jobs, given that Odin has developed a processor that evaluates fitness in terms of your feild, looking at language among other factors. This also means you won´t be using keywords, Odin’s “artificial intelligence” will sort it out for you.

“Odin collects jobs from job boards, corporate websites, groups etc. At last count Odin is collecting over 20,000 jobs from 1000 of sources every day.
To fulfill the key part of our mission - get the "Right" It job, Odin features a matching technology that sifts through all the jobs and selects the right ones based on your qualification, experience and preference.
Instead of using keywords and displaying 1000's of weak to irrelevant jobs, Odin employs language processing and artificial intelligence to determine the fitness of a job for you and shows you only the right ones.
We want you to find the right IT job. We want to make your search easier and faster and more relevant.”
More at:http://www.odinjobs.com/

Retailmenot

Collaborative system for finding, sharing and ranking coupon codes for online stores.

Users can get easy discounts with over 25,000 coupon codes and growing.

Also features an OSX Widget and Firefox extension.
More at:http://www.retailmenot.com/

Ideas On Business

Many of us consult mentors and business coaches and most of us keep journals. All of us bounce ideas off of friends and collegues. This is an experiment in combining all of those actions together in one place.

The purpose of this community is to bring together a group of people who want to see their business ideas turn into something real, a success. By collaborating with friends and peers and writing about our successes and failures at each step of the way, we can create a means...
More at:http://ideasonbusiness.com/default.aspx

Zipingo is the online place to find the cream of the crop in terms of local businesses.

Zipingo is the online place to find the cream of the crop in terms of local businesses. Search reviews to find the best local resturaunts, even colleges and universities. Imagine this as your online guidebook to the best places in your neighborhood, or better yet when you go outside of your comfort zone and travel. Find out what others have to say before you decide to settle at an italian resturaunt, read reviews on a cleaning service before you hire. Zipingo was created by a team of Intuit employees, yes, formerly those who worked on your Turbo Tax! May be completely unrelated, but these people know that your daily decisions affeft your finances in a big way, and thus should be fully informed before deciding to purchase or use a service.

In their own words:
“You may be wondering why Intuit, a company known for financial software since the mid 80s, would create something like Zipingo. Well, you're not alone. We’re asked the same question by our co-workers – along with “how’d you come up with that name?”

The connection is not immediately apparent, though the explanation is simple. Intuit was founded and operates on a core principle — watch what people do in their everyday lives and help them do it better. That's why we come to work everyday. It's amazing how much of what people do daily affects their finances.
The Zipingo team is an entrepreneurial bunch of Intuit employees who has come together to solve problems for both consumers and small businesses.
More at:http://www.zipingo.com/portal/home.psml

SimplifyThis.com is an intuitive, web-based application that lets you easily invoice your clients and get paid faster online.

SimplifyThis.com is an intuitive, web-based application that lets you easily invoice your clients and get paid faster online. It’s specifically designed for freelancers, small businesses, independent professionals, and service providers who want to free themselves from complex accounting software, so there will be no more forgotten invoices, no software to install and no help manuals to read. Best of all, since SimplifyThis.com is a web-based application, you can use it from home, from the library, or from any other computer on the internet.

Key Features
* Intuitive and easy to use
* Customizable to your business
* Send invoices using email * Accept payments online
* Track payments
* Record one-time and recurring charges

The application is currently FREE as a trial.
More at:http://www.simplifythis.com/

Xurrency is a new tool 2.0 that allows you to convert currency online and offers you the exchange rate information

Xurrency allows you to convert currency online with web 2.0 style. If you want to keep up to date on what the latest rates are, you can even subscribe to the various feeds. You can get the rates for a currency based on one of it, or in the inverse. You can do specific exchanges from the homepage or using the correct syntax URL. It’s all free, unless you are planning on use it for commercial purposes. Currently there are 42 different country currencies available, and that number will increase with time. So if you want to check what the latest exchange rates are before you travel or while you’re abroad, go to Xurrency and make the quick conversion.


“Xurrency is a new tool 2.0 that allows you to convert currency online and offers you the exchange rate information.”



It’s an easy and attractive way to find out currency conversions. RSS feeds of currency exchanges are a unique thing that people will find useful to keep up to date with money trends if they work internationally.
More at:http://xurrency.com/

Primofeed is a feed service that enables bloggers and content owners to monetize their web site.

People make a living from writing a blog. This service helps make that happen. Primofeed is a feed service that enables bloggers and content owners to monetize their web site. The site serves all major blog hosting companies, and all the blogger has to do is sign up as a PrimoFeed publisher, insert their ad code widget onto your blog, Primofeed runs targeted ads, and you get commissions when users buy their products. Now, what was not clear from reading the site was whether you only get a commission when an actual purchase is made from a reader of your blog (how do they track that?), or if you get a commission if someone clicks on their advertisement. They need to be more clear and upfront about that. Otherwise, if you are a regular blogger with a high traffic volume, take advantage of that and make blogging your career or at least a nice source of supplemental income.

As They say:
PrimoFeed enables you to monetize from your web site by displaying relevant products ads. It's a new advertising model approach by delivering ads in a form of a unique badge. This rich delivery system enhances click through rates and the bottom line impact of your web site's revenue earning potential.
More at:http://primofeed.com/

For Playing Game In Virtual World

Runescape is an extremely popular 3D online role playing game serving more than one million subscribers. The game serves people all over the world, but their core audience is in english-speaking countries. The game itself allows people to sign up (for free) and control a character. They then meet other characters in this virtual world and can choose to develop their character's skills and power during their "quests". Admittedly, this whole game world is foreign to me.
More at:http://www.runescape.com/

Cost Per Action It Will Multiply Your Earning As You Never Thought Off

CPA stands for “cost per action”. While most affiliate networks pay only for purchases and AdSense pays per clicks, CPA networks pay per “action”. An action may be a filled out form, an e-mail registration, a request for a brochure, a phone number, etc. My average pay out is anywhere between $1.45-$8.00 per such an action.

Here is a real example how Copeac works. Click this link http://affiliates.copeac.com/sw/9248/3291/
and you'll be taken to Shawn's Casey website. Shawn is giving away free internet marketing software. All he wants in exchange is your name and e-mail. Every time a person fills out an e-mail from, I get $1.30. As simple as that.

It's important to not that you can not (under any conditions) artificially inflate the number of opt-ins, but it's not necessary. Every time I run an article about Shawn I get about 50 dollars. People are all too happy to exchange their e-mail addresses for free software. Especially since my blog caters to the right crowd.

Some offers pay as high as $20 per lead. For exmaple this one. The high-paying offers are usually very specific (this one deals with military personnel only) and geotargeted to US only (some offers are exclusive to UK or Canada). All international traffic in this instance is re-routed.

But the best thing about CPA networks is that you can make MUCH MORE money not from your webiste, but from AdWords ads. My current ROI on Copeac ads that I run on Google is anywhere between 300% and 800% (it means for every dollar I spend on AdWords I get 3-8 bucks from Copeac). If you are interested in knowing more about that side of the business, make sure you drop me a line after your register with Copeac - there are a lot of little tips and tricks I'd like to share.
More at:https://affiliates.copeac.com/affiliate_signup.html?super_affiliate_code=3291

Get Things Done.

Vitalist is a web application designed to help people manage what they need to get done. It has been designed to work closely with the "Getting Things Done" methodology.

Vitalist offers web and mobile access. Free accounts are not limited any certain number of projects or actions. Premium acounts are $5 per month and include file attachments, sharing , and ssl security.

Vitalist is perfect for anyone needing to Get Things Done. Easily organize actions and projects on...
More at:http://www.vitalist.com/

Messenger Aggregator

Pidgin is an instant messaging aggregator for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. It supports the following clients: AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, and Zephyr. You can do almost all the same things you would normally be able to do on your AIM client, chatting, transferring files, putting up away messages, and costumization features. There are also features which are specific to your Pidgin ac...
More at:http://www.pidgin.com/

Swap Your Media For Free

Have an old NSYNC album, an archeology book from a previous college course, or the old Grand Theft Auto collecting dust on your shelves, and not enough money to buy the new media that just released? Swaptree could be your answer. With swaptree, you can easily trade your CDs, DVDs, video games, and books for other media other users have available. All you need to do is type in the UPC or ISBN code on the back of the item, and the swaptree algorithms figure out which items you can trade for bas...
More at:http://www.swaptree.com/

Make Money Without Really Trying

Kevin Ham -- one of a handful of major-league "domainers" in the world and arguably the shrewdest and most ambitious of the lot. Even in a field filled with unusual career paths, Ham's stands out.

Trained as a family doctor, he put off medicine after discovering the riches of the Web. Since 2000 he has quietly cobbled together a portfolio of some 300,000 domains that, combined with several other ventures, generate an estimated $70 million a year in revenue. (Like all his financial details, Ham would neither confirm nor deny this figure.)


And what few people know is that he's also the man behind the domain world's latest scheme: profiting from traffic generated by the millions of people who mistakenly type ".cm" instead of ".com" at the end of a domain name.

Try it with almost any name you can think of -- Beer.cm, Newyorktimes.cm, even Anyname.cm -- and you'll land on a page called Agoga.com, a site filled with ads served up by Yahoo (Charts, Fortune 500).

Ham makes money every time someone clicks on an ad -- as does his partner in this venture, the West African country of Cameroon. Why Cameroon? It has the unforeseen good fortune of owning .cm as its country code -- just as Germany runs all names that end with .de.

The difference is that hardly any .cm names are registered, and the letters are just one keyboard slip away from .com, the mother lode of all domains. Ham landed connections to the Cameroon government and flew in his people to reroute the traffic. And if he gets his way, Colombia (.co), Oman (.om), Niger (.ne), and Ethiopia (.et) will be his as well.

"It's in the works," Ham says over lunch in his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. "That's why I can't talk about it." He's nearly as reluctant to share details about his newest company, called Reinvent Technology, into which he's investing tens of millions of dollars to build a powerhouse of Internet businesses around his most valuable properties.

New ways to strike it rich on the Web
Given Ham's reach on the Web -- his sites receive 30 million unique visitors a month -- it's remarkable that so few people know about him. Even in the clubby world of domainers, he's a mystery man. Until now Ham has never talked publicly about his business. You won't find his name on any domain registration, nor will you see it on the patent application for the Cameroon trick.

There are practical reasons for the low profile: For one, Ham's success has drawn enemies, many of them rivals. He once used a Vancouver post office box for domain-related mail -- until the day he opened a package that contained a note reading "You are a piece of s**t," accompanied by an actual piece of it.

Bitter domainers are one thing, lawyers another. And at the moment, Ham's biggest concern is that corporate counsels will come after him claiming that the Cameroon typo scheme is an abuse of their trademarks. He may be right, since this is the first time he's been identified as the orchestrator.

When asked about the .cm play, John Berryhill, a top domain attorney who doesn't work for Ham, practically screams into the phone, "You know who did that? Do you have any idea how many people want to know who's behind that?"

Spreading the word
Kevin Ham is a boyish-looking 37-year-old, trim from a passion for judo and a commitment to clean living. His drink of choice: grapefruit juice, no ice. His mild demeanor belies the aggressive, work-around-the-clock type that he is. Ham frequently steers conversations about business back to the Bible. Not in a preachy way; it's just who he is.

The son of Korean-born immigrants, Ham grew up on the east side of Vancouver with his three brothers. His father ran dry-cleaning stores; his mother worked graveyard shifts as a nurse. A debilitating illness at the age of 14 led Ham to dream of becoming a doctor. He cruised through high school and then undergraduate work and medical school at the University of British Columbia.

Christianity had long been a mainstay with his family, but as an undergrad, he made the Bible a focal point of his life; he joined the Evangelical Layman's Church and attended regular Bible meetings. Ham recalls that it was about this time -- 1992 or 1993 -- that he was introduced to the Web. A church friend told him about a powerful new medium that could be used to spread the gospel.

"Those words really struck me," Ham says. "It's the reason I'm still working."
More at:http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/04/01/8403365/index.htm

Verticlans are online marketplaces that are run by you

Craigslist is undoubtedly one of the best inventions on the web. However, there is always an element of anxiety over who is going to respond to your ads or what kind of house you are visiting to pick up that new dresser, since people are..well, weird. This site eliminates that unknown factor by allowing you to post a classified ad to people you know, or at least buy/sell in a more closed universe of neighbors and friends of friends in your town. From there, the service is just like Craigslist, and free. Write in the title and description, insert the price, and add a few images. Others can subscribe to newly listed items via email. A limitation mentioned by others is the inability to link to another social networking or website.

Verticlans are online marketplaces that are run by you. When you create your Verticlan, you connect the people in your group to each other so that they can buy and sell stuff from each other. You can create a Verticlan for any group of people to sell anything.
More at:http://www.verticlans.com/

www.orgpluslive.com

If you thought that organizational charts would be forever consigned to the depths of the useful yet boring apps pile, then you’d be wrong. OrgPlusLive has made web based charting that’s easy; so you can chart out your company’s organizational structure, build project teams, keep track of roles and tasks, and you can even organize sports teams. There’s no software to install and all charts are available offline. You can easily export your existing data, for example from Excel or Visio. OrgPlus uses a drag and drop interface; there are templates; and it’s all quite secure. As it’s flashed based OrgPlus works with any platform. Of course there are plenty of collaborative features, and the price starts at $9.95 a month.


“OrgPlus Live is a web-based organizational charting service designed to make it easier to create, maintain and share organizational charts. If you've ever struggled to keep track of different versions of org charts sent over email, OrgPlus Live is for you.”
More at:http://www.orgpluslive.com/

Mogulus makes TV broadcasting available to anyone

Mogulus makes TV broadcasting available to anyone with a camera and a broadband connection. They provide tools to allow you to make your station look professional, such as with tickers, bumpers, logos, and your own personalized channel colors. Mixing various video clips is easy, and you can even have multiple people reporting live at the same time. Video clips can come from your webcam, YouTube, and your own original shots, mixing them together into your own personal TV show. If you want to share your channel to add content and collaborate with friends from all over, you can all contribute to your station. If you are having a live show, Mogulus even allows you to receive calls and broadcast them to the rest of the users, screening to select only the ones you trust, to make your station more interactive and more like the real deal.

They say:
“We're giving Mogulus users the power to create live, original television programming, all done on their own global broadcasting channel.

More at:http://mogulus.com/

Get Paid For Receiving Ads On Your Mobile

Have you ever thought about the amount of time you have spent reading advertisements? Now think about all the time you have spent reading advertisements about products, or services that you have no interest in buying. mGinger’s aim is to eliminate advertisements that do not appeal to the consumer, while at the same time paying the user for there reception of the ad. mGinger.com makes it possible for anyone with a mobile phone to be paid to receive advertisements in the form of SMS on your cell phone.

The user can sign up via their website, fill out a detailed profile full of interests, enlist their mobile phone number, and right a way begin receiving ads and payment. The user can choose the number of ads, and the time of day to receive ads. Depending on your profile description, advertisements will be targeted specifically to you. The user gets paid per reception of ad, as well as getting paid for the reception of ads of the friends they recommended. The payment is in the form of Rupees, and can reach up to the equivalent of 45 US dollars per month.

In their own words:
“mGinger works by sending you advertisements in the form of SMS to your mobile phone. The adverts will consist of offers, vouchers, news and more. These adverts will be related to areas of your interest that you specify during sign-up. Also, you will receive these only in the timings that you specify. You can refer your friends to become a part of your network. You will get paid for the adverts that you and your friends receive.”
More at:http://www.mginger.com/

Second Brain

Second Brain is a fascinating startup now in testing and accessible by invitation only. The service is a personal library where people aggregate all their creations, services and favorites - and then share and/or publish them online. Second Brain was founded by Lars G. Teigen who also co-founded Making Waves, one of Norway and Poland's leading design and technology services. The project completed its prototype and alpha stages back in November 2006 and the private beta was released in early February of this year. Second Brain's vision is to be the central service for collecting and sharing knowledge in 2008.

The Second Brain site organizes the chaos people feel from utilizing content across a wide variety of services, like YouTube, del.icio.us, Flickr and others. Ultimately Second Brain is trying to fill the niche between people's need to organize and use data, and the need for services to attract and retain users. Second Brain looks at Web 2.0 and beyond as a network of mostly small independent applications serving the needs of the market. Essentially, they see the Internet as a widely distributed desktop, albeit a huge one.
More at:http://www.secondbrain.com/

Where Fom This word 'Entpreneurship' came

Frankfullard Says:
What is not so well known is that [the word 'Entpreneurship'] acquired its modern economic meaning from an Irishman, the French-based banker Richard Cantillon. In Cantillon’s view the entrepreneur was someone who identified the possibility to gain from the market by buying products (at that time, agricultural products) at a certain price, and selling at a price to be determined later; the difference between these two being profit or loss. Cantillon considered the entrepreneur, therefore, to be primarily a bearer of risk."

Frank's blog is a terrific addition to the business blogging scene in Ireland and Keith Bohanna has news that he's now been joined by another County Enterprise Board CEO - Sean McKeown in Kilkenny. Sean is off to a flying start with posts explaining what CEBs actually do, tips for trading into Northern Ireland, news of the National Centre for Creativity in Kilkenny and an introduction to the Tech Check initiative -


"Tech Check is basically a mentoring service that provides small businesses with the services of a professional practitioner/adviser, who will undertake an audit of their current utilisation of information and computing technologies (ICT), and present them with a report on areas for improvement."
More at:http://www.frankfullard.com/wordpress/?p=10

Real equity investment opportunities.

Equity funding worth £5m is up for grabs for high growth and technology start-ups in the Midlands.

The reserve pot for this year's Connect Investment Challenge, this is twice the amount on offer in last year’s inaugural event.

The competition is run by Connect Midlands, the not-for-profit network for investors, and high growth and technology businesses in the region.

"The fact that we have been able to more than double the equity funding this year is testament to the success of the inaugural competition,” says Isabell Majewsky, Director of Connect Midlands.

“This year's challenge will reach out across the Midlands and showcase entrepreneurial activity in the region's business community at its very best.

"Its primary objectives are to identify and highlight entrepreneurial activity, to provide a range of benefits and assistance to those companies, and ultimately lead to real equity investment opportunities."
Applications for the Connect Investment Challenge close 4 July. Click here for more details.

http://www.connectchallenge.org/web/million/index.cfm

TomboyTools

Dugger just celebrated her first year as a sales consultant for Tomboy Tools, which sells ergonomically designed tools marketed to women. Tomboy Tools was started in 2000 by three friends in Denver, Colo. The company has grown to more than 1,000 sales consultants across the United States and Canada.

The tools, made for a woman’s hands, are smaller than the standard varieties, Dugger said. The idea is to get tools in women’s hands that they will actually use and that make sense to them. Some of the company’s tools feature a tape measure with measurements of every one-eighth inch labeled, a lightweight compressor that can be picked up with one hand, and a utility knife with an easy-turning adjuster, so no screwdriver is needed to change the blade.

Tomboy Tools is based around home party sales that Dugger said allow her to not only get the tools into women’s hands, but also to teach some basic home repair lessons.
More at:http://www.tomboytools.com/

Why Reunion Is Making Money

Reunion is a social networking company that looks decidedly old-fashioned, compared to glitzy (or garish, some would say) sites like MySpace.

And yet its simplicity, like that of Facebook, is apparently part of its success. It now has 28 million registered users, and is adding one million users a month — and by that measure, it ranks among the top five social networks (Facebook, by contrast has slightly more than 19 million registered users). That’s why Reunion has just scored $25 million in venture capital from Oak Investment Partners, in what is the largest first round of venture capital any social network has received to date.

So why have you never heard of it?

Launched in 2002, Los Angeles-based Reunion is far more retro than Facebook. It shrugs aside the sexy “widget” doodads popularized by companies in Silicon Valley — and has slogged away through the years quietly, without marketing hype or verve. Reunion targets the 25 and older crowd. When you register, it provides you a straight-forward profile page, and then lets you add a range of information about yourself (bio info, favorite movies, character descriptions, etc). At its simplest, you can add your friends, and then stay in touch with them — as the name “reunion” would suggest. No video sharing or anything. Plain-vanilla stuff. See screenshot below. Many of its 28 million users registered years ago, and aren’t that active. However, it has about eight million unique users a month, which comfortably places it among the top ten networks.

Yet its new users — because they are older — are far more profitable than users at younger sites, such as MySpace, says chief executive Jeff Tinsley. Reunion brings in revenue of more than $30 million a year, though he wouldn’t be more specific. Cyworld, the raging popular Korean site, has said it makes $2.10 revenue per users, and Reunion makes much more than that on its recent users, Tinsley said. “It’s interesting, we don’t get covered nearly as much as these other guys,” Tinsley said.

One source of Reunion’s traffic is the “people search” technology it offers to other sites. It powers people search for AOL, Infospace, and Lycos, and will announce another big deal in two weeks, he said. People search is becoming more popular, and it will soon “bubble up” to become a staple feature at the top of most major sites, Tinsley said. Reunion powers 60 million people searches a month.
More at:
http://www.reunion.com

www.corporateinterns.com

When Jason Engen was an undergraduate student at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, he and his friends knew the challenges students faced in finding worthwhile internships. So for one of his business classes, Engen wrote a business plan detailing a concept for an internship placement service--one that would interview and screen students and match them with local companies that needed interns. "We hit a nerve in terms of the marketplace and focused 100 percent of our efforts on students," says Engen. "We started a week after we graduated, and it took off."
More at:http://www.corporateinterns.com/

Get Rich by Selling Aprons

Aprons are generally considered more of a fashion faux pas than fashion-forward. They're hidden in the backs of drawers and thrown aside in the presence of company. Helena Steele knew it wasn't always this way. She could remember when her grandmother, Jessie, would bake treats while clad in finely constructed aprons with beautiful patterns on them.

So in 2002, Helena and her daughter, Claire, formed Jessie Steele, a line of aprons meant to go far beyond the kitchen drawer.

When the mother-daughter team created their line of vintage-inspired aprons, their unique backgrounds proved to be invaluable. Claire, a former model and marketing executive, used her knowledge of fashion and marketing to promote the business, while Helena, an accomplished seamstress and the founder of Golden Gate Kitchens, a successful kitchen design company, helped with the design. Their mission was to create an apron that bridged the culinary/fashion divide, an accessory that could be worn whether buyers were making meatloaf or strolling down Fifth Avenue.

"We definitely feel that they're functional fashion," says Claire, 29, who helped Helena, 54, update the vintage apron styles and textiles for modern wearers.

Claire and Helena unveiled the aprons to immediate success. The vintage styles are a hit among home chefs, as well as hip retailers and boutiques, which have seen a growing demand for retro styles, from '20s flapper gowns to bell-bottoms.
More at:http://www.jessiesteele.com/index.php

seahorsepower

The BigBelly is a solar-powered waste container that aims to eliminate those all-too-familiar overflowing trash cans, keeping public spaces cleaner and greener. The flagship product of US-based Seahorse Power Company, BigBelly units compact trash on the spot, optimizing refuse capacity — a BigBelly holds up to five times as much garbage as a regular, non-compacting bin. This reduces the number of times bins need to be emptied, and fewer collections means saved time, fuel and truck costs. Since they don't need to be plugged in, BigBelly units can be placed just about anywhere. The units also are fully enclosed and weather-resistant, are available with optional bear-proofing, and cost USD 3,600–3,900.
More at:Website: www.seahorsepower.com

Tiger Woods Could Teach Us How To Run A Business

If you play much golf, you've probably heard the saying "Drive For Show, Put For Dough." For those of you who don't play, it means that driving the ball far on your first shot off the tee isn't really the key to winning in golf.

The funny thing is, if you ever go to a driving range, 90% of what you see is people with their drivers trying to smack the ball as far as possible. I've played with some of these people that drive 280 yards, but then they 3 and 4 put holes and end up shooting in triple digits. For some reason though, it's important to golfers that they be able to drive the ball far. To have the longest tee shot makes them feel good, even if they don't have the lowest score.

Now, most people know that Tiger Woods is one of the greatest golfers alive. A few years ago, my uncle got a chance to play on a Florida course frequented by Woods.

Driving by the range to begin the round, my uncle noticed that Tiger was on the driving range with a single club when they took off for 18 holes. Nearly 4 hours later, the round was finished and Tiger was still on the range. The guy driving the cart with my uncle knew Tiger and drove up to say hello. They chatted for a few minutes and realized that the whole time they had been playing, Tiger had been practicing with the same club - a 7-iron. A pile of balls out on the range showed that he had been within 10 yards of his target on every shot, but that wasn't good enough. He was trying to get even better. One club. Four hours. That's why he's one of the world's best.


There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. -- Peter Drucker
In business, I think we often know the things we should do, but instead we try to do the things we want to do. We like the random fun things. We want to plan, brainstorm, hold meetings, all the stuff that doesn't require any discipline or focus. Unfortunately it's also all the stuff that doesn't make us better at what we are ultimately trying to do. We know we should be putting, but we want to take out the big driver and have a good time. Then we complain about our score.

More at:http://www.businesspundit.com/contributors.php

Why Adult Prepaid Cards?

Adult entertainment on the Internet is a multi-billion dollar a year industry that continues to grow in annual revenue each and every year without fail. No matter what the economic climate may be here in the U.S. or abroad, sex always sells! The Adult Prepaid business opportunity is a franchise that allows you to cash in on the adult business.


Why Adult Prepaid Cards?


100% Personal Privacy
No Credit Card Required
No Membership Obligation
No Hidden Fees
Global Access
And Much More...



Earn Incredible Profits!


The "Mini-Pack" consisting of 100 cards costs you only
$399.00 offering a potential return of $2,000.00


The "Senior Pack" consisting of 350 cards costs you only
$999.00 offering a potential return of $7,000.00


The "Distributor Pack" consisting of 1,000 cards costs you only
$2,499.00 offering a potential return of $20,000.00


Purchase an "Exclusive Territory Distributorship" for only $50,000.00 U.S.
which includes 25,000 cards offering a potential return of $500,000.00
This is your best opportunity to start making money from one of the Internet's top money-making industrys. In addition to our prepaid card program, we also offer a full line of turnkey adult web sites, casino web sites, and adult chat lines starting from only $99.00.
More at:http://www.entrepreneur.com/business-opportunities/adultprepaid/71012.html

Etsy

Etsy is a lovely site with beautiful pictures of the handmade and craft items it sells. It also has cool technology allowing you to find sellers by their location, and it gives good background information on them. It's not the place to buy a mass-merchandise item like a baseball glove, but it has pewter baseball glove stitch markers.

Because it is something of an alternative site, Etsy has odd quirks that you may find endearing (or annoying). The “Time Machine” channel is a cool Flash site that shows items from “the past” (if you can really call one minute ago the past). But it wasn't clear to me whether these items were on sale (or bought). Nor does clicking on them give you anything but a pop-up Flash picture.

Nevertheless, if you want to make a personal connection with a craftsperson and her lovingly made items, Etsy would seem to be a great destination.

More at:http://www.etsy.com/

Solving Your Domain Name Problem

Everyone has domains they want, but unfortunately they are most likely already registered.
Pool.com I would highly recommend them to all if you are trying to get that special domain name that is already taken.
Pool.com is a member of the Global Domain Name Exchange. You can access the entire inventory of domains listed through the GDNX on Pool.com's Domain Marketplace.
More at:http://www.pool.com/

Must Read Book

The Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online (Paperback).
Buy it at:http://www.amazon.com/Super-Affiliate-Handbook-Selling-Peoples/dp/0973328738/sr=8-1/qid=1171373229?ie=UTF8&s=books

Wiki is for You?

If you’ve never created a library Web page (and don’t intend to start learning HTML code anytime soon), but want your library to have a Web-presence, maybe it’s time to consider a library wiki. As more educators and librarians collaborate in an online environment, wikis (which in Hawaiian means “quick” or “very fast”) provide users with a tool that can be easily accessed, edited, and updated. As we create a more collaborative 2.0 school library environment, wikis provide an opportunity for students, teachers, parents, administrators, and community members to actively create new information for others.

There are hundreds of opinions on which wiki software is the best. One helpful guide is Wiki Matrix, which provides a comparison. Users can select wikis, evaluate the contents and features, and compare the software.

Decide ahead of time if you want to participate in a free wiki hosting site, pay a subscription cost to a provider to host your wiki, or set up the wiki yourself using your own server. For many, the ease of using a free hosting site has more advantages. In this article the wikis being evaluated are all hosted by the provider.

To learn more about how wikis are used in education and libraries, check Eric Oatman’s “Make Way for Wikis” and Gail Junion-Metz’s “If You’re Curious about Wikis”
PBWiki
For detail:
pbwiki.com/

Safari Will help You Download Any File From Any Site

Listen up Mac users. You may already know this, but I didn’t until the other day, and it really comes in handy. Safari has a little tool called the Activity Window, which can be accessed by going to going to “Window > Activity” (shortcut: alt + apple + a). In here you can see every file that the website you are viewing is calling upon. The brilliant thing is that by double clicking any one of these files, it will download straight to your desktop.
Considering you would most likely want to download a file containing video or audio, look in the column on the right to see its size. By process of elimination you will see that the biggest file will be the one you want.So if you happened to be on YouTube, you could download any video you wanted. Similarly, if you were on MySpace, and had no respect for copywrite law, you could download anything you wanted.
More at:http://www.gosquared.com/liquidicity/archives/133

Redfin

Redfin, The company, as described by TechCrunch, is offering: a combination of MLS listing information (homes for sale) with historical sales data (homes already sold) into a single map. But they take it one step farther than real estate info sites like Trulia and Zillow. According to TechCrunch, if you find a home you may want to buy, Redfin will alpy the role of your buyer broker – backed by a call center with licensed real estate agents. Then, they say, they will reimburse you for 67% of the fee directly on closing. Don't expect much from Redfin today; the company's site is crashing from TV traffic received even before the report aired on CBS on Sunday night.
More at:http://www.redfin.com/stingray/do/start

Discover Small Business Watch

The Discover Small Business Watch is a monthly index of the economic confidence of the nation's 22 million businesses with five or fewer employees.

Key Takeaways from the April Watch:

Economic confidence among small business owners decreased in April, driven largely by a deteriorating outlook on economic conditions for their businesses, rising insecurity about the U.S. economy and increased cash-flow issues. The Watch dropped from 117.7 in March to 110.3 in April, marking the largest month-to-month decline since the survey's inception nine months ago.

More at:http://www.discovercard.com/business/templates/bcwatch.shtml

Turning useless into useful.

Two years ago, Eli Reich was a mechanical engineer consultant for a Seattle wind energy company when his messenger bag was stolen. The environmentally conscious Reich, who rode his bike to work every day, decided that instead of buying a new one, he would simply fashion another bag out of used bicycle-tire inner tubes that were lying around his house. Soon compliments on his sturdy black handmade messenger bag turned into requests. "That was the catalyst," says Reich, who obtained a business license, gave up his day job, and quickly launched Alchemy Goods in the basement of his apartment building. The company's motto: "Turning useless into useful."

More at:http://www.alchemygoods.com/

www.smartmedicalconsumer.com

When Banu Ozden, PhD, couldn't get a straight answer out of her health-insurance company regarding the cost of treatment options after being diagnosed with breast cancer, she got mad.

And as she went through the treatment process, she grew increasingly overwhelmed by the fact that the myriad of bills that were sent her way were filled with unintelligible codes and statements that didn't accurately reflect what she owed. She couldn't figure out what to pay--let alone if she was overpaying. When she finally sat down to sort through the mess, she discovered that she had overpaid by about $4,000.

So Ozden decided to get even by building a service that would help others by automating medical billing, tracking medical expenses, and detecting errors, so they could concentrate on getting well. She had already left her job at Bell Labs, where she had worked as director of research of computing systems, and had been frustrated that many of the inventions that she and her colleagues had worked on simply didn't make it to market.

Creating a useful new business with an enormous market seemed like the right thing to do. Ozden, who has multiple patents under her belt, took a leave from the faculty of the University of Southern California and started just such a service, Web-based SmartMedicalConsumer. Its beta version launched in January, 2007.
More at:http://www.businessweek.com/.
2.http://www.smartmedicalconsumer.com/

Search For Young Rural Entrepreneur

Lycetts, the UK's premier countryside insurance broker, today launched its search to find the Young Rural Entrepreneur of 2007.

A cash prize of £10,000 is up for grabs to anyone under the age of 35 who is helping to boost the UK's rural economy amid an ever changing rural landscape.

Working in partnership with The Field magazine, the Young Rural Entrepreneur Award will focus specifically on businesses with a rural theme, and on the individuals behind them who have demonstrated entrepreneurial spirit coupled with a clear commitment to sustaining the rural economy.

The outlook for rural business is brighter, with the resurgence in demand for locally produced food and drink, coupled with the successful diversification of farm activity across the UK. The use of modern technology to work remotely is also helping to create sustainable rural employment, attracting professionals to the countryside.

Following on from the success of last year's Young Champion of the Countryside award, the winning entrepreneur could be running any type of business from soup making to computer software design.
More at:http://www.thefield.co.uk/

Sonopia is offering a service for brands to customize their own cellphones and wireless service plans.

A new company called Sonopia is offering a service for brands to customize their own cellphones and wireless service plans.

In place of a carrier's brand at the top of the phones, organizations that partner with Sonopia can label the phones with their own logos, and customize the colors. Marketers and hobby groups can then distribute news and entertainment to their customers and loyalists. The back-end billing and technical side of the phone plans is handled by Sonopia, much like credit card companies manage affinity charge card programs for charitable and alumni groups.

Innovative business model or simply phone shwag. What do you think? Maybe a bit of both.
More at:http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/06/business/ad07.1-40769.php

www.oldversion.com

This website called oldversion.com. It contains downloads for many old applications including original AIM, Skype, realplayer and many more. It is definitely a great idea and the guy is making a nice little allowance off of it. I would recommend a quick look.
more at:http://www.oldversion.com/

Free International Call

Once again you can make calls to landline phones in many countries around the world for the price of a call to Iowa. Pat Phelan, CEO of Cubic telecom group, posted the good news that www.yak4ever.com is now live replacing the defunct allfreecalls.net which was driven from business a few months ago by large telcos including at&t who stopped completing calls to these numbers. Michael Arrington has taken allfreecalls out of theTechCrunch DeadPool although he warns: “AT&T and others are going to continue to fight to kill this, since they are effectively subsidizing the service.”
More at:http://blog.tomevslin.com/

Startup Robot Genius

CNet writes about a new startup: Start-up Robot Genius deploys new security technology
Robot Genius, an Oakland, Calif.-based start-up, announced Monday that it has created a new suite of security products designed to combat malicious software attacks like spyware, adware, and rootkits through a threefold approach of prevention, detection, and remediation.
More at:http://www.robotgenius.net/

Make Upto $100 Profits In Just Few Minutes

How much is needed to be successful at PPC Arbitrage? Not a lot. Most of the guys doing it have created their site with AdSense or YPN, which took them a few hours, which is expected with your first site/page, because you’re not used to it just yet. But even so, a few hours of making a few pages on some information topic they don’t really know all that much about, slapping the contextual ads on there, and then driving traffic to it. So, aside for the work amount, the cost is so basic too. All you need to do is just prove it to yourself that at it works before you allocate a larger budget to the project. Typically, people will invest about $100 to maybe $300 at most. It’s up to you if you want to burn through that budget in a few hours, a few days, or a month. Most people let it run for about a week, and almost everyone sees results immediately. Sure, you may have to wait on a net 30 basis to get your check, but when you compare it to anything else, it overrides it so quickly.

Just to prove how goddamn easy and quick the ROI took, a friend of mine tested a small site for some weight loss drug called Hoodia. Put up the content, slapped the ads onto it, put some links to affiliate products as well, and that was it. He had already cleared $50 in profit within the first 20 minutes. He used some Tier 2 PPC traffic, which comes pretty quickly, especially for a topic like that. The positioning of ads was very creative, but everything stayed within the rules of Adsense. Again, he wasn’t doing this as a form of making cash for himself, it was strictly as a test to prove that what I said works, and does so very well.

Here’s another example. A friend of mine who happens to own a very large ad network, obviously doesn’t need to money, but likes to dabble in all sorts of interesting and creative ways to make money, put up an information site on mortgages and loans. Very popular and expensive topic, no need to tell you guys that. Typically clicks for it will cost about $9 on Adwords for almost every major keyword on the topic. He took traffic from one of the 2nd tier engines, Searchfeed I believe, pushed some traffic to it, and now, in month 2, he’s averaging $5k a month. Not bad at all. I think his total investment was a little over $2k for both months combined!

In the second example, my friend used a practice that I mentioned a few times to other people as a way to make even more money, or maybe convert the non-clickers of your ads into clickers, because again, that’s all you want them to do. You aren’t building it to make them come back time after time for updated information, because there will be none. All you want them to do is clickthrough to the advertiser who can either supply them with better, more accurate information, or a product/service that they are already looking for. So back on topic, using different forms of contextual based advertising and maybe tossing in some affiliate links on the sides is a good way to go. This way, if the user has no interest in your ads that they can tell are from Google (which aside for people within our industry don’t really notice this stuff like we do), they may click on something else. Perhaps you should add some Adbrite ads, or maybe something like Intellitxt or Kontera. Even Chitika ads can do well if it’s targeted to something in the shopping or consumer electronics area.

My point is, just because you’re making a site for something like arbitrage, doesn’t mean it has to look like it’s a MFA page (MFA - Made For Adsense). Spruce it up a bit with more ways to make cash, things to compliment the ads in ways that may not look like blatant ads, but can still drum up lots of clicks. Alright, you may not make $1 a click from it, but I’d rather make $0.15 a click instead of zero. You’ll see, it will hike up your profit margins.

In closing, I’m really glad people are using the advice I give, and not just making assumptions about it, or bashing it without trying it. I will always catch shit from people who disagree, and that’s fine, but 99% of those people who usually disagreed, never even tried it. Of all of the people who have tried it and failed, it was a minor failure and they usually go over where they failed and how, fix their mistakes, and poof, back on the horse they go, and into the ranks of success stories. So if you hit a snag, keep trying. We aren’t talking about investing a ton of cash here or something that you can lose your shirt over. It’s simple trial and error. Pick a topic, make a page/site, slap some ads onto it, spend $100 or so on some cheap 2nd tier traffic, and watch it go.

More at:http://www.aojon.com/category/pay-per-click-arbitrage/