Just send your word, excel, powerpoint file as an attachment to pdf@koolwire.com and you'll get your PDF by return mail. No software to buy, download and install, no time wasted.
More at:http://www.koolwire.com/
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Gaboogie is designed for busy professionals who don't have time to waste organizing conference calls with colleagues, customers and suppliers
Gaboogie eliminates the headaches and frustrations you experience when booking and attending conference calls, and replaces them with: An intuitive web interface for booking, An automated dial-out process to ensure you never need to remember dial-in numbers and PINs and A moderator console to help you manage every aspect of a call in progress. Gaboogie is designed for busy professionals who don't have time to waste organizing conference calls with colleagues, customers and suppliers.
More at:http://gaboogie.com/
More at:http://gaboogie.com/
Million Dollar Wiki
The Million Dollar Wiki is a website similar to Wikipedia, except that each page must be purchased and thus has a single owner. The owner of the page, and the owner alone, decides the content for the page. A page in the Million Dollar Wiki costs $100, and the purchaser owns the page for the life of the site, which is guaranteed to be at least 15 years.One of the interesting things about the Million Dollar Wiki, aside from the fact that you can put your own Google Ads on your Wiki page, is that if you purchase a page, you can sell that page down the road. That means if you own the page for "Startup" or "Video" for example and, a year down the road, someone is willing to pay a ransom for it, the owner of that page can sell it for a profit!
Another nice feature of the Million Dollar Wiki is that all pages are ranked according to their popularity as based on the number of views each page has had. That means that the more interesting pages in the Wiki will "weed themselves out" to the top.
More at:http://www.milliondollarwiki.com/
Another nice feature of the Million Dollar Wiki is that all pages are ranked according to their popularity as based on the number of views each page has had. That means that the more interesting pages in the Wiki will "weed themselves out" to the top.
More at:http://www.milliondollarwiki.com/
Multimillionaire Story
Entrepreneur Todd Beckman is no different. He insists customers be greeted within three seconds of arrival. Employees are empowered to “own” customer concerns and see them through until resolution. Every customer experience is expected to exceed expectations, says the founder.
But Beckman is in an industry where you normally wouldn’t expect to find such an extraordinary commitment to excellence. That’s all right, because Beckman’s formula for combining world-class facilities, state-of-the-art equipment and outstanding training and customer service with a passion for perfection has positioned The Tan Company as one of the fastest-growing tanning salon franchises in the nation. Business is booming.
With 72 locations in 12 states, The Tan Company expects to grow to 100 locations by the end of 2007 and reach 500 salons within five years. Beckman is considered one of the industry’s pioneers since opening what was formerly called The St. Louis Tan Company in 1994. He is a visionary.
Beckman was one of the first to combine the superstore concept—dozens of tanning beds providing multiple levels of tanning—with an economical membership program that provided unlimited tanning to customers instead of paying per visit.
Along the way, Beckman has fostered The Tan Company brand—recognized for its “Five-Star” facilities, world-class skin-care products and cleanest tanning environment in the country—making it a premier investment opportunity for single- and multi-unit ownership and area development.
“I saw the unprofessionalism in the tanning industry,” Beckman said. “There was not a dominant brand with first-rate facilities and service. Most were run like mom-and-pop businesses. I felt we had a unique idea.”
Beckman got his first job bussing tables when he was 13. His parents, Ed and Gay Beckman, owned several hair salons in the St. Louis area. Todd opened his franchised hair salon in 1984 when he was only 18.
Two years later, Beckman put four tanning beds in the back of his salon. They were immensely popular. It convinced Beckman to buy a small tanning salon in suburban St. Louis in 1994 that had sales of $65,000 in its first year under previous ownership. Beckman’s St. Louis Tan Company—with its innovative membershipprogram—had sales of $57,000 in its first month alone.
Even with two locations, customers were sometimes waiting 90 minutes for a tanning bed. Nine months later, Beckman opened his first superstore in Maryland Heights, Mo., with 30 tanning beds providing multiple levels oftanning. “We’ve been building off it ever since,” Beckman said.
The St. Louis Tan Company grew to 15 locations by 2000. With growing demand for the superstore concept and ever-increasing customer traffic, Beckman decided to franchise his business model and expand outside the St. Louis area in 2001 as The Tan Company. Today, superstores with 20-plus beds and five levels of tanning account for 90 percent of The Tan Co. locations.
“It took someone with an entrepreneur’s attitude like Todd to see the potential in building a brand when there were so many others entering the industry who only wanted to open a small salon,” said Todd Layton, vice president of franchise operations. “Unless you were willing to make a commitment to be the best, as Todd did, it wasn’t going to work.”
Beckman’s business prowess has caught the attention of others, namely Dave “Lags” Lageschulte, who became the first franchisee of the popular Hooters restaurant chain in 1983. Along with his partners, Lageschulte developed Hooters restaurants throughout South Florida and became one of the chain’s most successful franchisees. He is co-owner of the world’s first Hooters Casino Hotel that opened in Las Vegas in February 2006.
In January 2006, Lageschulte purchased a 50 percent ownership stake in The Tan Co., as well as area development rights to Georgia, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina. His first location opened in Athens, Ga.
More at:http://www.thetanco.com/
http://uncommonbusiness.blogspot.com/
But Beckman is in an industry where you normally wouldn’t expect to find such an extraordinary commitment to excellence. That’s all right, because Beckman’s formula for combining world-class facilities, state-of-the-art equipment and outstanding training and customer service with a passion for perfection has positioned The Tan Company as one of the fastest-growing tanning salon franchises in the nation. Business is booming.
With 72 locations in 12 states, The Tan Company expects to grow to 100 locations by the end of 2007 and reach 500 salons within five years. Beckman is considered one of the industry’s pioneers since opening what was formerly called The St. Louis Tan Company in 1994. He is a visionary.
Beckman was one of the first to combine the superstore concept—dozens of tanning beds providing multiple levels of tanning—with an economical membership program that provided unlimited tanning to customers instead of paying per visit.
Along the way, Beckman has fostered The Tan Company brand—recognized for its “Five-Star” facilities, world-class skin-care products and cleanest tanning environment in the country—making it a premier investment opportunity for single- and multi-unit ownership and area development.
“I saw the unprofessionalism in the tanning industry,” Beckman said. “There was not a dominant brand with first-rate facilities and service. Most were run like mom-and-pop businesses. I felt we had a unique idea.”
Beckman got his first job bussing tables when he was 13. His parents, Ed and Gay Beckman, owned several hair salons in the St. Louis area. Todd opened his franchised hair salon in 1984 when he was only 18.
Two years later, Beckman put four tanning beds in the back of his salon. They were immensely popular. It convinced Beckman to buy a small tanning salon in suburban St. Louis in 1994 that had sales of $65,000 in its first year under previous ownership. Beckman’s St. Louis Tan Company—with its innovative membershipprogram—had sales of $57,000 in its first month alone.
Even with two locations, customers were sometimes waiting 90 minutes for a tanning bed. Nine months later, Beckman opened his first superstore in Maryland Heights, Mo., with 30 tanning beds providing multiple levels oftanning. “We’ve been building off it ever since,” Beckman said.
The St. Louis Tan Company grew to 15 locations by 2000. With growing demand for the superstore concept and ever-increasing customer traffic, Beckman decided to franchise his business model and expand outside the St. Louis area in 2001 as The Tan Company. Today, superstores with 20-plus beds and five levels of tanning account for 90 percent of The Tan Co. locations.
“It took someone with an entrepreneur’s attitude like Todd to see the potential in building a brand when there were so many others entering the industry who only wanted to open a small salon,” said Todd Layton, vice president of franchise operations. “Unless you were willing to make a commitment to be the best, as Todd did, it wasn’t going to work.”
Beckman’s business prowess has caught the attention of others, namely Dave “Lags” Lageschulte, who became the first franchisee of the popular Hooters restaurant chain in 1983. Along with his partners, Lageschulte developed Hooters restaurants throughout South Florida and became one of the chain’s most successful franchisees. He is co-owner of the world’s first Hooters Casino Hotel that opened in Las Vegas in February 2006.
In January 2006, Lageschulte purchased a 50 percent ownership stake in The Tan Co., as well as area development rights to Georgia, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina. His first location opened in Athens, Ga.
More at:http://www.thetanco.com/
http://uncommonbusiness.blogspot.com/
How Entreprenuers Or Start Ups Techies Will get Success?Throuhgh Advertising?
I am proud to be a mentor for the Colorado TechStars program, and this evening we had our first mixer, a typical geeky mixup with poor acoustics and a male:female ratio of about 30:1. The mix was young entrepreneurs who won the TechStars competition and are now seed funded through the summer (along with gaining access to an array of very sharp advisors and mentors), the mentors, and other folk in the community who are focused on startups and business development.
A nice group and it was a good opportunity to both visit with some of my Denver-based friends and meet the young turks who are hopefully going to be building the next YouTube or Flickr in our proverbial garage.
Except for one glaring problem...
I estimate that I talked with about seven different startups this evening, roughly fifteen different entrepreneurs who are eager to dive into their business ideas full-time, to really devote all their energy into building Something Cool and Meaningful. Hopefully there's the proverbial pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow, but there was very little sense of people tilting towards a payout (or what we finance types call an "exit event"), which was nice.
But time after time, I asked "interesting idea, but how are you going to monetize it?" and received back flowery explanations that boiled down to "advertising" or, worse, AdSense. One group was even more disconnected, explaining that their goal was to build a large community of users, then they'd "figure out" how to make money.
Here's a tip for all you budding startup junkies: A busy site can certainly make for a great hobby, a fun project to fiddle with, and maybe a few bucks at the end of the month, but (with precious few exceptions) that's not a business.
Advertising? Well, you can look at the slow dissolve of the traditional media -- newspapers, magazines, radio, broadcast TV -- to understand the great risks involved in believing that someone else will always underwrite your efforts, someone other than your users. Further, while there might be high-flying estimates of future advertising revenue in the online world, it isn't often highlighted that the competition is going to get tougher too. A company like IBM might spend millions on advertising, but their money is going to skew towards a small number of large sites, not a large number of small ones, meaning that unless you want to build a business on the nickel and dime PPC payouts of Google's AdSense, AuctionAds, and related, you've got a fundamental problem in your business model.
How much smarter to have a business that has figured out a compelling value proposition, a solution that's so slick, so useful, that users are happy to upgrade to a paid premium service. Not an awkward afterthought of useless tools for the less than one percent who upgrade, but something really revolutionary, something new and clearly cool. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of that thinking embodied in the groups I met this evening, and while I remain highly enthused about TechStars, I am a bit concerned about the likelihood that we'll see a bunch of home runs, or, heck, even a single or two out of the mix...
No question, it's going to be very interesting to see how these companies evolve over the summer as various of us mentors and advisors try to hammer home the idea that the difference between a good idea and a real business is a reliable revenue stream, and that the best way to create that is to offer a compelling, valuable business service.
Then again, there are plenty of startups that were acquired without much more of a business plan than "get lots of eyeballs", so maybe I'm completely off-base here. How important do you, dear reader, believe it is that a business have a clear and sustainable revenue stream identified in the earliest stages of its existence?
More at:http://www.intuitive.com/blog/memo_to_entrepreneurs_advertising_not_strong_business.html
A nice group and it was a good opportunity to both visit with some of my Denver-based friends and meet the young turks who are hopefully going to be building the next YouTube or Flickr in our proverbial garage.
Except for one glaring problem...
I estimate that I talked with about seven different startups this evening, roughly fifteen different entrepreneurs who are eager to dive into their business ideas full-time, to really devote all their energy into building Something Cool and Meaningful. Hopefully there's the proverbial pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow, but there was very little sense of people tilting towards a payout (or what we finance types call an "exit event"), which was nice.
But time after time, I asked "interesting idea, but how are you going to monetize it?" and received back flowery explanations that boiled down to "advertising" or, worse, AdSense. One group was even more disconnected, explaining that their goal was to build a large community of users, then they'd "figure out" how to make money.
Here's a tip for all you budding startup junkies: A busy site can certainly make for a great hobby, a fun project to fiddle with, and maybe a few bucks at the end of the month, but (with precious few exceptions) that's not a business.
Advertising? Well, you can look at the slow dissolve of the traditional media -- newspapers, magazines, radio, broadcast TV -- to understand the great risks involved in believing that someone else will always underwrite your efforts, someone other than your users. Further, while there might be high-flying estimates of future advertising revenue in the online world, it isn't often highlighted that the competition is going to get tougher too. A company like IBM might spend millions on advertising, but their money is going to skew towards a small number of large sites, not a large number of small ones, meaning that unless you want to build a business on the nickel and dime PPC payouts of Google's AdSense, AuctionAds, and related, you've got a fundamental problem in your business model.
How much smarter to have a business that has figured out a compelling value proposition, a solution that's so slick, so useful, that users are happy to upgrade to a paid premium service. Not an awkward afterthought of useless tools for the less than one percent who upgrade, but something really revolutionary, something new and clearly cool. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of that thinking embodied in the groups I met this evening, and while I remain highly enthused about TechStars, I am a bit concerned about the likelihood that we'll see a bunch of home runs, or, heck, even a single or two out of the mix...
No question, it's going to be very interesting to see how these companies evolve over the summer as various of us mentors and advisors try to hammer home the idea that the difference between a good idea and a real business is a reliable revenue stream, and that the best way to create that is to offer a compelling, valuable business service.
Then again, there are plenty of startups that were acquired without much more of a business plan than "get lots of eyeballs", so maybe I'm completely off-base here. How important do you, dear reader, believe it is that a business have a clear and sustainable revenue stream identified in the earliest stages of its existence?
More at:http://www.intuitive.com/blog/memo_to_entrepreneurs_advertising_not_strong_business.html
Xplive.com is the new web-based software project planning and tracking tool that goes beyond task management lists
Often it happend with us when we start a software project off strong, determined, organized, and then somehow all of your to-do lists seem to get buried under all your dirty laundry on your treadmill. To do lists are a thing of the past, XPlive knows you need something more. Xplive.com is the new web-based software project planning and tracking tool that goes beyond task management lists, and rather aims the success of your projects on the progress of features, the things that mean the most to costumers. Xplive is browser-based for Agile development teams, and features 3 distinct plans: Ninja, and Professional, depending on howlarge your project is, how many team members you have and a large difference in terms of features. XPlive asks you to spill some serious bucks every month for their service, but their freemium for one month allows you time to decide if it’s worth it’s weight in gold.
“Welcome To XPLive! Premier online hosting of ExtremePlanner, the popular software project planning tool. Our service is the best value in software planning and tracking for Agile development teams. Sign up today to set your project on the path to success!”
More at:http://www.extremeplannerlive.com/
“Welcome To XPLive! Premier online hosting of ExtremePlanner, the popular software project planning tool. Our service is the best value in software planning and tracking for Agile development teams. Sign up today to set your project on the path to success!”
More at:http://www.extremeplannerlive.com/
TV4B
This is one of the first business video adventisement channel on the web. Publish your commercial, product video, company video, event, vacancies etc. on the web and attract more visitors to your web site. TV4B offers a white-label player, high resolution, which you can embed on your web site, as if it runs from your own web site, whilst TV4B takes care of all technical aspects and data traffic.
More at:http://tv4b.com/
More at:http://tv4b.com/
Latest Tech Tools
Windows-less
You no longer have to buy Microsoft Windows Office to have software that works for your business. None other than Google has stepped up with a legitimate competitor - a complete small-business software package called Google Apps, currently in Google's "pre-release" phase. The full-featured edition is free until April 30, 2007.
Google Apps offers a word processor, spreadsheet, calendar, branded e-mail, and even a telephony application, among many other tools. While you may miss all the bells and whistles - no fancy Microsoft Mail Merge, for example - Google Apps definitely works.
The software is entirely browser-based, so your files live on Google's servers. No more back-up headaches. Though the idea of storing sensitive financial information on some other company's computer can make one a bit queasy.
Again, the pricing is spooky: The basic package is free. And the Premier edition, which includes more storage, features and support, runs $50 per year. By comparison, the latest riff of Microsoft Office is far from cheap. Upgrades start at $239 for basic packages and climb to $679 for full-featured primary licenses. And that ignores the new Windows Vista operating system and hardware needed to make Office 2007 work as it should. Factor those in and the costs could get well north of $1,100, if not higher. So assuming a 10-person office, that's nearly $10,000 you just did not spend.
Blind data
Sometime soon you will have a third choice beyond your cable and phone company for data and phone products - the emerging Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, or WiMAX, provider.
Never mind the goofy Austin Powers-esque acronym, WiMAX is the real deal for small business. Essentially a gigantic WiFi hot spot, WiMAX providers offer data products by broadcasting and receiving digital information that rides on top of old-fashioned radio waves. All you need is a special antenna attached to a router. No pesky wires.
The release status of WiMax in North America is volatile at the moment, with providers carving out regional strongholds - sometimes seemingly by zip code - and pricing all over the map.
The following is a brief provider overview:
TowerStream. Founded in 2000, the company says it has established networks in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, the greater Boston area, Providence and Newport, R.I. A decent T1 line substitute, the company's pricing ranges from T1 Internet backup for $175/month to high-availability T1 for $600 a month.
Valtech Communications. Valtech, founded in 2003, is competing directly against Sprint in Ohio and offers basic phone and data access with dial-up service running $19.95 per month.
Clearwire. Founded in October 2003 by telecom veteran Craig O. McCaw, Clearwire says it offers service in 36 metro areas in California, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho and Minnesota. Probably the more friendly to small business of the bunch, it offers a direct competitive product to DSL and cable in some markets.
Sprint Nextel. Profit-hungry Sprint Nextel (Charts, Fortune 500) holds licenses covering most of the United States and says it plans to build a "Nationwide advanced wireless broadband network expected to cover 100 million people in 2008."
I am not saying WiMax will be the panacea for the small business. These are, after all, still telecom companies. But if you don't integrate these options into your business, you can bet someone else will - and that just may include your biggest competitor.
More at:http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/26/magazines/fsb/tech.fsb/
You no longer have to buy Microsoft Windows Office to have software that works for your business. None other than Google has stepped up with a legitimate competitor - a complete small-business software package called Google Apps, currently in Google's "pre-release" phase. The full-featured edition is free until April 30, 2007.
Google Apps offers a word processor, spreadsheet, calendar, branded e-mail, and even a telephony application, among many other tools. While you may miss all the bells and whistles - no fancy Microsoft Mail Merge, for example - Google Apps definitely works.
The software is entirely browser-based, so your files live on Google's servers. No more back-up headaches. Though the idea of storing sensitive financial information on some other company's computer can make one a bit queasy.
Again, the pricing is spooky: The basic package is free. And the Premier edition, which includes more storage, features and support, runs $50 per year. By comparison, the latest riff of Microsoft Office is far from cheap. Upgrades start at $239 for basic packages and climb to $679 for full-featured primary licenses. And that ignores the new Windows Vista operating system and hardware needed to make Office 2007 work as it should. Factor those in and the costs could get well north of $1,100, if not higher. So assuming a 10-person office, that's nearly $10,000 you just did not spend.
Blind data
Sometime soon you will have a third choice beyond your cable and phone company for data and phone products - the emerging Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, or WiMAX, provider.
Never mind the goofy Austin Powers-esque acronym, WiMAX is the real deal for small business. Essentially a gigantic WiFi hot spot, WiMAX providers offer data products by broadcasting and receiving digital information that rides on top of old-fashioned radio waves. All you need is a special antenna attached to a router. No pesky wires.
The release status of WiMax in North America is volatile at the moment, with providers carving out regional strongholds - sometimes seemingly by zip code - and pricing all over the map.
The following is a brief provider overview:
TowerStream. Founded in 2000, the company says it has established networks in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, the greater Boston area, Providence and Newport, R.I. A decent T1 line substitute, the company's pricing ranges from T1 Internet backup for $175/month to high-availability T1 for $600 a month.
Valtech Communications. Valtech, founded in 2003, is competing directly against Sprint in Ohio and offers basic phone and data access with dial-up service running $19.95 per month.
Clearwire. Founded in October 2003 by telecom veteran Craig O. McCaw, Clearwire says it offers service in 36 metro areas in California, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho and Minnesota. Probably the more friendly to small business of the bunch, it offers a direct competitive product to DSL and cable in some markets.
Sprint Nextel. Profit-hungry Sprint Nextel (Charts, Fortune 500) holds licenses covering most of the United States and says it plans to build a "Nationwide advanced wireless broadband network expected to cover 100 million people in 2008."
I am not saying WiMax will be the panacea for the small business. These are, after all, still telecom companies. But if you don't integrate these options into your business, you can bet someone else will - and that just may include your biggest competitor.
More at:http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/26/magazines/fsb/tech.fsb/
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