Tee Bee Dee is a social network for the over 40 crowd. The site is free to join, start groups, ask for advice to situations or answers to questions, and provide advice and/or answers.
TeeBeeDee was founded in 2006 to provide a voice for those who have learned from their life experiences and want to keep on growing. Tee Bee Dee is a community where you can get answers on everything from how to help aging parents to how to switch careers after 50.
They Raised: Tee Bee Dee raised $4.8 Million from Shasta Ventures and Monitor Ventures.
Full Detail:http://www.tbd.com/
Thursday, August 9, 2007
FolioNow.comoffer the service of helping people create websites quickly and easily, and making them very media rich as well
FolioNow.com they offer the service of helping people create websites quickly and easily, and making them very media rich as well so they show up higher in Google and Yahoo searches. All of this is done in four easy steps, add content, add some text, create the subjects you would like you site to contain and then pick a theme. And that's it. FolioNow handles all the rest.
This simple, web-based tool was designed to make creating websites an effortless and affordable process.
You can save money using folionow.
Some people are even making money with it.
More at:http://folionow.com/
This simple, web-based tool was designed to make creating websites an effortless and affordable process.
You can save money using folionow.
Some people are even making money with it.
More at:http://folionow.com/
ClientScribe is the easiest way to keep track of any activity between you and your customers
Start managing your clients and contacts - in minutes
ClientScribe is the easiest way to keep track of any activity between you and your customers. It's a Web-based, simple-to-use system that you can access with any Internet connected PC... anytime, anywhere.
For every phone conversation, Email & fax sent, proposal submitted, or just about anything else, ClientScribe helps you manage all events and documents easily.
At ClientScribe.com the company helps business owners keep track of these sort of things. The prices are very reasonable, the smallest package is free, for ten clients or less, above that the prices can scale from $5 a month to a still reasonable $25 a month. ClientScribe can be used for not only conversation logs and contacts, but the service can be used to send and save SMS messages, emails, and faxes. If a client needs more or less storage space, they can either upgrade or downgrade their service plan at anytime.
More at:http://clientscribe.com/
ClientScribe is the easiest way to keep track of any activity between you and your customers. It's a Web-based, simple-to-use system that you can access with any Internet connected PC... anytime, anywhere.
For every phone conversation, Email & fax sent, proposal submitted, or just about anything else, ClientScribe helps you manage all events and documents easily.
At ClientScribe.com the company helps business owners keep track of these sort of things. The prices are very reasonable, the smallest package is free, for ten clients or less, above that the prices can scale from $5 a month to a still reasonable $25 a month. ClientScribe can be used for not only conversation logs and contacts, but the service can be used to send and save SMS messages, emails, and faxes. If a client needs more or less storage space, they can either upgrade or downgrade their service plan at anytime.
More at:http://clientscribe.com/
Club Penguin New Millionaires
They may be flightless in the real world but penguins are soaring in the virtual one, as borne out by Walt Disney Co.’s agreement to pay $350-million for Kelowna, B.C.-based Club Penguin.
The online club lets subscribers take on the identities of penguins that waddle and chat in spots such as a ski hill, custom-furnished igloos and a coffee shop. The deal, announced yesterday, generates a windfall for the company’s three founders, who are its only shareholders, and highlights the burgeoning appetite for social networking sites that cater to a preteen audience.
Having fended off multiple offers from venture capital investors and would-be buyers, Club Penguin’s creators decided deep-pocketed Disney would be the best partner to help a company based on a flightless bird spread its virtual wings, co-founder Lane Merrifield.
Club Penguin launched in October, 2005, and now has more than 700,000 subscribers who pay $5.95 a month or $57.95 a year. The privately held company does not release financial information, but Merrifield said it was designed to be self-sustaining from its inception and is profitable.
Founded by Merrifield, Dave Krysko and Lance Priebe, the site was designed to appeal to youngsters from 6 to 14 and provide an advertising-free zone that features penguin avatars through which subscribers chat, play games to earn cash and decorate their igloos.
The founders, who all have children of their own, wanted to create a virtual playground that would emphasize fun and creativity.
More at:http://www.clubpenguin.com/
The online club lets subscribers take on the identities of penguins that waddle and chat in spots such as a ski hill, custom-furnished igloos and a coffee shop. The deal, announced yesterday, generates a windfall for the company’s three founders, who are its only shareholders, and highlights the burgeoning appetite for social networking sites that cater to a preteen audience.
Having fended off multiple offers from venture capital investors and would-be buyers, Club Penguin’s creators decided deep-pocketed Disney would be the best partner to help a company based on a flightless bird spread its virtual wings, co-founder Lane Merrifield.
Club Penguin launched in October, 2005, and now has more than 700,000 subscribers who pay $5.95 a month or $57.95 a year. The privately held company does not release financial information, but Merrifield said it was designed to be self-sustaining from its inception and is profitable.
Founded by Merrifield, Dave Krysko and Lance Priebe, the site was designed to appeal to youngsters from 6 to 14 and provide an advertising-free zone that features penguin avatars through which subscribers chat, play games to earn cash and decorate their igloos.
The founders, who all have children of their own, wanted to create a virtual playground that would emphasize fun and creativity.
More at:http://www.clubpenguin.com/
Entrepreneur With Difference
Robert Ward (52) is a man who knows his stuff.
Not just about his chosen profession, but about buying and selling businesses too, having started, sold and then bought back his own company in October 2006.
Robert says he drifted into the financial services industry after finally realising he was never going to make it as a professional cricketer.
“I joined a firm of estate agents back in the 70s and set up a mortgage and insurance department,” he says. “It was a very innovative thing to do at that time – no one else had really done anything like that.”
When the owner of the estate agency chain died, Robert found he didn’t really get on with the new owners and so he set about looking for something new.
“Because of my work with the estate agency I had knowledge of running a business and financial services. I joined a friend from school and helped him set up a business.
“We worked together for a while, and then I thought this is silly I might as well do it myself. So I started Robert Ward & Associates on my own, in Cheltenham on 10 October 1984.”
A wealth management business, Robert Ward & Associates has clients that range from “Mr and Mrs Middle England up to very wealthy individuals”.
Taking it public
Robert had always planned to sell his business into public ownership, but was delayed as events overtook him.
“My aim was to take it public, and that was thwarted by 2001 following September 11 and the effect those events had on the financial world.
“I ended up selling in July 2003 to a quoted company.”
The company that bought Robert Ward and Associates, SP Holdings, was a sport and media company heavily involved in rights and sponsorship deals. It bought Robert’s company to be its finance arm, to provide financial services for its clients.
Although Robert had been looking to sell, he was reluctant to let the business go unless he negotiated a reasonable price.
“I had been toying with the idea of actually selling for a while when I was approached.
“We had a conversation. I told them I wasn’t going to entertain selling unless I got a certain figure. They agreed to it and I sold the business.”
Like many business owners who sell their company to another firm, Robert was asked to stay on.
“Part of the sale was that I was asked to join their business as CEO of the financial services division. It all seemed like a great idea in principle.”
A great idea it may have been, but the goalposts were soon moved.
“The chairman turned out to not be very nice,” recalls Robert. “At my first board meeting he informed me that the plc board had decided that they didn’t want me to be CEO, and that instead, they wanted me head up mergers and acquisitions. I spent a very unhappy 18 months producing businesses for them to buy.
“Cash cow”
“It was a disaster. They wouldn’t let us do our jobs properly and thought that because they had bought us they knew better than us. They were more into selling goods and products rather than advising people – which is what we do.
“I stayed around until January 2005 and then I decided it was time to leave. I tried to sell the financial services division, mainly because there was such a disparity between the board and us.
“Then it turned out that they had been using us as a cash cow and using all our money to finance other projects. They basically wrecked the balance sheet of this business in order to succeed in other areas.
“I then had to make a decision over what to do with the companies we had acquired and built into a group – one of which was mine. Despite trying to sell them, we came to the conclusion it was best just to liquidate them.”
However, when they “started shutting down businesses the plc licence was liquidated, but we still had staff all over the country.
“To try and stop making people redundant, we ‘moved’ everybody to trade off the licence of Kingston – a company we were in the process of buying. The licence was moved, but the people remained in their areas (Cheltenham, Northampton, Bournemouth, etc).”
Not only was this a very stressful time in terms of business, but Robert also underwent treatment for eye cancer, which prompted him to shut down the financial services division.
Meanwhile, SP Holdings “were concentrating on their media work. They were also doing a clothing representation deal for Manchester United, and this was all at the time when Manchester United was being sold. That all went wrong, and in May 2005 they went into administration.”
Regardless of the stress, Robert decided it was time to take matters into his own hands.
“I agreed with the liquidator, to buy everything that had belonged to SP Holdings for a fraction of what I sold it for.
“Then I worked on an agreement with Kingston – so that they kept the staff in Northampton and Bournemouth and I would take back control of Cheltenham.
“This whole process took around 18 months and Kingston eventually signed the documents, officially handing the business back to me in October 2006.”
Straight talking
Now Robert has come full circle and is back running his financial services business in Cheltenham again. Reflecting on the episode, he has mixed feelings.
“My views on the whole experience? Well it was a means to an end – it terms of actually doing it. My reasons for doing everything I did were correct.
“The one thing about selling your business is that you have no control over the people you sell your business to once you have sold it to them. Because SP Holdings paid me in shares, I lost everything that I hadn’t sold.
“Basically, the shares that I wasn’t able to sell meant nothing when the company went into administration, and as a result I lost a lot of money.”
Robert is very straight talking and is clearly a man who takes things head on.
“I am not an IFA; I am a business man. Many people are too involved with their clients and products to take the time out to understand their business and where it is going.”
Not one to rest on his laurels, Robert is already thinking about how to drive his company forward and when to jump ship.
“You always have your eye on the exit strategy. Wanting to make this company into an all-signing, all-dancing enterprise so that someone wants to buy it is no bad thing – it would be silly to ignore that.
“We are working with an internationally-based software company to try and resolve the industry conundrum of the transaction platform.
“If we can resolve the problem, then we will look to launch an internet-based, transactional IFA. The public will sign up to the site and pay a monthly fee to access the site.
“They will be able to put all their investments and accounts online, do research – basically do everything that a professional would do but without the advice.
Clearly Robert is a man always looking to improve his business. But he is equally mindful that growth for growth’s sake is not the right approach.
“It’s also our plan to continue growing slowly, with small numbers of clients. We aim to look after individuals properly – not individual investments but their entire portfolio.
“It is important to remember that the faster you grow the business, the further it gets away from your original ethical ideas.
“The more you grow, the more it tends to dumb down to what the industry norm is. If you think about it, you as the business owner have little choice other than to delegate. The more you delegate – you bring in fresh blood, but those people have other ideas from other industries and sectors – the harder it gets to control.”
Robert kindly imparted his considerable knowledge about buying, selling and starting a business for BusinessesForSale.com.
More at:http://www.businessesforsale.com/
Not just about his chosen profession, but about buying and selling businesses too, having started, sold and then bought back his own company in October 2006.
Robert says he drifted into the financial services industry after finally realising he was never going to make it as a professional cricketer.
“I joined a firm of estate agents back in the 70s and set up a mortgage and insurance department,” he says. “It was a very innovative thing to do at that time – no one else had really done anything like that.”
When the owner of the estate agency chain died, Robert found he didn’t really get on with the new owners and so he set about looking for something new.
“Because of my work with the estate agency I had knowledge of running a business and financial services. I joined a friend from school and helped him set up a business.
“We worked together for a while, and then I thought this is silly I might as well do it myself. So I started Robert Ward & Associates on my own, in Cheltenham on 10 October 1984.”
A wealth management business, Robert Ward & Associates has clients that range from “Mr and Mrs Middle England up to very wealthy individuals”.
Taking it public
Robert had always planned to sell his business into public ownership, but was delayed as events overtook him.
“My aim was to take it public, and that was thwarted by 2001 following September 11 and the effect those events had on the financial world.
“I ended up selling in July 2003 to a quoted company.”
The company that bought Robert Ward and Associates, SP Holdings, was a sport and media company heavily involved in rights and sponsorship deals. It bought Robert’s company to be its finance arm, to provide financial services for its clients.
Although Robert had been looking to sell, he was reluctant to let the business go unless he negotiated a reasonable price.
“I had been toying with the idea of actually selling for a while when I was approached.
“We had a conversation. I told them I wasn’t going to entertain selling unless I got a certain figure. They agreed to it and I sold the business.”
Like many business owners who sell their company to another firm, Robert was asked to stay on.
“Part of the sale was that I was asked to join their business as CEO of the financial services division. It all seemed like a great idea in principle.”
A great idea it may have been, but the goalposts were soon moved.
“The chairman turned out to not be very nice,” recalls Robert. “At my first board meeting he informed me that the plc board had decided that they didn’t want me to be CEO, and that instead, they wanted me head up mergers and acquisitions. I spent a very unhappy 18 months producing businesses for them to buy.
“Cash cow”
“It was a disaster. They wouldn’t let us do our jobs properly and thought that because they had bought us they knew better than us. They were more into selling goods and products rather than advising people – which is what we do.
“I stayed around until January 2005 and then I decided it was time to leave. I tried to sell the financial services division, mainly because there was such a disparity between the board and us.
“Then it turned out that they had been using us as a cash cow and using all our money to finance other projects. They basically wrecked the balance sheet of this business in order to succeed in other areas.
“I then had to make a decision over what to do with the companies we had acquired and built into a group – one of which was mine. Despite trying to sell them, we came to the conclusion it was best just to liquidate them.”
However, when they “started shutting down businesses the plc licence was liquidated, but we still had staff all over the country.
“To try and stop making people redundant, we ‘moved’ everybody to trade off the licence of Kingston – a company we were in the process of buying. The licence was moved, but the people remained in their areas (Cheltenham, Northampton, Bournemouth, etc).”
Not only was this a very stressful time in terms of business, but Robert also underwent treatment for eye cancer, which prompted him to shut down the financial services division.
Meanwhile, SP Holdings “were concentrating on their media work. They were also doing a clothing representation deal for Manchester United, and this was all at the time when Manchester United was being sold. That all went wrong, and in May 2005 they went into administration.”
Regardless of the stress, Robert decided it was time to take matters into his own hands.
“I agreed with the liquidator, to buy everything that had belonged to SP Holdings for a fraction of what I sold it for.
“Then I worked on an agreement with Kingston – so that they kept the staff in Northampton and Bournemouth and I would take back control of Cheltenham.
“This whole process took around 18 months and Kingston eventually signed the documents, officially handing the business back to me in October 2006.”
Straight talking
Now Robert has come full circle and is back running his financial services business in Cheltenham again. Reflecting on the episode, he has mixed feelings.
“My views on the whole experience? Well it was a means to an end – it terms of actually doing it. My reasons for doing everything I did were correct.
“The one thing about selling your business is that you have no control over the people you sell your business to once you have sold it to them. Because SP Holdings paid me in shares, I lost everything that I hadn’t sold.
“Basically, the shares that I wasn’t able to sell meant nothing when the company went into administration, and as a result I lost a lot of money.”
Robert is very straight talking and is clearly a man who takes things head on.
“I am not an IFA; I am a business man. Many people are too involved with their clients and products to take the time out to understand their business and where it is going.”
Not one to rest on his laurels, Robert is already thinking about how to drive his company forward and when to jump ship.
“You always have your eye on the exit strategy. Wanting to make this company into an all-signing, all-dancing enterprise so that someone wants to buy it is no bad thing – it would be silly to ignore that.
“We are working with an internationally-based software company to try and resolve the industry conundrum of the transaction platform.
“If we can resolve the problem, then we will look to launch an internet-based, transactional IFA. The public will sign up to the site and pay a monthly fee to access the site.
“They will be able to put all their investments and accounts online, do research – basically do everything that a professional would do but without the advice.
Clearly Robert is a man always looking to improve his business. But he is equally mindful that growth for growth’s sake is not the right approach.
“It’s also our plan to continue growing slowly, with small numbers of clients. We aim to look after individuals properly – not individual investments but their entire portfolio.
“It is important to remember that the faster you grow the business, the further it gets away from your original ethical ideas.
“The more you grow, the more it tends to dumb down to what the industry norm is. If you think about it, you as the business owner have little choice other than to delegate. The more you delegate – you bring in fresh blood, but those people have other ideas from other industries and sectors – the harder it gets to control.”
Robert kindly imparted his considerable knowledge about buying, selling and starting a business for BusinessesForSale.com.
More at:http://www.businessesforsale.com/
Protecting Your ID Theft
Their mission is to provide consumers with clear, objective information about the dangers of ID theft and how consumers, can protect themselves. They provide product reviews, up-to-date information on the latest scams, identity fraud statistics, a useful find a solution search tool, an ID theft quiz to establish your risk rating and the unique step-by-step programme to do all that is possible to keep your identity out of the hands of fraudsters.
This website has some very interesting features. One very interesting feature is that users can perform a quiz to see how vulnerable they are to ID theft. Another very interesting feature is that users have the option to choose either to protect their computer identity, their family's non-computer identity and also their familiy's identity. Interesting website.
More at:http://www.id-protect.co.uk/
This website has some very interesting features. One very interesting feature is that users can perform a quiz to see how vulnerable they are to ID theft. Another very interesting feature is that users have the option to choose either to protect their computer identity, their family's non-computer identity and also their familiy's identity. Interesting website.
More at:http://www.id-protect.co.uk/
Stardoll, the online paper-doll site, has added StarPlaza for fashion labels to introduce virtual collections for the site’s members
Stardoll, the online paper-doll site, has added StarPlaza for fashion labels to introduce virtual collections for the site’s members.
Stardoll is like a mall for users to dress up their virtual paper-doll-like avatars, and pay for items with virtual currency, which you’ll have to spend real cash for. So far, participating brands include Stardoll itself, Fudge, Folk, Pretty In Pink, Rio, Hola, Fallen Angel, Viole, and Tingeling. Each brand has its own store, with a different design layout. I’ve always thought that avatars would be a good way for clothing brands to participate with Internet culture. This is something we’ve seen with Yahoo avatars, Second Life and MTV’s virtual worlds, too.
More at:http://www.stardoll.com/en/
Stardoll is like a mall for users to dress up their virtual paper-doll-like avatars, and pay for items with virtual currency, which you’ll have to spend real cash for. So far, participating brands include Stardoll itself, Fudge, Folk, Pretty In Pink, Rio, Hola, Fallen Angel, Viole, and Tingeling. Each brand has its own store, with a different design layout. I’ve always thought that avatars would be a good way for clothing brands to participate with Internet culture. This is something we’ve seen with Yahoo avatars, Second Life and MTV’s virtual worlds, too.
More at:http://www.stardoll.com/en/
RotoHog is a new community for fantasy sports, full with sports leagues and cash prize contests
RotoHog is a new community for fantasy sports, full with sports leagues and cash prize contests.
You can form leagues with friends or join a public league. The difference with RotoHog is its attempt to change the fantasy sports game in terms of the draft and its trading systems. Managing your drafts and trades happens in a real-time environment and evens the playing field for all members involved. This may be more fun for some, and offers more social features that align with web 2.0 concepts. Your team will be entered into its Marshall Faulk league, making you eligible for the $100,000 grand prize and weekly prizes capping off at $30,000.
While participating in the leagues is free for members, there are a few premium services included in RotoHog that you can pay for. These include real time player price updates, scores and stats, chat, market analysis, extra public and private leagues, and watch list and player alerts. So while you can participate freely in the open market that RotoHog has to offer, you’ll have to pay in order to be the best in the league. Premium services start at about $10, which is peanuts compared to the $100k you could win, right?
More at:www.rotohog.com
You can form leagues with friends or join a public league. The difference with RotoHog is its attempt to change the fantasy sports game in terms of the draft and its trading systems. Managing your drafts and trades happens in a real-time environment and evens the playing field for all members involved. This may be more fun for some, and offers more social features that align with web 2.0 concepts. Your team will be entered into its Marshall Faulk league, making you eligible for the $100,000 grand prize and weekly prizes capping off at $30,000.
While participating in the leagues is free for members, there are a few premium services included in RotoHog that you can pay for. These include real time player price updates, scores and stats, chat, market analysis, extra public and private leagues, and watch list and player alerts. So while you can participate freely in the open market that RotoHog has to offer, you’ll have to pay in order to be the best in the league. Premium services start at about $10, which is peanuts compared to the $100k you could win, right?
More at:www.rotohog.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
