Saturday, September 29, 2007

Site24x7 is a simple hosted web site monitoring service that works around the clock making sure that websites are performing flawlessly

What Company is Offering:
Site24x7 checks for the response time and availability of your website. For example, you can add a URL, say http://mycommerce.com, for monitoring. You can set a threshold for a web page such that - if the page load time of that page is more than 3 seconds, you should be notified through EMail, SMS and RSS. This helps you in taking quick action before it affects end users.
How It Works:
Site24x7 is a simple hosted web site monitoring service that works around the clock making sure that websites are performing flawlessly. There are six main functions that Site24x7 takes care of: website availability, tracking website performance, web application monitoring, web page defacement, instant alerts, and reports and trends. Each of these areas are consistently checked, reported, updated and fixed if need be. These reports help the site management see the flaws of their system and help to improve the site experience. One of the most important facets of Site24x7 is that it immediately alerts the manager when their site goes down. The manager is contacted by email, SMS and RSS so they are aware of outages and can react accordingly.
More at:http://site24x7.com/index.html

Mint For Money Management

What Company is Offering:
Mint connects nightly to the credit card providers, banks, and/or credit unions you choose to keep your transactions and account balances automatically up-to-date. Mint even auto-balances your checkbook and auto-categorizes your transactions. Set it up once and you’re done.
Mint is a modern, powerful, easy and secure web-based solution for managing your finances. And it’s free. You register anonymously using any valid email address, and then add the log-in information for the online bank, credit union and credit card accounts you want to consolidate in Mint.

Mint connects to over 3,500 US financial institutions. Your account information is updated each night. Mint automatically categorizes all your purchases, showing you how much you spend on gas, groceries, parking, rent, restaurants, DVD rentals and more, with amazing precision. An advanced alerting system highlights any unusual activity, low balances, unwanted fees and charges, and upcoming bills so you’re in constant contact with your money – effortlessly. “
How It Works:
Mint automatically brings together information from your bank, credit union and credit card data and organizes your financial life into a manageable view. Mint is already known for its cool and un-intimidating data displays and suggestions. The suggestions are a huge part of Mint that separates it from the pack. Mint immediately starts to offer money-saving and money-making tips for its users at an average of $1,000 in savings opportunities during the first season. The suggestions are sourced from a patent-pending search algorithm that searches for the best interest rates and lowest prices and best deals in all areas from banking to cable providers. Mint updates your account every night and is “always on” sending alerts on low balances, upcoming bills, or any unusual activity on your account. Finally, Mint can be accessed from anywhere at anytime on the web.
More at:http://www.mint.com/

MarketWatch Community is a free service that lets you discover, organize and share MarketWatch stories with other readers

What Company Is Offering:
MarketWatch Community is a free service that lets you discover, organize and share MarketWatch stories with other readers. Its new social site from Dow Jones owned financial site MarketWatch.
How It Works:
The community site gives its members the chance to decide what news stories or stocks are particularly worth paying attention to. Its UI is similar to that of its parent site, but with a less rigid newspaper feel and plenty of 2.0 features to capture the attention of old and new users alike. The site offers readers an easy way to give feedback and comment on stories, as well as to share their fav stocks of the day. Other social staples include tags, ratings, friends, and the community controlled Hot Picks page. For recommendations and tips, members can solicit a friend request. They can also display their stock prowess by making picks, and measuring their accuracy.
More at:http://community.marketwatch.com/

MicroPledge For free market-testing service to gauge the reception for new software products and features.

What company Says:
Have an idea? Just need funding?
Want to join with others to support to an idea?
This site is for you."microPledge" is sure its site will come to be viewed as a free market-testing service to gauge the reception for new software products and features.
How It Works:

Anyone with an idea for useful software can submit it on the site. Others who like it can then pledge money to help see the vision realized. Developers browsing the site can submit quotes for creating the software; the one with the best quote after two weeks is chosen for the job. Those who pledged, meanwhile, get to have a say in how the product takes form. The New Zealand-based site was launched in August by three business-minded brothers. They explain: "Being people with plenty of ideas, we kept wanting to start projects—the kind we knew people would find interesting. If we could only get people to pledge to support them ... Then one day it dawned on us that we had to run the service ourselves."
more at:http://micropledge.com/

Brandfame is the premier marketplace connecting brands and producers sharing their videos on video-sharing websites like YouTube

What Company Is Offering:
Brandfame is the premier marketplace connecting brands and producers sharing their videos on video-sharing websites like YouTube, metacafe, AOL Video, Revver, etc ... for live product placement and sponsorship deals.
How It Works:
Advertisers can list products they'd like to have featured in videos, and search for upcoming videos by producers to find a match for their brand. Producers indicate which productions they're willing to integrate products into, and can search for brands or products they'd like to work with. Once a deal has been made, the advertiser pays the producer, and Brandfame takes a cut. The startup is also working on an auction system for advertisers to bid on product placement in new videos by hot producers.
More at: www.brandfame.com

Online Receipt Organizer

Shoeboxed.com, a startup based in Durham, North Carolina, promises a way to safely store them. Anyone can sign up for the free service. Once enrolled, users receive an email address which they can give to merchants when buying online. The receipts then go to their Shoeboxed mailbox, where they’re safely stored. Better yet, the service allows members to organize their receipts by creating virtual shoeboxes, for a recent vacation or a series of tax-deductible home-office purchases, for example. Result: no more hunting for receipts in shoeboxes of the cardboard variety, or in a regular email inbox. Shoeboxed recently added a feature that allows users to scan in paper receipts for storage on the site.

All students from Duke University, the Shoeboxed team launched the service from a Soviet-era East Berlin apartment, during a study-abroad stint in Germany. Shoeboxed’s founders hope to eventually sign on 11 million users or 10 percent of US online shoppers. Next step: going global. As the number of users grows, so will the value of their enterprise to potential advertisers and those who wish to offer scaled-up pay versions of the service. Shoeboxed isn’t currently monetizing their product, and is operating on money from their angel investor. In the future, Shoeboxed aims to have several revenue streams (none of which involve selling personal information). They’ll likely offer a premium service at some point, but the core functionality will always be free.
More at: www.shoeboxed.com
Via-Springwise