Friday, November 9, 2007

HotSwap---Post Video Ads Of Cars Online

What Company Is Offering:
HotSwap gives users a way to post video ads of their cars online, YouTube-style. Anyone can shoot a video of their car with a cell phone cam or other digital camera and upload it to the site, along with still images and a description of the car. HotSwap also throws in some useful search tools for prospective buyers. Shoppers can search for cars by their mileage and colour, for example, or post questions about the vehicle for all to view and negotiate an offer online.
How It Works:
HotSwap’s founders, who met as graduate students at the University of California, are making the site pay by providing their video services to large-scale car dealers, including AutoNation. The site has already attracted some heavy-hitting investors, including Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak and the co-founder of Clear Channel Communications, Red McCombs.
How Is It Different:
What really separates HotSwap from the crowd of online-classified purveyors is the friendly feel of the site: more visually appealing than Craigslist, and not as commercial as cars.com. HotSwap’s organizers even advise sellers not to edit their videos into slick presentations, saying the home-produced uploads give viewers a more believable impression of a vehicle being sold. Believability isn’t a word often associated with used car sales, and it could end up being the biggest factor in HowSwap’s success. And something for anyone in online sales to learn from.
More at:http://www.hotswap.com/

Home Equity Share ----The online marketplace for real estate co-ownership

What Company Is Offering:
Home Equity Share is the online marketplace for real estate co-ownership. We help home buyers overcome the high price of real estate by matching them with investors, allowing both parties to co-own property and enjoy the benefits.
How It Works:
Use Home Equity Share to find a real-estate partner, calculate your profit potential, and complete the Equity Sharing Agreement, all for free. At HomeEquityShare.com, a Web site that matches prospective home buyers with real-estate investors, individuals making successful connections receive a free equity-share agreement.
How Equity Sharing Works:
In equity-sharing, the occupant is required by the Internal Revenue Service to pay rent to the investor for the portion of the property that the investor owns. The amount depends first on what the property could rent for in the open market. Say the fair-market rental value is $2,000 and the investor's ownership stake is 20%. That means $400 a month is owed to the investor.

Then, if the investor pays for expenses such as insurance, maintenance, association dues and property taxes, the rent can just be considered reimbursement for those costs.

The investor can deduct those expenses from his or her taxable income in an amount equal to—and in some cases exceeding—the rental income. If the deductible expenses, which are considered "passive" investment losses, add up to more than the rent, the excess may be carried over to future years or taken as a deduction against other passive investment gains such as those arising from other rental income or the eventual sale of the property.

The success of co-ownership arrangements hinges on having a well-crafted equity-sharing .
More at:http://www.homeequityshare.com/

Frame Media Got $2 million in series A funding

About Company:
FrameChannel, Frame Media's leading Web-service platform, enables wireless digital frame owners to program the delivery of dynamic content from a number of different sources. Users have the ability to select, program and manage personal photos, along with content from hundreds of content feeds including sports, traffic and entertainment news. According to a recent IDC study, "the 2.8 million digital frames sold in 2006 are predicted to grow to 42.3 million units by 2011, most of which will be Wi-Fi enabled."(1)( I reviewd this site before).
How Much They Got From VCs:
They have $2 million in series A funding. Funding was co-led by CommonAngels and Longworth Venture Partners.
What's the purpose of raising fund:
Frame Media will use the capital to advance its position as the leading Web platform to manage content for wireless digital picture frames. Frame Media is currently working with a number of major frame manufacturers and semiconductor companies to ensure their products will be compatible with FrameChannel in time for the holiday season. Additionally, this funding will allow Frame Media to begin a hiring initiative. The company expects to expand its workforce across all departments.

more at:http://www.framemedia.com/

Zoogmo----Your Online Backup Community

What Company says:
At Zoogmo our mission is to create solutions that help encourage people to proactively backup their precious data BEFORE disaster strikes. Zoogmo makes backup cool by using existing internet connections, available space on computers and your great relationships with your friends to automatically and securely back up your files for FREE to a place you trust.
How It Works:
Zoogmo is secure and easy to use. It operates by backing up your data over the internet or within a LAN to your own computers or the computers of your trusted friends, family and colleagues. Zoogmo gives you free, unlimited offsite backup. No monthly fees to use some company’s bandwidth and servers since we efficiently use disc space you have and bandwidth you are already paying for. Where else can you get so much goodness for free?

Is It Safe:
Before your files leave your computer, they are fully encrypted and remain that way crossing the internet and while stored on your partners’ computers. No one but you, neither Zoogmo nor your backup partners, has access to .
More at:http://www.zoogmo.com/faq.htm

Fring---For Free Mobile Calls

What Company Is Offering:
fring™ is a free mobile VoIP application that enables free mobile internet calls and live chat (IM) to other ‘fringsters’ and PC-based services including Skype®, Google Talk™, ICQ, MSN® Messenger and Twitter, using free Wi-Fi or your 3G or GPRS internet data plan instead of costly mobile airtime minutes.
With fring, you’ll gain benefits previously only found only on the PC and get empowered with mobility as never before: make cheap mobile internet calls, see who’s online before dialing with contact availability indicators (presence), live chat instead of SMS, engage in multiple conversations simultaneously, view conversation history and more! Take all your fring, Skype, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN Messenger and Twitter buddies with you wherever you go and view them, along with your regular phone contacts, from one integrated and searchable contact list.
How It Works:
The fring™ mobile VoIP solution is designed to optimize the embedded internet capabilities within the subscriber's handset. The fring™ solution establishes a Peer-To-Peer VoIP connection between calling parties, enabling true VoIP sessions between fring enabled handsets and also between handsets and PCs.

fring™ is based on a unique thin-client technology that for the first time enables true VoIP over 3G, GPRS and Wi-Fi networks. fring™ dynamically adapts itself to the optimal network and handset characteristics while enabling seamless roaming VoIP on multiple networks. The dedicated three-sided P2P network architecture has been developed to support near telco-grade voice quality and network efficiency.

fring™ leverages the Internet connectivity traditionally used for mobile email retrieval and web browsing to provide mobile-VoIP communications so users can talk and instant message for free!:

fring automatically roams between Wi-Fi and 3G networks, you can effortlessly login to recognized Wi-Fi hotspots, mindlessly gaining access to the best network for optimal call quality and savings.
More at:http://www.fring.com/

MerchantCircle----Business Marketing

What Company Is Offering:
They are a privately-funded business based in Silicon Valley, dedicated to helping local businesses get more customers quickly, easily and cost effectively. They know you've got a business to run, and you can't spare millions of dollars and extra employees to manage your advertising and marketing efforts. We don't think you should have to. Instead, let us help you.
How It Works:
MerchantCircle helps you tap into the power of the Local Internet to reach these potential local customers, who are online right now, searching for deals, recommendations and information in your community. They created simple tools to help you to promote your products and services, and designed our site to get your business listed higher in search engine results on engines such as Google and Yahoo. They developed free tools that help you develop a dynamic business listing and raise your visibility in search results. Moreover, we offer additional affordable service packages that leave phone book ads in the dust for a fraction of your budget.

Who Is Backing This Site:

MerchantCircle is led by an experienced team and funded by investors who share our vision and believe in the power of local businesses. Our backers include Rustic Canyon Partners, Scale Venture Partners and Disney's Steamboat Ventures, who each bring their specialized expertise to help us develop and improve your MerchantCircle experience.

Rustic Canyon has a deep understanding of small business advertising, earned in part through their experiences with the LA Times and City Search. Rustic Canyon was established in September 1999 to invest a portion of the funds created by a recapitalization of The Times Mirror Company (since acquired by the Tribune Company). Their Managing Partner, Tom Unterman, previously served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Times Mirror, where he supervised its investments, including an active venture capital investment program that included companies such as Netscape, City Search, and WebTV.

Scale Venture Partners employs a thesis-based strategy to identify innovative development-stage technology and healthcare investments. The ScaleVP team works with technology and healthcare companies to accelerate their growth and become more valuable to entrepreneurs, investors and consumers. Based in Foster City, California, the ScaleVP team collectively offers decades of technology and venture industry experience to development-stage companies in hardware, software, healthcare and medical devices. Representative portfolio companies include Alimera, Frontbridge, Glu Mobile, Good Technology, Monolithic Power Systems, Omniture, Orexigen, Placeware, ScanSafe, Seattle Genetics, Somaxon, Wayport and Xceive. For more information, visit www.scalevp.com

Disney's Steamboat Ventures helps companies succeed in emerging media and entertainment markets, and has extensive experience in advertising and developing truly local experiences. Disney owns an interest in 72 ABC radio stations, 10 television stations and many theme parks. In addition, Steamboat Ventures has an extensive investment portfolio, including advertising companies Quigo, who helps advertisers reach millions of targeted customers, and FastClick, (now ValueClick Media,) one of the first online advertising networks.


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

BricaBox----For Publishing And Connecting Information

What Company Is Offering:
NewYork based BricaBox launched an interesting publishing platform at BlogWorldExpo providing enhanced features for blogs and wikis with large directories. Early examples of content produced using the alpha version include a New York Tech Directory and a listing of eating establishments throughout NYC created by CEO Nick Westheimer.
How It Works:
Using their technology, anyone can make a website about topic or collection of information they want. Then, anyone in the world can visit that site, use the information as a resource, and even add more information to it. Think about it like wikipedia, only smarter; or like a blogging platform, only more versatile.

Why Is It Differnt:

BricaBox, culminates some diverse elements previously spread across numerous platforms. For example, BricaBox enables users to add maps instantaneously for collaboration on data outside of text and images. This lessens the need for embedding and regurgitation of commentary from different community outlets. Take a look at the previously mentioned Nate’s List, which documents opinionated reviews of the “awesomest places to get food and drinks in New York City.
More at:http://www.bricabox.com/

DotComPreneur.com---Internet Business Or Internet Entrepreneur

What Company Is About:
DotComPreneur is defined as a person who aspires to start, build or grow an Internet business, such as an Internet entrepreneur or someone who operates an online venture. This includes bloggers, Internet marketers, domain name investors, joint venture brokers, affiliate marketers, webmasters, information product creators, etc.
How It Works:

Dotcompreneur.com has detailed and innovative information that will help you glide through sticky situations or propel to the next level of success. The idea is that all news and information related to this subject are organized into easily searchable categories. Site visitors can check out the weekly section, “Monday Momentum,” to find tips and ideas on how to start the week off with a bang, not a bad word. Internet entrepreneurs who are looking for the real tactical goods can check out “Tools of the Trade” and “Secrets of Success” where accomplished and experienced business people give their best advice and hints. Also, since this is a dotcom site, there are tons of articles on blogging and how to work with Adsense and other programs.
More at:http://dotcompreneur.com/