Web 2.0 Marketplace:
–Websites for Sale
–Websites Wanted
–Jobs Available
–Jobs Wanted
–Facebook Development Services
–Software providers
–Consulting
–Events
…and much more to come.
It works the same as classifieds listings, with a flat rate of what we expect to be around $120/month, but I’d welcome your feedback on that. All listings will be syndicated through the Mashable feed. We’re serving 5 million+ pageviews/month now, so plenty of eyeballs on your listings.
if you are selling your site or services, go and list on the marketplace. You’ll see a free option in the listing price, which provides one week for free if you post within the next 48 hours or so. After the week is up, you won’t be billed: your listing will just be retired and you can choose to relist if you want.
More at:http://market.mashable.com/
Via-Mash
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
iSkoot extends the reach of PC Calling by allowing users to make and receive PC Calls using only their regular cell phones
iSkoot extends the reach of PC Calling by allowing users to make and receive PC Calls using only their regular cell phones.
With iSkoot, a mobile phone user gets the power of PC Calling as part of their normal communications capabilities. iSkoot eliminates the need for special hardware, headsets, microphones, broadband connections, USB phones and even PCs, and consumers don't have to go looking for a WiFi hot spot.
This program links your mobile phone to your Skype buddy list - and soon they will be able to do it for Google Talk and Yahoo as well - so you can communicate with these contacts via mobile phone. You can use iSkoot with your Blackberry, too. iSkoot provides a relatively cheap way to make international calls (of course, you have to be in a WIFI zone) and it's also a handy chat device. The application is supposed to be easy to install, and it's free for now.
More at:http://www.iskoot.com/
With iSkoot, a mobile phone user gets the power of PC Calling as part of their normal communications capabilities. iSkoot eliminates the need for special hardware, headsets, microphones, broadband connections, USB phones and even PCs, and consumers don't have to go looking for a WiFi hot spot.
This program links your mobile phone to your Skype buddy list - and soon they will be able to do it for Google Talk and Yahoo as well - so you can communicate with these contacts via mobile phone. You can use iSkoot with your Blackberry, too. iSkoot provides a relatively cheap way to make international calls (of course, you have to be in a WIFI zone) and it's also a handy chat device. The application is supposed to be easy to install, and it's free for now.
More at:http://www.iskoot.com/
First Meta Library
The Open Library is an ambitious project. When and if completed it could become a great resource for college students, researchers, and anyone who loves books.
The OpenLibrary aims to be the source for information about all the world’s books. Essentially, it acts as a metalibrary. While no one location can house all of the world’s countless books, there can be a place where you can find information about those books, which is precisely what the Open Library hopes to achieve. Search for books either by title or publisher and you’ll find information about the author, along with publishers, and availability for purchase or download. Some books are as full texts that can be searched by page. Each informational page on the Open Library site can be edited, and all edits are stored for comparison. The site is still being developed, so not all features work. Check back for new features.
More at:http://www.demo.openlibrary.org/
The OpenLibrary aims to be the source for information about all the world’s books. Essentially, it acts as a metalibrary. While no one location can house all of the world’s countless books, there can be a place where you can find information about those books, which is precisely what the Open Library hopes to achieve. Search for books either by title or publisher and you’ll find information about the author, along with publishers, and availability for purchase or download. Some books are as full texts that can be searched by page. Each informational page on the Open Library site can be edited, and all edits are stored for comparison. The site is still being developed, so not all features work. Check back for new features.
More at:http://www.demo.openlibrary.org/
Inspiring Business Idea Or Story Of Becoming Rich With Farming
IN 1961, William and Lucille Salatin moved their young family to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, purchasing the most worn-out, eroded, abused farm in the area near Staunton. Using nature as a pattern, they and their children began the healing and innovation that now supports three generations.
Disregarding conventional wisdom, the Salatins planted trees, built huge compost piles, dug ponds, moved cows daily with portable electric fencing, and invented portable sheltering systems to produce all their animals on perennial prairie polycultures.
Today the farm arguably represents America’s premier non-industrial food production oasis. Believing that the Creator’s design is still the best pattern for the biological world, the Salatin family invites like-minded folks to join in the farm’s mission: to develop emotionally, economically, environmentally enhancing agricultural enterprises and facilitate their duplication throughout the world.
The Salatins continue to refine their models to push environmentally-friendly farming practices toward new levels of expertise.
Small farms typically offer quiet pastoral scenes of rolling pastures, grazing animals, weathered barns, and a chicken coop or two.
Polyface Farm, a 550-acre spread in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, is different. The rolling pastures are there all right—but quiet they're not. Each day, men move fences, roll portable henhouses, and redirect cattle from one area to another for grazing. Trees are cut down for lumber and pigs set loose to roll in wood chips and cow manure to create compost.
It's all part of a plan that the owner, celebrity farmer Joel Salatin, carefully honed over the past 25 years to maximize productivity of his 100 acres of farmland and 450 acres of trees. He says the mobile approach enables him to produce not only much more beef, chicken, pork, and eggs than he could ever have done using conventional farming techniques, but better-tasting and more nutritious products as well.
The goal of the mobile approach is to systematically use the manure from his animals as fertilizer for his pasture, thus reducing his energy and feed costs. It's his secret quality-improvement ingredient. He figures his farm's revenue at about $3,000 per acre, vs. about $150 per acre for typical small and medium-sized farms that emphasize grazing. “We can feed the world with this technology,” says an exuberant Salatin, who has written several books describing his techniques and offers popular weekend seminars to farmers and wannabes.
More at:http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
Disregarding conventional wisdom, the Salatins planted trees, built huge compost piles, dug ponds, moved cows daily with portable electric fencing, and invented portable sheltering systems to produce all their animals on perennial prairie polycultures.
Today the farm arguably represents America’s premier non-industrial food production oasis. Believing that the Creator’s design is still the best pattern for the biological world, the Salatin family invites like-minded folks to join in the farm’s mission: to develop emotionally, economically, environmentally enhancing agricultural enterprises and facilitate their duplication throughout the world.
The Salatins continue to refine their models to push environmentally-friendly farming practices toward new levels of expertise.
Small farms typically offer quiet pastoral scenes of rolling pastures, grazing animals, weathered barns, and a chicken coop or two.
Polyface Farm, a 550-acre spread in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, is different. The rolling pastures are there all right—but quiet they're not. Each day, men move fences, roll portable henhouses, and redirect cattle from one area to another for grazing. Trees are cut down for lumber and pigs set loose to roll in wood chips and cow manure to create compost.
It's all part of a plan that the owner, celebrity farmer Joel Salatin, carefully honed over the past 25 years to maximize productivity of his 100 acres of farmland and 450 acres of trees. He says the mobile approach enables him to produce not only much more beef, chicken, pork, and eggs than he could ever have done using conventional farming techniques, but better-tasting and more nutritious products as well.
The goal of the mobile approach is to systematically use the manure from his animals as fertilizer for his pasture, thus reducing his energy and feed costs. It's his secret quality-improvement ingredient. He figures his farm's revenue at about $3,000 per acre, vs. about $150 per acre for typical small and medium-sized farms that emphasize grazing. “We can feed the world with this technology,” says an exuberant Salatin, who has written several books describing his techniques and offers popular weekend seminars to farmers and wannabes.
More at:http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
Looking Good Venture
Adzilla is provides a product for behavioral targeted advertising
Adzilla has a demo page, however you must email them for a demo, so the following is what we understand their business/products to be based on reading their site and press release.
Adzilla operates a platform that enables internet service providers to deliver targeted advertising based on action-based behavioral and demographic information to publisher sites and advertising networks. Adzilla creates revenue for the ISPs using information found in ISP subscriber browsing streams.
ZILLAcasting is a an online content management and distribution system that provides precise audience targeting, in development for the last three years. They state the content placement (various types of advertisements) are placed in the browser. Their product is currently deployed with eight ISPs.
They are currently headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, and are opening an office in San Francisco, CA.
They Raised:Adzilla raised $10.25 Million in series A financing from Norwest Venture Partners and Alloy Ventures.
More at:http://www.adzilla.com/
Adzilla has a demo page, however you must email them for a demo, so the following is what we understand their business/products to be based on reading their site and press release.
Adzilla operates a platform that enables internet service providers to deliver targeted advertising based on action-based behavioral and demographic information to publisher sites and advertising networks. Adzilla creates revenue for the ISPs using information found in ISP subscriber browsing streams.
ZILLAcasting is a an online content management and distribution system that provides precise audience targeting, in development for the last three years. They state the content placement (various types of advertisements) are placed in the browser. Their product is currently deployed with eight ISPs.
They are currently headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, and are opening an office in San Francisco, CA.
They Raised:Adzilla raised $10.25 Million in series A financing from Norwest Venture Partners and Alloy Ventures.
More at:http://www.adzilla.com/
Classmates.com Going For IPO
Classmates.com was the “first” social network is any real sense: launched in 1995, it came 2 years before SixDegrees, 4 years before Epinions’ Circle of Trust and a full 7 years before Friendster defined the model we know today. When asked, I say that Classmates.com was the first. No doubt others will disagree.
This aging social network isn’t dead yet. Today, Classmates.com filed with the SEC for a $125 million IPO. The company, which was acquired by United Online in 2004 for $100 million, is being spun off as Classmates Media, consisting of Classmates.com and the Mypoints.com online loyalty scheme. Its class A shares will appear on the NASDAQ with the ticker “CLAS”. At the end of June, the site had 50 million registered users and 2.7 million paid accounts.
But all is not well. ZDnet reports that the company had a net loss of $250,000 on revenue of $42.4 million for the period ending March 31 2007. Meanwhile, there’s one huge competitor that has already eaten their lunch: Facebook. Not to mention that MySpace, Bebo, Piczo, hi5, Multiply and many others offer better services for free.
more at:http://www.classmates.com/
Via-Mash
This aging social network isn’t dead yet. Today, Classmates.com filed with the SEC for a $125 million IPO. The company, which was acquired by United Online in 2004 for $100 million, is being spun off as Classmates Media, consisting of Classmates.com and the Mypoints.com online loyalty scheme. Its class A shares will appear on the NASDAQ with the ticker “CLAS”. At the end of June, the site had 50 million registered users and 2.7 million paid accounts.
But all is not well. ZDnet reports that the company had a net loss of $250,000 on revenue of $42.4 million for the period ending March 31 2007. Meanwhile, there’s one huge competitor that has already eaten their lunch: Facebook. Not to mention that MySpace, Bebo, Piczo, hi5, Multiply and many others offer better services for free.
more at:http://www.classmates.com/
Via-Mash
BuiltWith is a new service that lets you search for a website, and it will tell you what’s going on behind the scenes
BuiltWith is a new service that lets you search for a website, and it will tell you what’s going on behind the scenes.
For instance, you can search for a site and BuiltWith will pull up what language the site was built in, what services it uses for analytics and tracking, what server it goes through, which widgets are shown on the site, etc. It will also show data on the site’s advertising methods, aggregation functionality, document information and encoding. The basic analytics report you’ll find with BuiltWith is powered by Compete, but there are also links for you to gain additional information from sites like Alexa and Technorati.
The company has determined the different aspects of a website that it would get information for, so when you type in your search query, BuiltWith returns results that match up with the aspects it can profile. That being said, some information can fall through the cracks if you’re seeking out something that BuiltWith doesn’t look for, or if the site developer has inhibited a particular feature from being seen.
Another useful tool that BuiltWith offers is the percentage of other sites profiled in its database that use each metric that’s considered for this site profiling tool. It won’t indicate what sites these are, and there’s no directory of sites that it’s profiled (though there is a tag cloud for popular searches), so this tool is best used as a point of reference in regards to a particular site’s place in comparison with others BuiltWith has looked at. It would additionally be helpful for developers to search by the different aspects that BuiltWith gets information for.
More at:http://builtwith.com/
For instance, you can search for a site and BuiltWith will pull up what language the site was built in, what services it uses for analytics and tracking, what server it goes through, which widgets are shown on the site, etc. It will also show data on the site’s advertising methods, aggregation functionality, document information and encoding. The basic analytics report you’ll find with BuiltWith is powered by Compete, but there are also links for you to gain additional information from sites like Alexa and Technorati.
The company has determined the different aspects of a website that it would get information for, so when you type in your search query, BuiltWith returns results that match up with the aspects it can profile. That being said, some information can fall through the cracks if you’re seeking out something that BuiltWith doesn’t look for, or if the site developer has inhibited a particular feature from being seen.
Another useful tool that BuiltWith offers is the percentage of other sites profiled in its database that use each metric that’s considered for this site profiling tool. It won’t indicate what sites these are, and there’s no directory of sites that it’s profiled (though there is a tag cloud for popular searches), so this tool is best used as a point of reference in regards to a particular site’s place in comparison with others BuiltWith has looked at. It would additionally be helpful for developers to search by the different aspects that BuiltWith gets information for.
More at:http://builtwith.com/
Tinderhouse
With Tinderhouse Publishing all that needs to be done is to send all of the print ready information to Tinderhouse and they will take care of all the reformatting that has to occur to make the information internet ready. Making magazines to into websites is a no brainer for companies so they can monetize their sites and garner extra advertising revenue. The site works on a fixed price basis so it is easy to budget for and outsourcing this work frees the magazine publishers to do what they do best and not worry about that which they aren't the experts in. A company can also outsource its internet advertising to Tinderhouse Publishing if it wishes to do so.
More at:http://www.tinderhousepublishing.com/
More at:http://www.tinderhousepublishing.com/
Monday, August 13, 2007
"DailyDump" Unique Business Idea
A new start-up in Bangalore, India, hopes to arm consumers with products and services to empower them toward a simple solution for reducing landfill waste: composting. The Daily Dump offers an array of decorative composting containers that can be used in the home to manage organic household waste and convert it to useful high-quality compost. What's more, they offer a full range of service plans for customers wary of braving the ordeal on their own.
Composting pots and vessels made of biodegradable terracotta in a variety of shapes and sizes can be purchased on the website, which features a guide to help customers choose which is right for their needs. Rakes, spoons, spatulas and other supplies are also available. The website offers extensive information and tips, such as what items can and can't compost. Consumers who lack the time or desire to care for their composting pot can select a weekly, fortnightly or monthly service plan, with a Daily Dump ‘servicewalla’ dropping by to take care of maintenance: cleaning pots, adding dry leaves and stirring the compost. Those who don’t mind doing their own maintenance can opt out of the service plan and call Daily Dump when they have an issue that needs to be addressed by a professional.
The Daily Dump currently is limited to small residential composting, but the company has big plans for expanding its operations to include composting products for businesses and larger homes, solutions for dealing with inorganic waste and further ventures to address larger urban environmental issues. In the meantime, they hope to inspire others to invest in composting—and, as such, are not likely to mind much if copycat companies begin popping up in other parts of the globe, making it easy for them to be green.
More at:http://dailydump.org/
Composting pots and vessels made of biodegradable terracotta in a variety of shapes and sizes can be purchased on the website, which features a guide to help customers choose which is right for their needs. Rakes, spoons, spatulas and other supplies are also available. The website offers extensive information and tips, such as what items can and can't compost. Consumers who lack the time or desire to care for their composting pot can select a weekly, fortnightly or monthly service plan, with a Daily Dump ‘servicewalla’ dropping by to take care of maintenance: cleaning pots, adding dry leaves and stirring the compost. Those who don’t mind doing their own maintenance can opt out of the service plan and call Daily Dump when they have an issue that needs to be addressed by a professional.
The Daily Dump currently is limited to small residential composting, but the company has big plans for expanding its operations to include composting products for businesses and larger homes, solutions for dealing with inorganic waste and further ventures to address larger urban environmental issues. In the meantime, they hope to inspire others to invest in composting—and, as such, are not likely to mind much if copycat companies begin popping up in other parts of the globe, making it easy for them to be green.
More at:http://dailydump.org/
Online Publishing Tool
Create your own online magazines, fanzines, brochures, catalogues, portfolios and more. Using the formatpixel online editor you too can design page based projects, layout text, upload your own images, add interactivity and customise their appearance.
Edit the order of pages in your projects by moving, inserting or deleting pages to create multi-page presentations.
More at:http://www.formatpixel.com/
Edit the order of pages in your projects by moving, inserting or deleting pages to create multi-page presentations.
More at:http://www.formatpixel.com/
Lokad Is An Online Sales Forecasts Provider
Lokad is an online time-series forecasts provider. They claim "we deliver the most cost effective solution on the forecasting market".
This is the kind of technology that has allowed Wal-Mart to dominate the market so much, we have all heard about or seen how Wal-Mart's supply chain has enabled it to have less inventory on hand at any given time, signifigantly dropping the prices of the goods that it sells for not having to pay to have things only sit on the shelves. Lokad offers what it refers to as the "one-click" forecast, where they handle all of the graphs and difficult to understand statistical analysis and bring the answers to their clients in an easy to understand manner.
With plans starting at $20 a month it will be easy for any business to begin using this kind of technology. The costs saved by not holding onto excess inventory will easily cover the cost of paying for the service, making it an easy decision for a business owner to choose to begin the service. The Alexa Ranking illustrates that a lot of people are already visiting this site.
More at:http://www.lokad.com/
This is the kind of technology that has allowed Wal-Mart to dominate the market so much, we have all heard about or seen how Wal-Mart's supply chain has enabled it to have less inventory on hand at any given time, signifigantly dropping the prices of the goods that it sells for not having to pay to have things only sit on the shelves. Lokad offers what it refers to as the "one-click" forecast, where they handle all of the graphs and difficult to understand statistical analysis and bring the answers to their clients in an easy to understand manner.
With plans starting at $20 a month it will be easy for any business to begin using this kind of technology. The costs saved by not holding onto excess inventory will easily cover the cost of paying for the service, making it an easy decision for a business owner to choose to begin the service. The Alexa Ranking illustrates that a lot of people are already visiting this site.
More at:http://www.lokad.com/
He Made Millions With This Wacky Idea
More than 20 years ago, Tony Gutierrez dreamed of making a piece of jewelry that could double as a bar tool.
Today, his dreams are coming true.
Gutierrez, now lives in Las Vegas, where his invention, the Bottle Ring Opener, has taken off.
The Bottle Ring Opener is just what it sounds like: a bottle opener you wear as a ring. The ring looks like jewelry from the top of the hand, but on the underside is a small bottle-opening tool.
Made of coated aluminum, the rings come in several sizes and can have customized logos.
They won’t appear in stores until later this year, but they are available online for $9.99 at Bottleringopener.com. Since the site launched on June 8, about 50 rings have sold a day, Gutierrez said.
For now, he isn’t concerned about the product’s profit as much as its purpose.
“People tell me ‘money, money, money,’” he said. “I don’t care about money. I just want people to have something of mine to enjoy. By having this company here, having something to do with me — I still can’t believe it. It’s huge.”
More at:http://www.bottleringopener.com/
Today, his dreams are coming true.
Gutierrez, now lives in Las Vegas, where his invention, the Bottle Ring Opener, has taken off.
The Bottle Ring Opener is just what it sounds like: a bottle opener you wear as a ring. The ring looks like jewelry from the top of the hand, but on the underside is a small bottle-opening tool.
Made of coated aluminum, the rings come in several sizes and can have customized logos.
They won’t appear in stores until later this year, but they are available online for $9.99 at Bottleringopener.com. Since the site launched on June 8, about 50 rings have sold a day, Gutierrez said.
For now, he isn’t concerned about the product’s profit as much as its purpose.
“People tell me ‘money, money, money,’” he said. “I don’t care about money. I just want people to have something of mine to enjoy. By having this company here, having something to do with me — I still can’t believe it. It’s huge.”
More at:http://www.bottleringopener.com/
TrialIPO is an upcoming company that will let you simulate having your Internet company go public
TrialIPO is an upcoming company that will let you simulate having your Internet company go public. There are really two ways in which TrialIPO can be used: for business owners looking to test the virtual market, and for individuals wanting to be involved from the investor’s standpoint. If you have a company and you’re thinking of taking it public, you could try it out for a two-year time period (or a time period of your choosing) and see how it goes. The individuals in the TrialIPO community get $5 million in virtual money to play around with, so if they like you’re site, they’ll invest in it and you make money. Participating individuals can also rate and review companies on TrialIPO, and see if their judgment calls could hold water.
The difficulty in launching a community such as TrialIPO is the necessity to get a large and intelligent membership base to become highly active for the social networking and trading aspects of the site. It would be most beneficial for the companies if these members were in fact real investors, and bringing in members like this is a goal for TrialIPO. Otherwise, the sample pool to work from, on the company end and the community end, doesn’t become a helpful one for statistical purposes. Similar sites include Spigit and MediaPredict.
More at:http://www.trialipo.com/
Via-Mash
The difficulty in launching a community such as TrialIPO is the necessity to get a large and intelligent membership base to become highly active for the social networking and trading aspects of the site. It would be most beneficial for the companies if these members were in fact real investors, and bringing in members like this is a goal for TrialIPO. Otherwise, the sample pool to work from, on the company end and the community end, doesn’t become a helpful one for statistical purposes. Similar sites include Spigit and MediaPredict.
More at:http://www.trialipo.com/
Via-Mash
Million Dollar Contest
iYomu, the social network for grown-ups, is holding a million dollar contest.
The iYomu community will choose one single member to take home $1 million. Starting with a series of puzzles, the iYomu Challenge will weed out the finalists for the community to vote on. The series of cryptic puzzles lets contestants earn points, and once the ten finalists are chosen, they’ll have to say why they should win the $1 million prize, and how it will change their lives. The money can be used in any way the winner sees fit, and users from around the world are eligible to play. Users can also earn points by completing their profiles and referring friends.
Starting from August 13, iYomu members will be able to begin racking up points until December 31, 2007. The community picks the winner in Feburary of next year. That gives iYomu plenty of time to gain some new members and more site activity, as people will want their shot at the hefty cash prize.
More at:http://iyomu.com/
The iYomu community will choose one single member to take home $1 million. Starting with a series of puzzles, the iYomu Challenge will weed out the finalists for the community to vote on. The series of cryptic puzzles lets contestants earn points, and once the ten finalists are chosen, they’ll have to say why they should win the $1 million prize, and how it will change their lives. The money can be used in any way the winner sees fit, and users from around the world are eligible to play. Users can also earn points by completing their profiles and referring friends.
Starting from August 13, iYomu members will be able to begin racking up points until December 31, 2007. The community picks the winner in Feburary of next year. That gives iYomu plenty of time to gain some new members and more site activity, as people will want their shot at the hefty cash prize.
More at:http://iyomu.com/
VibeAgent, the hotel search tool
VibeAgent, the hotel search tool, has launched a new feature called My Maps.
it has reportedly climbed the ranks to become the 5th largest hotel site in the world. This may sound somewhat surprising, considering that VibeAgent has yet to launch, and is still in private beta, but this is largely due to VibeAgent’s new partners, OneTravel and TravelWorm. These partnerships have increased the search potential, making it the 5th largest hotel search in terms of bookable inventory. This increases the number of hotels in VibeAgent’s database to 120,000+, offering more resources for users to gather information from.
The MyMaps tool offers a personalized maps feature for users, which integrates with your existing network and throws in some geo-search functionality to top it all off. It’s also used as a search tool, helping you find new places, friends, and of course, hotels. Think of it as a geo-spatial way of managing your network.
More at:http://vibeagent.com/
it has reportedly climbed the ranks to become the 5th largest hotel site in the world. This may sound somewhat surprising, considering that VibeAgent has yet to launch, and is still in private beta, but this is largely due to VibeAgent’s new partners, OneTravel and TravelWorm. These partnerships have increased the search potential, making it the 5th largest hotel search in terms of bookable inventory. This increases the number of hotels in VibeAgent’s database to 120,000+, offering more resources for users to gather information from.
The MyMaps tool offers a personalized maps feature for users, which integrates with your existing network and throws in some geo-search functionality to top it all off. It’s also used as a search tool, helping you find new places, friends, and of course, hotels. Think of it as a geo-spatial way of managing your network.
More at:http://vibeagent.com/
StartForce.Com
You can have an online desktop with StartForce.com and all of your data saved on that online desktop, meaning that you can easily access all of the things that would usually be only on your computer from virtually anywhere, anywhere that has internet access that is. You don't have to worry about application either because Startforce comes with web application to view/edit your files without any downloading. StartForce.com doesn't cost a dime, sign up now and you can be uploading data to your online desktop within minutes.
You can store all your files and correspondence in one place on the Internet and access them from anywhere in the world. Logging into your StartForce desktop you can edit Word Processed documents and spreadsheets from this self contained desktop in your browser without having to worry about the software not being installed on the machine you are using in say an Internet cafe for example. The desktop it provides feels very much like Windows XP and provides you with:
* Web browser + favourites
* Word Processor
* Spreadsheet Program
* Games
* RSS reader
* Messenger client for ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Start Force. Which is great for people who may have this blocked on their firewall.
* Video Player
More at:http://www.startforce.com/
You can store all your files and correspondence in one place on the Internet and access them from anywhere in the world. Logging into your StartForce desktop you can edit Word Processed documents and spreadsheets from this self contained desktop in your browser without having to worry about the software not being installed on the machine you are using in say an Internet cafe for example. The desktop it provides feels very much like Windows XP and provides you with:
* Web browser + favourites
* Word Processor
* Spreadsheet Program
* Games
* RSS reader
* Messenger client for ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Start Force. Which is great for people who may have this blocked on their firewall.
* Video Player
More at:http://www.startforce.com/
Sunday, August 12, 2007
How To Know Your Market
Small businesses can now get expert insight into market research in tie-up between British Library and Yellow Pages.
Entrepreneurs and small businesses are being offered free expert advice on how to carry out essential desk research on their markets and customers, thanks to a series of special workshops being run at the British Library Business & Intellectual Property (IP) Centre (www.bl.uk/bipc) in London, sponsored by Yellow Pages.
The “Knowing Your Market” workshops are being run regularly throughout the second half of the year, following a successful pilot, and will provide SMEs with valuable insight into how best to research their specific business market.
During the two-hour sessions the Business & IP Centre’s information specialists will demonstrate the most effective ways of using the Library’s collection of published market research, business journals and high-value subscription databases, as well as showing attendees how to use internet sources available via their desktops.
The Business & IP Centre specialises in supporting SMEs from the first spark of inspiration through to eventual business launch or expansion.
Fittingly, given Yellow Pages’ sponsorship, the workshops are being held in the Centre’s “yellow” room – one of a number of colour-coded rooms.
Wendy Bridge, head of consumer development at Yell, the publisher of Yellow Pages directories, said: “Our directories are a showcase for a vast array of entrepreneurial talent throughout the UK.
“Not only do we offer predominantly small businesses a platform by which they can promote themselves through advertising, but we continually look at other ways to support them in running a successful enterprise.
"Good market research, using published information, is vital to help a business flourish, but it’s not always easy to find it, so the hands-on guidance and advice that the British Library is offering in this area is invaluable and a natural fit with the way Yell promotes UK businesses.”
Isabel Oswell, head of business marketing at the British Library, said: “You only have to watch BBC2’s Dragons’ Den to see how many entrepreneurs fall at the first hurdle because they haven’t carried out any basic market research. Yet there’s so much published information available, whether it’s free in the Centre or on the internet. In this workshop, the Centre’s information experts aim to equip people with the skills and confidence to identify and access vital published information on customers, competitors and trends.”
Details of forthcoming “Knowing Your Market” workshops at the Business & IP Centre, British Library, Euston Road, London NW1, can be obtained by visiting http://www.bl.uk/bipc/workshops.html.
Future “Knowing Your Market” workshops take place on the following dates:
4 September - 10:00am
20 September - 3:00pm
25 September - 3:00pm
Ubops.com
Entrepreneurs and small businesses are being offered free expert advice on how to carry out essential desk research on their markets and customers, thanks to a series of special workshops being run at the British Library Business & Intellectual Property (IP) Centre (www.bl.uk/bipc) in London, sponsored by Yellow Pages.
The “Knowing Your Market” workshops are being run regularly throughout the second half of the year, following a successful pilot, and will provide SMEs with valuable insight into how best to research their specific business market.
During the two-hour sessions the Business & IP Centre’s information specialists will demonstrate the most effective ways of using the Library’s collection of published market research, business journals and high-value subscription databases, as well as showing attendees how to use internet sources available via their desktops.
The Business & IP Centre specialises in supporting SMEs from the first spark of inspiration through to eventual business launch or expansion.
Fittingly, given Yellow Pages’ sponsorship, the workshops are being held in the Centre’s “yellow” room – one of a number of colour-coded rooms.
Wendy Bridge, head of consumer development at Yell, the publisher of Yellow Pages directories, said: “Our directories are a showcase for a vast array of entrepreneurial talent throughout the UK.
“Not only do we offer predominantly small businesses a platform by which they can promote themselves through advertising, but we continually look at other ways to support them in running a successful enterprise.
"Good market research, using published information, is vital to help a business flourish, but it’s not always easy to find it, so the hands-on guidance and advice that the British Library is offering in this area is invaluable and a natural fit with the way Yell promotes UK businesses.”
Isabel Oswell, head of business marketing at the British Library, said: “You only have to watch BBC2’s Dragons’ Den to see how many entrepreneurs fall at the first hurdle because they haven’t carried out any basic market research. Yet there’s so much published information available, whether it’s free in the Centre or on the internet. In this workshop, the Centre’s information experts aim to equip people with the skills and confidence to identify and access vital published information on customers, competitors and trends.”
Details of forthcoming “Knowing Your Market” workshops at the Business & IP Centre, British Library, Euston Road, London NW1, can be obtained by visiting http://www.bl.uk/bipc/workshops.html.
Future “Knowing Your Market” workshops take place on the following dates:
4 September - 10:00am
20 September - 3:00pm
25 September - 3:00pm
Ubops.com
CrowdRules is a market-testing platform
CrowdRules® is self-service audience testing. Ask questions, have the crowd submit answers, then get unbiased ratings. You can use videos photos, images, text and audio from anywhere on the web!
Anyone can search and see results, but you must be a member (and log in) to vote, to join a crowd, or to create your own crowd. Once you create a crowd, you can create your own challenges and invite people to submit answers and vote.
CrowdRules® can be used for audience testing, band battles, casting calls, film festivals, market research and a million other things. The only limit is your imagination.
features elsewhere.
CrowdRules is a market-testing platform where members can upload video, images, text, or audio, and submit questions to "the crowd" (that is, other members) for voting. Though variations on this theme exist elsewhere on the Web--FunnyOrDie comes immediately to mind--CrowdRules seems intent on offering flexibility for content beyond videos as well as working with media and entertainment companies for paid
More at:http://crowdrules.com/
Anyone can search and see results, but you must be a member (and log in) to vote, to join a crowd, or to create your own crowd. Once you create a crowd, you can create your own challenges and invite people to submit answers and vote.
CrowdRules® can be used for audience testing, band battles, casting calls, film festivals, market research and a million other things. The only limit is your imagination.
features elsewhere.
CrowdRules is a market-testing platform where members can upload video, images, text, or audio, and submit questions to "the crowd" (that is, other members) for voting. Though variations on this theme exist elsewhere on the Web--FunnyOrDie comes immediately to mind--CrowdRules seems intent on offering flexibility for content beyond videos as well as working with media and entertainment companies for paid
More at:http://crowdrules.com/
With New 8hands, the desktop tool ,you can get to all of your social networks from a single entry point, including MySpace, Facebook, Twitter etc
8hands, the desktop tool that operates as a social networking profile aggregator, has released some new features.
With the upgraded version, you can get to all of your social networks from a single entry point, including MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and more. Also note that access to Facebook friends is a new feature as well. You’ll also get real time notifications on the 8hands desktop tool, and you can chat via IM with your contacts added from your various social networks, and its new Flip! Mode view operates in a similar manner to a microblog, which is in turn better for 8hands’ drag’n'drop media-sharing capabilities. You can also keep track of your media content, as well as share it with your friends. One-click access to your friends’ social networking profiles has also been added.
While 8hands is still in its alpha phase, these tweaks improve its overall service and make it more useful as a profile aggregating and media-sharing tool. The media-sharing and chat options appear to be along the lines of what Velvet Puffin offers, too.
More at:http://8hands.com/
Via-Mash
With the upgraded version, you can get to all of your social networks from a single entry point, including MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and more. Also note that access to Facebook friends is a new feature as well. You’ll also get real time notifications on the 8hands desktop tool, and you can chat via IM with your contacts added from your various social networks, and its new Flip! Mode view operates in a similar manner to a microblog, which is in turn better for 8hands’ drag’n'drop media-sharing capabilities. You can also keep track of your media content, as well as share it with your friends. One-click access to your friends’ social networking profiles has also been added.
While 8hands is still in its alpha phase, these tweaks improve its overall service and make it more useful as a profile aggregating and media-sharing tool. The media-sharing and chat options appear to be along the lines of what Velvet Puffin offers, too.
More at:http://8hands.com/
Via-Mash
Network Bar Generator dot com was created to help network owners and webmasters
Network Bar Generator dot com was created to help network owners and webmasters provide a quick and easy way to create and manage network bars. There have been many web designers making good money off of this simple concept so they thought it only right to let the public have the control. Hopefully beginner webmasters can make some unique styles out of the styles they have setup. They will be adding more styles as they get more time. If you want to submit styles to be used on Network Bar Generator, please contact them with your CSS / images.
more at:http://www.networkbargenerator.com/
more at:http://www.networkbargenerator.com/
VideoCafe
With footage from VideoCafe, your blog could rival any trad media outlet. Although you may be able to find videos elsewhere, VideoCafe is a constant and reliable source, with direct access to the news that matters. You’ll be able to find videos easily and quickly. Videos can be directly embedded or you can download them for editing. Breathe some life into your blog, try it today.
After much demand from bloggers,
The NewsMarket, the world's leading
online platform for raw news footage,
is releasing a new Web site.
Video Café enables bloggers to use the same platform traditional media outlets use to acquire 'video from the source.
More at:http://www.thenewsmarket.com/vc/
After much demand from bloggers,
The NewsMarket, the world's leading
online platform for raw news footage,
is releasing a new Web site.
Video Café enables bloggers to use the same platform traditional media outlets use to acquire 'video from the source.
More at:http://www.thenewsmarket.com/vc/
A collaborative online service to boost productivity on professionals and workgroups
A collaborative online service to boost productivity on professionals and workgroups. Tools to organize and strength relationship among coleagues, employees, clients and suppliers. Our main services are: Online Office, Presentations and Email Marketing.
The target users of Aprex are independent professionals (attorneys, doctors, dentists...), small and medium businesss, educational institutions, governamental and non-governamental organizations, and virtually any group or individual seeking better organization and productivity. The system brings a lot of features, and at the same time remains very clean and user-friendly. Opening a free account, the user will be able to use all the features offered by Aprex.
Aprex also features email marketing campaign management tools. Execution requires a few simple steps. Templates are provided, all you’ve got to do is fill in the info and import your contact lists. A free version is available, however more advanced versions start at 19 reais for the presentation software (that’s per month) and 38 reais for the office suite.
More at:http://www.aprex.com.br/home.php
The target users of Aprex are independent professionals (attorneys, doctors, dentists...), small and medium businesss, educational institutions, governamental and non-governamental organizations, and virtually any group or individual seeking better organization and productivity. The system brings a lot of features, and at the same time remains very clean and user-friendly. Opening a free account, the user will be able to use all the features offered by Aprex.
Aprex also features email marketing campaign management tools. Execution requires a few simple steps. Templates are provided, all you’ve got to do is fill in the info and import your contact lists. A free version is available, however more advanced versions start at 19 reais for the presentation software (that’s per month) and 38 reais for the office suite.
More at:http://www.aprex.com.br/home.php
Saturday, August 11, 2007
American Dreamer
Ablade Odoi-Atsem moved to the United States from Ghana in 1984 and realized his long-held goal of becoming an entrepreneur when he launched Odoi Associates Inc. in 1998.
As founder and president of the construction, facility and energy management services company in Greenbelt, Maryland, he has overseen an impressive growth curve. Odoi-Atsem funded the startup by maxing out his personal credit, and the business has since grown into an $8.2 million venture.
His success formula is simple: “I [am] lucky to have selected the right group of people to work with.”
Government contracts are a huge part of what the business does. “Have a good relationship with the people who make the decisions in the federal arena,” Odoi-Atsem, 53, advises.
Networking and relationships are also important when it comes to government work.
And as for the future of Odoi Associates, he’s got big plans to venture into new frontiers. “The future of the company is to make sure that we diversify, go heavily into private sector work, and grow nationwide and internationally,” says the entrepreneur, who’s been able to focus his talent for construction and engineering on building a thriving business.
More at:http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/printthis/181886.html
Via-Dan Carlson
As founder and president of the construction, facility and energy management services company in Greenbelt, Maryland, he has overseen an impressive growth curve. Odoi-Atsem funded the startup by maxing out his personal credit, and the business has since grown into an $8.2 million venture.
His success formula is simple: “I [am] lucky to have selected the right group of people to work with.”
Government contracts are a huge part of what the business does. “Have a good relationship with the people who make the decisions in the federal arena,” Odoi-Atsem, 53, advises.
Networking and relationships are also important when it comes to government work.
And as for the future of Odoi Associates, he’s got big plans to venture into new frontiers. “The future of the company is to make sure that we diversify, go heavily into private sector work, and grow nationwide and internationally,” says the entrepreneur, who’s been able to focus his talent for construction and engineering on building a thriving business.
More at:http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/printthis/181886.html
Via-Dan Carlson
What does it take to run a successful small business?
What does it take to run a successful small business?
The UK is a hotbed of entrepreneurial talent, but in today’s tough markets, not all small businesses make it. To understand the secrets of SME success, BT Business commissioned a report with Alain Samson and Thorsten Roser, from London School of Economics.
They investigated how and why key decisions made by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have contributed to some being significantly more successful than others.
The report analysed and compared the following businesses:
The Body Shop – the ethical cosmetics retailer which was sold to French cosmetics giant L’Oreal in a £652 million deal
Last FM – the internet radio and music community and one of the world’s largest social music platforms which in May 2007 announced a £140 million take over by American media giant CBS
Webvan – an online credit and delivery grocery business that was started at the peak of the Dotcom boom but went bankrupt in 2001
Key Report Findings
The Dos
1) Be Different
The Body Shop has proved that by being able to distinguish yourself from competitors you will increase recognition. They did this by setting up new business units across the world and in doing so, The Body Shop has come to occupy the niche of ethical retail in health and beauty.
Last FM also achieved difference by becoming one of the first websites to allow artists to have their music streamed online. They now make a profit through advertising and selling to affiliates.
2) Collaborate
Last FM had to make the public aware of their website and find a way for people to listen without involving the music industry. They realised they needed a partner to achieve this and by working with Audioscrobbler (a system that builds personal online music profiles by monitoring what users play on their computers) Last.fm were able to boost awareness and their profile.
3) Have The X Factor
There needs to be a reason why people would buy from your business, it isn’t good enough to be the same as others on the market, you need to be better. The Body Shop achieved this by combining an issue, which people feel very passionately about: the environment, with health and beauty products.
4) Get help from others
SMEs need to focus on their business, increase turnover, and improve quality and one way of doing that outsourcing services such as IT and telecommunications. This allows SMEs time to concentrate on building their business and not worry about tasks such as fixing computers.
The Don’ts:
1) Over Promise
Webvan’s marketing promised to deliver products to customers' homes within a 30-minute window of their choosing. Unfortunately, their operations could not adequately live up to that promise, which fundamentally let down customers and lost business.
2) Ignore Strategic Partners
The main mistake Webvan made was to try and build everything on their own, instead of partnering with existing supermarket chains, wholesalers, or a network of independent grocers. Even though Webvan was popular, the enormous amount of money spent on infrastructure far exceeded their sales growth.
The conclusion of the report showed any new SME has a number of factors to consider when analysing how to become successful. Having a dynamic and original idea is important, as is using the help of others where necessary.
“With so much entrepreneurial talent in the UK, many people are looking to start up their own businesses. Alongside having great ideas, businesses need a support team to help them concentrate on what they do best. At BT Business we’re dedicated to providing IT and comms services and solutions which are designed to help small businesses compete and thrive.” said Bill Murphy, Managing Director for BT Business.”
For further information regarding BT Business log onto www.businessclub.bt.com.
The UK is a hotbed of entrepreneurial talent, but in today’s tough markets, not all small businesses make it. To understand the secrets of SME success, BT Business commissioned a report with Alain Samson and Thorsten Roser, from London School of Economics.
They investigated how and why key decisions made by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have contributed to some being significantly more successful than others.
The report analysed and compared the following businesses:
The Body Shop – the ethical cosmetics retailer which was sold to French cosmetics giant L’Oreal in a £652 million deal
Last FM – the internet radio and music community and one of the world’s largest social music platforms which in May 2007 announced a £140 million take over by American media giant CBS
Webvan – an online credit and delivery grocery business that was started at the peak of the Dotcom boom but went bankrupt in 2001
Key Report Findings
The Dos
1) Be Different
The Body Shop has proved that by being able to distinguish yourself from competitors you will increase recognition. They did this by setting up new business units across the world and in doing so, The Body Shop has come to occupy the niche of ethical retail in health and beauty.
Last FM also achieved difference by becoming one of the first websites to allow artists to have their music streamed online. They now make a profit through advertising and selling to affiliates.
2) Collaborate
Last FM had to make the public aware of their website and find a way for people to listen without involving the music industry. They realised they needed a partner to achieve this and by working with Audioscrobbler (a system that builds personal online music profiles by monitoring what users play on their computers) Last.fm were able to boost awareness and their profile.
3) Have The X Factor
There needs to be a reason why people would buy from your business, it isn’t good enough to be the same as others on the market, you need to be better. The Body Shop achieved this by combining an issue, which people feel very passionately about: the environment, with health and beauty products.
4) Get help from others
SMEs need to focus on their business, increase turnover, and improve quality and one way of doing that outsourcing services such as IT and telecommunications. This allows SMEs time to concentrate on building their business and not worry about tasks such as fixing computers.
The Don’ts:
1) Over Promise
Webvan’s marketing promised to deliver products to customers' homes within a 30-minute window of their choosing. Unfortunately, their operations could not adequately live up to that promise, which fundamentally let down customers and lost business.
2) Ignore Strategic Partners
The main mistake Webvan made was to try and build everything on their own, instead of partnering with existing supermarket chains, wholesalers, or a network of independent grocers. Even though Webvan was popular, the enormous amount of money spent on infrastructure far exceeded their sales growth.
The conclusion of the report showed any new SME has a number of factors to consider when analysing how to become successful. Having a dynamic and original idea is important, as is using the help of others where necessary.
“With so much entrepreneurial talent in the UK, many people are looking to start up their own businesses. Alongside having great ideas, businesses need a support team to help them concentrate on what they do best. At BT Business we’re dedicated to providing IT and comms services and solutions which are designed to help small businesses compete and thrive.” said Bill Murphy, Managing Director for BT Business.”
For further information regarding BT Business log onto www.businessclub.bt.com.
Jjot is an online tool that lets you take down “sticky” notes
Jjot is an online tool that lets you take down “sticky” notes.
This basic tool lets you create boards on which your sticky notes are placed. Add as many sticky notes as you’d like. Individual notes can be printed and emailed to others, or you entire note board can be printed and emailed out to others as well. There are a couple of options for your notes: text can be made in bold print, you can include hyperlinks, and you can add bullet points. You can also change the size of the notes on your board from small, medium and large, though this won’t change the size of the text inside your notes. There’s also the option of rearranging the notes on the page, and this function is similar to moving modules on your Netvibes start page. Note boards can be kept private or made searchable by the Jjot community.
More at:http://jjot.com/
This basic tool lets you create boards on which your sticky notes are placed. Add as many sticky notes as you’d like. Individual notes can be printed and emailed to others, or you entire note board can be printed and emailed out to others as well. There are a couple of options for your notes: text can be made in bold print, you can include hyperlinks, and you can add bullet points. You can also change the size of the notes on your board from small, medium and large, though this won’t change the size of the text inside your notes. There’s also the option of rearranging the notes on the page, and this function is similar to moving modules on your Netvibes start page. Note boards can be kept private or made searchable by the Jjot community.
More at:http://jjot.com/
Edgeio has created a widget that lets you distribute content and enables you to sell content directly through the widget as well
Edgeio has created a widget that lets you distribute content and enables you to sell content directly through the widget as well.
This makes it easier to distribute content because it allows customers to purchase the content via the widget, and view it immediately through the widget as well. It removes steps for paid content, and allows publishers to expand on the places their content can be seen. What’s more, is as a widget distributor, you can take a cut of the sales made. This is like earning ad revenue, but for direct sales of content, instead.
The widget can be used by any publisher, from a newspaper to an e-zine or a blog. Pick and choose which content will be sold through the widget (podcasts, text, images, etc.) and place it on your site or encourage others to place it on their site as well. It’s a good way for publishers to retain their branding while spreading full access to their content. I consider this a good way of taking what Scribd has made popular and applying it to branded, paid content distribution.
More at:http://www.edgeio.com/
This makes it easier to distribute content because it allows customers to purchase the content via the widget, and view it immediately through the widget as well. It removes steps for paid content, and allows publishers to expand on the places their content can be seen. What’s more, is as a widget distributor, you can take a cut of the sales made. This is like earning ad revenue, but for direct sales of content, instead.
The widget can be used by any publisher, from a newspaper to an e-zine or a blog. Pick and choose which content will be sold through the widget (podcasts, text, images, etc.) and place it on your site or encourage others to place it on their site as well. It’s a good way for publishers to retain their branding while spreading full access to their content. I consider this a good way of taking what Scribd has made popular and applying it to branded, paid content distribution.
More at:http://www.edgeio.com/
ElephantDrive is committed to providing individuals and businesses simple but powerful tools for protecting and accessing their data
ElephantDrive is committed to providing individuals and businesses simple but powerful tools for protecting and accessing their data. We want ordinary people to enjoy the peace of mind that comes from the type of enterprise-class backup, storage, and data management that has historically only been available to big corporations. And we've made it so simple.
The smallest plan is free if you are looking to store anything less than 1 GB, the next step up saves 100 GBs for only $10 a month, and a whopping 1 TB of space for $35 a month. Some information is too valuable to keep on the computer, if it crashes you may lose everything. At first this was mostly for big companies, but now with it becoming so affordable, it is for average consumers as well.
More at:http://elephantdrive.com/
The smallest plan is free if you are looking to store anything less than 1 GB, the next step up saves 100 GBs for only $10 a month, and a whopping 1 TB of space for $35 a month. Some information is too valuable to keep on the computer, if it crashes you may lose everything. At first this was mostly for big companies, but now with it becoming so affordable, it is for average consumers as well.
More at:http://elephantdrive.com/
Extend Your Blogsite's Reach Through FeedMB On Your Mobile Internet And Earn More Revenue
You invest so much time on your site, why not extend its reach to the mobile internet and earn more revenue? If your blog is not mobile ready, you're missing out on a huge opportunity. Using FeedM8, you can turn your blog or feed into a mobile site with just one click. Your current readers can catch up from their mobile phones and you'll find new readers you never had before. We'll also find advertisers for your mobile site so you can start making money right away.
your readers will thank you for letting them read your blog wherever they are, whenever they feel like it. FeedM8 will also provide advertisers so you can start raking in the cash. Their 40/60 cash split favors you the blogger, and their service is absolutely costless. You’ll get paid at the end of each month via check or PayPal once your account adds up to at least $50. Get mobilized today and make some cash while you’re at it.
More at:http://www.feedm8.com
your readers will thank you for letting them read your blog wherever they are, whenever they feel like it. FeedM8 will also provide advertisers so you can start raking in the cash. Their 40/60 cash split favors you the blogger, and their service is absolutely costless. You’ll get paid at the end of each month via check or PayPal once your account adds up to at least $50. Get mobilized today and make some cash while you’re at it.
More at:http://www.feedm8.com
Friday, August 10, 2007
With "Wattpad" Share Any Content On Your Mobile
Wattpad operates much like YouTube, with users supplying files to share with one another.
To get started, all customers need are compatible devices and data plans, and they can download Wattpad directly through their mobile Internet browsers at no charge—the site is financed by advertising dollars. Community members can share just about any type of text files—short stories, news articles, study notes, movie reviews—anything, provided they have the appropriate copyrights. They can even upload shopping lists, driving directions or reminders (though they should bear in mind that these files are accessible to the entire Wattpad community!). Top 3 this week: an essay by Albert Einstein, a dialogue-only short story by science fiction writer Terry Bisson, and quotes from The Simpsons.
Wattpad supports a large variety of languages and special characters, and users can log onto the website to post comments, browse categories and interact with other members. Those who are looking for something particular can even post requests to the community at large via a bulletin board on the site.As with any Web 2.0 venture, Wattpad's success relies largely upon its ability to build a rich community—with more than 13 million pages already delivered to mobile phones, they're off to quite a start! Could be a handy new venue for viral marketing, too. (Related: Novels for the very small screen.)
More at: www.wattpad.com
To get started, all customers need are compatible devices and data plans, and they can download Wattpad directly through their mobile Internet browsers at no charge—the site is financed by advertising dollars. Community members can share just about any type of text files—short stories, news articles, study notes, movie reviews—anything, provided they have the appropriate copyrights. They can even upload shopping lists, driving directions or reminders (though they should bear in mind that these files are accessible to the entire Wattpad community!). Top 3 this week: an essay by Albert Einstein, a dialogue-only short story by science fiction writer Terry Bisson, and quotes from The Simpsons.
Wattpad supports a large variety of languages and special characters, and users can log onto the website to post comments, browse categories and interact with other members. Those who are looking for something particular can even post requests to the community at large via a bulletin board on the site.As with any Web 2.0 venture, Wattpad's success relies largely upon its ability to build a rich community—with more than 13 million pages already delivered to mobile phones, they're off to quite a start! Could be a handy new venue for viral marketing, too. (Related: Novels for the very small screen.)
More at: www.wattpad.com
Unusal And Untapped Business Idea Which Can Make You Rich By Just Watching You Tube Violaters
A lot of people watch YouTube videos at work. A few are actually paid to do it.
A former bartender named Joe Bersik sits in front of a flat-screen monitor about eight hours a day, pulling up Internet videos. His job is to find pirated material and get it taken off the Web.
Mr. Bersik works at BayTSP Inc., an eight-year-old start-up with big clients like Viacom Inc., the parent of MTV Networks. BayTSP employs more than 20 video analysts -- sometimes called "hashers" -- who watch videos looking for copyright violations.
Tethered to his computer by headphones, Mr. Bersik on a recent day played the music video of R&B singer Akon's hit song "Don't Matter" on YouTube. The logo of the MTV Jams TV channel was visible at the bottom of the clip. The 53-year-old Mr. Bersik watched for a minute then fired an alert to a colleague who sent an email requesting that YouTube take it down.
In about two hours, the video was gone.
Mr. Bersik and the eight men around him staring at monitors are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the people who post copyrighted clips on the Web. Working from a leafy office park on the fringes of Silicon Valley, they are key players in the legal battle over Internet copyrights between Viacom and Google Inc., which now owns YouTube.
Viacom last fall asked BayTSP to keep a running log of clips from the cartoon show "South Park" and other Viacom programs that people had posted on YouTube. In February, Viacom gave the signal to fire off a barrage of "take-down" notices: In a single batch of emails on Friday, Feb. 2, BayTSP requested that YouTube remove more than 100,000 Viacom clips, in a procedure outlined in U.S. copyright law. The clips Mr. Bersik and others identified were cited in Viacom's $1 billion copyright suit filed against Google the following month. The New York media company says it pays more than $100,000 a month to BayTSP, to find infringing videos and have them removed from YouTube and other sites.
BayTSP says it has more than five TV and movie-studio clients but for contractual reasons can't disclose names other than Viacom. The closely held company says it bills clients as much as $500,000 a month to track down illegal copies of software, music and video clips. Every month it sends out more than a million take-down notices.
Other companies have started using automated technology to identify video clips so they don't have to employ a room full of people manually scanning them as Bay TSP does. YouTube, which says it complies with copyright laws by removing clips when their owners request it, is testing technology to keep infringing videos off its site in the first place. BayTSP thinks human beings will always be needed if only to inspect automated results.
"There will always be something that falls into the gray area," says BayTSP CEO Mark Ishikawa, 42, who is also an active race-car driver. The company and Viacom have faced criticism for mistakenly requesting the takedown of noninfringing clips such as parodies and home videos, though BayTSP says its error rate on Web videos is only around 0.1%.
It's in an open, white-walled room close to Mr. Ishikawa's race-car machine shop at BayTSP's headquarters that Mr. Bersik and the other video analysts sit side-by-side combing through clips looking for clients' content. Movie posters with mustaches drawn on actresses' faces and other defacements hang above the desks.
The analysts use special software to scan the new clips posted to YouTube and other video sites a few times a day, creating lists of potentially infringing ones. They can use a separate program to conduct searches for keywords -- such as "Laguna Beach" or character names -- on the sites and either flag a clip for takedown or clear it to stay up.
On a recent day, their manager, Eric Antze, pulled up a clip from Comedy Central's "Chappelle's Show" that one of his colleagues had identified. "This is clearly copyright infringement," said Mr. Antze, 26, as the video began playing on YouTube. He clicked "Send" in a BayTSP software program running on his other monitor, triggering the email delivery to YouTube of a takedown request. When YouTube receives such emails, employees review them and then remove the clips. Mr. Antze, who was a part-time teacher until he started at BayTSP in November, has a sheet showing the logos of Viacom's various TV channels taped to his monitors.
He says BayTSP has had more than 230,000 clips, which users had viewed more than two billion times, removed from YouTube for Viacom alone. When the Viacom takedowns crossed the 150,000 mark, BayTSP bought better chairs and desks for the analysts.
People who post videos use tricks to make it harder to locate them. Some deliberately misspell the names of shows or films to thwart searching. With music videos, they sometimes include the word "remix" in the title, because the media companies often will let videos altered by users stay. Users often figure out and try to work around the rules BayTSP's clients set for what they want taken down.
The users also remain persistent in finding ways to upload videos again each time they're removed. "By the time I send notices and take them down, they'll be reposted," says Justin Hernandez, 27, who focuses on finding feature films for a BayTSP client.
The part-time DJ says he thought the video-analyst job was "too good to be true" when a friend who works at BayTSP told him he could get paid to watch online videos all day. Analyst salaries start at around $11 an hour. Perks include subsidized 25-cent sodas.
BayTSP's analysts say they don't tell friends and family exactly what they do, because they sign agreements not to disclose specifics of their work or the media-company clients. Scott Martine, 26, says his vagueness has led friends to suspect he is in the pornography business.
Mr. Bersik tells people he works for an Internet security company. The amateur guitar player, who has worked here since January, spends much of his time taking down music videos recorded off Viacom's MTV and other music channels. He keeps a dogeared copy of the Billboard music charts printed each Tuesday in USA Today on his desk to give him ideas for songs and artists he should search for.
Some analysts complain of tired eyes, and the tedium of watching the same clips over and over. "The novelty of 'Oh great, I get to look at YouTube videos all day' -- that wears off real quick," says Mr. Martine, who has worked at BayTSP since January. "Are you prepared to watch a million videos over and over again?" Mr. Antze asks job applicants.
The men, mostly in their 20s, play basketball in the parking lot during a 3 p.m. break each day. They combat the monotony by passing links to quirky clips around the office. One recent oddball favorite was a video of a flamboyant German disco-era group performing in Genghis Khan-inspired outfits.
The analysts generally say they have little appetite for YouTube outside of work anymore, however. "By the time I'm done working on it for eight hours, this is the last site I want to go to," says Mr. Antze.
More at:http://www.startupjournal.com/ideas/b2b/20070809-delaney.html
A former bartender named Joe Bersik sits in front of a flat-screen monitor about eight hours a day, pulling up Internet videos. His job is to find pirated material and get it taken off the Web.
Mr. Bersik works at BayTSP Inc., an eight-year-old start-up with big clients like Viacom Inc., the parent of MTV Networks. BayTSP employs more than 20 video analysts -- sometimes called "hashers" -- who watch videos looking for copyright violations.
Tethered to his computer by headphones, Mr. Bersik on a recent day played the music video of R&B singer Akon's hit song "Don't Matter" on YouTube. The logo of the MTV Jams TV channel was visible at the bottom of the clip. The 53-year-old Mr. Bersik watched for a minute then fired an alert to a colleague who sent an email requesting that YouTube take it down.
In about two hours, the video was gone.
Mr. Bersik and the eight men around him staring at monitors are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the people who post copyrighted clips on the Web. Working from a leafy office park on the fringes of Silicon Valley, they are key players in the legal battle over Internet copyrights between Viacom and Google Inc., which now owns YouTube.
Viacom last fall asked BayTSP to keep a running log of clips from the cartoon show "South Park" and other Viacom programs that people had posted on YouTube. In February, Viacom gave the signal to fire off a barrage of "take-down" notices: In a single batch of emails on Friday, Feb. 2, BayTSP requested that YouTube remove more than 100,000 Viacom clips, in a procedure outlined in U.S. copyright law. The clips Mr. Bersik and others identified were cited in Viacom's $1 billion copyright suit filed against Google the following month. The New York media company says it pays more than $100,000 a month to BayTSP, to find infringing videos and have them removed from YouTube and other sites.
BayTSP says it has more than five TV and movie-studio clients but for contractual reasons can't disclose names other than Viacom. The closely held company says it bills clients as much as $500,000 a month to track down illegal copies of software, music and video clips. Every month it sends out more than a million take-down notices.
Other companies have started using automated technology to identify video clips so they don't have to employ a room full of people manually scanning them as Bay TSP does. YouTube, which says it complies with copyright laws by removing clips when their owners request it, is testing technology to keep infringing videos off its site in the first place. BayTSP thinks human beings will always be needed if only to inspect automated results.
"There will always be something that falls into the gray area," says BayTSP CEO Mark Ishikawa, 42, who is also an active race-car driver. The company and Viacom have faced criticism for mistakenly requesting the takedown of noninfringing clips such as parodies and home videos, though BayTSP says its error rate on Web videos is only around 0.1%.
It's in an open, white-walled room close to Mr. Ishikawa's race-car machine shop at BayTSP's headquarters that Mr. Bersik and the other video analysts sit side-by-side combing through clips looking for clients' content. Movie posters with mustaches drawn on actresses' faces and other defacements hang above the desks.
The analysts use special software to scan the new clips posted to YouTube and other video sites a few times a day, creating lists of potentially infringing ones. They can use a separate program to conduct searches for keywords -- such as "Laguna Beach" or character names -- on the sites and either flag a clip for takedown or clear it to stay up.
On a recent day, their manager, Eric Antze, pulled up a clip from Comedy Central's "Chappelle's Show" that one of his colleagues had identified. "This is clearly copyright infringement," said Mr. Antze, 26, as the video began playing on YouTube. He clicked "Send" in a BayTSP software program running on his other monitor, triggering the email delivery to YouTube of a takedown request. When YouTube receives such emails, employees review them and then remove the clips. Mr. Antze, who was a part-time teacher until he started at BayTSP in November, has a sheet showing the logos of Viacom's various TV channels taped to his monitors.
He says BayTSP has had more than 230,000 clips, which users had viewed more than two billion times, removed from YouTube for Viacom alone. When the Viacom takedowns crossed the 150,000 mark, BayTSP bought better chairs and desks for the analysts.
People who post videos use tricks to make it harder to locate them. Some deliberately misspell the names of shows or films to thwart searching. With music videos, they sometimes include the word "remix" in the title, because the media companies often will let videos altered by users stay. Users often figure out and try to work around the rules BayTSP's clients set for what they want taken down.
The users also remain persistent in finding ways to upload videos again each time they're removed. "By the time I send notices and take them down, they'll be reposted," says Justin Hernandez, 27, who focuses on finding feature films for a BayTSP client.
The part-time DJ says he thought the video-analyst job was "too good to be true" when a friend who works at BayTSP told him he could get paid to watch online videos all day. Analyst salaries start at around $11 an hour. Perks include subsidized 25-cent sodas.
BayTSP's analysts say they don't tell friends and family exactly what they do, because they sign agreements not to disclose specifics of their work or the media-company clients. Scott Martine, 26, says his vagueness has led friends to suspect he is in the pornography business.
Mr. Bersik tells people he works for an Internet security company. The amateur guitar player, who has worked here since January, spends much of his time taking down music videos recorded off Viacom's MTV and other music channels. He keeps a dogeared copy of the Billboard music charts printed each Tuesday in USA Today on his desk to give him ideas for songs and artists he should search for.
Some analysts complain of tired eyes, and the tedium of watching the same clips over and over. "The novelty of 'Oh great, I get to look at YouTube videos all day' -- that wears off real quick," says Mr. Martine, who has worked at BayTSP since January. "Are you prepared to watch a million videos over and over again?" Mr. Antze asks job applicants.
The men, mostly in their 20s, play basketball in the parking lot during a 3 p.m. break each day. They combat the monotony by passing links to quirky clips around the office. One recent oddball favorite was a video of a flamboyant German disco-era group performing in Genghis Khan-inspired outfits.
The analysts generally say they have little appetite for YouTube outside of work anymore, however. "By the time I'm done working on it for eight hours, this is the last site I want to go to," says Mr. Antze.
More at:http://www.startupjournal.com/ideas/b2b/20070809-delaney.html
BillingOrchard is an online electronic billing software application that maintains hourly time billing
BillingOrchard is an online electronic billing software application that maintains hourly time billing, along with flat fee and recurring billing, managed using your web browser. Integration to Authorize.Net and other leading payment gateways provides hands-free recurring billing. BillingOrchard is the ideal solution for web hosts and hosting resellers, lawyers, web developers, consultants, and others requiring time-based and recurring client management.
Electronic billing and invoicing software, starting at only $14.95 per month.
More at:http://www.billingorchard.com/
Electronic billing and invoicing software, starting at only $14.95 per month.
More at:http://www.billingorchard.com/
What is The Million Dollar Wiki?
The creativenesses of Internet entrepreneurs never cease to amaze me. Take for example Graham Langdon, 21 year old senior from the University of Connecticut. Like many college students, Graham has enormous college debts that he needs to pay off. He also wants to open the best bar in the world, right in the heart of Boston. How does Graham plan to pay for all this? He’s hoping The Million Dollar Wiki is the answer.
What is The Million Dollar Wiki?
The Million Dollar Wiki is basically a pay-per-page version of wikipedia. There will be a page for literally everything. However, instead of being open for anyone to edit, one person owns each page. Each page cost $100 and Graham plans to sell 10,000 pages so he can make his million bucks. Graham is off to a good start with the project. Since starting it two months ago, he has sold 158 pages and made $15,800. The FAQ gives a complete explanation on what the site is about and how it can make you money.
Every page is dedicated to a unique word or phrase. The content on each page is controlled by the page owner. Owners use the site, and specifically their page, as a vehicle to generate traffic, revenue or publicity. Other benefits include:
Secure an exclusive niche in a growing micro-economy.
Raise awareness of your website, product, or service.
Cultivate a heightened web presence.
Share traffic generated by the entire community.
Join a resourceful community of motivated entrepreneurs.
Receive storage space on our server for your page’s content.
Link quality content to your relevant website for better SEO.
Make Money Online with The Million Dollar Wiki
Because you own the page for your chosen keyword, you can do whatever you want with it. Monetization of your page can range from selling products or service to putting on advertising like Google AdSense. You can also resell the page for a profit.
Ownership of the page is forever. In this case, forever is until 2022 - the hosting of the site has been covered until then. It’s Graham’s intention to keep the site up forever but it’s guaranteed to be up for the next 15 years. Some examples of Wiki pages created by users include:
The music page
The campus cuties page
The design page
The forum
Buy a Blogger.com
There are a couple of case studies showing how the Wiki pages are making money for their owners. The Million Dollar Wiki offers several ways to promote your page. You could show up on the front page as a featured page, you could show up when a reader clicks a random page and you are also listed in the most popular pages. Currently, the most popular page is the keyword for Business, with 28,085 views.
The Power of Viral Marketing
Like the Million Dollar Homepage, The Million Dollar Wiki is based on the power of viral marketing. How well the Wiki does will depend greatly on how well Graham gets the message out about his project. Right now, he has the advantage because he is the first mover into this new space. After working the numbers - $100 over a minimum of 15 years - I decided to buy a page. I now own the Wiki page for Make Money Online.
I wish Graham luck on this project. I really hope he makes it because everyone loves an Internet success story. One thing for sure, paying $100 to own a Wiki page seems like a better deal than paying $100 for a little square.
More at:http://www.milliondollarwiki.com/
Via-JohnChow
What is The Million Dollar Wiki?
The Million Dollar Wiki is basically a pay-per-page version of wikipedia. There will be a page for literally everything. However, instead of being open for anyone to edit, one person owns each page. Each page cost $100 and Graham plans to sell 10,000 pages so he can make his million bucks. Graham is off to a good start with the project. Since starting it two months ago, he has sold 158 pages and made $15,800. The FAQ gives a complete explanation on what the site is about and how it can make you money.
Every page is dedicated to a unique word or phrase. The content on each page is controlled by the page owner. Owners use the site, and specifically their page, as a vehicle to generate traffic, revenue or publicity. Other benefits include:
Secure an exclusive niche in a growing micro-economy.
Raise awareness of your website, product, or service.
Cultivate a heightened web presence.
Share traffic generated by the entire community.
Join a resourceful community of motivated entrepreneurs.
Receive storage space on our server for your page’s content.
Link quality content to your relevant website for better SEO.
Make Money Online with The Million Dollar Wiki
Because you own the page for your chosen keyword, you can do whatever you want with it. Monetization of your page can range from selling products or service to putting on advertising like Google AdSense. You can also resell the page for a profit.
Ownership of the page is forever. In this case, forever is until 2022 - the hosting of the site has been covered until then. It’s Graham’s intention to keep the site up forever but it’s guaranteed to be up for the next 15 years. Some examples of Wiki pages created by users include:
The music page
The campus cuties page
The design page
The forum
Buy a Blogger.com
There are a couple of case studies showing how the Wiki pages are making money for their owners. The Million Dollar Wiki offers several ways to promote your page. You could show up on the front page as a featured page, you could show up when a reader clicks a random page and you are also listed in the most popular pages. Currently, the most popular page is the keyword for Business, with 28,085 views.
The Power of Viral Marketing
Like the Million Dollar Homepage, The Million Dollar Wiki is based on the power of viral marketing. How well the Wiki does will depend greatly on how well Graham gets the message out about his project. Right now, he has the advantage because he is the first mover into this new space. After working the numbers - $100 over a minimum of 15 years - I decided to buy a page. I now own the Wiki page for Make Money Online.
I wish Graham luck on this project. I really hope he makes it because everyone loves an Internet success story. One thing for sure, paying $100 to own a Wiki page seems like a better deal than paying $100 for a little square.
More at:http://www.milliondollarwiki.com/
Via-JohnChow
AdSymetrix is an ad campaign tracking system that lets you keep up with how your ads are performing whether its online, email, or via phone
AdSymetrix is an ad campaign tracking system that lets you keep up with how your ads are performing whether its online, email, or via phone.
What you do is tag your various ad campaigns so AdSymetrix can keep tabs on your campaign’s performance on three different fronts. See how your ad is being passed along, see who responds to email newsletters, find out which websites are best for your particular ad, and see how many phone calls you get based on a particular ad method, whether it be a flyer, billboard, phonebook, etc. AsSymetrix also offers reverse lookup functions so you can see who’s actually calling you. This all indicates that you may need a different phone number as a way to tag each ad method.
This system may appeal to many that are entering the online business marketing world, or may be wondering about comparison points in regards to offline and online ad methods. Most businesses don’t have an online presence, and could even use this service to see how many customers come in from phone calls alone.
More at:http://www.adsymetrix.com
What you do is tag your various ad campaigns so AdSymetrix can keep tabs on your campaign’s performance on three different fronts. See how your ad is being passed along, see who responds to email newsletters, find out which websites are best for your particular ad, and see how many phone calls you get based on a particular ad method, whether it be a flyer, billboard, phonebook, etc. AsSymetrix also offers reverse lookup functions so you can see who’s actually calling you. This all indicates that you may need a different phone number as a way to tag each ad method.
This system may appeal to many that are entering the online business marketing world, or may be wondering about comparison points in regards to offline and online ad methods. Most businesses don’t have an online presence, and could even use this service to see how many customers come in from phone calls alone.
More at:http://www.adsymetrix.com
SteamStreet is a site for managing your portfolio with a chart that shows you the ups and downs, letting you see how your shares performed over time
SteamStreet is a site for managing your portfolio with a chart that shows you the ups and downs, letting you see how your shares performed over time. You can also see transaction histories for each stock, and you can easily update them. SteamStreet gives you secure controls to share your holdings, portfolios and notes with friends or with the public. You can even let your profile be public and let the world view and make comments on your investing strategy. The site also has a trading journal where you can keep notes about your trading ideas. It's free and easy to register with SteamStreet.
Now you can see exactly how well you're doing with true rate of return calculations and comparisons against any stock, fund, index, or friend's portfolio.
SteamStreet offers free, no-nonsense financial organization with plenty of options according to personal tastes. People may or may not like sharing their stock strategies, but this is an optional component anyway.
More at:http://www.steamstreet.com/
Now you can see exactly how well you're doing with true rate of return calculations and comparisons against any stock, fund, index, or friend's portfolio.
SteamStreet offers free, no-nonsense financial organization with plenty of options according to personal tastes. People may or may not like sharing their stock strategies, but this is an optional component anyway.
More at:http://www.steamstreet.com/
InvenTube, a brand new website designed to connect inventors with manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, scouts, attorneys, and retailers
InvenTube, a BRAND NEW website designed to connect inventors with manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, scouts, attorneys, and retailers like never before...
InvenTube is FREE to sign up, FREE to promote your patented concepts, and FREE for companies to browse your patent listings! You have the BEST chance to succeed with your brilliant ideas here at InvenTube.com! (and it won't cost you a dime!)
Experience the FASTEST growing professional online community for creative thinkers...
Built especially for inventors, BY inventors.
The site is designed for showing off your inventions, networking with your fellow inventors, and for getting your ideas patented. Companies and scouts are invited to browse the patent listings and discover new, innovative products at a competitively low cost. Other features include business directories, a discussion forum, members search, blogs, event listings, and resources. It’s free to join.
More at:http://www.inventube.com/
InvenTube is FREE to sign up, FREE to promote your patented concepts, and FREE for companies to browse your patent listings! You have the BEST chance to succeed with your brilliant ideas here at InvenTube.com! (and it won't cost you a dime!)
Experience the FASTEST growing professional online community for creative thinkers...
Built especially for inventors, BY inventors.
The site is designed for showing off your inventions, networking with your fellow inventors, and for getting your ideas patented. Companies and scouts are invited to browse the patent listings and discover new, innovative products at a competitively low cost. Other features include business directories, a discussion forum, members search, blogs, event listings, and resources. It’s free to join.
More at:http://www.inventube.com/
"Online Virtual Office" It will be helpful for companies that have workers spread across the globe
OvoSuite.com will easily organize the information of the company online and control who in the company is able to access it and who is not. Everything from Document Management to User Audit to Voting, yes there is even a voting feature.
It will be best suited for those company who are outsourcing its business to another location so they can remotely store all their information and be able to monitor who accesses these things and when. The smallest plan is free and the plans go up to corporate, but none of the prices are listed on the website. Hopeully this site can get up and going quickly so we can see how effective that it can be, as this is a sound service that clearly would be enjoyed by many businesses all over the world.
It will be ideal for companies that have workers spread across the globe that need to communicate with each other and share the same documents.
More at:http://ovosuite.com/
It will be best suited for those company who are outsourcing its business to another location so they can remotely store all their information and be able to monitor who accesses these things and when. The smallest plan is free and the plans go up to corporate, but none of the prices are listed on the website. Hopeully this site can get up and going quickly so we can see how effective that it can be, as this is a sound service that clearly would be enjoyed by many businesses all over the world.
It will be ideal for companies that have workers spread across the globe that need to communicate with each other and share the same documents.
More at:http://ovosuite.com/
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Tee Bee Dee Seems Lucrative Offer For Venture Capitalists
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/
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/
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
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
They're going to build a Disneyworld for investors and entrepreneurs.
Several months ago Silvia Cuevas took stock of her life, and it was a profoundly unsettling experience. At 40 she had a solid job with a modest salary at the public library in Santa Ana, Calif. She'd carefully squirreled away some savings and bought herself a little house.
She was financially secure - and utterly dissatisfied. All around her, Santa Ana throbbed with the feverish energy of recent immigrants eager to cash in on the promises of America. A short drive from Disneyland, Santa Ana boasts one of the highest concentrations of Latinos of any city in the U.S., and these days it is a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity. Cuevas, though, felt as conservative, meek, and, well, dull as a church mouse in Vegas. "I was going nowhere," she recalls. "How was I going to find my fortune?" Then a girlfriend introduced her to Nouveau Riche University.
Not exactly a university, Nouveau Riche offers real estate investment classes -and a host of related products and services - to would-be tycoons. In April, Cuevas plunked down tuition of $16,000 and attended a weeklong program in Phoenix. Two weeks later, emboldened by her instructors and an advisor assigned by the university, she refinanced her home, taking out $200,000 - a large share of her equity.
She used the money for down payments to buy - sight unseen in one case - three investment properties through a real estate agency controlled by Nouveau Riche. By midsummer Cuevas' portfolio of investments had grown to include a condo in Colorado, three acres of undeveloped land in the Smoky Mountains, and a three-bedroom house in San Antonio. Her debt load has grown too, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans she took out on the properties, but she doesn't worry.
"I learned how to be bold at Nouveau Riche," Cuevas says. "They're the market experts, so I trust them to help me buy. I can't wait to make my next purchase!"
That's the kind of rah-rah spirit visitors encounter at Nouveau Riche (nruniversity.com), where the lectures are more like pep rallies, the tests are sometimes self-graded, and the homework is optional. Nouveau Riche has reason to cheer too. Co-founder and CEO Jim Piccolo claims that revenues will top $80 million in 2007, up tenfold since 2005, when the company was founded and the real estate market peaked. Piccolo makes money not only from tuitions but also from commissions on the properties his students buy and from the fees he charges for accounting, finance, and property-management services.
Remarkably, Nouveau Riche is able to attract huge crowds (a recent class in Phoenix lured 2,479 students) in a market that is declining rapidly. The Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller home price index (homeprice.standard-andpoors.com) shows that nationally prices fell 2.7% in the first quarter, more than in any quarter since 1990. In a late July conference call with analysts, Countrywide CEO Angelo R. Mozilo, who runs the nation's largest mortgage firm, said home prices were falling "almost like never before, with the exception of the Great Depression." That's not all. PMI Mortgage Insurance (pmigroup.com), a financial firm that tracks the market, predicts two more years of decline across much of the U.S.
Given those grim stats, why would anyone want to invest in real estate? Nouveau Riche borrows heavily from the investment philosophy popularized over the past several years by real estate guru Robert Kiyosaki, who wrote the bestselling advice book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Like Kiyosaki, Nouveau Riche teaches that working for a salary is a fool's game; the road to riches requires leveraging debt to amass a portfolio of income-generating properties. Yet investing in rental properties, like all entrepreneurial endeavors, is hard work. A successful landlord has to know the market, maintain his properties, and retain paying tenants.
That doesn't seem to bother Nouveau Riche students, many of whom have seen their neighbors get rich flipping houses or renting them out during the boom. Judging from the callused hands and well-worn work boots spotted at a recent Nouveau Riche event, it attracts a blue-collar crowd for whom the promise of riches from real estate rings true at a gut level that stocks and bonds don't reach. "I know I'm not going to get wealthy working for the fire department," says Hector Magallanes, a firefighter from Los Angeles. "I'm working up the courage to take the risks I need to take to be financially independent."
Nouveau Riche makes it easy for would-be tycoons to get started. "We learned through our research that most students of real estate seminars never actually buy any property because they don't have the tools to take that first step," Piccolo says, "so we are offering them all the tools they need to build their portfolios."
At a recent seminar at a Hilton in Phoenix, Fix 'n Flip - a daylong course in the art of the fixer-upper - was standing room only. So was Creative Financing, in which students learned how to tap their retirement savings and their home equity for money to invest. Between classes, throngs of students flocked to the lobby to booths featuring affiliates of Nouveau Riche. Save Our Scores (or SOS, as it is called) helps high-risk borrowers boost low credit scores so that they can borrow more money at lower rates. (Fees range from $600 to $1,200.) Investor Concierge, the real estate brokerage firm owned by Piccolo and his associates, helps students buy houses and condos, arranges financing, then provides management services for their far-flung properties. (The firm's slogan: "Click a mouse, buy a house.") Meanwhile, the Nouveau Riche University Store did a brisk business in polo shirts, plus jackets with the college logo, a stylized eagle.
These days alumni groups are springing up in Atlanta, Boise, Tacoma, and other cities. What's on the agenda at their meetings? "We boast about our portfolios," Heather Echevarria, 29, of Boise, says. "We shop deals too." Echevarria and her husband, Ben, specialize in pre-foreclosure properties - that is, buying houses from cash-strapped owners who can no longer afford to pay their mortgages. Typically, she says, they buy houses for half their appraised value. Last year, the pair claim, they bought-and quickly resold for a profit - 75 homes in Idaho and Nevada.
But will other graduates of Nouveau Riche do as well? What happens if interest rates rise and the monthly payments on a variable-rate loan soar, or a tenant leaves? Will the investor be able to sell at a profit in a market where home prices are falling? Casey Serin, a 24-year-old programmer from Sacramento, had already invested in property (although not through Nouveau Riche) before he enrolled in one of its classes last year. "What they teach there is dangerous," he says. "They're selling you on getting rich fast-and that's a risky game to play."
Piccolo retorts, "There is no better time to buy, because real estate is on sale. You can never go wrong with real estate in the U.S. of A." He admits, though, that he has not bought any property lately.
Raised in Nebraska, Piccolo says he was a poor student, interested more in sports and cars than his classes. After graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1984, he moved to Phoenix and worked in the car detailing and design business. In 1990, Piccolo says, medical bills forced him to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and list debts of $650,539. Piccolo ran into more trouble a year later when he pleaded guilty to the theft of his girlfriend's new Mercedes-Benz. Although he denies responsibility now, Piccolo admitted to the court that he had dumped the car in the desert so that his girlfriend could collect an insurance claim of about $24,000; Piccolo said she'd complained that the car was a lemon. "I couldn't bear to see her hurt," he told the court. After three years probation, his felony conviction was reduced to a misdemeanor.
Not long afterward Piccolo discovered real estate. By the mid-1990s he had stumbled on the idea of consolidating investment seminars, offering students the opportunity to hear several gurus speak on various techniques. Out of that grew Nouveau Riche, which he and a co-founder, Bob Snyder, launched in 2005.
At 45, Snyder is a veteran of the multilevel-marketing business. "I'm good at building teams," he says, and indeed, he has been teaching salespeople for more than two decades, after being trained by Amway (amway.com), the global leader in multilevel marketing, in which sales reps are paid not only for selling products but also for recruiting more reps. To date, he has signed up 1,300 sales reps for Nouveau Riche. Working out of their homes, they sell two products: a 15-volume encyclopedia on real estate investing for $3,500 and tuition to the "college" for $16,000. The first five tuition sales don't yield a commission, but on subsequent ones the sellers get a 50% cut, or $8,000.
How does the company attract customers? It offers free one- or two-day intro classes. According to Andrew Yurasek, an independent regional advisor for Nouveau Riche, at a recent event in Shaumburg, Ill., the company rented Lamborghinis and Ferraris for six of its sales reps for the night so they could roar up to the hotel just as prospective students were filing into the Hyatt. "We want to generate some excitement," says Yurasek. Among the reps, he adds, were an architect, a housepainter, and an office worker, none of whom have a real estate portfolio. About 10% of those who come to the free classes buy the home-study materials or spring for the tuition.
As chancellor of Nouveau Riche, Piccolo doesn't teach any classes, but he is a regular on stage on the university's awards night, working the crowd of star-struck students eager to pose for a quick photo with him. At 50, he has the tanned good looks and boyish charm of actor Dennis Quaid, whom he resembles.
These days Piccolo is living large - and proud of it. "Only in America," he says, "can a guy who barely made it through college end up owning a college." He and his wife, Mary, own three homes, including a ten-acre ranch with a 22,000-square-foot house and a pool in North Scottsdale. Still a car buff, he boasts a collection that includes a Ferrari 360 Spider, a Lamborghini Diablo, and a Bentley GT convertible. He also travels in a Falcon 200 company jet. For their seventh wedding anniversary he surprised his wife with a cherry-red grand piano signed by Elton John. Cost: $100,000. Piccolo says he and his wife also own investment properties in Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah; Mary Piccolo manages the portfolio. Piccolo estimates its total value at $20 million.
Investor Concierge, Nouveau Riche's brokerage arm, typically sells students about 100 properties a month, most ranging in price from $100,000 to $200,000, says the firm's president, Craig Cottrell, 39. To date, Investor Concierge has racked up property sales on 1,100 units, most of them in Georgia, Michigan, and Texas. Over two recent weekends the firm moved 60 condo units in a complex in Fenton, Mich., a blue-collar town 15 miles south of Flint, at prices ranging from $60,000 to $67,500.
The way Investor Concierge structured the deal in its prospectus, the buyers put 10% down, borrowing the rest using an interest-only loan. Trouble is, the rents on the condos won't cover the total cost of owning them. No problem. Investor Concierge explains that it has arranged for the seller of the condo complex to subsidize the rent for as long as two years at above-market rates. The seller will also pay all the management fees and real estate taxes for two years. As a result the investors should be $145-a-month cash-flow positive. But what happens when the subsidies expire, and the buyer discovers he is losing money every month? Will he be able to unload his property or command a higher rent?
The way the Michigan real estate market is headed, it might not be so easy. According to Judy Brant, a broker in Fenton for more than 20 years with Coldwell Banker, the inventory of homes in Genesee County, which includes Fenton, averaged 2,000 units in 2005. Today it is 8,000, up 300%. When Brant heard that Nouveau Riche students had bought 60 condo units in her town - sight unseen - she said, "I'm speechless. The housing market here is tied to the auto industry, and prices are falling faster than you can imagine: 10% last year and another 10% this year. Who knows when it will reach rock bottom? As far as rental properties, it's hard to rent anything here now. Houses and apartments sit empty all over town. People are leaving because there are no jobs here. We're really suffering."
Despite these risky deals, Nouveau Riche's enrollment keeps booming and Piccolo's pockets keep filling, which lets him plan big for the future. The company bought 24 acres on top of a black-lava mountain north of Phoenix. In 2008, Piccolo intends to break ground on a new campus with modern steel and glass classrooms and four luxury dorms, each with its own pool and barbecue pit. The pools will be linked by a man-made river; students will be able to float from dorm to dorm, riding the river on inner tubes. "It'll be very theme-y," he says. "We're going to build a Disneyworld for investors and entrepreneurs."
More at:http://nruniversity.com/
Via-CNNMoney
She was financially secure - and utterly dissatisfied. All around her, Santa Ana throbbed with the feverish energy of recent immigrants eager to cash in on the promises of America. A short drive from Disneyland, Santa Ana boasts one of the highest concentrations of Latinos of any city in the U.S., and these days it is a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity. Cuevas, though, felt as conservative, meek, and, well, dull as a church mouse in Vegas. "I was going nowhere," she recalls. "How was I going to find my fortune?" Then a girlfriend introduced her to Nouveau Riche University.
Not exactly a university, Nouveau Riche offers real estate investment classes -and a host of related products and services - to would-be tycoons. In April, Cuevas plunked down tuition of $16,000 and attended a weeklong program in Phoenix. Two weeks later, emboldened by her instructors and an advisor assigned by the university, she refinanced her home, taking out $200,000 - a large share of her equity.
She used the money for down payments to buy - sight unseen in one case - three investment properties through a real estate agency controlled by Nouveau Riche. By midsummer Cuevas' portfolio of investments had grown to include a condo in Colorado, three acres of undeveloped land in the Smoky Mountains, and a three-bedroom house in San Antonio. Her debt load has grown too, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans she took out on the properties, but she doesn't worry.
"I learned how to be bold at Nouveau Riche," Cuevas says. "They're the market experts, so I trust them to help me buy. I can't wait to make my next purchase!"
That's the kind of rah-rah spirit visitors encounter at Nouveau Riche (nruniversity.com), where the lectures are more like pep rallies, the tests are sometimes self-graded, and the homework is optional. Nouveau Riche has reason to cheer too. Co-founder and CEO Jim Piccolo claims that revenues will top $80 million in 2007, up tenfold since 2005, when the company was founded and the real estate market peaked. Piccolo makes money not only from tuitions but also from commissions on the properties his students buy and from the fees he charges for accounting, finance, and property-management services.
Remarkably, Nouveau Riche is able to attract huge crowds (a recent class in Phoenix lured 2,479 students) in a market that is declining rapidly. The Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller home price index (homeprice.standard-andpoors.com) shows that nationally prices fell 2.7% in the first quarter, more than in any quarter since 1990. In a late July conference call with analysts, Countrywide CEO Angelo R. Mozilo, who runs the nation's largest mortgage firm, said home prices were falling "almost like never before, with the exception of the Great Depression." That's not all. PMI Mortgage Insurance (pmigroup.com), a financial firm that tracks the market, predicts two more years of decline across much of the U.S.
Given those grim stats, why would anyone want to invest in real estate? Nouveau Riche borrows heavily from the investment philosophy popularized over the past several years by real estate guru Robert Kiyosaki, who wrote the bestselling advice book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Like Kiyosaki, Nouveau Riche teaches that working for a salary is a fool's game; the road to riches requires leveraging debt to amass a portfolio of income-generating properties. Yet investing in rental properties, like all entrepreneurial endeavors, is hard work. A successful landlord has to know the market, maintain his properties, and retain paying tenants.
That doesn't seem to bother Nouveau Riche students, many of whom have seen their neighbors get rich flipping houses or renting them out during the boom. Judging from the callused hands and well-worn work boots spotted at a recent Nouveau Riche event, it attracts a blue-collar crowd for whom the promise of riches from real estate rings true at a gut level that stocks and bonds don't reach. "I know I'm not going to get wealthy working for the fire department," says Hector Magallanes, a firefighter from Los Angeles. "I'm working up the courage to take the risks I need to take to be financially independent."
Nouveau Riche makes it easy for would-be tycoons to get started. "We learned through our research that most students of real estate seminars never actually buy any property because they don't have the tools to take that first step," Piccolo says, "so we are offering them all the tools they need to build their portfolios."
At a recent seminar at a Hilton in Phoenix, Fix 'n Flip - a daylong course in the art of the fixer-upper - was standing room only. So was Creative Financing, in which students learned how to tap their retirement savings and their home equity for money to invest. Between classes, throngs of students flocked to the lobby to booths featuring affiliates of Nouveau Riche. Save Our Scores (or SOS, as it is called) helps high-risk borrowers boost low credit scores so that they can borrow more money at lower rates. (Fees range from $600 to $1,200.) Investor Concierge, the real estate brokerage firm owned by Piccolo and his associates, helps students buy houses and condos, arranges financing, then provides management services for their far-flung properties. (The firm's slogan: "Click a mouse, buy a house.") Meanwhile, the Nouveau Riche University Store did a brisk business in polo shirts, plus jackets with the college logo, a stylized eagle.
These days alumni groups are springing up in Atlanta, Boise, Tacoma, and other cities. What's on the agenda at their meetings? "We boast about our portfolios," Heather Echevarria, 29, of Boise, says. "We shop deals too." Echevarria and her husband, Ben, specialize in pre-foreclosure properties - that is, buying houses from cash-strapped owners who can no longer afford to pay their mortgages. Typically, she says, they buy houses for half their appraised value. Last year, the pair claim, they bought-and quickly resold for a profit - 75 homes in Idaho and Nevada.
But will other graduates of Nouveau Riche do as well? What happens if interest rates rise and the monthly payments on a variable-rate loan soar, or a tenant leaves? Will the investor be able to sell at a profit in a market where home prices are falling? Casey Serin, a 24-year-old programmer from Sacramento, had already invested in property (although not through Nouveau Riche) before he enrolled in one of its classes last year. "What they teach there is dangerous," he says. "They're selling you on getting rich fast-and that's a risky game to play."
Piccolo retorts, "There is no better time to buy, because real estate is on sale. You can never go wrong with real estate in the U.S. of A." He admits, though, that he has not bought any property lately.
Raised in Nebraska, Piccolo says he was a poor student, interested more in sports and cars than his classes. After graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1984, he moved to Phoenix and worked in the car detailing and design business. In 1990, Piccolo says, medical bills forced him to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and list debts of $650,539. Piccolo ran into more trouble a year later when he pleaded guilty to the theft of his girlfriend's new Mercedes-Benz. Although he denies responsibility now, Piccolo admitted to the court that he had dumped the car in the desert so that his girlfriend could collect an insurance claim of about $24,000; Piccolo said she'd complained that the car was a lemon. "I couldn't bear to see her hurt," he told the court. After three years probation, his felony conviction was reduced to a misdemeanor.
Not long afterward Piccolo discovered real estate. By the mid-1990s he had stumbled on the idea of consolidating investment seminars, offering students the opportunity to hear several gurus speak on various techniques. Out of that grew Nouveau Riche, which he and a co-founder, Bob Snyder, launched in 2005.
At 45, Snyder is a veteran of the multilevel-marketing business. "I'm good at building teams," he says, and indeed, he has been teaching salespeople for more than two decades, after being trained by Amway (amway.com), the global leader in multilevel marketing, in which sales reps are paid not only for selling products but also for recruiting more reps. To date, he has signed up 1,300 sales reps for Nouveau Riche. Working out of their homes, they sell two products: a 15-volume encyclopedia on real estate investing for $3,500 and tuition to the "college" for $16,000. The first five tuition sales don't yield a commission, but on subsequent ones the sellers get a 50% cut, or $8,000.
How does the company attract customers? It offers free one- or two-day intro classes. According to Andrew Yurasek, an independent regional advisor for Nouveau Riche, at a recent event in Shaumburg, Ill., the company rented Lamborghinis and Ferraris for six of its sales reps for the night so they could roar up to the hotel just as prospective students were filing into the Hyatt. "We want to generate some excitement," says Yurasek. Among the reps, he adds, were an architect, a housepainter, and an office worker, none of whom have a real estate portfolio. About 10% of those who come to the free classes buy the home-study materials or spring for the tuition.
As chancellor of Nouveau Riche, Piccolo doesn't teach any classes, but he is a regular on stage on the university's awards night, working the crowd of star-struck students eager to pose for a quick photo with him. At 50, he has the tanned good looks and boyish charm of actor Dennis Quaid, whom he resembles.
These days Piccolo is living large - and proud of it. "Only in America," he says, "can a guy who barely made it through college end up owning a college." He and his wife, Mary, own three homes, including a ten-acre ranch with a 22,000-square-foot house and a pool in North Scottsdale. Still a car buff, he boasts a collection that includes a Ferrari 360 Spider, a Lamborghini Diablo, and a Bentley GT convertible. He also travels in a Falcon 200 company jet. For their seventh wedding anniversary he surprised his wife with a cherry-red grand piano signed by Elton John. Cost: $100,000. Piccolo says he and his wife also own investment properties in Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah; Mary Piccolo manages the portfolio. Piccolo estimates its total value at $20 million.
Investor Concierge, Nouveau Riche's brokerage arm, typically sells students about 100 properties a month, most ranging in price from $100,000 to $200,000, says the firm's president, Craig Cottrell, 39. To date, Investor Concierge has racked up property sales on 1,100 units, most of them in Georgia, Michigan, and Texas. Over two recent weekends the firm moved 60 condo units in a complex in Fenton, Mich., a blue-collar town 15 miles south of Flint, at prices ranging from $60,000 to $67,500.
The way Investor Concierge structured the deal in its prospectus, the buyers put 10% down, borrowing the rest using an interest-only loan. Trouble is, the rents on the condos won't cover the total cost of owning them. No problem. Investor Concierge explains that it has arranged for the seller of the condo complex to subsidize the rent for as long as two years at above-market rates. The seller will also pay all the management fees and real estate taxes for two years. As a result the investors should be $145-a-month cash-flow positive. But what happens when the subsidies expire, and the buyer discovers he is losing money every month? Will he be able to unload his property or command a higher rent?
The way the Michigan real estate market is headed, it might not be so easy. According to Judy Brant, a broker in Fenton for more than 20 years with Coldwell Banker, the inventory of homes in Genesee County, which includes Fenton, averaged 2,000 units in 2005. Today it is 8,000, up 300%. When Brant heard that Nouveau Riche students had bought 60 condo units in her town - sight unseen - she said, "I'm speechless. The housing market here is tied to the auto industry, and prices are falling faster than you can imagine: 10% last year and another 10% this year. Who knows when it will reach rock bottom? As far as rental properties, it's hard to rent anything here now. Houses and apartments sit empty all over town. People are leaving because there are no jobs here. We're really suffering."
Despite these risky deals, Nouveau Riche's enrollment keeps booming and Piccolo's pockets keep filling, which lets him plan big for the future. The company bought 24 acres on top of a black-lava mountain north of Phoenix. In 2008, Piccolo intends to break ground on a new campus with modern steel and glass classrooms and four luxury dorms, each with its own pool and barbecue pit. The pools will be linked by a man-made river; students will be able to float from dorm to dorm, riding the river on inner tubes. "It'll be very theme-y," he says. "We're going to build a Disneyworld for investors and entrepreneurs."
More at:http://nruniversity.com/
Via-CNNMoney
Zippi, which is introducing sophisticated tools aimed at helping eBay sellers make more money
Zippi, which is introducing sophisticated tools aimed at helping eBay sellers make more money.
Over the coming months, Zippi will launch a marketing campaign to promote its consumer-facing hotline. Anyone with clutter to unload can call 1-877-GO-ZIPPI to submit an item for sale. Using a database of trillions of past eBay transactions, Zippi automatically appraises the item and gives the owner an indication of its estimated value. The owner sets a minimum amount his or she is willing to sell for. Zippi then contacts an affiliate in the owner's area. Affiliates are eBay sellers who have signed up with Zippi. The affiliate visits the owner, picks up the item, lists it on eBay and takes care of shipping. Once an item is sold, the consumer is paid, the affiliate receives his commission and Zippi take their cut.
While basic enrolment starts at USD 49.95, for USD 1399.95 sellers can buy the Zippi Affiliate Pro Bundle, which includes a handheld device that enables sellers to go to a consumer's home, take a picture of the item they're offering for sale, scan barcodes, create a description through a template that's pre-populated by Zippi's call center, and create a listing on the fly. As described by Zippi, this "brings eBay to the doorstep of American households and businesses," while allowing affiliates to act as highly mobile franchisees. For added revenue, affiliates can become 'Zipsters', recruiting and training other sellers and receiving a percentage of every commission they earn. Which brings Zippi more affiliates and lets Zipsters build a scalable business.
Last but not least, Zippi formalizes the process for selling on behalf of friends and family. Since Zippi automatically doles out both the owner's and the affiliate's shares of a sale, selling on behalf of one's social network becomes much easier: sellers don't have to negotiate a cut or write a cheque to the owner once an item has been sold. By making it simpler to sell a bicycle for a neighbour or a lamp for a cousin, sellers are stimulated to tap into a new pool of products.
If it takes off, Zippi's integrated approach could create a large network of consignment shops on the go, generating leads for sellers and easy access to eBay for consumers who just want to offload stuff without figuring out how to use an online marketplace. Opportunities if you’re not an eBay seller? Zippi only operates in the US. Partner with them to bring the concept to other large eBay markets.
Website: www.zippi.com
Via -Springwise
Over the coming months, Zippi will launch a marketing campaign to promote its consumer-facing hotline. Anyone with clutter to unload can call 1-877-GO-ZIPPI to submit an item for sale. Using a database of trillions of past eBay transactions, Zippi automatically appraises the item and gives the owner an indication of its estimated value. The owner sets a minimum amount his or she is willing to sell for. Zippi then contacts an affiliate in the owner's area. Affiliates are eBay sellers who have signed up with Zippi. The affiliate visits the owner, picks up the item, lists it on eBay and takes care of shipping. Once an item is sold, the consumer is paid, the affiliate receives his commission and Zippi take their cut.
While basic enrolment starts at USD 49.95, for USD 1399.95 sellers can buy the Zippi Affiliate Pro Bundle, which includes a handheld device that enables sellers to go to a consumer's home, take a picture of the item they're offering for sale, scan barcodes, create a description through a template that's pre-populated by Zippi's call center, and create a listing on the fly. As described by Zippi, this "brings eBay to the doorstep of American households and businesses," while allowing affiliates to act as highly mobile franchisees. For added revenue, affiliates can become 'Zipsters', recruiting and training other sellers and receiving a percentage of every commission they earn. Which brings Zippi more affiliates and lets Zipsters build a scalable business.
Last but not least, Zippi formalizes the process for selling on behalf of friends and family. Since Zippi automatically doles out both the owner's and the affiliate's shares of a sale, selling on behalf of one's social network becomes much easier: sellers don't have to negotiate a cut or write a cheque to the owner once an item has been sold. By making it simpler to sell a bicycle for a neighbour or a lamp for a cousin, sellers are stimulated to tap into a new pool of products.
If it takes off, Zippi's integrated approach could create a large network of consignment shops on the go, generating leads for sellers and easy access to eBay for consumers who just want to offload stuff without figuring out how to use an online marketplace. Opportunities if you’re not an eBay seller? Zippi only operates in the US. Partner with them to bring the concept to other large eBay markets.
Website: www.zippi.com
Via -Springwise
Cake Financial is a new investment community that lets you follow others’ portfolios and real time trades to help you make your own investment
Cake Financial is a new investment community that lets you follow others’ portfolios and real time trades to help you make your own investment decisions. The site is currently in private alpha.
You can see what the top performers are doing, as well as the other members of Cake Financial. Create your own network of users to make friends and set up alerts to be notified when those in your network have made a trade. You can also set up your own account to track performance across your online brokerage accounts. Cake Financial will rank you along with the rest of the members of its community, so you can see how you compare against others.
There aren’t any fantasy trading plans going on in Cake Financial, so you’ll get more useful data when it comes to leveraging a community to aid in your own personal decisions. And unlike some other similar networks, there are no fees associated with accessing data from top performers. This could be in an effort to keep top performers from becoming more like brokerages that may have their own interests in mind when offering advice, or it may simply limit the legal liability for the whole of Cake Financial’s service.
The potential downfall is of course, you may get just what you pay for. There’s already hesitance when it comes to business applications online, and a free investor’s network could very well have some people wondering how valuable the information could be coming out of this community. Cake Financial will have to ensure that its top performers are just that–on an industry-wide perspective, and not just relative to the other members of its network.
Similar services include Geezeo, Covestor, SteamStreet, SocialPicks and DigStock.
More at:https://www.cakefinancial.com
You can see what the top performers are doing, as well as the other members of Cake Financial. Create your own network of users to make friends and set up alerts to be notified when those in your network have made a trade. You can also set up your own account to track performance across your online brokerage accounts. Cake Financial will rank you along with the rest of the members of its community, so you can see how you compare against others.
There aren’t any fantasy trading plans going on in Cake Financial, so you’ll get more useful data when it comes to leveraging a community to aid in your own personal decisions. And unlike some other similar networks, there are no fees associated with accessing data from top performers. This could be in an effort to keep top performers from becoming more like brokerages that may have their own interests in mind when offering advice, or it may simply limit the legal liability for the whole of Cake Financial’s service.
The potential downfall is of course, you may get just what you pay for. There’s already hesitance when it comes to business applications online, and a free investor’s network could very well have some people wondering how valuable the information could be coming out of this community. Cake Financial will have to ensure that its top performers are just that–on an industry-wide perspective, and not just relative to the other members of its network.
Similar services include Geezeo, Covestor, SteamStreet, SocialPicks and DigStock.
More at:https://www.cakefinancial.com
Fring, the mobile application that integrates your chat and mobile phone clients
Fring, the mobile application that integrates your chat and mobile phone clients, has added ICQ to its long list of supported communication tools.
That means you can now get Skype, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Twitter and ICQ on fring, enabling you to chat with IM users and mobile phone users. The free, downloadable mobile phone application lets you make VoIP calls over mobile data networks or a wi-fi connection, roaming between GPRS, 3G and wi-fi. Meebo and eBuddy offer ICQ integration and Nimbuzz is also looking to add ICQ support for its VoIP service, and has recently received $10 million in funding.
more at:http://www.fring.com/
That means you can now get Skype, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Twitter and ICQ on fring, enabling you to chat with IM users and mobile phone users. The free, downloadable mobile phone application lets you make VoIP calls over mobile data networks or a wi-fi connection, roaming between GPRS, 3G and wi-fi. Meebo and eBuddy offer ICQ integration and Nimbuzz is also looking to add ICQ support for its VoIP service, and has recently received $10 million in funding.
more at:http://www.fring.com/
Wikinvest is an online community where users can add their two cents about the stock market
Wikinvest is an online community where users can add their two cents about the stock market. The community of course operates around wikis that are created and modified by all the users of Wikinvest.
This set up allows for users to submit their working knowledge of various aspects of investing. Write an entry regarding a particular company, or add your opinion on why you think it’s for a bull or bear market. You can do this for concepts or actual stocks. In addition, you don’t have to be logged in or even registered in order to contribute to Wikinvest. Anonymous contributions are tied to the ISP address. Information you’re looking through can be filtered by users or anonymous entries, company category, most popular, recently added, and more.
From your profile you can add bio information about yourself, include external links to your website, and add your blog feed so others can read your content. While you can’t add friends, you can send a public or private message to other users. In leiu of adding buddies to your profile, you can bookmark a user and stay updated with their activity in this manner. Wikinvest will suggest bookmarks for you along your profile sidebar, and you can choose to keep a bookmark permanantly here for easy access. The more active you are within the website, the higher your ranking will be, pushing you up to various “positions” like analyst or senior director.
More at:http://www.wikinvest.com/
This set up allows for users to submit their working knowledge of various aspects of investing. Write an entry regarding a particular company, or add your opinion on why you think it’s for a bull or bear market. You can do this for concepts or actual stocks. In addition, you don’t have to be logged in or even registered in order to contribute to Wikinvest. Anonymous contributions are tied to the ISP address. Information you’re looking through can be filtered by users or anonymous entries, company category, most popular, recently added, and more.
From your profile you can add bio information about yourself, include external links to your website, and add your blog feed so others can read your content. While you can’t add friends, you can send a public or private message to other users. In leiu of adding buddies to your profile, you can bookmark a user and stay updated with their activity in this manner. Wikinvest will suggest bookmarks for you along your profile sidebar, and you can choose to keep a bookmark permanantly here for easy access. The more active you are within the website, the higher your ranking will be, pushing you up to various “positions” like analyst or senior director.
More at:http://www.wikinvest.com/
OleOle is a new social network for soccer fans
OleOle is a new social network for soccer fans. The site is currently in public beta.
The site is based in New Zealand and focuses on soccer teams around the globe. There are three main components to the site: resources, social networking, and “experience,” which lets you participate in fantasy football leagues or buy tickets to games. The resources section focuses on stories submitted by users, which can be voted up, like Digg. There’s also a way to keep track of your favorite players and teams in this section as well, offering info on players and teams as each has its own profile with videos, stories, and more.
The social networking component of OleOle includes profiles, blogs, groups, forums and media-sharing. Users can connect based on interests, befriend them, etc. In addition, you can get quick access to live scores for worldwide games, check out the detailed information regarding different soccer leagues, and be informed about events going on in different countries.
More at:http://www.oleole.com/
The site is based in New Zealand and focuses on soccer teams around the globe. There are three main components to the site: resources, social networking, and “experience,” which lets you participate in fantasy football leagues or buy tickets to games. The resources section focuses on stories submitted by users, which can be voted up, like Digg. There’s also a way to keep track of your favorite players and teams in this section as well, offering info on players and teams as each has its own profile with videos, stories, and more.
The social networking component of OleOle includes profiles, blogs, groups, forums and media-sharing. Users can connect based on interests, befriend them, etc. In addition, you can get quick access to live scores for worldwide games, check out the detailed information regarding different soccer leagues, and be informed about events going on in different countries.
More at:http://www.oleole.com/
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