Friday, August 17, 2007

EbayConverter.com is powered by Flyingcart so you can customize your store and create your own unique style

EbayConverter.com is powered by Flyingcart so you can customize your store and create your own unique style. There are four easy steps to create your store; enter your ebay ID, create your store, customize your page, and promote your store. You have all the benefits of ebay, you can sell an unlimited number of items, it accepts all major credit cards, and no commission fees to worry about. At the moment there is a waiting list and you must sign up for an invitation.
For only 12dollars a month you can change your ebay account into your own store. This means that you have relieved yourself of transaction fees and can make your ebay items into your own store.
It seems as though the low cost of 12 dollars a month would be much less than the commission fees presented on ebay, so why wouldn't you convert your ebay items to your own store? Also converting your ebay account items to your own store is as easy as a couple of clicks, so there is no hassle in changing your items from your account to your store. Who wouldn't want there own online store, where they can customize their page and have more ownership over their sales?
more at;http://www.ebayconverter.com/

Gastus--- Tracking Your Expenses

Gastus is a free service, and will remain free forever. Maybe they'll add some extra funcionalities in near future available only to payment accounts, but current functionalities will be free forever, they promise us. They guarantee you that they don't access nor share your personal information, including email and expenses. Your data is only yours.
Gastus provides an easy 1-click way to find, modify and introduce expenses. Optionally, you can enter a description to identify better that expense later. You can see expenses by date or by concept and have a listing of this month’s expenses, this week, last week, or last month expenses. Each expense must belong to one concept, lets say Internet, Electronic Gadgets, Electricity & Gas, or Vacations and Special Weekends. You can add, edit, and delete a concept. A concept belongs to a type of expense, and is mainly used to categorize expenses in a more detailed form. You can use types like Home, Extras, Vehicle, Personal, Taxes, to easily classify your expenses. Gastus also provides an easy and visual way to control your expenses, with integrated graphic pies and ability to compare between months. The dashboard offers a simple evolution graphic for the last 12 months, but many other features will be added soon. To work with Gastus you’ll need a modern standard-compliant web browser such as Firefox 2 or later, Internet Explorer 6 or later, or Safari, and obviously, an internet connection.
more at:http://www.gastus.com/

Startup Addict Is A Social Networking Plateform For The Startup Community And For Many More Things....

Whether you are an entrepreneur, investor, advisor, job seeker or service provider you’ll be interested in visiting this site. Startup Addict is a social networking platform for the startup community. But Startup Addict is much more than a destination; it is a toolbox of people, skills and resources. As a member, you can create a custom profile, network with the startup world, mingle, comment, share, IM and email. You can also look for funding, get advice, and join groups and forums. Browse startups, investors, advisors, service providers, and job seekers. Each search topic will bring up a different matrix or trade. Browse startup industries such as real estate, legal, sports, travel, marketing, Web 2.0, sales, SEO, and automotive, among many others. Entrepreneurs can also get their most difficult questions answered. Some advisors give free advice and others charge a fee per question. As entrepreneurs can then leave a positive or negative response based on advisors answers, this will force advisors to give you relevant and important advice. Startup Addict has also created an affiliate network in order to pay users who create traffic and build the Startup Addict community. It offers $9.95 - $29.95 commission to affiliates for every user that subscribes to the Startup Addict network above the free basic user service.
Come join the startup community that embraces greatness. Ranging from entrepreneurial musicians and real estate moguls to the next big Web 2.0 startups. Get your idea financed and brought to fruition with the help of other startup addicts. Build your team of specialized startup heroes from your supercharged Rolodex and community of business savvy gladiators to thwart the powers of convention. Build your profile and shout your startup idea from the highest peak of Mount Capitalism until you have enough mojo to be recognized for dreaming big and being great.
More at:http://www.startupaddict.com/

Conneting Travellers

Epic Trip is a new and unique way for travelers to know what their destinations and their hotels are all about, even before setting off. By connecting our travelers with videos, virtual tours, reviews, and the wealth of experience brought to bear by the very users of Epic Trip, it is our mission is to spark people's desire to discover their own epic trip. This is just the beginning. We are working to provide you with a greater coverage of destinations, hotels and helpful features. So go ahead. Discover your next epic trip.

It allows travelers to view detailed information about their destination. There are hotel videos, virtual tours, reviews, and journals written by fellow travelers. You can add your places and leave photo trails. Just upload your photos to the Epic gallery and start sharing your travel experiences. Search for hotel videos by destination, beaches & waterfronts, casino areas, golf areas, or by spa & wellness. You can also search for hotels, restaurants, and attractions in the U.S, meet like-minded people, and participate in blogs. If you're a student or a teacher, check the Student Travel Guide to find lots of interesting places for you to explore, as well as hot travel deals specifically for students.
more at;http://www.epictrip.com/

Backflip is offering a fundamental advance in how consumers capture enduring value in their everyday Web experiences

Backflip is offering a fundamental advance in how consumers capture enduring value in their everyday Web experiences. As a team, Backflip is excited to help people enjoy, personalize and get the most from the Web.
This site offers a free web-based service, where users can create a personal web directory of the most valuable websites they discover on the net and just by using the Backflip it! button this sites will be saved and automatically organized by Backflip.com, there’s no hard work needed. When users want to visualize their sites, they simply need to go to their Backflip account and they will find the pages filed in their personal directory. Moreover, at Backflip.com users are also able to share and discuss with friends or other users about the sites they choosed, and by this also contribute with other interesting sites. As a user you are also provided of a list of the top sites in topics you care, so start exploring others view right now.
more at: http://www.backflip.com/

Thursday, August 16, 2007

What’s the best thing to do with money: Spend it, save it or give it away?

What’s the best thing to do with money: Spend it, save it or give it away?

The ideal answer, says Eulalie Scandiuzzi, is to recognize the importance of all three. That’s why she created colorful children’s banks with three compartments: spend, save and share.

Too many families, she said, either don’t talk about money at all or discuss it as an obstacle, the reason they can’t do certain things.

“I wanted something that brought the conversation to the dinner table in a fun way, so money would became a ‘yes’ conversation rather than a ‘no’ conversation,” said Scandiuzzi, executive director of a family foundation and a past director of Coyote Central, which offers life-skill experiences to middle-school students.

Since the bank’s debut in 2002, more than 1 million Moonjars have been sold — credit unions, banks and charities give them away — and the product line continues to expand into books and games to spark family conversation.
More at:http://www.moonjar.com/
Source:http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2003817958_inventors050.html

Timesonline has a number of videos from entrepreneurs offering advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.

At the Bank of Scotland launch dinner for The Entrepreneur Challenge, business figures and entrepreneurs offered excellent advice for contenders
Getting started in business can be a daunting task, no matter how much determination and drive an entrepreneur has. It can be a lonely path at times, but there are people willing and able to give great advice on how to keep going through the tough times and what not to do to save trouble in the future.

Therefore, when Bank of Scotland hosted a dinner at London’s Quaglino’s restaurant in May to launch The Entrepreneur Challenge, we took the opportunity to ask the great and good of the business world for advice for up-and-coming entrepreneurs.

We spoke with business figures and entrepreneurs at the dinner resulting in a series of interviews, the first three below, where established players on the business field gave their top tips and advice for becoming a success.

Full text:http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/related_reports/entrepreneurs/article1965482.ece

Could You Turn Sheep And Duck Doo Into A Selling Point?

If you want to be an entrepreneur but need a business idea, consider renting ducks. It's apparently doing very well in Germany.
Germans are lining up to rent farm animals to help with the gardening as part of a new green scheme.

Werner Kiwitt, who runs an ecological park in Schleswig-Holstein, is offering sheep to cut the grass and ducks to eat the slugs.

He said: "You get free fertiliser provided by the animals as well, so it's not a bad deal."
Who would have thought you could turn sheep and duck doo into a selling point? Now that's a good entrepreneur.

More at:http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2464126.html?menu=
Via-Businesspundit

Venture Watch

KickApps provides a hosted web 2.0 platform.
KickApps allows any one to easily add social networking features and media to their site. The application is a hosted platform, meaning the social networking features and necessary servers, code etc. Everything is running and maintained by KickApps. You do not need to worry about scalability or other code and hardware related concerns as your site grows.

Their solution is "white label" and will match your sites look and feel, therefore no one knows that these social networking features and media are provided by a third party, KickApps.

KickApps provides an entire management console, reporting and other tools. Their ease of use and speed of deployment makes them worthy of consideration if you are in need of these types of services.
They raised:KickApps raised $11 Million in series B financing from SoftBank Capital, Spark , and Prism VentureWorks.
More at:http://www.kickapps.com/

With Taskee, web developers can assign, comment, and manage tasks directly on their website

With Taskee, web developers can assign, comment, and manage tasks directly on their website. Taskee makes it easier and cheaper to collaborate during the website testing process. As web developers know, the testing process may not be a process so much as a way of life.

After visiting the Taskee login page, you are shown a list of the pages with assigned tasks. The Taskee control panel resides above the pages of your site as you test them, waiting to be accessed via a small button in the top right corner of the screen. When a tester finds a problem on a page of the website, the tester assigns the problem to a developer. These tasks can be commented on, and the developers are notified of the task via email as soon as it is created. Each created task is URL specific, allowing for quick and efficient problem solving.

Taskee is really useful, and very creative. The simple way each task is assigned to a specific URL allows for simple multiple user problem solving. Taskee can help anyone coding a page, or even just someone who may notice a spelling error occasionally.
more at:http://www.taskee.com/

Personal Finance Tool

Intuit is getting ready to launch an online version of Quicken, the personal finance software. The upcoming service is currently in private testing, and the beta site is set to launch in the middle of September and becoming largely available to the public this winter or early next year.

The web-based, personal finance tool will let you create balance charts and reports, as well as track your bill payment services. All additional features for Quicken have not yet been revealed. A good amount of security issues had to be overcome on the part of Intuit, as the company notes that consumer trust levels are just now reaching a point that warrants the development of online applications for tracking personal finance information. Not sure on how integrated the online Quicken version will be with the desktop service, but it would be great to get a basic service for free, though consumers may not be that ready for business, web-based applications merging with the concepts of web 2.0.

Additionally, Quicken’s desktop software versions to be released this year have also been improved, and the Home & Business Edition comes with a desktop gadget for Windows Vista, and Paypal integration. With improved security measures and an increasing use for web-based applications, as well as paperless billing and electronic payments and banking, now is a better time to develop services for consumers to this end. While Intuit moves towards web-based applications, Adobe has hinted that it’s moving in the opposite direction, with the use of its AIR runtime.
more at:http://quicken.intuit.com

Video Converter

All2Convert.com, just go to the site, browse through your computer to find the file that needs conversion, recognize which format you wish to convert to and select it, then click start, when the conversion is finished you will be able to download your media back to your computer in the new format.
Their free online video conversion service allows you convert video from web sites like: google.com, youtube.com , break.com, metacafe.com, myspace.com in all known video formats, such as *.3gp *.mp4 *.wmv *.mpeg *.mov *.swf *.avi *.mp3 files.

They use the new method of video conversation technology for your computers (OS: Windows, Mac) and your mobile devices. It converts all video files (all known video formats) to your desired video format faster with high quality than a typical transcoder software installed on your PC.
More at:http://all2convert.com/

Realtravel.com provides detailed accounts of trips all across the globe that real travelers have documented and shared with the online community

Realtravel.com provides detailed accounts of trips all across the globe that real travelers have documented and shared with the online community. This site also offers a clear and simple way to organize a trip and good methods to lead to a better experience. Dynamic rout maps are very helpful to visualize a trip, and users can view information from Frommer´s for free! The plans are easily changed and travelers can send their information and plans to family and friends through the website. Realtravel.com also provides a massive amount of information on specific attractions and destinations. For example, users can view current weather, news, exchange rates, visa and border rules, other articles about the location, travel advisories, economic and social information, local calendars, compare prices, etc.
They Say:
"At RealTravel, we believe that travel information is about more than price and star ratings - it is about the whole experience. You want to know what it is really like there. You want information on the people, the culture, how to get around, how to avoid problems, as well as suggestions for itineraries, accommodations, dining and things to do. We also believe that the best way to find out about a place is from someone with similar tastes who has already been there. So we've created an exciting new online community that lets people like you find and share detailed advice and experiences on places around the world. And we make it easy for you to connect to other travelers who are just as passionate about travel as you."
More at:http://realtravel.com/

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

How To Survive In Business

Couple of quick items I thought you’d find interesting.

First Interesting Item: The Wall Street Journal ran a great story the other day on the follies of MBA-powered mismanagement.

Well, I thought it was a great story, anyway. No one else seemed to pay much attention… probably because it doesn’t fit into the average person’s belief system that a Master’s in Business Administration is good for anything.

Seems that Harvard lost $350-million bucks in a hedge fund… run by guys with Harvard MBAs.

Let that idea roll around in your head for a moment.

If you have a stake in believing that MBAs rule, then it’s just an annoying news item. Move along. Nothing to see here.

However, if — like me — you enjoy these tidbits of proof that MBA actually stands for Massive Bullshit Acquisition, then the irony is truly delicious.

I’ve always maintained it is harder to teach people with too much education how to run small biz and entrepreneur shops, because the nonsense is piled so deep and thick in their skulls. An MBA is often a red flag that trouble lies ahead… like getting in a car with someone behind the wheel who learned how to drive solely from books.

A lot of the people who come to me for private consultation have MBAs. They can wax prolific on all sorts of business theory… but when it comes down to actually making sales, they’re like a babe in the woods. Helpless, clueless, and desperately trying to bluff their way through whatever disaster they’ve created.

Okay, there’s probably some worth in getting advanced degrees in biz. If you’re looking to nail down a soul-devouring gig in middle management at some faceless corporation, for example, it’s definitely the way to go.

And it will, at the very least, force you to read some books. I guess that’s a good thing, too.

But a vast number of the most frightingly successful entrepreneurs and small biz owners I know have zero college under their belt. Many dropped out of high school.

And yet you would consider them intellectually “inferior” at your peril. They’re usually smarter than the most “officially” educated guy in the room, and possess infinitely more real-world “pedal to the metal” savvy. The world of small biz doesn’t do so well using theory and grand concepts like “branding”. Entrepreneurs generally do better by breaking rules, and employing old-time classic salesmanship to deliver targeted product via killer pitches to hot markets.

All my mentors were self-educated. That generally means they were obsessive about reading. If rumor of any good book in any MBA program leaked out, they were on it. And because they filtered all incoming data through the real-world crucible of making sales happen, I would bet on their comprehension level being higher than any student’s.

But they never relied solely on books. Often, they would stop reading the latest bidniz best-seller half-way through, having quickly picked up the essential knowledge they could use. Books are tools.

It’s how the info works in the laboratory of everyday selling that counts.

I’m a broken record on this, because it’s important: Whatever happens to the economy (and things are, admittedly, getting scary)… whatever happens in your market (including the sudden threat of increased competition)… and whatever happens in your life in general… the one key survival skill will always and forever be raw, classic salesmanship.

Learn how to sell. Learn how to identify your best prospects, how to find them, how to nurture their innate desire for what you offer… and, most importantly, learn how to needle their emotional sweet spot to get them to act. To buy, to try your stuff out, and to allow you into their complex, fuzzy-focused lives as a “go to guy” provider of goods, services and content.

And remember — if the dudes teaching the MBA courses really knew their stuff, do you think they’d be grinding it out in academia?

The School of Hard Knocks remains the best university out there.

Second Interesting Item: Last night, I had dinner with a friend who also happens to be the top real estate broker in Northern Nevada.

Nevada, you may or may not know, went from being one of the top ten hottest real estate markets in the country… to being one of the top five worst. And we did it in a matter of shell-shocked months.

Most real estate-related businesses around here are in full panic mode, laying people off, closing up shop, fighting off bankruptcy, wringing their hands and hiding under the covers.

Ask your average agent how things are going, and he’s liable to burst into tears (and ask to borrow twenty bucks for lunch).

My friend, however, is doing just fine. He’s not matching his record-setting pace from the recent boom years, but he’s not far off, either.

And how, you ask, is he able to survive and thrive while others struggle and fail?

The answer is very simple, it turns out.

He ignores all the strategies other agents and brokers rely on.

And, instead, he uses old-time classic salesmanship to help his clients sell when no one else is selling, and buy when no one seems to be buying. Any good salesman would immediately recognize his skill-set as bonding, smart message-to-market targeting, and (most notably) working within the rules of the real world.

No theory. No tricks. No special magic at all.

Most agents simply do not know how to sell. They violate the most basic principles… like forgetting that it’s not all about them, but rather all about the prospect.

You never “sell” a house to anyone. You create the opportunity for a prospect to sell himself. And you do this by completely understanding his needs and desires, and genuinely matching him up with the right house. However you need to define it.

Most agents get all caught up in self-defeating conversations about “no one’s buying”, “the market’s in the tank”, “we’re in a recession” and all sorts of other nonsense. The glass is half empty, and leaking.

A great salesman assesses the situation, adjusts, and stays frosty.

And they get real. People are still buying and selling, even in the most dire market conditions. Sure, they’re harder to find, but they’re there. The housing industry is a fluid, moving parade of action. And there is always a way around a problem. Always. The reality of the solution may not thrill you, but there are endless choices and alternative paths.

The world may or may not be headed for some kind of economic Armeggedon. We may weather the coming crises just fine, or we may all be living in caves in a few years.

But however the reality plays out, one stark fact remains: Those who survive and thrive will be the ones with the most real-world experience, and the best salesmanship skills.

It has ever been thus.

Stay frosty…
Via-http://marketingrebel.com/

JumpKnowledge, a brand new online notation tool. JumpKnowledge gives its users the ability to note and comment directly on web pages

JumpKnowledge is a lightweight and simple tool which is dead easy to use. It’s great for jotting down your thoughts in context without any disruption of the original text. It’s also a good way to share notes with fellow students or coworkers. You can even use it in jest, to mock bloggers by inserting witty asides in their witless posts.
JumpKnowledge, a brand new online notation tool. JumpKnowledge gives its users the ability to note and comment directly on web pages (unlike Google Notebook) whenever a thought occurs to them. Annotated pages can be saved, linked and sent to friends. All your notes displace the underlying text so that none of the original content is lost or obscured; your text is highlighted and can be read in context. JKN supports international character sets and includes soft links for cross referencing your annotations. There are add-ons for both IE and Firefox; you can also just copy and paste the web address into the text box on the homepage.
More at:http://info.jkn.com/

Shopify, one of a number of services for creating niche online stores

Shopify, one of a number of services for creating niche online stores, has launched the Shopify Marketplace, a venue to search all items on Shopify stores, browse by tag, vendor and product type and use the slick interface to view the featured stores of the day. The site was announced to users today.

Shopify claims to have more than 20,000 stores running on the platform, with pricing between free and $299/month. Rivals include Zlio and Amazon aStores.

Speaking of marketplaces, you’ve got 24 hours left to list in the Web 2.0 Marketplace, which I’m happy to say is getting hammered with traffic.
more at;http://www.shopify.com/

Social Media Plateform

CrowdFactory.com, which offers a platform that includes user profiles, blogs, comments, groups, discussions and photo albums -- all completely customizable. The service is offered on a hosted basis, and can be deployed quickly and easily. CrowdFactory boasts that their services cost less than developing software in-house. CrowdFactory makes it easy for anyone to set up a social network, for anything. Maybe you can use it for a campaign, your work team, your reading club, or a nation-wide group of like-minded thinkers.
They say"Traditional media are losing their reach. Tivo, spam-blockers, information overload, and the inability to deliver relevant information to consumers and track the effectiveness of campaigns have created a void for new forms of marketing to fill. The emerging social media - the synergy of online identity, communication, consumer-generated content, and traditional media combine to create compelling experiences for consumers. Social media have surpassed simple trend into phenomenon.

To help companies leverage the new medium, we have developed a social media platform and toolset to power white-label social network communities. Our offering includes social network communities with user profiles, blogs, comments, groups, discussions and photo albums, all completely customizable to create the optimal customer experience. The service is offered on a hosted basis, and can be deployed quickly and easily at a fraction of the cost of developing software in-house.

Our vision is to deliver social media in a way that makes it easy and effective for marketers and developers to create and power the best consumer experience possible."
More at:http://www.crowdfactory.com/

AskLaila.com works as a search engine where you can find any kind of information about your city

AskLaila.com works as a search engine where you can find any kind of information about your city. For instance, if you are in need of a specific kind of service, such as the telephone number, location and hours of service of a plumber, you will have it. Or even if you are running late for an important meeting and need the exact direction of the location where its taking place, you will also be provided of this information. But this doesn’t end here, whether you feel you must suggest a kind of place, your favorite one for example, or a helpful service, you have to register with the site, which is free, and by this provide the site with all the essential information you feel should be included. You can also contribute to AskLaila.com by writing reviews, rating the reviews of other users, or even your questions are considered as important. At the home page you will find five categories including Wine and Dine where you will find the best places to eat, drink and merry, Events, Lifestyle where you will find all you need to live, Local Services and Shopping. After this, what else do you need to make your life easier?
more at:http://www.asklaila.com/

Youtube On Your Cellphone

Mofoyo is the only way to share and watch videos and view images on
your phone. The Mofoyo service is 100% free and works on most video
enabled phones including Sprint, AT&T/Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile or
other carriers including the iPhone, Blackberry's and Windows mobile
enabled phones. You may then share the video and / or image via
standard text message to the phones of your friends, colleagues and
family.
Mofoyo is an innovative site that allows you to share videos and photos with friends as well as meet new people from your video-enabled cell phone and your computer. One must simply enter the site and
create a user account, then you are ready to go and upload, watch and
share videos and photos as well as meet new people. Mofoyo works with
all major cell phone carriers and is free, although it is recommended
to upgrade your cell phone to an unlimited data package. Videos and
photos are shared through text messages and you can create a profile
which allows you to meet other users all over the world. The Mofoyo
site also keeps you updated with lists of all the most popular videos
and photos, along with members profiles.
More at:http://mofoyo.com/

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Websites For Sale Or Web2.0 Marketplace

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

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/

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/

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/

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/

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

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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

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/

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/

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/

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

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/

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

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/

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/

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

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

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.

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/

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/

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/

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

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

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

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