Friday 28 December 2012

PeakGames - The Biggest Game Developer You Never Heard About

Need Perfect Software Name? Try Crowdsourcing.



http://www.peakgames.net/

It’s probably fair to say that few American have heard of Peak Games, the Istanbul-based startup that recently became the world’s No. 3 social-gaming company in terms of daily active users (DAU). That’s because Peak develops and publishes online games that are culturally targeted at Turkish, Middle Eastern, and North African markets. All but one of the games are available only in Turkish and Arabic.

The company, which creates Facebook, mobile, and browser-based games, announced last week that it has over 9.4 million daily users. Zynga and King.com, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 companies, have 57.3 million and 12.3 million, respectively, according to online data provider AppData. (Note: Peak’s number is based on a combination of developed and published games, while AppData provides these numbers separately. Also, these numbers have shifted since last week but Peak remains in the No. 3 spot.)

Peak Games has experienced rapid growth since late 2010, when the company’s three founders set up shop in the small storage room of an air conditioning store owned by one co-founder’s father. At the time, Peak’s goal was to create culturally specific games for the Turkish market, starting with an online adaption of the traditional Turkish tile-based board game, Okey. “Back then, Turkey was the fourth-largest country on Facebook and there was no local player or even global player who was providing relevant content or relevant services to the region,” says Rina Onur, the company’s co-founder and chief strategy officer, who graduated from Harvard in 2008 with a B.A. in economics and briefly worked at Morgan Stanley as an analyst. She explains that most big social-gaming companies simply translate Western games into Turkish.

When Okey took off (the game now has 18 million users), Peak’s team moved to more comfortable office space. In 2011, they secured funding to expand into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), regions that Onur says have “similar cultures, a similar history, similar user habits … and Internet and Facebook penetration that is growing really, really fast.”

The company’s first release in MENA was a game with a name that translates as Happy Farm. That game has since become the world’s No. 2 farm game, after Farmville. It includes characters, buildings, and animals that are specific to Peak’s targeted regions. “In the Turkish version, the farmer is not covered, while in our Arabic version there is a Saudi man with a cultural outfit,” says Onur. “We don’t have cowboys or American horses.”

In February, Peak acquired Saudi Arabia’s largest gaming company, Kammelna, creator of a popular online version of the beloved local card game, Baloot. Saudi Arabia is now Peak’s second-largest market, after Turkey. It’s a good market to have cornered, says Onur. “There’s high levels of disposable income but not a lot of liberty in terms of going out and socializing, so people use these games as a platform to meet each other, express themselves, and interact,” she explains. “They’re like online coffee shops.”

Since last year, Peak’s revenues have skyrocketed by 600 percent, according to Onur. The company now has about 200 employees in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, as well as in offices in Berlin and Barcelona. Peak has also secured over $20 million in funding from investors in Belgium, Germany, and the Middle East.

eak has no plans to make its locally targeted games available in English, as they don’t hold the same relevance for Western cultures. But Onur says the team may eventually expand its offerings of “global themed” games such as its latest release, Lost Bubble. Peak created the “bubble shooter, arcade-style game” for a dozen languages because it isn’t culturally specific, and it picked up a million daily users in two weeks. “To our surprise, without pushing the product in Western markets, we got a huge number of organic users, especially in Europe,” says Onur. “It proved to us that the developing capabilities we have built over the past year and a half … are comparable to those of our global peers.”

Regardless of Lost Bubble‘s success, Peak’s primary focus remains servicing and creating content for Turkey and MENA. It’s a market that the company has locked down, according to Onur. ”Global players with money and resources are not focusing on these games,” she says. “And the local players in our regions are too small to compete.”

The company’s next goal is to expand slowly and sustainably into such new emerging markets as Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia, bringing more local games online. According to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, it’s a solid strategy. “They’re obviously doing something right, and what’s interesting is that they’re focused on such a narrow market,” he says—noting he hasn’t played Peak’s games because they aren’t translated. “If their games work in that market, they’ll work anywhere. They just need to localize them and get the language right.”

[Via - Business Week]

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Friday 21 December 2012

Cool Startups - Geologi.com

BizHacks - How To Use Bitrix24.Com As A Free CRM, Intranet And Task Manager.



https://geoloqi.com/

During her keynote speech at the 2012 South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, Geoloqi CEO Amber Case proclaimed that the next generation of location-based apps and analytics would transform the mobile phone into a "remote control for reality," with people as the metaphorical buttons. The problem with the current state of things, she lamented, is that you "miss a lot of life looking at the screen all the time."

With Geoloqi, you can make apps to fix that--apps that work in the background, alerting you only if something needs to be done. The Portland, Ore.-based company provides a turnkey platform that makes it easy to add next-generation geolocation functionality to apps and mobile devices. The company demonstrates its capabilities to potential clients and partners with its own app, which has features like "Don't Eat There" (it pings you if you're near a restaurant that has gotten too many bad reviews). Case and co-founder Aaron Parecki programmed a set of location-based features that automatically turn lights on or off when they enter or leave their houses.

Ambient-location technology, as Case describes geolocation, "has incredible implications for the end-user." Other developers, she hopes, will take the technology and run with it, since her main focus is on big organizations. Already, Geoloqi has partnerships with app-development platforms like Appcelerator and a project with personnel recovery firm TATE to help track the global staffs of clients such as the Peace Corps, pushing emergency alerts upon entry to dangerous areas.

Case and Parecki started Geoloqi in 2010; they launched the product this past February, offering a software development kit that addresses pain points that have plagued the geolocation market from the beginning, such as accuracy, battery drain, carrier dependence and privacy.

In fact, Geoloqi has been six years in the making; development began two years ago when Case and Parecki still had day jobs and bootstrapped the business with winnings from weekend hackathons. "I've seen a lot of geocompanies die, so we were waiting until the exact right moment," she says--referring to when investors started calling. The company closed on $350,000 in funding in July 2011.

That cash is proof of what Victor Hwang, managing director of Silicon Valley's T2 Venture Capital and author of The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley, says is the "significant" amount of interest, money and activity still flowing into apps. "It's true that geolocation has been going on for a while, but we're still waiting for a big ‘super-app' company that answers how to really make revenue off that," he says.

Things are promising for Geoloqi. "This is the future of apps," Case says. The numbers back that up: Pyramid Research puts the global location-based services market at $10 billion by 2015; ABI Research estimates location analytics will be a $9 billion market by 2016; and Ericsson anticipates upward of 50 billion connected devices on the market by 2020.

[Via - Entrepreneur.Com]

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Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Friday 14 December 2012

Bootstrap This - 29+ Free Bootstrapping Tools That Help You Save Money

1. Bitrix24.com - Free CRM, planner, project manager, document sharing (limited to 12 employees)

2. PickyDomains.com - Pay per result naming service, $50 for domain/name/product line, slogan.

3. Reddit/Freebies - Community moderated daily updated freebies list.

4. AppSumo.com - Groupon clone for buying enterprise software.

5. JetRadar.com - Low airfare meta searchengine (searches through 700+ airlines to find best deals normally available through direct purchase on airline sites only).

6. SideJobTrack.com - Free invoicing.

7. MoneyBookers.Com (Skrill) - PayPal alternative, cheap way to accept online payments/credit cards (25 cents + 3%, please refer to site for exact details)

8. Kodesk.com - Office sharing. You can both buy and sell extra office space, including by the hour.

9. PRLog.com - Free press-release distribution.

10. InternMatch.com - Own slaves legally.

11. RetailMeNot.Com - Discount coupons, business section available.

12. OpenOffice.Org - Free MS Office alternative.

13. WaveAccounting.com - Free online accounting SaaS

14. SysAid.com - Free helpdesk software. ZenDesk.com is worth paying for.

15. CouchSurfing.com - Yes, I do want to let complete stranges sleep in my house for free (so I can do the same when I travel).

16. SubmitYourStartup.Com - Partly outdated list of sites that accept startup submissions.

17. Vator.Tv - Social network for startups

18. LowerMyBills.com - Loan/Insurance/Internet Provider/Phone Carries comparison service.

19. Score.Org - Free consulting from retired entrepreneurs (available in certain areas only).

20. Logaster.com - Free logos. Bad English gratis.

21. 99Designs.com - Cheaper alternative for design work. Designers hate the site, so it must be good.

22. MinuteBox.com - Hire doctor/lawyer/coffee enema expert - pay by the minute. Lots of experts, typical pay is around $2.50 a minute. Not sure, but there's probably some sort of minimum required.

23. HelpAReporter.Com - Free publicity (pitch your business directly to journos working on certain stories).

24. AVG - Free antivirus.

25. Weebly.Com - Free website creator.

26. GotFreeFax.com - Send free fax online. Limited to 3 pages, US and Canada only.

27. RememberTheMilk.com - Free To-Do list, iPhone and Android support.

28. Zamzar.com - Free online file converter. Let's pass a law that mandates that only one extension (how does .file sound) is allowed!

29. Join.Me - Free webcast/webconference SaaS.

P.S. I have not included eBay, Skype, etc. since everybody knows about those. Did I miss something? Send me a message.

Friday 7 December 2012

Cool New Startups - Bitrix24.Com

Does your site need hits? We've got them!

Bitrix24.com is a new SaaS (software as a service) cloud based social intranet platform that makes corporate intranet easily available to smaller companies. It does not take any time to deploy (everything is already installed and set up) and doesn’t cost anything if it’s used by companies with fewer than 12 employees.

At first, Bitrix24 looks like corporate Facebook – there is the wall or activity stream where different employees engage in discussions and vote by ‘liking’ ideas, documents or workgroups. There are also instant messenger and photogallery. This is where the similarities end.



The first important Bitrix24 module is free CRM (customer relationship module) that comes with a database for clients and prospects that are easily sorted by events (phone call or meeting, for instance). Next comes the sales funnel that divides clients into easy-to-work-with groups - new prospects, first contact, requested quote, scheduled meeting, negotiations and sales, for example (the actual setup is customizable). Bitrix24 free CRM is designed for easy interactions with clients. For example, you can send an e-mail to a certain group as well as import/export any client information. You can also set Bitrix24 to automatically import ‘leads’ that are generated by any site into the CRM.



The second important module is document management. This module allows storing, editing and collaborating on various documents with co-workers. The documents can be made private (visible to document owner only) or shared. Bitrix24 also tracks version history, making it possible to revert to older version of the document, if necessary. Importantly, you can map a single document library or all of your document libraries to a network drive on your local machine literally in 2 clicks using WebDav. That means that whether you use Windows, Mac OS, or Linux, you will be able to see the documents in the intranet locally through your file manager.



Third and fourth are planning and task/project management modules. These include calendar, work reports, absentee charts, meeting scheduler, personalized to-do lists, time management tools, even Gantt charts for easy visualization of progress made on specific projects. The employees are split into workgroups and access rights are assigned to each individual. For example, the department head may see work reports of his subordinates only, while vice-president is able to view every work report made by any employee.



Because companies tend to outsource or hire outside contractors/freelancer Bitrix24 allows one to easily integrate those into workgroups and give non-employees access to corporate intranet with restricted rights specified as necessary. Also, for higher mobility, Bitrix24.com can be easily accessed via iPhone, iPad or any Android based device.

As mentioned, Bitrix24.com is free when used by 12 employees or fewer. Bitrix24.com can be used by unlimited numbers of workers for $99 a month. Unlike other similar services, Bitrix24.com doesn’t charge extra for each additional employee, since it is cloud based and ample storage is available. The premium version is priced at $199 a month.

[Via - MadConomist.com]

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Friday 30 November 2012

Startup Profiles - IslandX.Com

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http://www.islandx.com/

Name:Marius Hjelset
Age:30
Company:IslandX
Staff numbers:Three
Company description:A network for people moving abroad

Tell us what your business does

IslandX is a international lifestyle and relocation network; or in other words, a social network for people who want to work, study or live abroad. We help people find information about places they are interested in moving to using a social experience.
Where did the idea for your business come from?

I have spent most of my life living abroad. Having moved around many places with my parents when I was younger, I always had an interest in continuing to experience different countries. However, as an adult I found that moving countries was a lot more difficult when you have to organise everything yourself! So I decided to start building a social network that can help with the relocation process.
How did you know there was a market for it?

There was a great deal of market validation in place already by way of hundreds of different forums and information sites for people who are moving. However, we found these to be outdated either in content or design. Also, we found that they didn't take full advantage of the social web that people are familiar with.

In addition, the sheer number of sites already out there makes for a fragmented user experience, something we feel we can solve. Statistically, international migration is constantly increasing.
What were you doing before starting up?

I have been working in the technology sector for the past seven years in project and product development roles. Most recently I was leading the technical development on a global project for Vodafone, developing a web hosting and email service for small businesses.
Have you always wanted to run your own business?

Yes, ever since university I have had an interest in developing new services and creating something that builds value beyond that which one person can put into it.
How did you raise the money?

IslandX has been self-funded to date. We have also been in touch with investors as part of our launch build-up and we anticipate that we will start a fund-raising round in the near future to fund additional resources and accelerate our growth.
What challenges have you faced and how have you overcome them?

There are probably more than I can remember! Running a web start-up is a constant rollercoaster ride, with periods of immense feeling of achievement followed by feelings of insecurity and defeat.

Our biggest challenge is and always will be attracting enough users to engage online, help build content, and to come back again. That's why we spend time on PR and brand building, and we have had some good press coverage as a result.

How will you make money?

The service is entirely free for users. IslandX aims to make money by providing access to qualified leads to a wide array of companies involved in different parts of the relocation lifecycle. This will allow us to provide targeted support to our members who wish to work, study or live abroad.
What was your first big breakthrough?

Making it to our launch. Before launch we were doing early market validation with a test user base. If we didn't see enough of an opportunity based on their reactions we probably would have stopped right there.

It's now 10 days since launch, and we've had a great response from new members. We are adding new members every day, and more and more content is being added.

What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs?

To achieve your dreams, be stubborn. Don't give up: persistence and hard work will pay off.

When building your business, don't be stubborn. Evolve your product or service as much as is needed to get the desired behaviour from your customers.

Where do you want to be in five years' time?

In five years we want IslandX to be recognised as the tripadvisor of the relocation world. In other words, the number one place people go to for information about moving countries.

[Via - Startups.Co.Uk.]
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Friday 23 November 2012

10 Great Books About Underground Economy, Working Under The Table And Surviving When Economy Sucks

1. Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
In this revealing study of a Southside Chicago neighborhood, sociologist Venkatesh opens a window on how the poor live. Focusing on domestics, entrepreneurs, hustlers, preachers and gangs linked in an underground economy that “manages to touch all households,” the book reveals how residents struggle between “their desires to live a just life and their needs to make ends meet as best they can.” In this milieu, African-American mechanics, painters, hairdressers, musicians and informal security guards are linked to prostitutes, drug dealers, gun dealers and car thieves in illegal enterprises that even police and politicians are involved in, though not all are criminals in the usual sense. Storefront clergy, often dependent “on the underground for their own livelihood,” serve as mediators and brokers between individuals and gang members, who have “insinuated themselves—and their drug money—into the deepest reaches of the community.” Although the book’s academic tenor is occasionally wearying, Venkatesh keeps his work vital and poignant by using the words of his subjects, who are as dependent on this intricate web as they are fearful of its dangers.
2. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don’t need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald’s, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don’t really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner’s 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there’s a good economic reason for that too, and we’re just not getting it yet.
3. Ragnar’s Guide to the Underground Economy
Through detailed case studies Ragnar shows you how carpenters, woodcutters, farmers, housecleaners, computer consultants, mechanics, lawyers, vendors, locksmiths and others are cashing in on today’s booming economy - and keeping what they earn by not paying taxes. From these undergrounders you’ll learn how to locate work, get paid without supplying identifying numbers, prepare a realistic budget, advertise your services or product and finance your project when you can’t go to the bank. You’ll also learn the pitfalls of working off the books and what you can do to prepare for them.
4. How to Survive Without a Salary: Learning How to Live the Conserver Lifestyle
I thought that this book was so funny in places that I haven’t laughed so hard, so much, for a long time. Charles is a skilled writer; the book is very readable, intelligent, thoughtful,and well organized. It contains a copious (even prodigious) amount of tips, for a 200-page book. Very practical, and at the same time touches on abtruse philosophical areas, especially at the end of the book.
Hey, I used to think I was cheap. This guy is CHEAP. His anecdotes include waiting for it to rain to take a shower instead of installing indoor plumbing. He had a big hole in the floor of his entryway, or somewhere in his house, into which the kids and a few guests fell. He refused to spend one cent covering the hole, until a neighbor told him about a steel grate they threw away years ago, so he went to the dump and found it.
The point is that you can learn from a top-notch “conserver”; an applied example I would give is to buy two gallons of milk when it’s on sale and freeze one for later use (works well!). This guy probably drinks powdered milk though.
I disagree with his economic analysis; prudence CAN be a vice, as any virtue most certainly is in its extreme, or even overdone. But Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is not just about “McPimple Burger” or keeping up with the Joneses. Any system on a mass scale is going to have gaping faults, and the weaker of us might succumb to our basest impulses. But perhaps Long goes a bit too far the other way…
At any rate, he sounds like an economic anarchist. Very well thought out book, great advice.
5. Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets
In Freakonomics, many people were fascinated by a section that described how most crack cocaine dealers lived at home with their mothers. Why? They make less money than minimum wage. The source of that factoid was research conducted on site by Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day, who describes in this book how he did that research and came to make decisions one day for part of the Black Kings gang in Chicago.
In the process of reading this book, you’ll learn more than you ever expected to know about the ways that the poorest people support and protect themselves. You’ll also find how drug-dealing gangs are both a help and a hindrance to the poor.
More powerfully, you’ll be exposed to the great difficulties involved in observing the lives of the poor and the gangs that spring from them. The moral and ethical dilemmas this book presents are almost beyond belief.
6. Under the Table and Into Your Pocket: The How and Why of the Underground Economy
Under The Table And Into Your Pocket: The How And Why Of The Underground Economy by Bill Wilson will provide the non-specialist general reader with a complete education on a facet of the American economy rarely (if ever) covered in school. Beginning with an introduction to just some of the ways governmental regulations strangle business, overtax the little guy, and enable Washington to be the drunken big spender that it is today (if you overpay your taxes by $7,000 and don’t reclaim it within three years you’re out of luck - but underpay it by $7,000 and the IRS can and will come after you no matter how much time has passed!), Under The Table proceeds to demonstrate how the little guy can circumvent taxes by doing business away from Big Brother’s prying eyes. From boarding houses and flea markets to roadside merchants and dominatrix work, Under The Table covers the benefits, disadvantages, tips, tricks, techniques and much more of common underground ways to earn a living. Under The Table is emphatically not a legal guide; neither the author nor the publisher assume any responsibility for the use or misuse of information contained within - but the eye-opening ins and outs of a truly free economy make for quite fascinating and advantageous reading.
7. Deep Inside the Underground Economy: How Millions of Americans are Practising Free Enterprise in an Unfree Economy
Are you fed up with giving so much of your hard earned cash to the government, then watching it get spent on ridiculous pork-barrel special-interest projects? Would you like to hold on to more of your money for your own special-interest boondoggles? The underground economy continues to grow in spite of ever-widening atttempts by the government to regulate and tax everything we do. Millions of Americans are practising fee enterprise in today’s increasingly unfree tax society. This is the most comprehensive how-to book ever written for those entrepreneurial individuals who have decided to end their slavery to a wage and to government taxation as well. Discover how you can keep more of what you earn for yourself. Here you will find complete and up-to-date information on the ins and outs of guerrilla capitalism and the underground economy in this country.
8. Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging.
In December of 2001 Jeff Ferrell quit his job as tenured professor, moved back to his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, and, with a place to live but no real income, began an eight-month odyssey of essentially living off of the street. Empire of Scrounge tells the story of this unusual journey into the often illicit worlds of scrounging, recycling, and second-hand living. Existing as a dumpster diver and trash picker, Ferrell adopted a way of life that was both field research and free-form survival. Riding around on his scrounged BMX bicycle, Ferrell investigated the million-dollar mansions, working-class neighborhoods, middle class suburbs, industrial and commercial strips, and the large downtown area, where he found countless discarded treasures, from unopened presents and new clothes to scrap metal and even food.
9. McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld
In McMafia, Misha Glenny draws the dark map that lies on the other side of Tom Friedman’s bright flat world. That connected globe not only brings software coders and supply-chain outsourcers closer together; it’s also opened the gates to a criminal network of unsettling vastness, complexity, and efficiency that represents a fifth of the earth’s economy, trading in everything from untaxed cigarettes and the usual narcotics to human lives and nuclear material. Glenny’s a Balkans expert, and he begins his story there, with the illicit–but often state-sponsored–underworld that grew out of the post-Soviet chaos, but he soon follows the contraband everywhere from Mumbai and Johannesburg to rural Colombia and the U.S. suburbs. It’s not just a hodgepodge of scare clips, though: Glenny reports from the ground but follows the leads as high as they go, showing how the dark and bright sides of the flat world are more connected than we imagine.
10. Living Well on Practically Nothing
Living Well on Practically Nothing: Revised and Updated Edition is for people who need to live on a lot less money. If you have been fired, demoted, retired, divorced, widowed, bankrupted or swindled - or you just want to quit your job and remain financially self-reliant - this book is for you. In it are hundreds of tips, secrets and necessary skills for living well on little money. Chapters include: Save Up to $37,000 a Year and Live on $12,000 a Year; Low-Cost Computers for Fun, Profit, and Education; Some Ways to Live on No Money at All; A Day of Cheap Living; A New Career or Business for You; Fix Things and Make Them Last; and Protect Your Investments and Make Them Grow. From cover to cover, this book is stocked with proven methods for saving money on shelter, food, clothing, transportation, entertainment, health care and more. The author left the “system” in 1969 and has worked for himself ever since. Let him show you how you, too, can live happily, comfortably and with complete financial freedom.

Friday 16 November 2012

Startup Buzz - Zozi.Com

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://www.zozi.com/

Twenty people tore up Squaw Valley with Olympic gold-medal skier Jonny Moseley. National Geographic explorer Mireya Mayor led a small group on a wildlife "safari" through California's wine country. A group of thrill-seekers sharpened their whitewater skills in Nevada's Truckee River with world-record kayaker Tao Berman. These are the types of once-in-a-lifetime adventures, guided by celebrity gurus, that have helped drive zozi to rapidly multiplying revenue, backed by $11 million in venture funding.

"No other company has built an online platform that easily connects anyone to some of the most unattainable people in the world to go on experiences that will give you a lifetime of stories to tell," says T.J. Sassani, founder of the San Francisco-based company. "Zozi is ultimately a discovery engine that makes bite-sized adventures accessible to all kinds of people."

When the site launched in 2010, it specialized in discounted nonguided quests, like a tour of medieval castles in Ireland, a five-day surf and spa retreat in Baja or the chance to hang glide to a beach picnic. But Sassani says he's growing the business to also focus on unique, full-price celebrity excursions, starting at $300. Zozi's niche is in creating short adventure trips that aren't available anywhere else.

The site operates in 19 U.S. markets, and its user base is approaching 1 million. Sassani will not disclose revenue, which comes through shares with merchants and partners, but says it grew 700 percent last year.

Venture capitalists are clawing for a piece of the exploding tech travel sector. Last year zozi raised $7 million in Series B funding from investors that included LaunchCapital; meanwhile, San Francisco-based travel search site Hipmunk raised $4.2 million and Seattle-based flight tracker Yapta locked down $5 million, though they are threatened by recent JetRadar success.

LaunchCapital co-founder and managing director Elon Boms says his firm was looking for a concept that could be a category leader through true innovation. "They've done just that. Zozi is unlike any other company in the tech travel space," he says. "Zozi is pioneering the future of travel and entertainment, and as VCs that excites us." He adds that leadership in the fragmented but huge U.S. travel activities market--worth $26.8 billion in 2009, according to PhoCusWright, host of the annual Travel Innovation Summit--will be "driven by a brand that both customers and merchants embrace, one that stands for quality and is used not as a bargain hunter but as a tool for discovery."
PhoCusWright senior technology analyst Bob Offutt agrees that the time is right for investment in travel companies with a tech component. "There's a sense that there's some gold to be found if you mine the right mines in this category," he says. "VCs feel there's opportunity to move the needle and come up with new ideas that will shift share to something more appropriate for the 21st century."
[Via - Entrepreneur]
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101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms and Dads

New Startup Pays Experts To Answer Questions

How To Use Bitrix24.Com As A Free CRM, Intranet And Task Manager

Does your site need hits? We've got them!

Friday 9 November 2012

The Slow Growing Startups - MyWedingWorkbook.com

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http://www.myweddingworkbook.com/

Company: My Wedding Workbook
Location: Denver, Colo.
Annual sales: "Low six figures."
When a local angel investor expressed interest in funding the development of their web-based project management software called Planning Pod in April 2011, business partners Jeff Kear and his co-founder Steven Feingertz got excited. They were taking on well-established competitors like Basecamp and could have used the money. But it turned out that the investors, who were going to pony up $20,000, wanted a 20% the company in exchange, plus 20% of annual revenues; the investor would have four additional opportunities to buy 5% of the firm for about $5,000. Their instincts told them to back away. "It would really cripple us," says Kear.
The two entrepreneurs had been investing revenues from their first successful product, My Wedding Workbook, into building the new one. "I would rather bootstrap it and use the revenue we're already bringing in to bump it along," he says. And that's what they did, offering their tech contractors equity instead of paying development fees. "Our developers now have a vested interest in the success of the company and have shown great initiative," says Kear. Plus, the four-employee firm has freed up cash for marketing.
[Via - CNNMoney.Com]

My Name Is Beer, Mr.Beer

PeakGames - The Biggest Game Developer You Never Heard About

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Duolingo Review

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New Startup Pays Experts To Answer Questions

How To Use Bitrix24.Com As A Free CRM, Intranet And Task Manager

Does your site need hits? We've got them!

Hot Startups - Bitrix24.Com

Does your site need hits? We've got them!

Bitrix24.com is a new SaaS (software as a service) cloud based social intranet platform that makes corporate intranet easily available to smaller companies. It does not take any time to deploy (everything is already installed and set up) and doesn’t cost anything if it’s used by companies with fewer than 12 employees.

At first, Bitrix24 looks like corporate Facebook – there is the wall or activity stream where different employees engage in discussions and vote by ‘liking’ ideas, documents or workgroups. There are also instant messenger and photogallery. This is where the similarities end.



The first important Bitrix24 module is free CRM (customer relationship module) that comes with a database for clients and prospects that are easily sorted by events (phone call or meeting, for instance). Next comes the sales funnel that divides clients into easy-to-work-with groups - new prospects, first contact, requested quote, scheduled meeting, negotiations and sales, for example (the actual setup is customizable). Bitrix24 free CRM is designed for easy interactions with clients. For example, you can send an e-mail to a certain group as well as import/export any client information. You can also set Bitrix24 to automatically import ‘leads’ that are generated by any site into the CRM.



The second important module is document management. This module allows storing, editing and collaborating on various documents with co-workers. The documents can be made private (visible to document owner only) or shared. Bitrix24 also tracks version history, making it possible to revert to older version of the document, if necessary. Importantly, you can map a single document library or all of your document libraries to a network drive on your local machine literally in 2 clicks using WebDav. That means that whether you use Windows, Mac OS, or Linux, you will be able to see the documents in the intranet locally through your file manager.



Third and fourth are planning and task/project management modules. These include calendar, work reports, absentee charts, meeting scheduler, personalized to-do lists, time management tools, even Gantt charts for easy visualization of progress made on specific projects. The employees are split into workgroups and access rights are assigned to each individual. For example, the department head may see work reports of his subordinates only, while vice-president is able to view every work report made by any employee.



Because companies tend to outsource or hire outside contractors/freelancer Bitrix24 allows one to easily integrate those into workgroups and give non-employees access to corporate intranet with restricted rights specified as necessary. Also, for higher mobility, Bitrix24.com can be easily accessed via iPhone, iPad or any Android based device.

As mentioned, Bitrix24.com is free when used by 12 employees or fewer. Bitrix24.com can be used by unlimited numbers of workers for $99 a month. Unlike other similar services, Bitrix24.com doesn’t charge extra for each additional employee, since it is cloud based and ample storage is available. The premium version is priced at $199 a month.

[Via - MadConomist.com]

My Name Is Beer, Mr.Beer

PeakGames - The Biggest Game Developer You Never Heard About

From 0 To $30,000 A Month With Dropshipping

Duolingo Review

How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Release

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms and Dads

New Startup Pays Experts To Answer Questions

How To Use Bitrix24.Com As A Free CRM, Intranet And Task Manager

Does your site need hits? We've got them!

Friday 2 November 2012

Hermitage Jewelers Review

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http://www.hermitagejewelers.com/

If you’re somebody who’s into carefully hand-crafted jewelry that you know will last a lifetime, chances are you might have a stash of authentic, luxury Swiss watches and fine jewelry in your little treasure chest somewhere. But if you don’t and want a few pieces for yourself or the people who matter to you, Ermitage Jewelers might just have the perfect ones for you in stock.

Ermitage Jewelers is a respected name in authentic, luxury Swiss watches and fine jewelry, and had been buying and selling Swiss watches and jewelry for almost 30 years now. Rolex or whatever luxury brand, you also have an option to trade in an old timepiece of yours.

Peter, Ermitage Jewelers’ chief watch specialist, is the grandson of the very same guy who opened the first Ermitage outlet in Russia in 1915 and served as master jeweler with New York’s Baume & Mercier for seven years in the 1970s. Every client is guaranteed to receive personal attention from Peter himself, and the store’s state-of-the-art repair shop ensures quick turnaround time.

In addition to a retail store in Atlanta, Georgia, the company’s website, www.ermitagejewelers.com, provides the same quality of service and selection as in the actual store. Every piece Ermitage Jewelers sells is new-looking and authentic. You can rest assured the store never sells replicas of any form. The company’s philosophy is simple: Commitment to quality, service and value results in satisfied customers who are sure to come back time and time again.

[Via - MadConomist.com]

My Name Is Beer, Mr.Beer

PeakGames - The Biggest Game Developer You Never Heard About

From 0 To $30,000 A Month With Dropshipping

Duolingo Review

How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Release

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms and Dads

New Startup Pays Experts To Answer Questions

How To Use Bitrix24.Com As A Free CRM, Intranet And Task Manager

Does your site need hits? We've got them!

Friday 26 October 2012

Education4Drivers.Com Review

Does your site need hits? We've got them!



http://education4drivers.com/

Being on the road, especially if you’re the one driving, is serious business. A moment’s distraction, a tiny miscalculation may mean grave danger, worse, loss of life and destruction of property. This is why a driver’s license isn’t just any regular piece of plastic, or a ticket to freedom, or some sort of a lunch pass that allows you to move around anytime you please. A driver’s license has to be regarded with respect and sense of responsibility.

As the domain would suggest, Education4Drivers.com is an online resource for drivers and would-be drivers. The site offers a broad collection of carefully researched information regarding everything driving-related, one of which is the permit test, which basically is the test that gauges your knowledge of state traffic laws and your ability to navigate state roads. The permit test is a prerequisite to applying for a driver’s license.

The site also offers similarly valuable information about the driver’s test, the driver’s license application, the DMV test, graduated driver’s license, parent-taught driver’s education, driver’s manual, permit restrictions and a whole host of others.

So if it’s a wealth of knowledge about driver’s education and driving in general that you’re on the lookout for, it’s worth checking out Education4Drivers.com.

[Via - MadConomist.com]

My Name Is Beer, Mr.Beer

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Duolingo Review

How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Release

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How To Use Bitrix24.Com As A Free CRM, Intranet And Task Manager

Does your site need hits? We've got them!

Saturday 20 October 2012

Hot Startups - Muzooka.com

 Hot Tips - The Best Free Business Tool You (Probably) Don't Know About.
 


http://muzooka.com/

They say music is a universal language. Some even go as far as saying it is the language of the soul. But whatever language music speaks, the fact that it has universal appeal cannot be denied.

 If you're a music enthusiast and Twitter or Reddit are two of your online hangouts, you'll most likely love Muzooka, a music streaming application that brings together music lovers, unsigned/independent music artists and record producers in a single place to discover and share music. Aside from its online portal, http://www.muzooka.com, Muzooka also offers its services through downloadable applications for supported mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone.

According to Shawn Wilson, Muzooka's co-founder and CEO, having been in the music arena for four years, meeting and talking with top industry producers and executives, he noticed that one of the biggest issues surrounding the space was obtaining new talent, especially nowadays when so much content abounds. After months of research, and with the help of his Silicon Valley friends, Shawn discovered the short answer to the problem – the absence of a new discovery platform and lack of social engagement in the existing applications.

That was when Muzooka was born.

When asked what has been the biggest challenge encountered by his team so far, Shawn admitted it had to do with the application’s launch date. He recognized that while it was important to “ship” a product, it was far more important to penetrate the market with the best possible product. Shawn believes that his focus on creating a lean product is one contributing factor to his success so far. For him, in the feature department, less is more. As well, getting the word out about the product, especially in the early phases, is critical.

 A couple of weeks back, Muzooka was presented at the Silicon Valley Plug and Play Tech Center launch in Calgary. Out of over 80 applicants, only 13 made it to the presentation. Muzooka was one of the lucky four startups to be granted an investment of $25,000, plus mentorship and free office space in both Calgary and Silicon Valley.

[Source - PickyDomains.com]

Social Intranet Giveaway ($2400 Value)
 
PickyDomains - startup that caught everyone by surprise

The (Evergrowing) List Of Cool Bootstrapping Sites

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My Name Is Beer, Mr.Beer

Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

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Daily Advice Link - Free Logo Service

Friday 19 October 2012

MegaFlowers Review

BizHacks - How To Use Bitrix24.Com As A Free CRM, Intranet And Task Manager.



http://megaflowers.com/

If you're somebody cooking up a surprise for somebody close to your heart and you're into flower giving, you're sure to love MegaFlowers.com.

A brainchild of a company called Three Colours, MegaFlowers.com started business in 2005, specializing in the delivery of fresh flowers around the globe. MegaFlowers has florist partners all over the world, allowing it to offer delivery time ranging from a minimum of 3 hours to 24 hours. Plus, fresh flower delivery worldwide doesn't have to be expensive. MegaFlowers' own courier service and special partnership agreements with major delivery services affords the company its distinctive quality of products and services at affordable prices.

To place your order, simply go to www.megaflowers.com where you will find a wide selection of basic bouquets and flower arrangements. A professional manager-florist is always available to take your order and give you sound advice on bouquet choices, should you need any. Manager-florists are highly qualified and boast of an extensive professional experience in the field.

Payment options include credit card payment, PayPal and the call-and-pay method. MegaFlowers guarantees timely delivery and fresh quality of your order, ensuring that your gift's recipient feels loved and valued, just the way you want her to feel.

[Via - MadConomist.com]

My Name Is Beer, Mr.Beer

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How To Use Bitrix24.Com As A Free CRM, Intranet And Task Manager

Does your site need hits? We've got them!

Sunday 14 October 2012

Social Intranet Giveaway ($2400 Value)

Just a heads up - my friends from Bitrix24.com have recently launched Bitrix24 Startup Initiative. Which means that if you are a startup, you get their top plan that normally costs $2400 free for one year. All you have to do is register at Bitrix24.com first and then fill out this form with your Bitrix24 ID (subdomain). Pretty cool, ain't it?

Cool Startups - PickyDomains.com

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releas
So you came up with an idea for an online business and started thinking of a great domain name for it, only to realize that all the good domain names are already taken. Then you tried automatic domain name generation tools, but most of the name they generated didn’t make any sense. What to do now? Well, just crowdsource your domain name idea generation to PickyDomains.
picky logo
PickyDomains is a cool service that offers 100% risk free domain name and business slogan or tag line generation service. It has a proven track record of generating great domain names, and business slogans such as SEOBook for Aaron Wall, eMomsAtHome Wendy Piersall, and SurefireMarketing for Yanik Silver.

How Does it Work?

To get started, you have to deposit amount depending upon the service you need. For domain name suggestions, the fee is $50. For business slogan suggestions, its $75. You can use credit card, paypal or wire transfer to deposit the money. Note that this money is only a deposit, which means if you don’t like any of the domain names suggested by them, you get a full refund.
After payment, you send them more details about the site you are starting, and characteristics of the domain name you need, like preferred extensions, length, and hyphenated or not. After that just wait and watch as people start suggesting the names.
You must check the suggested names periodically and mark them Liked or Disliked to indicate your taste. Once you find the domain you like, just mark it Picked to complete your order.
There are more then 44,000 registered contributors at Pickydomains right now, which means you can get what you are looking for within a few days, or sometimes, within few hours!

Become A Contributor And Make Some Money

You can also join PickyDomain as a contributor and make some money. Just register as a contributor and log into your account. Then, check the available orders to see if you can come up with some good domain names for them. If you suggest a domain that is picked by a client, then you get 40-60% of the fee, depending on you rank, which improves with the number of suggestions you post.
To get great domain name suggestions and business name ideas, check out PickyDomains.com.
[Via - Hacktrix.com]

Sunday 30 September 2012

Cool Ideas - TeachersPayTeachers.Com

Hot Tips - The Best Free Business Tool You (Probably) Don't Know About.


Deanna Jump is not a trust fund baby. She never married into money and she has never won the lottery. But in the past year-and-a-half, the 43-year-old kindergarten teacher in Warner Robins, Ga., has earned more than $1 million. Her unlikely strategy: selling catchy kindergarten lesson plans to other teachers.
Jump is just one of some 15,000 teachers currently marketing their original classroom materials through the online marketplace, TeachersPayTeachers. Since signing on to the site, she has created 93 separate teaching units and sold 161,000 copies for about $8 a pop. “My units usually cover about two weeks’ worth of material,” she says. “So if you want to teach about dinosaurs, you’d buy my dinosaur unit, and it has everything you need from language arts, math, science experiments, and a list of books you can use as resources. So once you print out the unit, you just have to add a few books to read aloud to your class, and everything else is there, ready to go for you.”

To be fair, no one else on TPT has been as wildly successful as Jump, but at least two other teachers have earned $300,000, and 23 others have earned over $100,000, according to site founder Paul Edelman. “Of the 15,000 teachers who are contributing, about 10,000 make money in any given quarter,” he adds.
Edelman, a former New York middle school English teacher, launched TPT in 2006 after sinking grueling hours into planning his own classes. “Every night, I would spend two or three hours, at least—and then Sundays I would spend all day and all night preparing and correcting papers,” he says. To get ahead, Edelman and his colleagues swapped ideas and lesson plans. They also perused online sites for helpful resources, but found only sub-par, outdated materials.

After four years in the classroom, Edelman hit upon the idea for an online lesson-plan marketplace. “I thought teachers would be more incentivized to post their best stuff and to create even higher quality materials if they had the opportunity to get paid for them,” says Edelman, who now lives in Fontainebleau, France, south of Paris. “I had no clue what I was doing, but I knew it was a really good idea, so I just found my way,” he says, noting he has no tech background. “I read books. I cashed out my retirement fund and sold my car and my motorcycle and got enough money together—around $10,000—to hire a programmer to build the first version of the site.”

Soon after the launch, New York-based publisher Scholastic bought the site for what Edelman says was a low six-figure sum. Over the next few years, TPT continued growing, though not fast enough to hold Scholastic’s interest. Edelman bought the site back in 2009. “Scholastic—being a big, publicly traded company—wanted instant gratification, YouTube-like, explosive growth,” he says. “They were going to close [the site] down, but I fought really hard to get them to let me buy it back.”

Little by little, TPT began gaining steam. “With marketplaces, it’s that chicken-and-egg thing,” says Edelman. “Until you have lots of products, you don’t have lots of buyers.” Today the site has 1.1 million active members and over the past year has seen enormous growth. Last month alone, TPT grossed $2.5 million in sales, up from $305,000 in August 2011. It has 10 employees working in customer service. Teachers pay an annual premium membership fee of $59.95 to sell materials on the site, and TPT takes a 15 percent cut of most sales. (Teachers can sell materials without a premium membership, but TPT’s share then rises to 40 percent of a sale.)

Jump admits that her own success is partly due to keeping a popular blog that helps direct readers to her TPT materials. TPT’s “Follow Me” button has also been a boon. “I have over 16,000 followers,” she says. “So every time I post a new product, an e-mail goes out to those people and—literally within an hour—I’m selling, selling, selling.”

In the past three months, Jump, who earns $55,000 per year teaching, has collected $213,000 in TPT sales. She says the money has not changed how she lives day-to-day. If anything, Jump says, she’s working harder than ever, putting about 40 hours a week into TPT projects, apart from her regular teaching schedule. So far, she’s used the money to pay off bills, send her daughter to college, and buy a handicapped-accessible van for her quadriplegic brother.

“When I realized that we could buy that van and it wouldn’t be a financial hardship for my family, that was really something,” she says. “But we really haven’t changed our lifestyle. I drive a Kia, okay? I’m just trying to keep it real.”

[Via - BusinessWeek.com]

Cool Inventions - The Roll-It

BlockAvenue Review

Cool Startups - ContractGurus.Com

Find Similar Images

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From 0 To $30,000 A Month With Dropshipping

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Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Release

Daily Advice Link - Free Logo Service

Saturday 22 September 2012

Cool Inventions The Roll-It

Hot Tips - The Best Free Business Tool You (Probably) Don't Know About.


http://theroll-it.com/

Much of Gary Peterson's summer was spent cruising the toothpaste aisles at various Fred Meyer stores. There, displayed near the brushes and floss sits his baby: the Roll-It, a snail-shaped device that aims to squeeze every bit of paste from a tube.

The gadget made it into 132 Fred Meyer stores in June, but staying there meant selling at least 480. Without an ad campaign or any marketing, 590 reached check-out stands that month.

It's nearly unheard of for a first-time inventor to land in a major retailer's health and beauty care aisle, a highly competitive category dominated by multinational corporations. And yet for Peterson, 71, the work has just begun. He not only faces competition from the Johnson & Johnsons of the world, but also an ever-growing roster of rival inventors and inventor-aimed businesses, some willing to scam or lift from creatives as they travel the confusing, and sometimes costly, road to market.

atent and trademark experts agree inventors face more risks today, leaving many, including Peterson, feeling they must hold on tight to their ideas and go it alone. But most experts say the only way to generate real buzz and sustainable sales for a product is to hand it off to the experts at manufacturing, distributing and marketing.

Peterson, who builds gutters for a living, admits being overwhelmed by the nine-month process he faced to gain entry into Fred Meyer. And yet he still spends many nights at his dining room table slipping Roll-Its into little plastic bags and stapling on its bare-bones, red-white-and-blue label, in pursuit of an even bigger quarry: The Kroger Co. The Cincinnati-based chain operates 2,460 supermarkets under several banners, including QFC and Portland-based Fred Meyer.

"I do gutter work and climb on roofs every day, but I can't do that forever," said Peterson, who with his wife is raising 10-year-old twin grandchildren. "If we're going to get into Kroger, we'll need consistency."
Consistency and, as it turns out, a little bravery. And better yet, a willingness to let go.

[Via - The Oregonian]

BlockAvenue Review Cool Startups - ContractGurus.Com

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Daily Advice Link - Free Logo Service

Monday 17 September 2012

Hot Startups - BlockAvenue.Com

Hot Tips - The Best Free Business Tool You (Probably) Don't Know About.



http://blockavenue.com

Restaurants, hotels, doctors, supermarkets, books, gadgets, even the employer you love to hate – if you’re in the habit of writing reviews or doling out five-star ratings when you feel like it, you know that with the Internet, thehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifre are so many ways to do just that. Now, imagine Yelp on the street where you live, and that will be equivalent to Block Avenue.

Block Avenue is a Cambridge startup that collects opinions about the block or street you live on. Block Avenue has broken down the United States into 1.89 billion squares, each square with 300 feet on each side. Data about each block includes whether there’s a public transport system, bike-sharing/car-sharing locations; amenities like nature parks, fitness gyms, supermarkets, dry cleaners, hospitals, restaurants and schools; sex offenders who live on the block, including recent crimes. Based on the collected information, Block Avenue’s software algorithm automatically as signs a grade from A through F which shows up as you zoom in and out of Block Avenue’s map.

Site visitors can also write their own reviews of blocks they live on or known to them and add more information, including noise, traffic levels, cleanliness, overall community spirit and anything that cannot be found on Block Avenue’s database. Additional user reviews and ratings will, of course, affect the automatic grades assigned to each block.

Slated to launch next week, the company will be concentrating on the cities of Boston, New York and Washington, D. C. Founder Tony Longo says that during the site’s testing this summer, more than 2,000 reviews had already been pitched in by users hailing from the aforementioned cities.

Longo plans to include U.S. Census data onto Block Avenue’s maps, such as race, average age, income and ethnicity, which may not make a lot of people happy. As well, the rating system may spark a bit of a controversy e specially since most homeowners who intend to sell their homes wouldn’t admit to living on a block with a rating of D or F. As a result, real estate brokers may come up with sugary reviews of blocks they represent, and a natural tendency for inflated ratings is a possibility. Longo, however, promises to keep a close eye on real estate developers, agents and property administrators.

The company aims to make money via advertising, licensing data to real estate sites and selling services to real estate professionals to allow them to create reports about particular neighborhoods for their clients.

For someone looking to buy or rent a place or for tourists looking for places to stay while in the area, Block Avenue’s data will come in handy, says Longo.

[Via - PickyDomains.com]

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Daily Advice Link - Free Logo Service

Thursday 13 September 2012

Baidu – A History Of The Search Dominator In China


2000 is the year when Baidu (www.baidu.com) was founded. It's creators, Robert Li and Eric Xu used their own patented technology to create the search engine. By the time Google thought of creating a Chinese search engine in 2006, Baidu had already planned on dominating the market and formulating ways to get clients to stick with them.

How the idea of Baidu came about


The name Baidu, which

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Pinterest - What It Is, History

When it comes to social media, people
are so much addicted with this trend. They always want to find new
things that they can use in order to express themselves and enjoy. What is Pinterest (pinterest.com) and how can you enjoy this new,
quickly gaining momentum site? To give you more information about it,
Pinterest is the newest social phenomenon that has hit the masses. It
is a platform wherein

Tuesday 11 September 2012

Cool Startups - Dijit.Com

Hot Tips - The Best Free Business Tool You (Probably) Don't Know About.


http://www.dijit.com/

It’s time to literally reinvent the TV guide.

So says Jeremy Toeman, CEO of Dijit Media, the Silicon Valley startup behind the iPad app NextGuide. NextGuide is a personalized guide that informs its users of available shows on TV or online based on their preprogrammed genres of interest or their friends’ favorites. NextGuide aspires to foster a content-based experience among its users as opposed to channel-based, which is what traditional grid-based TV guides offer.

NextGuide brings together TV and movie listings from pay-TV services such as Tribune Movie Services, Netflix and iTunes. The guide can be sorted by show, type, channel or any keywords. NextGuide also allows DirecTV customers the freedom to initiate recordings on their DVRs. The same feature will be provided for subscribers of cable companies this fall.

What makes NextGuide unique from other TV guide apps is its mosaic-like interface made out of mov ies and TV shows a user is interested in. Each screen is representative of a particular category such as sports, drama or comedy. All a user needs to do is slide from one screen to another to browse through available listings. As well, NextGuide users have the option to form their own categories such as “Basketball,” “California,” or “Katy Perry.” The app then sends out alerts whenever new episodes of similar content become available.

NextGuide’s social media functionality evaluates a user’s Facebook friends’ interests and that of the user to make recommendations. And if content is available via Netflix, a video stream can kick off.

NextGuide can be downloaded for free at the App Store, and Dijit makes money through transaction fees for routing users to paid iTunes or Netflix content, promotion of TV shows through content advertising and data and analytics sales.

As Toeman puts it, the biggest pain from knowing about a TV show is figuring out how to watch it. With NextGuide is an app anybody can use to add it into a playlist. The user doesn’t even have to know which channel the show is on.

[Via - PickyDomains.com]

Cool Startups - ContractGurus.Com

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Daily Advice Link - Free Logo Service


Wednesday 5 September 2012

Cool Startups - ContractGurus.Com

Hot Tips - The Best Free Business Tool You (Probably) Don't Know About.



http://contractgurus.com/

For the average Joe, reading through contracts and legal agreements can be a headache, mostly because of legalese that, to him, doesn't always make any sense. But a contract is legal and binding, and affixing one's signature without fully understanding what it contains (the fine print, most especially) can result in dire consequences. Hiring a lawyer to translate said document in layman's terms can be costly.

Contract Gurus is an Austin startup that provides fast and cheap contract reviews for families and businesses. Mike Kiamanesh, Contract Gurus' founder, is an entrepreneur, not a lawyer, who didn't always find the idea of spending money to hire a lawyer of his own appealing. Contract Gurus provides a hassle-free way to translate legal agreements and contracts into simple English, ensuring that the necessary information for clients to carry out informed legal decisions are captured.

To get started, clients either fax a co py of their contracts to the company or upload them online via contractgurus.com. Contract Gurus currently has more than 20 lawyers to review the contracts. A contract's contents will be summarized and important components color coded. Aspects of the contract that need to be revised will be highlighted in red. Depending on the rate, Contract Gurus provides a 24-hour turnaround.

The company's press release states that Contract Gurus supplies general contract information on frequently encountered legal issues. Kiamanesh emphasizes though that the service it provides isn't legal advice and there is no attorney-client relationship.

[Via - PickyDomains.com]

Hot Startups - VaultBox

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