Move over, Uber, two Bay Area startups have found a new ways to rent cars out.

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases  

There are few investments less sensible than car ownership. A new purchase loses close to 9 percent of its value the minute it leaves the dealer's lot, according to automotive-information site Edmunds. Further, most cars sit idle the majority of the time.

Two San Francisco-based startups, RelayRides and Getaround, are working to change these inefficiencies--and snag a piece of the nation's $20 billion car-rental market. Similar to Airbnb, both companies facilitate peer-to-peer transactions through which car owners can rent out their vehicles to those who need them by the hour, day or week. Owners set the rental price for their vehicles; both companies say the average rental runs $8 to $12 per hour and lasts 40 hours.

The model offers big savings for customers--generally half of what a local car-rental agency would charge. Plus, the range on offer allows renters to get exactly the vehicle they want, whether it's a pickup truck or minivan for a jaunt to IKEA or a Porsche or Tesla for a night out.

The business model would not have been possible without a new class of insurance created for this purpose. Every individual's car is insured for $1 million against collision and accident coverage. "When we say the service is all-inclusive, that means the vehicle is covered should something go wrong," confirms Andre Haddad, CEO of RelayRides. "Owners like the peace of mind. And as a customer, considering you usually have to pay extra for insurance with a car rental, this is a big deal."

Founded in 2008, RelayRides operates in 1,500 U.S. cities. Getaround, which launched in 2009, has cars in San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, Austin and Portland, Ore. While their business models are similar, the companies are executing them in subtly different ways. RelayRides is a big believer in the face-to-face meeting between car owner and customer to pick up keys and sign paperwork. That said, the company does offer a mobile access kit for qualified car owners and allows anyone to use General Motors' OnStar system to remotely unlock GM vehicles--pointing to an acknowledgement that many users may not want to be directly involved in the exchange.

The meet-and-greet is also an option with Getaround (minus the paperwork), but that company would rather see owners install "Carkits" that allow renters to unlock the vehicles remotely and access a hidden set of keys through its iPhone app. "We focus on the app," says Sam Zaid, Getaround's co-founder and CEO. "The way we see it, we want to provide a service, and the app is the most efficient way to achieve that."

The nascent car-sharing industry is not without challenges. Cars have long been sold as "a product that is closely associated with who you are," says Arun Sundararajan, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business, explaining that letting strangers in can uncomfortably infringe on that identity. Perhaps, but RelayRides and Getaround are banking that their financial appeal will help car owners get over it.

[Via - Entrepreneur]

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FreshBooks review (and coupons)

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases

FreshBooks (claim your $50 FreshBooks coupon here) is known for weird titles.Corey Reid, for instance, is Chief Cat Herder. That's Director of R&D Talent for us mere mortals. Saul Colt is Head of Magic. Perhaps you'd prefer Marketing and Customer Experience Design. And don't even ask me what Freshbooks CEO goes by.

So perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that FreshBooks isn't really about bookkeeping. Instead, FreshBooks is really one of the first timekeeping and invoicing software turned SaaS (it'll be interesting how FreshBooks reacts to the recent onslaught of free CRM with invocing).

FreshBook is now used by over 5 million users and known for it's "braindead simple" approach. One of the reasons for that that one year after being launched in 2003, it had only 6 clients. That's six. And 24 months into operation, it had only 10. This is how Mike McDerment recalls these days:

"So we tried a PR firm and I like to say that I got my Masters in Communication through that process because we basically…we didn’t get any awareness built out of it whatsoever. And so we shelved that and we went back to putting our heads down and spending our money on direct response type marketing, like being in an email newsletter or pay-per-click. You know, started trying to learn a little more about who was being successful marketing themselves online. So we started learning more about blogging and that kind of thing."

Two things saved FreshBooks - first they changed their pricing. Not once, not twice but actually four times, and every with every time they'd get more and more paying customers. Second, FreshBook decided to become a 'human' company, meaning that if you call their number, you actually get a human being on the other end. And if you have a question, you can an answer. And corporatespeak was banned at the company as well.

Becoming a user centric company transformed FreshBooks in a number of ways. Feeback was collected not as a formality, but in order to stay ahead of competition, so it's no wonder that FreshBooks one of the first to offer iPad app, when others weren't so sure about that anyone would use mobile apps for their invoices. Addition of expense tracking and cloud accouting significantly expanded FreshBooks use beyond its core market of small business owners, lawyers, designers and other professionals (my girlfriend uses iOS mobile app to track her daily expenses). With WaveAccounting and Bitrix24, FreshBooks makes the Holy Trinity of SMB and Productivity 2.0 tools that every business owner should be aware about. Oh, and if you want to try FreshBooks, here's your $50 coupon)

[Via - MadConomist.Com]

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http://vinaudit.com
Finance gurus claim that a brand-new car loses about 20% of its original retail value after the first year. Even after being driven off the lot, as a matter of fact. Still, buying a used car is an investment and should be regarded with utmost consideration, especially since with some used cars, more than the initial amount shelled out, safety and hidden costs can be issues.

In the United States, CARFAX is perhaps the leading platform when it comes to conducting history checks on pre-owned cars. Information provided include vehicle registration, title information, structural damage, accident indicators, odometer readings, service and repair information, among a bunch of other things.

For most people, however, shelling out $35 for information on a car that they might not even buy can be a total waste.

VinAudit.com (TRY FREE coupon) thinks so, too, which is why for just a fraction of the cost CARFAX charges, you get the same car history report from VinAudit.com. David Wu, an ex-Googler and VinAudit’s founder, believes that vehicle history data should really be free, just like the rest of the Internet. His company isn’t quite there yet, but David believes that making vehicle history reports as inexpensive and publicly available as possible is a stride towards that goal.

Through a collaboration with NMVTIS, the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System, VinAudit provides easy access to a national database used by law enforcement agencies to fight car robbery in the U.S. This database contains information supplied by state DMVs, salvage yards and insurance companies. With VinAudit.com, users can now be provided with instantaneous reporting on all available records linked to a VIN (Vehicle Information Number).

Depending on the user’s preference, the generated report can be exported as a PDF file, printed out or forwarded to an e-mail address.

If you’re a car dealer, you can sign up for a dealer account and get bulk vehicle history reports for as low as $20 per month or $1 per report. You can also participate in VinAudit’s reseller program as a hybrid affiliate or reseller. This allows you to sell vehicle reports under either the VinAudit brand or your own brand, including full custom integration of raw vehicle data over the Internet through API (application programming interface).

[Via - NicheGeek.com]

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Site of the day - PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming agency

http://chefdup.com/

A private, unique and memorable dining experience for your guests at your next dinner party doesn’t have to mean booking a reservation at an upscale restaurant or finding somebody good enough to cook for a crowd (if a group of eight to twelve can be considered a crowd). And that’s thanks to Chef’d Up, a startup founded by three Harvard guys: David Snider, John Feeney and David Werry.

With Chef’d Up, you get to bring home premier chefs in the Boston area that include Danya Bader-Natal, a former Clio chef, Katie Barry, former Rialto chef and currently with Lumiere, and Jitti Chaithiraphant, formerly with Radius and Lumiere and now with Franklin Café South End. Chef’d Up has a total of 10 chefs in its roster at the moment.

To book a chef for your event, first, browse through the chef’s profiles, including reviews from previous guests who have experienced receiving the chefs in their homes. Once you’ve selected a chef, you’re ready to provide the initial details of your event on a request form. Your chef will then contact you to discuss the event, the menu and the event price. Once the details are in place, your chef will confirm the agreed-upon event price in the Chef’d Up system, and you finalize the booking by paying via the site prior to the scheduled event.

On the day of the event, your chef will acquire the ingredients, prepare the meals in your kitchen, even clean up if you wish, allowing you to concentrate on hosting.

Chef’d Up, according to co-founder Snider, is a unique way to make high-end dining accessible to a larger part of the population.

Except for a $5,000 award from Harvard Business School’s FIELD program, Chef’d Up is mostly bootstrapped. The company makes money by receiving a portion of the fee paid to book a chef.

[Via - NicheGeek.com]

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

http://www.fohrcard.com/

Nowadays, if a brand is solely focused on traditional marketing, i.e., television, radio, billboard and print advertising, chances are it’s not tapping its full potential. Online marketing, with the growing popularity of blogs and other social media platforms, has become critical for brand advertising as well.

Fohr Card, an analytics platform created by James Nord, a blogger and photographer, alongside Rich Tong, Tumblr’s former fashion director, and Holly Stair, a social media manager, aims to bring brands and bloggers together to form a partnership that can include advertising, sponsored content and gift giving.

With Fohr Card, bloggers are given the chance to be found by brands, where they can showcase their social media following across different social media platforms (Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), including their real-time traffic stats. When joining Fohr Card, bloggers agree to divulge their private Google Analytics figures to eliminate numbers-fudging.

While Chris Black, a social media marketing consultant whose clientele includes Gilt Groupe and New Balance, firmly believes that big numbers don’t necessarily equal engaged users, the Fohr Card team assures brands that not every blogger is invited to join the platform. Alongside popularity, every blogger’s Fohr Card is reviewed to guarantee quality and original content.

For brands to gain access to Fohr Card’s roster of more than 1,800 fashion and beauty bloggers, an annual membership fee of $5,000 (more for large companies and agencies) is required. They then gain access to the bloggers’ numbers. Fohr Card also allows them to sort through the numbers by region, category (DIY, menswear, nail art, etc.), and traffic on certain platforms. Puma and Oscar dela Renta are just two of Fohr Card’s brand launch partners.

Mr. Nord also divulges that they plan to eventually recruit travel, food, mommy bloggers and others to turn Fohr Card into a global marketing tool.

[Via - NicheGeek.Com]

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http://swipp.com

You probably remember how free social intranet provider Bitrix24.com has become the fastest growing social enterprise tool in 2012. But it's 2013 now. Aside from being “social,” Facebook, Google+ and just about every company in the social arena have something in common – to become the social layer beneath every service on the Internet and provide real-time social data that’s measurable, can be referenced and helpful to marketers and data analysts spanning a broad range of industries. Facebook’s recent release of Graph Search and everything else Google has been doing since Google+ was released in 2011 are adding up to this mounting evidence.

Launched on January 23, 2013 in 45 countries and 5 languages, Swipp is a brand-new social media analytics and sharing platform whose main objective is to find out how the general population feels about a given topic real-time. User sentiment is analyzed, and coupled with structured data that is readily available via sites like Wikipedia, app developers should be able to come up with more intuitive applications that can better predict users’ needs.

Despite the fact that companies providing consumer sentiment analytics have sprung up from here, there and everywhere, a lot of social data is unstructured, which means that making comparisons – let alone, drawing conclusions – from such data is easier said than done. Swipp’s answer is to recreate the way things are shared via social media to generate more consistent and functional data.

Technically speaking, you, the social media user, are still allowed to post random thoughts about random things – unstructured data, essentially. Swipp, then, would have you tag your post to signify that it’s under a subject that exists in its humungous library of structured web data. After which, to explicitly address the sentiment analysis side of things, it also would make you rate how you feel about your post using a scale of 1 to 10. And once the data is entered, Swipp lets you know how other people from different parts of the world feel about the same subject.

While Swipp may be able to give its users extra and relevant data, it doesn’t have the follower base Facebook has for Graph Search nor the user data Google has for every meaningful thing it has in store for Google+. Swipp is coming from nowhere and may need to beat insurmountable odds to become a major player in the social space.

Then again, as per Swipp co-founder and CEO, Don Thorson: Every big idea looks impossible up until the exact moment it looks inevitable. Whether he’s right or wrong is left to be seen.

[Via - PickyDomains.com]

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Freelancers are going 'Donanza'

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases

http://donanza.com

Freelancing can be a lucrative career, if you know what you’re getting into. Advantages to freelancing include the freedom to choose your work schedule and the projects you agree to, how much time you invest in each of the jobs you take on, the freedom to work anywhere you deem conducive – at home, at a coffee shop, even out of town. You may also start working straight out of bed, if you so please, with your pajamas on.

That said, however, don’t let the good stuff lull you into believing freelancing is all milk and honey or where the grass is always green. Freelancing comes with disadvantages, too – the most common of which is failing to land regular, if not long-term, gigs to keep your money vessel replenished.

There are sites like oDesk and Elance that connect clients and freelancers. And then, there’s DoNanza.com, a freelancing search engine that allows anybody to find available freelance jobs that match his expertise or field of interest. Being a search engine, DoNanza pores through as many cracks in the Internet to get the most comprehensive set of results. It doesn’t, in any way, compete with Elance, oDesk or other freelancing platforms. Instead, DoNanza “completes” them as it ultimately directs traffic back to these platforms.

Aside from its basic listing services, DoNanza also offers 1Click Advertising, a feature  that allows freelancers private job requests – meaning, no competition, minimal effort, more job prospects and more chances of landing a job – for a fee.

As well, DoNanza integrates several freelancing apps like Conduit Mobile, which makes your DoNanza site mobile-friendly; Fanzila, a Facebook fan page app that helps you create a powerful social media presence; KashFlow, an app that automates credit control, billing and payment reminders; Paymo, which provides project management, invoicing and time-tracking tools; Base CRM, which easily manages your contacts, sales and customers; and a whole lot more.

If you’re a publisher, DoNanza’s Publisher Program allows you to integrate either the DoNanza widget or project board into your site. Publishers are compensated when a reader posts a job via the widget or a freelancer starts a job that he/she found on the publisher site.

If properly utilized, DoNanza can be your springboard to a successful freelancing career.

[Via - PickyDomains.com]

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http://www.bigcommerce.com/

All venture capitalists have got startup business plans piling on their desks every single day. But how many of them are the breakthrough ideas worth investing in? Australian BigCommerce has proven right to the Massachusetts based venture capital firm General Catalyst. “We quickly signed up our first 1000 customers within three months,” says Eddie Machaalani, the co-funder and co-CEO of BigCommerce, “and now we’re about to hit 20,000 customers after just 17 months.

Mitchell Harper, the other co-founder and co-CEO, explains “you can set up your own online store in a few clicks. We’re growing so quickly because we’ve made it really easy to sell online.”

If you’ve got a product and you need an easy way to sell it and advertise it, BigCommerce might be exactly what you’re looking for. All the marketing tools have been built in and the list of features is countless which targets all potential kinds of client s.

There are e-commerce newbie’s looking for tools to start with: web-based control panel, automated email marketing and almost one hundred store designs. There are e-commerce owners hoping to update and refresh their software with push to Facebook and eBay, SEO and Google Website Optimizer. And there are website designers looking for a ready platform to work with; they’ll look into painless software updates, unlimited design flexibility and premium hosting. To cut the long story short, BigCommerce has got everything for everybody.

The company overview does sound like a cliché online success story. Two IT geeks, a brilliant idea, a lot of hard work, right place, right time, huge demand and a spot on investor. (General Catalyst have also believed in BigFish, airbnb, iWalk and many others). This is how Eddie Machaalani speaks of the beginnings of their cooperation. “When we made the decision to raise capital and did our U.S tour to pitc h different VC firms, General Catalyst had already done a ton of due diligence on the market opportunity, our company and our competitors. They were very eager to invest in the company.”

BigCommerce have recently announced $2M integration fund to follow the market developments and create new better features. The software has now got built-in Pinterest and Quickbooks integration, referral system, a live chat, abandoned cart plugin and many other improvements. They tent to release new features every two weeks.

The software seems to be ahead of its competition (Shopify, Zencart, Magento) according to various online discussions, blogs and comparisons and is only getting better and smarter. E-shopping cart is gaining the whole new meaning. And what does it mean to you? Only one way to find out. (Here is a link for $100 coupon or 30 day free trial provided by BigCommerce for our readers).

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - Madconomist.Com]

* - do you own a web-based business? We'd like to profile your website, too.

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http://www.omaze.com/

If, by some stroke of luck, you're given the chance to play tennis with superstars Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, hang out backstage with Lady Gaga, or perhaps discuss Latin American future with Mexico's former President Vicente Fox over a cup of coffee, or, say, spend some time with a Nobel Prize winner at MIT's Robotics Lab, will you grab the opportunity? Most folks would, given these are once-in-a-lifetime experiences that can change their lives forever.

And if you're like most folks, you probably would be elated to know that with Omaze, an L.A. startup founded by two college friends, for as little as $5, you get the chance to live out dream experiences while making donations to charitable causes.

After college, co-founders Matt Pohlson and Ryan Cummins moved to L.A. to get into film. Soon, they discovered they both had a passion for “cause content,” which essentially are stories that both entertain and impart social messages. As was pretty much inherent in the cause content space as a whole, while they were creating a lot of awareness for the causes that have chosen to partner with them, they weren't necessarily creating a lot of impact. Hence, their decision to go to business school to hopefully be exposed to innovative ways of thinking.

While in business school, they went to a benefit for the Boys & Girls Club of America hosted by Magic Johnson, where Magic auctioned off the opportunity to sit alongside him at a Lakers game and have dinner with him after. Being die-hard Lakers fans, with Magic their childhood hero, hanging out with him for a night would be a one-of-a-kind experience, a dream come true. Literally. Being broke grad students, however, they could do nothing but watch. The bids escalated until the winning bid finally clinched the deal at $15,000. Two questions consumed them on the way home: (1) Why were life's most awesome experiences accessible to but a select few? (2) How could such a priceless experience raise a mere $15,000 for the Boys & Girls Club?

And then it hit them. They could make the same opportunities available online. For a donation of $5, everybody gets the chance to make their dream experiences happen. As well, they help to generate substantially more money and awareness for worthy causes.

From every experience, Omaze earns 20% of the net proceeds, which is industry standard for professional fundraisers, while the remaining 80% goes to the charity.

[Via - NicheGeek.Com]

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Savings.Com Story

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http://savings.com

When Loren Bendele started online coupon company Savings.com in 2007, he wondered why traditional paper coupon companies didn't have more of an internet presence. It was a simple idea that filled a niche in an established market.

While his marketing plan initially was designed to attract customers, it also was meant to gain the attention of prospective acquirers--and it did. In June 2012 Bendele sold Savings.com to Cox Target Media, parent company of Valpak, for a reported $100 million.

"We always thought the traditional coupon players would be looking for ways to migrate their business," Bendele explains. So he intentionally built his company to sell.

Ken Wisnefski, meanwhile, has flipped two companies and now runs Mount Laurel, N.J.-based WebiMax, which provides internet marketing services such as search engine optimization. His first tip on building a business to sell? "You should treat [each company] as though you are going to keep it for 100 years," he says.

In other words, starting a company with the intention to flip is not so different from starting any company, but it does come with its own set of guidelines.

"With very few exceptions, startups get bought, they don't go public," says Nat Burgess, president of Bothell, Wash.-based Corum Group, which provides mergers and acquisitions advice for the software industry. "The ones that go public go through so many funding rounds and recapitalizations that they are thoroughly vetted by the time they file for IPO. For the other 99 percent of startup companies, proper planning and strategy are critical to a successful sale. Without a good business, quality team and solid execution, there is no exit."

Nate Redmond, managing partner at Rustic Canyon Ventures in Santa Monica, Calif., was one of the venture funders of Savings.com. He stresses that the business itself is more important than any exit strategy. "Rarely do we make an investment with the stated intent to sell," he says. Instead, the investment decision is based on market conditions, competitive position and company execution. "The best companies are bought, not sold," he adds. "We believe it is important to keep the focus on the long-term horizon until buyers come calling."

However, nearly every entrepreneur and investor who has been through a sale says there are crucial ingredients to any exit plan. Above all, the company needs an easily adaptable product or concept, clean books, good old-fashioned buzz, delegated authority and attention to the customer mix. Finally, the details of daily management have to support a company's long-term growth. "Startups get acquired because the acquirer believes they can scale up the company," Burgess says. "If the company is held together with duct tape and baling wire, it won't scale. Even though they start small, entrepreneurs have to think big from day one."

[Via - Entrepreneur]

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http://donanza.com

Freelancing can be a lucrative career, if you know what you’re getting into. Advantages to freelancing include the freedom to choose your work schedule and the projects you agree to, how much time you invest in each of the jobs you take on, the freedom to work anywhere you deem conducive – at home, at a coffee shop, even out of town. You may also start working straight out of bed, if you so please, with your pajamas on.

That said, however, don’t let the good stuff lull you into believing freelancing is all milk and honey or where the grass is always green. Freelancing comes with disadvantages, too – the most common of which is failing to land regular, if not long-term, gigs to keep your money vessel replenished.

There are sites like oDesk and Elance that connect clients and freelancers. And then, there’s DoNanza.com, a freelancing search engine that allows anybody to find available freelance jobs that match his expertise or field of interest. Being a search engine, DoNanza pores through as many cracks in the Internet to get the most comprehensive set of results. It doesn’t, in any way, compete with Elance, oDesk or other freelancing platforms. Instead, DoNanza “completes” them as it ultimately directs traffic back to these platforms.

Aside from its basic listing services, DoNanza also offers 1Click Advertising, a feature  that allows freelancers private job requests – meaning, no competition, minimal effort, more job prospects and more chances of landing a job – for a fee.

As well, DoNanza integrates several freelancing apps like Conduit Mobile, which makes your DoNanza site mobile-friendly; Fanzila, a Facebook fan page app that helps you create a powerful social media presence; KashFlow, an app that automates credit control, billing and payment reminders; Paymo, which provides project management, invoicing and time-tracking tools; Base CRM, which easily manages your contacts, sales and customers; and a whole lot more.

If you’re a publisher, DoNanza’s Publisher Program allows you to integrate either the DoNanza widget or project board into your site. Publishers are compensated when a reader posts a job via the widget or a freelancer starts a job that he/she found on the publisher site.

If properly utilized, DoNanza can be your springboard to a successful freelancing career.

[Via - PickyDomains.com]

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Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases

http://sanebox.com

Does e-mail overload make you want to pull your hair out? You’re not alone. According to a study that analyzed a database of over 5 million e-mails, the average e-mail user receives about 147 messages per day, including junk mail, and spends more than 2.5 hours on e-mail alone. On average, about 71 of those get deleted and about 12 require a great deal of work, which usually takes up about 90 minutes per day.

Knowing there are only 8 hours in an average work day, spending 2.5 hours on e-mail is downright unacceptable. That is, if your line of work doesn’t revolve around e-mails, i.e., you’re not an e-mail support staff for some customer service company.

Okay, so 147 may be a lot for some. But you get the picture, right? Depending on your mileage, sorting through e-mail can be a time-consuming exercise, especially nowadays when extra time is fast becoming a scarce commodity for most of us.

SaneBox is a cloud-based e-mail service that promises to save you loads of time by sorting your inbox for you. SaneBox’s algorithm decides which e-mail is important and moves the less important messages out of your sight into a separate folder, summarizing them for your quick perusal. SaneBox can work with just about any e-mail client available – Gmail, Yahoo, Exchange, Apple Mail, Outlook, AOL, iPhone, Android, etc.

SaneBox also lets you create folders for e-mails you would like to defer until you’re ready for them – SaneTomorrow for e-mails you’d like to see in your inbox the following day, SaneNextWeek for next Monday, or some other custom defer folder. If a company still sends you mails despite unsubscribing to their newsletters more than a hundred times already, simply drag the e-mail into your SaneBlackHole folder, and you’ll never hear from that sender again.

As well, SaneBox comes with an ingenious auto-nagging feature that notifies you if an e-mail you sent has not been replied to. All you need to do is send a CC or BCC to 5days@sanebox.com, for instance, and the message pops right back into your inbox if it doesn’t get a reply in 5 days.

Depending on your needs, subscription to SaneBox starts at $2.04 per month. You can also try it out for free for two weeks. If after two weeks you decide the service is not for you, SaneBox puts everything back to the way it was before you subscribed.

[Via - PickyDomains.com]

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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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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]

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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]

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http://vaultbox.me/

If losing your belongings because of a hurricane, burglary, fire or other casualty is difficult enough, filing a claim with insurance companies who say you don't have something they need to be reimbursed for the loss can be totally infuriating, if not heartbreaking.

To address this problem, Jacob Israel and Mauricio Jimenez founded Miramar-based VaultBox.me, a cloud-based inventory application that stores pertinent information about items in a client's home or business. Information stored in VaultBox.me include the make of an item, model, photos, serial number, etc. These can be input into the system via your personal computer, an iPhone or iPad.

Having been broken into several times in a span of a year, Israel founded VaultBox.me after going through the frustrating process of trying to make a claim and sent home empty-handed because he didn't have what was needed for the reimbursement.

Now that VaultBox.me has finally launched its iPhone app and service early this year, in the event of a disaster, you can always log on to VaultBox.me via your phone or computer to pull a complete report of your assets for filing with the authorities and your insurance broker. Being a South Florida resident, Israel fully understands the damaging effects even a tiny hurricane can inflict.

Subscription, which is dependent on the number of items you plan to inventory, ranges from free to $5 monthly. Currently, VaultBox.me has over 2,000 customers – individuals with a few items to business entities owning hundreds of computers. Also, VaultBox.me just recently filed affiliate partnerships with eight different insurance companies and brokers who will be offering the service to their own clients.

[Via - PickyDomains.com]

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https://www.pitchphone.com/

If you're not bootstrapping a startup, chances are you'll have to secure funding for it. Securing funding can equate to two-minute elevator pitches that can either make or break your chances of clinching that much-needed capital.

Imagine yourself working day in and day out for months on end, maybe even years, to perfect your product. You know everything about it, the inside, the outside. Even in your half-awake state, you know how it looks like, what it's all about, what good it brings to your target consumer. You know darn well that when somebody asks you questions, you'll be able to beautifully satisfy everything this person needs to know about your product. You apply for VC funding, and then the big day comes. But for some reason beyond eloquence, you stammer and falter while delivering your pitch. The person you're speaking with at the other end of the line hangs up on you. With sagging shoulders, you admit defeat, wondering to yourself what the heck went wrong.

If this scenario sounds familiar, maybe what you need is practice.

PitchPhone is the brainchild of the same guy behind DidThis and Addy, Francis Dierick. Last year, Dierick quit his job to focus his attention on startups. PitchPhone is a service that allows you to practice your pitches over the phone in one of two ways: call PitchPhone and answer the question it throws at you or have PitchPhone call you randomly throughout the day to inquire about your startup. Each time, you're given 30 seconds to answer.

According to Dierick, while planning to apply with Y Combinator for DidThis, the idea for PitchPhone came to being. He needed a tool to help him practice with his pitches. Initially, he created an iPhone app containing 100 startup questions. Soon, he realized that an app alone couldn't help him develop pitching practice into a habit. As a result, he created the PitchPhone hotline, which has been programmed with 100 tough questions about your startup. PitchPhone currently works within the U.S. only.

At the moment, the service is free for the first 1,000 inbound calls. And for $4.99 per month, PitchPhone is available to those who want to automatically receive calls throughout the day. Dierick is working on adding toll-free numbers, international support and improved overall support and voice quality for call recording.

If you're ready to practice that pitch, the PitchPhone hotline can be reached at +1 (209) 215-2160.

[Via - Bitrix24.de]

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http://wahooly.com/

In the tech world, most startups fail not because they have a crappy product but because their marketing efforts fail to create enough end user interest in the product itself. For a company just starting out, marketing can be costly, and keeping burn rate to a minimum is of paramount importance, especially in the early stages.

Wahooly is an Austin startup that aspires to empower other startups in a way that's never been explored before. Wahooly’s business model proposes to provide traction to a startup by taking a small equity percentage in the startup, and in return, Wahooly allows 28,000+ members of its platform to compete over that equity via promotion, feedback and engagement. Naturally, the member that provides the most noteworthy input gets compensated via the equity Wahooly receives in the event of a company sale or liquidation event.

The best way to illustrate Wahooly’s business model is through an Austin tech startup c alled tweetTV, which aims to revolutionize the way TV guides are seen and utilized. Instead of the old static TV guides you used to receive in the mail, through tweetTV, TV guides now also enter the social, online and dynamic realm where users can watch the same shows other people watch and communicate with them through Twitter real-time.

Wahooly provides the company with about 5,000 users – selected based on fit from its pool of 28,000+ members – who now compete for the equity Wahooly owns on tweetTV. Wahooly then tracks each member’s interaction with tweetTV via the metrics promote (any promotional activity done by the user, including social media promotion), improve (user feedback, especially on ways to improve the product) and engage (using the product just like any ordinary end user would).

Essentially, with Wahooly, a product or an idea gets tested by actual users who determine whether the product or idea is even worth a thing, sans the engi neer having to shell out cash he might not even have. Wahooly aspires to become the place to be for cash-strapped engineers with great products and international startups that seek the exposure they need.

[Via - PickyDomains.com]

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http://northsocial.com/

Okay, so you're into social media, Facebook specifically. You've got a brand to promote, a small business to tend to. Since we all know that social media is one way to go to build a brand, obtain more followers, promote e-commerce, distribute content, the whole nine yards, how about dressing up your Facebook page to engage your fans and make your marketing campaigns more impactful?

Of course, you relent without even batting an eyelash. That's got to be the most brilliant idea you've heard all day. And then you remember, you don't know a thing about codes, let alone a line of codes.

North Social just might be the very thing you need. A company that provides a platform of applications to make your Facebook page sizzle and dazzle, North Social's coolest feature is the fact that every app in its "application buffet" is template-driven and includes a simple do-it-yourself content management system. You get to upload images, text an d links to create promotional campaigns and brand messages without having to worry about writing codes.

Eighteen in all, apps in North Social's "app buffet" range from apps that pimp up your Welcome page, launch a sweepstakes within minutes, the Deal Share app to unlock group discounts, Fan Offer for Timeline that converts visitors to fans through coupon rewards or invitation to events, and a whole lot more. And then there's North Contact, a CRM extension for North Social's apps that can be embedded for capturing users' names, e-mails and other information. This is especially useful for creating lists, auto-responders and outbound e-mails.

North Social's pricing depends on the number of fans you have. One account unlocks all apps, and the starter package, with a fan limit of 1,000, is at $19.99 per month. If you just want to try it out and see for yourself if there's any truth to everything you've read and heard, North Social offers a 14-day free trial. If you think it isn't for you, you can cancel anytime - no long-term contract to worry about.

[Via - Business Ideas Blog]

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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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