Top 20 Most Popular US Health Websites

 

 

1. National Institutes of Health
2. WebMD
3. MSN Health & Fitness
4. About Health
5. MedicineNet.com
6. Yahoo! Health
7. MayoClinic.com
8. RealAge
9. AOL Health
10. Drugs.com
11. QualityHealth.com
12. Aetna InteliHealth
13. KidsHealth
14. Healthology
15. RxList
16. Everyday Health
17. MedHelp.org
18. Prevention.com
19. eMedicineHealth
20. familydoctor.org

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Interview with CEO of Blinkcart.com

 

 

BlinkCart is an online service that enables you to easily add a shopping cart feature into anywhere that supports html links or javascript code. e.g. your websites, blogs, emails, MySpace, MSN.

Frostfire met up with the CEO of Blinkcart to learn more about their business.

Where did your idea come from?

BlinKCart started from my own experience developing my e-commerce website
BeadCharm (http://www.beadcharm.com.au). Initially i tried using a few shopping cart systems but ran into integration problems and most of them did too much and were too expensive. I ended up developing Blinkcart and realised that it could be also useful to other people.

What is your elevator pitch?

BlinkCart is an online service that makes it super easy for anyone to add a shopping cart feature into anywhere that supports html links or javascript code. This basically means you can use Blinkcart for a shopping cart to sell online on your websites, blogs, emails, MySpace, MSN... (the list goes on) with one central shopping cart system.

How is your proposition different from competitors?

BlinkCart integrates seamlessly with existing web pages. This means you can customize your products page/listing anyway you like and simply copy and paste a link or button code to add your shopping cart. Also unlike most shopping carts, BlinkCart uses javascript to display your shopping cart in your website (no popups). This offers a much better and less intrusive shopping experience.

BlinkCart is a fully web based solution and is very easy to setup and use. No downloads, installation or programming skills required. It takes roughly 5 minutes for a regular user to setup and get a shopping cart running on their website.

Why will you succeed?

BlinkCart offers an easy and cost effective solution to selling products/services on various web platforms.

What are your biggest successes so far?

Launching the service without any hiccups. So far there has not been any negative feedback and the response has been great which is more then what anyone can hope for during such early stage of a product release.

How will/do you make money?

By offering a valuable service for a reasonable monthly fee.

Have you received funding? If so, how much and from whom?

This project is currently self funded.

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Startup Tools

 

 

Below is a selection of useful tools for anyone involved in an Internet Startup.

• Communication Tools: Skype




• alternatives: Gizmo, Jajah, Google Talk

• Presentation: GoToMeeting




• alternatives: WebEx, BudgetConferencing

• Project Management: Basecamp




• alternatives: CentralDesktop, ActiveCollab, TeamWorkLive, QuickBase

• Calendar: Google Calendar




• alternatives: Yahoo! Calendar, 30Boxes, Kiko

• Source Code Control: CVSDude




• alternatives: SourceHosting, Version Host

• Online Backup: ElephantDrive




• alternatives: JungleDisk, Mozy

• Accounting / Payroll: QuickBooks




• alternatives: IntAcct, Keep More

Are you social Web 2.0?

 

 

 

The T-shirt "Are you social?“ takes up on the popularity of Web 2.0 and shows a list of the best-known social web services with their icons and colours. The owner of the T-shirt is expected to mark the services he uses with a pen and to wear it in public.

What happens when users start wearing their network identities openly in public? What does identity mean in the age of Web2.0? Where is this still growing mass of webservices leading to?

 

If you enjoyed this post please use the logos below to add it to StumbleUpon, Delicious, Digg or Reddit.

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The Top 70 Web 2.0 Startups in Europe

According to a recent report from industry intelligence analysts, Library House, €1.8bn (£1.2bn) was invested by venture groups in software and IT companies across Europe in 2006, with the lion's share of 31% - €558m – going to British groups. The figures are expected to be marginally lower in 2007, as investors try to avoid an overheated market.

We have put together a list of the most promising and exciting Internet Startups from the Europe. Most of the businesses are from the UK.

 

Autoquake - sells cars on eBay on behalf of sellers.

Amigo - Amigo is a service that matches advertisers with email newsletters, and vice versa.

Blockhunter - a new way of connecting buyers and sellers of property. Google Maps powered.

blipstar - add an interactive store locator to your website

Extate - the UK property search engine

 

DropSend - e-mail large files easily

 

 

FeeFo - sales-triggered feedback forum for online businesses and their customers

garlik - giving individuals and families more power over their personal information

 

Fuzzbo - every year consumers in the UK pay estate agents in excess of £3 billion to sell their homes. We know there's a better way

FriendsAbroad.com - the largest online community for people learning languages

Gottabet.com - a social networking site that lets you create your own bets and challenge friends

Boxed Up - Create lists of things you want from any shop or site on the internet

Geograph British Isles - project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of the UK.

Indienet - Discover new indie bands and music.

Listal - List the stuff you love

LittleLegends - free service to allow parents to find out what's good in their area, and share their views.

Mydeo - Safe, secure digital video hosting

Reevoo - Share reviews before you buy

 

 

Patient Opinion - Enabling patients to share their experiences of health care.

Nestoria - property search engine

OnOneMap - UK property search engine using maps

My Neighbourhoods - Get to know my neighbours and other members.

Supermarket Wine - the easy way to find recommended wine at your supermarket

Moo - Print on demand: cards, notes and stickers.

OnOneMap - Map-based property search.

Touch Local - Local directory services.

Snipperoo - If you use widgets or want to use widgets to add interesting stuff to your site, Snipperoo lets you collect and use them without hacking code.

iSporty - MySpace for sports enthusiasts

Tinderhouse digital publishing - Publish your magazine to the web

Trusted places - Find great places recommended by real people

 

WeHangHere - location-based social networking with Google Maps integration

welovelocal.com - The smarter way to find the best local businesses by reading reviews and recommendations from people you can trust

Univillage - Uk student social network

viewmy.tv - boradband free online streaming TV

wherejackmetjill - dating website that invites the user to completely customise their own profile

Zoomf.com – London property search engine

 

 

YourClients.co.uk - Web based help desk software

Dopplr - Social networking for frequent travellers.

MindCandy - Alternate reality gaming.

Zopa - Peer to peer lending.

Auctioning4u - Handle your Ebay auctions for you. Give them your goods to sell.

Zubka - Recruitment 2.0.

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Can WooMe rock the online dating industry?

WooMe is an exciting dating site. With investment from one of Skype´s founders WooMe aims to woo the dating industry. Frostfire spoke to their founder to learn a little more.

Where did your idea come from?

Stephen was hanging out with his 23 year old sister and her friends who were all complaining about how lame online dating sites were, but how much fun speed dating was. Stephen, who was looking at nascent in-browser voice and video technologies for British Telecom as its youngest VP, put two and two together and created a cutting edge speed introduction platform where people could have fun meeting others without the overhead of lengthy profiles or dating stigma.

 

What is your elevator pitch?

WooMe is an introduction platform where you can meet five people in five minutes in live video speed sessions.

There are no long forms or lengthy profile descriptions, simply find a session that interests you and meet 5 people in 5 minutes. Or, create your own sessions based on your interests - such as "Tech lovers in San Francisco." -Invite friends or strangers to play with you and immediately decide if you are woo'd by someone. WooMe's cutting edge in-browser video and voice capability delivers a live interactive experience.

 

How is your proposition different from competitors? Who do you see as your main competition?

1) it is a completely innovative user proposition based on topical speed sessions (vs profiles) that replicates the offline speed dating model (users meet five people in five minutes live)
2) leverages cutting edge in-browser voice and video technology, ie no client downloads or clunky user experience
3) users can create their own session topics and leverage viral tools to invite people

 

Why will you succeed?

We have a great team and a great idea.  The technology itself is cutting edge with over 15,000 man hours of optimization that has gone into it.

WooMe takes social networking, online dating and online gaming into new territory bridging the gap between offline and online worlds.

 

What are your biggest successes so far?

User side - have had over 1000 speed sessions with over 30,000 introductions made within those sessions. of the 30,000 people who have met, over 7000 have mutaully "woo'd" each other (both said they connect with other person).

Technology side - in-browser communication aspects optimized to point that is better than skype quality (to point where Skype founders have invested)

How will/do you make money?

In a session, if both parties select "I was woo'd" vs "no thanks" it is a successful woo and they have the opportunity to pay $1 for the person's contact info.

How do you market your site?

Social media, facebook, PR, targeted campus campaigns, sem.

 

Have you received funding? If so, how much and from whom?

$2m from Nikkalas Zennstrom (Skype founder), Klaus Hommels (Venture Partner at Benchmark) and Mangrove Capital

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Create a multi-media personal life story that will be stored forever

 

 

StoryOfMyLife.com offers users a place to create a multi-media personal life story that will be stored forever.

A separate 501(c)(3) non-profit called the Story of My Life Foundation has also been established with the mission of keeping the stories maintained and accessible in perpetuity.

The goal is to get a Story about every single person both living and deceased. They want to create the largest online collection of life Stories in the world, and preserve them - forever.

Stories posted include people’s backgrounds, hopes, dreams, family history and other details. Stories of different family members are linked together so that users will be able to read them for generations without worry of them being lost, destroyed, or erased.

In order to alleviate fears of spilling family secrets, Stories and files can be private or released in the future by placing them in “time capsules“.

Storyofmylife.com users create private networks for families who want to share stories, pictures, videos, and keep in touch; for those to whom leaving their legacy is important; and for boomers who are reaching retirement and becoming interested in genealogy and recording stories.

The site remains free to use so long as there is activity on the account. Once an account has gone six months without activity the system begins attempting to contact the user or guardian that the person has assigned to manage the account.

For $1 per megabyte, the user or guardian can opt to move the story into a permanent archive called “Forever Space.”

The Story of My Life Foundation receives a portion of all Forever Space purchases. These proceeds go into an endowment fund that provides funding to cover storage costs in perpetuity.

StoryOfMyLife.com is certainly one of the strangest websites we have come across. While i am sure there are some people who would like to record their life and leave it on the internet i wonder whether internet users in general would ever get around to creating their own story.

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THE FROSTFIRE BUZZ TEST

1. Is this a unique product? 9/10

2. Is this business/product difficult to replicate? 6/10

3. Is this something that can appeal to a large global audience? 5/10

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1 Million U.S. Consumers lost $7 Billion to online scams

 

The online threats associated with using the Internet remain high according to Consumer Reports's latest "State of the Net" survey. Consumer Reports projects that
U.S. consumers lost more than $7 billion over the last two years to viruses, spyware, and phishing schemes.

Consumers face a 1 in 4 chance of succumbing to an online threat and becoming a cybervictim.

The number of consumers responding to e-mail phishing scams has remained constant at eight percent.

Many underage youngsters are at risk on social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, the survey found. In households surveyed with minors online, 13 percent of the children registered on MySpace were younger than 14, the minimum age the site officially allows, and three percent were under 10.

Computer virus infections prompted an estimated 1.8 million households to replace their computers in the past two years and 850,000 households to replace computers due to spyware infections in the past six months.

Additionally, 33 percent of survey respondents did not use software to block or remove spyware.

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Frostfire meets Alexis Ohanian, the Co-Founder of Reddit.com

 

 

Reddit.com has become one of the most successful Web 2.0 businesses and Frostfire met up with Alexis Ohanian, Reddit´s Co-founder to learn more.

Where did your idea come from?

Steve and I had applied to YC with a totally different idea that ended up getting rejected. The next morning PG called us back, offering to let us into the summer program if we came up with a new idea. We turned right around and met with him that afternoon.

He suggested we build a front page of the web. We laughed at first, but then realized he was serious, so we started figuring out how to do it.

What is your elevator pitch?

We never discuss reddit while inside an elevator. Just stare straight ahead.

How is your proposition different from competitors? Is Digg still your main competitor?

Reddit is a place for people to find interesting content online -- a "social news" site run by readers, not editors. You've heard that before, but we started reddit without any competitors in mind. I think this is the reason why we've been so successful in distinguishing ourselves. The front page is fundamentally unique, because links actually rise and fall throughout the day as they heat up or cool down in voting activity. This not only helps insulate us from gaming, but it also makes for a very different user experience. Our readers are reloading throughout the day to watch their submissions float or sink.

While we're very happy with the growth we've gotten, we'd like to make reddit the destination for everyone -- regardless of their interests -- when they want to know what's going on in the world.

What are your biggest successes so far?

The most special for me happened within the first two months. It was the first day neither Steve nor I had to participate on reddit (vote, submit, etc.) and everything still chugged along. The site was alive. It was an incredible feeling of validation.

How will/do you make money do you plan to introduce different revenue models in the future?

Advertising is the boring way. We'd love to do more in the way of licensing and we're currently polishing the tools to let third parties do just that.

Do you plan to develop the site with new features and more extensive categories?

Yes. These new features should be released <very soon>. If we've learned anything from the last two years of working on reddit, it's that the more control we give to users, the better. Expect more subreddits, but not built by the reddit team...

What advice would you give to potential entrepreneurs needing a little inspiration?

Do it. Especially if you're at a point in your life when you don't have much responsibility (and face it, few recent college grads do). When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose (apologies to Bob Dylan).

Also, be skeptical -- especially of 24 year olds giving advice. Certainly take advice, just not blindly; you're the one who must live with the decision, so think it through.

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Inside the Architecture of YouTube

 

 

YouTube grew incredibly fast, to over 100 million video views per day, with only a handful of people responsible for scaling the site. How did they manage to deliver all that video to all those users? And how have they evolved since being acquired by Google? CLICK TITLE TO SEE THE FULL FEATURE

Information Sources

* Google Video

Platform

* Apache
* Python
* Linux (SuSe)
* MySQL
* psyco, a dynamic python->C compiler
* lighttpd for video instead of Apache

 

read more

MySpace for Dogs

 

 

MyDogSpace.com is a new, interactive, online community for all dogs and dog lovers.

Robert and his doggie co-founder, Hershey, are the creators of MyDogSpace.com. "Before we began MyDogSpace.com, there were forums and websites for pet owners, but no central online community for those who love dogs" says Robert. "It finally occurred to me that dog owners of all ages would enjoy their own online space, a central hub, to connect to other dog owners for advice, sharing stories, friendship and meeting up for doggy play dates."

MyDogSpace.com is filling up fast, as people fill out profiles for their favorite canines. Each profile allows for the dog's personality to shine through, by providing space for them to share their sex, age, breed, size, mating habits, favorite foods, toys and tricks, as well as their pet peeves and a place for them to introduce themselves.

MyDogSpace.com is well constructed, easy to use and fresh in design. The forums are active and the users are already using the extensive profile features such as colored backgrounds.

It was only natural for them to launch MyCatSpace.com, a place for cats and cat lovers to connect.

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THE FROSTFIRE BUZZ TEST

1. Is this a unique product? 6/10

2. Is this business/product difficult to replicate? 7/10

3. Is this something that can appeal to a large global audience? 7/10

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Downtime at Twitter

 

 

Even after moving to a new data center, Twitter has been undergoing some growing pains. Royal Pingdom reports that the service has been down almost a total of six days since it began monitoring the service last February.

Downtime so far in December has exceeded almost any preceding month, with nearly 11 hours of downtime, compared to 9 hours in November.

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Kayak raises $196 Million and buys rival SideStep

 

 

Discount travel site Kayak has acquired rival SideStep for $200 million. This story was set to be announced tomorrow but word is leaking all over the place after Sidestep CEO Rob Solomon told his company employees the news at an all hands meeting.

This is a two part deal. Kayak raised $196 million in a new round of financing from their existing investors (Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Accel Partners), two of SideStep’s existing investors (Norwest Venture Partners and Trident Capital), new investors (Oak Investment Partners and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners) and debt lenders (Silicon Valley Bank and Gold Hill Capital). Prior to this new round, Kayak had raised $27 million in capital.

Kayak subsequently acquired SideStep. Terms are not being disclosed, but we are hearing that the deal was for $180 million in cash. An additional $20 million that SideStep holds in cash is being distributed as well, making the total deal size around $200 million.

SideStep and Kayak are the two leaders in the discount travel search space (along with Mobissimo and Farecast). Kayak is reportedly doing around $50 million in yearly revenues, compared to SideStep’s $35 million.

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Job for Computer Engineering

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this post please use the logos below to add it to StumbleUpon, Delicious, Digg or Reddit.

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Is Bebo up for sale?

 

 

Bebo may be looking to put some cash in their pockets, one way or another. According to Venturebeat, the company has said that it has hired a bank to potentially raise another round of funding, while a source close to the matter has said that Bebo has in fact hired a bank so it can get sold.

With the hiring of a bank, it’s highly suggestive that Bebo would be looking to raise a very large amount of funding, most likely from private equity firms and others that deal in late-stage investments.

Bebo would be a great investment for Yahoo who could add their ad network and global reach to help build a more successful Bebo.

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Kyte raises $15 million Series B for live TV shows

 

 

Online video service Kyte has taken $15 million Series B in a round that included Telefonica, Nokia, DoCoMo, Swisscom, Holtzbrinck and DFJ. The new round brings total funding for Kyte to $17.25 million.

With Kyte, you create your own live TV shows and broadcast them on your own interactive channel, on your website, blog, social network or mobile phone.

You can share your Kyte channel with your friends and collaborate with them so that they can also be a part of your shows, by adding their own content, by voting and by chatting live with other viewers. You can share your experiences live with the world and be the star, director and producer of your own live TV channel.

The investment will expose Kyte to a much broader audience with the raft of telco investors having hundreds of millions of users between them.

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3Gruppies heads for the deadpool

 

 

The venture firm behind mobile media startup 3Guppies, VantagePoint, has closed down the company. This is despite still having $8 million of an original $20 million left to burn in the bank. VentureBeat reports that the company’s 40 employees were sent home last week, but will be paid through the end of the month.

3 Guppies was started after VantagePoint spent $20 million acquiring two companies: MoPhone, a mobile social networking company, and 3Guploads, a mobile content company (ringtones). However, the mobile ringtone market has been drying up over the last year as margins tighten and mobile phones become more open. 

3Guppies allowed users to share and store pictures in a free mobile locker as well as create your own MP3 ringtones and download video to any cell phone. The offering is similar to those of Juicecaster and Treemo.

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SheKnows acquires LovingYou.com

 

 

SheKnows.com, one of the fastest growing online destinations for women, ahas acquired LovingYou.com -- the marriage and relationship site.

LovingYou.com is one of the top 10 online destinations for women ages 18-25 and delivers nearly half a million unique visitors per month with 12 million page views.

The site has been online for over 10 years. Unlike sites focused on dating and finding a mate, LovingYou.com is a leading source for information on how to put the fire back into an existing relationship and features advice and support for staying in love.

Although not considered a dating site, LovingYou.com consistently ranks in the top 10 dating sites on the web.

The acquisition of LovingYou will allow SheKnows users, the opportunity to dive deep into ideas and advice suggesting ways to enhance their relationships.

Last month it acquired soap opera site Soaps.com. LovingYou is said to get half a million uniques per month, with strength in the 18-25 age bracket. Other sites in the SheKnows network include iChef.com and Childfun.com. 

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Google talk now translates your chats

 

 

Google relaease translation bots. For those not familiar with bots, a (ro)bot is a piece of software that acts as a chat contact and provides some fun or useful functionality.

If you want to try it, just add en2zh@bot.talk.google.com as a friend in Google Talk and send it a message to translate from English to Chinese. You can use it as an interpreter in your group chat, or as a pocket translator in your Google Talk client for BlackBerry.

For more languages, just add any of the 29 other translation bots. They're named using two-letter language abbreviations as "[from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com", and the supported language pairs are: ar2en, bg2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fi2en, fr2de, fr2en, hi2en, hr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, uk2en, ur2en, zh2en. So, for French to German translation, talk to fr2de@bot.talk.google.com.

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BitTorrent-based video distribution service Vuze raises $20 million

 

 

BitTorrent-based video distribution service Vuze,  previously known as Azureus, has raised $20M in a Series C round of funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and joined by existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Greycroft Partners, BV Capital, and John Mohn.

The round brings Vuze’s investment total to $34M after a Series A of $2M with BV Capital and a Series B of $12M with Redpoint, Greycroft, BV Capital, and Mohn. As part of this Series C, TiVo co-founder Mike Ramsay is joining Vuze’s board of directors.

Vuze is the world's most popular entertainment platform for high-res digital content: video, music, and games. With an installed base of 11 million unique client downloads in its first nine months, more than 500,000 new viewers joining per week and more than 100 content partners to date, Vuze has seen high growth.

Vuze attracts and features high quality content from a growing roster of global television networks, premier production studios and thousands of maverick content creators.

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Kango launches semantic search for travel

 

 

Kango, a semantic search engine for travel, announced that it raised $4 million from Shasta Ventures. The terms previously were not disclosed. Kango looks at travel reviews and other information across the Web and automatically generates tags so it can categorize results by how “kid friendly” or “romantic” they may be.

Kango aims to help you make the best possible travel decisions based on your unique preferences.

Kango are not a booking site, they are a resource that brings all your choices to ONE place, filters them based on your preferences, and helps you make a faster, better decision based on more than 20M opinions from 1,000+ web sites.

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THE FROSTFIRE BUZZ TEST

1. Is this a unique product? 8/10

2. Is this business/product difficult to replicate? 7/10

3. Is this something that can appeal to a large global audience? 7/10

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The UpDown is building the ultimate community-based investment strategy

 

 

Investing social network The UpDown has taken a slightly different take on investment communities than the likes of Marketocracy, Covestor, and others.

Users invest a simulated portfolio starting with $1 million and are paid based on their ability to consistently out-perform the S&P 500. And users who refer a friend pick up 10% of any earnings that friend rakes in. Since the beta launch in June, members have made thousands of dollars off the site.

But not only is The UpDown a destination for investors to collaborate and compete using virtual portfolios and real-life brokerage simulations, its members also have a chance to make real money derived from their on-site analyses.

By aggregating the trading activity of its members, they compile a community-based investment strategy, which is then used to manage a real-life fund. They believe that the organic competitive analysis is the ultimate hedge to investment risk.

The revenues from this fund are shared with the top members of The UpDown on a weekly and monthly basis. It all comes down to the individual investors - the more qualitative their insight, the higher the fund dividends, and the more money they'll earn.

Joachim Schoss provided the initial $500k in funding to the Harvard Business School startup. The company is currently in talks to close another angel round of $500k and will most likely be looking for a further $2 million in the summer.

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THE FROSTFIRE BUZZ TEST

1. Is this a unique product? 8/10

2. Is this business/product difficult to replicate? 7/10

3. Is this something that can appeal to a large global audience? 7/10

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Live Gamer is eBay for MMOG Virtual Goods

 

 

Live Gamer today announced its service as a provider of a publisher-supported, secure platform for real money trading of virtual property. Live Gamer is partnering with top multiplayer online game (MMOG) publishers and virtual world operators worldwide.

The company was founded by industry veterans and backed with $24 million in venture funding from Charles River Ventures, Kodiak Venture Partners, and Pequot Ventures.

Virtual trading today represents an estimated $1.8 billion in real money exchanged annually among MMOG players and virtual world inhabitants who buy and sell rights to use in-game goods, services, and characters .

To date, such transactions have usually meant braving an unstructured, unsanctioned marketplace in which players lack protection from unethical traders, and do business in violation of the publisher's terms of service.

By introducing a fully transparent, secure, publisher-sanctioned marketplace, Live Gamer helps protect content creators from the distorting impact of illicit trading on their intellectual property and provides a safe alternative for consumers around the world who spend millions of hours in-world every month.

Live Gamer was co-founded by Mitch Davis and Andrew Schneider. Davis, the company's chairman, revolutionized the video game industry by pioneering in-game advertising with Massive Incorporated, which was subsequently acquired by Microsoft.

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THE FROSTFIRE BUZZ TEST

1. Is this a unique product? 8/10

2. Is this business/product difficult to replicate? 8/10

3. Is this something that can appeal to a large global audience? 7/10

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Summize launches review search engine

 

 

Summize is a new way to find and discover products, based upon the sentiments of millions of user reviews and blog discussions.

The Summize crawlers constantly scour the web to find the latest and most helpful opinions — from the largest review portals (such as Amazon) to the livliest blogs. Summize then crunch and summarize all these sentiments to produce the response.

With so many companies trying to build up a database of reviewed products Summize is simply acting as a search engine and collator for other website reviews.

This is a smart move from Summize since there is no need for them to work hard to reach traction with the number of reviews on offer.

However, the big problem Summize is likely to encounter is the lack of community feel at Summize.  Most review websites build a strong community and include user profiles.  Without this functionality Summize may well struggle to gain traction aboe 1 million unique monthly users.

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THE FROSTFIRE BUZZ TEST

1. Is this a unique product? 8/10

2. Is this business/product difficult to replicate? 7/10

3. Is this something that can appeal to a large global audience? 7/10

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Hakia's Semantic search gets serious with more finance and serious traffic growth

Semantic search engine Hakia has raised $2 million of a planned $5 million round. The funding, from an unidentified investor, follows $16 million in funding that was announced last year, bringing its total raise to $18 million.

Previous institutional backers include Noble Grossart Investments Ltd., Alexandra Investment Management, Prokom Investments and KVK.

Competing with is Hakia is Powerset and Yedda.

 

 

Hakia has seen some remarkable growth in the last month. It is no wonder they have raised more finance. With this kind of growth Google would be wise to buy the company.

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AdReady raises $10 million

 

 

AdReady is a recently launched start-up that has just landed $10 million in investment from Bain Capital, Khosla Ventures and previous investor Madrona Venture Group for its display advertising service.

AdReady is an advertising technology company focused on making online display advertising accessible and effective for advertisers of all sizes. 

Traditionally, online display advertising has not been a simple solution for businesses looking to grow their marketing efforts online. First, while it may be possible for almost anyone to write a two-line text ad, a single high-quality rich-media ad can cost thousands of dollars to design and build, the process can often take weeks, and there is no assurance that it will perform well.  Tracking results and planning broad campaigns takes some skill and planning that most people do not have.

AdReady is setting out to change all that. The company was founded in 2006 in Seattle with the goal to develop a better way to do display advertising that works for marketers at all levels of expertise and all budgets.

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Ideeli raises $3.8 million for luxury shopping network

 

 

Ideeli, the closed shopping network where consumers can buy luxury brands at discounted prices, has just secured $3.8 million in Series A funding, led by Kodiak Ventures and angel investors. 

Ideeli is a members-only shopping community that offers women's luxury bags, sunglasses, jewelry, accessories, fragrances and more for 50 to 90% off original prices from top luxury and fashion brands, plus giveaways every week.

All the items are only available for a limited time, and they have a limited quantity of each, so it pays to move quickly if you see something you like. All sales are final - no returns. 

When you become a member, you can choose to be notified when we post items for sale (or are accepting entries for giveaways) via email (2nd Row member - free) or on your cell phone via text message (1st Row membership - $7.99 per month). 1st Row members can also shop an hour early for all our sales and enter all the giveaways from their cell phones.

Ideeli is a great concept and likely to gain traction. Ideeli has an interesting business model in that it plans to make money from text messages rather than just concentrating on the revenue from the product sales.

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THE FROSTFIRE BUZZ TEST

1. Is this a unique product? 8/10

2. Is this business/product difficult to replicate? 7/10

3. Is this something that can appeal to a large global audience? 7/10

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NewsGator raises $12 million

 

 
NewsGator have raised a $12 million led by a new investor, Vista Ventures, and supported by existing investors Mobius, Venture Capital, and Masthead Venture Partners. This brings the total raised by NewsGator to $30 million over three rounds.

NewsGator helps individuals and businesses improve the way they find information and communicate internally and externally. They offer a wide range of RSS aggregation products and social media tools.

• NewsGator Enterprise Server helps organizations take news and updates from the Web, the blogosphere, premium content providers and internal applications and systems and automatically deliver it to places where their employees can easily find and use it ─ portals, mobile devices, their desktops or preset folders in Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes. We also offer Enterprise RSS via a hosted service and integrated Enterprise 2.0 suite.

• NewsGator Syndication Services provide a widget framework for newspapers, magazines and other online content providers to increase page views and improve audience engagement through the use of interesting text, audio and video content.

• The RSS readers for individuals including FeedDemon (Windows), NetNewsWire (Mac), NewsGator Inbox (Microsoft Outlook), NewsGator Online (Web) and NewsGator Go! (Mobile) make users more productive and informed by consolidating news and information in one place.

NewsGator CEO J.B. Holston said:

Over 1 million folks rely on NewsGator daily – whether through FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, our mobile applications, our enterprise server at 12 of the Fortune 100 (and many more companies), or readers of over 50 sites who work with our content and widgets (USA Today, CBS News, etc etc).

He confirms that NewsGator’s main sources of revenues come from licensing its software to enterprises and monthly service fees from media and consumer-products companies. The new investment will go towards strengthening its position “in the enterprise RSS space,” and he expects this will get the company to a breakeven point on profits.

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Google to compete with Wikipedia

 

 

Google is to launch a new project called “Knol” (which apparently stands for a unit of knowledge), a user generated knowledge project that combines parts of Wikipedia and Squidoo (and to a lesser extent Mahalo) into what could easily turn out to game changer in this space.

The goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only.

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted.

Google believes that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably.

It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest.

A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions.

Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.

Knols will include strong community tools. People will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on. Anyone will be able to rate a knol or write a review of it. Knols will also include references and links to additional information. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads.

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Classmates cancels IPO

 

 

Parent company of Classmates.com, United Online has pulled its S-1 registration statement (the filing required to go public), citing “current market conditions would not be in the best interests of its stockholders.

Classmates.com has already received some recent bad publicity with the FTC looking into the company’s practice of auto-renewing paid subscribers without their explicit consent.

Testing the waters for a Classmates.com IPO is going to cost United Online between $4.5-$5.5 million in their fourth quarter - mostly fees they paid to investment bankers in preparation for an IPO. United Online originally acquired Classmates.com for $100 million in 2004.

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Mahalo breaks 25,000 pages and announces Creative Commons License

 

 

Human-powered search engine Mahalo.com has revealed that its index of search result pages has hit the company's goal of 25,000 pages by the end of 2008, a year earlier than originally expected.

Additionally Mahalo will be making the entire index available in both RSS and OPML formats, and under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. This license allows individuals to use Mahalo results in a non-commercial setting, without having to ask permission.

Santa Monica-based Mahalo.com is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital, Elon Musk, Newscorp, CBS Corporation, Matt Coffin, Mark Cuban, Ted Leonsis, Jon Miller, Attractor Investment Management, and Hubert Burda Media. The company launched in beta May 30th, 2007.

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Bebo launches Open Application Platform

 

 

Bebo, the global Social Media Network, today announced that it has launched its Open Application Platform, opening its API to third party developers to integrate their applications with the Bebo site.

At a launch event held in San Francisco, Bebo announced partnerships with more than 40 developers to date who have created applications from music and movies to gameplay and photo sharing for the site's 40 million users worldwide.

Joining Bebo are developers from NBC Universal, Gaia Online, and Flixster to demonstrate how their applications are now featured on Bebo.

The Bebo Open Application Platform will be the first in the industry to implement the standards defined by the Facebook Platform, an open development system that enables companies and engineers to extend Facebook's more than 7,000 applications to other social websites.

Bebo's Open Application Platform will allow developers of all sizes to generate revenues as they build engaging applications for Bebo's international user base.

Additional launch partners include NBA, The Gap, Yahoo!, FashMatch, Webs.com, Bantr, Last.fm, MesmoTV, PokerSavvy, Jangl, PicksPal, Qloud, Atomic Moguls and a host of others that have already developed applications for the site. Many developer partners will be launching applications for the very first time on Bebo.

With Bebo's implementation of Facebook's open standards, developers can expand their reach, which will lead to even more application development, and ultimately benefit both Bebo users and Facebook users.

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Microsoft buys Multimap for $50 million

 

 

Microsoft has agreed to buy Multimap, the privately-owned British company for a little more than $50 million.

Multimap is regarded as a pioneer in location-based search services. That means it provides technology and data that allows a mobile phone to be used to search for, say, the restaurants open for business in a certain area. 

It also owns a map website aimed at consumers that attracted more than 4 million unique users in the UK last month, according to Nielsen NetRatings, the market researchers.

The figures place the site second in the field in the UK – sandwiched between the market leading Google Maps, which attracted about 11 million users, and the third-placed Google Earth. Microsoft’s current mapping effort, Live Search Maps, languished in a distant fifth place, with about 868,000 users.

The figures show how Microsoft needs to change its game. The acquisition looks like a smart, cost-effective move.

Multimap, which was founded 12 years ago, also supplies online maps for third-party websites, where it counts groups including Ford, Royal Mail and Virgin as clients. 

The company is expected to post revenues of about $24 million this year, and made a profit of nearly $1.8 million in 2006. It will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, as part of the Virtual Earth and Search teams in the software giant's Online Services Group.

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Penthouse buys Friendfinder for $500 million

 

 

Penthouse Media has bought Various Inc, for $500 million, according to the New York Times.

Various owns AdultFriendFinder, an adult community for swingers, and a range of more than 25 smaller and less risque sites. It does business under the name FriendFinder and claims to have more than 260 million total users, with 1.2 of them paying customers.

Penthouse is trying to expand into the web. Marc H. Bell, the company’s chief executive, said the strategy was to diversify from its print origins and serve a range of sex-related print, in video and online material to 18-to-34-year-old men.

Bell is part of a group of private investors called PET Capital Partners, that bought the financially bankrupt Penthouse magazine in 2004.

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Mahalo builds social search network

 

 

Mahalo has rolled up quite a big and interesting update today: Mahalo Social. You can now recommend links, make friends on Mahalo, share links you've recommended with friends, and much more.

Your level of participation counts with Mahalo Social—recommend great links and your rank rises on our leaderboard.

Your profile can contain info about your other social networking profiles such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Pownce; you can recommend new links for Mahalo search results; you can track your submissions on Mahalo; you can discuss on any page on Mahalo.

 

 

Mahalo has seen some steady growth and now appears to be combining features fromtraditional search, Digg.com and Wikipedia.com.  Whatever the outcome at Mahalo, this is an exciting avenue to explore.

 

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Jaxtr.com - 5 million users after only 5 months

 

 

Jaxtr.com, the free service that links your phone to the web has seen some remarkable growth and now boasts 5 millions users after just 5 months.

Jaxtr allows you to hear from callers worldwide while keeping your existing phone number private.

Jaxtr attributes a lot of the growth to the utility of the product and virality of calling links placed in emails.

In August, Jaxtr reported 1 million users and $10 million in financing. In response to the growth, they’ve brought on Taneli Otala as VP of engineering, the former CTO of MySQL.

Jaxtr lets people call you anonymously online through a widget or unique Jaxtr phone number that connects to your real number. Similar to Jangl, Jaxtr adds a host of advanced features such as call screening and voicemail, all without giving away your original phone number.

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Twitter has confimed it has raised $5.4 million

 

 

Short-hand blog company Twitter disclosed in a regulatory filing that it has raised $4.8 million of a $5.4 million Series B round. It's the same round that got reported back in July, from Union Square Ventures and Charles River Ventures.

The company is not currently raising new capital, although could do so sometime next year. There is still no indication of the business model.

Given the large amount of finance raised someone at Twitter must have a good idea how they will one day make some money.

We hope they figure out how to make their money before they have spent all their money.

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Earn revenue from your YouTube submissions

 

 

After half a year of testing out its Partners program with 100 lucky YouTube contributors, YouTube is now accepting applications. 

YouTube is expanding its program to share a cut of the AdSense advertising revenue associated with your videos on the site (even though most videos are watched elsewhere in embedded players that typically don’t carry ads).

Metacafe and Revver have been sharing their revenue with users for some time. The criteria for membership are:

—You create original videos suitable for online streaming.
—You own the copyrights and distribution rights for all audio and video content that you upload — no exceptions.
—You regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users.
—You live in the United States or Canada.

There is presently no mention of the income you may receive, but like Adsense it is unlikely to make you rich.

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AGLOCO is heading for the deadpool

 

 

The following email is believed to have been sent to some AGLOCO members:

We would like to update you on the status of AGLOCO’s operations. We continue to believe in the AGLOCO concept, but our revenue is currently not sufficient to give Members a meaningful distribution. And though there are increases in membership, the resulting revenue is not enough to support operating costs. As a development team we are unable to continue to use our savings to fund the operations. If any Member would like to pursue continuing the operations of AGLOCO, you may contact us at agloco1@live.com .

We would like to thank every Member for supporting our effort to bring a piece of the Internet directly to the user. We hope that we can find a way to keep the operations going.

Agloco is the reincarnation of AllAdvantage, a Web 1.0 company that paid users for viewing advertising through a toolbar. When AllAdvantage failed they said this time they would get it right.

 

 

As the graph above shows, traction was never reached at Agloco and the last six months have seen a steady decline.

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Digg: Why nerds have the reputation that they do

 

 

If you enjoyed this post please use the logos below to add it to StumbleUpon, Delicious, Digg or Reddit.

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SkiSpace is MySpace for winter sports

 

 

SkiSpace is a new social networking and information site just for skiers, snowboarders and winter sports hounds. Bode Miller in conjunction with PathConnect, LLC created SkiSpace.

Bode Miller has 25 World Cup wins and begins the 2007-2008 race season just two wins shy of the all time American World Cup record of 27, which has stood since 1984.

SkiSpace is designed to let you connect with other skiers, boarders and snow sports fanatics, while keeping you up to date on the latest news and snow reports.

Other features also give you the ability to share photos and videos, even from your mobile phone. You can also plan your snow adventures, snag the best travel deals and hottest resorts, and outfit you with the greatest selection of gear you can find.

While SkiSpace has done a good job of building social networking tools, the question remains as to whether there is demand for yet another vertical social networking website.

It is likely to take more than the celebrity endorsement of Bode Miller to get traffic to SkiSpace.

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THE FROSTFIRE BUZZ TEST

1. Is this a unique product? 7/10

2. Is this business/product difficult to replicate? 6/10

3. Is this something that can appeal to a large global audience? 6/10

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Nielsen and Digimarc to offer copyright protection system for the web

 

 

The Nielsen company, along with Digimarc, are planning to offer their digital watermarking technology to web content providers. According to Information Week, the system will provide a way to quickly discover unauthorized content on sites.

To do that, the system would leverage Nielsen's existing watermark technology, which is used on more than 95% of TV programming distributed today. The watermarks are used by the meters installed in people's home to identify the programs they watch.

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Yahoo sends MingleNow to the deadpool

 

 

Social network, MingleNow has been sent to the deadpool by Yahoo. According to a post on the service’s blog, MingleNow will officially close on January 7th. No official explanation has been made for the closure.

We can speculate that Yahoo was not interested in running another social network. When Yahoo acquired BlueLithium, the ad network, MingleNow was also acquired as part of BlueLithium's properties.

 

 

As the graph above shows, based on web traffic it is no surprise Yahoo is closing the website.

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Unique Visitors to Facebook.com jumped 20% in November

 

 

Are Facebook users even aware of their worsening privacy situation? Take a look at the chart below. Looks like regular Facebook users are mostly unaware of their worsening situation, or more likely don’t know what to do about it - not good.

 

 

The next few months figures will be crucial for Facebook as the recent bad press starts to make users aware of Facebook's privacy controversy.

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ClickTale secures funding for web interaction analytics business

 

 

ClickTale, the Web Interaction Analytics business, has announced it has secured funding from YL Ventures, a boutique European venture capital firm.

ClickTale, whose service enables websites to record and watch movies of their users' browsing sessions, will use the proceeds of the funding round to expand the sales and the feature set of their hosted service.

An example of services provided by ClickTale is their recently released web usability study. Using over 80,000 recorded web page browsing sessions, ClickTale's statistical analysis demonstrated that:

• While most web pages have a vertical scroll-bar, visitors scrolled all the way to the bottom in only 20% of the recorded visits.


• Users scroll based on relative position inside the page, not based on absolute position in terms of pixels. In other words, the same number of page viewers will tend to scroll halfway or three-quarters through a page, regardless of whether the page size is 5,000 pixels or 10,000 pixels.


• The top and bottom of a web page are the most valuable areas in terms of visitor attention. Users spend an average of 24 seconds near the top and 14 seconds near the bottom as opposed to 8 seconds at the middle.

The study can be seen in more detail on ClickTale's blog. Website owners can compare ClickTale's findings with user behavior on their own sites by signing up for ClickTale's service.

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Google Trends API coming soon

 

 

Google is planning to release an application programming interface for its Google Trends program, according to Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.

During the question and answer portion of a Webcast demonstration of Google Trends on Tuesday, Mayer said the company would eventually release a Google Trends API. She also said the company would make it possible to download data from Google Trends into spreadsheets. Mayer said she couldn't provide a time frame for either action.

Google Trends allows people to see trends in searches. You can compare specific searches, see how the search volume for search terms changes over time with interactive graphs, and even see the top 100 searches for any given day. You can also see how spikes and drops in searches are linked to news and blog items.

For instance, comparing searches for Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama shows that Clinton is leading in terms of searches, although Obama seems to have more news references.

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Latimes.com gets personal with Mixx

 

 

Latimes.com has joined forces with Mixx.com, the social news website, in an online content and co-marketing alliance which puts readers of the nation's largest metropolitan daily newspaper in control of their own personal blend of online news, information, photos and videos. It has also been announced that The Times has taken a small equity stake in Mixx, details of which were not disclosed.

Launched in October, and created and designed by a team of industry veterans with deep Internet, news publishing and online content expertise including former executives from Yahoo!, AOL, USA TODAY and The Associated Press, Mixx allows users to discover personally relevant media and interact within networks of friends, colleagues and people who share their common interests.

Latimes.com readers will now have direct access to Mixx's networking and personalization tools through integrated functionality on story pages. In addition, cross-promotional traffic will be maximized by optimization of Times content for searches from within the Mixx site.

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Future Scanner tracks the future

 

 

Future Scanner, essentially scans the web for the best future-focused content (predictions by experts, discoveries that will impact future events, product prototypes, industry forecasts, useful resources, etc.) and then sorts it by future Year and Category.

When Community members locate these types of cool links, they tag them accordingly and submit them to site via their personal accounts.

Other users then vote on the material they find most interesting or beneficial and the best content ends up being featured on the front page.

Users are also encouraged to link together related scans and resources, so that it becomes easier to find more information on a given topic.

Although Future Scanner is unlikley to become a large business, this is a very fun website with unique content.

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THE FROSTFIRE BUZZ TEST

1. Is this a unique product? 8/10

2. Is this business/product difficult to replicate? 6/10

3. Is this something that can appeal to a large global audience? 6/10

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Trouble at Blognation over unpaid fees

 

 

Techcrunch is reporting that UK based BlogNation network has lost its US editor Oliver Starr. Starr alleges that he and other BlogNation writers have not been paid. The following was taken verbatim from a post at BlogNation since deleted:

AN OPEN LETTER TO SAM SETHI

Please Note: This is an open letter to Sam Sethi, Founder and CEO of Blognation. I have elected to write this letter after having been one of the principal Blognation authors since August of this year. In all that time I have not received the pay promised in my contract nor the reimbursement promised for expenses incurred on behalf of Blognation during this period. I am not alone. Every other Blognation author is in the same unsavory situation.

This open letter details in very broad strokes the reasons why I have lost faith in Sam. It makes specific statements as to the veracity of things Sam has said or written as well as things he has failed to do. I do not say these things lightly. Every statement made in this letter can be backed up with verifiable written material from email correspondence, Skype chats, or SMS messages.

The final paragraphs are obviously my opinion and do not necessarily reflect that of the other bloggers that are still members of the Blognation team. For a more detailed history of this sordid story, one includes a considerable amount of the actual Skype chat dialog as well as many paragraphs from dozens of email messages, please visit my new home on the blogosphere, owstarr.com (http://owstarr.com), my new email will be oliver@remove-this-first-owstarr.com

Lastly, this post is likely to be removed very shortly after I post it so please, make a screen capture, download it to an off-line reader, copy and paste it into a document or repost it on your own blog(really). At the end, this is a cautionary tale and the victims are the people that have worked for months on the content many of you have enjoyed but for which Sam Sethi has yet to (and may never) pay.

Oliver Starr
 

CLICK THE TITLE TO READ THE REST OF THE LETTER 

 

read more

Flickr launches Picnik photo editing tools

 

 

Flickr has finally rolled out its integration of Picnik photo editing tools, which can be accessed directly from within your Flickr account.

You’ll see on your menu of options, along with “rotate,” “delete,” etc., an option to “edit photo.” Click this and a Picknik editor will pull up.

The Picnik/Flickr collaboration works similarly to other 3rd party services who’ve built additional tools on top of the Flickr API: You’ll need to pass through the step of giving the Picnik service permission to edit and save your photos.

Once you select a photo for editing, it will appear in a Picnik editor that appears within the Flickr UI. All the tools are there–cropping, resizing, color picker, red-eye remover, and the rest. There’s also the Create tool for adding stickers, text, and other graphics and effects to your images.

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Motionbox raises $7M but needs more traction

 

 

Video editing and sharing site Motionbox, which markets primarily to families, has announced the closing of a $7M round of Series B financing led by Constellation Ventures with participation by Canaan Partners and SAS Investors.

 

 

Motionbox makes it easy to upload, organize, enhance, and share your personal videos with family, friends & groups.

Motionbox recently released a premium version of its service that allows you to upload files of any size and enjoy unlimited storage for $30 per year.

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