Scriblink: Makes Collaborating Online Easier Than Ever

Company Name: Scriblink

Website: http://www.scriblink.com

CEO’s Elevator Pitch: The internet has revolutionized almost every aspect of the way we communicate. Every day, billions of emails, chat dialogues, and video conferences are exchanged as people from around the world work together and share their ideas. Despite this technological innovation, one of the most powerful ways of expressing an idea remains free-hand expression, whether it’s on paper, a chalk board, or even the back of a napkin.

Scriblink is an online whiteboard where users can collaborate in real-time with anyone, at anytime, anywhere in the world. Our site is totally free, requires no registration, and has no ads. The site includes a fully featured whiteboard with in-screen chat, free VoIP conferencing, image uploading, file sharing, and more. Our goal is to make using the board as simple and intuitive as possible while giving users all the functionality needed from a whiteboard.

We recently launched the Business Solutions Program (www.scriblink.com/business), a customizable API that is the only service of its kind. For a monthly fee users can personalize and implement their own version of our whiteboard on their site, hosted by us.

My Take: The technology is pretty cool but the need for such a service might be lacking as a stand alone product. Web conferencing solutions such as DimDim have a white board tool already available and I’m sure other web conferencing solutions do as well.

I played around with it and writing free hand or “free mouse” is pretty difficult so the major aspects of using a white board which is quickly writing things on the white board, erasing them and so on (like the UPS commercials) are not there like they are with a real white board. Maybe if all the users contributing are on tablets it might work much like the real world experience?

If the big boys such as WebEx and DimDim have added a white board feature to their solutions there must be a need out there so I’m sure Scriblink will find developers interested in adding its functionality to their Rich Internet Applications (RIA) via their API.

Like I said above the technology is pretty cool so I’m interested in seeing future developments and what the product evolves into. Best of luck to Jordan and the team at Scriblink.com!

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August 15, 2008 | by Chris | 2 Comments 

Zlert: Shopping Alerts

Company Name: zlert

Website: http://www.zlert.com

CEO’s Elevator Pitch: Save money, discover new stuff, stay in the know. zlert keeps track of millions of products for you. Choose items from Amazon and set up alerts:

Price - get emailed when the price finally matches what you want to pay.
Price Guarantee - lets you know about any price fall within 30 days (for Amazon.com refund).
Search - we run your search daily and email you when new matches appear.
Accessory - find new accessories for items you own.
Wishlist - know when a friend adds items to their wishlist.
Reminders - pick out presents now, get a reminder before the big day.
Availability - find out as soon as a used copy goes on sale.

and many more.

My Take: Simply put, zlert offers a tool for keeping track of stuff you, your friends and your family want. Toss in some useful features (here’s where the alert part of the name comes from) including alerts for birthdays, anniversaries or other gift giving events and alerts when friends add new items to their wish list so you are prepared for these big days.

Zlert is great for bargain hunters as you can track and be alerted of price fluctuations on individual items and better yet set the price you want for something and be alerted the moment it hits.

Zlert is obviously using the Amazon API to collect the item data including prices but beyond that not sure what other technology is behind the site. From what I can tell the only method of making money is with the affiliate links to Amazon where zlert will make a % of each sale they send Amazon’s way, usually between 6-8% or more depending on the amount of volume you send each month. With enough traffic they could also sell some sponsored advertising space.

I’m pretty sure Amazon has their own set of alerts but I doubt they have anything that tracks price drops as that wouldn’t be in their best interest, but maybe they do…anyone know?

Zlert has carved a pretty good niche that I’m sure a lot of people will find useful.

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August 12, 2008 | by Chris | Leave a Comment 

Joodo: P2P Social Networking Platform

Company Name: Joodo

Website: http://www.joodo.com

From the CEO Eric Willis…

Short Description:

Joodo is a hybrid web/desktop peer to peer social networking application designed to help people manage and share data in a self-empowering environment.

Long Description:

Joodo’s mission is to help users organize, manage, search for their data on the desktop and make it easily shareable. As the world’s first p2p social networking platform, we want to leverage our technology to create a new platform for sharing data. Joodo also includes a p2p search engine for locating data exclusively in your personal network. This is a next-generation decentralized social networking platform for creating personal sharing networks. Some people think of it as hybrid web/desktop app for sharing files. Some people think of it as a decentralized social network. We would like to think we are building
a new effective and efficient way to organize, share, and search for data in a decentralized network that is self-empowering.

What was the goal of this project?

My goal in creating Joodo, simply stated, was to create a platform for direct, dynamic, private person-to-person or person to many interactions within a private network that the users themselves control.

Why do we think this is possibly disruptive technology?

We are working on a self-organizing network based on machine-learning technology that organizes nodes based on semantics and supernode capability. Combining this with our new semantic routing technology we
are developing, we fill that we can offer an order of a magnitude increase relevancy in decentralized social search.

The amount of data locked away on the desktop in this data silos is staggering. Unlocking that data and making it easily searchable and shareable, can unlock a new “web” of data…opening up the next generation of search, sharing, collaboration, and organization technology.

Just another comment…

Although there seems to be over-development in terms of features and there could have been most focus on overall value, we have very credible plans on further tying those modules into the overall theme of making it easier to share information with your trusted network. It may not seem obvious now, but some of the ideas (when implemented) will be very awesome. Again, we are very much alpha stage here. We just wanted to offer a sneak preview.

Platform?

It´s built on mozilla framework, XUL, C++, SVG, PHP,…. There are other technologies used as well.

Because we’ve used some mozilla code in our technology, we plan on opening up some the platform as to support extensions. This will further create these hyper personalized and customized private networks that uses our technology to reduce the amount of time in sharing large amounts of data, and increase the prospects of frictionless sharing by building a new collaboration framework specifically operated on their terms on their own network. Essentially, we wanted to build an inherently self-empowering, spontaneous type of tool.

Is this just a set of features without a Business Model?

We’ve already licensed Joodo to a small social network that will use Joodo to run the offline version of their network. We’ll offer synchronization and storage services as value added paid premium services to users. We’re also testing our ad delivery platform to place contextual based overlay ads in the video service and also keyword based ad in our search results…amongst other things.

My Take: I haven’t had much time to play around with it as I am consumed with the testing and debugging of our own app but Eric was kind of enough to provide the following invite link.

http://www.joodo.com/download.php?invcode=startupblips

The UI is a little dark for my taste but hopefully they will come up with different skins to better fit each users taste. The rollover navigation on the sides and bottom is cool but not all that functional. You’re also locked into one size for viewable space from what I can tell.

Overall looks like an interesting way to organize your media/data and distribute/share it with friends or co-workers. Plenty of work to do but they’re just in alpha testing so I’m sure they will keep progressing…will keep my eye out for the Mac version!

Best of luck to Eric and the team over at Joodo.com.

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August 4, 2008 | by Chris | Leave a Comment 

YOLLEGE: Your College. Your Voice.

Company Name: YOLLEGE

Website: http://www.yollege.com

CEO’s Elevator Pitch: YOLLEGE is going to revolutionize the way college bound students and their parents learn about college. Forget about the generic campus tour, and the college’s website. YOLLEGE is going to give you real perspective on what college life is really like on that campus because you’re hearing it from the actual students! College students will be able to review every aspect of their school, and find out what’s hot and not so hot around them. Vital tool for those in college and the college bound.

About the CEO: I graduated from UC Davis in 2006, and actually started YOLLEGE after my first company I started during my junior year of college called University Passport. I used to create all inclusive college tours, with lunch, transportation and tours. From there, many parents told me how great it would be to meet more students and learn from them, so I started YOLLEGE!

My Take: I think YOLLEGE has focused on a pretty good niche and basically wants to become the Yelp for college reviews. If they can reach that important mountain called “critical mass” YOLLEGE could become THE place for college bound high school seniors.

The biggest challenge of course, this is the same for any internet startup, is reaching that critical mass point where you have TONS of users all contributing TONS of useful reviews. Yelp has created what is basically a “culture” of dedicated followers who feel it is their duty to contribute. If YOLLEGE can get college students to feel this way about reviewing their school, YOLLEGE will have something big on their hands. They need to get college students passionate about making sure their school is properly represented.

They have a “College Rep” system in place which is a great way to have “street teams” in place to help spread the word about YOLLEGE quickly and effectively across a campus. Having a physical presence on campuses offering incentives to get students to sign up and contribute is a great start. Not sure if these “College Rep” positions are paid positions but if YOLLEGE has the cash available that would be a great opportunity for students to help pay for tuition, books and all the other costs associated with going to college. This will also help strengthen the YOLLEGE brand across college campuses because word will spread about this money making opportunity and the chance to work for something new and exciting.

There is currently a message board and chat available…though I think they could do without the chat. The message board could also use an upgrade to something like VBulletin or phpBB to offer more tools for conversations and better navigation of posts.

Overall the site has a nice design and simple layout but has plenty of room for improvement like building out each campuses “Profile Page” to offer areas for students to possibly upload pictures, college logo and more. Also, I didn’t test the sign up process but if they made it so ONLY emails for .edu addresses work that would help strengthen the quality of reviews because you know for a fact only college students are posting. Take it a step further and ONLY allow emails for each specific school to posts for the school that matches their email would raise the quality of reviews even higher. If they took this advice they would need to make sure the ENTIRE site is available to non-registered visitors as high school seniors of course would not have a .edu email yet.

YOLLEGE is focusing on a good niche and if they continue to develop the site and its list of available features they could be on to something big. My advice would be to stay focused on new features and ideas that help drive user participation and that make users want to come back to the site once a month, once a week and possibly multiple times a day.

I wish Mike and the team at YOLLEGE nothing but the best of luck with their new venture!

—

Have a NEW and EXCITING startup? Get it reviewed here at startupBLIPS, find out how!

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July 18, 2008 | by Chris | Leave a Comment 

SalesForce.com to manage your, well sales!

Pretty much everyone has heard of SalesForce.com, the leading On-Demand Software as a Service (SaaS) provider for customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, but for the 1% of people who haven’t this should be groundbreaking for you.

If you’re looking for an affordable, feature rich and easy to use solution for managing your sales and customer relationship management functions, look no further than SalesForce.com.

I’m not going to go into detail about everything they offer, their website has more than enough info for you to look at.

I plan on using it for our stealth startups sales/CRM, soon to be launched, and have used it in the past and have had nothing but a good experience with it. For the basic user seat license you’re looking at only $99 for an ENTIRE YEAR. So if you need to manage your leads, accounts and such this is a inexpensive and more importantly efficient way to do it.

So navigate on over to their website to learn more, they offer a free 30 day trial so get started with that.

Have you had success with SalesForce.com? Share your thoughts below…

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July 17, 2008 | by Chris | Leave a Comment 

Life in a cubicle…

It has been a crazy couple of weeks (months really) but things should start settling down here in the next couple weeks as we get our new business and new product(s) live and if everything goes according to plan adding new accounts like crazy.

For the next couple days I’m living the cubicle life thanks to…

Also in the middle of an office move which has thrown another curve in the road but we’re taking everything in stride and still pushing forward. You learn A LOT about people when they are challenged and I’ve seen the best and worst of the people around me and it has been a great learning experience.

On a side note…I’m sure most have heard of and probably read Jim Collins “Good to Great” book…and if you haven’t I suggest you pick that one up immediately. Every business leader needs to read that book!

For those of you founders who have submited your startup for me to review here on the blog I have not forgot about you. Once the dust settles and I have some time in my day I will be sure to get caught up and give your startup the attention it deserves. I’ve peeked at a couple of them and they look pretty cool so looking forward to that.

For those of you that pass by in the next week or two…wish us luck on the business and product launch!

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July 15, 2008 | by Chris | Leave a Comment 

RingCentral.com - Great Internet Phone Service for Small to Medium Sized Businesses

I’m in the process of looking for a good solution to manage our phone system here in the office and I think I found a good one with RingCentral.com.

I want something that has minimal startup costs, minimal monthly costs and no lengthy contracts. At first glance it looks like RingCentral.com offers all of that and more.

You can setup a local number, toll free and fax and have it all go through your online RingCentral.com account. It has all the bells and whistles including company greeting, department extensions, personal extensions, call forwarding, cool on-hold/waiting music, voice mail and pretty much everything you need to manage your office phone system.

You can use it with a regular phone, cell or right inside your PC. I’m going with the PC option and all you need is a headset to make and take calls…less clutter on the desk with no need for a phone! Plus you can work from anywhere, where the software is downloaded, and make and take calls as if you’re at the office.

Here’s a little “How it works” diagram from there site…

I’m looking to make our office as mobile as possible so this fits right into the scheme of things. We’re pretty much plug and play from anywhere now.

Skype.com is also a good solution and I use it for personal calls, and even some business, but I think RingCentral offers more for businesses. Any feedback for similar services out there or experience good or bad with Skype in a small to medium sized business situation?

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June 20, 2008 | by Chris | Leave a Comment 

Great products don’t need SPAM to attract visitors

There’s a recent trend/SCAM going on around the internet these days that has masked itself with the name of what is a great marketing concept called “Web 2.0 Marketing”…what these people are doing is NOT “Web 2.0 Marketing”. Spammers across the internet looking to pitch worthless products such as e-books, the next great MLM scheme and other garbage is flooding the internet through spam blogs, video spam and anywhere else they can re-post the same junk in order to send potential visitors their way.

What is Web 2.0 Marketing? Web 2.0 Marketing is a great tool to help you interact with your clients/customers and openly discuss your products, company news, feedback and more. Being transparent in business these days helps build your brand as well as client/customer loyalty. This means creating a company blog, maybe a support forum or wiki to include tutorials and instructional videos etc., and if your business offers some kind of online service create a useful widget or two for popular social networks like Facebook or MySpace to help make your product/service that much more available and user friendly.

Legitimate businesses with worthwhile products and services don’t want to, and don’t need to, hurt their brand and reputation by becoming known as a SPAMMER among their peers and their clients/customers. Leave that for the e-book, MLM and other junk peddlers on the internet. Creating 20+ different spam blogs all covering the same thing, putting your instructional/demonstration videos on every video network possible and commenting all over the place with your links in an effort to trick people to visiting you and even worse fall into your trap might work in the short term but will all crumble in the long run.

I would provide some examples of these spam bots but that would just give them the link bait they so desperately desire. Just search YouTube.com or Squidoo.com for “MLM” or “home based business” and you will find PLENTY of people who are making millions of dollars and they want to teach others how to become rich just like them…I’m laughing as I write this and I’m sure you are too while you read it. Really though, how nice of all these people to share their secrets with others when they could be just living it up with all the money they’ve made right???

Rant over. Back to my point…

Deliver a solid product or service, setup a web presence with your main website (SEO optimized of course), add a company blog/forum/wiki so you can have open communication with your clients/customers and with that you will see the short term and most importantly long term results you want.

You don’t need “Spam wish I was Web 2.0 Marketing” to grow the traffic to your business. Your great product or service will generate the viral marketing you need to become successful.

They call the planets environmental problem “Global Warming” and we should all do our part to stop it…I think we should call the internet’s spam problem “Internet Spam Growing” and we should all do our part to put an end to it.

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June 20, 2008 | by Chris | Leave a Comment 

Is it live yet?

We’re nearing the launch of our new platform and the closer we get to this day the question “Is it live yet?” comes up more and more. Though annoying to hear it’s a good thing because it means we are close to seeing what seemed like the impossible project FINALLY go live. What couldn’t get done in well over 4 years is not only going to be realized in just over 6 months (was shooting for under 6 but thats close enough) of development but it’s going to be more amazing than anyone ever imagined.

Seeing this happen has us dreaming much larger now so I’ve been busy the past week or so putting together a “Pro-Forma” report so we can start looking to acquire VC funding to help us make the dream a reality.

While working on the pro-forma report I’ve been learning a lot about business plan writing and why it’s important not to just secure funding but as a tool to run your business. It makes complete sense to me…without a business plan how to you know where you’re going and how to get there?

I’m looking to try and accomplish the business plan writing in house but I’m also looking into using a company called GrowThink…anybody have feedback good or bad about them? They look pretty reputable and would probably do a great job putting on paper what it is we want to accomplish with this business.

Well that’s all I have for now…we’re looking to go live really soon and hopefully I will be able to post soon that we’ve secured funding and all things are full steam ahead!

cheers,
Chris

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June 13, 2008 | by Chris | 1 Comment 

Great leaders are ALWAYS great

WOW! It’s been A LONG time since my last meaningful post!

Well I’ve been busy with the approaching launch of our new on-demand technology platform, “to be named later”, which has me knee deep in things like testing, further project scoping and the thing I dread most writing the marketing content for the website.

But things are coming together nicely and being able to see the light at the end of what once was a pitch black tunnel of a project is inspiring to say the least.

The pressure is immense because A LOT is riding on the success of this project but I’m ready for such a challenge.

I read a great piece by Jim Collins in the recent Fortune issue that I wanted to share. With all the struggles facing business leaders today, especially in the lending industry, I thought this quote was spot on.

The best corporate leaders never point out the window to blame external conditions; they look in the mirror and say, “We are responsible for our results!” Those who take personal credit for good times but blame external events in bad times simply do not deserve to lead our institutions. No law of nature dictates that a great institution must inevitably fall, at least not within a human lifetime. That most do fall - and we cannot deny this fact - does not mean you have to be one of them.

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May 19, 2008 | by Chris | Leave a Comment 

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