Have you ever had an idea that you know without a shadow of a doubt will be the next big thing? Have you ever seen yourself coming up with the next idea that will be sure to shake the earth? If you said yes to any of the above questions, one of your main problems will be to find funding like any new business. Symbid.com attempts to use crowd-funding just like kickstarter.com to help those brilliant or not individuals to raise capital. If everyone had the amount of money that they needed to turn their ideas into reality, then we can be sure that we would be having a lot more businesses in our world. How is this possible?

In an attempt to solve this problem for the entrepreneur, symbid.com offers a unique feature where you can post all your bright ideas. The process does not end there, you; the entrepreneur will still need to get funding for your projects. So how do you get the money you need to kick start your idea? Posting your idea on symbid.com is just the first step. The next thing that you will need to do is to find investors who will invest in your bright idea. After you have posted your idea in symbid.com, anyone who is interested in your idea will be able to invest in it with as low as two euros to as much as they would wish to invest. Through funding the investor becomes a shareholder of the promising business opportunity. With symbid.com the entrepreneur surely comes out smiling; his or her idea is given a lease of life through crowd sourcing and crowd funding. Founded by Korstiaan Zandvliet symbid.com surely helps out many entrepreneurs with funding for their projects and ideas. Korstiaan Zandvliet saw the need for a way in which entrepreneurs would find funding for their great projects. If there is one thing that is absolutely great about symbid.com is that as long as an idea is great, you can be sure that you will find the much needed funding.

If you are wondering whether or not there is another similar crowd funding provider, then I can inform you that there are other providers such as Maxclass.com or kickstarter.com  which is in one way or another similar to symbid.com, and a few others. By the look of things, symbid.com has nothing to worry about when it comes to competition. With its firm grip on the market, you as an entrepreneur can be sure to get the funding that you need and your dream will finally see the light of day. What symbid.com actually tries to achieve is crowd funding for the great ideas that many people have. Thanks to this principle, we will be seeing many bright ideas being birthed.

As for my opinion on the potential that symbid.com has and how its future is likely to shape up, I can only say that many entrepreneurs and many investors have been waiting for such a platform, but some competitors are already very well positionned. A platform where they can share their ideas with the world, on the part of the entrepreneur and where investors can find the right projects which they can invest in is a crowing trend. We can be sure be seeing a lot of changes in the way businesses are created and the number of businesses will surely be on the rise.

In conclusion, there is a lot for us to see from symbid.com. We can be sure that we will see a lot of ideas being given life by symbid.com and thanks to symbid.com, you can be sure we will see great ideas coming to life. We can only thank Korstiaan Zandvliet for seeing the problem that many face when trying to kick off their ideas. With crowd sourcing and now crowd funding, your idea will finally find life. The only thing that you need to do is to dream more, you can be sure to find the much needed funding with symbid.com.

One of the startups previously talked on smartideabox.com is currently seeking funding on Symbid. Sellanapp.com

It is about time that we saw an application that made taking pictures more interesting. With kooba.com application, déjà vu, we are sure on the right track to seeing greater things in the near future. With the application, you will find it a lot interesting to take photos and even share the same photos with your friends. The application works in a really interesting way, it uses image recognition for automatic labelling of your snapshots. This really saves you a lot of time and energy, from the sound of things, it really sounds like a great application. Let’s take a deeper look at how it exactly works.

If you just love taking pictures and keeping all those precious memories then kooaba.com’ déjà vu application is the application for you. Designed to operate on iOS phones, it will turn your iPhone into your visual memory. The déjà vu application goes a step further and makes sure that your experience is much better. This is mainly by automatically labelling all your snapshots, this means that you don’t have to worry about the number of photos that you take. All that you need to worry about is the quality of photo that you take. This surely sets a huge smile on a lot of faces. The great thing about it all is that you can also can go ahead and edit the labels as you would wish.

If there is one problem that many have identified while taking photos is that the applications they use do not allow for fast picture taking and easy navigation through the photos. With the déjà vu application however, the above problems are fully addressed. The déjà vu application came about from the need of a better photo taking experience. Since the integration of the camera in the phone, we have seen a lot of changes in the way we take pictures. Though this has been the case since 2006 where we saw the first phone with an integrated camera, there hasn’t been so much change in the nature of the photo experience. The only difference between then and now is that the phones now are much more sophisticated and much more efficient. The need for an application that helped people with photo taking and managing their photos increased day by day. This need saw the birth of the déjà vu application. It is through this application that you can effectively organise all the photos that you have.

The number of photos that many individuals have is overwhelming. From this assertion, one thing that is clear is that we need a system that will see us saving our photos and organising our photos in a much easier way. This is what kooaba.com déjà vu application does. Once you take your pictures using the application, the application will label all your snap shots and keep them in an organised format. If your phone is out of memory and you need more space to store all your special memories, kooaba.com déjà vu application has a way out for you. After taking your photos, the application synchronizes with your personal account on cloud. On cloud, they are stored safely for as long as you would like. Though they are synchronised with kooba.com cloud application, you can always access the photos from any device.

As for my personal opinion on what the future holds for kooaba.com déjà vu application, I can only say that the future for the application is quite bright. The application is set to gain a lot of popularity since it is the only application that integrates image recognition for automatic labelling of your memos, the profits that kooaba.com is set to get from its exploration in this particular field will really reward the whole team behind the déjà vu application which they deserve. I am sure that with time, we will be seeing a lot of changes in the way we take photos and the ease with which we can organise all our photos, thanks to kooba.com déjà vu application.

With the déjà vu application, we can only pray that things keep going in the right direction. With the current success that the application is having, things are looking up. We might just see something new from the application.

Related articles

• The Android Déjà vu (webtropic.cc)
• Deja Vu uses image recognition to organize your visual memory (thenextweb.com)
• Kooaba’s Paperboy app makes printed newspapers digital, partners with over 2000 titles (thenextweb.com)
• Déjà Vu app adds image recognition capability to Evernote (intomobile.com)
• Déjà Vu – Your Visual Memory (swiss-miss.com)

When it comes to travel, maybe you are on a vacation or just on a business trip, we are always out to find some adventure, something that is far from the norm, something new. For you to get the best experience from a place, then you need to have everything planned out quite well. It is at this point that many people go wrong and eventually wind up not enjoying their visit as much as they should. With getyourguide.com, you can get all that you need online. This means that you will not only find an experienced guides to show you all the exciting places in the area, but you will also get the best guide who knows the do’s and don’ts in the place.

It does not mean that you will only be getting a guide to guide you around the place of visit; you will also be able to book for tours, attractions, and even activities. This is quite a great idea. To be able to complete all your booking in one site is amazing. If you are a constant traveller, you do know how hard it is to have everything that you want planned out for you in advance.

Let’s say you are going to Kenya on your vacation, all that you will need to do is to log onto getyourguide.com and you will be able to book for everything you need. You can book a camel ride, you can also book a visit to the Maasai Mara, and you can also book yourself a stay in one of the exquisite hotels in the country.

Through getyourguide.com, travel has been made hassle free at pretty favourable prices. With getyourguide.com you will get the best deal for the best experience. This is because getyourguide.com works with local travel companies who will be out to make sure that you get to experience all that your place of visit has to offer. If you would love to visit Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, Oceania or even south America, all you need to do is to log into getyourguide.com and all your needs will be addressed. By getting rid of all the intermediaries, you will be sure to get the best price, guaranteed.

Founded by Johannes Reck and Pascal Mathis, what getyourguide.com has to offer is quite unique to the market as it works with local providers so that you can get the best experience. This goes beyond what we are usually used to. We are usually used to individual providers providing booking for their services online, with getyourguide.com; you get everything in one place. If you would love a spa treatment during your visit and some rock climbing at the same place of visit, getyourguide.com will help you make all the arrangements with the best providers around. All you need to worry about is the important stuff; having the time of your life. If you are out to find the perfect visit, where you practically have everything worked out for you then Johannes and Pascal have it done for you through getyourguide.com.

As for my personal opinion on the whole idea, I must admit that I love the idea. Too many times we find our holidays and vacations getting all messy due to some few mishaps here and there, which are all as a result of not finding the right provider for the service you want. Previously all we had were many providers from different parts of the world that offered online booking, now with getyourguide.com; you will get all that you need in one site. The one thing that really intrigued me is a provision that they have. It states that if you happen to find your booked tours at a lower price elsewhere, they will make sure that they refund you the difference. This will be done without any questions. I guess that getyourguide.com is what we have all been looking forward to when it comes to having a great experience while travelling to exotic places all over the world. I sure know what to do the next time I want to visit the pyramids to get the best experience.

In conclusion, getyourguide.com is for sure a great idea. The one thing that we can expect from getyourguide.com is more growth in terms of service. This only means that we will be seeing even much better deals than the ones that we currently have. If you do love travelling then getyourguide.com will let you enjoy your travel with all your needs being addressed no matter how diverse they may be.

Quite a number of people are out to find a solution to their power consumption. As many have come to realise, there is a lot of electricity being wasted in their house by technology they use at home. Getting a gadget that will be able to monitor your power consumption and even help you in a way that you are aware of the amount of electricity getting into your home is what some people are out to find. With ecowizz.net, you will be able to save energy in a more efficient way.

It is the need for us to save energy in our homes that birthed ecowizz.net. Ecowizz.net is a company that makes products that will help you in saving energy in your home with ease. With the products that they have to offer you can have complete control over your energy consumption. This is really good news for quite a number of individuals.

When you look at the type of products that they offer, you will notice that they are the only players that are currently in the field. This means that the field is quite scary for many businesses. Just recently we saw Microsoft, Google and Cisco launch experimental software and hardware to help homeowners in this particular regard. It was after a while that all of the mentioned companies bailed out of the project. This left a gap and which ecowizz.net has come in to fill. The products help you monitor the amount of energy getting into your home each and every day making it easy for you to know exactly where it is being used most and what you can do to minimise power usage in your house by employing the right measures. Picture this for a moment, you just dozed off and left the lights on, your television set on, and a lot of other electrical appliances using energy on. What ecowizz.com products aim to achieve is for you to have little or no cases of energy wastage in your house.

Press on cc button to switch english subtitles on

As for my personal opinion on what the future holds for ecowizz, I can say that it will be a tough ride. The idea is really good for me, but when it comes to using the technology that ecowizz has to offer, you can be sure that not so many people will be interested. The market is now aware of the amount of energy the consume and the majority think they are doing enough, this means it will require a huge amount of work to educate the costumer base. The reason being; people cannot see the benefits of such great technology, it very likely to be seen as a small gadget that will help them monitor a fraction of their consumption and that looks complicated. The interest in monitoring one’s own electricity consumption will become a growing trend but in the near future all I can see is gloom.

It is one thing to have great products and services, but quite another to have products that are actually meet the requirement of large target market. To conclusion, I think ecowizz needs to rethink their sales strategy and make their product more attractive. They need to grab attention by using real success stories and maybe giving away the device for free and take a small percentage on the savings the costumer makes. I think a strong and well structured referral system  could be a could idea as this kind of devices will sell well on word of mouth. It’s all about sales & unfortunately is also the case for green technology. I’m looking forward to how this company will shape up in the future.

Today I received an email from swiss “couponing” website Qoqa.ch an offer for a half price ecowizz system I was two fingers from buying it but I didn’t. The main reason is that is the majority of my plugs and an ON/OFF button and that I cannot connect my lights on the system. I will only invest in this if I can control my entire house from my iphone and monitor the consumption otherwise I see it as a gadget.

Related articles

• Measuring Your Energy Consumption (lumoenergy.com.au)
• Facebook Launching “Social Energy” App for Improving Energy Efficiency (treehugger.com)
• Do smart energy gadgets actually save you money? (moneyexpert.com)
• The Recession’s Toll on the Green Economy Home energy-monitoring systems have wilted, green job growth is lackluster, and we’re left to worry about the state of green tech By Rebecca Boyle (imullins89.wordpress.com)

When it comes to events, the organiser has to do a lot for him or her to appeal to the attendees. This means that he or she needs to know of the likes and the dislikes of the attendees. The next thing that the organiser needs to do is to make sure that he or she schedules more time for what the attendees like and minimise on what they do not like. This sounds huge! You are probably thinking that it is almost impossible to please everyone. You are right on one thing, it is hard to please everyone, but you can try to please most people. The one thing that any organiser will be willing to tell you is that he or she wants the same attendee of a previous event to show up for the other event that he or she will organise. It is this state of events that have lead organizers to develop their own software applications for each and every event that they organise and hold, so as to create the best atmosphere for the attendees to benefit.

Let’s take a look at what you, the attendee, would like to have in the event that you are attending. The one thing that will get you going to such events is the need to network. You would really love to meet up with a person who holds the same interests as you and maybe a person you can work with to discover new business opportunities. Every business person understands how important this is. In whatever event they attend, they will be out to make sure that they have effectively interacted with other attendees.

From the above it is clear to see that there is a need that needs to be met if events are to be more successful both to the organiser and to the attendee. This is where bizzabo.com comes in. you are probably thinking of it as genius at this stage, but wait till you hear the rest of the story. It is indeed genius and brings a lot of relief to event organisers and gives smiles to attendees.

Bizzabo.com places itself in the middle of the equation and serves both the organizer and the attendee. It is a free location based mobile application for networking at business events. With this application you, the attendee, can discover new business opportunities and meet ups. It also serves the event organiser in that he or she will engage more effectively through the application.  Bizzabo.com, is an Israeli start-up company Founded by Eran Ben- Shushan, Alon Alroy and Boaz Katz, all alumni of the San Zell Entrepreneurship programme, bizzabo.com promises to be a must have for any event organizer. It is funded by private investors and advised by professionals in the business events category. This is one reason that it is so good.

How does it work? It helps you search for other event attendees. This is usually based on the title, company, industry and other favourable criteria. The application also presents you with a suggestion list that matches you to other attendees based on your profile and interests. For event organisers, they are able to keep track of attendees from previous events. The organiser can also upload events to bizzabo.com’s directory and edit the information about the event at any time, may it be during the event or before the event.

One advantage that the application has is that the event organiser can brand the page with his or her event logo, colour themes and even the up to date agenda. This is one idea that the world is embracing with arms wide open. Another valuable feature that bizzabo.com has to offer is that it allows the organisers and attendees to post special offers on their products or services. From this, it’s easy to conclude that with bizzabo.com at your event, you will generate some significant revenue.

As for my personal opinion on the potential that bizzabo.com has to offer, I must admit that I am in love with the idea. With bizzabo.com the organizer and the attendees stand to gain a lot. This is real- time event networking at its best. Bizzabo.com is certainly pacing the way in giving the attendees what they really need from an event that they attend.

In conclusion, we are sure to see a lot of exploration in event networking. The one thing that we can be sure of is that you, the attendee, will stand to gain a lot.

Related articles

• Bizzabo is the new event-based social networking tool for professionals (thenextweb.com)
• Live Business Networking App Bizzabo Wins Aug 2011 TechAviv Peer Award (techaviv.com)
• Bizzabo:New Business Networking Application (techmadly.com)

With Sellanapp.com, you have a chance to turning all those light bulb moments into reality. Founded by Aernoud Dekker, sellanapp.com promises to bring you all the resources that you need for you to create your ultimate application. This is one idea that is set to bring a lot of smiles all over the world. If you were afraid that your ideas were not going to see the light of day, you need not worry; sellanapp.com will bring you all the tools that you need.

Sellanapp.com offers you a platform for crowdsourcing where you will be able to source for funds. With this, you will be able to source, fund, develop and distribute the application for your favourite device. In a nutshell, what really happens is that you’re great ideas are brought together with the people who are willing to get your idea up and running.

SellAnApp from NewLogics on Vimeo.

This idea is surely one of a kind. It only means one thing; we will be seeing a lot of applications available for our day to day use. The great thing about mobile applications is that they are fun and they make life a lot more easy and interesting. With this platform now, many bright ideas will be brought to fore and this will see a lot of improvements in terms of the quality of applications that we get. To a great extent we can say that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Mobile phone applications are set to bring on board a lot of innovation and incorporate a lot of aspects that we need every now and then. This only means that there is a lot for us to see in a few years or so.

As for my personal opinion on what the future holds for sellanapp.com. I will say that this idea will be the mother of many mobile phone applications; I also believe that we will see a lot of improvements with regards to the ease with which one can make his or her application. Surely we need to thank Aernoud Dekker for his one of a kind contribution to helping many people achieve their dreams. When we look at the financials, mobile applications can help you gain a lot more than the initial investment. This is why investors will be keen to make sure that they invest in sellanapp.com. The world is certainly turning out to be quite a great place. With Sellanapp.com, it will be much easier to get your ideas and dreams fulfilled. Now with mobile application downloads exceeding music downloads, we are set to see more applications popping up, a lot of investors will be investing a lot in this particular sector.

In conclusion, sellanapp.com is sure to see a lot of business taking place; from those with the ideas, to the developer, to the investor and finally to the market. When we turn a blind eye to all the benefits that sellanapp.com has to offer with regards to the market, we still find that there are numerous advantages that the individual without funding stands to get. The first being the much needed tools to get his project running and finally to get to use it. With sellanapp.com, we are moving into an age where applications are set to bring a lot of change in our day to day lives. You can be sure that the application that you are using currently will be history tomorrow all with the help of sellanapp.com.

Related articles

• SellAnApp: A new platform that lets you produce, fund and promote your own apps (thenextweb.com)
• Backend Service Provider StackMob Comes To Android (techcrunch.com)
• Examples Would Help Clarify When a Mobile Application Qualifies as a Mobile Medical Application (projecthealthdesign.typepad.com)

Do you remember that time you went to a party and the DJs seemed completely disconnected from their audience in the sense that they just could not find the music that struck the right chord? This can be a source of great frustration not just for you as an attendee of the party but for the DJs too.

Actually, look at things from the DJs perspective – you have tens, hundreds or even thousands of people in front of you looking to have a good time and you have to find the music that will connect with most if not all of them – tough to say the least.

Finding music that will appeal to everybody is virtually impossible. Music tastes are almost like fingerprints – no two people have an absolute identical music taste. And it looks like one person, Ben Gleitzman, wants to take the literal comparison of unique physical attributes and unique music tastes a step further.

Introducing Automatic DJ – a system that can decipher the kind of music you like simply by scanning your face. How is that for intuition! Sounds outlandish? Not quite. The ‘intuition’ is actually backed by a fairly logical process – unsurprisingly, the internet is involved.

Automatic DJ uses a special iSight camera that captures an image of your face and then runs it through a recently added feature on Facebook – face recognition. With more than 700 million active user accounts, there is a strong chance that the person whose face is scanned by Automatic DJ will already have a Facebook profile.

The system then looks at the music preferences as outlined on the person’s Facebook profile and then creates and plays the appropriate music. In effect, the songs are automatically selected for you hence the name Automatic DJ. You do not need to say a thing. The application’s owners have gone ahead and made the source code public so that other programmers may customize and improve the software even further.

Automatic DJ is no doubt an interesting and fun application. It might not have everything going for it though in the long run.

First, Facebook has already come under fire for creating a database of Facebook user images that can be deciphered by image recognition software without obtaining the express permission of users. Whether this functionality will continue to be available is not clear. And even if it will be, many users will squirm at their data being that easily traceable. Since Automatic DJ relies on Facebook’s image recognition facility, this could end up being its waterloo.

The second shortcoming is that music preferences on Facebook are not completely streamlined neither are they wholly representative of all the music genres. And just because someone indicates they like reggae music for instance does not mean that they enjoy music by all reggae artists.

Related articles

• Automatic DJ – Scans Your Face And Creates A Personalized Playlist (smartideabox.com)
• HOW TO: Promote Your Band With Turntable.fm (mashable.com)
• Griffin’s DJ Cable Makes iPad DJing Significantly Easier [Music] (gizmodo.com)
• Diy Dj (wonderfulweddingsforless.wordpress.com)
• Nerdy DJ Turntable Web App Kind of Rocks [Music] (gizmodo.com)

Every once in a while, there comes innovative technology that has the potential to revolutionize howhealthcare is administered. Intelligent skin patches are quickly proving to be just that with GENTAG becoming one of the leaders in this niche industry.
The skin patch is a low cost, passive and customizable technology that does not require battery power tofunction. The skin patches are in fact a combination of an adhesive patch with an embedded RFID chip.

Initially, the skin patches found application as tools for identification. For instance, hospitals could usethe skin patches to reduce potentially life threatening errors involving surgery-patient mismatches,mother-child mismatches after child birth and patient-medication confusion.
The skin patches have also found application in amusement parks and similarly crowded locations wherethe possibility of children getting lost after being separated from their parents is high.
But now GENTAG is moving the application of skin patch technology a step further – RFID diagnosticskin patches. The diagnostic skin patches are simply ID skin patches but now with sensors based onGENTAG’s proprietary RFID chip technology.

These new skin patches facilitate the real time diagnosis, geo-location and health condition monitoring via smart phones, PDAs, laptops and PCs that can read RFID chips. Using these readers, the data can bequickly transferred from or to authorized persons whether it is a doctor or a close relative.
So far, patents have been filed for the diagnostic skin patch’s glucose level sensing, fever monitoring, UVexposure checks and temperature/pressure sensing. The adhesive used on the diagnostic skin patch isFDA approved and can last for up to 2 weeks depending on the wearer’s skin type.
Once the patch is removed, it cannot be re-used. Since the chip contains some sensitive information including a link to one’s medical records and a picture, this un-reusability is meant to reduce thelikelihood of the details of the previous wearer being used to execute fraud. That being said, the RFIDchip can be protected with a pass code just in case.

The GENTAG skin patch is shower proof, flood proof and does not trigger any allergies. Consistent with ISO standards, each RFID chip has a unique ID.
As a tool that makes health care more efficient than before, GENTAG is likely going places if it cancontinue to grow the number of health conditions that the patch can be used to diagnose. Theorganization is currently developing diagnostic skin patches for new conditions in conjunction with anumber of corporate partners.
Overall, the fact that the technology can be customized to diagnose a wide array of medical condition simplies that the opportunities for this product are vast.

Related articles

• What’s next for RFID? (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
• Treating ADHD With a Skin Patch (everydayhealth.com)
• Edible RFID Tags Describe Your Food [Republished] (gizmodo.com)
• How a Carmaker Let Consumers Like It on Facebook – Without a PC or Phone [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
• Ortho-Tag Uses RFID To Identify Your Implants [Science] (gizmodo.com)

UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) equipped with cameras have found broad application in a number of
fields both commercial and research. There is though one inherent limitation with the images captured
via UAVs – the images are non-continuous and are not 3-dimensional.

But all that seems set to change with the Pix4D technology developed by EPFL. Pix4D allows you to
convert your UAV drone’s two-dimensional photographs into a detailed 3-dimensional map.

The process is relatively straightforward – at least on the front end. All you need to do is upload the
photos from your UAV to the Pix4D. The UAV images would contain the appropriate GPS geo tags for
each photo.

The location of the Pix4D app that you will upload the UAV photos to will depend on the
implementation of Pix4D you have signed up for. The Pix4D implementation options available are: a
cloud version, a server on your network and a minimalist installation that can run on a laptop or desktop
PC.

Once you upload your photos, the process of converting the images to the 3D map takes no more than
30 minutes. To create the map, Pix4D will determine the internal and external orientation of each
image.

The cameras on ordinary UAVs are of lower resolution than the cameras used by sophisticated satellite

systems. In addition, the UAV cameras are of varying power depending on each UAV. Ordinarily, this
would mean the Pix4D app would have to be recalibrated each time photos from a different UAV are
uploaded.

But this is not necessary since Pix4D performs an initial analysis of each set of photos uploaded to it and
uses this data to estimate the internal parameters of the camera. This estimation factors the variation of
the lens between photos as well as variations occasioned by temperature changes.

You might be wondering why the application is called Pix4D whereas it produces a 3D map. The answer
lies in Pix4D’s ability to integrate the time factor. In other words, you could take photos of the same
area but on different times of the month, week or year and create a 3D map of each using Pix4D.

You can then use Pix4D to overlay the 3D maps allowing you to see any changes to the landscape
that may have taken place between the times each set of photos was taken. This functionality can be
particularly useful for farmers with large ranches who may want to keep track of the progress of their
crops’ growth.

Related articles

• Uav,Uas,now comes the aerostat (via SMARTPLANE) (crufc.ca)
• Successful Launch for Elbit UAV (israelnationalnews.com)
• Batcopter UAV observes anti-collision bat behavior, crashes into ground (video) (engadget.com)
• Making a Real Batcopter, With Parts From the Hardware Store (science.slashdot.org)
• ‘Batcopter’ studies bats in flight (gizmag.com)

Paper.li is a Swiss startup based in Lausanne. Todays world in full of information that we have a hard time to digest, News Feeds, Social Media feeds, links or videos fly around the web. We are somewhat overwhelmed by the volume of information we have access to. We try to classify it through bookmarking site or rss feeds, but we also seem to classify the information we are interested in by connect with people of the same background or similar interests.

Paper.li decided to take the challenge of digesting information with tools from the social end. What else than the two biggest networks at the moment, Facebook & twitter, could be as relevant. The goal is to use real people to filter the information that really matters to you or that you want to publish.

The process to generate your own daily or weekly newspaper is as simple as login on twitter. Login with your twitter or facebook credentials then choose the streams you want to include in your paper.li and click generate. After a few seconds paper.li generates a beautiful newspaper witha perfect layout based on those feeds. You can then easily share your paper and people can follow your paper.

Twitter has become so rich in information it’s impossible to take value out of it without the specific tools. Everyone uses tools like tweetdeck of hootsuite in order to manage their twitter feeds but it is still very difficult to get a global overview of the activity. Furthermore if you’re someone who , like most of us, doesn’t have time to be online 24/7 then you miss 99% of the relevant information. Paper.li give every on a chance to quickly recap the most important events that occurred in their social networks.

watch this video of Guy Kawasaki who is an adviser to Paper.li:

Some kind of competitors are in the same field such as Flipboard or Zite for iPad or Twitter Tim.es. We can say that Paper.li differenciates itself by encouraging publishing and not necessarily personal use. This enable them to target companies or even publishers on top of individual users.

At the moment over 12 million articles are curated daily by Paper.li publishers, creating highly personalized and contextually relevant content collections. The company’s enhanced search now provides the Paper.li community easy access to this filtered information, for an unprecedented content discovery experience. ANd recently on the 20th of April paper.li partnered with HBO to deliver a daily, branded newspaper to fans of the network’s new series, Game of Thrones (http://paper.li/GameOfThrones), based on George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy books.

“As the volume of social media content on the internet grows, curation tools such as Paper.li offer an immense value to consumers” said Sabrina Caluori, director of Social Media & Marketing, HBO. “We are excited to use this innovative platform to deliver a branded, highly relevant, daily Twitter newspaper to Game of Thrones fans.”

Now considered as one of leading social news publication application Paper.li raised  $2.1 million in financing, from Highland Capital Partners, SoftBank Capital and Endeavour Vision, to improve their service. In the future the “publishing company” aims to revolutionize the publishing industry explains their COO and CEO:

“Paper.li is shaping the modern state of publishing, by matching context and content from diverse streams of social media information and packaging it in an easy to consume manner,” said Iskander Pols, COO and Co-Founder of Paper.li. “We’re thrilled that Eric has chosen to help us shape the next wave of publishing and curation, and we thank our millions of readers and publishers for helping us advance our application to where it is today,” added Edouard Lambelet, CEO and Co-Founder of Paper.li.

As of my personal opinion on the service I was pretty exited. I love Flip board or Feedly to go through my favorite rss feeds, it helps me have all the information I care about in one place. I wanted to see if with my twitter feed I could achieve the same result, Well I guess I can and its quite nicely presented. On the downside though is that you can only see an excerpt of the articles which is really a bugger… you have to leave the site to reas the news! I don’t understand why they don’t want to keep users on their site like feedly!!! It’s the same with the mobile app it’s not very user friendly and to be honest if you leave the site for every article you don0t get the risk of landing on site not optimized for mobile. But overall their site was beautiful and easy to use and i’m sure there is potential to innovate and gain more users.

Related articles

• What’s new at Paper.li (paper.li)
• Paper.li upgrades social news curation platform, adds Eric Hippeau as an advisor (eu.techcrunch.com)
• 3 Social Publishing Apps That Empower Human Curators (mashable.com)
• Golf Tweet Gets Employee Fired: What You Can Learn From Their Mistake (socialtimes.com)
• Former HuffPo CEO Eric Hippeau Joins Up With Twitter Startup Paper.li (AOL) (businessinsider.com)

The human brain is one of (if not THE) the single most complex organs in the body. Its memory banks still surpass the capacity of the fastest computer processors manufactured to date. Scientists have devoted years of research to establish and understand how this organ works but there is always a new and interesting discovery on its working that comes up.

The brain is one mega-processing center for signals from all other the body – from the eyes and ears to the knees and toes. These signals are then decoded and an appropriate response or reaction triggered if necessary. It is from these signals that we are able to feel pain, appreciate beauty and recognize different smells.

One link that a number of scientists have discussed for a while is that between exposure to light and the onset of depression. Persons subjected to dim or dark conditions for a long time are more likely to experience depression than those who spend time in bright, well lit environments.

It is this linkage that has spurned Valkee, a brain stimulation headset. Valkee uses light stimulation to tackle and bring under control conditions such as stress, anxiety, fatigue and depression. But Valkee does not work the way most people would expect of a light stimulator. This is because previously it was thought that the eye was the only medium through which light could get to the brain.

However, some researchers have cited the less discussed but, in their view, potentially equally effective path through the ear tube. The argument is that the skull is thinnest at this point. Valkee thus capitalizes on this ‘weakest point’ by channeling artificial light to the brain through this route.

What has been the result? Valkee’s manufacturer has indicated that the gadget has provided relief to persons with brain disorders after as little as four weeks of consistent use. Users were more alert, energetic and cognitive.

For best results, the Valkee headset must be used for about 8 to 12 minutes continuously. As an easily portable device that can be carried anywhere, travelers will be glad to hear that Valkee significantly reduces the effects of jet lag.

But Valkee has not escaped criticism. The first is the unclear nature of the research that backs the product’s science. While research on darkness-induced depression is well known, the research on how light shone through the ears can have the same uplifting effect as light that goes through the eyes has not been proven beyond reasonable doubt. Could the users’ experiences of Valkee be the result of a ‘placebo’ effect?

Without getting this one elephant in the room out of the way, Valkee may not be able to gain widespread use

.

Related articles

• Mind controls: Running electricity through the skull (newscientist.com)
• Mind controls: Electrodes sitting on the brain’s surface (newscientist.com)

The workplace is the environment where we spend most of our active adult life in. We spend more time at work than we do at home. Therefore, employers must do all they can do to to make sure their staff are comfortable and do find ways to enjoy what they are paid to do on a daily basis.

Regardless of age or position, employees want to feel appreciated and this in turn motivates them into delivering ever better results. Successful corporations are driven not just by great managers but even more by motivated, productive teams. Staff motivation is at the heart of a recent startup, Rypple.com.

Rypple.com acts like an in-house social networking site. It makes it possible for team leaders keep track of goals, obtain feedback and track performance. Employees can spur each other on and rally behind departmental goals.

Team leaders can use Rypple to encourage their teams to forge ahead. They can also commend team members for a job well done. Mangers can give recognition, set goals and notify team members of any relevant changes soon as they occur.

Any difficulties & issues are quickly identified and nipped in the bud. Rypple can be used to relay even simple words of encouragement all of which go a long way in keeping staff happy and motivated.

Through this web based application, workplaces suddenly become fun places to be in. Rypple is not strictly all-work. By socializing via Rypple, work colleagues can bond informally even as they keep abreast of each other’s performance. Note that both managers and peers have rights to award a recognition badge to a Rypple user in their organization.

Thanks to Rypple, the traditional, archaic ways of conducting performance reviews can be abandoned for methods that are more in touch with modern times. Employees need not wait for a quarterly, semi-annual or annual performance appraisal. After all, by that time, an employee’s inefficiency may have caused substantial tangible and intangible loss to the organization.

Managers can promptly commend or correct staff via Rypple. Rypple is a particularly useful tool for coaching new recruits. In addition, not all communication via Rypple is necessarily public. In true social networking fashion, team members can privately seek guidance from managers or peers on how best to carry out a specific task.

Rypple.com brings a social networking platform and a gaming environment together in the context of a professional work environment. Today’s employee is already heavily involved in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter – why can’t employers reap this craze and put it to productive use in the workplace?

That being said, employers must tread the fine line of ensuring Rypple.com does not end up so popular that it becomes a distracting addiction just like the conventional social networking sites employers are battling so hard to keep their staff away from during office hours.

Related articles

• Rypple Gamifies the Workplace (gamification.co)
• Entrepreneur Corner: Board control and talent retention (venturebeat.com)
• Why joining a fitness social network can actually get you to the gym (thenextweb.com)
• Kaizen through Rypple… (zdnet.com)
• The future of “Social Talent Management” is Rypple? (gautamblogs.com)

It is safe to say that email has replaced postal mail both at home and the office. Email saves on paper use and one does not have to wait for days or even weeks for mail to arrive. It can take a matter of milliseconds to move from one end of the planet to the other. Though these advantages are welcome, email can also be a persistent distraction to actual productivity. The answer to such distraction lies in a new service – Emailga.me (or the Email Game).

The Email Game imports your mail from other sources and places it all in one central inbox. The interface is structured in a way that enables you to pay attention to just one mail at a time regardless of how many unread mails you have. You don’t get to see the whole of your inbox at a glance as you do in conventional email apps. This ensures you are not distracted by any other mails before you act on that one mail.

The single email window is just one aspect of Emailga.me that makes reading email efficient but also fun. There as an icon that shows you just how unread emails you have to go. There is also a timer that will let you know when you are spending too much time on just one mail. The goal is to trigger quick decisions so you can move on. This action may be delete, reply, archive etc.

For instance, if you choose to reply to an email, a default 3 minutes countdown is automatically launched. Within this time, you are expected to draft a suitable response and be done with it. Of course not every email response can be adequately done in 3 minutes. Thus, Emailga.me allows you to change this limit to suit your requirements.

Emailga.me is one of those applications that come along and you wonder where they have been all along. Research on employee efficiency has consistently shown email to be one of the single biggest distractions to employees. Past solutions have been impractical e.g. turning off email alerts or completely closing the email application throughout the day except in the morning, noon and evening.

Emailga.me does not wish away email since a business can seldom operate without at least some employees being able to continuously their email. Instead, this new app allows users to access their email but breaks down emails into bite sized chunks. That way, email recipients can take quick and decisive action before moving onto other productive activities.

Related articles

• The Email Game: Have Fun & Earn Points Emptying Your Inbox For Real! (makeuseof.com)
• Avalanche of Emails? Try the Email Game (gamification.co)
• 11 Awesome Web Apps to Boost Your Gmail Usage Experience (maketecheasier.com)
• How I used to handle 500+ emails a day (thenextweb.com)
• Awayfind tries to solve the ‘email sucks’ problem with relevant alerts (thenextweb.com)

When you are running a business, your eye is on not only increasing sales but also on reducing your expenses. A business must continuously look for ways in which scarce resources can be utilized to increase profitability. Technology has already demonstrated that many of the things that we considered part and parcel of business overheads are not always necessary. A new service, Sococo.com is pushing the concept of the virtual office to a new level.

In a normal office setup, staff in the same department ordinarily have to be physically present in the same office. With Sococo, staff do not have to be in the same location as their colleagues – rather, everyone is interconnected by a virtual network that mimics a real office environment. That way, employees could be working from the office, home or overseas and still interact with their colleagues as though they are seated next to them.

This ‘proximity’ is achieved not just by chat or voice that is characteristic of technologies such as Skype, but it also uses an interactive graphical user interface that portrays the setup of the virtual office. That way, businesses no longer need to pay for any office space since staff can work from virtually anywhere.

With Sococo’s Team Space product, the users in the same Team Space can share experiences and communicate with one another just like they would face to face. Through the GUI, users can ‘see’ each other, listen to voice messages, get into one on one or group chats, attend virtual meetings and share ideas in real time.

Sococo employs the use of intelligent avatars. The avatar changes in tandem with what the end user is doing at any given time. The avatar covers the basics i.e. you can tell which members are online and those that are not. But it goes further to show you what the person is engaged in at that time e.g. are they typing, chatting, reading or listening to music. Most important for managers is that Sococo.com can identify and show idleness (nil activity).

The virtual conference room is a particularly powerful feature. You can instantly who is gathered in the meeting and even confirm what time they ‘came in’. When in the conference, only participants can hear and contribute to the meeting. Through the Sococo.com GUI, staff can easily tell when a colleague is in a meeting and thus wait for them to ‘exit’ before engaging them on any matter.

Sococo.com recognizes Skype as one of its key competitors for market share. While Sococo.com does present several aspects that are not on Skype, the fact that one has to pay to use it (Skype is free) is likely to be a hurdle for businesses that might consider using it.

“From Google to Social Bookmarking”

The worldwide web is the richest and most complete source of data ever built by human kind. Anyone can research, learn or sell almost anything but that is the case if they can actually find what they are looking for. At first, the answer came from a small start up called Google, which grew to be amongst the largest tech firms in the world. If you knew exactly what you were looking for then Google was the perfect solution, in the matter of seconds you could reach your content.

The web grew to become even larger; Along with Google which became even more efficient with better algorithms, localized search, Maps and so on. But there is one thing that Google didn’t manage or try to achieve: “Recommendations”. Some might argue that Google’s Adwords is somewhat links to the recommendation business, but at the end there it isn’t a breakthrough technology. Companies out there all know the value of online recommendations especially when focusing on online businesses, we saw Amazon & Netflix spend millions to develop their in-house recommendation systems.

Those recommendation systems are doing the job but they are very limited. Limited by the fact that they were designed for a specific domain and are mostly based on simple algorithms or on other user’s behaviors. In recent years, the importance of social networks became a major part of the web , with this phenomenon social recommendations emerged. Users have now access to perfect tools to communicate therefore they are able to share content with their peers easily.

This is when everyone realized the potential of social bookmarking. Forms of social bookmarking existed since 1996 but it’s only around 2003 with Del.icio.us that it took of. People used it to bookmark their personal interests while surfing on the web. But is only 4 years later that users actually started sharing content, with the appearance of Digg.com and the Facebook share feature (2005 ).

This phenomenon became huge and other major player like Stumblupon.com, Reddit or even twitter took part in this craze. What is revolutionary about this is that real users are actually indexing content that they feel has value. Thus Opening new doors on how to find precious content amongst the “junk”.
History of Hunch: “The Decision Making Engine”

Hunch emerged from an initial idea from a Women entrepreneur Caterina Fake. She was previously known for being the Co-creator of Flickr.com along with Stewart Butterfield in 2004, which was later sold to Yahoo in 2005 for 35 million dollars . She is one of the first to use the notion of “user generated content” publicly, she is passionate by the fact the individuals can create amazing content when put into a community.

The idea of Hunch came on the basis that decision-making is difficult. Sometimes the simplest questions are hard to answer. Here are examples of questions than Hunch aims to answer for you: “What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a Porsche? Does my hipster facial hair make me look stupid? Is Phoenix a good place to retire? Whom should I vote for? What cologne should I buy?” . Before Hunch other antic techniques were used for this matter like Coin-flipping, Rock-Paper-Scissors or maybe asking your girlfriend.

Hunch aims be the best ever decision making tool customized specially for each user. Of course it’s not going to tell how to run your business or other very complex questions. But everyday questions that might not be bothered to think about or maybe decisions we don’t attached to much importance too.

At this point the whole Hunch was trying to map users taste based on series of random questions in order to create a “Taste Profile”. Those questions are called “THAYs” which translates to “tell hunch about you”. Here is a sample of these “THAYs” :

• Where do you live?
• Would you setup a new home theater on your own?
• Which fries would you prefer to munch?
• Alien abductions are they real or fake?
• Are you a mac person or a pc person?
• Do you generally prefer your sandwiches to be cut vertically or diagonally?
• Which lettuce would you usually prefer on a salad?
• Do you like to dance?

By analyzing all those answers, linking them together and comparing them to other users hunch is able to link tastes and personalities that no one ever thought about before. The second “Layer” used by hunch where simple ratings on different type of objects, actions, thoughts enabling yet another range or correlation and associations.

For example when looking and political ideologies and food preferences: “Conservatives like meat, comfort foods, cheeseburgers, deep dish pizza, and wooden, country-style kitchens. Liberals are vegetarian brie-lovers who enjoy wine, international food, and sleek, stainless steel-style kitchens.”

Hunch Now: “From Social Bookmarking to Indexing You”

The current online trends provide the perfect environment to study people’s interests and personalities. With the growing capacity of channels to rate and share media Hunch is able to add more “layer” to its recommendation system.

Towards the end of 2010 Hunch had to take a different direction. It had to move away from being a simple decision engine to focus on providing personalized content recommendations powered by behavioral data. This change of strategy is logical as companies targeting behavioral data start make real sense for big businesses , as they seen to become a very valuable tool to increase sales.

The Hunch Taste Graph

Hunch incredible knowledge on users taste already used the opportunity to merge this date with “Public Social Data”. This data can be found in forms such as the Facebook like or share or shared links on twitter. So much data is available in the social cloud and hunch is capable of giving it some structure. A localized layer can also be added with the emergence of Geo-localized data from “check-ins”.

Check-ins are basically people notifying where they are and what they are doing there. Platforms like Gowalla or Foursquare, which is set to reach 10 millions users in the coming months , are growing in popularity. This trend is highlighted with the recent launch of the “Facebook Places” feature .

Monetization:

Hunch’s Taste graph has great value but it has to find ways to monetize this rich data. Businesses need to able to the added value of using such a service. The Business Model can be separated in two; revenues from the actual Hunch.com website and the revenue linked to the API.

The website is the primary distribution channels with an average of unique 30’000 visitors per day . Some of the content on hunch are products such as dvds, books or restaurants. Using affiliate programs with Amazon or Barnes & Noble is the first and most logical way of generating benefits. The better Hunch gets in those fields the higher the probability of users shopping through those links.

Furthermore, with the introduction of company profiles hunch encourages users to rate and recommend products also making it easier for companies to publish on the platform. Those companies are considered as individuals and will be pictured on the same level as a individual user in Taste Graph. Engaging companies to participate will be key for hunch in the near future.

The other possible revenue channel for hunch is though its API to enable developers to benefit from those recommendations in their applications. Would benefit large or independent online stores, they could increase average checks by recommending better content. Hunch can either sign large deals with heavy users or find a system to charge a percentage for each recommendation converted into a sale.
Funding and Value:

Today it difficult to estimate Hunch.com’s real value if we look at their funding history we can see that the change of direction has help them raise another 12 million in March 2010 in Series B funding (CrunchBase). We can conclude that this illustrates renewed confidence that Hunch will manage to use its Taste Graph to generate revenues. It is difficult to estimate the real value of the company, Google was rumored to have made acquisition offer of 60 million in 2010 but it doesn’t mean much.

Business Model

Opportunities & Threats

Hunch is it’s 4th year and has made significant progress in those years, becoming a very abstract service to something that can add real value. The partnerships and the way they treat their users will be key for the future.

We have seen companies like digg.com completely loose user loyalty due to sudden design changes . Hunch has made decision to remove feature like that made them a fun decision making engine, users have been disappointed. The user experience needs to create engagement otherwise hunch might just become a new social bookmarking site or a twitter for content. They need to carefully manage their content in order to maintain consistency and avoid content pollution like on twitter. Treating their users with care is key as they are the real value of the service like most web 2.0 communities.

In order to attract companies, which of course are more skeptic than individuals, solutions need to be found to prove that recommendation really are of high quality. Data is needed to prove this, as it cannot only rely on users appreciations.

Hunch has a great potential; mapping people’s taste and personalities is extremely valuable raw data. The main threats for the company it the company itself, as it must remain focus on key objective. With such a product it would be easy to loose track and jump onto every opportunities.

References:

Alexa. (n.d.). Hunch.com. Retrieved May 16, 2011, from Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/hunch.com#

Barbierri, C. (2010, August 5). A new Hunch points to the money with behavioral targeting. Retrieved May 15, 2011, from Venturebeat: http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/05/hunch-web-personalization/

Carlson, N. (2009, October 25). Not For Sale: Hunch Has Turned Down Three Offers, Including One From Google Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/not-for-sale-hunch-has-turned-down-three-offers-including-one-from-google-2010-10#ixzz1MWJzLm7z. Retrieved May 16,

2011, from Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/not-for-sale-hunch-has-turned-down-three-offers-including-one-from-google-2010-10

Carr, A. (2010, September 23). Digg Redesigns, Loses More Than a Quarter of Audience. Retrieved May 16, 2011, from Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com/1690829/traffic-plummets-26-after-digg-redesign

Facebook. (n.d.). Company Timeline. Retrieved May 14, 2011, from Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline

Fake, C. (2009, Mars 27). Hunch. Retrieved May 14, 2011, from Catrina Fake’s Blog: http://caterina.net/archive/001169.html

Netflix Prize. (2009, 9 29). Retrieved 2011, from Netflix: http://www.netflixprize.com/sg=AFQjCNE4osxOTLm7WzZnXnD0qsZwBJcrNA

MERAJI, S. M. (2010, October 10). Hunch.com Might Know Your Personal Tastes Better Than You Do. Retrieved May 15, 2011, from NPR:org: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2010/10/04/130327569/hunch-dot-com

SCHWARTZ, A. (2009, November 12). Hunch Confirms that Liberals Enjoy Vegetables, Conservatives Like Fried Chicken. Retrieved May 15, 2011, from Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ariel-schwartz/sustainability/hunch-confirms-liberals-enjoy-vegetables-conservatives-fried-chic

The Next Web. (Saturday, May 14). Correction: Foursquare currently at 9.3 Million users. To cross 10 million “soon”. Retrieved May 16, Monday, from The Next Web: http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/05/14/milestone-foursquare-hits-10-million-users/

The Nielsen Company. (2009, 2009). Global Faces and Networked Places. Retrieved from Nielsen Wire: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/nielsen_globalfaces_mar09.pdf

Related articles

• Caterina Fake: How To Avoid The Pressure Of The Startup “Sophomore Slump” (businessinsider.com)
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• Samsung Launches “Hunch”: A Social Movie Experience (socialtimes.com)
• Forage Makes YouTube Playlists From Your Favorite Tweeples’ Shared Videos (socialtimes.com)
• Hunch – Search Takes a Social Turn (rodneo.wordpress.com)

We Know the popularity of Yelp, Google or TripAdvisor maps when it comes to choosing restaurants on the fly. They are amazing tools and everyone uses them to get a insight on which place they should go try out. The concept is dead simple “get reviews from real people that are always up to date”.

But there is one issue, one of the biggest issues when going to a restaurant is actually knowing what you should eat. With current rating websites you might get a review saying “you should try the roast duck with red wine sauce!!! amazing 5 stars” but this is very rarely the case.

FoodSpotting aims to change the process of rating the restaurant industry by strictly focus on rating food items or dishes. Mening that the focus is not on the restaurant but on what the restaurant offers. This is a radical change because when choosing a restaurant usually we have a small idea of what we want to eat. No days or thinking is pretty simple I want Mexican, pizza or a steak for exemple but when you only have an abstract idea of what you want to eat its not that simple.

Because of how Foodspotting is structured is enables you to browse dishes and snacks just like if you where window shopping in a bakery. This is a radical change in the way those online recommandation work. Further when we look at “real” life when a friends tell you about a place he often tells you about what he ate there that you should try. This means its very natural to recommend specific dishes.

The process of sharing has been made as easy as possible: take you iphone snap a picture of the food and rate it, you Geo-localisation will detect where you are and you’re done!
Business like Zagat in New-York have themselves added pictures of foods you can buy for other people to rate. When I think about Zagat I realize how useful it could when you walk in a store where there are too many things to choose from. Or simply when walking in a restaurant with a 4 page menu.

We all know how Yelp struggled to launch at the beginning by going global, then they had refocus and San Francisco to great a buzz and improve quality of the content, then we all know the story. Will FoodSpotting be able to find a spot in this market or will it be a new hype that will slowly die. They need to make a huge marketing effort and focus on user engagement to make sure the community grows. THe quality of their recommandations will also be crucial ( why not implement the hunch API into this application?).

Happy FoodSpotting and don’t Forget to Spot Ideas Too!

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• Meal review app Chewsy adds photos to share your food porn (venturebeat.com)
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Credit cards are a convenient way to pay for goods or services on the internet. Unfortunately, the use of credit cards online presents a number of risks. First, not everyone on the internet has good intentions. There are spoof sites that masquerade as well known legitimate brands but whose main intention is to harvest credit card information from unsuspecting users.

Second is the risk from hackers who penetrate the defences of ecommerce sites and steal customer credit card information. Once your credit card or bank information is in the wrong hands, you have no alternative but to cancel your card or close your account and order a new card or open a new account.

Mobino is a new online payment system that removes the need for buyers to provide their credit card information when making a purchase. Buyers need only register on Mobino.com once. During registration, the buyer provides their bank details to Mobino as well as their mobile phone number. Mobino.com does not release this information to merchants.

So if Mobino.com does not give merchants this information, how then does the system then work? Transactions are hinged upon a unique token number that is assigned to the merchant’s product. To pay for the product the buyer uses their phone to make a voice call to Mobino. During the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) call, the first prompt will require the buyer to key in the token number as indicated on the merchant’s website.

If the token number provided is correct, the IVR confirms the amount the buyer will be paying for if they choose to proceed. The next prompt is for the buyer to key in their secret PIN code. Once the PIN code is authenticated, the transaction is confirmed and the payment executed. From start to finish, the entire transaction can be completed in a matter of seconds

Mobino’s strength does not only lie in the removal from the equation of buyer credit card information disclosure. There’s more. For instance, because it uses IVR, one does not need to have a smart phone to use it. This aspect in particular creates an opportunity for Mobino to get a foothold in the fast growing emerging economies where smart phones are still out of reach for most of the population but where ordinary phones are widely used.

That said, this is not the first ecommerce payment system that seeks to eliminate the need for exchanging credit card information between buyer and seller. PayPal is probably the best known online payment system that hides a user’s banking information during a transaction. In fact, apart from paying via credit card, PayPal is in many ways considered the de facto online payment standard.

Even though Mobino uses an IVR system as opposed to a completely web based technology like PayPal, Mobino will at some level inevitably have to compete with the well-oiled PayPal juggernaut – a tough proposition.

Related articles

• Smart phones as credit cards: Will Visa finally let Americans start paying for everything by phone? (slate.com)
• Why Credit Cards Are Not the Future of Online Payment (mashable.com)
• Paypal Is About To Get A Bruising From Facebook And Square (techcrunch.com)
• American Express Takes on PayPal With Serve (mashable.com)
• Square eliminates its credit card transaction fee (venturebeat.com)

While ecommerce is an all encompassing term for transactions that take place over the internet,social commerce refers to transactions that are triggered by or conducted over a social networking platform. Some have considered social commerce to be the next natural step in the Web 2.0 evolution.

And this is not unfathomable. Facebook, the undisputed king of social media, now has a user base that exceeds the population of every other country on earth except China and India. Businesses that can successfully tap into this vast market will no doubt have a leg up over their competition.

Already, there are a number of social commerce applications on Facebook. The current leader is Payvment. Since it was launched in November 2009, Payvment has grown to have over 60,000 brands, merchants and celebrities that use the service to sell their products on Facebook.

Payvment tackles one nagging problem that has bedevilled payment solutions residing outside Facebook – the need for Facebook users to be redirected to a different site in order to complete the transaction. With Payvment, everything runs from within Facebook. Users view and pay for the product without ever leaving the social networking site.

Payvment’s advantage over many other payment solutions on Facebook is in the Open Cart Network. Ordinarily, most payment services only allow your shopping cart to contain the goods of one vendor. In other words, you have to pay before you can move to another store – you cannot shop in different stores and do one final payment for all.

That is now possible with Payvment’s Open Cart Network. As the name suggests, Open Cart allows you to carry your items across as many Payvment-enabled stores as you would like before you make a single payment to all the retailers you bought from at the end of your shopping.

Payvment allows you to search for a product not just in the Payvment-store you are currently on but also conduct a Facebook-wide search. The Facebook-wide search will check for the product in every Facebook store running on Payvment.

Payvment is still on free public beta. Though Payvment’s founder has admitted that at some point they will start to levy a fee for the service, merchants that create a store during the current beta phase will still continue to enjoy the service for free when Payvment starts charging new entrants.

Payvment’s greatest hurdle will be to convince retailers to get on a Facebook-centric payment service when other major non-Facebook online payment service providers have or are already rolling out Facebook APIs. Why be on two payment services (e.g. Payvment and say, PayPal) when you can be on one?

Unless Facebook social commerce experiences dramatic and exponential growth, Payvment will be at a disadvantage against the major general payment solutions that have Facebook APIs.

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• 4 Ways to Set Up a Storefront on Facebook (mashable.com)
• 5 Ways Retailers Are Winning Big With Facebook Commerce (mashable.com)
• How to Monetize Social Media (inc.com)
• Beetailer Lets Ecommerce Web Stores Easily Import Products to a Facebook Page Storefront (insidefacebook.com)

If you have ever tried to set up an ecommerce-ready website, you will agree that one of the most difficult parts of the process is identifying and settling on a suitable credit card processor. And the problem is not because of a lack of credit card processors. On the contrary, the difficulty stems from the fact that there are far too many credit card processors to choose from and the near impossibility of comparing the processors on an apples-to-apples basis.

If you have been in this kind of predicament, Feefighters.com promises to make the search for a credit card processor far easier than it is when one is using the traditional approach. Feefighters.com uses a ‘reverse auction’ approach. All you need to do is provide certain key information about your business and the credit card processors in turn submit their bids to get your account. The Feefighter.com portal uses a standard structural format for all the bids thus allowing you to make a fairly accurate assessment and comparison of the real cost of each card processor’s bid.

Feefighters.com is fast. Keying in the details of your business can take less than 5 minutes to do. The details customers are required to provide include business name & address, owner name(s) & address(es), monthly transaction volume, average value of each transaction and the proportion of sales via different channels (over the phone, mail order, online, in-person).

Bids for your business from matched, prequalified bidders are available immediately you submit the details about your business. Other than speed, Feefighters.com also provides substantial cost savings. Since its official launch in the spring of 2009, Feefighters.com claims to have saved users of the service an average of 40% of the costs of credit card processing. Feefighters.com is free – the site only receives payment from the card processor when a customer signs up.

To ensure the protection of customers, all credit card processors cleared to bid on Feefighters.com must commit to certain core principles. These include transparent pricing (no hidden fees), comprehensive statements of the customer’s account for the duration of the contract and waiver of all cancellation fees. Feefighters.com also conducts an independent assessment of each credit card processor before the processor is allowed on the bidders’ roster.

When a customer selects a processor from the bids received, this does not mean that they have entered into a contract. Rather, this is interpreted as consent by the customer to Feefighters.com to provide the customer’s contact information to the credit card processor. The customer and processor must still go through the process of completing paperwork that signifies the establishment of the contract. Note that customers are under no obligation to select a winning bidder and they will not be charged if they do not.

There is little doubt that Feefighters.com has developed a business model that has significant potential. Neither credit card processing companies that bid on the site nor the customers incur any cost before the contract is finalised. And even then, it is only the card processor that pays a fee to Feefighters.com, something that card processors will ordinarily be glad to do as a cost of getting more business.

Related articles

• FeeFighters – Make credit card processors bid for your business (feefighters.com)
• How FeeFighters saved startups $50 million a year in credit card fees (thestartupfoundry.com)
• Apple Square sallies forth from stores (go.theregister.com)
• Top Dying Industries, and lessons for your startup (feefighters.com)
• Square Drops $0.15 Fee for Credit Card Purchases (mashable.com)

Location based content services are fast becoming the point of focus of new web technologies.

FourSquare is probably the most recognisable such service and can in fact be credited with opening
up the market to several other niche local services. To a large extent, the phenomenal growth in
smart phone sales has also provided impetus for individuals and businesses intent on developing
internet-powered location-based services.

Hunch.com and its Hunch local iPhone app is one of the new entrants that is making a significant
mark. Established by Chris Dixon and Caterina Fake, a co-founder of Flickr, the Hunch local app
allows users to make recommendations and discover locations that are consistent with their stated
tastes. You can find everything from museums and spas to grocery stores and restaurants.

To place the practical use of the Hunch local app in context, think about sitting in an office and
craving a cup of coffee or an afternoon cocktail. If you are a travelling businessperson that is new
in that part of town or you are a local who simply wants to explore a different restaurant or bar, all
you need to do is go to the Hunch local app on your iphone and you will get suggestions on the most
popular coffee shops and bars in your area.

The suggestions are not just listings of places or products. Rather users can leave a review of a venue
that other users can read in order to get better informed on what they can expect to experience
when they do go there. Hunch local also uses an intelligent iterative algorithm where a user’s
recommendations and responses to random questions are used to tweak the user’s future search
results of the same keyword(s).

Users of Hunch local can sign onto the service directly or through Twitter or Facebook. Given that
Facebook boasts more than 650 million users and Twitter having a substantial user base as well,
this ‘single sign on’ functionality adds to the convenience of the site. Naturally, the quality of data on
Hunch local depends on the number of users that participate. For this reason, the service is currently
most accurate and informative when in urban areas. As the number of users grows, so will the
quantity and quality of recommended locations in rural and remote locations.

Where does Hunch local stand now and where is it likely to go? The service is currently limited to
the US and major non-US towns. The Hunch service initially did not require one to log in to access
the data. When Hunch enforced the log in requirement in May 2010 the number of unique users fell
from 750,000 in May to 250,000 in June. However, Hunch substantially recovered with unique users
bouncing back to 350,000 by July 2010 and has been on a growth trajectory since then.

One of the key things that the developers of Hunch local might consider incorporating is the ability
to see one’s followers that are currently in the suggested restaurant a la FourSquare. Hunch.com has
already stated its intent for deeper cooperation with FourSquare so this functionality might not be
long in coming.