Slidecasting by SlideShare.net enables you to synchronize PowerPoint slides and audio files. To create a slidecast, you upload slides to SlideShare.net. The audio file is hosted anywhere on the web. Then you link the slides and audio by using an online synchronization tool. When you play the slidecast, the audio is streamed from its location [...]
Pixilu Imaging Inc. provides professional retouching services as an online service. You upload digital photos and Pixilu’s graphic artists review each photo and perform color correction, acne removal, facial lines reduction, teeth whitening, and enhanced red-eye correction. The cost varies from $1.49 to $9.99 per photo. I submitted my picture to the service, and this [...]
It’s Saturday night in California, and if you’re reading my blog, you need help. MatchActivity is a new dating site that enables people to find others who are interested in attending a particular event or activity. For example, these are men and women listing activities within fifty miles of Palo Alto. Activities that are shown [...]
Talk about unintended consequences, all I wanted to do with “A Review of My First Year of Blogging” was provide some factoids about my blog. However, this tidbit became quite the topic: Total advertising revenue: approximately $3,350 = $1.39 cpm. (This assumes that I can get Google to pay me. I’ve tried several times during [...]
I love vertical-markets companies and recently learned of one. Airspun, Inc. offers commercial radio airtime to bands and songwriters for the purpose of showcasing their music to genre-targeted radio listeners around the world. Here’s how it works: Bands browse sixty-second airtime slots on radio stations by genre and city. After booking their slot (at prices [...]
Garage is an investor in a discount travel company called cFares. First, here’s some background info about the travel business: A large portion of airfare expenditures flow through the GDS systems (ie: Sabre, Amadeus, and Galileo). “First generation online travel sites” such as Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz rely on available inventory within the GDS supply. [...]
RAZZ, Inc. recently introduced the RAZZ Mixer. It enables people to create personalized audio recordings to post on web pages. This is a Flash-based application consisting of a voice recorder, music uploader, and special effects sound board with hundreds of pre-recorded sounds. Users “mix” recordings for posting onto social-networking sites and blogs. These recordings serve [...]
Coghead provides a web-based application that allows tech-savvy businesspeople (that is, non-programmers) to create and deliver their own web-based applications. Essentially, it’s bringing the “do-it-yourself” trend to software—hopefully disrupting tradition and changing the way software is created and used. It can help fill the large, unmet need for small, specialized applications because packaged software is [...]
Fanpop is a network of social portals where communities of fans can discover and share content and participate in discussions around their favorite topics of interest. Rather than visiting multiple websites and forums or hunting and pecking through search results, passionate users bring the best content together in one place. Fans can submit, organize, and [...]
Veotag, Inc. enables people to place navigation tags in video and audio files. For example, if a speaker uses the top-ten format, you can tag where each section begins. Listeners/viewers can then click on tags to navigate the digital content. Think of this as adding a table of contents to audio or video. Search engines [...]
If most venture capitalists weren’t liars, we’d tell you that if we had the opportunity to fund Google, we would have passed. Seriously, who would have thought the world needed another search engine in 1995? Fast forward to 2006. Does the world need another web conferencing product? Maybe. Check out Vyew. Vyew is a free [...]
I must say that the "reality check" on Goowy worked better than I anticipated. Here's another product to look at called Jajah. Jajah is a VOIP company. It enables you to make long distance calls for about $.02/minute. Some people's initial reaction will be, "I can already do this with Skype." I don't think so. [...]
I'm going to add a new kind of posting. Sometimes I need a "reality check" on products or services--that is, I'd like to know what other people think of something I've found. (After all, what someone fifty-one years old thinks is cool, might not be cool.) Here's the first one: http://www.goowy.com/ This is a free [...]
Most of the information that you can find about recruiting is for the employer, not the employee. (I'm as guilty as this as anyone: for example, The Art of Recruiting, I and II.) Let's turn the tables, switch modes, and balance the scales by discussing what a hot candidate should ask a private, venture-backed startup [...]
I've been on both sides of board meetings: as the entrepreneur (a.k.a., the “victim”) and as the board member (a.k.a., the “heavy”). I can't tell you that I've run perfect board meetings nor that I am the world's greatest board member, but I can provide some tips on the art of the board meeting. These [...]
Many people have asked questions about how I write my blog entries. Some think that I am simply copying and pasting from my books. Others, ironically, have asked when I'll publish my blog entries in a book! I'd like to explain what I'm doing for many of my entries. It starts around 10 pm when [...]