By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

In the late 1990s, I was involved in a startup called Interactive Music. The site was the first online music school. Users could come to the site and take lessons from software that was accessible on the site. We eventually sold the site for a tidy profit, but the site itself became obsolete with the advent of cheap accessible streaming video and lives feeds. Several sites provide useful online lessons for such things as music, dance lessons , children’s education, and golf . However, with no disrespect to those who have earned online degrees, I have always suspected that nothing can replace the immediacy and efficacy of face-to-face instruction.

LessonsCentral.com seems to understand that fact, and instead of offering lessons online, the site merely seeks to manage the relationship between the instructor and student. Based in LaJolla, California, and launched in June of 2008. LessonsCentral.com offers a free service for coaches, tutors, instructors, and their students.

The site offers a state of the art scheduling system that allows students and instructors to better manage appointments. The search feature allows students to search for local instructors in a variety of categories. The site also features messaging and payment tools. Instructors can add existing students to their profile.

You need to be 13 years old and the site is limited to United States residents.

LessonsCentral.com is a useful tool for students looking for instructors, but I imagine it will prove invaluable to instructors, as it allows for free use of a system that would cost a pretty penny if the instructors purchased or develop a similar system on their own.

By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

If you have a question that you want to pose on the web, there are several major sites where you can go. Yahoo!Answers and WikiAnswers are two examples. Google has discontinued GoogleAnswers but you can still search the old database.

A new website called IdeaOffer.com has added a money component in an effort to attract more useful answers or “ideas” to questions or “projects” posed on the website. IdeaOffer.com bills itself as an online idea community. It is a subsidiary of Wasabi Ventures LLC, a venture capital firm and holding company. It is one of the incubated properties of New Concept Factory.

IdeaOffer.com posits that there are many aspiring entrepreneurs and creative thinkers out there with great ideas that could be masterpieces and they simply have no way to express them, share them with the world, and capitalize on their idea’s potential. If anything, the web is full of people sharing and expressing the ideas. The real problem is getting useful feedback from a large and diverse group. That is where IdeaOffer.com offers some intrigue.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

In my Internet research on the various start-ups that come to our attention, I have seen almost everything. I am not sure however I have ever seen a website that has so intrigued and overwhelmed me.

Stavatti.com is the website for Stavatti Aerospace, a designer, developer and manufacturer of high performance aerospace vehicles and defense systems. The company produces new breeds of aerospace vehicles as well as superior weapons for the defense of NATO countries and other United States allies. Stavatti began as an aircraft manufacturer whose core competency rested with advanced fighter and special applications aircraft production.

The odd part about the company is that its website contains pages and pages of detail concerning its next generation military and civil aircraft, it also contains a bevy of information on its corporate structure and its plans for the future. The amount of information in the site is daunting.

According to the site, Stavatti has been developing the Machete family of aircraft to meet specific global and domestic air defense needs with the potential for over 300 orders within the next 3 years. The company states that the Machete family represents a significant paradigm shift in air defense which emphasizes an affordable, common solution to both light attack, close air support and continental air defense.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

LetsGoExpo.com is not only an interesting start-up, it is a great story.

LetsGoExpo has a very unique history. Its sister company, OcuSource.com, LLC provides marketing resources to manufacturers and vendors in the low vision and blindness arena. In working closely in that industry for many years, it was clear that many individuals with disabilities were having difficulty getting to on-site trade shows. For instance, the cumulative attendance to the 4 largest trade shows in the low vision and blindness industry is approximately 10,000. Yet there are over 12 million low vision and blind individuals, and over 200,000 professionals servicing that industry. The company say the need to bring the event to the attendee rather than the attendee to the event.

The time was right for OcuSource.com to create LetsGoExpo.com as the technology could now met the need. The development team created its first virtual tradeshow in the fall of 2005. There were over 11,000 live attendees in three days, and 100,000 downloads of recorded presentations later. It was then decided to create a separate company for this unique service. As time went on clients requested variations of the virtual trade show system such as accessible elearning, and accessible onsite conference management. And LetsGoExpo.com met those needs.

The LetsGoExpo system is summarized in a video that appears on the site and they also encourage you to try the free trial they offer for all of their products.
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By: The Editor

Current unemployment is the United States is at a staggering 9.4%. Jobs are very hard to locate. Temp-Agency’s can only help so much. Companies such as Monster.com charge a ton of money to use various parts of their website, however, many people looking for jobs simply cannot afford their services.

So here comes Jobvue.com, based out of Akron, Ohio (home of LeBron James, “yes” I am a hoops fan) and almost a year ago is here to help make the job search a lot easier.

Jobvue is a premium job board offering job postings, resume submission and even live video internet interviews for free. Jobvue also features resume ranking technology. This feature analyzes a jobseekers resume upon submission and automatically ranks the candidate for the employer. The most qualified candidates now appear at the top of a search so they can distinguish themselves from the “lesser qualified” candidates.

Jobvue states “we have seen steady growth due to current economic conditions.” In this economic downturn, Jobvue has the ability to play an integral role in new hiring. With its free services, jobseekers can interview for multiple jobs around the world without having the expense of traveling to each interview.
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By: The Editor

Zooloo.com which just launched in July of 2009, has already earned a ton of press from the likes of USA Today, TechCrunch, Business Journal and Mashable. So what is the entire buzz about and what does everyone seem to like Zooloo?

ZooLoo is a complete online environment for everyone, built around a user’s own domain name. You can build your own site on your own domain name, and you control exactly who sees your content on a page-by-page basis. Everything is private until you make it public. You also get a personal Web dashboard where you can keep track of all your favorite news sources, blogs, social media sites (integrate with Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, etc), videos and more.

ZooLoo has an on-demand entertainment center, a personal shopping mall, a full media center for photo and video storage and sharing, custom photo gifts and prints, blogging capabilities, organizational tools to manage your life online.

Internet users are spending so much time weeding through what’s on the web to find the information that they actually want or need. With ZooLoo, users can save time by bringing all of their interests… everything that they do on the Internet, into one place.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

Accounting software is readily available in retail stores and on the Internet. However, there is a new company that is using the latest web-based technology to provide accounting solutions for small business that is user friendly and time saving.

MerchantsMirror.com is owned by the Greensboro, North Carolina based Firelace, Inc. Merchant’s Mirror described itself as the next evolution in accounting for small businesses. The company states that their software “breaks the mold of traditional accounting systems and challenges what we usually think of when we refer to bookkeeping software.”

By using the latest in web-enabled technology, Merchant’s Mirror provides a complete accounting suite. Most accounting packages do not take into account that small business owners do not have data entry people nor do they have employees creating reports that, for example, could help spotlight inefficiencies in their operation. Merchant Mirror takes financial data and drives it forward in a fashion that provides more interesting ways of digesting the accounting information in short order thus allowing more time for actual company operations. A multi-user feature allows you and your tax professional to access your company data simultaneously and in real time.
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By: The Editor
This next startup is what I consider a “rough and raw” concept. Not necessarily is a bad way, however, I think its success will depend on the ability to gain some real traction. The site must gain popularity in order to have a real chance at success. I love the concept and that is why I decided to write about it.

Ijustsawyou.com is located in Rockwall, Texas and just launched on 08/1/09. The concept is very simple and has happened to most of us on more than one occasion.

Let’s say you are out at a restaurant, shopping mall, ball game or any social environment and you notice someone that peeks your interest? You also see that they notice you back. What happens next is typical; nobody says a word to each other. They type of occurrences happen quite often.

With Ijustsawyou.com, you can now post a “sighting” entry. With a little luck, if the other person checks the website and looks for you, they could read the entry, see that you were interested and send an e-mail, therefore, making a potential connection. The data entries fields include date, time, location and description fields to assist the reader in identifying themselves as the potential sighting. All of the major cities for all fifty states are currently available. Expansion would include specific pages for colleges, high schools, special events, etc.

In short, again, I love the idea; it’s a matter of getting people to buy into the concept. Organic growth is great; however, they will need a very large advertising budget in order to make this a household name. We will follow them (no pun intended – Twitter) as I am always excited to hear about growth of any business we mention on GreatStartups.com.

Ijustsawyou.com – you actually just might get a second chance at love.

By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

With the proliferation of YouTube.com and other video sites, amateur video is ubiquitous on the web. A new site allows you to conduct contests and offer prizes by hosting your own video contest through the site. You may also enter one of the contests posted on the site and win prizes.

Films4Prizes bills itself as the premier site for online video competitions. These competitions utilize user-generated content and the viral power of social media .The end result is a highly interactive media that creates powerful brand awareness in some cases, and in others, it is just plain fun (depending on your taste).

As the company states on its site, consumers are bombarded by thousands of banner ads, television commercials, radio ads, and other media. The constant barrage of ads competes for their attention and ultimately dilutes the effectiveness of these media. Films4Prizes.com states that video contests are, along with social network sites, the new media of choice. Whether that bold pronouncement is true or not, it is not hard to see how Fortune 500 companies, advertising agencies, PR firms, publishers, media companies and other brands can effectively market their products or services through online film competitions.

Examples of some of the contests on the site include a music video contest to help market the release of country singer Brad Paisley’s new album. Another contest seeks videos extolling the virtues of online educator Capella University, while another offers $25,000.00 for the person who makes the best video showing “how far they would go for a Butterfinger®.”
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By: The Editor

It seems like this next start-up looks to take social networking to the next level. 6rounds.com is in private beta for the moment and is scheduled to launch in October 2009. However, you can still visit the 6rounds.com website, look around and they have a few videos that really explain what 6rounds.com truly aims to be.

6rounds is a live web-based meeting point, combining web-cams, social activities, and interactive zones to offer its users an exciting variety of experiences that they share together live and in real-time. In a personalized live environment, users conduct a video conference in which they interact on a co-browsing experience allowing them to get to know each other and socialize together with broad range of opportunities: from watching videos, playing real-time games, listening to music, “co-facebooking” or “youtubing”, to shopping together and beyond. The possibilities are endless as independent developers can also contribute activities using the platform’s API and users can personalize their video arena, by choosing favorite activities, games and gifts to share with friends.

The 6rounds platform can easily be integrated into any 3rd party website or service – starting from a Facebook application or an open-social app on MySpace, continuing with a plug-in for WordPress or an embeddable widget on users personal pages, and ending with various extensions to IM, ICQ, Skype and Firefox. By creating these extensions, 6rounds aims to be a cross-network platform, which will allow users from all over the web to interact live and in real-time, no matter what their favorite social network or service are.
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