By: Co-Editor, RB:

This next site is neither an oracle nor some sci-fi movie. It is simply a new way to compile news and its hook is kind of fun.

Brikut.com is a free service operated out of Sydney, Australia. Brikut.com provides local, regional, and international stories that are yet to happen (hence their slogan “stories of tomorrow”).

In a way it is like a news site, but the stories concern things that are soon to occur (e.g. Afghanistan Parliamentary Elections on Sept. 18, the new Queen Elizabeth formal naming ceremony on Oct. 11, and Earth Hour Day 2011 on Mar. 26).

At Brikut.com, users can get information about things that will happen in the future: when it is and the countdown. There is a little bit about the story and where the story is sourced from, and other user comments and hypes. Stories are all contributed by the users.
Read more

By: Co-Editor, RB:

We have previously covered online classified ad sites such as ListHere.com  and GlasyAds.com.
GlasyAds.com enables people to create one classified ad and then have it posted on leading online marketplaces.

ListHere.com is a free online classified service overlaid with business offerings for SMBs. It allows users to have the capability to search multiple cities, states, and any combination thereof.

In addition to the sites we have covered, there are dozens of classified ad sites that have been operating for many years.

A new site called Treidr.com out of London has now thrown its hat into this crowded ring. Treidr.com is a free classifieds website where you post or search classified ads with photos in categories like jobs, personals, real estate, pets, cars and more.
Read more

By: Co-Editor, RB:

We stumbled across a really useful website that can be a real time saver.

Launched in beta in Canada in January and in the United States in July, PinBud.com is a one-stop web application enabling users to find and contact service providers in their area. Users can connect to multiple businesses using a single online service request form, saving time and effort on a wide range of household, automotive, personal, or professional services.

A business will not only list and describe its services, but will receive direct sales leads in detailed, targeted customer requests. PinBud also offers the possibility to post renovation projects or finished jobs so users can share or submit them for comments to their Facebook friends, while recommending their preferred contractors.

PinBud is not just a business directory, a reviews portal, a job matching service, or a classifieds site. It is all of the above.

The site takes the basic yellow pages concept to a new social media level, PinBud’s goal is to change the way consumers look for local service providers for their home, car, finances, health, or pet.
Read more

By: Co-Editor, RB:

There are plenty of companies and firms offering software to help you beat the financial markets. Some of this software is very sophisticated and very expensive.

Here is a new company that provides free risk managmenet and free portfolio management technologies. PortfolioRunner.com is a platform providing stock exchange trading recommendations and investment portfolio management tools. With PortfolioRunner you can get personalized trading recommendations from a set of various investment strategies – technical, fundamental and social. In addition, you can manage and reduce investment risks with our proprietary portfolio risk management platform.

Portfolio Runner is a ready-to-use trading recommendations source. Buy and sell advices you receive are specially refined for your portfolio only. The system personalizes all the recommendations in accordance with your risk inclination, portfolio size and structure, available investment capital, and other factors, so that you receive particular and focused portfolio recommendations right on time.

The company PortfolioRunner LLC was established in 2009 out of Austin, Texas by a group of seasoned professionals in the areas of stock exchange trading, mathematics, information technology and marketing. Prior to joining PortfolioRunner the founders of the company have been leading successful investment firms, global IT services providers and top research labs.
Read more

By: Co-Editor, RB:

Can anyone remember a time when everyone did not walk around with a bottle of water in their backpack, hand or purse? Now a water bottle is almost as common an accessory as a cell phone.

Yet most people who are walking around with water bottles are not drinking water from a faucet or public fountain, but water they’ve purchased from a store or vending machine. This reflects a popular idea that bottled water is more pure, healthy and safe than plain tap water. Unfortunately, some recent studies have challenged this understandable assumption. Some bottled water is merely tap water that has undergone some basic filtering. Even actual spring water often contains contaminants. Regulations vary concerning water purity, and as long as the manufacturers conform to the local standards, they are allowed to call their product “spring” or “purified” water.

“Distilled” water is pure H2O but lacks minerals and nutrients that can make other water healthy. The best solution is to use a good water filter. Yet, how should you carry your water if you are one of those people that need water by your side at all times?

Check out Alexbottle.com which offers a unique product. ALEX is a stainless steel modular drinking vessels that is designed to open up in the middle for easy cleaning and can compact to half its size when empty. ALEX seeks to fuse functionality with fashion and ultra-premium design.
Read more

By: Co-Editor, RB:

In June, just before the World Cup, we reviewed a company called Konkuri.com. At Konkuri.com you can create your own tournament site, share results, get feeds, comment on matches, and so on. Konkuri.com’s goals are to help people manage and publish tournaments for any kind of sport or game.

Here is another site that is kind of in the same space but at the same time it is very different.

Sportmeets.com launched in late April out of Glasgow is an online application designed to make recreational sports more enjoyable for the players and the organizers alike.

Miro and Peter, two Slovak friends and sports enthusiasts who met during their studies at the University of Glasgow, started the site. Their experience with running the university volleyball club and participating in a variety of sports on campus made them realize the significant amount of work and time that the person in charge of a sports group typically has to devote just to set up a game or a sporting event. The hassle that comes with inefficient communication, late cancellations and sharing of booking fees will be well familiar to anyone who has been involved in grassroots sports.
Read more

By: Co-Editor, RB:

Here is a cool new site that is banking on the death of business cards. Given current technology an argument can be made that the exchange of business cards is anachronistic.

Qubrit.com, new launched out of London, is a fast growing social network which allows you to create your virtual business card and exchange it with friends, colleagues and others. The most important feature of Qubrit, is that you will always keep the contact details of others updated. People tend to change their phones, emails, addresses, and even close down their social network profiles (like recent examples of Facebook accounts closures).

Qubrit’s main feature is that you have business cards of others, which will always be up to date, with the most current contact information, such as mobile, phone, email, address, skype, facebook, and twitter profile links. Once a person amends his business card information, everyone who has his virtual business card will see his most up-to-date info.

When you exchange contacts, the info will automatically be saved in your contact list online as soon as you go home and write that “Nice meeting you” follow-up email. So why does contact info even need to cross the digital threshold if it’s only going back to cyberspace?
Read more

By: Co-Editor, RB:

There dozens of websites that offer free online classified ads. For example, SalesSpider.com  is a large social network for Small and Mediums Sized Businesses (SMBs). In additional to the online social network aspects of the site they offer free classified ads.

Now comes a new site called ListHere.com. Launched in June out of Utah, the site purports to be a free online classified service overlaid with business offerings for SMBs.

The team at ListHere.com acknowledges that there are a ton of free online classified sites, but they feel most of them are lacking. The problem with those sites according to ListHere.com is their inability to handle online postings, and the limited ability to search within different cities, states, or even nationwide.

ListHere.com offerings paid business listings for local businesses, so there is no more re-posting and cluttering everything up. It also offers segregated online postings – if you can’t find it locally.

The site recently had a facelift. Unlike other free online classifieds, ListHere.com grants users you the capability to search multiple cities, states, and any combination thereof. This means that if you’re looking for a new job but are open to possibilities that you can search for “Network Operations” in Los Angeles, Florida, and Ohio all from one search.

On top of this functionality, they have also introduced what they call “online ads”. This is a paid only type of listing that will only show if you want it. On the left-hand side of your navigation you will see an indicator showing “All”, “Offline”, and “Online”. The online ads are paid at $0.10 a click to an advertiser’s site, and only show up if you want them to.

So if you have fund other classified sales sites wanting, check out ListHere.com.

By: Co-Editor, RB:

As journalists and bloggers increasingly turn to social networks and the blogosphere for their research and information, the text-heavy, one-size-fits-all format of traditional press releases seems somewhat antiquated.

Press releases are increasingly being replaced with a deconstructed format where information is divided into special, more useable sections. This new type of news dissemination is called the Social Media News Release (SMNR).

A new site, launched by a company called Liberate Media, aims to be a leader in this growing phenomenon.
Pressitt.com, launched in public beta in April of 2009 out of the UK is based on the theory that the time has come for a free, accessible-to-all SMNR service to be made widely available within the UK market and beyond, to raise awareness of the SMNR among PR agencies in particular and help encourage take-up.

Pressitt allows you to create your own social media news release (SMNR) – also known as a social media press release (SMPR) or social media release (SMR), and publish it to an online community of journalists, the blogosphere and the general public.
Read more

By: Co-Editor, RB:

A news site recently launched out of Sunnyvale, California seeks to make shopping more fun and more analytical. The site, DidYouSwipe.com (referred to on the site as Swipe) was launched on May 26, 2010.

Swipe aims to be a fun and easy way to share and find shopping information in your city. Using Swipe you can tell your friends what you want to buy and find what they are buying. Swipe helps you shop street smart by giving you access to prices and product reviews recommended by your friends and other people whom you trust.

You can share the inside scoop on countless everyday purchases such as food, clothes, gadgets, furniture, books, tickets, gyms, cars, holiday packages, games etc. Swipe starts social conversations around purchases and helps you discover prices, deals, opinions, locations, stores, products and shoppers in a fun and competitive game environment. Swipe helps you answer the questions “what did you buy”, “where did you buy it” and “how much did you pay for it”. It is essentially seeks to be like Yelp, Price Grabber and Foursquare.
Read more