By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:
Zero Motorcycles Inc. designs, manufactures, and sells high performance electric motorcycles. The company, formerly known as Electricross, was started in 2006 near Santa Cruz, California. The company was founded by Neal Saiki who was a former NASA engineer and has also won numerous design awards in the sports world.
They are known for their line of dirt bikes and most recently the popular Zero X. They have begun branching out into the street world with a motorcycle called the Zero S (Zero S) which began shipping in 2009.
The Zero S shares some of the same styling cues as its off-road little brother, the previously mentioned Zero X. The motorcycle has highway appropriate tires and a “projector beam” headlight. With a peak horsepower of 31 and 62.5 lb-ft of torque, the clutchless one-speed “Zero S” gets to its top speed of 60 mph in no time. Its four kWh battery can keep you going for up to 60 miles. The intergrated charger allows you to fully charge in less than four hours.
It is very light, and therefore very quick. The battery warning light goes on with about 20 miles to go.
By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:
I am one who has always been skeptical of personal coaches and self-help gurus. However, there are organizations in this space that are doing good and valuable work. EntrepreneursSource.com is one of those organizations.
Franchising’s leading career and business coaching company recently launched a free, innovative online virtual coaching experience. The virtual coach elicits ideal income, lifestyle, wealth and equity dreams from visitors. While defining their objectives in a series of questions, a picture board dramatically builds on the screen allowing people to visualize what they aspire to attain through business ownership. Once the series of questions have been completed, the virtual coach helps identify the type of investment that could ultimately provide personal fulfillment.
Additional enhancements to the site include a blog that will be routinely updated with business buying tips from company leadership and more than 100 pages of valuable insight into entrepreneurialism. Studies show more than 70 percent of the U.S. population looks to be self sufficient rather than working for somebody else but only 5 percent of the population actually accomplish the feat. The problem is that many of them call it quits before they even get started.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:
In the famous Chinese Restaurant episode of Seinfeld the maitre’d continually barks out the patrons names as their table becomes available. The cast waits for hours for their table before finally giving up. Just when they leave the restaurant the maitre’d yells “Seinfeld, Four!”
I thought of that episode while checking out a new website Textaurant.com. The Seinfeld episode demonstrates how quaint we used to be about dealing with dining options and wait times. The first advancement I remember is when restaurants began to use beepers so they could beep you when your table was ready. But the range was limited and you had to be ready right away so you could not wander off too far anyway.
Other restaurants have used the Internet and technology to deal with wait times. The Shake Shack, which is a wildly popular burger stand in Madison Square Park in New York City, uses a “Shack Cam” so patrons can monitor the wait online.
Textaurant.com offers a more comprehensive twist. It is a Massachusetts based company that acts as a web-based waiting list and as a management application for busy restaurants that consistently have their patrons waiting for tables.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:
A lot of you may have heard of the diet book Eat This, Not That. It is the wildly successful diet book from Men’s Health Editor-in-Chief David Zincenko and Men’s Health food and nutrition editor Matt Goulding.
The book does an excellent job exposing the obscene number of calories in certain foods, such as Outback’s Aussie cheese fries that weigh in at 2,900 calories, Chili’s Awesome Blossom at 2,710 calories , and Lonestar’s 20-ounce T-bone — an astonishing 1,540-calorie steak. And as a result, several restaurants have removed calorie-laded items from their menus.
However, most of us presumably do not walk around with a book under our arm that will let us know what is in the foods we eat. Now comes an iphone application developed by a San Franscisco entrepreneur that was designed to enhance not only healthy eating but food safety as well. Dwayne Ratleff, the sole proprietor of a house keeping business spent six months developing the recently launched iPhone app-Don’t Eat That.
The app is based on the premise that most consumers are not able to understand, let alone pronounce, many of the ingredients listed on food labels. Their food decisions are frequently based on convenience and taste, with few knowing the impact of what they are actually eating. The Don’t Eat That app was designed to enhance food safety with the touch of a finger. Read More >>
By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:
The word “bitch” is often consider a profanity in the English language and commonly carries misogynistic overtones. However, a “bitch” in the literal, non-slang use refers to a female dog.
Now comes a start-up out of Long Island, New York that has fun with both the literal and slang use of the word “bitch”. BitchNewYork.com is a startup that specializes in designer products for dogs. The “Bitch” in BitchNewYork.com refers to both its founder and a very spoiled Chihuahua named Princess Lola that provided the inspiration for this success story.
The human “Bitch” is Stacy Braverman who is not a bitch at all. She is a successful entrepreneur who has transformed her love of dogs and fashion into a successful business. In her quest to spoil Princess Lola, Ms. Braverman searched far and wide for glamourous canine couture and accessories to befit a Princess.
The designer clothes she procured for Princess Lola were the envy of the neighborhood, and her fellow dog lovers wanted their pooches to be outfitted in the same manner. It was then Ms. Braverman decided to start her own online boutique and thus BitchNewYork.com was born.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:
Mobile Gifting is the next evolutionary step in the world of gifts. In a fast moving world there will always be room for paper vouchers but unquestionably the majority of the market will move to e-vouchers - in particular mobile vouchers.
With more and more users buying goods online why not allow customers to buy gift vouchers online as well. These vouchers can be delivered, including a personal message, via SMS. Delivery is almost instant.
Several large e-retailers are already involved in mobile gifting such as Alibaba.com.
A new company currently in beta is seeking to ride this next wave in retail. The Cambridge, Massachusetts based KangoGift.com is at this point limited to retailers in the Boston area.
KangoGift, allows shoppers to send both virtual gifts and real gifts via text message to friends and family.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:
What if SharkTank was filmed on 125th Street in NYC? What if the VC firms in Silicon Valley considered pitches from a more diverse group than Stanford business grads?
A new website seeks to fill a largely ignored niche by being the online community for young urban entrepreneurs.
TheCASHFLOW.com, based in Cold Spring Harbor, New York is a startup that seeks to provide an interactive and approachable platform blending financial media, professional networking and business knowledge for young urban entrepreneurs. The site officially went live online earlier this month.
TheCASHFLOW.com users can customize an education plan, apply to get their business idea funded, gain knowledge of unique ways to profit from today’s news and trends, and learn from a resource-rich blueprint that takes them step-by-step through the process of writing a business plan, building their team and realizing their financial dreams.
The launch of TheCASHFLOW commenced with the “Put Yourself on the Map Tour,” a coast-to-coast series of interviews and networking events with aspiring urban entrepreneurs in 100 cities across the United States.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:
Since this is not technically a tech site, I will take a second to give you a primer on what a Cloud operating system is.
The term “cloud” is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents. Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online which are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on servers.
Attribo.com is a Bangolore based startup beta that is focused on what they call “Cloud Management, Provisioning, Monitoring & Reporting Solutions”. They are trying to solve the end user adaptability issues related to multiple cloud vendors and cloud based infrastructure components. They are attempting to make the cloud experience more end user friendly and easy to manage with feature rich approach.
Attribo is built with a unique integration pattern, which brings on the multiple cloud vendor API features within 24 hours of their release and made available to users via the Attribo 3C management console.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:
There are people who you know that are obsessed (not merely interested) with the latest technology releases be it the latest iPhone, Nokia Booklet, or video game release. Some of these people have buyer’s remorse the minute they pick up the latest gadget thinking about the next upgrade.
There is a new site out of St. Petersburg, Russia called PreOrder.it launched in January that has been created in order to give people who are interested in latest novelties in the world of electronics, mobile systems, photo and video equipment a possibility to contact manufacturers directly and leave an order for a product in which they are interested before the official sale starts.
This site would obviously interest any techno-savvy consumer, but the obsessive described above will really enjoy it.
The site actually has two types of users: merchants and customers. Customers can go to the site to access company’s press releases to find out new models, their characteristics, types of set and future price. If the client gets interested in something he can leave a pre-order that goes directly to merchants. Merchants can sell in advance and receive orders directly from loyal and future customers.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:
We have not spent too much time on this blog talking about gadgets. This space has mostly focused on service related Internet sites. However, today we have something very interesting to show you. Anyone who has dropped his or her phone in a pool, toilet, or puddle will be able to relate to this.
Karen Wildman and Lisa Holmes are sisters originally from Oregon. The idea for their product was conceived when they saw a sad boy who dropped his gameboy in a pond. The sisters realized that since electronics are everywhere and people take them everywhere, a product that protected against water damage would be great. So they set out to invent a solution… and they did!
Karen Wildman has struggled with hearing loss since she was a baby. She knew a lot about drying out hearing aids from sweat, rain and other moisture. But when she realized she could apply her drying technique to other small electronics and started saving her children’s and friends’ gadgets, she knew she was on to a big idea.
Starting small and funding the project themselves, Karen and Lisa took five years to develop their product, which is now being sold online and in retail stores — including at major outdoor supplier REI. The two mom inventors are currently reveling in hearing about the countless iPods, cell phones, digital cameras and other gadgets their product has saved.
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