By: Co-Editor, RB:

For those who are 2.0 renaissance men or women, there is a new product that might interest you.

MyVoxtopia.com offers Voxtopia. Voxtopia provides smart, virtual phone numbers in over 40 countries that allows users to forward calls anywhere in the world for pennies, screen and block unwanted callers, make cheap international phone calls, make conference calls, get faxes and voicemails sent to email and much more.

Voxtopia is a product of WorldTalk Incorporated, a privately owned, global Internet Telecommunications provider specializing in next generation voice, video and mobile technologies. WorldTalk provides international consumers, small-to-medium sized enterprises, and Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs) with cutting edge, inexpensive communications tools and services. They are located in Los Angeles, California.

Using Voxtopia, you can manage call settings, view instant call history, manage contacts and download your messages anytime online. You can sign up for free and receive one free US phone number. They provide similar features for two other killer services (google voice and ringcentral) but in a combined package, with extra goodies and available in over 40+ countries. They also give free phone numbers away. They also have plugins for other great services: Highrise, Twitter, Facebook (it allows Facebook users to call you from the web without giving away your number).

As long as you have service on your phone, it will work with Voxtopia. Voxtopia works with any mobile phone or landline with an active carrier. You can either switch completely over, or use Voxtopia on top of your current service provider. You can use Voxtopia with any mobile phone on any carrier. There are no software or hardware requirements to use our service. Simply dial the local number we give you & connect to anywhere in the world. As an optional component, you can download a free desktop app to use with Voxtopia.

There is no term commitment. You may cancel your service at any time. Voxtopia is only available in the United States.

Post from: GreatStartups.com

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.

It provides a set of innovative and practical tools to make life easier for the group organizers, coaches and captains of all kinds of team sports. It helps individuals find and join local sports groups, partners or events that match their sporting interests and skill level. And, its ladder competitions and simple 1-on-1 matches completely change the experience for players of sports like squash, tennis or badminton.

Sportmeets, however, is much more than practical. Users can earn achievement badges to motivate them to play more and better, share their events and results on Facebook and Twitter, or show support for their friends by voting for them in 1-on-1 matches.

Sportmeets solves the problem that recreational athletes face when organizing recreational sports games and matches – they get overwhelmed by the amount of work required to organize even a single session. Doing this via email and mailing-lists is time consuming to sort out and keep up to date. Organizers need to spend hours making sure that people turn up, everyone is kept up to date and they get paid for the venue booking afterwards. Sportmeets helps in all these respects.

Currently, Sportsmeets.com is being used by mostly Europeans but there are active users out of San Francisco and New York here in the United States. Squash, Tennis and Soccer are the most popular sports on Sportsmeets.

Post from: GreatStartups.com

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?

With Qubrit.com, you can customize the look of your business card, put your profile photo and do many more cool things. One of the innovative features, Qubrit has brought is the restriction of information which others will see about you by inventing Smartlabels. The problem of all existing social networks, such as twitter and facebook is that all people you know are in “Friends” category there. In fact, only 2-3 people from list of 150 friends are real friends of yours. Your boss, the lady you met in airport, a guy from your junior school where you studied 15 years ago and you haven’t’ seen or spoke to that guy – they all are friends in your social networks. Now, when you share your photos, your statuses, you wish you could make this visible to only small part of the friends or followers in your profile.

For example, with Qubrit labels – when you put cards of other people into the “Work” category, they will be able to see only your official information and won’t be able to access photos from crazy night party in a bar.

When you check out the site you will see examples of the virtual business card. It is very cool.

The company announced that very soon it will release Qubrit Themes for its cards. There are 3 pre-built themes at the moment based on the existing design and UI, but after they launch these Themes, they will continue to make more new styles and themes.

Post from: GreatStartups.com

By: Co-Editor, RB:

I do not think anybody would be surprised to learn that a recent study found that users of Facebook and Twitter spend more time and money online than average persons using the Internet by quite a large margin.

Small businesses that seek to remain on the cutting edge of these demographic shifts often have trouble optimizing the myriad information provided by these social applications. But at the same time they cannot afford to miss out on the opportunities that are presented by these applications.

3DCart.com, based in Tamarac, Florida, help small businesses and entrepreneurs start their websites, design sites, and make sure these businesses reach social media customers wherever they are be it laptops, PC’s, or smartphones.

Today 3DCart is used by thousands of businesses online, including businesses in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, Italy, France, and Spain.

3DCart.com is a product of Infomart 2000. Infomart 2000, Corp. is committed to delivering an easy to use suite of e-commerce solutions designed to fit just about any kind of online business.

As of February 26, 2009, 3dCart officially became PCI DDS compliant. As our readers may know, the PCI Security Standards Council has put forth a series of regulations online business must follow to ensure the security of online shopping. 3dCart has met and surpassed all standards outlined by the PCI Security Standards council. The company invested in over $50,000 of state of the art network security software. In addition, all tests were conducted by two third party companies, SecurityMetrics  and Plynt, which guarantees no shortcuts were taken in proving our compliancy. You can review all of the steps taken to ensure security on the company’s website.

Plans start at $19.99 and you can try it for free for 15 days.

Post from: GreatStartups.com

By: Co-Editor, RB:

Many of the startups we see are from entrepreneurs who are trying to create the next Facebook or create a niche online community, be it through-travel, shopping, sports, parenting etc.

A new site is looking to cater to these already existing communities by providing mobile applications for these communities.

Zerista.com was launched in mid-May out of Denver, Colorado.

Zerista.com is a site that will enable any person who manages a group, team or event to turn it into an interactive community that every member can access on his mobile.

These apps work on any web-enabled phone, and the creation process couldn’t be simpler. In fact, it is almost automatic in the sense that your input is kept to a bare minimum. You just create an account, name the community and set the respective functionalities. Zerista.com can quickly turn your group, club, team or organization into an active mobile community.

Until Zerista.com, community managers have had to use a wide range of generic tools to try to manage their community communications and activities. And none of the existing tools are built for active, mobile communities. Zerista.com is the first company to put everything the community manager needs into a single, comprehensive, yet easy to use package.

Zerista.com also offers Zerista Pro, a next generation event networking platform that enriches the event experience by creating a persistent event community. Zerista Pro has had the effectiveness of this platform proven by more than 30 customers, including the Mobile World Congress with more than 20,000 users.

Zerista’s platform is the only hybrid solution that combines best-of-breed elements of custom community platforms, mobile social discovery, and event ticketing and management, allowing anyone — from soccer teams to realtors to wine clubs — to quickly create a custom mobile application. Zerista makes it possible for community managers to create and publish a mobile application, customized specifically for their group, in just minutes, and since it’s a web app there isn’t the delay and hassle of going through a mobile app store.

“Existing social media platforms and communities are trying to retrofit their desktop applications for mobile use,” said Charlie Savage, CEO of Zerista. “But Zerista is the first community platform designed from the ground up for the mobile web.”
According to Gartner Research mobile internet reach is expected to surpass desktop access in 2013. Zerista is specifically designed for on-the-go scenarios to enable people to maximize the potential of mobile web connectivity.

The business model is typical freemium. Groups of up to 250 people can use Zerista free, in exchange for ads on their pages. For larger groups, the company sells the Zerista Pro application on a flexible pricing basis.

Post from: GreatStartups.com