By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

When I was in college dealing with bills was a major headache. We had one roommate who never had any money and was always late with getting it in. Also, no one in our house wanted the chore of collecting every month and keeping track of all of the house’s expenses.

To help with that chore comes Beezang.com, a new site out of India, launched in August 2009 and currently in alpha.

Beezang.com is a free, simple to use web application that helps people manage and keep track of bills they split with friends, roommates and office colleagues. You can use Beezang.com to stay on the top of your apartment shared expenses with your roommate, you can also track bills associated with weekend get away trips.

The site does one thing and does it good. The folks at Beezang.com have worked hard on the usability so that its users do not have to spend hours figuring out how to use the app. They are working towards constantly improving the application.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

Ice cream trucks are part of the quintessential American summer. The sound of the Good Humor man or here in the Northeast Mister Softee were part of your child, if you are of a certain age.

High gas prices, noise restrictions and media accounts of ice cream trucks being used for nefarious purposes  have made the sight of an ice cream truck is a rare occurrence in most neighborhoods.

Captain Ice Cream, a Los Angeles based start-up aims to change all that. Captain Ice Cream is a franchise of 3-wheeled, moped-powered, novelty ice cream vending trucks. The unique size of Captain Ice Cream’s ice cream mopeds allow the franchisee to go where the other ice cream trucks can’t go: deep into parks, farmer’s market booths, parades and other places that are simply impractical for trucks.

The 2010 Ice Cream Mopeds feature a cold-plate freezer that holds approximately 500-600 novelty ice cream treats. You can plug the freezer into any standard 110-volt outlet at night and its internal temperature will drop down to -15°F. The freezer will maintain 0°F for 6 to 8 hours in 100°+F temperatures.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

If you are getting any belated holiday gifts or someone’s birthday is coming up, you should consider a relatively new site called BookSwim.com.

Just like NetFlix.com, you pay a monthly fee and rent up to 11 books at a time. BookSwim.com has just unveiled new plans at reduced prices.
The new plans feature:

• Price reduction to $9.95 monthly: The old $15 starter plan changed to become $9.95 for any book
• “Exclusive at BookSwim”: BookSwim is the only rental club offering newly released novels and nonfiction bestsellers published in hardcover format.
• UPS-integrated shipping: Speedier delivery, dramatically reducing outbound transit times to members’ homes at no additional cost.

The $9.95 charge is a starter charge, and you pay from $23.95 (for 3 books at a time) to $59.95 (for 11 books at a time). BookSwim.com offers all types of books including hardcover new releases, mystery/thrillers and modern nonfiction all the way to cookbooks, chick lit, self-help, contemporary romance, classics and even textbooks. Given the fact they are shipping books (and in a lot of cases hardcovers) as opposed to DVDs as with NetFlix.com their prices are extraordinarily reasonable.

College friends, George Burke and Shamoon Siddiqui, founded BookSwim in 2006 because they shared both a love for reading and a desire not to spend so much money on it. Prior to going online, BookSwim earned the Rutgers Business School’s 2006-2007 Business Plan Competition Finalist Award.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

While Facebook searched for ways to monetize its behemoth of a site. Other business are seeking ways to use the power of Facebook to create their own businesses

Launched on November 12, 2009, a Cape Town, South Africa startup called Personera.com is seeking to use Facebook for its own purposes.

Personera.com allows people around the world to design and order print products personalized with their Facebook content. You can use your Facebook account to sign in, customize and order your product.

Personera’s service allows people to use their Facebook accounts to log in through Facebook Connect, and make their entire social network content instantly available for product personalization. Users are able to choose a theme, automatically add their friend’s birthdays and events each day, and drag and drop their favorite photos into the monthly layout.

A high quality 12-month, 32-page printed calendar then is delivered to their mailbox. The service itself costs $24.95, but that includes shipping to anywhere in the world.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

Technology can be a wonderful thing or a ponderous thing, depending on how it is deployed and who deploys it. A new website that is creating quite a bit of controversy is eliciting opinions across a broad spectrum.

Youtego.com, a Bay Area based start-up launched on September 30, 2009, describes itself as a new visual tool for self-visualization on the Internet. As stated on their website and in their releases, Youtego.com believes in the mantra “recognize yourself to recognize the world around you”. They think that the concept of self-visualization represents what you believe, feel, know, taught or capable of doing.

The process of self-visualization in Youtego.com is a combination of semantics (words and phrases) and visual representation (pictures and photos) that the user defines (words and phrases) and selects (picture). Ultimately, the user gets the combination or matrix of visual objects that they personally defined and visualized. The elements of that matrix (the company calls them Tegos) may match with people’s Tegos anywhere in the world.

Once you sign up for an account, you start by creating a ‘Tegoset’. If you are a golf nut you presumably would post pictures relating to that interest. With a Tegoset you have the ability to explain what you like and enjoy without to having to write anything — it’s all done through pictures.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

We have previously discussed language translations sites and software available on the web. While acknowledging their ubiquity, we discussed a new site based in Bulgaria called TranslationsPal.com. This site is a web-based, real time online translation service powered by human translators.

Now comes another language related site with a narrower bent, but nonetheless intriguing. Recently launched and based in New York City is LanguageMate.com.

LanguageMate.com bills itself as the leader in the development of language solutions for the healthcare field. Its mission is to create tools that enable healthcare institutions to enhance quality of care, improve patient safety, and elevate satisfaction levels for both patients and providers.

They offer a suite of products and services that are specifically designed to meet the communication needs of clinicians, support staff, and the patients they serve. Given the United States’ growing diversity, it is becoming increasingly important to provide appropriate language assistance to people who are not fluent in the English language.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

Numbers, in the form of passwords, IDs, account numbers, and phone numbers etc., pile up every year. In addition, health care information and financial information are more detailed and complicated than ever.

A Chicago based start-up launched in early September of 2009 provides an online solution to this prolific personal information explosion.

Orggit.com (Short for “organize it”) is an online solution that allows its users to store so-called wallet information, medical information, passwords, and documents all in one secure online location. Orgitt.com’s customers can access all of their information anytime; anywhere they may need it–wherever there’s an Internet connection. The company offers a free iPhone application that allows for true on-the-go access. With the emergence of cloud computing and storage, Orggit.com aims to be at the forefront of consumer focused solutions.

Orggit.com empowers its users to organize, store, and retrieve life’s essential information anytime, anywhere. You can neatly store your personal and family medical information, and retrieve it from any computer or smartphone with an internet connection.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

For those adventurous travelers out there who love the British Isles, as I do, here is a neat site.

Pitchup.com is a new website (launched in July of 2009 and based in London) that matches users with the perfect campsite or holiday park in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The site makes it easy to sift through 5,000 holiday parks and campsites using 79 different criteria. Users can search not only by place, but also by providing a postcode, and further search a site’s proximity to attractions like beaches, National Parks and so on. Users can also search more detailed information such as sites in which campfires are allowed, for example.

“Special Offers” are also available, with online booking in the pipeline.

Pitchup.com is free to use for both users and campsite managers, providing a service users can trust for its transparency and accuracy. Pitchup.com sets itself apart because no other site offers a search with such depth and which covers so many sites. Pitchup.com brings a totally fresh approach to a sector enjoying rapid growth as travelers rediscover the charms of so-called staycations or the joys of camping in a foreign land.

The site looks great and is easy to use.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

On December 2, 2009, InfoDome, Inc., an Oakland California based company announced the beta release of InfoDome 1.0 , a new visual way to create online database solutions.

Under development for two years, InfoDome 1.0 promises to revolutionize the way databases are created and used.

According to Dave Kleinberg, CEO of InfoDome, Inc., “Unlike software databases that are hard to share and other online tools that are either limited in functionality or clunky to use, InfoDome is visually driven and powerful. With just a few clicks, database authors, website designers and spreadsheet users can create flat-file or relational databases from scratch, by importing their data, or by customizing pre-built solutions. Using 100% visual WYSIWYG (an acronym for What You See Is What You Get in case you don’t know) tools, they create forms and advanced reports to let remote users access and manage data, and create and share their own reports. With another click or two, the solutions can be embedded in their website.”
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

You’ve heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Now there is Free Shipping Day, a one day online shopping event on Dec. 17, when participating merchants offer free shipping to their customers with guaranteed delivery by Christmas.

Over 300 merchants have already signed up for this year’s event and founder Luke Knowles expects more than 500 merchants will participate. Merchants like Toys R Us, JCPenney, Apple Store, Nike, Sears, Babies R Us, Eddie Bauer, PacSun, PetSmart, and Adidas have confirmed they will be involved.

According to the results of the most recent e-Customer Service Index (eCSI), which indicates that 93 percent of people intend to surf the net for presents this holiday season. More than 71 percent are prepared to complete at least half of their Christmas shopping online. Free Shipping Day founder Luke Knowles says the level of interest in the second annual Free Shipping Day shows that retailers have high hopes for the online holiday shopping.

“Merchants who participated in last year’s first Free Shipping Day received such a tremendous response they almost immediately committed to being involved in this year’s event,” said Knowles, whose site, FreeShipping.Org, is a one-stop destination for consumers to find online retailers that offer free shipping deals. “A growing number of retailers have contacted us to participate in Free Shipping Day, thanks to all the media attention it has received.”

Black Friday (shopping)and Cyber Monday have become household names in the holiday shopping vocabulary. Free Shipping Day is emerging as a widely known event among cost-conscious consumers during the holiday shopping season.
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