Venture Capital Firms

Compass Labs - your precision targeting solution

Social Media is on the way up, that’s for sure and the advertising potential attracted many investors. One of them is Dilip Venkatachari who founded Compass Lab in 2009.
Dilip Venkatachari worked for both internet giants, Yahoo, as VP Insight Data Strategy and Google at DotMobi, the mobile ad division acquiring deep knowledge in the field. He also founded other two startup companies, CommerceSoft and CashEdge. Arjun Jayaram is also a co-founder of Compass Labs. He worked for Sybase, Bea and People Soft.

New Enterprice Associates, Triple Point Capital and others recently funded the company with $5 million (Series B funding) after a first round of funding in 2009 of $1 million. The money will be invested in further development of the business and to support the sales channels.

The potential of this market is enormous, as Social Media websites have seen exponential growth in the last few years and the forecasts shows that they will develop faster than any other online media in the next years. The advertising should be where the customers are. As the customers spend more and more time on websites like Twitter or Facebook, it is important for advertiser to allocate a good part of their budget to promote their product and services there. There are predictions that budgets spent in 2014 in Social media will be over $3 billion.

Still, these Social Media environments are not quite exactly the same as other marketing channels. The decision process slightly changed from “buying what you see more often” to “buying what your friend recommends you” and this process will continue with the development of social networks. This is why the services provided by Compass Labs - real time precision targeting on social media platforms - are a great help for any marketer. The solution offered by Compass Labs is designed to identify the consumers who are in the decisional process in buying products or services, the high time for sending a targeted message or a special offer with a direct result in a better conversion of ads into closed sales.

Given the potential of this market, Compass Lab has a great future ahead even the competition is not missing the game. There are several companies offering targeted marketing but most of them are specialized on certain platforms like Twithawk for Twitter. Still, the next years will bring to the table more companied in this field, for sure as the entry barriers are not so hard to be demolished.

Compass Labs is relying on a reduced number of employees but they are top-notched professionals in their field. They are looking to expand their team with other professionals. Andre Leb, a veteran from PriceGrabber.com with over 10 years experience in social media, recently joined the company as VP of Business Development.

Compass Labs is one of those start ups that should be watched closely. They will probably develop extensively in the near future as they activate in a market with a huge potential.

More information about Compass Labs their services you can find here

The birth of brilliant modern technology that can handle numerous applications on devices like Iphones, net books or Blackberries has created a sea of endless opportunities. Countless of application can and are being built right now all over the world. This is a long and hefty process and developers need a helping hand.

That is where Appcelerator comes in. This a successful start-up from California which helps developers to efficientize their activity by cutting development time in half, driving down development costs and helping them avoid vendor lock-in. All this will finally mean increased revenues for that certain developer. Appcelerator does this by providing open source development platforms for building internet, mobile and desktop application and if needed consultancy and design review. The Platform is called Titanium and has some noticeable features like an extensible Module API and built-in support for Linux. Moreover, it supports a large variety of programming language like Python, JavaScript besides the basic C++. The Titanium platform is open source, so you may also access the source code to the complete the application at any time for your own use.

The firm seems to have a large playground as the closest competitor is Gizmox the company behind the Visual WebGui platform, an older firm but which has developed in a smaller scale and has not received any funding yet.

The management team of Appcelerator is not to be overlooked. Jeff Haynie the co-founder and CEO of the company has an extensive experience in entrepreneurship, this is not his first start-up having worked as a CTO at eHatchery and has been a co-founder and CTO at Vocalocity. Nolan Wright the second co-founder has experience in engineering and product management, which he gained also at Vocalocity and Accenture. In charge with marketing, we find Scott Schwaezhoff, which was formerly a VP of marketing at Adeze and worked at HP and Microsoft.

The company was founded in the last quarter of 2007 and has grown rapidly hitting a market that has just began to find out how implementing and developing application can be a huge hit at the moment and in the future and shows no sign of slowing down. Even during the last period of economic difficulties, this market has been developing nicely and so did Appcelerator, which currently has 22 employees in two headquarters, one in Atlanta and one in California.

Appcelerator product is an alternative for more known products like the cross-platform AIR runtime from Adobe with which is still competing with.

The company has raised two rounds of funding, one in 2008 from Storm Ventures valued at $4.1 million. The other one was announced just one month ago. This round B funding was valued at $2.1 million. The venture capital inputs also brought Ryan Floyd and Larry Augustin both with extensive experience in IT, internet and Open source as Board Members and Advisors.

Appcelerator has progressed nicely so far and the general opinion is positive. You can read about them and their products here

Wireless technology is not new. At the beginning of the 20th Century, wireless technology began with the advent of radio and later television. Furthermore, toward the end of the 20th Century, wireless technology came to the phone industry and by the late 1980s almost everyone already had a cordless phone. Through the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st Century, however, wireless technology has taken new bounds with WiFi, Bluetooth, and other signals. Adimos is just another example of how far has come in this century.

Adimos is not just another wireless company, but a wireless company that makes wireless transmitters and receivers that will connect just about anything, from video and audio equipment to your television set. Adimos even has technologies that lets you connect your iPod wirelessly to your home entertainment system.

If you browse over the Adimos company website, you can see all the types of applications that Adimos technology can apply. You can look at the company’s applications overview and see exactly Adimos offers. You can buy different devices that can even connect your computer and its peripherals to your TVs or other electronic equipment.

One of the unique applications that Adimos offers is the ability to connect your plasma screen TV with a digital media player, such as a DVD player or a DVR wirelessly. The way this works is that Adimos creates top boxes, which you can set throughout your home and some of these boxes will transmit a wireless signal, whereas others will pick up the signal. The receivers are wired to your TV and the transmitters are wired to your different video players.

Another innovative application that Adimos offers is a many to many wireless connection. This is a special wireless system that is designed to connect multiple devices that make up a home entertainment system. This setup allows you to connect all kinds of components to an entertainment system, such as your radio tuner, DVD players, DVR, satellite tuners, and different audio players. These devices can be wirelessly connected to your plasma screen TV and to speakers positioned throughout your house. The way this application works is that the different components of the entertainment system are wired to a small transmitter that transmits the wireless signal to a wireless hub, which is both a receiver and a transmitter. The wireless hub picks up the signal from the individual devices and then transmits it to either the television or speakers. What is the most amazing thing about this system is that you can even connect your different components of the wireless system to more than one TV set.

You can set up multiple video devices and even stream multiple video streams to different TV sets throughout your home, using the Adimos Set Top Box.

This does not stop there. Adimos, believe it or not, even has devices that allow you to connect your portable music player, such as your iPod, MP3 player, or other devices. This is a device that has a dock that your iPod can dock into. The dock has a wireless transmitter that can transmit the wireless signal to a receiver that is wired to your TV set.

Adimos also has devices that can connect any older device that was never designed to be a wireless device. Using the Adimos pair box, you can connect VCRs, DVD players, and other units to older TV sets and have them connected wirelessly. The way the pair box works is that one box is a transmitter, which is wired to your video source and the other is the receiver, which is connected to your TV set.

Adimos was founded by both Eran Igler and Dr. Michael Genossar, who are currently still working with the company.

Eran Igler, besides being the cofounder of Adimos, is also the company’s CTO. Mr. Igler has a great deal of experience in leading high-tech communications projects. Before founding Adimos, Mr. Igler worked for several technology and wireless companies, which include Floware Wireless Systems and Alvarion. When Mr. Igler worked for those companies, he was in charge of chip and development, which include HW and SW technologies. Mr. Igler graduated from the Technion Technology Institute with a BS in Electronic Engineering and then went on to graduate from the University of Tel Aviv with an MBA cum laude.

Dr. Genossar also works at Adimos as the company’s chief scientist. Dr. Genossar also has deep experience in the tech industry. His experiences include 20 years of research and development and led different technological groups who were involved in wireless signal processing, modem design, and wireless systems. Before founding Adimos together with Mr. Igler, he was in charge of the modem development group at Floware. He later went up the corporate latter at Floware, by becoming the company’s CTO in 1999. After holding that position, Floware merged with Breezecom, Dr. Genossar became the CTO of Alveron. Dr. Genossar graduated from the Technion Technology Institute in Israel with a BS summa cum laude in Computer Engineering. He then went on to graduate from Stanford University with a PhD in Electrical Engineering. Other achievements that Dr. Genossar has on his belt include winning the Philip Merlin Award and a Fulbright grant.

Adimos’s investors include JVP, Benchmark Capital, Gemini Israel Funds, and Genisis Campus; which invested $12 million in series A funding in August 3, 2009.

Founded in 1995, Benchmark Capital is a vc firm that is devoted to helping entrepreneurs build major companies in the tech industry and are in for long term growth. Currently Benchmark Capital has over $2.3 billion in committed capital and the vc firm believes in taking a labor intensive team approach when investing in a company. Other companies in Benchmark’s include 1-800-flowers.com, AllPosters.com, AOL, LogoWorks, ebags, eBay, Ofoto, Open Table, and others.

Gemini Israel Funds is one of Israel’s top vc firms that is dedicated to helping startup companies get their feet on the ground. The people at Gemini believe in helping talented entrepreneurs build successful companies in the tech industry. Some other companies in Gemini’s portfolio include Contextream, Massive Impact, Schema, Outsmart, and others.

JVP is a large international vc firm that primarily invests in early stage companies who are in the enterprise software, communications, communications, and mobile infrastructure industries. JVP currently has over $670 million under its management and has offices in New York, London, and Jerusalem. Some other companies in JVP’s portfolio include Allot Communications, Altair Semiconductors, CyOptics, Double Fusion, Infinite Memories, and others.

The Genesis Campus is a vc firm that takes a personalized approach to investing in early stage companies. The Genesis Campus likes to invest in entrepreneurs who are energetic and have both a vision and experience. Furthermore, entrepreneurs who are candidates for an investment from Genesis must have the desire to change the industry they are in. The Genesis Campus is different from other vc firms because unlike other vc firms, the Genesis Campus is made up of entrepreneurs itself and understands the stresses that entrepreneurs go through when they start up their own business. Other companies in Genesis’s portfolio include Arrowping, Inner Wireless, NA Solutions, 10C Technologies, and others.

Adimos is a privately owned company that is based in Mountain View, California. Currently there are no major competitors that provide a serious threat to Adimos.

For more information about Adimos, click here.

The most amazing thing about the internet is that it is a medium where anything goes. You can do all kinds of things on the internet, from watching TV and listening to the radio to playing sophisticated video games, but did you know that you can learn foreign languages on the internet as well? Yes, you can, with Babbel, a company that offers online courses in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Founded in 2007 and based in Berlin, Germany; Babbel has a playful and interesting way to learn a foreign language online.

To get started with a course on the Babbel website, you need to first register with the program and it is free. Furthermore, the registration process is rather simple. First, you need to type in your first and last name, type in a username, type in a password and reconfirm it, and your email address. You also need to select the language that you want to learn. There are a few pros and cons about Babbel, however. One of the biggest pros that Babbel has is that they have a system where you can connect with people who speak the language that you intend to learn and you can greatly improve your language skills by communicating with native speakers. The biggest con that Babbel has is that, unlike some of the bigger offline language software packages available, like Rosetta Stone, the number of languages that you can learn on Babbel is rather limited. Right now you can only learn five languages of Babbel, but the company is still rather new, launching its service just two years ago.

Once you have finished the registration process, you can start the language that you want to learn. Babbel has many tutorials to show you how to use their program. You can then choose different courses that are available on Babbel, depending on the level of knowledge you have on the language that you are willing to learn. For example, the first course that you will see, this is especially the case if you do not know the language at all, but want to learn it from the very beginning, is very basic. For example, suppose you want to learn Italian, one of the languages available on Babbel. The first lesson you will see is about getting acquainted. These courses have some of the most basic phrases, such as saying “hello” or “How are you.”

The beautiful thing about Babbel is that the language courses are not just in text. They have voice recordings on the site that are recorded by native speakers. This is very important to learn how to speak in that language. You can see how it is written with all the proper accent marks on the accented letters, and if you want to hear how that phrase is pronounced correctly, you can click on the little orange circle with the play symbol to the left of the written phrase.

At the bottom of each learning page is a grey circle with the play symbol. When you click on that circle, it will take you to the next lesson. The following lessons show how you can express greetings both formally and informally. The second lesson also shows how you tell someone “good morning, good day, good evening,” etc. Toward the middle or the end of each lesson, the Babbel website will even quiz you on a 24 point scale. The way the quiz works is not exactly the best. It is a mix and match. There are six images that are labelled A to F. Each image is a photo of someone or people doing something together. Below the pictures are phrases that you can also listen to. To the left of these phrases, you see a line, on which you click and a drop menu appears with the letters A to F. You need to decide which picture corresponds with which phrase.

Following the first quiz, the lessons go on and you can learn and make more progress. Here comes another question. Suppose you are finished learning Italian or don’t want to learn Italian anymore. Can you change the language that you want to learn? Yes, you can. Suppose you want to learn German instead of Italian. At the top right hand corner of the website, you will see the flag of the country in which the language you are learning is spoken in. If you were originally learning Italian, you will see a circle with an Italian flag. If you click on that flag, you will see a pulldown menu, and you can choose from the rest of the languages that are available. You can use Babbel to learn one language after another.

Babbel is a privately owned corporation that employs 14 people and four people on its management team, who are Markus Witte, managing director; Lorenz Hein, managing director; Thomas Holl, technical director; and Toine Diepstraten, R&D and IT director. The four people on the management team also founded Babbel.

Babbel’s investors include KIZOO Technology Ventures, and VC-Fonds Berlin.

KIZOO Technology Ventures is a vc firm that is dedicated to the internet services industry. Some other companies in KIZOO’s portfolio include MegaZebra, Fun&Smile, and others.

Babbel does have many competitors. Some of these competitors include Friends Abroad, Lingus TV, and Live Mocha.

Friends Abroad advertises itself to have up to over 80 languages and provides a service similar to that of Babbel. The only thing is that is competitor must have gone out of business or acquired by Babbel, because when you click on its website you get redirected to the Babbel website.

Lingus TV has a service that is similar to Babbel, but incorporates video as well as audio. Lingus TV, however, is much more modest than Babbel, with only the ability to learn Spanish. Lingus TV is still undergoing beta testing.

Live Mocha is a language learning website that is also undergoing beta testing. This company has become one of the top Web 2.0 companies and Live Mocha can pose some serious competition for Babbel because it has over 200 languages available to learn.

For more information about Babbel, click here.

Many of you probably have had a computer that crashed. The likelihood of Windows is phenomenal, but Macs can also crash from time to time. Computer crashes can happen to any computer user, whether a PC or a Mac user. In some cases computers can crash severely and you can loose everything that is on your hard drive. Been there, done that? You probably have. Well the internet, believe it or not, can be a great tool to save a backup of all your files to a remote server. This is exactly the service that Nomadesk offers. Though there are other companies which offer similar services, Nomadesk claims to offer one of the most user friendly and secure file backup and sharing network.

In order to use Nomadesk, you have to download its special software. Nomadesk has a new software for you to download and is currently in beta testing. The software is free of charge, but the service that Nomadesk provides does have a cost. Nomadesk has a software version for both Windows and Mac Leopard. Nomadesk offers two services with different fees. The first service package that Nomadesk offers is the Team File Server, and the Personal File Server.

The Team File Server costs $15 per month and is oriented more to the business community. This service package would bill out yearly to $180 per year. Some of the features in the Team File Server package are synchronization for an unlimited number of PCs, allows for file sharing for an unlimited number of guests, secure storage, secure file server backup, email2 folder, has both free live chat and phone support, file link, and theft guard protection.

The Personal File Server package is much cheaper, costing only $50 per year. This service is much more modest than the Team File Server. This particular service package offers only synchronization to five PCs, no file sharing capabilities, secure file storage, secure file backup, no email2 folder, file link, free live chat and phone support, and theft guard protection.

On the Nomadesk site, there are many testimonials posted by small business owners, who use the Nomadesk software and services. The testimonials are on the whole positive. Many small businesses like the Nomadesk software and service, because it allows their management to share files from anywhere on the globe. People can store files on the Nomadesk File Server and be assured that these files are not only secure due to technical glitches, but from theft as well.

This service is especially good for freelancers. Freelancers are always on the go and Nomadesk allows them to access files from any computer and save files from any computer and access those files from other computers.

Nomadesk was founded by three people. These people are Philip Tack, Peter Geldhof, and Miguel De Buf.

Besides being one of the cofounders, Mr. Tack also works at the company as its CEO. Nomadesk was founded in 2004, and before coming to Nomadesk, Mr. Tack held some key positions in some major telecom companies. Mr. Tack also has experience in the IT industry. Mr. Tack graduated from Ghent University with both a BS and an MS in Bioscience. He then went on to receive his MBA from Vlerick Leuven Ghent Management School.

Another cofounder of Nomadesk is Peter Geldhof. Besides being one of the three cofounders of Nomadesk, Mr. Geldhof is also working at the company as its COO. Mr. Geldhof has deep experience in IT service management and in other areas of communications, including quality assurance. Mr. Geldhof also graduated from Ghent University with a Bachelor’s Degree. Mr. Geldhof is an IT specialist and clearly understands the value of IT products.

The third cofounder of Nomadesk is Miguel De Buf. Mr. De Buf also works at the company as its CTO and has deep experience with project management and IT service management. Mr. De Buf’s experience is very crucial to Nomadesk, because his area of expertise is client-server application design and development. Mr. De Buf also graduated from the University of Ghent with a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering and a Post Graduate Degree in Information Technology.

Nomadesk’s investors include the three cofounders, Business Angels, IWT, and Participatiefonds; which invested $450,000 in seed funding in August of 2005, and then were joined by GIMV for a $4.5 million investment in series A funding.

Founded in 1992, Business Angels was founded to match successful entrepreneurs with angel investors who have both the money and the expertise to make a business successful. Business Angels is not necessarily a vc firm, but connects angel investors with small to medium businesses. The people at Business Angels believe that small business and business ventures are key to a healthy economy.

Based in the Netherlands, Participatiefonds is a federal financial institution of the Netherlands that finances self-employed professionals.

GIMV is an independent investment company that is located in Belgium. GIMV primarily deals in both venture capital and private equity and primarily invests in European companies. GIMV is on the Euronext list in Brussels. The investment company searches for active participation and an enterprise environment.

Although there are some different companies that are similar to or provide slightly similar services to Nomadesk, the company does not have any noteworthy competition as of yet.

For more information about Nomadesk, click here.

Business can be tricky sometimes. Many successful businessmen fail many times over before they become successful. This is especially true with Cafe Press. What is Cafe Press? Cafe Press is a combination of an advertising company and a printing company. Cafe Press prints T-shirts, coffee mugs and other ceramics, stickers and buttons, cards and calendars, and arts and posters. Cafe Press also offers gifts for sale as well. When you first pull up the Cafe Press website, you will see many different T-shirts that Cafe Press has printed for different people and business. Many businesses use Cafe Press for their marketing as well. There are many products that Cafe Press has to offer, and what is even better, Cafe Press offers reasonable prices for custom printing on just about anything.

The top product from Cafe Press, however, is T-shirts. On the website, you can see some of the hottest T-shirts that Cafe Press has printed for various businesses, organizations, and social groups. If you own a business or want to sponsor a fundraiser, Cafe Press might just be the right thing for you. Cafe Press has some T-shirts that are humor of all sorts, ranging from political to geek to other types of humor. Not only does Cafe Press sell all kinds of different T-shirts, and other accessories, the company also allows you to make your own T-shirts. By clicking on the hyperlink that is at the very top of the website, “Make Custom T-shirts and More,” you can see a broad range of T-shirts, sweatshirts, and other articles of clothing that you can have Cafe Press customize just for you. You create the design and Cafe Press will print it. Cafe Press also even has T-shirts for dogs that you can have something printed on.

It does not even stop there. Besides T-shirts, Cafe Press also offers a wide range of other different customizable products for you to choose from. Perhaps you want to place your business logo on a coffee mug, or on some other type of article. Well, Cafe Press has something for you too. Cafe Press also has a wide range of different cards, stickers, bumper stickers, and calendars that you can customize for yourself or your business or charity. Cafe Press also makes banners, yard signs, greeting cards, posters and more.

Cafe Press also has a small variety of different drink ware that you can customize for yourself or your business or charity. These include water bottles, coffee and beer mugs, keepsake boxes, and tile coasters for hot pots on the table.

In a nutshell, Cafe Press will practically print on anything for you. Other things that Cafe Press customizes are mouse pads for your computer, wall clocks, dog and cat food boles, buttons, refrigerator magnets, and much more. If you want Cafe Press to customize a large quantity of items for you, they even offer a bulk price and the company also has no minimum limits. This is great for the individual who wants a T-shirt for him or herself.

Cafe Press is a true success story. As the title of this article mentions, the founder of the company has had many failures before he succeeded with Cafe Press and not only is this company successful in the United States and in the area where it was founded, on the West Coast, but internationally as well.

Besides the company’s main website in the United States, Cafe Press also has websites for the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. The US website is also the website that Cafe Press uses for doing business throughout the world. Cafe Press also accepts several other currencies, besides the US Dollar, which include the British Pound, the Euro, the Canadian Dollar, and the Australian Dollar.

The cofounder of Cafe Press is Fred Durham, who also works at the company as its CEO. When you click on the About Cafe Press hyperlink on the Cafe Press website, you can watch an interesting video that has Mr. Durham explain everything about the company and how it was founded. In the video he explains that he came to the Bay Area in southern California, because that is in his view “the Hollywood for Geeks.” He also states in the video that he had ten business plans about two types of businesses, helping businesses sell their products on the internet and providing a medium for businesses to print their advertising material on. Nine of these ten business plans failed, so Mr. Durham came up with the idea to combine the two things together and change them a bit. This idea became the core idea that grew into the successful Press Cafe. In the video, Mr. Durham was doing most of the narrating and explained that he could create a company that allows businesses to sell something on the internet and have something that can be customizable and be generated on demand. This is the main idea that is behind Cafe Press.

The company video also features some of the customers that Cafe Press has acquired. Cafe Press has acquired a unique variety of different customers who have different ideas about their products and have turned to Cafe Press to produce their ideas. One of these customers, featured in the video is Matt Jervis of Kulture Hero Designs. According to Mr. Jervis, Cafe Press is a neat place for him to express himself. This is also another unique thing about Cafe Press. You can also sell your creativity on Cafe Press and many T-shirt artists sell their T-shirts on Cafe Press and make a profit.

Another Cafe Press customer featured in the company promotional video is Jolene Sugarbaker, of Jolene’s Trailer Park. The business plan that Ms. Sugarbaker is to “right the trailer park name,” which she has been doing with not only her products, but also through the internet and hope shows. Mr. Sugarbaker further went on to explain that though her theme is the trailer park, she wants to turn a negative into a positive. She went on to say that there are many people whop either do not like something or are anxious about something, such as going to the dentist. She will use these anxieties or dislikes that people have about certain things, such as going to the dentist. She comes up with all kinds of shirt designs, such as “sexy waitresses” and other ideas. Ms. Sugarbaker also believes that many people are on the internet begging for money, and she says that there is something wrong for that. Ms. Sugarbaker further stated that she feels fulfillment, since she knows that when someone buys her product, she knows that someone is helping her cause and at the same time she knows that her images, slogans, etc. are being worn by real people around the world.

A third Cafe Press customer featured in the company promotional video is Lisa Spodak of Lisawalks.com. She runs a charity against breast cancer, which she started when her mother was diagnosed with the disease. Ms. Spodak has a walking fundraiser where she walks and raises money, from which the proceeds go to help fight breast cancer. She goes on in her video to explain how she started with this fundraiser where she needed to raise a minimum of $1800 but with her first walk she managed to raise over $4400 and then in her second walk she managed to raise $7800. She noticed that she was being successful with her fundraiser and wanted to reach out to people who were not her close acquaintances, so she turned to Cafe Press for help. Along with walking 14 Avon Walks to help fight against breast cancer and wearing T-shirts that were printed by Cafe Press, Ms. Spodak was able to raise over $110,000. Lisa Spodak further stated that social expression can be very important and when she wears one of her T-shirts people can see what is important to her.

The video closes with Mr. Durham again explaining that Cafe Press is at the heart of the trend of people wanting to express themselves and this is one of the reasons that the company is so successful.

Cafe Press was founded in October of 1999 and is based in San Mateo, California. The company currently employs ober 300 people.

Cafe Press’s investors include New Millennium Partners, PacRim Venture Management, and Staenberg Venture Partners who invested $1.2 million in series A funding in March of 2000. These investors added another $300,000 to the series A funding in May of 2001. These investors were later joined by Sequoia Capital for a $14 million investment in series B funding in 2005.

New Millennium Venture Partners is a vc firm that primarily focuses its investments in angel and seed and first round companies who are in the internet industry. The vc firm believes in turning entrepreneurs and their ideas into great companies. Some other companies in Millennium’s portfolio include CodersLife, WildTangent, Kana, LookSmart, Four11, and others.

Based in Seattle, Washington, Staenberg Ventures is a vc firm that is committed to the companies that it invests in. Staenberg Ventures primarily invests first in the early stages of the company and co-invests together with other institutional investors in later stages in the company’s life. Some other companies in Staenberg’s portfolio include Aprimo, Blue Marlin, Care2, Corrigo, Intrepid, and others.

Serquoia Capital is a vc firm that invests in early stage companies who are in the healthcare, energy, internet, outsourcing services, and tech industries. A typical investment from Sequoia Capital ranges from $1 million to $10 million per round. Some other companies in Sequoia’s portfolio include A123, Achates Power, AdBrite, AdMob, FireEye, InfoBlox, and others.

Though Cafe Press does show signs of success, it does have a few competitors that it has to deal with. A couple of Cafe Press’s major competitors include Zazzle and Spreadshirt.

Zazzle was founded in 1999 and provides a service that is similar to the service that Cafe Press offers. Zazzle prints and sells everything from T-shirts to postage stamps and pays artists commissions to sell their designs on the Zazzle site.

Spreadshirt is also a company that has a similar service to the service that Cafe Press offers. Spreadshirt was founded by a German graduate student who later built the company and based it out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Spreadshirt’s service allows anyone, to be either an individual or a company to design and market their T-shirt with the company.

For more information about Cafe Press, click here.

About 15 years ago, a new dynamic way of obtaining information was born. First called the information super highway, now more popularly known as the internet, this information super highway has not just become a new means to get information about practically anything, but has become a new marketplace as well. Over the past years, many different businesses have come onto the internet and people have been buying things on the internet. Another thing that has come on the internet are internet auctions, pioneered by eBay, which has become the largest internet auction. However, since eBay, many other internet auctions of all different kinds have also appeared on the internet. BidRodea is one of the many internet auctions that has appeared on the internet since eBay.

BidRodeo was first thought of in August of 2008 by people who enjoy the internet, and then it was launched by AMPP LLC in the spring of 2009, BidRodeo is one of the newest auctions to appear on the internet. BidRodeo is different from eBay, in that it is a penny auctions, so bids can be as low as 70 cents. In order to use BidRodeo, you must first sign in. The signing in process is quick and easy, unlike some other online subscription sites. First, you need to type in a username, which has to be three to thirteen regular characters, such as letters on your keyboard, with the exception of the “@” character. Then you need to type in and confirm a password, and your email address. You also have the option to type in a coupon code, if you have one. To finish up the process, you need to decipher letters and numbers in a coded image. Once you have done all that, you are in and you need to wait for a confirmation email to come into your email account.

Once you have signed up onto the auction, you will notice as a new member, that BidRodeo offers five free auctions to new users. Unlike, eBay, however, to be able to bid on something on BidRodeo, you have to buy bids. There are several bid packages that you can choose from. The premium package that BidRodeo offers is known as the “Grand Bargain,” and this bid package costs $140 and gives you a total of 200 bids on the site. The next package is the Mega Deal package, which costs $72 and offers 100 bids. The bidding package below that one is the Special package, which costs $37 and offers 50 bids. The bidding package below the Special is the Value package, which costs $16 and offers 20 bids on the auction. The lowest and cheapest package offered by BidRodeo is the Basic package, which costs $10 and offers ten bids on the auction. You get a coupon code that allows you to get ten free extra bids upon the purchase of your first bid package. Bidrodeo also offers rookie auctions for those people who never won an auction.

To win the 10 extra bids in the auction, you must type in the coupon code when you buy a bid package.

BidRodeo is owned by AMPP LLC and its investors are not disclosed to the general public. The two people who are in charge of AMPP LLC include Weronika Cybulska and Chrystian Cybulski.

Mrs. Cybulska was born in Poland and when coming to America, she originally had a career in the jewelry industry where she was a product development specialist. Later on she decided to change her career plans and decided to go into internet marketing. Since the conception of BidRodeo in 2008, Mrs. Cybulska had been on board and worked diligently on concentrating on usability, operation, and on marketing the site online. One of Mrs. Cybulska’s personal hobbies is world travel and has traveled extensively throughout the world; including riding camels in India, swimming with sting rays in Belize, and fishing for trout in Mongolia. Mrs. Cyburska also traveled throughout Asia and Europe by rail, car, and bus; and enjoys the local culture of every country she visits. Mrs. Cybulska received her Masters in Business Administration from the Warsaw School of Economics in 2007.

Mr. Cybulski is also an avid world traveler and that is how he met Weronika Cybulska. At AMPP LLC, Mr. Cybulski is in charge of building all the websites. Mr. Cybulski has always been interested in computers and the internet ever since the <blink> tag was in fashion. Mr. Cybulski is also experienced in computer animation, graphic design, and web design. Later on, Mr. Cybulski began more serious work in the computer industry, such as designing applications for desktop computers and the internet. Before Mr. Cybulski started to work on BidRodeo, he worked at Blue Tie, Inc. since 2001. He started his travels around the world in 2005.

Though, BidRodeo is a new website from AMPP LLC, it does have some competition. BidRodeo’s major competitor is Swoopo, which was originally known as Telebid. Swoopo is also an online auction of the same type and style as that of BidRodeo. Swoopo offers low bids, but the only difference is that Swoopo has an international market. Swoopo was first launched in the United Kingdom in 2007 and then by 2008, it was launched in Spain, the United States, and Austria. Swoopo’s investors include Wellington Partners, who invested in the company in series A funding and August Capital, who invested in Swoopo for series B funding.

For more information about BidRodeo, click here.

In the past few years, the internet seems to be replacing all the conventional media of entertainment, such as TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers. More people are turning to the internet for their news, entertainment, shopping, and communication. In this revolution and the constant evolving entertainment industry in the 21st Century, the newest entertainment website has emerged, Masher Media. Masher Media is brand new, being founded only this year.

When you first get onto the Masher Media site, you will see that it begins like a Looney Tunes Cartoon with all the same sound effects. Then you will notice two cartoon girls appear on either side of the top of the browser’s viewing area. Furthermore, with a delayed loading on the middle toward the bottom of the browser’s viewing window you will see a cartoon-style town with different cartoon characters going back and forth.

The one question is, how does this interface work? There are no instructions on how to use Masher Media. This could be because it is a new website and might not be completely finished. When you click on any of the moving characters on the homepage, nothing happens and instructions are not to be found anywhere. If you look at the company profile, however, you can read what exactly Masher Media is really up to. According to the company profile, Masher Media is dedicated to build a highly creative and high quality media platform for entertainment.

The company’s founder has quite a unique history herself. Masher Media was founded by Sherry Gunther, who is an Emmy Award winning producer and entertainment executive. Ms. Gunther produced some of the most watched cartoons in the United States and the world, which include the Simpsons, the Family Guy, Edith Ann, Dexter’s Laboratory, and other well known cartoons. Masher Media is not the first endeavor that Ms. Gunther has delved into with the new internet media. Before founding Masher Media, Ms. Gunther was a cofounder of ZooKazoo.com, which is an online entertainment site for children from ages six to twelve. ZooKazoo.com received rave reviews since it was launched and was named as the Best Kid’s Destination on the Web, which was put out by the Real Simple Family Magazine in 2008.

Masher Media will also come out with an entertainment interface for children from ages six to 13 in a safe internet environment. This prototype interface, which will be coming out soon, is known as the Myminipeeps.com. This interface will include the ability to make movies, have mini locations, parent control, and My mini page. This interface will allow children to be able to have their website, make their own cartoons, have their own virtual world, and more.

Masher Media’s sole investor is Tech Coast Angels, who invested $300,000 in seed funding in August of 2009.

Tech Coast Angels is a group of angel investors who solely invest in the geographical location of southern California. Tech Coast Angels has some criteria for investing into a company. The primary criteria include having a market opportunity large enough to generate at least $50 to $100 million in annual revenue, a strong and compelling strategy, proprietary technology, strong management, and an exit strategy for the investors. Some other companies in Tech Coast Angels’ portfolio include Inlustra, Eefuf, Soda Head, Nine Head, EZ-Apps, Transcepta, and others.

Masher Media is a new company and does have some small competitors, but none of its competitors are noteworthy enough to pose a threat to the company. Furthermore, Masher Media’s founder’s credentials show great promise for the company’s future.

For more information about Masher Media, click here.

Founded in 2004, Redfin is a new website that is dedicated to the real estate industry. Redfin advertises that its way is the better way, however, after trying out the website, you will find that some of the features might not work properly. The first thing that you notice with Redfin, is that its search area does not cover wide areas throughout the United States. What makes Redfine unique is that it is a real estate brokerage firm, like some of the major real estate brokerages, such as Century 21, Remax, Coldwell Bankers, and others. The only difference is that Redfin is completely online.

How does Redfin work? Redfin has a search engine which promts you to type in a zip code or a city. The only problem is that Redfin’s search area is limited and you will not be able to find a home everywhere. If you type in a zip code, unless it is within the Redfin search area, you will get a dialogue box that tells you that says “We are unable to find 46360. It may be outside of our search area.” Search area is in hyper text and encircled in an outline like a button. Below that phrase, you will see several choices where you can use Redfin to find a home. These areas include the Boston area, the Chicago area, the Long Island & Westchester area, the Sacramento area, the San Francisco Bay area, the Seattle area, Southern California, and the Washington, DC area. If you type in a zip code that is in the Chicago area but outside of the search area, you will get the above mentioned dialogue box. For example, if you type in the zip code 46360, which is the zip code for Michigan City, Long Beach, Duneland Beach, Michiana Shores, and surrounding areas in Indiana. This area, though in Northwest Indiana, it is still considered to be part of the Chicago area, but it is outside of the Redfin search area. The only option that you have left is to click on the on the hyperlink that indicates that you want to search in the Chicago area.

After you click on the Chicago area hyperlink, you will find that the search area for the Chicago area stops right at the Indiana line and not even Gary, Indiana is covered in the Chicago area as far as Redfin is concerned. The counties covered in the Chicago area are Cook, Du Page, De Kalb, and some of the other surrounding counties. This is fine if you want to be close to Chicago, but if you want to be in Indiana, Redfin cannot help you.

Redfin also offers other services as well. Besides allowing you to search for homes online, Redfin also has certified real eastate brokers which can organize open houses or a private showing for you. You can use Redfin not only to buy homes, but to sell your home as well. Furthermore, for those of you who feel uncomfortable with communicating with a broker by email, you can also talk to a Redfin agent by calling a toll free number.

Redfin is based in Seattle, Washington and is a privately owned company that employs over 80 people. Redfin has three people on its management, who are Glen Kelman, Scott Nagel, and Michael Young.

Redfin’s investors include Madrona Venture Group, which invested $770,000 in series A funding in September of 2005. In May of the following year, Madrona Venture Group was joined by BEV Capital and Vulcan Capital in a $8 million investment in series B funding. The three vc firms were later joined by Draper Fisher Juvertson or DFJ in a $12 million investment in series C funding in July of 2007.

The Madrona Venture Group is a vc firm that believes in funding the passion behind the idea. In other words, the Madrona Group funds ideas that revolutionize the way people work. The Madrona Group was founded in 1995 and primarily invests in the Pacific Northwest and in early stage companies in that region who are in the IT industry. Some other companies in Madrona’s portfolio include Animoto, Borrow or Steal, BuddyTV, PayScale, ExtraHop, Intrepid, and others.

BEV Capital is a vc firm that is a specialty firm and specializes its investments. BEV Capital primarily invests in companies who are in the consumer industry or companies who create products that support the consumer industry, such as marketing software, internet based technologies, analytics, etc. Some other companies that are in BEV Capital’s portfolio include 1-800-Diapers, Alloy, Classmates Online, Cool Cuts 4 Kids, Outpost.com, Waterfront Media, and others.

Founded in 2003, Vulcan Capital is a private investment firm that invests in all stages of a company’s life. Vulcan Capital primarily invests in companies who are in the media, communications, energy, natural resources, life sciences, and tech industries. Some companies in Vulcan’s portfolio include Plains Resources, Icat, Makena Capital Management, Intrapace, Dreamworks Animation, Radar Networks, and others.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson, or DFJ, is a vc firm that has been around for over 24 years. The vc firm invests in extraordinary entrepreneurs who have the desire to build great companies. Currently, DFJ has over $6 billion in committed capital under its management. Some other companies that are in DFJ’s portfolio include 4 Info, Achex, Abuzz, Aniboom, AppStream, and others.

Redfin does have a few competitors, however, two of Redfin’s most noteworthy companies are LakePlace.com and HotPads.

LakePlace.com is a company that offers a service similar to Redfin, but is strictly devoted to lakefront homes and properties that are for sale. LakePlace.com has a search area which is much smaller than that of Redfin. This is because LakePlace.com is an online recreational real estate firm that solely searches for homes for sale on lakes in Wisconsin and Minnesota. LakePlace.com is a privately owned corporation which is based in Richfield, Minnesota and was founded in 2003. The company has two people on its management team.

HotPads is a company that is building a comprehensive online real estate marketplace. HotPads has the belief that finding your next home should be easy to find and HotPads also advertises itself as having an innovative web interface that makes choosing your next home a piece of cake. HotPads is a privately owned corporation which is based in Washington, DC, and was founded in 2005. The company currently employs 12 people and its primary investor is Meakem Becker Venture Capital.

For more information about Redfin, click here.

For the past ten years that the internet is growing with new social networks popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm, so has the video game industry. The internet has opened a whole new world of interactive video games has been opened. One of the newest websites that has opened is Zynga. Zynga offers video games to some of the major social networks out on the web.

As you go onto the Zynga homepage, you will notice a series of choices from which to choose from. You can click on the about link to find information about Zynga and you can also see what games are available on Zynga. The homepage has featured games and other games that you can play with. You do not need to sign into Zynga to play its games. The one thing, however, is that you need to be a member of a particular social network to play the games that are on Zynga. If you click on one of the featured games on the website, you will notice the picture of the game and a paragraph which explains what the game is about and what the object of the game is. Also, you can see on what social network you can play a particular game on. Some games will only allow you to play on one particular social network, such as Facebook or MySpace, whereas other games can be played on several different social networks. For example, one of the current featured games on Zynga is FarmeVille, which is a game that is intended for the whole family and allows you to have your own farm; where you can have your own farm animals, fruit trees, and grow your own vegetables. This game can only be played on Facebook. On the other hand, another game that is featured on Zynga, called YoVille, is a game that is aimed at the teen community. This video game is playable on three social networks, which are Tagged, Facebook, and MySpace. Other games can be played on all the social networks that are available.

Though Zynga is dedicated to online video games, playing video games is not the only thing you can do on Zynga. Zynga also has a forum where you can talk or ask about different games that are featured on Zynga.

Zynga also offers certain games which can be played on your iPhone. Currently, Zynga only has a limited selection of games that are apps for your iPhone, but as the website continues to grow, there will be more games available for the iPhone. Some of the video games that are made for the iPhone on the Zynga site include Mafia Wars, Pirates, and Dragon Wars.

Zynga was founded in 2007 by Mark Pincus, who still works at the company as its CEO. Mr. Pincus created Zynga out of two of his greatest passions, competitive online gaming and entrepreneurship. Zynga is not the first company that Mr. Pincus successfully founded. Other social networks that Mr. Pincus founded include Tribe.net, which he founded in 2003 and was one of the first social networks. Mr. Pincus was also the founder of SupportSoft, where he stayed as the company’s CEO until he founded Tribe.net. Mr. Pincus was also a cofounder of Freeloader.

Zynga’s main investors include Avalon Ventures, Clarium Capital, the Foundry Group, the Pilot Group, and Union Square Ventures, which invested $10 million in seed funding in January of 2008. Then, in July of 2008, KPCB and IVP joined the above mentioned investors in a $29 million investment in series B funding for Zynga.

Individual investors who helped lead the investment in the company include Bing Gordon of Kliener, Perkins, Caufield & Byers or KPCB, which is a vc firm that is passionate about helping its portfolio companies. The people at KPCB are dedicated to have their portfolio companies succeed and know that it takes much more than just financial sponsorship to make a company succeed. Mr. Gordon is widely known in the video game industry as one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. Mr. Gordon and Mr. Pincus work and think together and do some of their best thinking on long bike rides in Marin. Other companies in KPCB’s portfolio include Amazon, Google, Aerohive Networks, AOptics, Kodiak Networks, and others.

Clarium Capital is a vc firm that is based in San Francisco, California and pursues global macro strategy. The key person who led Clarium Capital to fund Zynga is Peter Thiel, who is the vc firm’s managing partner. Mr. Thiel runs a large macro hedge fund and was also one of the leading investors of Facebook.

Based in Monrovia, California, the Pilot Group is a manufacturer of small electronic components. The main people of the Pilot Group who led the Pilot Group’s investment in Zynga are Bob Pittman and Andy Russell. Mr. Pittman was the founder of MTV and also has experience in running some major consumer franchises; such as the large real estate franchise, Century 21; and America’s largest internet provider, AOL.

The Foundry Group is a vc firm that primarily invests in early stage IT companies which show great potential for market success. The main person who was behind the Foundry’s investment into Zynga is Brad Feld. Mr. Feld is also a friend of Zynga’s founder, Mr. Pincus. The two met when Mr. Feld worked at SoftBank. Some other companies in the Foundry’s portfolio include AdMeld, Brightleaf, Gist, Gnip, Lijit Networks, and others.

Based in New York City, Union Square Ventures is a vc firm that primarily invests in early stage companies who are in the IT enabled services, media and marketing, healthcare, financial services, and telecom verticals industries. The key person who led Union Square’s investment into Zynga was Fred Wilson, who knew Mr. Pincus for a long time and encouraged him to become an entrepreneur in 1995. After Mr. Pincus took Mr. Wilson’s advise, he went on to found Freeloader, which Mr. Wilson backed with funding.

Zynga does have some competitors, however, the most noteworthy competitor of Zynga is Playfish, which is an online gaming social network that has a product which is similar to the product that Zynga offers. Playfish is a privately owned corporation which is based in London, England and was founded in October of 2007. The company has four people on its management team and three people on its board of directors.

For more information about Zynga, click here.

In the United States and other parts of the world, the love of animals is abundant. What is especially abundant is the love of dogs and cats and, especially in the United States, people will practically do anything for their dogs. Now what happens when you mix this immense love for man’s best friend with the internet? Well, you get Dogster. Dogster advertises itself as a website for dog lovers and for “dogsters.” Furthermore, when you read the About Dogster page of the website, you will discover that the creators of Dogster are both dog lovers and computer geeks. That is quite a combination, but what does Dogster do and how does it benefit animal lovers? Dogster provides a service that any animal lover can sign onto and find out anything or even everything about dogs, from how to care for them, tips from veterinarians, and even buy dog toys or other dog supplies.

You can become a member of Dogster and it is free. What you need to do to register with Dogster is simply go into the My Account tab and you will see an option to create an account with Dogster. Once you click on that link, you will be prompted to type in your email address, your name and last name, a password and to retype your password. Once you have done that, you have the option to invite some or all of your friends to join Dogster. Dogster will discover all the friends on your email’s address book. You can also uncheck all the checked boxes by clicking on uncheck all link. Once you have done all that, you need to check your email and find the email from Dogster, which will provide you with a link to confirm your account. Once you have clicked on that URL, you have completed your registration process.

Once you have registered yourself into Dogster, you have several options. Assuming that you registered into Dogster because you are a dog owner, you can create your own doggie page. In order to do this, you need to first type in your dog’s name. After you have written your dog’s breed, you will need to select your dog’s breed and you can also select a secondary breed. You can also say that your dog is a mixed breed. You can also write a story about your dog. To do this you need to click on the story link and you will see several fields open up, where you can write a story about your dog. You can also click on a check box that states that your dog is no longer with you if you are writing about a dog that you had and passed away. Furthermore, you can type all kinds of different other things about your dog. You can add some of your dog’s personality traits and other fun things that your dog does. Dogster also lets people know that this is a family oriented site and language needs to be suitable for a child of as young as seven years of age. In order for your doggie page to be published, you will need to upload a photo of your dog. Uploading your dog’s photo can take some time. Once your photo is uploaded, you can go back to your account page.

Once your doggie page is finished, you can see it and how it looks. When you log into your Dogster account, you will see your doggie page link and you can click on the picture of your dog and that will take you right to your doggie page. Once you are in your doggie page, you can see how everything is and Dogster will even give you a number of different stars depending how good your doggie page is.

Another thing that Dogster offers is an adoption service. If you click on the “See the dogs!” link, you can click on adoptions and view all the dogs that are put up for adoption. Your search for dogs on Dogster is not just limited to the United States and Canada. You can choose from practically any country in the world.

Other services that Dogster offers include gifts for dogs and dog lovers, tips about veterinary care and much more. You can buy things from Dogster and also share questions and answers about dogs with other dog owners on Dogster.

Dogster is a privately owned company that was founded in 2004 and is based in San Francisco, California. Dogster has three people on its management team, two people on its board of directors, and two advisors. The three people on Dogster’s management team consists of the three founders of Dogster, who are Ted Rheingold, John Vars, and Steven Reading.

Ted Rheingold is the man behind the idea of Dogster. Mr. Rheingold also founded Catster for cat lovers. The reason for founding Dogster was to unite people who love dogs and cats, and offer a place where people can share tips, ask questions, write biographies and buy things for their pets. Mr. Rheingold also serves as Dogster’s CEO and is also one of the people on Dogster’s board of directors.

Besides being one of Dogster’s cofounders, Mr. Vars is also at the company as the CPO. His major role in the management is to search for new products to sell on the Dogster site. Mr. Vars has a background on software engineering and before taking part in the founding of Dogster, he worked as the product manager for Preview Travel, which is a major global travel site.

Besides being the third cofounder of Dogster, Mr. Reading is also working at Dogster as the company’s chief business officer. Mr. Reading has an extensive background in tax law and was born and raised in London, England. Mr. Reading came to San Francisco in 1994. Mr. Reading graduated from the University of London with a Law degree and then went on to study at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, where he received a degree in Tax Law.

Dogster’s investors include Jeff Clavier, Adam Baguelin, and Michael Arrington, who invested $1 million in series A funding in September of 2006.

Jeff Clavier is the founder and Managing Partner of SoftTec VC and is one of the most active seed stage investors in the Web 2.0 industry. Mr. Clavier has been investing in Web 2.0 for a while and in 2007, he was named in Business Week as one of the 13 Web 2.0 King Makers. Mr. Clavier has also been active in both North American and European markets.

Mr. Arrington is a serial investor who has invested in many entrepreneurs who are in the tech, software, and internet industries. Mr. Arrington is also no stranger to entrepreneurship, founding several different internet startups himself. One of his biggest successes is TechCrunch, which is an information site that gives reviews about new technologies and companies in the tech industry.

Dogster does have a few competitors. Two of the most noteworthy competitors are Leashes and Lovers and United Dogs and Cats.

Leashes and Lovers is an online social network for dog lovers and provides a service that is similar to the service provided by Dogster. Leashes and Lovers is a privately owned LLC that was founded in 2003 and is based in New York City.

Like Dogster and Leashes and Lovers, United Dogs and Cats is also a social network that aims to unite dog and cat lovers all over the world. United Dogs and Cats is a privately owned LLC that is based in Estonia.

For more information about Dogster, click here.

Founded in 2004, B-Side is a unique entertainment technology company that creates websites for over 250 independent film festivals throughout North America. As you first open the B-Side website, you are greeted with a headline that reads “The audience is never wrong.” The way that B-Side works is by connecting with different independent film producers who want publicity for their films and allows them to feature their film on a website on B-Side’s domain and then either individual viewers or entertainment companies and radio or TV stations can go onto those sites and view and critique the films.

When you first go onto B-Side’s website, you have several options to choose from. The homepage tells you who the people at B-Side are and what they do. There is also information about the films featured on B-Side and a schedule for upcoming film festivals. At the very top of each page, just beneath the headline, there are several links that you can click on. The first link after the home link is the films link.

The films link will bring you to all the films that are featured on B-Side. You can scroll down the list of the different films that are available for screening and next to the film’s thumbnail is a short story about what the film is about. You can either click on the thumbnail or on the more link after the brief paragraph of the film and you can view the film yourself using the Adobe Flash Player. You can even click on the full screen button to view the film on the entire screen of your computer’s monitor to have as much of the cinema effect as possible. Next to the film featured on the site, you can even schedule a screening of the film if you choose to do so.

The link after the films link is the festivals link. This link shows you when festivals are coming up and you can schedule to go to those film festivals if you choose to do so. Under this link, you can even view a video about the various film festivals available on B-Side.

The link after the festivals link is the blog link. Under this link, you can read several different blogs about upcoming film festivals and stories or critiques about the various films that are featured on B-Side.

B-Side is a privately owned corporation that is based in Austin, Texas and employed nine people. The company is managed by its founder, who is Chris Hyams; who also serves as B-Side’s CEO.

B-Side’s investors include Silverton Partners and Maples Investments, who invested $3.1 million in series A funding in October of 2006 and $4.25 million in series B funding in November of 2008 with Valhalla Partners joining the above mentioned investors.

Silverton Partners is a vc firm that primarily invests in early stage companies who are based in the Austin, Texas area. According to the team at Silverton Partners, the culture that is represented at the vc firm is a people driven culture that leads the partners at Silverton to partner up with exceptional entrepreneurs. Other companies in Silverton’s portfolio include Chicory Systems, Crimson, Crossroads Systems, Matrix Services, and others.

Maples Investments is an investment firm that was founded by investor and entrepreneur, Mike Maples, Jr. and the firm invests in all sectors of the tech industry. Other companies in Maples Investments include 750 Industries, Aggregate Knowledge, Bazaarvoice, Business Connect China, Ghegg, and others.

Valhalla Partners is a vc firm that has over $240 billion of capital under its management and mainly invests in companies who are in the software, internet, digital media, mobile, storage, and infrastructure industries. Other companies in Valhalla’s portfolio include Advertising.com, B2e Markets, BlueStripe Software, and others.

For more information about B-Side, click here.

As the internet keeps being a growing marketplace for just about anything, the music industry has also taken a hold of the abundant market opportunities on the internet. Music, however, has not been a stranger to the internet. Napster was actually the first music file sharing network on the net, but was later forced to shut down because of the complaints of artists and record companies who thought they were loosing profits from everyone sharing music files on Napster. Once Napster got started, however, the gene was out of the bottle and both artists and record companies saw the potential for profit on the internet market. Many online music companies have emerged ever since Napster was shut down. One of these happens to be Amie Street, which advertises itself as a website that allows artists to upload their music for publication.

Anyone can sign up to use Amie Street’s services and you do not necessarily have to be an artist to use Amie Street. All you need to do is to type in your email address, a username, and a password that has to be more than four characters long. You also have the option to subscribe to Amie Street’s online newsletter, but if you do not like to have all kinds of junk email, the subscription is not necessary and you can uncheck the box that asks if you want to subscribe to their newsletter. The process takes a few seconds and then you are ready to browse over the collection of music that is available on the Amie Street website. Amie Street membership is free.

Once you have signed into Amie Street and are ready to look up music, you can select from several different genres. The genres that Amie Street offers are pop, rock, folk/country, electronic, hiphop/rap, soul, classical, and more. You can go on the genre pulldown menu and choose the genre of your particular taste. If you do not see the genre of your taste in the menu, you can click on more genres. When you click on the more genres option, you will find a huge variety of different genres ranging from music that comes from all over the world. You can even select from such genres such as polkas and other rare genres aimed at select tastes.

What makes Amie Street stand out from other music sites in the industry is that many of the songs and albums on the site can be downloaded for dirt cheep. You also have the option of listening to the music before you buy it. The only thing about Amie Street is that you have to pay a minimum of three dollars when you buy a music file or album from the site. You will get this notice as soon as you pay for a song or album that is under three dollars. You will also find a list of options from which you can choose from each option will cost more. Prices can range from three dollars all the way to above $90. Click on the option that you want and then you can proceed on to checkout. At the checkout, you have three different payment options. You can pay either with Amazon Payments, your Paypal account, or your own credit or debit card. If you choose to pay by credit or debit card, Amie Street takes MasterCard, American Express, Visa, and Discover cards.

Amie Street is a privately owned company that is based in Long Island City, New York, and was founded in 2006. The company currently employs twelve people and the company’s management team consists of the three cofounders, who are Elliot Breece, Elias Roman, and Joshua Boltuch.

Amie Street’s sole known investor is Amazon.com, which invested an undisclosed amount of money in series A funding in August of 2007.

Amazon.com is the pioneer in e-commerce and originally started by selling books online, now Amazon.com sells anything from books to records and other things as well and has become a multimillion dollar business. Amazon.com also invests in companies that could be of interest to Amazon.com

Because the online music and entertainment industry is such a fast growing marketplace, that it comes to no surprise that Amie Street does have a few competitors. One of the company’s most noteworthy competitors is GarageBand.com.
Founded in 1999, GarageBand.com is a subsidiary of iLike.com and offers a service that is similar to the service provided by Amie Street. GarageBand.com is managed by only one person and has seven people on its board of directors. The company is based in Seattle, Washington and its investors include Khosla Ventures and NEA.

For more information about Amie Street, click here.

Lately the craze of social networks, which has taken off with the bigger social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace, seems to be getting bigger with more different social networks for all kinds of different tastes. Founded in 2006, RockYou is an interesting social network that allows you to create your own slideshows, add glitter text, music and much more. Furthermore, RockYou also has all kinds of widgets available, that you can attach to your other social network accounts, such as Twitter and the others.

To be able to use the services provided by RockYou, you need to register your email and it is free. RockYou gets most of its revenues through advertising. To register, you need to first type in your email address and then the password of your email account. This can be something of concern to some people, but the company site states that your email password will not be saved; it’s just to verify that your email account exists. Once you have taken those steps, you will be prompted to enter and confirm a RockYou password and then state the country that you live in and either your zip or postal code. Once you have completed those steps, you are in. You will also receive an email from RockYou, welcoming you as a new member.

Once you have logged into your account on RockYou, you can create your own slideshow by uploading photos from your computer and you can even select several different transitions. Furthermore, the photos that you can upload cannot be any more that 3 MB in size.

There is a slight problem with how the slide show works on RockYou. You upload the photos from your computer and then, when you click the save button, you get a message that you do not have any slideshow to save. Furthermore, when you choose to go back to the slideshow, it takes for ever for the slideshow to load back up.

Besides creating your own slideshows, RockYou also allows you to create widgets for all the different social networks available. Below the slideshow creation feature, you will notice that there are different widgets which are available for most of the major social networks. Widgets are available for Facebook, MySpace, HI5, Friendster, Orkut, Bebo, and more. To find out what other social networks you need, click on the more button, but you will find more of the same.

RockYou is a privately owned corporation that is based in Redwood City, California and employs 75 people. RockYou has six people on its management team. These people include Lance Tokuda, CEO and cofounder; Jia Shen, CTO and cofounder; Ro Choy, CRO; Steve Van Horne, CFO; Lisa Marino, Vice President of Sales; and Mihir Shah, Vice President of Ad Network.

The two cofounders of the company, as mentioned above, are Lance Tokuda and Jia Shen.

Along with being both a cofounder and CEO of RockYou, Mr. Tokuda has over 15 years of experience in software and management, which he brings to the company. Furthermore, before taking part in the founding of RockYou, Mr. Tokuda worked for several consumer and web services companies, such as Iconix and Open Harbor, where he held key executive positions in both companies. Mr. Tokuda was also an early employee at Resumix, which was later acquired by Yahoo! and is now known as Yahoo! Hot Jobs.

Besides being the other cofounder, Jia Shen is also the company’s CTO and is in charge of RockYou’s technical functions. Like Mr. Tokuda, Mr. Shen also worked at Iconix, where he served as the engineering manager. Mr. Shen also held key positions at Open Harbor, BlueDog, and Bell Laboratories. Furthermore, Mr. Shen is highly experienced in enterprise sales and services while working for large companies, such as Tyco, Flextronics, and DHL.

RockYou’s investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and First Round Capital, which invested $1.5 million in series A funding in June of 2006. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital were returning investors and were joined by Partech International in funding the company in $15 million series B funding in May of 2007. RockYou received more funding rounds later with Doll Capital Management or DCM being the sole investor in a $1 million convertible debt funding round in May of 2008. DCM was then joined by Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Partech International as returning investors along with new investors, Softbank Japan and SK Telecom Ventures in a $67 million series C funding in June of 2008.

Sequoia Capital is a world class vc firm that primarily invests in early stage companies in the tech industry. Sequoia Capital is managed by some of North America’s best known entrepreneurs, such as Apple’s Steve Jobbs, Oracle’s Larry Emerson, and other well known entrepreneurs. Some other companies in Sequoia Capital’s portfolio include Alfa & Omega, Aricent, Dropbox, FireEye, Loopt, R2, Jasper, Stoke, StrongMail, and others.

Lighspeed Venture Partners is a multinational vc firm that has its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, and also has offices in Shanghai and Beijing China; New Delhi, India; and Herzliya Pertuach, Israel. Lightspeed Venture Partners currently has over $2 billion of committed capital under its management. Some other companies in Lightspeed’s portfolio include 4Interactive, Aerohive, AMEC, Audio Pixels, Bling Nation, and others.

With over $850 million under its management, Partech International is a leading international vc firm which operates in the United States, Europe, and Israel. Partech International is very selective in the industry that it invests in. Partech solely invests in the IT industry. Some other companies in Partech’s portfolio include Bocada, Brands4Friends, DecisionView, Jaspersoft Software, Spoke, TV Trip, and others.

DCM is an early stage vc firm that has the mission to turn entrepreneurs and their ideas into world class companies. DCM currently has $1.6 billion under its management and has helped build some of the world’s best known companies and operates in the United States, China, and Japan. Some other companies in DCM’s portfolio include @motion, 2Wire, About.com, AdSpace, Embark, GoodMail, and others.

Because RockYou is in an industry that has become a massively growing industry for a while, it is no surprise that RockYou would have quite a bit of competition. Some of RockYou’s most noteworthy competitors include Animoto, WidgetBucks, and CoolApps.

Animoto provides a service similar to RockYou and was founded in 2007. Animoto is a privately owned corporation which is based in New York City. Animoto has four people on its management team with Amazon being its sole known investor.

WidgetBucks is a service that also creates widgets for most of the big social networks. Unlike Animoto, WidgetBucks creates widgets for shoppers. WidgetBucks was founded in 2005 and is a subsidiary of Mpire.

CoolApps is a company that develops different apps for Facebook and is a subsidiary of Insider Guides. One of the things that this company advertises is that you are able to own your friends and are able to put yourself on the market and see how much you are worth. If you currently click on the CoolApps website, you will notice an advertisement that the company is currently hiring developers of Facebook apps.

For more information about RockYou, click here.

Zoodak is an interesting company that is still undergoing beta testing. Zoodak educates people about the stock exchange by simulating the stock market and providing players the stock exchange tournament. Zoodak offers two different programs, a free portfolio and a portfolio that costs $20. Signing up for the service that Zoodak provides is also very simple. First, you type in your first and last name, type in a user name and a password. You get into the program right away without having to wait for a confirmation email.

As you look at the Zoodak site, you will find all kinds of different things that form your portfolio as if it is your portfolio in a real stock exchange. As you log into your account, you will see a pie graph and you will be allowed to add in quotes. There are several tabs on the Zoodak website that make the site look like an online trading site. This is a game that is intended to educate its users how to successfully trade on the stock market.

The first tab is the home tab. This tab actually shows your Zoodak account’s home page. The homepage has all kinds of advertisements for stock trading tournaments and prizes. The next tab is the tournament tab. This tab is the playing field. You will see the tournament of the month and you will have an option to do the practice tournament or the payment tournament. You can also view the results of the tournament of the previous month as well as a hyperlink that shows all time performance and instructions on how to play. If you are not familiar about how this website works, this is the tab for you. All you need to do is to click on the “how to play” link at the top of the page. When you click on this link, you can see some clear set of instructions that explain the way the tournament works.

The first paragraph of this page explains about for the cash tournament works. When you pay $20 you will get a portfolio with a balance of $100,000. This tournament allows you to trade for 20 days, and if you win the highest rates, you can win cash prizes. Furthermore, if you enter a positive return, you will win ZooPoints which you can use to buy portfolios for future tournaments. According to these instructions, Zoodak is different from other stock trading contest sites, Zoodak allows you to start trading on their site immediately, whereas many other similar sites make you have to wait for the new month to begin.

On the ZooTrader page, you will see the leader board. This is a table with all the participants of a stock trading contest. On this table you can see all the participants in the contest, their contest portfolios, their reports, their projected cash prizes, and projected ZooPoints earnings. The highest prizes are always at the top of the table of the leadboard.

The third tab on the Zoodak website is the ZooAnalyst tab. This is a tab for you to look up when you need to research certain stocks that you want to enter into the trading contest. In this tab you can look at what other people are saying about certain stocks. As you click on the ZooAnalyst tab, you will see a list of trader names and what they could be saying on particular stocks. You can click on a trader’s name and see their portfolio, including what they are saying about a certain stock. You can look into traders’ profiles and even sign into them and if they are interested in you, the will add you to their friend’s list and you can add them to your friend’s list. This feature allows for people to talk with each other and share different trading tips.

The next tab is the research and ideas tab. This tab is devoted to do market research and see which stocks will do well in the contest. This tab is divided into several different sub-tabs. The first sub-tab is the overview, which is what comes up when you click on the research and ideas tab. The next sub-tab is the sectors and industries sub-tab. In this sub-tab you will see two charts. The first chart is the Top 10 industries, which is a table that has sectors, industries, and day’s change. In the Top 10 table, you will see that all the quotes in the day’s change are positives in green. Below that table is the table containing the Bottom 10 industries table. This table is laid out just like the Top 10 industries. The only difference is that all the numbers in the day’s change are in the red and are all negatives. The sub-tab after the research and ideas sub-tab is the stock quote tab. This tab is the tab that gives you stock market information and allows you to get the different quotes about stocks that you could possibly add to your portfolio. You can also get the latest stock market news. The fourth sub-tab of the research and ideas tab is the news sub-tab that has all the latest stock market news.

The fourth tab on the Zoodak website is the ZooStore tab. This tab has prizes that you can win with a certain number of ZooPoints. The ZooStore offers a limited number of prizes that you can buy with ZooPoints. Some of the lower end prizes are T-shirts and baseball caps with the Zoodak logo and higher end prizes include an iPod Touch and USB flash drives.

The last tab is the promotions tab. This tab offers all kinds of different promotions that allow you to win a certain number of ZooPoints. You can choose from some of these promotions and win points to play more.

Zoodak is a rather new company that is based in San Ramon, California and was founded in 2008. The company currently employs seven people and is a privately owned corporation. Zoodak has three people on its management team and three people on its board of directors.

Zoodak does not disclose its investors to the general public.

Some of Zoodak’s major competitors include Predictify, Xpree, and ExchangeP.

Predictify is a company that posts a website that offers a service similar to Zoodak. The company belief is that larger crowds can more accurately predict information than small groups of people. Predictify allows users to predict everything from politics to business and users can win money. Predictify was founded in 2007 and is a privately owned company based in Menlo Park, California. The company has four people on its management team.

Xpree is a company that also has a service similar to Zoodak. Its function is to train workers to be productive for the enterprise and win a valuable place at work and in the marketplace. Xpree is a privately owned corporation that is based in Redwood, California and has three people on its management team.

The one competitor that is very similar to Zoodak is ExchangeP, which is a limited liability corporation. ExchangeP is a company that allows for people to research the real market value of a company and allow you to make a wise investment.

For more information about Zoodak, click here.

As more people are working from home online, time reporting has been a big concern for both employers and employees to count their time on various projects done online. Often, many employees are at the mercy of either their employers or themselves to manage the time and hourly rates of work done online. In some cases, time management has a lot of guess work. Well, introducing TimeXchange, which is a new website that has a mission to provide solutions for managing time and payments online for both employers and employees.

TimeXchange is a unique website that offers a service that requires you to pay for services. TimeXchange also has a free trial version, which allows you to play around with the services available on the TimeXchange website for a certain period of time. The pay services that TimeXchange offers are the same services as are offered in the trial version. You can buy the annual plan which costs $39.95 pe3r year or you can buy a monthly plan that costs $9 for the first three months and then you need to contact the company to go on find out what the monthly costs will be for the continual use of TimeXchange’s monthly services.

Signing up for TimeXchange’s services is rather simple. First you need to type in both your first and last names, then your email address. You also need to confirm your email address and then you need to type in a password that contains a minimum of six characters. This password is case sensitive and needs to have at least one upper case letter and one number incorporated in it. After typing in your password, you need to confirm your password by retyping it as well. When you are signing up for the uses of TimeXchange’s services, you also have the option to add a few emails, which could be the emails of your friends, coworkers, business partners, etc. That feature, however, is optional. The required fields that need to be filled in are marked by an asterisk next to that particular field.

Once you are in the TimeXchange program, you have several features at your disposal that can help you manage your time in a very cost effective manor. At the website you have several tabs to choose from. The first tab is the project tab. You can click on that tab to create, manage, and delete projects. Projects can be related to your work, or if you are freelancing online, as many people do, you can choose what your hourly rate is and estimate how many hours this project will take you to finish.

The next tab after the project tab is the time tab. When you click on this tab, you come to a page where you can manage your time, hours for your work project, time when you are on vacation, etc. This page displays a calendar and you can choose dates and times. You can also use this page to keep appointments for both online and offline meetings.

The third tab is the expenses tab, which allows you to manage your expenses and in both the expense and time tabs, all the expenses are automatically added up for you. For example, you have an article writing project that you are doing online, in the projects tab you all the expense and payment information about that particular project. You can also manage costs for all kinds of other expenses in the expense tab. For example, if your job requires you to travel quite a bit, you can add the mileage and figure out how many miles you need to bill for. You can also figure out hotel expenses, meals, tolls and parking expenses, and many other kinds of expenses that you come across in the average work day or business trip.

The last tab on the TimeXchange website is the reports tab. This tab allows you to see what your reports are, prepare things for billing, etc. You can even export reports to other sites, such as the sites where your employer reviews your hours.

Your homepage on TimeXchange has your personal profile and you can also upgrade your personal profile whenever you like.

TimeXchange is a privately owned corporation that is based in Chicago, Illinois and was founded in 2006. TimeXchange has four people on its management team, who include Joe Piekarz, company president and CEO; Jim Figliulo, director of business development; Eileen Dowd, director of member services; and Maripa Abella-Davison, company CTO.

Members of the company’s board of directors include David Hill, Kevin Alodi, and Michael Kelly. TimeXchange does not disclose its investors, and the only information about investments that TimeXchange has been known to receive is seed funding, yet the vc firm who invested in this seed funding or the amount of the seed funding is not disclosed to the public.

TimeXchange does have one noteworthy competitor, who is Tsheets, which like TimeXchange was also founded in 2006. Tsheets is a company that provides similar services to that which are provided by TimeXchange. Tsheets is based in Maridian, Idaho, and has two people on its management team. Tsheets is a privately owned company which employs nine people.

For more information about TimeXchange, click here.

Over the past two or three years, an amazing phenomenon has overtaken the entire social networking industry. When Twitter launched three years ago, the entire internet has been tweeting from computers, mobile devices, and phones. Tweets have been used to spread information from news to fomenting revolutions throughout the globe. Since then, a number of different social networks that are based off of Twitter and let you edit your Twitter accounts have popped up like mushrooms after a rainstorm.

One of these new Twitter based social networks is TuneIn, which was founded in July of 2009. To use TuneIn, you must have a Twitter account and you can log directly into your Twitter account from TuneIn and have all of TuneIn’s services at your disposal. According to the CEO of TuneIn, Adam Hertz; in a video produced by TechCrunch, TuneIn is basically a digital VCR for twitter. The drawback of Twitter is that all the information that is on Twitter comes in on real time and for those who are information addicts, when they go to bed or get something to eat, they miss out on some of the information because there is no way to save the information on Twitter. TuneIn aims to correct that problem. When someone just uses Twitter, information simply scrolls off the screen with out the user being able to stop and save a particular tweet. Mr. Hertz further went on to state in that people aught to think of TuneIn as Tivo for the web, or that it works much like Napster used to work. If you have ever used Napster, you probably remember how you were able to view someone’s playlist when you were downloading music from that person. Well, TuneIn works much in the same way. When you log into your Twitter account through TuneIn, you are able to use TuneIn to filter what people you want to associate with or what tweets you think are noteworthy or important. In TechCrunch’s video, Mr. Hertz stated that the real filters in the social networks are people. People should be able to filter the information they feel important from the information that they consider as junk. TuneIn allows you to be able to save all the tweets, video and audio from users that you feel are important or are close to you.

TuneIn is still a rather new startup and is still in the early stages of beta testing and the beta testing is on an invitation basis only and is limited to a few hundred people, but within the next coming months, the company plans to have the number of people beta testing TuneIn to grow to a few thousand.

As mentioned before, Mr. Adam Hertz is the CEO of TuneIn and is also its founder. Mr. Hertz has over twenty years of experience in technology and the consumer internet industry. Before founding TuneIn, Mr. Hertz was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Kapor Enterprises. Mr. Hertz also held key executive positions at Ofoto, Technorati, Contact Networks, and Excite@Home. Mr. Hertz also worked at Magic, NeXT, and Lotus as an engineering manager.

Other people on the TuneIn management include Jim Lanzone, Philip Black, and Mitch Kapor. All the people on the company’s management team, including Mr. Hertz are also on the company’s board of directors.

Jim Lanzone is the cofounder of TuneIn, working together with Mr. Hertz to help build the company. Previously, Mr. Lanzone was CEO of Ask.com and also served as both the senior vice president and general manager of Ask.com, US. In his position at Ask.com, Mr. Lanzone oversaw product management and all marketing and engineering operations. Mr. Lanzone also launched eTour in 1997 and ran it until it was acquired by Ask.com in 2001.

Philip Black is simply a member of TuneIn’s board of directors and works as a partner with True Ventures, one of the company’s investors. Before coming to True Ventures, Mr. Black founded Blacksmith Capital in 2003. Blacksmith capital is a vc firm that mainly invests in seed and early stage companies. Before founding Blacksmith Ventures, Mr. Black worked at ABS Ventures, where he served as General Partner of the firm. Before that Mr. Black worked at San Francisco-based Weiss, Peck, & Greer Venture Partners, which has since become Lightspeed Venture Partners, from 1995 to 1999. Mr. Black started his career in venture capital funding at Summit Capital as an associate and then was promoted to senior associate. He was an active investor in over 20 privately owned companies during his tenure at Summit Capital. Mr. Black graduated from Stanford University with an AB degree in Economics.

Mitch Kapor also contributes to TuneIn as a member of the company’s board of directors. Mr. Kapor is an amazing individual with a wealth of experience in the business and entrepreneurial community. Mr. Lotus is one of the founders of Lotus and was the mastermind of Lotus 1-2-3, which has become known to the tech world as the “killer application.” Truly a pioneer in the tech industry, his Lotus 1-2-3 has made the PC become a household commodity in the 1980s through into the mid 1990s. Mr. Kapor is also the chairman of Mozilla, the creator of the FireFox internet browser and is also a philanthropist, who has deep concern for the environment. Mr. Kapor is also a cofounder of the Level Playing Field Institute, where he still sits on its board of directors. The Level Playing Field Institute is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to fairness and equal opportunity in both educational institutions and in the workplace. Mr. Kapor founded more companies and is a machine what will never stop.

TuneIn’s main investors include True Ventures and Mitch Kapor, who invested $500,000 in series A funding in July of 2009.

True Ventures is a large vc firm that mainly invests in seed and early stage companies with offices in Palo Alto, California, San Francisco, California, and in Northern Virginia; near Washington DC. The team at True Ventures believes that early stage high growth companies need the type of venture backers who are both creative and have a great deal of entrepreneurial experience to help new entrepreneurs turn their ideas into successful companies. Some other companies in True Ventures’ portfolio include GigaOM, MeeBlog, WordPress, Three Rings, Spectrum Bridge, and others.

TuneIn does not have any noteworthy competitors as of yet.

For more information about TuneIn, click here.

If you are a web developer who is designing a website and are having a hard time getting people online to visit your site? Maybe you are a developer of an online entertainment site and are sick of relying on advertising revenues and would like to keep people on your website for hours playing games that they would not be able to get enough of. Well, there is a website for all you developers out there. HeyZap is the website made for developers and provides widgets of thousands of video games that developers can place on their website and people would actually pay to play these games. Many of these games are strategy games where the player won’t handle the suspense and be addicted to the game quick enough that he will be on your site for hours.

If this sounds like a good business plan for you, then you probably would like to know how HeyZap works. It’s very simple, you log onto the HeyZap website and you sign up to their service. It is a pay service and HeyZap even offers $50 free credit that will allow you to get what you need to get these games on your website and start earning money from them. This credit is made from “HeyZap Money,” and basically when users play these flash games that have been posted as widgets on your website, they would have to buy the HeyZap money through your website to be able to buy upgrades and new flash games to play and you make money. HayZap will actually pay you to sell their product on your website. The way this system works is by the following: first, as a user plays a game on your website, he will eventually see an update needed button open on the flash game and the user will have to get that update in order to continue to play that game. The user’s option is to have HeyZap money, which he has to buy in order to get the update. Once a user clicks on the upgrade button, he will see a dialogue box come up and the dialogue box will tell the user how much HeyZap money coins he has and how much he needs. Another web window will pop up with several buying options. The options can be a free promotional option, choose a payment by credit or debit card, choose payment by cellphone, or choose payment through Paypal. After clicking on one of the payment options you have a choice of several options to get, some of them are free and some of them cost money. These are advertising campaigns of certain businesses and you get a certain number of HeyZap money coins if you choose a particular advertisement. Some of these offers can range from internet-related software applications to snoring problem solving. Once the user has completed one of the listed offers, he can pay and continue playing.

HeyZap offers all kinds of different games for all kinds of different tastes. Some of these games include war games with amazing graphics to catching butterflies. Furthermore, if you want to choose some game widgets to put on your website, there is a list of games which has several options. The first option is the Popular option, which is a list of the most popular flash games that HeyZap has published. Some of the games on this list include Gem Craft, Iron Serpent, 3d Microwars, and many more. The next list of games that you can choose from is the list of featured games. These games are the games that have been featured and are also popular. Some of the games in this list include Shuriken, Even More Bloons, Colour Shift, Roly Poly Cannon, and more. Some of the games on the featured list are also on the popular list. The next game genre that you can choose from is the Premium game list. This list contains the best or the top rated games of all the genre lists. The list after the premium list is the New list, which contains all the new games that HeyZap has recently published. The next list is the Sports list. This list contains all flash games that are in the sports genre. The list below the Sports list is the Shooter list, which contains all the games in the shooting genre. These games are games where the player has to shoot his opponents and these games can range from simple target shooting to hunting related games to war games where you need to shoot invaders. There is also a list of strategy games, which can be different games where you need to develop a strategy to excel at those games. Some of the games in this genre include Bloons, 50 States, Kaban: Sheep, and many more. The point is that HeyZap has so many games that it is impossible to explain them all in one article. Other genres that you could choose from include puzzles, action, etc.

If you are a game developer, you can even sell your own flash game that you have developed and earn money every time someone on HeyZap is playing your game. All you need to do is to click your mouse on the developers tab at the top right-hand site and you will be prompted to type in a username, your email address, and a password. After that you need to click on the submit button and then you will be prompted to type in the name of the game and later on will have to upload the game.

HeyZap is the brainchild of to young entrepreneurs, Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund.

Born in London, England, Mr. Gomilla is not new at building startups. Before he co-founding HeyZap, Mr. Gomilla founded several other companies, which include Sugar Global and Helpthrist.com. Both of these companies became big names. Sugar Global is a company that makes digital picture frames and its products are also sold in big name stores throughout the United Kingdom, including Herrods, one of England’s biggest name stores. Mr. Gomilla graduated from Cambridge where he graduated will honors, receiving a degree in Engineering and Management.

Like Mr. Gomilla, Mr. Akhund also has a good business background. Before joining Mr. Gomilla in founding HeyZap, Mr. Akhund was both a founder and CTO of Clickpass, which was later sold to Synthasite. Mr. Akhund also graduated from Cambridge University, where he received a BA in Computer Science. Mr. Akhund also worked for Bloomberg’s Trading Systems Department.

HeyZap’s investors include the Y Combinator and Union Square Ventures along with angel investors, Naval Ravikant and Joshua Schachter. All of these investors joined in investing $500,000 in seed funding for HeyZap in May of 2009.

The Y Combinator is a new kind of vc firm that is dedicated to funding young entrepreneurs in the tech industry. The Y Combinator is a vc firm that only invests in the early stages in a company’s life. The Y Combinator mainly invests in seed stage, giving the young dedicated entrepreneur get over that first difficult hump in starting up a company. The team at the Y Combinator is dedicated to the tech industry, because its investors are all tech junkies and have the knowledge about the tech industry as well as the knowledge needed to start up a successful company and helping in creating a business plan that will take off.

Based in New York City, Union Square Ventures is a vc firm that primarily invests in early stage companies who are in the IT, digital media, healthcare, financial services, and telecom industries. Having been around for over 17 years, Union Square Ventures has a small team of investors who have the experience in a wide variety of industries. Some other companies in Union Square’s portfolio include 10gen, Adaptive Blue, AMEE, Boxee, Bug Labs, Disqus, Esty, and others.

HeyZap is still a rather new startup and the company still has not acquired any noteworthy competitors.

For more information about HeyZap, click here.

Based in San Jose, California, Deepmemo is another invention of Siteheart. Siteheart is an online chat site which attempts to get people to chat online about anything. Siteheart is also based in San Jose, California, and employs over 25 people. Deepmemo, however is not too impressive as a service. The way Deepmemo works is that you can either download the Deepmemo tool bar for FireFox, but the tool bar only works on the Mozilla FireFox browser, it will not work on Safari or Microsoft Internet Explorer. Deepmemo, however, after the FireFox tool bar has been downloaded is not exactly what it is cracked out to be. The first problem is how to login to Deepmemo’s service. The login is not clear. Do you need a Google account to log in or not? That is the main question. Not everyone has an email account with Google’s Gmail. What about those with Yahoo accounts or email accounts from other email providers, are they left out in the cold? Apparently, you can sign in if you have a different email account, by clicking in on a tiny OK button. The fact that the sign in on your Google account is so big that the OK button is hard to notice can confuse many users.

Once you have figured out how to sign in, the signing in process is rather easy. If you are using the FireFox tool bar in FireFox, it appears on the top right hand corner of the browser and just to the right of Google search tool bar. Once you sign into Deepmemo, you will see a page with several different tabs. When clicking on these various tabs, you can write your own blogs, send messages, contact friends, or if you are on Twitter, you can send your memos as tweets through Twitter. To send a message is rather simple. You can also send messages to friends.

The way the Deepmemo tool bar works is that when you click on the Deepmemo logo, your Deepmemo account page will automatically appear on the browser. Here you can edit your profile, send messages; write your blogs, etc. The next icon on the Deepmemo tool bar is an icon of a webpage with a pair of scissors nearby. This icon is used to clip passages of text from a particular website that you can send, that is either news, or other information of interest. The next icon looks like a webpage being clipped with scissors and has a pencil next to it. This is the blog icon. When you click on this icon, you will see a dialogue box come down and you can either write your blog or cut text from a web article and place it into your blog. The third icon is a pencil and paper. If you click on this icon, you will find that a dialogue box will also come down and this is used to post a message on Deepmemo. To use the Deepmemo tool bar on the FireFox browser, you will need to first click on the key icon, which is the very last icon on the Deepmemo toolbar. Before you click on this icon, all the other above mentioned icons will appear shaded in gray and will not be active. When you click on the key icon, you will see a dialogue box come down and it will prompt you to type in your user name and password. You also have the option to have your computer remember your password and keep you signed in every time you click on the any of the icons of the Deepmemo tool bar.

The main investor of Deepmemo, as well as an investor of Siteheart is PrivatBank. PrivatBank is a Ukrainian bank that has its banking branches in Ukraine, Russia, and other newly independent countries that made up the former Soviet Union, including Georgia. PrivatBank has also evolved into one of the largest and more stable banks of the former Soviet Union. PrivatBank was established in Ukraine shortly after Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union in 1992 and has since grown to have even associates in Switzerland. According to the PrivatBank B2 Blogger, PrivatBank announced its investment into Deepmemo on September 3, 2008, and also announced that Deepmemo will also be on Facebook. PrivatBank invested $0.8 million in seed funding.

Deepmemo does have some competitors. The major competitor of Deepmemo is Clipmarks, which offers a similar service as Deepmemo does. Clipmarks is based in New York and has four people on its management team. Information about Clipmarks’ investors is not available to the public.

For more information about Deepmemo, click here.

Corbis is dedicated to bringing high quality art photographs and putting them online. The service is for anyone who has a passion or is in business in photography or whose work has to do with photography. Registration for this service is free, but you can purchase photographs for fee and can sell your photography as well.

The signing in process for Corbis is rather smooth. To register for Corbis and create an account, you need to first type in a username and type in and retype your desired password. The password must be in between 8 to 20 characters. The password must be case sensitive and must contain at least one number. You also need to provide both your mailing and billing address, your email address, your company name, choose a position, and then you need to read the terms and privacy policy and click the checked box stating that you agree with the terms and click on the register button. Once you have registered into Corbis and created your account, you need to wait for your confirmation email to come, and it comes within seconds. Once you have gotten your confirmation email, you are in.

Once you have signed into your account, you can choose from a whole list of categories of photography on the site. Some of the categories that you can choose from include agriculture, animals, architecture, backgrounds, business, concepts, food, healthcare, health and beauty, and much more. You can also search for photographs by alphabetical order. You can also choose what photographs you want to buy. You can buy photographs that are rights managed, which means that you might not have the right publish those photographs, or if you are given publishing rights to those photographs, they might be limited and you might need to accredit the name of the author or publisher along with publication.

Royalty free photos can be published at your will. These are photos that are intended to be used in advertisements, promotional sites, motivational, etc.

You can also choose from illustrations for certain motifs. In the illustration list is a whole collection of beautiful hand-drawn artwork that is intended to be used as illustrations for themes in certain publications. Some of these pieces of artwork even look like classic masterpieces and are professionally done.

The next list of photo genres that you can choose from is the documentary genre, which is a collection of photography and artwork for travel, news, culture, nature, technology, etc.

Another genre you can choose from is the fine arts genre, which holds a collection of fine museum quality artwork. Some of the photos of the artwork are taken from some of the world’s top art museums.

There are other genres also available on the Corbis website that subscribers can subscribe to.

Coming back to choosing a photograph to buy from Corbis. First, you want to choose from one of the genres listed above. For example, if you return back to the royalty free artwork, you can choose from one of the choices in the list. For example, suppose you like nature or the natural motif. First click on the royalty free link and you will come across the list of different themes that are available. There are several choices that could fit that theme. You can choose from animals or nature. If you click on the animals link, you will see that to the right of the original list there is a more detailed list with what types of animal themes you can choose from. You can choose from either animal attitudes, animal farm, animals and wildlife, etc. If you are looking for nature, etc. If you are interested in nature and would like to have animals in the scene, you should choose animals and wildlife.

Once you have chosen your category to the final subcategory, you will find an amazing variety of photos available to browse. As your mouse hovers over each picture, a popup will appear that will show you the image and give you the information about the image, in the case of royalty free photography, the author’s name is not published. However, the information will describe the name of the animal and where it what photographed or the natural habitat of the animal is.

To view the photograph up close and not in thumbnail form, you can click on that photograph’s thumbnail and another window will open with a larger image. Here you have the option to browse the photo closer and in this window you can even find out who the author of that photograph is. It will also tell you whether you have the right to publish that photograph or not. You also have the option to buy the photograph if you wish to do so.

If you choose to buy the photograph, all you need to do is to click on the shopping cart icon. If you want to view your shopping cart, click on the shopping cart with the arrow and the content of the window will change to shopping information. At the top right hand corner of the window, you will see the number of items in your shopping cart and you can click on the cart button to view what is in your shopping cart.

Buying a photograph or artwork from Corbis is different from other e-commerce sites. In the conventional e-commerce site, the prices are already set. With Corbis, you need to price the photograph that you want to purchase. Under the thumbnail appears a link that says “Price now.” To get a price on that photograph, you need to click on that link and then the content of the window will change, giving you several options with different sizes of the photographs and the prices. For example, in this photograph, the sizes are measured in both pixels and in inches. The top option shows the photograph with the size of 427 pixels by 640 pixels or five inches by eight inches with the price being $55. The second option shows the photograph to be 853 pixels by 1280 pixels or eleven by 17 inches. You will notice that the price of this size of the same photograph will be more expensive at $100. The other one has a smaller size but a higher quality and of course more expensive with the price of $230. To choose a price, you need to click on the option that has the price that you are willing to pay. Once you have chosen your price, you can click on the Update my cart button and the shopping cart will appear with the price that you have chosen. The defect of Corbis is trying to get the price into your shopping cart and continue to check out. There is no option on how to be able to price the photo and drag it to the priced item. Perhaps Corbis only allows certain clients to buy the photographs.

Corbis is a privately owned corporation that is based in Seattle, Washington and was founded in 1989. Currently, Corbis has two people on its management team, who are Gary Shenk, who is the company’s CEO and Barry Allen, who is the company’s CFO. Bill Gates is the sole member of the company’s board of directors.

Mr. Shenk is the company CEO and in his role, he his responsible for all of the business operations at Corbis. Furthermore, Mr. Shenk has extensive experience in marketing and advertising, giving him an amazing leading role at the company and he is one of the reasons for Corbis’s success. Before being the company’s CEO, Mr. Shenk has been working at Corbis as its president since 2006. Before then he worked at Corbis as the company’s vice president of imaging, where he was in charge of the entire imaging department and led the transformation of images to editorial, entertainment, and creative photography. Before coming to Corbis in 2003, Mr. Shenk founded one of Hollywood’s major film licensing firms, FlixMix. Mr. Shenk also had an interesting youth, first living in Moscow, Russia, where he met his wife and then went on to graduate from both Harvard and the Wharton School.

Being the CFO at Corbis, Mr. Allen oversees the entire financial operations of the company. Mr. Allen came to Corbis in 2008, where he led the company to financial success. When Mr. Allen joined the Corbis team, the brought to the company over 25 years of experience in global companies, where he held various different senior positions in both publicly traded and privately owned companies in the internet, enterprise technology, and real estate industries. Before coming to Corbis, Mr. Allen worked at Move.com, where he was also the company’s CFO. Mr. Allen was also president of Marketwave, a leading provider of corporate e-business intelligence software. Mr. Allen graduated from the University of Washington, where he received his BA in Business Administration.

Corbis does not disclose information about its investors or investments that it has received to the general public.

Corbis does have one noteworthy competitor, which is GettyImages. GettyImages is a company that provides a similar service to Corbis and has actually been around before Corbis. GettyImages is a subsidiary of Hellman & Friedman and was founded in March of 1995. GettyImages has three people on its management team and one person on its board of directors.

For more information about Corbis, click here.

Yet in the age of computers and the internet, more and more people are searching for solutions to have a reliable backup system that can always provide access to important files when your system crashes. SugarSync is yet another example of innovative technology that is available to store your backup files online and keep them on a safe server that can be accessed from any computer or mobile device.

The service that SugarSync provides is not free, but you have several options available and you do get a free trial period for 30 days. You can also upgrade or down grade your service if you choose to do so. Some of these programs available include several packages that offer a monthly or a yearly fee and you can choose which fee you prefer to pay. The lowest cost program that SugarSync offers has a monthly fee of $4.99 or an annual fee of $49.99. This package is advertised for those who have a small collection of family photos or a limited amount of audio and video files. This package offers 30GB of free storage and has just the basic features. The next package is also what the company advertises as being the most popular of their packages and that is the Premium package, which has a monthly fee of $9.99 or $99.99 for an annual fee. This is basically the package that provides the needs for the average internet user who also is on the go frequently. This package offers 60MB of space and is designed for people who accumulate a lot of photos, videos, and music files. The third package that is available by SugarSync is the Professional package, which is designed for the business professional. The cost for this package is $14.99 per month or an annual fee of $149.99 and allows file storage up to 100 GB. This is especially designed for the mobile business man who is always on the go. For the person who constantly needs to have access to his files and needs plenty of storage on an online server that can be accessed at any time. Finally, for those of you who like to spend that extra money and always like to have all the bells and whistles, there is the most expensive package that SugarSync offers, which is the Business package. The Business package has a monthly fee of $24.99 or if you go for the annual option, the annual fee is $249.99. This package comes with 250 CB of storage and is designed for the person who has large files that need to be stored online and accessed from anywhere any time.

Now, how does SugarSync work? Well, once you have signed in for the service, you need to download the software for SugarSync to work for you. The SugarSync website is very simple and even detects what type of computer you have. For example, on a Mac, SugarSync will show you how to download it and the download box will appear as you download the software. Once you have downloaded the software, it is very easy to install and once installed you can upload your files from your computer to the SugarSync server and the program will tell you if you are over the limit of your package. The only problem with SugarSync’s service is that if you choose not to have a certain folder on the SugarSync server and it is synchronized your computer, you will not be able to delete those files without deleting them from your computer. This can also pose a potential problem.

SugarSync is a subsidiary of SharpCast, which is based in San Mateo, California. The company’s investors include Draper Fisher Juvertson, or DFJ, Selby Venture Partners, and Sigma Partners, which all participated in investments of $16.5 million in series A funding in March of 2006 and then $10 million in series B funding.

Founded in 1985, DFJ is a vc firm which mainly invests in early stage companies and has over $3 billion in assets under its management. DFJ mainly invests in the tech industry and has a global presence with offices in technology centers throughout the world. Some other companies in DFJ’s portfolio include 4INFO, Abuzz, Achex, AltoBeam, AppStream, and others.

Selby Venture Partners is a vc firm that has a leading presence in Silicon Valley and mainly invests in seed and early stage companies, who are in the business of developing next generation technology and software that will disrupt the inter tech industry. Some other companies in Selby’s portfolio include 3Ware, BigFix, Blue Pumpkin Software, Bay Micro Systems, EcoHouse, and others.
Sigma Partners is a leading vc firm that was established in 1984 and mainly invests in early stage companies who are in the tech industry. Sigma invests throughout the United States and has over $1.5 billion under its management. Some other companies in Sigma’s portfolio include Acquia, AppliedEntity. Aprimo, Azuki Systems, Centrify, Dambala, Digital Fuel, and others.

For more information about SugarSync, click here.

We live in an age where information can be sent from one person to another within seconds. This information technology in our Information Age can be great by providing instant telecommunication and we can share photos or text with friends and relatives who are physically far away. Though this is good, it does come with a few pitfalls as well. We all have heard stories about our files being intercepted by hackers and even some people have been rather shy about putting personal information out on the internet for this very reason. Well, Confidela aims to change all that with its new service, known as Watchdox.com, which is a file sharing and email authentication service. Watchdox.com is still undergoing public beta testing and will give you a free trial period for one month.

After or during the free trial period, you have the option to upgrade your account. The first option is the Watchdox Pro, which has a monthly fee of $14.95 and allows for safe and secure file sending, which means that you can send a file to whom you want and you can also set the file in a way that the person with whom you are sharing the file with can be controlled. You can allow the other person to edit the file or change things in that file, or you can allow the other person to only view that file. This is what Watchdox allows you to do. The Pro version also allows you to send files up to 25 people at the same time. The Pro version also allows for document encryption and tracking.

The next version that Watchdox offers is the Business version, which has a monthly fee of $29.95, but unlike the Pro version, the Business version requires a minimum of ten users to enroll in this program. The Business version also allows for more storage space than the Pro version. The Pro Version allows for 10MB as the maximum file size, whereas the Business version allows a file to be 20 MB as the maximum file size. Furthermore, the Pro version has a maximum storage capacity of 500 MB, whereas the Business version has a maximum storage capacity of 2 GB storage space online.

The top of the line version of Watchdox.com is the Business Premium. This is the highest quality service available by Confidela’s Watchdox.com and you need to contact the company to find out the price of the premium service. The Business Premium allows a maximum of online storage space to be up to 4 GB and allows you to send a file with the maximum size of 20MB.

The online file storage is also a great feature, because computers do crash. Many of you have experienced computer crashes and those of you who have Windows also probably have experienced file loss. With Watchdox, you can store files safely on a server online which allows you to have access to them from any computer anywhere.

Watchdox was launched by Confidela in 2009 as its flagship service designed to work as an SaaS or Software as a Service that allows individuals and businesses to store and share files with their associates without having to deal with any security issues or deployment hassles. Confidela likes to stress the importance in the easy use format of Watchdox.

The creator of Watchdox, Confidela was founded by both Moti Rafalin, who also works at the company as its CEO; and Noam Livnat, who also serves the company as its vice president of products.

Before Mr. Rafalin took part in founding Confidela, he worked as the General Manager of Applications Business Management at EMC, where he oversaw the transformation of nLayers technology, after nLayers was acquired by EMC. While working with nLayers’ technology, he was able to transform it into a successful business and in the end was able to increase the company’s revenue by over four times. nLayers was not the only acquisition that Mr. Rafalin was involved in at EMC. Mr. Rafalin also led the acquisition of Smarts and OEM. Mr. Rafalin graduated from the Technion, Israel School of Technology with a Summa Cum Laude BSc in Aerospace Engineering and then went on to Harvard Business School, where he received an MBA. Mr. Rafalin also spent over seven years in the Israeli Air Force, where he held several engineering positions.
Noam Livnat came from Cyota, Inc., which was later acquired by RSA, which is the security arm of EMC. At Cyota, Mr. Livnat was Senior Product Manager and oversaw the company’s entire product line from the very beginning to the point of maturity and introduction to the marketplace. Cyota was a company that led many innovations in layered authentication solutions and it was because of Mr. Livnat’s work that enabled RSA to acquire Cyota for $145 million in 2005. Like Mr. Rafalin, Mr. Livnat also spent some time in a branch of the Israeli military. Mr. Livnat served in Talpiyot, which is the most prestigious intelligence corps in the Israeli Defense Forces. Mr. Livnat graduated from the Tel Aviv University in Israel with a Magna Cum Laude BSc and a Summa Cum Laude MBA in Industrial Engineering.

Confidela’s investors include angel investor Shlomo Kremer, who is the cofounder of both Check Point and Imperva; and Gemini Israel Funds, which invested $5.5 million in series A funding in August of 2008.

Besides being involved in the above mentioned round of funding, Mr. Kremer also invested the seed funding that Confidela needed to get off the ground and also serves as the chairman of Confidela’s board of directors. Besides being an entrepreneur and founding Check Point in 1993, Mr. Kremer has also invested in several other security software companies.

Gemini Israel Funds is a vc firm that mainly invests in seed and early stage Israeli companies in the communications, wireless, consumer electronics, enterprise software, internet, and semiconductor industries. Gemini Israel Funds was founded in 1993 by the Israeli government’s Yozma Program to develop Israeli business and support Israeli entrepreneurs. Other companies in Gemini’s portfolio include Massive Impact, RADLive, Autotalks, Modu, Neocleus, and others.

For more information about Confidela, click here.

Throughout this new Information Age, in which we live in today, there are many IT companies offering many different solutions to improve communications from business and work processes to social networking. DevonWay is yet another example of a powerful IT company which has a vision to provide an on-demand solution to aid and improve the work process of heavy industry and the energy industry.

According to the DevonWay website under its product listing, the paragraph states that the IT industry has evolved into different types of methods of conveying information. The system that DevonWay employs has an organized system to improve the way people can work together for a company. DevonWay is not only dedicated to providing effective communications, but also providing a way to have improved communications and doing it at a much lower cost to the enterprise.

DevonWay’s on-demand system offers solutions and even incorporates them with Google technology to make it an even more powerful communications engine. The solutions in this on-demand system includes YourWay, ShareWay, DevonWay Connect, Google Search, WriteWay Reporter, MS Outlook, MultiLanguage, and Voice to Text. All these solutions combined into one powerful system are sure to help a company to take off globally. As far as the team at DevonWay is concerned, making communication easier and more cost effective could be a benefit to all companies. Just imagine, you are running a global company and you have affiliates in different countries and may not necessarily speak the same language you speak. Wouldn’t it be nice to have technology that is able to automatically translate your co-worker’s language into your language and vice versa? Language barriers can be a problem for global companies, but with DevonWay’s MultiLanguage, this can change. MultiLanguage can translate several languages while you are communicating with your coworkers in other countries.

Other features are the ActionWay, which provides condition and safety reports, as well as operating experience, action item management, quality control observation, and other useful services for the enterprise.

DevonWay is widely used in the nuclear energy and conventional energy industry. Especially for the nuclear industry, DevonWay has created a special SaaS or Software as a Service application set up on the DevonWay OnSite preconfigured server. Furthermore, what makes DevonWay such an attractive service to nuclear companies is that with DevonWay, company officials can enjoy all the features of a conventional browser, such as Google search to search through company data and are still able to control their security by themselves. Security is a big issue for nuclear companies in this day and age where terrorism and intrusion to sensitive access can be a serious concern. DevonWay’s service allows for nuclear companies to have complete control on important security features, such as SQA procedures.

As for the conventional energy and utilities industry, DevonWay on-demand is very useful in providing solutions to manage customer relations and lowering over all operations costs.

DevonWay’s achievements can also be proven by several press releases that have been published. In a press release published in December 3, 2008 by USA/Stars “OE,” which states that DevonWay was selected by NPPD for the Cooper Nuclear Plant. The article went of further to state that DevonWay’s TimeWay would be used to keep track of the time employees clock in and out, and also to fulfill the NPPD’s requirements to be in compliance with the 10 CFR Part 26, Subpart I, which are the Nuclear Fatigue Regulations.

In October 22, 2008, DevonWay had announced that it would team up with Hitachi in providing turnkey configurable solutions for the electrical utilities industry. The article went on further to state that the initial initiative would be to create a domestic solution that would address the above mentioned Nuclear Fatigue Regulation that is to be initiated in October of this year. This solution will also function as a SaaS where utility companies can manage all aspects of their functioning.
DevonWay is based in San Francisco, California and is a privately owned corporation that was founded in 2005. DevonWay’s investors include Crosslink Capital, which took part in a series A investment of $6.5 million in January 10, 2008.

Crosslink Capital is a unique investment firm that has one simple mission, to find the best companies to invest in. The partners at Crosslink Capital will work together with companies that show good business prospects and that have an edge. Crosslink Partners also has extensive experience and expertise in early stage investing and also provides its portfolio entrepreneurs unique partnership skills and structures. Some other companies in Crosslink’s portfolio include Alta Devices, Intematix, AmberPoint, Force 10, PlatoNetworks, SeaMicro, and others.

For more information about DevonWay, click here.

With the growing demand for alternative sources of energy, many companies are looking to solar and wind power for answers. There are many solar companies out there, but 1366 Technologies seems to a unique and innovative way to harness solar energy and aims to make solar energy cost the same as that energy generated by coal.

The type of technology that 1366 Technologies employs is photovoltaics. Photovoltaics is a silicon based technology that has no moving parts and the prototype has also been successful in the field. The one main ingredient in photovoltaic technology is silicon, which is readily available. Silicon makes up about 90% of sand and has also been used in micro-electronics because of its conductivity.

One of the key components to 1366’s products is its innovative cell architecture. The cell architecture used by the company in its products was developed by Prof. Ely Sachs. What makes this cell architecture so unique and effective, is that it actually improves the texture of the solar panel and enhances the efficiency of multi-crystalline cells. The most important aspect, however, is that this new cell architecture reduces cost. This is the key to make solar energy attractive to the marketplace. If solar energy can be made to effectively generate the power that is used by the average household and be cost effective at the same time, it is the key to get solar energy out to the mainstream market.

Furthermore, another positive for 1366 Technologies and this new cell architecture is that 1366 Technologies plans to work closely together with other solar energy companies and government agencies to help further develop this technology.

Another innovative technology that is developed by 1366 Technologies is the Light Capturing Ribbon. This is used together with the new cell technology. The light capturing ribbon is actually incorporated into the solar panel under the glass and it works by capturing the sun’s light and is soldered to the silver bus-bar. As the light comes into the unit, it is captured by the ribbon and then reflected off the glass inside the panel and then gets absorbed by the cell. Doing this actually enhances the solar source inside the actual unit, enabling the unit to generate more electricity than the conventional solar panel.

As mentioned before, this technology is the brainchild of Prof Ely (Emanuel) Sachs, who is the CTO of 1366 Technologies and also sits on the company’s board of directors. Prof. Sachs is a professor at the Daniel Fort Flowers School of Engineering at MIT and his specialty is in the designing and manufacturing process. Prof. Sachs does have several patents under his name and one of his inventions included the String Ribbon, which is a ribbon crystal growth that can be employed in making substrates for solar panels. Prof. Sachs is also a graduate of MIT, where in 1975 he received a BS in Engineering, then in 1976 he received his MS, also in Engineering, then went on to receive his PhD in Engineering in 1983.

Other members of 1366’s board of directors include Carmichael Roberts, Bob Metcalfe, Prof. Joe Lassiter, and Frank Van Mierlo.

1366 Technologies’ investors include North Bridge Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners, who invested $12.4 million in series A funding on March 27, 2008.

North Bridge Venture Partners or NBVP is a bicoastal vc firm with offices in both Boston, Massachusetts and San Mateo, California; and mainly invests in early stage companies in the communications, healthcare, materials and manufacturing systems, semiconductors and components, services, and software industries. Other companies in NBVP’s portfolio include A123Systems, Active Endpoints, DYM, Idiom, eRoom Technology, FirstSense Software, and others.

Polaris Venture Partners is a rather large vc firm that invests in seed, early and mid stage companies who are in the IT and other industries. Polaris Venture Partners has over $3 billion under its management and since its founding has invested in over 90 companies. Some other companies in Polaris’s portfolio include Athletes’ Performance, BlackArrow, Sprout, TechTarget, Thing Labs, Turbine, Ember, Silicon Optics, and others.

For more information about 1366 Technologies, click here.

Another example how the online travel industry is growing, despite the current economic downturn, is a company called “Yapta. Yapta offers a website where people can go and compare air fare and get good flights for bargain prices. Any time, when the economy is not doing too well, people will always be looking for a bargain where ever they can get one.

Using Yapta is very easy. All you need to do is to sign up by clicking on the join link and type in your email address, first and last name, a password, and confirmation of your password. You should be getting a confirmation email as soon as you sign up, but it does take about five or ten minutes for the confirmation email to come. Upon receiving the confirmation email, simply click on the link they give you and you are in. It’s that easy and best of all signing up to Yapta is free.

Once you have signed in and logged into Yapta, working with the service is also easy. Once you sign into your Yapta account, you will see three different options, which are tracking airfare price drops, tracking hotel rates and availability, and tracking for airfare vouchers and credits. All three of these services can be a big help to the bargain hunter.

When you are looking for airfare price drops on Yapta, you will see several fields which prompt you to type in the city of departure and destination, and then you have the option to choose a round trip or one-way fares. You will also see a drop menu that will show a calendar where you need to choose departure date and for round trip flights a calendar for the date of your return flight. One problem that Yapta does have is that it can load slowly on certain internet services and sometimes the server may not respond. This might turn away the more impatient users. However, when the site does work, after you have typed in all the above information, you will see a whole list with different airlines and their airfares. The site will even tell you whether the flight is a nonstop or has stops. Supposed you want to fly to Tbilisi from Chicago O’Hare. At your departure just type in Chicago and you will have three choices, all airports, Chicago Midway, and Chicago O’Hare International Airport. You will notice that most of the flights are operated by United Airlines. You will see a hyperlink that tells you how many stops you have. The only problem is that the prices are quite unrealistic. It is hard to find a price on Yapta for this flight that is under $3000. That is awfully high when tickets for this same flight are offered by various travel agents for under $1600.

The next option on the My Trips page of Yapta is dedicated to tracking hotels and rates. This feature also helps you see if there is a vacancy at a particular hotel. To use this feature, all you need to do is to click on the Track Hotels button. You will find several fields to fill out. You can also filter out other hotels, but this can sometimes yield no results. For example if you would like to stay at Hotel Vere Palace in Tbilisi, you will not be given any information on that particular hotel. However, if you do not filter any hotel, all the hotels in Tbilisi will appear. You will first see the high-luxury hotels from Marriot, Radison, and Hilton, and then all the others. The problem here again is that it will not really find the best prices and for avid travelers, this feature may also not provide that much of a service.

The third option in My Trips is designed to find refunds from flight vouchers or other credits. For example you are flying Lufthansa to Munich with flight 435 and you want to see if you can get some credits from this flight. This feature is very user unfriendly and you keep getting error messages unless you type in the fields correctly, which the site does not explain.

Yapta is based in Seattle, Washington and the company’s investors include First Round Capital and Voyager Capital, which invested $700,000 in seed funding and $2.3 milliion in series A funding.

Voyager Capital is a vc firm that mainly invests in companies who are in the IT, digital media, wireless, and software industries. Furthermore, Voyager mainly invests in the geographical location around Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and northern California areas. Voyager’s strategy is a “go to market” strategy, which is a strategy that helps new companies aggressively take their product or service to the market and helps the entrepreneurs develop an effective marketing strategy, crucial for new startups to execute in order to be successful. Some other companies in Voyager’s portfolio include Placecast, Amplitude, AboutUs, Capital Stream, Elemental, GoAhead, and others.

First Round Capital is a vc firm that mainly invests in early stage startup companies who are in the tech industry. First Round Capital especially looks for entrepreneurs who have an innovative product that could disrupt the tech industry. The vc firm is managed by Joshua Kopelman, Chris Fralic, Rob Hayes, and Howard Morgan. First Round mainly invests in seed and early stage funding for its portfolio companies. Other companies in First Round’s portfolio include 33Across, Aggregate Knowledge, AppNexus, Aster Data Systems, BazaarVoice, BiggerBoat, and others.

Yapta does have some heavy competition. Some of Yapta’s major competitors that could pose serious competition for the company include Kayak, CheapFlights, TripHup, and others. The two biggest competitors, however, are Kayak and CheapFlights.

Kayak is a website that provides a travel search engine and offers a service similar to what Yapta provides. Some of the services that Kayak offers is finding and comparing airfares, hotels, car rentals, etc. Kayak is based in Norwalk, Connecticut and employs 75 people.

CheapFlights actually pioneered the online travel industry by offering price comparison of airfare. CheapFlights partners up with many airlines and Priceline to help find the bargains for you. CheapFlights is based in London, United Kingdom and was founded in March, 1996.

For more information about Yapta, click here.

For the past decade, the internet has become the major source of media for the majority of the population in the United States and Europe, as well as in other parts of the world. Furthermore, since the majority of the American people have had access to the internet in the mid 1990s, the internet has graduated from the slow 56k modem connection to the super-fast broadband connection of today. As the internet is able to traffic more information with a much larger bandwidth faster, many websites have started with videos and internet television. Internet television was first pioneered by Youtube, but after that all kinds of TV websites have appeared on the web. In 2006, Joost was launched as a website that shows videos and TV shows and allows you to view videos and even share them with your friends. You can even share videos with your friends on Facebook with Joost.

Joost is currently undergoing public beta testing and anyone can join Joost for free and the sign up process is amazingly easy. When you join Joost, first you need to type in a username, which must be at least four characters or numbers with no spaces. The nice thing about the sign up application on Joost is that it will point out anything filled out wrong in red lettering and if each field is filled out correctly, the lettering appears white. This is very convenient because it saves time because you can be sure that every field is filled out correctly before you hit the submit button. After you have chosen your username and Joost has accepted it, you need to type a password and reconfirm the password. After that, you need to type in your first and last name. You will also need to type in your zip code, and then hit the submit button and you’re in. Joost will send you an email to confirm your email promptly and before you get that email, your service with Joost is not affected.

Navigating and using the Joost website is also rather easy. You can also search for your friends who might be on Joost and Facebook and share videos with them on Joost. Joost also allows you to search for videos selected to your individual taste.

Joost is a privately owned company based in New York City and the company’s founder is Niklas Zennström, who was also the CEO and cofounder of Skype, one of the world’s largest IP phone and video conferencing services. Skype is not the only successful company that Mr. Zennström founded. Before founding Skype, he also founded other companies, including KaZa, which is a consumer file sharing network similar to Napster. Mr. Zennström also ran the European branch of Everyday.com as its CEO.

Some of the several successes that Joost has had since its founding include its partnership with Viacom. According to a press release on the company website, dated February 20, 2007 states that Viacom was to be a key content partner with Joost. Viacom is a large producer of TV shows and feature films. According to this article, Viacom is to provide its branded content of entertainment for free on Joost’s websites, which Joost users can view for free. The article further states that Joost is a service that combines the best quality internet TV for the new Web 2.0. Furthermore in that article, Philippe Dauman, CEO and President of Viacom stated that Viacom is very pleased to start a partnership with Joost.

In September of 2008, Joost began to offer UK viewers hundreds of hours of hit shows by sealing a partnership with ALL3MEDIA International. In an article, also on the company site, that is dated September 30, 2008, explains that with this partnership, Joost users in the United Kingdom will be able to view such shows as Peep Show, Shameless, Derren Brown, Ultimate Force, and much more. Furthermore, the article states that Joost is not just a website for viewing TV shows online, but the website also has a social networking feature that allows users to interact with each other and talk about the various TV shows that they have watched over the Joost network.

Recently, in an article dated June 30, 2009, Joost announced that it will be providing white label online videos on its website. The article further states that more and more media companies are looking for high quality internet video portals to show their premium content. Furthermore, Joost will have to rework its business practices to keep these partnerships. After reworking these partnerships and providing more solutions that will improve TV viewing online, Joost will commercially offer white paper video content online.

Joost’s investors include CBS, Inc.; Index Ventures, Li Ka Shing Foundation, Sequoia Capital, and Viacom. All of the above investors all took part in a gigantic series A funding of $45 million in May of 2007.

CBS, Inc. is one of the largest broadcasting networks in the United States and has a large selection of hit shows. CBS partners with Joost and many of its videos are featured on Joost’s website.

Index Ventures is a vc firm that invests mainly in IT companies that represent a good investment opportunity. The team at Index Ventures is a group of dedicated entrepreneurs who built the vc firm up brick by brick. Some other companies in Index’s portfolio include 7TM, AlertMe, Betfair, Boku, DoubleTwist, King.com, Love Candy, and others.

The Li Ka Shing Foundation is a fund that was created by Mr. Li Ka Shing, who is the chairman of Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited. Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited is actually a branch of the Cheung Kong Group and is based in Hong Kong. The Li Ka Shing Foundation is a charitable organization that is based on Mr. Shing’s belief on how to form a successful equitable society. According to Mr. Shing, an equitable society can only be founded when every individual in that society is ready, willing and able to do his or her part.

Sequoia Capital is a global vc firm with its headquarters in Menlo Park, California and also has offices in China, India, and Israel. Sequoia Capital was built by some of the best known successful entrepreneurs, who include Steve Jobbs, of Apple; Larry Ellison, of Oracle; Bob Swanson, of Linear Technology, and others. Some other companies in Sequoia’s portfolio include Zappos.com, Afara, AMCC, AdMob, eHarmony, and others.

Viacom is one of the world’s leading entertainment content company, which generates all kind of prime-time entertainment brands. Some of the brands under the Viacom name include Media Networks, MTV, BET, TV Land, Spike TV, VH1, and others. Viacom invests and partners with companies that can be of good interest for the large media company.

Joost does have some competitors, but the biggest competitor is Hulu. Like Joost, Hulu is an online video sharing site which believes in bringing in premium entertainment to the masses. Hulu was founded in Los Angeles, California, and has six people on its management team.

For more information about Joost, click here.

We always have everything in motion around us, moving, lively. Technology had long back evolved with capturing these motions and storing them for future viewing. Then came the era of the internet, and it became more than a necessity for the videos to be shared, it was a lifeline. Estimated increase in growth of internet video population has gone from 65% to 85% within the past few years.

Founded in 2005, Visible Measures provides new solutions and capability to allow internet video publishers and advertisers understand the audience behaviours and accurately predict and analyze the success of internet video programs. They accomplish this by capturing and measuring every video interaction in every video from every viewer, from play to pause, to rewind to forward-to-a-friend and more. They major in providing video placements with benefits to the major brand advertisers. The technology works upon integrating the video streaming and viewing of the viewers to the hosts.

The company’s video solutions are provided by three core and powerful technologies, i.e., the Video Placement Multiplier, Viral Reach Database, and Video Metrics Engine and thus providing a rich technological and interactive platform for both the user and the provider.

The website has also been in the news recently for providing the top ten movie trailers chart and continuously posts the tricks and perks of understanding the online film trailer performances. One of the main features of the website is to provide with the 100 Million view club, with ratings and other details which are trusted throughout with accuracy. The list is a diverse collection of campaigns, including music and movie videos, trailers, user-generated videos, and clips from TV shows having the user hits as the common feature for all.

The company’s Partner Program is designed so as to help partners develop new opportunities and grow their businesses into profitable ventures. Built on a strong understanding of the partners’ needs, this program is sustained on solid foundation blocks of significant resource commitments to build strong and productive relationships with the partners. The company has partnered with internet video platforms Brightcove and the platform to provide their customers with analytical services as a pre-integrated solution for there projects.

The current investors for the company are:

• * Mohr Davidow Ventures that invested in hi5 networks, ProActive Software, etc.
• * General Catalyst Partners that invested in Kayak, EZ Prints, etc.
• * Northgate Capital that invested in Widgetbox, Silver Spring Networks, etc.
• * Mohr Davidow Ventures that invested in Tiny Pictures, Mantara, etc.
• * General Catalyst Partners that invested in Sand 9, Big Fish Games, etc.

Visible Measures had been also involved in a major product release for video advertisers.
Vidmeter gathers data from across the internet and provides an accurate and detailed representation of the most popular online videos in various forms. Since, it seems impossible to tell the exact number of hits and views a given video has been receiving from every website and every download, Vidmeter accumulates the reported view count from a large cross-section of web-based video sites, and hence indicates the relative popularity of the video among the viewers.

The major competitors it faces in the industry are Intempo Digital and Mixercast. The two majors specialise in music sharing and also eat up the larger chunk of the video industry. Intempo in particular had been involved in release of a large number of products for making streaming/download easier for the user.
Mixercast on the other hand is the mastermind creation of developers from Yahoo, Microsoft and many such large firms. It highlights the fact of legal sharing and personal sharing with customised products being available for the same.

For more information about Visible Measures, please click here.

Outspark, an online game company that focuses on the community besides the engaging online multiplayer and Role playing games (RPGs), was founded in January 2007, by Susan Choe and has now over 4.7 million users. Outspark is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with a subsidiary office in Seoul, Korea.
Enjoying rapid success due to a unique business model that has flourished an online community engaging in social events, in-game and around the game networking and user generated content, not to mention the amazingly personalized user experience, this site has over 5.4 million unique visitors each month engaging in “massively multiplayer online” (MMO) games.
In less than two years, Outspark has signed deals with various leading internet service distribution and game developer partner companies including YouTube, XFire, Meebo, Yahoo! Games, BesyBuy and not to mention BitTorrent, among others.
On December 2nd, 2008 Outspark recruited Paul Thind, formally working in Habbo, a competitor, as the firm’s chief business officer.
In January 2008, Outspark raised Series B $11 million capital from investors Tencent Holdings, DCM and Altos Ventures. And in July 2009 they raised series C $8.3 million capital from investors Syncom Venture Partners and SBI Investment.
Currently Outspark offers the following games:

• -Fiesta
• -Secret of the Solstice
• -Bread ‘n Butter
• -Project Powder
• -Blackshot
• -Wind Slayer( their latest offering)

They are about to release another game titled “Dance Groove”.
There are other browser based games as well, just waiting for the users to come and enjoy. With all the games free to play, it is the consumer (read player) who will benefit the most out of this venture with a plethora of games at his/her disposal.
To sign up for a free Outspark player account or for more information please visit the Outspark site.
Among those that invested in Outspark there are Syncom Venture Partners and SBI Investment.
Syncom Venture Partners was founded in 1977 and has headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. A leading media and communications venture capital firm that supports talented entrepreneurs dedicated to creating innovative business of great escalating value. Approximately $400 million of private equity capital is managed by Syncom.
SBI Investment is a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, Inc., which is one of the largest and most active venture capital firms in Japan. Established in 1996, the company has since focused its investments on current growth sectors such as information technology, bio-tech and life sciences. Offering comprehensive support to entrepreneurs through its venture capital fund, provides them with the risk capital, support in the terms of taxes and finances, public offering related consultation services and capable managers. Managing various venture capital funds, its total fun size is of over $1 billion.

Founded in 2004, Xoopit which has been undergoing beta testing has now been acquired by Yahoo. First before explaining Yahoo’s acquisition of Xoopit, let’s explain what Xoopit exactly is. Xoopit is a website which is the amateur photographer’s digital dream. Founded in 2004, Xoopit allows you to upload your photos from your computer or bring in your video files from Flikr, Youtube, Shutterfly, Kodak, and Picasa in one website. Now, however, with Xoopit being acquired by Yahoo, you will be able to have more options to send your photos and video clips to your friends and family. With the acquisition of Xoopit, size limits of photos, graphic images, and video clips will be a thing of the past. As of now, Yahoo just signed the agreement for the acquisition, but in the near future, you will see that Xoopit will appear as one of the tabs in your yahoo email account.

The merger did cause some concerns for Gmail users, who have Xoopit, but as the message on the official announcement on Xoopit’s company site states that Gmail users have nothing to worry about. The first question raised by Gmail users is if the Xoopit service will continue with Gmail. Xoopit answers by saying that as Xoopit gradually gets integrated into the Yahoo infrastructure, Gmail users will still be able to use all the services that Xoopit offers for the time being. Furthermore, Xoopit is an application that was created for Gmail, so Xoopit will continue to run on Gmail and Gmail users will not notice any changes for a while.

Xoopit works by providing an app that you can attach to your email browser known as “My Photos.” My Photos is an app that allows you to organize all your photos online and even send them through your email to your friends and families.

Xoopit is based in San Francisco, California and until this acquisition was a privately owned company that worked closely with Gmail. The two founders of Xoopit are Bijan Marashi, who also serves the company as its CEO; and Jonathan Katzman, who also works at Xoopit as the company’s COO.

An article filed with Trends & News on July 22, 2009, states that the merger of Xoopit and Yahoo is official and the article’s headline reads “Xoopit + Yahoo Mail = Moving Beyond the Massive Digital Shoebox.” The article goes on to further state that most email inboxes do change into digital shoeboxes filled with intimate family photos that people share with close friends and family. Furthermore, the basic inbox can be a disorganized mess. Xoopit will organize all your photos and you can send what ever ones you want through the email. The article goes on further to state that Yahoo’s acquisition of Xoopit is a big deal, because Yahoo already has the largest photo organization system on the net and with Xoopit on board, it will get even better. The attachment limits for photos, which has been a problem for many people will be eliminated when you use the Xoopit My Photos with Yahoo.

Xoopit also has a video on its website that shows the “future of email.” The video is a quick overview of the Xoopit application and how it will work with Yahoo. It has music over the entire video, which can be muted and explains in great detail how Xoopit works and walks you through step by step on how to save and share your favorite photos and moments in your life with friends and relatives.

Xoopit’s investors include Foundation Capital, who invested together with some individual private investors in $1.5 million in seed funding in December of 2006 and then in March of 2008, Accel Partners and Foundation Partners invested $5 million in series A funding.

Founded in 1995, Foundation Capital is a vc firm, who’s single goal is to build great companies. The philosophy of the partners at Foundation Capital is that the most powerful aspect of the foundation of a company is the idea. The idea of a product or new service that can disrupt the markets is the most powerful driving force in a company’s success. Furthermore, at Foundation Capital, all the vc firm’s partners have been entrepreneurs and are willing to share their entrepreneurial experience with new entrepreneurs as they make that first step. Some other companies in Foundation Capital’s portfolio include Aktino, Altor Networks, Azure Power, BabyCare, Biz360, Calstar Products, and others.

Accel Partners has been around for over 25 years and is a global vc firm with offices in London, China, and India; along with its headquarters in Silicon Valley. Accel Partners likes to invest in entrepreneurs who are courageous and have a breakthrough idea that can take over a market. Some other companies in Accel’s portfolio include Facebook, Real, Xen Source, Glam.com, JBoss, BitTorrent, MacroMedia, RiverBed, and others.

For more information about Xoopit, click here.

As we are already more than ten years into the Information Age and the internet, search engines keep coming up like mushrooms after a rain storm. Some are general and others are more specific. Perhaps you need a particular item and you are constantly frustrated because when you need to buy an item it is out of stock at your local big box store. Well, there is a search engine for you too. Introducing Milo — the search engine for shoppers and people who like to know ahead of time before something is in stock at their local stores. Milo is the newest of the search engines out there and is still in beta testing.

Milo works by having a large choice of your large chain store names and it will browse the inventory of all the sponsored stores inventory to find what store near you has that item you are looking for in stock. The search engine itself is very simple to operate. When you first log on the site, you will find your home city and a search bar. Furthermore, you will see below all the store names that Milo will search for your item, and you can even specify a particular store name if you wish to do so. What’s even better, the service is free and you do not need to register or sign in.

To date, Milo has 13 store names available for searching a product. Furthermore, next to each store logo you will see a caption showing the location of the nearest store in or near your city. The stores, who’s inventories Milo can browse, include Lowe’s, JC Penny, Home Depot, American Eagle, Barnes & Nobles, Best Buy, BevMo, Ikea, Borders, Guitar Center, Staples, Office Depot, Nordstrom, Sears, Macy’s, Micro Center, Radio Shack, Target, Wal-Mart, and EBGames. Note, however, Milo is still undergoing public beta testing, so in the future the list is likely to grow.

Using the search engine is also quite simple. Suppose you are doing some landscaping and you want some landscape lighting to accent certain parts of your landscaping, such as specimen trees or bushes, water features, etc. In the search bar simply type “landscape lighting” and a whole list of stores and varieties of different landscape lighting will come up. Landscape lighting may be a too broad term, so you may want to narrow the choice of what type of light you are looking for. After you made the query, you will notice below the search bar a whole variety of choices. For example, you may want to see what is in stock in all the stores. As default, Milo will have the check box by all stores check marked. Next to the all box, you will see a box next to other stores that carry some of the top brands of lighting fixtures. For landscape lighting, you have the option to search the inventories of either only Lowe’s, Best Buy, Fry’s Electronics, or you can click on the hyperlink that asks you if you want Milo to show more and all the stores that have linked to Milo will show up.

If you are knowledgeable about the different store names, you should be able to know which stores sell what. For example, Best Buy is a store chain that mainly specializes in consumer electronics and appliances. Obviously there is no sense in looking into that store’s inventory. Lowe’s and Home Depot, however, are stores that specialize in home and garden products, so these stores are the more sensible to look up.

For other products you can also search for a specific brand, but that does not apply to home & garden merchandise. You can also choose the price range that you are looking for.

Now, let’s go back to the search. You will notice that “landscape lighting” is too broad of a search for you and you want the low voltage landscape lighting. With just landscape lighting, you will find that you will find other light fixtures as well. What will happen if we narrow the search down to “low voltage landscape lighting,” or “solar landscape lighting?” If you narrow the search down to just “low voltage landscape lighting,” you will find that all the low voltage or 12 volt lighting fixtures or whole sets that are available in your location and the stores that have these items in stock. For example, in Michigan City, IN, there are two stores that have low voltage lights in stock. These stores are Wal-Mart and Lowe’s, and besides Michigan City, you can also find items in other stores near Michigan City. The items that are in stock in the Wal-Mart or the Lowe’s in Michigan City will appear at the top of the list, but if you scroll down, you will see items in stock in stores that are in towns near Michigan City, such as La Porte, Valparaiso, Chesterton, or even as far as South Bend or Chicago.

Other helpful features on Milo are maps that are provided by Google Maps which show your location and you can also find the stores that are listed in your search where the product you want is in stock.

Milo is the brainchild of the child prodigy, Jack Abraham, who named the search engine after his beloved dog, Milo. Jack Abraham started his career in computers and technology at age 13, when he started working with data extraction encoding and processing mechanisms for ComScore. Mr. Abraham also worked on behavioral targeting strategies for Microsoft and Drugstore.com. Another one of Mr. Abraham’s achievements is the development of the automated arbitrage system for eBay. Mr. Abraham is currently studying at the Wharton School of Business, where he will be graduating magna cum laude with a customized degree in Technological Entrepreneurship, which is a merger between business and computer sciences. When Mr. Abraham graduates, he will receive the title of Joseph Wharton Scholar. Mr. Abraham still works at Milo as the company’s CEO.

Another cofounder of Milo is John Evans, who is a seasoned entrepreneur and has founded several other companies before founding Milo. Mr. Evans also worked at J. P. Evans, Inc., which is a small software company with a seven-person staff, where he ran all operations. J. P. Evans was also founded by Mr. Evans and builds custom solutions for various technical problems and has some Fortune 500 companies among its clientele.

The third cofounder of Milo is Ted Dziuba, who is casually known as the company’s minister of defense and works on the company’s Python code. Mr. Dziuba joined the founders of Milo after hearing about them from Pressflip, which is a machine learning company in which Mr. Dziuba was also a cofounder. Mr. Dziuba is also one of the cofounders of Google.

Milo’s investors include ICBT Capital Partners and Youniversity Ventures, along with several individual investors, who are Keith Rabois, Len Lodish, Jawed Karim, Kevin Hartz, and Dr. Magin Abraham.

ICBT Capital Partners is actually a privately owned hedge fund that invests in both public markets and high growth private equity funds. ICBT is based in San Francisco, California.

Youniversity Ventures is a vc firm that seeks business students or young entrepreneurs who have an innovative product and are in the internet and consumer industries. Besides providing entrepreneurs with the necessary capital, the people at Youniversity also provides mentorship, expertise, and the contacts that are vital to get the business up off the ground and in flight. Youniversity Ventures is located in the Twin Cities in Minnesota and invests in the geographic location of the Twin Cities and the Bay Area in California. Some of the entrepreneurs that Youniversity Ventures has backed include the founders of Paypal, Youtube, Linkedin, and others.

For more information about Milo, click here.

“Honesty is the best policy — when there is money in it” said Mark Twain. From time immemorial money has always taken the frontlead in people’s lives. Right from the days of Barter system to the ancient copper coins to the present day currency……….all of it almost dictates to us how we live our lives. Paper money, Credit Cards, Debit Cards etc. are only a few modes of payment available to the never ending list of buyers today. While some find the traditional way of exchanging money as the true form of purchase, some like to crank it up a notch and use their credit cards. We live in a day and age where different geniuses are trying to make living easier and more livable. And one of such discoveries is BOKU.COM.
BOKU.com is raising the bar for online payments using your mobile phone for the purchase of products and services across the internet. The main aim of BOKU.com is to merge bank worthy transactions, technology and mobile users together on the internet and create a trustworthy, reliable platform for the easy accessibility of the market.
BOKU.com has its base in Chesterfield, UK and California, USA. Mark Britto, the President and CEO of BOKU.com is the leading man in making this site the leading mobile payments platform. With a strong team force working in the fields of Business Development, Marketing, General Counsel and so on, Boku.com is soon reaching success of epic proportions.
BOKU.com has the advantage of being tied up with investors like Benchmark Capital, Index Venture and Khosla Ventures who not only double up as advisors and innovators but also as the company’s strong backbone.
The site has separate features for both publishers as well as customers. It is a well defined distinction and we will deal with each respective group in brief.
PUBLISHERS: BOKU.com lures prospective publishers with the tempting offer of a conversion rate going up to even 80% in some countries. And since a higher conversion rate means a higher net payout, BOKU.com proves to be a profitable option for publishers. Since mobile payments are soon becoming the latest fad and is used by over 4 million people, publishers are given a boost to explore new markets, new demographics and even new revenues. With an estimate of 1.6 billion consumers around the world, there are many people wanting to use their mobile phones in their virtual lives. Boku.Com complies to publishers from over 10 nations. The website ensures detection and prevention of fraud through their numerous processes and systems.
CUSTOMERS: One alluring factor of Boku.com is the absence of any form a cards or form filling. With over 4 billion recorded online credit card frauds worldwide, the facility of making payments through the phone is a secure option as it is handled by only you. And without the presence of the 16 digit credit or debit card number which can be stolen, you are well on your way to fraud free, secure and safe transactions.
For those who are in need of further help or just have a query, the site has a support page to help you with any kind of problem.

For more information about BOKU.com click here.

Need a product or a service over the internet and it’s taking ages to find it… technology presents to you the “SEARCH ENGINES” - a fast and new way of finding what you want when you want it. Among the search engines that are available to the “searching” crowd, sites like Google, AOL pages, Excite are helpful in finding their specific requirements. But one search engine that stands out amongst the hundreds out there is Topsy.com.
In a nutshell if you were to ask what makes Topsy.com so different from the rest, then this would be your answer: Topsy.com is your taste of old meets new. Unlike other search engines which regard the Internet as a collection of documents or files, Topsy.com sees the Internet as a stream of conversations. To them, it is a relationship which influences once speech and thought process. Through fast paced communities like Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Yelp, Identica and so on, Topsy.com keeps tabs on people’s conversations. Hence when you use this site to search for something, unlike other search engines which may provide you with outdated information, Topsy.com tells about what is being spoken of now, this week or even the past month. So one word you could use for this site would be “Fresh”.
Topsy.com is actually the brainchild of 4 people - Vipul Ved Prakash, Rishabh Aiyer Ghosh, Gary Iwatani and Justin Foutts. The site has the support of a 5 member Board of Directors and 10 member team. Topsy.com’s main investors are BlueRun Ventures, Ignition Partners, Founders Fund and Scott Banister.
Topsy.com categorizes search results into time windows - all time, month, week, day, hour. Hence the result for a search would be one which would be fresh and important to the individual. This is usually called the “right - time window”. Topsy also searches for user names, full names and mini bios of Twitter users. There is something called a “topsy bubble” which is present near every link to show how many hits each search result has received.
One of the most distinctive features of Topsy.com is its ability to discover the list of people who have responded to your query. This list is specific to the time window mentioned. Topsy.com computes with the reputation and the potential of these authors based on the quantity and quality of the hits they receive.
If you wish to contact Topsy.com with a query or a suggestion or any other specific need, then they have delegated different help contacts to suit your type of requirement.

For more information about Topsi.com click here.

Have you ever been in a situation where you meet someone at a party or a family get together and you get a feeling of being in the midst of absolute strangers? People come and give you a beaming smile and just out of sheer courtesy you mingle with them but the only thought in your mind is “who is this person”? If a survey is taken, then I can guarantee you that the result would be that at least 1 out of 4 people would have faced such an awkward experience. Well wouldn’t you want to know who your extended family is? Wouldn’t you want to interact with relatives who do not belong to your immediate family circle? Well if your answer is yes……….then there is a saving grace in the form of Geni.com.
Geni.com is that platform where you can build on your family tree. You can connect, share and preserve relationships with those relatives who you didn’t even know existed. And the USP of this site is that all you need to do is the basic groundwork of including members who you do know and the rest can be filled out by the rest of the family. Only people who belong to your family can log into their personal profiles and edit or add new members of your never ending growing family.
Geni.com was founded by a group of former executives and early employees belonging to PayPal, eGroups, eBay and Tribe. This website is financially backed up by Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures. Since its inception, Geni.com has got the recognition of being the nest way to track family members and the easiest way of building up one’s family tree. Geni.com was bestowed with the honor of being one of the best 50 sites by Time magazine and was even honored in PC magazine as one of the Best Free Software.
Geni.com gives you the chance to add photos, videos or events and this can be shared by all the members of your tree and for those members who still aren’t a part of the tree, they can log into the site, register for it and join the clan. It enables you to keep track of the various birthdays, anniversaries or any special events in the family…….something that all of us have a problem keeping a note of.
This site let’s you know to what extent your family tree has been completed and it gives you timely updates whenever a new member has either updated his/her profile or added a new member into your tree. Geni.com can be used as your very own personal newsletter. Any events or future engagements could be posted here to let the rest of the family know about what’s happening where.
With the feature called Hot Matches list, you can find duplicates existing in someone else’s tree and thus expand and develop your own tree. Who knows through this you might just find an uncle or an aunt or even a long lost cousin.
Just when people almost gave up hope of knowing their extended family, Geni.com came to the rescue as I couldn’t think of a better way to bring the entire family together. So go ahead, build your tree and see it grow!

For more information about Geni.com click here.

In the 21st century, we live in an age of mobility and technology. Furthermore, the two seem to go increasingly go hand in hand. With a huge range of mobile devices available from cell phones and smart phones to small GPS devices. Cars have GPS built in and some of the higher end phones, such as the iPhone 3G and the Blackberry also have GPS and other directional mapping apps available. Now yet a new company is joining the new directional mapping market. Introducing Waze, the company that advertises the “way to go.”

Founded in 2006, Waze has been leading the way in creating a new directional mapping program for the variety of smart phones available today. Waze, however, is not your regular directional mapping program that will just show you where to go or the best way to get there. Waze is that and more. The extra goodies that Waze will provide its users with include traffic, areas where construction could be a problem, and accidents and incidents. Furthermore, for the speeder and the type that consider the highway patrol as “costly pigs;” Waze also has something for you, which is even better than your conventional radar detector. What Waze has for you lead foots is a map that shows where all the speed traps and speed cams are — not giving the traffic cop a clue that you know where they are. Much better than a detectable radar detector, which cannot detect speed cams anyway. Also available with Waze’s services and apps is the showing of areas where parking is available.

The service that Waze is creating is still in its infancy and in the Alpha phase. You can sign up to be an alpha tester for Waze, since the Waze service is a service where drivers provide information to other drivers onto their mobile phones. To be an alpha tester for Waze’s service, you must have a smart phone that is compatible with Waze. The phones that will work with Waze are shown in a list where you fill in the proper fields for registration. These phones are the HTC Touch Pro2, Android G1, Android G2/Magic, iPhone, LG Incite, HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Touch Diamond 2, HTC Touch Fuze (Pro), Samsung Omnia HD i8910, Samsung Jack, Samsung Propel Pro, HTC Tilt, Motorola Moto Q9, Samsung Epix i907, HTC Snap, and Nokia E71x. Along with having one of the above mentioned phones, you will need to type in your first and last name, your email, and your city of residence.

Waze is a company that is based in Israel and its founder is Ehud Shabtai, who is a software engineer who graduated from Tel Aviv University with degrees in Philosophy and Computer Sciences. Furthermore, while at Tel Aviv University, Mr. Shabtai also received a PDA for a GPS navigation device and the navigation software, but unfortunately the product that Mr. Shabtai developed did not show the real conditions on the road that can be a nuisance to any driver. This is where the idea for Waze was born.

What makes Waze different from your average GPS device is that it is a dynamic navigation platform that has an eclectic system of working. The Waze platform works by incorporating GPS technology together with open source software and a community of drivers. The drivers are the key to the Waze network. The drivers are the ones who bring in the real-life road condition information in the Waze platform. When a driver drives through an area or on a particular stretch of the Interstate and can see where the construction areas and what detours are the best to take. The drivers will also be able to tell each other about speed traps and speed cams, so you lead foots know when to slow down before getting that expensive ticket.

Waze’s investors include Blue Run Ventures, Magma Venture Partners, and Vertex Venture Capital. The rounds of funding that these vc firms participated in and the amount of money that was invested in Waze is not disclosed to the public.

Blue Run Ventures is a vc firm that is solely dedicated to early stage companies in the tech industry and provide them with the foundation they need to become successful companies that will redesign the tech industry. Some other companies in Blue Run’s portfolio include Fwix, Good Media, Like.com, Inker, Topsy, and others.

Magma Venture Capital is one of Israel’s leading vc firms and it mainly focuses its investments in early stage companies in the communications, semiconductors, internet, and media industries. Some other companies in Magma’s portfolio include Zon Networks, Phonetic Systems, OutSmart, Extricom, and others.

Vertex Venture Capital is another one of Israel’s top vc firms and mainly invests in Israeli or Israel-related companies in the information networking, communications, and enterprise software industries. Some other companies in Vertex’s portfolio include Expand Network, Scopus, Flash Networks, Voltaire, Zeugma, and others.

Waze does have a few competitors and one of the noteworthy competitors is Mobile Crossing. Mobile Crossing is a company that was founded in 2004 with a vision to be a better navigation service for frequent drivers. The service that Mobile Crossing offers is similar to that of Waze. Mobile Crossing is based in Sunnyville, California and is a privately owned corporation.

For more information about Waze, click here.

As the internet is getting more advanced and able to handle more bandwidth, video is becoming a more frequently used medium on the internet. Until now, however, video on the internet could be a problem, since certain plugins would be needed to view these videos. Because of the near monopoly of Windows, many videos run together with only Microsoft Internet Explorer in conjunction with Windows Media Player. If you were using Mozilla’s FireFox browser for surfing the net, unless you download the right plugins, viewing video on FireFox would have been impossible. Furthermore, if you are a Mac user, you would be also out in the cold. This is the reason why Apple created Flip4Mac, which is a plugin that simulates Windows Media Player and allows to view Windows compatible videos on your Mac using the Safari browser.

Adobe created the Flash Player, which is compatible with both Windows and Mac and provides a much smoother video streaming experience. Now, however, Kaltura arrives on the scene and is about to revolutionize the way video is being viewed on the net.

What makes Kaltura stand out from other internet video technology is its innovative open source video platform, which allows you to all kinds of things with your video, including developing your own video apps.

Kaltura’s video platform is based on a modular platform that is built with Kaltura Widgets, which are building blocks that are completely customizable to the advertiser’s needs. These widgets can be customized in all kinds of different ways, including skinning and combining different workflows, generating new video based apps. All the ways that Kaltura Widgets can be customized are listed below.

One of the most common methods to customize these widgets is by first collecting and then ingesting content into the stream. Basically, creating, collecting and ingesting content is the best way that you can promote user generated video on your website. Collecting and ingesting content allows users on your website to upload and import their content and add it to video on your site. This can be great for social networks which use video content. Furthermore, video ingestion can be used to upload different resolutions of video, including HD video streams.

Kaltura also allows you to create your own video players with your own feel. With the ability to publish your own content, you can create your own playlists, publish all kinds of video resolutions, including HD. Furthermore, for those of you, who are online merchants, you can use Kaltura’s platform to market and merchandize your product and have it on your website in high quality video, in the end attracting buyers to your site and increasing your revenues.

You can also manage and create your own apps. Developing your own apps can give you the ability to create something completely different. You can go into the Kaltura video gallery and see what exactly can be done with your videos. The possibilities can be endless, from creating your own video blogs to immersing branded entertainment with your videos. You can also create video wikis.

Kaltura is based in Brooklyn, New York and is a privately owned company which has recently been in the news because of its work together with Wikipedia.

According to an article from Softpedia, dated July 18, 2009, video will be coming soon to Wiikpedia. The article basically states that there have been rumors around that Wikipedia is working to support video formats. Lately, the Wikipedia foundation has been coming out with more information about the new Wikipedia video platforms. The article further states that Wikipedia has tried several avenues, but what seems to work the best is that using tags, such as

Another article, on Read, Write, Web; dated July 18, 2009, states that Wikipedia has developed a video portal using a player known as an Ogg and for FireFox users, Wikpedia has created a video fireogg plugin. The article further states that Wikipedia is working closely with Kaltura in developing its video platform.

In a Cnet article dated July 17, 2009, Wikpedia will launch its controversial video player. The article further states that Wikipedia’s choice of the Ogg Theora as a video platform has caused quite a fracas in the web. Where the more prominent companies, such as Apple and Google both prefer the macro video formats, such as that provided with the Adobe Flash Player, Wikpedia has chosen to go with this new video format pioneered by Kaltura.

Yet another article published by Wired Magazine also states that Wikipedia is going video. In an article dated June 18, 2009, Wikipedia officials have gone to New York and worked together with Kaltura to develop a user edited video platform for Wikipedia that is not shackled by copyright infringement laws. The article further states that along with Kaltura and the Mozilla Foundation to name a few.

Kaltura was founded in 2006 by Ron Yakutiel, Dr. Shay David, Dr. Michal Tsur, and Eran Etam with the intention of revolutionizing online video streaming. All three founders have vast experience in marketing, advertising, and the media industry as well as being seasoned entrepreneurs who founded several other companies before hand.

Mr. Yakutiel has great entrepreneurial experience and has founded a whole slew of successful companies in Israel, the United States, and Canada in the internet, mobile applications, and security industries. Mr. Yakutiel was also a helicopter pilot at one time and enjoys traveling to remote and exotic places, such as Papua New Guinea and the Amazon. Mr. Yakutiel also enjoys shark fishing, scuba diving, sky diving, and bungee jumping. Mr. Yakutiel graduated from the Wharton School of Business with honors and received an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurial Management. Mr. Yakutiel also still currently works at Kaltura as the company’s CEO.

Dr. David is a great asset to the company because of his broad experience in ventures in the tech industry, starting companies, and helping large enterprises turn ideas into products. Dr. David graduated from Cornell and got his PhD. Dr. David enjoys world travel. Dr. David also currently works at the company as the Vice President of Business and Community Development.

Dr. Tsur has deep experience in entrepreneurship and has started many startups in the tech industry and has the knowledge to boot it up. Dr. Tsur is very athletic and is an avid swimmer. She enjoys competitive swimming and tri-athletics. Dr. Tsur also enjoys hiking and is a mother of two. Dr. Tsur graduated from the University of New York and received her PhD in Application and Game Theoretics. Dr. Tsur also works at the company as President.

Mr. Etan also has experience in founding companies and was a cofounder of ICQ and also worked there as the Vice President of R&D. Later, ICQ was acquired by AOL for over $407 million. After that acquisition, Mr. Etan was a Vice President at AOL for a while and then went on to found other internet startups. Mr. Etam enjoys spending his spare time with his wife and children.

Kaltura’s investors include Avalon Ventures, which invested $2.2 million in series A funding, and 406 Ventures, which invested an undisclosed amount in series B funding in 2008.

Based in San Diego, Avalon Ventures is a vc firm that mainly invests in seed and early stage companies in the life sciences and IT industries both locally and across the United States. Founded in 1983, Avalon has eight venture funds totaling over $11 billion. Some other companies in Avalon’s portfolio include Afraxis, Carolus Therapeutics, Otonomy, SimulMedia, and others.

406 Ventures is a vc firm that invests in companies which have an innovative product in the IT industry. The vc firm was founded by seasoned entrepreneurs who have the know-how in starting a business from the ground up. 406 Ventures was founded in 2005 and identifies the latest trends in the IT industry and invests accordingly. Some other companies in 406 Ventures include Ambient, Bit9, Mashery, Memento, RatePoint, VeraCode, and others.

Kaltura does not have any noteworthy competitors as of yet.

For more information about Kaltura, click here.

Wouldn’t you like your own personal space where you can not only store your important notes but also have it almost communicate to you? Well maybe in the past this would have seemed like a far fetched idea, but not in today’s world. Presenting EVERNOTE… your very own work station where you can take notes, clip WebPages, snap photos using your mobile phones, create to-do lists and if this hasn’t triggered off your interest yet, then you can even record audio on this.

Evernote presents to you the most ideal way to access your information anytime, anywhere. Once you save any given information on Evernote, the powerful image and text recognition engines analyze the content and make it searchable, so accessing it would be child’s play.

Evernote was launched in 2009 and has it’s base in Mountain View, California and has a 50 member team. This company was conceptualized by Amir Behrooz and is headed by Phil Libin who is the current CEO. Though comparatively new in the business world, Evernote has already achieved the distinction of having one million registered users and has raised approximately $4.5 million last year alone.

Evernote’s 2 main investors include Troika Dialogue and Amir Behrooz the founder of Evernote and owner of Alimed, a leading manufacturer and supplier of high end products for all segments of the healthcare market.

The success of Evernote was not an overnight one. It was and continues to be steady and consistent. Through it’s Iphone application, Evernote has been downloaded around a million times. The company also has Mac and Windows clients as well as a Web browser version. If you were to have a breakdown in percentages, when it comes to usage, Windows has a 36% usage, Mac has a 28% usage, iPhone has a 20%usage, The Web browser version has an 11% usage, the Blackberry is at 2% and all the other mobile devices stand at a modest 1%.The numbers pertaining to the company are instructive because the number of downloads does not equal the number of registered users. The success of Evernote lies in it’s active users which amounts to almost 360,000. Though the number might seem relatively less, over the past one year this number has created over 36 million notes. The notes posted come in the form of Web clips, text notes, Photos, PDF documents, Voice notes, Digital ink and so on.

The main goal of Evernote is to enable people to capture any idea, moment or experience in any possible way they want and in any given possible platform and, later on, making it as accessible as they can. And they have achieved the desired results with the creation of text and ink notes, snapshots of whiteboards and clips of WebPages.

Since this is a very new, easy and convenient method of storing information, there are other companies who are in the running alongside Evernote. Evernote has 2 main competitors in the market namely Springnote and Radar Networks.
Springnote is a service that has captured the essence of Wiki. It works as a representative service of the web as a platform and the writable web.
Radar Networks is pioneering the mainstream adoption of the Semantic Web or what is sometimes called “Web 3.0″.

For those wanting a pocket friendly option, then Evernote provides it’s users with a free account. But for those who feel it just isn’t enough, then they can opt for the Evernote Premium. It comes complete with full synchronization, 500 MB of monthly allowance, stronger security and many more premium features. Evernote has approximately 13,755 Premium subscribers which comes out to about a 3.75 conversion rate. With time, the number of Premium subscriptions and the conversion rate is on the rise. The annual run rate is about 650,00 which may not sound much but Evernote has it’s other share of revenues. According to Phil Libin, the company’s CEO, if Evernote has about a million paying subscribers then that would be considered a decent profitable return for Evernote.

Evernote is your friendly companion which does not limit itself to only your PC or your mobile. It can be downloaded into your Mac, Windows mobile, Palm Pre, Blackberry, Web clippers and into your SanDisk U3 flash drives.

Evernote recommends the following products to make it easy for their users to capture anything, anytime: GRIFFIN CLARIFI CASE FOR THE IPOD 3G and EYE-FI WIRELESS SD CARD.
GRIFFIN CLARIFI CASE FOR THE IPOD 3G comes with a built in lense to make snapshots super clearwhich further improves evernote’s recognition results.
The EYE-FI WIRELESS SD CARD goes directly into your digital camera and your photos go directly into Evernote through Wi-Fi

For more detailed information about Evernote click here.

During a time where economic times are difficult and more people are loosing their jobs, needless to say the crime rate is rising and more people are looking for more effective ways to protect their homes and businesses from theft and other crimes. In fact, during such tough economic times, the security industry is doing very well and Ingrid Home Security is no exception to the rule. Furthermore, Ingrid Home Security has a revolutionary proprietary technology that allows you to control your home security system’s parameters through wireless controls.

Founded in 2004 and based in Berwin, Pennsylvania; Ingrid offers a whole array of technologies to keep your home and property protected. What makes Ingrid’s technology so revolutionary is that unlike most of your conventional security systems, there is no messy installation, no tearing through walls for placing wiring, or no requirement for a land phone line. Most of the security systems that Ingrid Home Security can be operated through your wireless phone or other communication device.

The way the Ingrid system works is by having a cordless phone and security remote control unit in one unit. This device allows you to keep your security controls with you at all times and this unit also has a panic button, incase someone is breaking into your home at night, when you are home alone. Along with the handset, Ingrid Home Security also provides a base to recharge the handset’s battery.

The next item in the Ingrid Security System is the Keypad Counsel, which is not only a security system keypad, but also doubles as a speaker phone and even has a weather station that can alert you when severe weather is on the way, giving you enough time to run to the basement when that tornado hits.

The next device in the Ingrid Home Security System is the Grid Extender. This is the brain of the entire system and enlarges the wireless grid to cover your entire house. The Ingrid Home website even advertises that you can use this device to cover your neighbor’s home if you wish to do so. This device will send all security information and security breaches to the Ingrid Home Security Monitoring Center.

Ingrid Home Security will even provide you with a security keychain, which has a panic button that you can press either inside or outside your home. You can also attach your house and car keys to the ring on the keychain.

Along with these wonderful gadgets, your system is supplied with eight points of protection. These points of protection are sensors that dedect motion and can detect whether there is an intruder inside your home when you are gone and can trigger the alarm. The alarm is also included in your system and has a high decibel siren that can scare the intruder away.

The security package also comes with an auxiliary battery pack for extra power and Ingrid Security signs for your yard.

Ingrid also offers you online access to your home’s security system from your laptop from anywhere in the world. You can access your security center and make changes to it from your office, a hotel, or where ever.

Ingrid Home Security has also been in the news. According to an article from the New York Times, that was dated October 29, 2008, the article states that Engineer, Mr. Jongsma had built a house where the builders installed a pre-wired security system and later on, Mr. Jongsma decided to reconfigure his home security system but soon found out that he was in over his head. Furthermore, the article stated that most alarm companies have their monitoring service and their system can only be used by their service and might not work properly with others, and the monitoring services can be fairly expensive. The Ingrid System, however, allows you to have a pay as you go plan and all of it is wireless.

On January 22, 2008, PC World wrote that the Ingrid Home Kit was well worth the time to install. This article continues to state that most conventional security alarm services, such as ADT use outdated analog phone land lines, whereas the Ingrid System is completely wireless and works on the broadband wireless network, therefore the system is not just restricted to one home.

Ingrid Home Security’s investors include Novak Biddle Venture Parters and PA Early Stage Partners, which invested $6.6 million in series A funding in September of 2004; Centerpoint Ventures, which invested $8.1 million in June of 2006; and ZG Ventures, which joined Novak Biddle Venture Partners, Centerpoint Ventures, and PA Early Stage Partners in a $13.5 million investment in series C funding.

Novak Biddle Venture Partners is a vc firm that provides both venture capital and private equity to early stage companies in the IT industry within the Mid-Atlantic region. Some other companies in Novak Biddle’s portfolio include 2tor, Appian, Starfish, Social Gaming Network, Education Initiative, and others.

PA Early Stage Partners has currently changed its name to Novitas, which according to them, means early stage success. The vc firm mainly invests seed and early stage funding to companies in various industries. Novitas also plays an active role in helping the startup company’s success. Some other companies in Novitas’s portfolio include Arista Systems, LightWire, Nistica, Fortera, EZ Prints, and others.

Centerpoint Ventures is a vc firm that has the philosophy of not just offering the needed capital, but also choosing the right deals and showing up at board meetings. Centerpoint is an active investor that follows its portfolio companies every step of the way. Centerpoint Ventures mainly invests in the first or second round of funding. Some other companies in Centerpoint’s portfolio include D2Audio, Voyence, Netbotz, Neoworld, and others.

Ingrid Home security does not yet have any competitors that are noteworthy enough to provide serious competition.

For more information about Ingrid Home Security, click here.

There has been no technological advancement that is as awesome or versatile as the creation of the internet. What is the most amazing thing about the internet is that it is such a powerful engine for many entrepreneurs and more innovative technologies and services have been spawned by the internet. The latest evolution on the internet is an online invitation publisher, Anyvite. Anyvite is a privately owned corporation that was founded in 2008 with the goal to publish a free invitation service. The slogan at Anyvite is that “an event creation should be simple, easy, and produce a quality result.” In the About segment of Anyvite’s website, the creators of Anyvite state that the purpose for creating Anyvite is to allow for people to create invitations for all sorts of events ranging from weddings to birthdays to graduations, or practically anything else that you would like to invite a few people to.

How Anyvite works is very simple and the user-friendly interface allows you to create a quality invitation with relative ease. When you first come to the website, you will see a large green button that will ask you to try Anyvite. The first thing that you need to do is to choose from the thousands of themes and images available on the Anyvite website. If you do not see an image that fits the event that you are creating, you can even upload your own picture in JPEG format. A tip for uploading your image, make it small, there is a size limit. The next step is to enter the details of your event. This is done by typing in your name, address, RSVP, and other information that you would like to have on the invitation. For those of you in foreign countries or speakers of foreign languages, Anyvite does accept the text of non-Latin alphabets, so you can do invitations in Russian, Ukrainian, or any other language that uses the Cyrillic alphabet. You can even use Georgian, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, and Japanese script in writing your event invitation.

The third step is inviting guests. Anyvite has several different kinds of options on how to approach this. Some people like to invite everyone, others want to invite only a select few. Anyvite allows you to do just that. You can import email contacts, Evite contacts, or you can even import emails manually to invite a select few friends. Sending the invitation is also rather easy. All you need to do is to type in your name, email, and password. That’s it, and it’s all free.

Well if the service is free, how does Anyvite make a profit? Anyvite makes a profit with advertisements powered by Google.

The one known investor of Anyvite is the Y Combinator, which invested an undisclosed amount in seed funding. The Y Combinator is a new kind of vc firm that is there for startup tech companies who need to get over that first step, obtaining the necessary capital to get off the ground. The Y combinator also cares about how the entrepreneur gets started and will help him all the way through that first tough step. Along with providing that necessary capital, the Y Combinator also provides new entrepreneurs with the knowledge and resources to get started successfully

Anyvite does have a few competitors, however the two major competitors are Evite and EventElephant.

Evite is one of the major online event invitation generating services serving over 15 million registered users. Evite is a corporate subsidiary of Ticket Master and is based in Los Angeles, California with seven people on its management team.

Based in the United Kingdom and Ireland, EventElephant is another online event invitation generator which has a platform that can allow the user to easlily organize events and generate quality invitations and send them to their online friends. EventElephant has two people on its management team and is a privately owned LLC, which was founded in 2007.

For more information about Anyvite, click here.

As social networks are growing in popularity, there is a constant flow of new social networks out there that provide something for everyone. The newest one of these social networks is Slinkset. Slinkset claims to be a news related social network which allows you to register, if you can get the registration to work, that is.

According to the company’s website, you are able to create your own social news network in seconds. When you do create your network, you are supposed to have the ability to customize your own design, use your own domain, etc. You can even auto post links through the RSS method. Slinkset also has a link that allows you to visit other Slinkset sites. Slinkset also features sites and gives typography tips.

Registration on Slinkset, however, is not what it is cracked out to be. After trying to register into Slinkset, the registration failed every time. Either there is something wrong with the password or something else, it’s hard to explain. Furthermore, there are few or no directions what so ever to make the sign in process easier or successful. Furthermore, if the registration process is not user friendly and people are unable o sign in and start using the Slinkset site, how will the company succeed?

Slinkset was until recently owned by Anzavista, but now it was acquired by blogging company, Posterious, Inc., which is a company that allows you to write and post blog entries. Posterious acquired Slinkset in June of this year.

Slinkset’s sole known investor is the Y Combinator, which invested an undiscloded amount in seed funding in 2008.

The Y Combinator is a unique vc firm that is solely dedicated to providing the needed capital to startup companies in the internet, software, and tech industries. According to the Y Combinator, getting started is the hardest step for fledgeling entrepreneurs and the vc firm is dedicated to get them over that difficult first step. Furthermore, when it comes to technology, the team at the Y Combinator are all young techies with the passion for new technology and are more than willing to help out the diligent entrepreneur who has a unique technology that will revolutionize the internet industry.

Slinkset does not have any noteworthy competitors, but there are some companies that provide a similar service to Slinkset. One of these is Digg, which was founded in 2004 and provides people a place to explore and share content from anywhere on the internet.

For more information about Slinkset, click here.

Based in Brazil, Power.com is a unique social network that allows you to sign in and access other social networks, such as Twitter, Linkedin, Orkut, MySpace, Facebook, and Hi5. What makes Power.com different from other social networks, is that you do not need to sign up like you need to do with other social networks. If you are already signed in in one of the above mentioned social networks, you just need to type in your username from one of those networks and type in the password that you use for that network and you are in. Power.com allows you to access all the information in your other accounts and use them on Power.com

This new service by Power.com, however, does not come smoothly. In January of 2009, Facebook did not like Power.com’s platform and sued the company for infringements on copyrights. Facebook does not like that users can log on to their Facebook accounts from other social networks, and this is the reason for the lawsuit. In fact, Facebook prefers that its users would log on directly to the Facebook website. The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court in San Jose. Other claims that Facebook has made against Power.com are of unlawful competition and Facebook also claims that what Power.com is doing is also a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Barry Schmidt, a spokesman at Facebook stated in an article from the New York Times dated January 2, 2009 that Facebook had several discussions with Power.com over this issue for over a month without any concessions from Power.com, Facebook decided to take the company to court. According to Steve Vachani, founder of Power.com, the company wanted to work together with Facebook on how to best create this service and wanted to cooperate with Facebook, but obviously Facebook decided to take another direction. The complaint that Facebook filed states that Power.com uses a program that solicits uses and saves all of Facebook’s users’ login data for use on its own website. Furthermore Facebook also claims that Power.com also sends emails that are misleading advertisements to the Friends of Facebook.

The fight does not end there, in fact recently it just got hotter with Power.com counter suing Facebook, claiming that Facebook is a monopoly and argues that Facebook is curbing the competition by restricting its users to the Facebook server and by blocking users’ access to Power.com. Furthermore, Power.com charges Facebook with monopolization of the trade because Facebook has made billions of dollars while restricting users’ data within its service and Power.com also claims that Facebook only decided to sue them after they refused to follow the rules that Power.com worked out together with Facebook.

Power.com is a ptivately owned venture backed company with three people on its management team. The people on the management team include Steven Vachani, CEO; Boyan Josic, director of corporate development; and Eric Santos, director of public engineering.

Power.com’s investors include Draper Fisher Juvertson, or DFJ, and Esther Dyson.

Based in Menlo Park, California, DFJ is a premier vc firm that focuses its investments on early stage companies. Besides its headquarters in Menlo Park, DFJ is also global with offices in Shanghai, China and in Bangalore, India. DFJ is an active investor that provides its portfolio companies with more that just the necessary capital they need to run successful companies. Other companies in DFJ’s portfolio include 4info, Abuzz, Achex, AppStream, Boxbe, and others.

Esther Dyson calls himself a catalyst for startup companies and his vc firm is EDVentures, which invests in markets throughout the United States and other markets throughout the world, including Russia.

Power.com has one competitor that is worth mentioning, FriendFeed. FriendFeed is a social network that provides the same kind of service that Power.com provides. FriendFeed is a privately owned corporation, which employs nine people and has four people on its management team.

For more information about Power.com, click here.

Founded in 2004, Ozmo Devices has been innovating new devices that can use the WiFi connection to link together with your WPAN or WLAN. The company’s technicians are developing a two-part solution which has a driver incorporated in it that coexists with the host platform’s WiFi device, which could be a computer or other device. The other part of this solution is a low powered component that is highly integrated into the system and is embedded in the wireless peripheral. Furthermore, the type of platform that Ozmo is developing can leverage itself to any of your WiFi devices from your iPod Touch or iPhone to your laptop computer and in linking these two devices you can have your own WLAN or WPAN.

Along with this innovative platform, Ozmo also provides applications to make all the peripherals work together smoothly.

As of 2008, about 95% of all PC laptop computers are WiFi enabled and naturally the laptop computer is what most people use WiFi with to connect to the internet. It would only make sense for Ozmo to make the laptop computer to be the first basis for applications for Ozmo’s technology. The value of millions of laptop computers can significantly increase when Ozmo devices with a WiFi chip in them are linked wirelessly to your laptop. Furthermore, you can use your computer together with other peripheral devices such as mobile devices, consumer electronics, and hi-tech television sets and set up your own WPAN or WLAN.

With the advent of technology in the late 20th Century and the first nine years of the 21st Century more and more devices are becoming outfitted to be WiFi capable. Whether you have any kind of consumer electronics, the newest MP3 players or cellphones are all equipped with WiFi. The first WiFi MP3 player that was WiFi equipped was Apple’s iPod Touch, and now everyone is jumping into this market. Video games are also going WiFi, with many video games being made to work with devices that are WiFi equipped. The problem, however, lies in bandwidth. Video players and video game controllers which can output highly graphic video games require more bandwidth than what the ordinary WPAN can accommodate. Ozmo Devices also provides a solution for this. All the peripherals that Ozmo creates for consumer electronics do provide the bandwidth for high-quality video and audio files.

What really gives Ozmo Devices the potential for taking off in the marketplace is its home entertainment platform. Nowadays home entertainment systems and computers are integrated with television and internet being merged into one unit. One of the benefits of having internet based TV is that the variety of channels to your avail is amazing. Some web-based television platforms even allow you to view TV channels from all over the world. Ozmo Devices has the technology needed to wirelessly integrate your home entertainment system with your computer. Ozmo Devices allows you to connect unlimited devices to your home entertainment system.

Ozmo Devices is based in Palo Alto, California and was founded in 2004. The company employs 26 people.

Ozmo Devices has been in the news quite a bit since its founding. In March 30, 2008 Ozmo Devices’ subsidiary, H-Stream Wireless received $12.55 million in series A funding from Granite Venture Partners. The article stated that the revolutionary platform that Ozmo provides solves many problems with WiFi connections and different WiFi devices, allowing for many peripherals to be connected wirelessly at the same time. H-Stream Wireless, however, develops wireless semiconductor solutions.

In 2008, Ozmo announced the launching of WPAN applications for low powered wireless devices. The article also states that in 2004, when Ozmo was founded, the company also invented and launched the H-Stream Wireless.

Ozmo’s investors include Granite Ventures, Tallwood Venture Partners, and Intel Capital.

Founded in 1992, Granite Venture Partners is a vc firm that mainly invests in early stage companies in the communications and software industries. Granite Ventures has over $700 million under its management and has invested in over 80 companies since its founding. Some of the companies in Granite Ventures’ portfolio include Airtight Networks, GigaNet, InfoGear Technology, NetBoost, and others.

Intel Capital is the vc arm of the CPU maker, Intel, and invests in companies that have a product that is of interest to Intel.

Tallwood Venture Partners is a vc firm that is devoted to the semiconductor industry and the vc firm raised its first fund in 2002, which consisted of $180 million and then raised its second fund in 2005, which consists of $250 million. The vc firm’s main investors are Stanford and Harvard Universities. Some other companies in Tallwood’s portfolio include Abound Logic, Astute Networks, Ciena, Calypto, and others.

Ozmo Devices does have some competitors, one of which is Nanoradio, which is based in Kista, Sweden. The company offers products that are similar to those that Ozmo Devices makes. Nanoradio was founded in 2004 and employs 55 people. Nanoradio has three people on its management team.

For more information about Ozmo Devices, click here.

RentHop is another new company that offers a service. RentHop’s website is a service that helps people find a place to rent or buy, and also allows landlords list places to rent or sell, bypassing the need to hire a real estate broker, which can be a costly undertaking. The site allows you to sign up or register for free, but the main problem with the site is that it does not seem to function the way it is supposed to.

For example, if you are planning to find an apartment to rent somewhere in America’s heartland, and you type in the town of your choice to try and find a place; you always end up with a map of New York City. Furthermore, only after spending time browsing through all the nooks and crannys of the RentHop site, you will find out that it only caters to New York City real estate. This is great if you live in New York City, but if you are trying to find a place somewhere else, it will do you no good. If RentHop only caters to New York City real estate, that’s fine, but it should make that clear on its homepage, not to confuse people.

RentHop works by registering on the site. Registration is simple and free. When you first go onto the site, you have the option of either logging in or registering as a new member. The registration process requires you to type in your first and last name, email, create a user name and password. You also have the option of typing in your current address and your city to help you find a place.

Once you have logged into the site, you will see the homepage will have changed by the log in and register buttons changing into “find housing” and “offer housing” buttons. You will also see pictures of apartments that RentHop has to offer. You can click on the find housing and a whole list of apartments throughout New York City will appear.

RentHop also allows you to offer housing by clicking on the “offer housing” button. Once you have clicked on the “offer housing” button, you have the option of typing the address of the apartment or home you plan to list. You can also type in the name of the city. For example, suppose you want to offer a place in Michigan City, Indiana. Suppose you own, for example 119 Oakdale Way, Michigan City. First type in the address, city and state, and zip code. If your rental home is a unit in a condo complex or apartment complex, you will also need to enter a unit number. You also have the option of uploading photos of your rental property. Once you have typed in all the important information you post the offer for people to see.

Another problem with RentHop is the contact information is only one email address and no phone contact. This leaves those people who like to talk to people out in the cold. Furthermore, the company does not disclose company information, such as investors, how many people they employ or their management.

For more information about RentHop, click here.

With the advance of the internet, many magazines or newspapers started going onto the internet, subscriptions have also been done online, however, doing an online subscription is not easy. Zuora is a service that attempts to solve the problems that online subscription companies face.

To use Zuora, you must sign up for its service, and it does not cost anything to sign up. The only problem is that when you sign up for Zuora’s service, you will not be prompted to type in a user name or password like you do with other internet based sign-up forms. Zuora is designed differently, because instead of prompting you to type in a user name or password, you need to type in your name, your business name, your email, and your phone number. You will also be prompted to choose from a menu that asks you what your company offers. You have the option to choose either subscription based products, software as a service or SaaS, or neither. You also have a second menu that asks you what status your company is in. You can choose pre-revenue, less that $1 million, $1-5 million, $5-20million, $20-100 million, or $100+ million. You will need to select any one of these. The required fields will be marked with a red asterisk and you can also fill out optional information, such as your title, city, or country. When you are done filling out the form, you click on the “submit” button, and you will get an email that thanks you for your interest in Zuora, but no user name or password. The question is that how can someone use a company’s products if he does not have any access to them?

The one product that Zuora has featured on its homepage is Z-Billing. Z-Billing is a billing system that is supposed to be designed specifically for online subscription companies, and the advertisement for Z-Billing 2.0 basically states that there are many kinds of subscription products that web-based subscription companies offer, from music to software to DVDs and other services or products.

Some of the features that Z-Billing is supposed to have is that it can scale according to the growth of your business, provide full pricing flexibility, to allow you to constantly introduce new products; it supports any subscription model, allowing you to have a one-time subscription fee or a recurring monthly or yearly fee; tax automation and compliance, which is a new feature added to Z-Billing 2.0 and allows you to figure out your taxes with relative easy; an automatic currency converter; and many more features needed for a web-based subscription business.

The main problem with Zuora is how to gain access to its products. According to its overview on TradeVibes.com, Zuora is considered as a bearish company. Some of the viewers on TradeVibes commented that Zuora’s pricing not sustainable, furthermore it is impossible to log into Zuora’s service. Therein lies the question on how can users access the products that Zuora has to offer? Most people who do business on the internet like to have things running smoothly and not have to constantly contact tech support to get a problem solved.

Zuora is a privately owned corporation that is based in Redwood City, California and was founded in 2006. Zuora has four people on its management team and its main founder is Tien Tzuo.

Tien Tzuo is the driving force in the company and has also founded other startups as well. Mr. Tzuo helped in the founding Zuora after working at Salesforce.com, where he was also a cofounder. Mr. Tzuo also currently works at Zuora as the company’s CEO and is also an adviser to Cloud9 Analytics and also sits on Zuora’s board of directors.

Zuora’s investors include Benchmark Capital, which invested $6.5 million in series A funding in March of 2008 and Shasta Ventures and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, which invested $15 million in series B funding in October of 2008.

Benchmark Capital is a vc firm that is focused on helping talented entrepreneurs build successful companies. One of the key phrases at Benchmark is team work. This is what makes Benchmark Capital unique among other vc firms, they like to consider themselves as part of the team of their portfolio companies. Benchmark Capital is usually the first investor in a company’s life, providing seed and early stage funding to companies in the tech industry. Some other companies in Benchmark’s portfolio include Mazu Networks, Atrica, Blue Coat, Decru, Securify, and others.

Shasta Ventures is a vc firm that is dedicated to backing early stage companies run by outstanding entrepreneurs and mainly invests in companies that are in a wide range of different industries. The goal of Shasta is to provide entrepreneurs not only with the capital they need, but also help them set realistic objectives to make their companies succeed in the marketplace. Some other companies in Shasta’s portfolio include Apptio, ArchRock, Asterpix, BabyCenter, BlueNile, Click Forensics, and others.

Zuora does have some competitors, but the most noteworthy one is Paypal. Paypal is an online bank, which allows you to deposit or withdraw money digitally to your bank or credit union. You can also use Paypal to make online purchases. Paypal is safe to use and your money in Paypal is secured by all kinds of different security features. Paypal is used by most of the world’s most prominent online merchants and auction sites. In fact, eBay only uses Paypal for online transactions. Paypal is a subsidiary of eBay and was founded in 1998.

For more information about Zuora, click here.

In recent times, the mobile industry is expanding and there are always new emerging markets for new and more sophisticated mobile devices, from hi-tech phones to small pocket computers that fit into the palm of your hand and, the iPhone, of course. These emerging markets in the mobile industry are always a great breading ground for new startup companies and Modu is no exception.

Modu is very unique because it has introduced a very revolutionary product into the market. Not only does Modu create the world’s lightest phone, it also has a modular phone which is a device jacket that can be attached to another portable device, such as an MP3 player. The Modu Jacket is also revolutionary, because you can change a jacket whenever you like and the different jackets that Modu makes can accommodate practically any lifestyle.

One of the jackets that Modu offers is the Modu Express Jacket, which is a jacket that advertises to turn your Modu phone into a playful and entertaining device. The way this works is that the Modu phone is just a phone, but the jacket is the actual interface that gives the basic Modu phone all kinds of features that you could find in multiple mobile devices. The Express Jacket is a jacket that has a slim design and comes in a huge variety in colors and patterns. Furthermore, the Express Jacket is designed to turn your phone into a fun messaging device.

Another of Modu’s jackets is the Modu Music Jacket, which turns your phone into an MP3 player as well as just a mere cellphone. The face of the Modu Music Jacket has graphic equalizers on the display screen and what makes the music jacket so amazing is that it even comes with its own loud speakers that have high quality sound. This MP3 player is not just for headphones anymore. These speakers power excellent sound for their small size, allowing you to blast the neighborhood with the stored music tracks.

Are you an avid bicycle rider? Well, guess what? Modu also has something for you. Introducing the bicycle jacket, which allows you to affix your phone to the handle bar on your bicycle. The jacket also comes with an added accessory that is also affixed to the handle bars on your bicycle. The Modu Bicycle Jacket is also equipped with an extra large display screen with large text that can be easily seen when a call is coming in or scrolling through menus while riding on your bicycle and still being able to pay attention to the road.

The three products mentioned above are only a few of the jackets that Modu has available for its phone. Furthermore, as mentioned above, all these jackets are interchangeable and you can even have several different jackets to suite all your different needs in life.

Modu is based in Kfar Saba, Israel and employs ten people. The company was founded in 2007 and is a privately owned corporation with four people on its management team, who are Dov Moran, CEO; Ronen Faier, CFO; Itay Sherman, CTO; and Udi Weinstein, CIO.

Besides being Modu’s CEO, Mr. Moran is also the founder of the company. Mr. Moran is not new at founding companies, since before founding Modu, he founded Msystems, which is the company that invented both the USB flash drive and the flash chip or card. Msystems became worth more than $1 billion and was acquired by Sandisk.

As the company’s CFO, Mr. Faier oversees all the financial operations at Modu. Before coming to Modu, Mr. Faier was the CFO at Glue Software Technologies and Sandisk Israel. Mr. Faier has quite a bit of experience in corporate finances and also held key positions in the financial departments of Msystems and other tech companies. Mr. Faier was also the financial controller at VocalTec Communications, Ltd.

Mr. Sherman works at Modu as the company’s CTO and oversees all the technical operations at Modu. Before coming to Modu, Mr. Sherman worked for Texas Instruments, where he held key tech positions. Mr. Sherman joined Texas Istruments when it acquired the innovative cable modem developer, Libit; where he worked as the company’s marketing director. Mr. Sherman also worked for the Israeli Defense Ministry.

As Modu’s CIO, Mr. Weinstein is in charge of Modu’s entire IT operations. Mr. Weinstein worked at Sandisk as the company’s vice president before coming to Modu. Mr. Weinstein also has over 10 years of experience in IT, organization, and methods. Mr. Weinstein’s main role at Modu is to make sure that the communications systems of the company work smoothly.

Modu’s main investors are Gemini Israel Funds and Genesis Partners, who funded Modu $20 million in series A funding in June of 2007, and $100 million in series B funding on March 25, 2008. Qualcom also invested $7 million in series C funding for Modu in January of 2009.

Gemini Israel Fund is a vc firm that mainly invests in early stage companies that are based in Israel. The goal of the Gemini Israel Fund is to support Israeli entrepreneurs build successful companies. Some other companies in Gemini’s portfolio include Contextream, Massive Impact, RADLive, WeFi, and others.

Genesis Partners is a leading Israeli vc firm that mainly invests in the tech industry. The types of entrepreneurs that Genesis seeks to invest in are those who are diligent and have an innovative technology, along with the desire to build fast growing companies. Some other companies in Genesis’ portfolio include AGI, ColBar, Elcom Technologies, Lucid, Netect, and others.

Modu does not have any known competitors as of yet.

For more information about Modu, click here.

Astaro is a company founded in 2000 and designs an internet gateway that simplifies your email and protects you from viruses, spyware, phishing, and other pitfalls of the internet. Astaro is a privately owned venture backed company which is based in Wilmington, Massachusetts and employs 170 people.

When you look at the Astaro website, you will see four ways that Astaro claims to help you secure your internet activity and protect your computer from viruses and other internet dangers. These are the Astaro Security Gateway, the Astaro Web Gateway, the Astaro Mail Gateway, and the Astaro Command Center.

The Astaro Gateway is an internet portal which comes with both hardware and software and is designed to integrate the complete network. Furthermore, the Astaro Gateway interface has a user-friendly threat management system that can provide an all in one solution for all your internet security needs. Some of the features that the Astaro Gateway includes are a network security feature, which can protect your network from a huge variety of internet threats, including viruses, denial of service attacks, port scans, worms, trojans, and other threats; a mail security feature, which scans and filters your emails to prevent spam, viruses, phishing, and other destructive emails out of your network; a web security feature, which can protect employee access to your network and filters all web FTP traffic to protect your network from viruses and other online threats; and finally, the Astaro Gateway provides you with easy management and up to date service.

The Astaro Web Gateway is an interface that is designed to keep all your web data secure and can also control what your employees can access on the web. Some of the features that are included in the Astaro Web Gateway include URL filtering, which controls what your employees can or cannot browse over the web and Astaro advertises that this feature not only increases productivity, but also can enforce compliance and reduce legal risks to the employer. Another feature is the Malware Detection feature, which is a feature that helps your network monitor all FTP traffic and filter out viruses, spyware and phone-home applications, which can pose serious security threats to your network. The use of this feature in the Astaro Web Gateway can greatly reduce the leakage of sensitive information to undesirable parties or hackers trying to get into your network.

The Astaro Mail Gateway is an all in one solution to monitor your employer’s emails on your company’s network. The Astaro Mail Gateway protects your emails from spam, worms, phishing, and viruses. Furthermore, the Astaro Mail Gateway is a user-friendly end portal that can allow users to keep a quarantine email log.

The Astaro Command Center can be a key feature for internet service providers and employers alike to oversee the entire network operation. The Astaro Command Center is used to monitor the overall system, see what is going on and to control aspects of the network. The command center also offers a single-sign-on feature, which allows your users to sign on only once, simplifying the login process onto your network.

As for a startup, Astaro seems to doing rather well, with global expansion and the company has offices in the United States, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, Jordan, Singapore, and Switzerland.

Astaro’s known investors are Insight Venture Partners and Wellington Partners, which invested $6.7 million in series B funding in May of 2004.

Insight Ventures is both a vc firm and a private equity firm, which is a leader in providing the necessary capital to new global software, internet and data service companies. Insight Ventures was founded in 1995 and has over $3 billion under its management. Some other companies in Insight’s portfolio include ExactTarget, Connexus, Nistevo, Cleanwise, Argus Software, and others.

Wellington Partners is a vc firm that has been around for at least ten years and is dedicated to the success of European entrepreneurs. Wellington Partners mainly invests in companies that are in the clean tech, digital media, software, and life sciences industries. Wellington Partners has offices in London, England; Munich, Germany; and Palo Alto, California. Some other companies in Wellington’s portfolio include BridgeCo, Cavendish Kinetics, Adconion, Goom Radio, SMS Guru, and others.

Astaro has one noteworthy competitor, Alert Logic. Alert Logic provides a similar service and product as does Astaro and is a company that is based in Houston, Texas and was founded in 2002. Alert Logic is a privately owned corporation and employs 52 people.

For more information about Astaro, click here.

Founded in June of 2006, Aprius is the newest company that bids to revolutionize I/O gateways and the products that Aprius offers are solutions that virtualize and pool the I/O gateway, high performance and shared storage, cost effective host-to-host communications, and a high availability sparing for PCIe resources.

The I/O gateway is a device that enables PCI Express resources to be provisioned, moved, managed, or consolidated. Furthermore, the Aprius I/O gateway virtualizes all of the above into one pool, whenever the need arises to do so. In doing so, the Aprius I/O gateway helps businesses and high-end computing customers to achieve the highest performance possible from their servers. Furthermore, higher performance and more traffic flow also provides for lower costs and higher profits for the companies with Aprius products.

Aprius has a line of products that is solely dedicated to a higher I/O gateway performance. Aprius’ technology is also good for businesses because it is scaleable and resilient, as well as having a high port count system architecture, which can be used to interface a high volume of servers serving both industrial and high computing networks.

Aprius also offers applications that are designed to help I/O providers to run their I/O gateways more smoothly and efficiently. The way this software works is by I/O virtualization, server expansion, computational acceleration, high performance storage, and host-to-host communication.

Aprius investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners and NEA, which invested $11 million in series A funding in 2007, and the two above mentioned vc firms also pitched in with Menlo Ventures in $20 million in series B funding.

Lightspeed Venture Partners is a vc firm that is a global leader in investing in early stage companies and Lightspeed has more than $2 billion under its management. Lightspeed Venture Partners is based in Silicon Valley, California and has offices in Israel, China, and India. Some other companies in Lightspeed’s bill include 99Bill, Aerohive, Blaze DFM, Blue Nile, CoalTek, and others.

NEA or New Enterprise Associations is a vc firm that is also a leader in venture capital and focuses on helping entrepreneurs turn their ideas into successful companies. Founded in 1978, NEA invests in all stages of a company’s life and has over $8.5 billion under its management. Some other companies in NEA’s portfolio include Anicus, Xen Source, 3Com, Alteon, Argon Networks, and others.

Menlo Ventures is a vc firm that is based in Menlo Park, California and is dedicated to providing long term capital and management support to early stage companies and was founded in 1976. Menlo Ventures has over $4 billion under its management and has a team of partners with deep experience in the tech industry. Some other companies in Menlo’s portfolio include 3Par, Acme Packet, CellFire, UUNET Technologies, InfoSeek, Mobitv, and others.

The founders of Aprius are Jean-Marc Verdiell, who still works at the company as its CTO; Marc Epitaux, who still works at Aprius as the company’s Vice President of Components and Engineering; and Peter Kirkpatrick, who also serves the company as the Chief Architect.

Dr. Verdiell has experience in management, product development, and research in the optoelectronics industry that spans over 19 years and has held key management positions in prominent companies, such as AT&T Bell Laboratories, SDL, and Intel. Dr. Verdiell also directed the Optical Digital Group in October of 2001, where he was in charge of developing Intel’s optical technology strategy. Dr. Verdiell graduated from the University of Paris, where he received a doctorate in optoelectronics.
Marc Epitaux has worked in the development engineering and team management department for over 13 years and was an early contributer at LightLogic, where he developed 10 GB/s optical modules and manufacturing automation technology. Mr. Epitaux graduated from EPFL, Switzerland in 1992 with an MS in Micro Engineering.

Mr. Kirkpatrick is also an asset to the company, because of his incredible experience in the development of high speed communication systems. Mr. Kirkpatrick also worked at Intel, where he worked on path finding in short reach optical interconnects. In 1999, he graduated from the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, where he received an MSEE in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering.

Aprius does not yet have any noteworthy competitors to speak of.

For more information about Aprius, click here.

The job search has been on the internet for a while, and there are many job searching networks available, but there is one that seems to stand out from them all. Visual CV is the online social network that is designed for those of you who finished your college education and are looking for a good job. Visual CV basically provides you with a free service that can also allow you to import your Linkedin profile, if you have a Linkedin account.

Signing up on Visual CV is very easy and user friendly. All you need to do is to type in your first name, then your last name, and your email address. After you type in your email address, you will be prompted to confirm your email address and then you must type in and confirm a password, which must be a minimum of eight characters. After your password, you must type a series of letters and numbers that appear in a graphic above. That’s it, then you are in. You will not be able to log into your account until you get your confirmation email. That email usually comes in seconds after you have successfully signed up for Visual CV. When you get the email, all you need to do is to click on the hyperlink in your email that tells you to confirm your email and it will directly open up Visual CV’s website and walk you through establishing your account.

Once you are in your account, you can set things up with relative ease. After you have edited your Visual CV profile, you will see a bar graph that tells you how much of your profile is complete. You will see after you have finished your initial profile, you will see the bar graph will tell you that your profile is 30% complete. On your account, you will see that you have two options: 1) the option to share your profile with others, and 2) the option to edit your profile. If you are not finished with your profile, you can go to the edit option and you can do all kinds of things to create that killer resume or curriculum vitae that will land you with that good paying job. You can upload your personal image by clicking on the square at the top right hand corner of the website. You can also add a summary, edit your work history, and your educational history.

The parts of your online Visual CV resume are known as columns and the above mentioned material is in your main column. At the top of the website, you will see a toolbar that has all kinds of options for columns that you can add. Suppose you want to add your interests or skills as a column to your resume. For your interests, you click on the interests button on the toolbar. You will see at the bottom of the group of columns an interest column that you can edit. All you need to do is to click on the edit hyperlink and a text box will appear on that column. All you need to do is to type in all your interests and then hit save button and that’s it. What you wrote will be saved and you or anyone else who views your profile will see it when they see your profile. Visual CV offers even more options that cannot all be covered in this article.

If you choose to share your profile with someone you know or a potential employer, you can click on the share hyperlink and you will be prompted to add emails of people, with whom you want to share with. You have the option to choose your contacts from either your Linkedin account or from your email’s address book. You can click on either one of these options. You can even change your privacy status and promote yourself with Visual CV.

Visual CV was founded in 2008 and is based in Reston, Virginia and employs 20 people. Visual CV has three people on its management team and they are Phillip Merrick, who is one of the two cofounders of the company and also serves Visual CV as the company chairman. The second cofounder is Clint Heiden, who also serves as the company’s CEO. The third member on the management team is Douglas Meadows, who is the vice president and the general manager of operations.

Philip Merrick is a seasoned entrepreneur, who also founded Bibury Partners, where he still works as a managing partner of the firm. Bibury Partners is an early stage technology advisory and investment firm. Mr. Merrick also was a cofounder of webMethods, Inc, which he founded together with his wife in 1996. webMethods is a company that became a leader in business integration software.

Clint Heiden is the second cofounder and before founding Visual CV, he was the CEO of the Heiden Group, which is a recruiting firm for venture backed companies in the tech industry. The Heiden Group also builds sales and marketing teams up from scratch for these companies so the sponsored companies can have an effective marketing strategy to sell their products. Mr. Heiden also has over 17 years of experience in the executive field that includes P&L, Finance, sales, marketing, and business development.

The two major investors of Visual CV are Valhalla Partners and Heidrick & Struggles, which invested an undisclosed amount in series A funding in November of 2007.

Valhalla Partners is a vc firm that invests in companies in the IT industry. Valhalla is an amazing vc firm that is able to generate a large amount of capital and a track record to prove it. Over 20 years ago, Valhalla Partners had about $3 billion to about $240 billion in capital under its management today. Some other companies in Valhalla’s portfolio include Advertising.com, Avail, B2B Markets, Enterprise DB, Exelon, and others.

Visual CV does have a few competitors and one of its more noteworthy competitors is ResumeBear, which is a privately owned corporation that employs 12 people. ResumeBear was founded in 2008 and is based in Solana Beach, California. ResumeBear has four people on its management team and two people on its board of directors.

For more information about Visual CV, click here.

A new form of advertising has appeared on the internet. Introducing Pinch Media, which is an advertising company that offers a free service and even allows you to create your own application. Using this service is very simple and you do not need to be a techie to be able to create an app on Pinch Media. You even have the option to charge for downloading your application if you choose to do so. You can even have your application to be in several different languages. The languages that you can choose from are English, French, Italian, German, Japanese, and Spanish. After you have written what the application will do, Pinch Media will launch it automatically. Once you have successfully created your application, you will see at the top of the website, that your application and the name of your application successfully added to Pinch Media. You will be required to create your own application to be able to use the services available on Pinch Media.

The two major services are the Pinch Analytics, which is an analytic system that is compatible with mobile phones. This program is integrated with your app and you can see all the valuable data about the market of your product. Pinch Analytics is free to use and your app is automatically enrolled into it after you have created it.

The second service is Pinch Advertising. Pinch Advertising is an app that can be used on the iPhone and the above mentioned Pinch Analytics is required to enroll your app for this service. Furthermore, Pinch Advertising is also offered simultaneously with JumpTap, which is a leading network in the mobile advertising industry. This also allows you to integrate your app with JumpTap’s sales team and enables your app to work with the iPhone. If you choose to enroll your app with this service, you need to click on the hyperlink below that will say enroll and your app’s name. When you click on this link and plan to enroll your app with this service, you will see a whole page that explains the terms and services this service provides. You will also be notified that JumpTap will handle all the payments. Your adds will appear on the iPhone as a banner at the top of the iPhone display. You will not be prompted to type in a credit or debit card number or your cellphone number for payment.

Pinch Media is a privately owned company that is based in Hoboken, New Jersey. The company’s management team consists of its two founders, Greg Yardley, who also works at Pinch Media as the company’s CEO and Jesse Rohland, who also works at the company as its lead developer.

Mr. Yardley has quite a bit of experience in designing analytics and ad serving products. One of the reasons of Pinch Media’s success is because Mr. Yardley is a former Yahoo employee and worked on Yahoo’s real time auction for the Yahoo advertising. Mr. Yardley joined Yahoo, when it acquired Right Media, where Mr. Yardley was the lead product manager.

Mr. Rohland is the engine that runs Pinch Media’s engineering efforts. Before joining Mr. Yardley in founding Pinch Media, Mr. Rohland also worked at Yahoo, where he was the key developer. Before coming to Yahoo, Mr. Rohland was a developer at several e-commerce sites.

Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital, and W Media Ventures are the three major investors in Pinch Media and invested an undisclosed amount in series A funding in seed funding in May of 2008.

Based in New York, Union Square Ventures is a vc firm that mainly invests in early stage companies in the IT industry and that have an innovative product that has the potential to disrupt the market. Some companies in Union Square’s portfolio include 10gen, Adaptive Blue, AMEE, Boxee, Clickable, and others.

With offices in Philadelphia and San Francisco, First Round Capital is a vc firm that primarily invests in early stage companies that are competitive. The vc firm does not offer capital to companies that do not have a competitive edge in their markets. Some other companies that First Round Capital has in its portfolio include 33Accross, Ambient Devices, AppNexux, Aster Data Systems, and others.

W Media Ventures is a vc firm that mainly invests in internet opportunities and looks for entrepreneurs who want to build outstanding companies. Some companies in W Media’s portfolio include AbeBooks.com, AdMarketplace, Nexopia, TeamPages, TechVibes, and others.

Pinch Media has one major competitor who is AppLoop. AppLoop is a privately owned company based in Silicon Valley, California and was founded in 2008. The company employs two people and has two people on its management team.

For more information about Pinch Media, click here.

A new and unique service has appeared in the internet industry. Plaxo is the latest in internet innovation, claiming to organize your appointments, calendar, and even help you link together all your accounts on the well known social networks, such as Flickr.com, YouTube, Digg, and others. Plaxo also offers downloads for your computer for both Windows and Mac users. These downloadable applications can automatically update your appointments to your iCal, for Mac users, Outlook Express, etc. To use Plaxo, you must sign up and it is free, because Plaxo generates its revenues with advertising.

Signing up for Plaxo is very easy. All you need to do is to type in your full name, your email address, and your password. Once you have typed in all your prompts, you will be prompted to confirm your email address. Theoretically, you should be able to do this from the Plaxo website by clicking on a hyperlink, but the hyperlink is obviously inactive. That is a bit inconvenient, but it is no problem, because you can get to your email and you will see an email from Plaxo asking you to confirm your email. Once you open this email, you will be prompted to click on a hyperlink that asks you to confirm your email. Once you have clicked on that link, you will be led right into your Plaxo account. You will be prompted to type in your friends which Plaxo gets automatically from your address book. Plaxo works with all the internet emails, such as Yahoo!, Gmail, and others. You also have the option to add your work email, if you choose to do so. Plaxo will then take you to your friends list, which it gathers from your email’s address book and you can select or deselect contacts if you wish to do so.

Once you have entered Plaxo, you can update your profile. You can upload your photograph, which is very easy to do. You can upload either jpeg, gif or png files. You can also update all your personal data, such as your religious and political views, your activities and interests, and your favorite movies and TV shows. You can also add your favorite books to your profile. Your profile also allows you to change your contact information and hide your birthday if you choose to do so.

If you click on the downloads link at the bottom of the page, you will find that Plaxo offers four different downloads and you can download either one for free. The first download is a toolbar for Outlook and Outlook Express, which is great for those of you who use either one of these applications to access your email. This toolbar is also equipped with Pulse Integration.

The second download is a toolbar for Apple’s iCal application and it allows Plaxo to get everything up out of your iCal app and link it with your Plaxo account. This application is also equipped with Pulse Integration.

The third download that Plaxo offers is for Windows Mobile and is for Windows users. This app is designed to keep your Windows mobile phone in sync with your Plaxo account.

The fourth download is Pulse Notifier for Windows and this application is designed to alert you when your friends share videos, music, or messages on Pulse.

Plaxo is the brainchild of Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring. Both of these men are seasoned entrepreneurs and have both founded other successful companies before.

Besides being one of Plaxo’s cofounders, Mr. Masonis still works at Plaxo as the Vice President of Products and does all the lead user interface and windows design for the Plaxo website and apps as well. Before founding Plaxo, Mr. Masonis founded netElement and Natient Technologies. Plaxo is the third startup that Mr. Masonis participated in its founding.

Besides being the other cofounder of the company, Mr. Ring aslo works at Plaxo as the Chief Architect of Plaxo. Mr. Ring’s main duty at Plaxo is to oversee all the client side development at Plaxo, including the integration of the company’s software together with Outlook and Outlook Express. Mr. Ring also founded netElement together with Mr. Masonis.

Plaxo is based in Mountain View, California and is a privately owned company. Including the two above mentioned cofounders, Plaxo has nine people on its management team and six people on its board of directors.

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