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What's For Lunch? Log In To Find Out.

Lunchtime in a typical office. Someone wants Chinese, another wants a quick bite before that 2 o'clock review, no one can agree and every one is in a hurry. Those lunch blues can be solved with a click of a mouse. A cool, new and very insightful website, Lunch Prodigy is just what the doctor ordered (no puns intended).

The site defines itself as:

"This website offers an online service for those companies who would like to save hours from their employees' time to take food orders for their company."

To start, you open a Lunch Prodigy account and get everyone to log in and place their orders. Once done, someone prints it, makes that call and places a single clear order. No more splitting hairs on who ordered what, what he or she should pay, or making sure that everyone was asked. The administrator can easily add new lunch providers and Lunch Prodigy can also be used for stationary and other corporate needs.

"Lunch Prodigy has saved us so much time. Ordering food by the employees couldn't be easier"-

The group account page has some fun features, like Interesting Facts, which gives you random facts like "Your company orders French fries more than any other company in your area." It also gives useful insights about recent activities and the current roster order made by users of your company. You can create new orders for the day and delete old ones or even add items to the existing order for facilitating easy actions. And who says there is no such thing as a free lunch? Lunch Prodigy is free- revenues coming from advertising.

A very new website, started in March, based in Malta, founded by Neville Attard, it sure gives you food for thought and more importantly, for your stomach!

Musings From Malta – a chat with Lunch prodigy

What type of programming is Lunch Prodigy build on?
It is built using Java (Struts, Hibernate and SiteMesh libraries)

What is the infrastructure of Lunch prodigy? How is the network of local restaurants developed?

Currently users (i.e. companies using Lunch Prodigy) have to add their favorite local restaurants. But soon we will provide a section where restaurants can register to provide deliveries or at least take phone orders.

Do you have any stats on how much time or money employers lose on deciding on lunch?

Well all I can say is that all this started when I noticed my colleagues at work wasted a lot of time. First there would be a lot of quarrelling of whom should be taking the order, something on the lines "Hey I took the order yesterday... I'm not gonna take it today". Then they would waste time to decide from whom they should order. Then the guy who is taking the order would have to go round the office rooms and take the order for each one. More than 30min were wasted daily, if not more. Plus the confusion to add up how much money he should collect from each colleague. There would always be mistakes :). So you see there are a lot of advantages for a company using Lunch Prodigy if they make lunch orders frequently.

Do most Lunch Prodigy users typically have delivered by restaurants?

Yes, although there are also restaurants who are taking orders by phone and the users then go pick it up themselves. Lunch Prodigy just helps the users to avoid wasting time going round the offices and adding up the correct amounts for collecting money.

Does Lunch Prodigy benefit restaurants or do they contact you?

I'm not sure I understood the question. But I guess restaurants benefit from Lunch Prodigy, especially when we will roll out the update for letting restaurants register their menus. The restaurants will be suggested to those companies who signup and are in their locality.

Could this concept be applied to users when they go home?

I'm not sure how it could be used at home, since when you're at home there won't be a lot of people ordering.

What business would make good partners for Lunch Prodigy?
Any restaurant willing to put their menu online basically :)

Lunch Prodigy – Are we drooling at the prospect?

Yes! All of us have gone through lunch time blues, being hungry and not knowing when the food is going to turn up. It's quite a boon for large organizations and a dozen or so uses spring to mind, apart from the time saving bit. For instance, it's someone's birthday and in a weak moment, they agreed to sponsor lunch…what easier way to ensure that they do deliver on it?!! For restaurants too, it's a great way to reach out and find out more about customers' tastes. All in all, our vote is for insightful, thoughtful applications like Lunch Prodigy, which make our nine to six a little easier.

The Game's The Thing!

Hate being the only one who missed the unbelievable game? Or the only one sleeping while baseball history was being rewritten? RUWT? or Areyouwatchingthis is the site that will keep you right in the game, right in the thick of things.

Created by Mark Phillip in January, 2007 at Austin, Texas, aided by the Tribune Group, the company that owns www.zap2it.com, the site has reached out to a million sports fans either by emails or by text messages.

This amazing new sports fan site, let's people on to the most popular game based on votes and provide real-time scores. Each game in the TV schedule tells you where and when it will be aired, a written preview of the match, lets you vote, and lets you "shout" your opinion to a comment thread. The site also tracks news, standings, and teams across 15 sports. The score board page is another way of following games on the site.

At the core of the site is RUWTbot, the "game-watching robot" that uses algorithms to identify the next instant classic in the making and will alert you about instant classics being televised. The RSS or iCalendar feeds make it easier to get updates and their sports videos through YOUTUBE are an interesting watch.

Recent updates include an RUWT? toolbar that displays a ticker in your Firefox browser containing scores and news from the sports of your choice.

Sports+TVGuide+Digg=RUWT? asks Techcrunch

(RUWT?) is a new sports fan site you can use to follow the most popular sports games on TV based on votes from the community and the real-time score of the game. It's meant keep people from missing the really spectacular sports games as they develop.

Though a similar site does not exist, there are huge sports sites, flexing muscle in the same areas.

R U Reading This? A Chat With The Company

1. What does the brand of RUWT mean?

RUWT (pronounced root) stands for Are You Watching This? I can't count how many times I've called a buddy shouting that phrase as a game went into triple overtime, or a there was a huge brawl on TV, so it was the perfect name for a site that lets you know when you need to get on the couch and turn on the TV.

2. With the development of the Internet, scores can be viewed in near real time. How does RUWT take advantage of this?

The core goal of RUWT? is to help fans catch as many great games as possible. RUWT? uses algorithms to determine the "Root Rating", so our users can tell how exciting a game is. Thanks to real time scoring, we're able to alert our users almost instantly when there's a great game on TV they could (and should) be watching.

3. Besides being able to change the feed to your postal code & cable provider, what other features can be customized?

We understand that people don't want to spend all day monitoring the site, but definitely don't want to miss anything good, so in-game alerts are far and away the most popular feature among users. To make the alerts as helpful as possible, we let users pick the sports they care about, the level of Root Rating before receiving a message, as well as whether they want notification via email and/or SMS.

4. Who writes the preview of the matches?

All of our news is provided by PA SportsTicker. We mash-up a sports feed from SportsTicker with a TV feed from the Tribune Group to power our game information.

5. I have been a sports fans all my life and I always hear the "any broadcast without express permission is prohibited" thing. How does RUWT avoid violating this law?

Thankfully, those policies don't apply to us because we just show scores and game updates, and don't provide a play-by-play stream of what's going on.

6. How does RUWT take advantage of RSS technology?

RUWT? uses RSS, iCal, and standard XML to power different data feeds on our site. RSS can be used to monitor news of any one of our 20+ sports or 7000+ teams, upcoming games for a sport or team, or a customized list of televised games available to a user.

7. What is the RUWTbot?

The RUWTbot is our "game-watching" robot that monitors the sports feed searching for instant classics in the making. The core, ground-breaking feature of RUWT? is our ability to use algorithms to determine how exciting a game is. It's a new way to watch sports so initially it was hard explaining to people what the site was about. We created RUWTbot's character to help people wrap their heads around the concept.

8. How do you use your blog to generate buzz about RUWT?

I laugh when people ask if I've done any surveys or market research--I'm basically building a sports service that I always wished existed. All sports fans hate missing great games, and I'm one of them. The blog is a place for me to show the lighter side of sports, share some behind the scenes tidbits about the site, and show other fans that I'm just like them.

9. What type of person makes an ideal RUWT employee?

RUWT? doesn't have any competitors, but the other big Sports Web 2.0 sites out there are just that: big. Fannation.com probably gets the most publicity, and they were purchased for $20M+ by Sports Illustrated. To combat that, and to hold the attentions of our users we have to be flexible and nimble, so the perfect employee is more focused on the principles of programming versus any particular language. We value breadth of skill versus depth, because one day our Flash widget is the high priority, but the next day programming in XUL to get our Firefox Toolbar out the door could become hot. For RUWT? to be successful, and for an employee to be successful with us, we have to be more nimble than the giants in the Sports Web 2.0 space.

We Are Watching This For Sure!

It's human to want to be where the action is. And with RUWT? you'll never again miss that opportunity. A great site and a great idea, which has the potential to become a habit (rather than a mere product/service) with sports fans, in the same genre as looking up the TV schedule or reading about a game, despite having watched it all night!

Forget Buffet, Try Feeding The Bull Instead!

Who says finance guys don't socialize? Feed The Bull is abuzz with just about every finance type, from rookie investor to hedge fund managers…and guess what they are all up to? Talking shop of course! Founded in October 2006 at Denver, Feed The Bull is a social site with news and tips on every aspect of investing, business, and the economy.

This is how it works – The site, mainly targeted for investors, allows anyone to register (for free) and gives them a voice by allowing them to submit, vote, and comment on articles that influence the stock market. An in-depth into the site shows how each article undergoes a process of selection by votes and is queued up until it gets the required votes to reach the front page. Search is through the tag cloud method, using key words on any topic. RSS feeds, organized by topic, are also available, so you know up-to-the minute who's saying what about which market. Ads too are allowed onsite.

Topbloglists observes that the site is a

"Great way to aggregate financial information and to let the finance community have a chance to voice their opinion on the articles and stocks."

That's not all. You can prove your pet stock theories by entering an online competition and see how your picks fare against the rest of the Bull community.

The word from killerstartups.com is encouraging:

"FeedTheBull.com helps to demystify the investment world by providing news about stocks through user-generated content which is displayed according to the votes received by users."

There is no direct competition, though sites like Helium operate on the same format. The site has taken great pains to improve and keep the articles relevant to its core area. Some rumblings were heard earlier about the articles being too general!

Straight From The Bull's Mouth

Who is the typical Feed The Bull user?

The typical Bull user is someone that is doing their own research and managing their own investments. Currently, FeedTheBull has members ranging from Hedge Fund Managers to beginner investors.

Different types of investors have different philosophies & attitudes to the markets. How does this affect a democratic type of environment such as FTB?

The different investor philosophies and attitudes of investors is what really gives value to FeedTheBull. While someone may be a value investor, they may find an article written up by someone with a technical mindset and can pull some truth from it that sits well with them. The idea is that we have a free exchange of ideas and anyone can take what they want from it. If you disagree with someone's viewpoint, you have the opportunity to express your views and have an open debate on the validity of the article. This not only fosters discussion, but a new thought process that may lead to a new way of thinking for someone. My hope is that people are open to new ideas and willing to at least entertain different philosophies.

Is there information other than the stock markets such as energy, gold, etc.?

FeedTheBull has information on most types of investments, from the stock market to commodities to real estate. We have created a platform for news related to the stock market, finance and the economy. There are many different forces that affect the stock market, or a particular company.

Financial markets tend to be highly regulated. How does the possibility of misinformation affect FTB users?

Misinformation is always a possibility on the internet. One of the advantages of a democratic website is that when people do see through the fluff and misinformation, they will not vote for the article and it will never make it to the front page. As well, FeedTheBull wants to remind everyone to do their research before they make any investment decisions.

Have visitors embraced RSS technology on your site?

Absolutely. While RSS feeds don't allow the user the full FeedTheBull experience, we have just as many users of the RSS feeds as we have page views otherwise. We have RSS feeds set up for each individual category, for stories that are published, and for stories that are pending publishing.

What is the challenge tab on the FTB home page?

FeedTheBull offers an online stock competition. Periodically we sponsor a Stock Challenge open to all members and will offer prizes to the top performing portfolios. As well, any member can create their own challenge and invite others to compete against them with a $100,000 portfolio. It gives investors a chance to participate in the market and try out new techniques that they have picked up from the site.

What type of person is an ideal employee for Feed The Bull?

Creative, Cutting Edge, someone that can handle fast passed work, rapid changes, and loves challenges and the rewards that come with a challenge.

What skill sets & knowledge will be to work at FTB?

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, Ajax, Smarty, PHP, MySQL. It depends on what we're doing, but we need all of these for some portion of the site. Additional skills are Linux, web hosting experience, SEO. In addition, FeedTheBull is looking for marketing campaign managers, and ad sales managers.

Bullish on Feed the bull

Oh yes, but like we said earlier on user generated content/user dependant sites, it all boils down to the quality of visitors to the site, their level of awareness and discretion in rating the various articles. But in the meanwhile, let's sharpen those pencils and jump right into the ring, after all the bull's on our side this time!

Zinch That Admission!

First it was companies using social networking sites and virtual reality sites for hires. Now colleges are following suit, on to sites like Zinch, to find out exactly what material their future students are made of!

Zinch.com, launched in March 2007 by Mick Hagen, (President and Founder) with Brad Hagen and Sid Krommerhoek, invites students to empower themselves to get into their preffered colleges. A free website, it is privately funded and has added to its mantle recently, by winning the Utah entrepreneur challenge worth $40,000.

How does it help applicants? Any student can create their Zinch account and keep building their profile, all through high school. It is a detailed online portfolio to showcase academic and extra-curricular achievements. Typically, students can upload extra-curricular activities, awards, jobs or internships, personality traits, qualities, likes and dislikes and even their hobbies.

The idea is to make sure that in the rat race for admission, you don't lose out just because you have lower scores. Once you're done with your profile, Zinch takes over. The site has a profile of every school and college in America. Colleges and universities search through the Zinch database to recruit students based on different criteria. For instance, a college department with a strong swim team, would find it easier to spot a future champion through Zinch than through the traditional application method.

As killerstartups defines it

Zinch is a disruptive technology that changes the way students will find and be found by universities. The current system of college recruiting and application is broken. The only way the universities can find students is to buy list of students with a high ACT or SAT score. This is only useful to the most cerebral universities and students. Everyone else is left on their own. Zinch solves that problem by recognizing that students are more than a test score.

Zinch offers those enticing extras too. The "schoolzeeker" menu helps you to choose the college with your favorite sports and clubs, as well as the culture and social groups you'd like to meet.

The 'holler dollar' menu of Zinch also offers a wide spectrum of scholarships for those who might need it. Admission officers have it easier too as they can actually see the student's long term achievements rather than just be restricted to what they put on the form.

Podtech sums it neatly

The Zinch model: students generate their own profiles as a free service. Zinch lets the students "shout-out" to specific programs and universities they are interested in attending. Universities purchase a subscription to the content database with the ability to search various criteria. Zinch also provides the university an additional way to target prospective students and then market specific programs students are looking for, rather than deliver generic, campus-wide information.

Competition is hot on Zinch's trail. Zandigo.com is a recent me-too, while U-sphere.com and Connectedu.net operate in the same space, though not with as many features.

Zinch talks

Zinch is yet another cool web name. Where did the name come from?

Back in the day everyone used to say, "dude, that's a sinch." Ya know, saying something was easy. We're putting a small twist on it, using a "z," but saying college admissions is now a ZINCH! Meaning, it's now a lot easier.

I read about the company background, but tell our readers the story behind the idea of Zinch.

When I was in high school and thinking about different colleges, I realized that I was pretty much in trouble. I didn't have the greatest GPA or SAT scores. I was way below the average for a place like Princeton. However, I had always wanted to go Ivy league and I knew that I had many amazing skills and talents that would appeal to a place like Princeton. So what I did was create a really sweet portfolio that highlighted who I was and what I could do. It spoke about my photography skills, web design skills, leadership work, volunteer work, etc. It had everything. It really painted a complete picture of who I was. To make a long story short, it worked. I got into Princeton. They were able to see me for what I was, not some stupid test scores that I didn't do too well on.

Why do you think the current recruitment process is flawed?

Colleges use standardized tests to recruit students. Colleges currently go to College Board (AP and SAT tests) or ACT and buy lists of students who got above a certain score. From there, the colleges will start recruiting and send out info regarding their college. Colleges waste an incredible amount of money on students who they know very little about, and students are pigeon-holed and judged by how they do on a test. The current method is advantageous to the advantaged. Students are more than test scores. We all know that. Colleges now have a method to recruit based on more.

What are some of your general recommendations to high school students?

Be yourself. Find your passions and pursue them. Don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid to be special. Have fun. No matter what college you go to, you can have a great experience and be successful. Showcase yourself through Zinch.

How do you leverage your blog to market Zinch?

The blog is an awesome way to keep people updated on what's going on. It's been a really powerful tool for us to share our excitement and momentum with the world. Through our blog, the energy that we feel as a team can be shared and multiplied. It's been very helpful.

Tell us the main benefits of Zinch for the various interested parties: students, counselors, parents, admission officers.

Students:

Counselors:

Parents:

Admissions officers:

What specific technical skills will you be looking for in the near future?

We're looking for dot net developers who are very familiar with Ajax. We're also looking for the greatest web marketers around.

A sinch for zinch?

Yes and no. The site is certainly a lifesaver to hundreds of relieved students who don't find their chances disappearing just because of their scores. The scholarship idea is also great to create and retain a loyal base. The only note of caution, competition could well be banging on Zinch's door before too long. Just ask Orkut or Facebook or MySpace.

Going, going, gone…on Gumiyo!

What next? Mobiles that can program satellites? From the looks of it, the web 2.0 war is soon going to shift battlegrounds, from sleek computers to even sleeker flip-tops and slide phones! And showing the way, are companies like Gumiyo, who have taken all the features of an online classified site on to the omni-present mobiles.

Gumiyo enables your phone to not only search online, but publish classified ads as well. It's unbelievably simple, anyone with a mobile that can send or receive SMS or MMS, that has a web browser and a camera can do it. By creating an image or video of the item, attaching a multimedia message with a short description and sending it to post@gumiyo.com. Gumiyo will organize and process the ad and allow you to review / edit before publishing. The ad will be broadcast on leading websites like Google, Froogle, Lycos, Oodle, Vast and others. A seller is not forced to reveal private contact information. You can import names from you address book and invite friends to view and visit your listing. In the meantime, buyers on the lookout will connect to the seller via text message or email.

As praized.com puts it

When you post your item, you are presented with a one click experience to notify your friends, and they are presented with a one click experience to notify their friends and so on. Thus, creating the propagation effect of viral marketing regardless of the social network affiliation of each member.

On the browsing/buying side Gumiyo lets you see items on My AOL, My MSN, My yahoo, Google Homepage, or any other RSS Reader. Even if you're looking for that hard-to-find item, a Gumiyo alert will let you know at once, if it comes online. Once the seller is found, you'll be hooked up right away via SMS, emails or even a direct mobile phone call.

The word from mobilecrunch is

Gumiyo.com is working on the most popular classified ads site on the Internet . Using its oh-so-Web 2.0 classified site to buy or sell items, a seller or buyer can be hooked up via telephone by using "disposable" phone numbers. If you find something you like, you enter your phone number and a verification code and hit "Send!". Your number is auto-magically paired with a Gumiyo number and this number is sent to the seller. When he or she calls it, it basically forwards to yours. It even works with text messaging, a neat feature.

For the now, the service is free and accessible from mobiles and web browsers by going on to the website http://www.gumiyo.com. Gumiyo requires no installation and is compatible with most mobile phones. Gumiyo sells products, merchandise, vehicles and housing but no firearms, porno, drugs etc. and are targeted a t both businesses and consumers. While free for non-commercial users, commercial users can pay an additional fee for marketing and for extending their postings.

The really good news, a single Gumiyo ad can generate up to 100-150 additional web pages and citations across the Internet. Apart from the hassle free buying process, here's a great excuse to upgrade those phones!

Competition exists all around, but mainly in the online space from vFlyer.com and the ubiquitous craigslist.com. But neither (as of now), has the mobile edge that Gumiyo has so cleverly cornered.

Gumiyo is privately owned, but as with all of us, is on the lookout for funding. It's quartered in California and was started by Shuki Lehavi.

Catching up with Gumiyo – our chat with them

What specific skills will Gumiyo be looking for in the future when recruiting tech professionals?

Gumiyo is constantly seeking avid technologists who are excited about changing the lives of users around the globe. We look for passionate candidates who care about the product and are not afraid to explore new technologies and apply them to the mobile space. As a parallel web/mobile shop, we are looking for experience in enterprise web applications, along with specific technologies in the mobile arena.

In what ways is Gumiyo better than eBay or Craigslist?

Gumiyo is a different solution than the existing sites and in our view, paves the way for mobile commerce to really emerge.

Our focus is on the connection between the buyer and the seller. In other words, Gumiyo is for selling and buying items where some form of direct, secure communication between parties to a transaction is necessary. Gumiyo is a fully mobile service with complete parity to the Web version of Gumiyo. It might look different in the two environments, but the core user flows and functionality are the same. There aren't many (if any) classifieds sites that can say that.

What are some of the strangest things that have been listed on Gumiyo?
Someone listed an island. I think there was an Irish castle there, too.

What is the advantage of online bidding via mobile phones?

Actually, Gumiyo is not an auction site so I have no idea. In truth, we extend the online marketplace to mobile phones. We also like to say that we are an "ecommerce community with a mobile delivery system." We're not trying to put a shopping cart on a phone nor are we trying to cram an Amazon experience onto the mobile phone. For us, we want to natively incorporate mobile devices into the e-commerce experience in a way that makes the most sense. The mobile phone is an "always on, always-with-you" connectivity channel. For us, it means:

• Delivering qualified buyers to sellers wherever they are
• Delivering relevant listings to buyers wherever they are that can be viewed and acted upon
• Freeing buyers from combing through irrelevant online ads in numerous locations
• Taking full advantage of camera phones and SMS/MMS to post ads from anywhere and propogate them throughout the Internet and to connect buyers and sellers in real-time
• Using PayPal Mobile to securely transact without carrying cash or the hassle of money orders
• Taking advantage of mobile-based social networking to help get your items sold

How important will marketing via mobile communications be in the next few years?

There's so much forward momentum in the mobile marketing world that it's inevitable it will be huge. The cellphone is the fastest growing segment of personal computing, with 222 million subscribers in the U.S. alone. That's more than 2/3 of the population! In 2006, mobile subscribers world-wide have grown at a 15% rate, and global mobile revenues have seen a similar 18% rise, exceeding $667 billion. That's just too big for it not to be important. I don't remember where I got the statistic (or it's context), but I read that in China there are 7 mobile phones per computer in households that have such items. If it can be done on a phone in a way that makes sense, then it will be done. As people start doing more and more computing on their phones, as they view more media, and as they have more mobile online destinations, then there will more opportunities to market to those users.

However, one distinction I see with mobile marketing versus web or traditional marketing, is that mobile marketing is more permission-dependent. In other words, the mobile end-user is in charge of the content because he has to pay for it. Maybe this will change in the future when unlimited mobile browsing and messaging will be the norm like today's Internet.
To this point, we are a mobile platform for consumers and businesses to market their for-sale items and classified ads to a mobile audience. The buyer is in charge of the messages and alerts he receives, and he only gets the ones that matter to him. The seller gets a risk-free way to publish his listings without incurring cost before he gets any value (unlike most classifieds). The buyer and seller are each independently in-charge of the content and messages that come to their phones while they still mutually benefit from the inherent connectivity and ubiquity.

Gung-ho on Gumiyo

It's just the beginning. Web marketing will become the 'traditional' way whereas mobile marketing will be the new mantra! The only issue is the number jumping on to the bandwagon. Frankly, it is just a matter of time before the online biggies go mobile as well. So for Gumiyo and the like, it's a question of being ahead and protecting turf more than anything else.

Who Says The Web Can't Substitute Your Family? Try Wamily For One.

Given the slew of social networking sites, to not belong to any one seems unthinkable! E-mails that kindled friendships and located long-lost friends have now morphed into social networking sites that go that wee bit further to form a network of friends, knitting people globally through a network of communities. Orkut, Myspace, Facebook, Secondlife…there is no dearth of choice.

And now, jumping onto the bandwagon is Wamily, an amalgam of Web + Family.

Wamily? What's a Wamily?

According to the company, Wamily takes off where social networking sites end. This is a customizable, community application tool, based on the Wiki technology. An invitation only site, once in, the user can set up his own Wamily, a personal platform for interacting, sharing messages, pictures, videos and web feeds.

As killerstartups.com puts it

A family on the web is a….feb? A fameb? How about a wamily? A wamily is an online space where a group of people can share, interact, meet, plan, and play. You can create a wamily for any group: friends, family, teams, organizations, social groups, church groups, towns, clubs. On the Wamily site you log-in to your group, and there you can use the site's easy tools to share stuff like messages, pics, videos, ideas and web feeds.

This young company, started in 2006, is founded by 2 business school buddies from Emory University. Since then, it has become a team of 4 talented web professionals, and they are still on the look out for more. Totally self-funded, plans are to use advertising and paid premium features for further funding. Currently Wamily supports Firefox, IE, Netscape 8 onwards, Opera 9 upwards and Safari 2 or newer.

Being a relatively new tool, there's not much in terms of rating, however a word of advice from Mashable

Nevertheless, with all the options for modules, a Wamily page can get crowded very quickly. There's no way to hide them - they're either on your page, or deleted. Some may find the scroll bars in every module a bit cumbersome. And being in alpha means there are some bugs to work out, especially regarding the options for profile customization.

It's hard to define the competition, however sites like Profil3, an online community around gaming where you meet other gamers or Famiva the perfect family site, which hopes to bring families together online, are sure to give Wamily a run for its money. Widen the canvass and names like Wetpaint crop up as possible alternatives.

One To One With Wamily

Wamily is a very unique name. How did you come up with it?

It fell into our lap ... and actually the name helped shape the product. Last year when my co-founder Hyaat and I first came up with the idea for Wamily, we knew we wanted to build a customizable, community-focused app, but we didn't really know how it would work at the beginning. We were both up late one night talking to each other over the phone, searching on GoDaddy for domain names for our new idea -- looking for names that used words like 'community', 'family', 'page'. Eventually, Hyaat found wamily.com, and we both immediately thought "web family". It was perfect, and this concept of web family helped keep us focused on what the product should be.

What does the Wamily brand mean?

The name Wamily comes from the idea of a "web family". Wamily is a social collaboration site, which combines collaborative content tools like conversation boards and wikis -- with social networking. You can create a wamily page for any group, club, team, family ... and allow everybody to communicate and share messages, photos, links, etc.

What will Wamily look for in terms of technical & IT skills in the near future?

We're always looking for sharp Ruby on Rails developers and Interface/CSS gurus that are excited about working in a startup environment. Right now we're still trying to raise enough money to have a real office and hire real employees -- but when that comes we're going to want to ramp up quickly.

How do you use your blog to communicate to members and the public?

You really have to listen to your users (and potential users) from the very beginning, and adapt your business to what people really want. A blog is an easy and really effective way to communicate to our users. It helps users understand that there are real people behind Wamily, listening to what they want.

How do you encourage first time visitors to start a Wamily?

Usually when somebody joins, it's because they're invited by somebody already using the site. Once you've joined one wamily, it's easy to see how useful it could be for another purpose, and it's even easier to start a new wamily.

Wamily is currently open by invitation only. What type of users would you like to give Wamily a try?

We're still pretty early on in our product development, so we're limiting registration at the time. We are looking for web-savvy groups that want to give our alpha product a try, though. If you're looking for a tool to manage communication in a social group, send us a note and we'll help you get set up.

Where do you see wiki sites and social collaboration sites going in the next 2-3 years?

I don't think any of your readers would argue that wikis and other online collaboration tools are very useful in many ways. But, I think they are still very unknown concepts to the average internet user. I still get many, many people who ask me, "what's a wiki?" Sites like Wamily are lowering the hurdles for your average person to actually use a wiki, not just for consuming information, but also for creating and sharing information. These types of tools are in early stages of adoption still, but if I can help it -- in 2 to 3 years a "wiki" will be just as common as "email".

Wamily Rocks Or Not?

I opened a Wiki some time back and while it was really easy to use, it wasn't that simple to get friends to log in and share the Wiki. So a Wiki that combines social networking features like writing scraps or sending messages is probably the next logical move. The only problem is retaining that USP for long enough, on the surface for example, Wamily sounds a lot like Wet Paint, though its application and features are a lot more varied. Our advice is to step on the marketing and make it synonymous for the genre, before some other Wamily or Fameb comes waltzing in.

Wesabe Knows Where Your Money Is Going. Do You?

Wesabe, a pun on the Spanish for tu sabes (you know), is all about helping you get more for your money. From budgeting to analyzing, it's all there for you to jump right in. To start with, you can download your transaction data from your bank without worrying about security risks. You can upload three accounts through the "Wesabe uploader" and tag and edit each transaction by setting a monthly spending limit or fixing a goal. The site in turn will give you a budget, telling you how much to spend or save each month.

That's not all. For you number crunchers, there are lots of features to chew on. Tags can be split in terms of ratios or percentages. For instance, if you went to a restaurant with a friend, and paid by credit card and your friends pay you the difference in cash, you can actually record the transaction as by splitting your tags as credit 1/2:cash1/2. Perfect for those countless occasions when cash and credit combinations have played havoc with your monthly cash flows.

Depending on your spending pattern, the site automatically gives you tips on how to reduce those numbers. If grocery is a bit ticket item on your budget, Wesabe will tell where and how you can reduce those expenses.

As nata2.org puts it "Wesabe basically takes your financial data and make it easy to see what's going down in your world."

Better still, Wesabe compares your record to peers to tell you what you've always wanted to know, are you better or worse than the average Joe!

Like Techcrunch says:

"Wesabe essentially helps users figure out where they can save money and manage their finances better by anonymising, aggregating and analysing their personal financial data and comparing it with that of other Wesabe users."

Wesabe is native to California. It was founded by Marc and Jason in December 2005 and headquartered in Berkeley. Wesabe is self-funded and plans to generate revenue through membership. It is considered to be the web version of Quicken and faces competition from Peer Budget. However, Peer Budget has been rated as time consuming and it is not online. Giving Wesabe a free hand to define or redefine the personal finance space.

What They Know – A Chat With Wesabe

What is the story behind the company name?

Wesabe is based on the Spanish words "tu sabes," which translate to "you know." Wesabe is a twist on that, employing some Spanglish to imply "we know."

Who are your ideal clients?
Anyone interested in making better financial decisions and getting more value for their money.

Where do you see the surge of community-based web 2.0 sites going in the next 3 years?

Tim O'Reilly, a member of our Board of Directors, put it well when he said, "One of the key insights of Web 2.0 is to build products that learn from their users, harnessing network effects to get better the more people interact with them."

The key metric to success for a community site is simple – does it have an engaged, active community? If you build it, they may come, but your site has to understand and promote the social and collective aspects of the Web and provide value to keep them coming back and getting friends to join.

Does Wesabe offer any money saving advice/ services for businesses?

Our site is geared toward helping individuals get more for their money. That being said, Wesabe does have merchant pages and scores that may be of interest to small business owners – for example, are customers at Staples or Office Max more satisfied? There are also tips that may be relevant, such as using Kayak.com to find great travel deals.

How important is your blog to your marketing?

We launched our blog, Wheaties for your Wallet, several months prior to our launch. This gave our founders, Marc and Jason, an opportunity to talk about what they were seeing in the world at large that prompted them to create the company. We recognize the sensitivities of dealing with our members' financial information, and the blog is a great outlet for our founders to talk about larger issues such as privacy, community and how people can start feeling less stress around their money.

How did you set up an infrastructure to help people locally?

Wesabe helps people locally by allowing members to attach geographic areas to their location-specific tips. For example, a member recently posted a tip for where to find cheap sushi in Seattle. That tip is not going to show up for someone in Chicago. A number of our groups and discussions also have a local flavor. For example, there is an Australia Wesabeans group and an active thread under the Better Branch Bureau group with people talking about where to find good bank branches in San Francisco.

How did you arrive at the decision to not sell advertisements on your site?

The problem with ads is that they generally show you ways to spend your money. There are tons of sites and services that will help you spend your money — we want to be the one that helps you save it.

What service does Wesabe offer in terms of investing or growing money?

The wisdom of Wesabe comes from the community, with all tips and recommendations coming from our members. We provide a forum where people can raise issues and have discussions around money and financial choices, including growing and saving money. For example, there have been recent discussions on how to improve your FICO score and which types of IRAs are best.

Your CEO seems to be very available to the public, how do you see that changing as the company grows?

Since our launch in November, Jason Knight has been taking calls four hours a day, seven days a week. His contact information is on the front page of our Web site.

Jason has had some great, insightful conversations with members and people with questions about Wesabe. These discussions and suggestions have helped shape our product, and while there may come a time that Jason can't commit the same amount of time to direct customer service, he plans to always be available to our members.

What are some privacy issues that your business faces?

We never share member account data with anyone. What we do is look for patterns in lots of our members' spending — patterns that would help inform the Wesabe community about good or bad values. For instance, when we see that enough of our members shop at a merchant, we will post the average transaction that they paid — not what each of them paid, and not any information about who shops there, but only the average payment.

Our co-founder and chief product officer is a frequent speaker on privacy issues at industry events and conferences. The Wesabe blog also contains several in-depth posts on privacy and the steps that Wesabe takes to protect our members. Read more..

We For Wesabe – Our Take On It

Please make Wesabe a person and I'll hire him! Given the speed at which we move, it's great to have a tool that actually checks up on things. The only hitches would be privacy issues, which the company is extremely confident about and the effort to upload all the data. But after it's all said and done, I love the idea of finding out whether my peer group is as worse off as I am. After all, isn't life all about keeping up with the Joneses?

Helium – All Hail The Knowledge Economy

The floodgates have opened. People do not have to be ignorant, but potentially valuable contributors. Wikipedia showed the way in the user generated content space, followed by a slew of question-answer sites (see our article weekend with wikis), bookmarking sites and now it's a live reference site called Helium (based in Andover, Massachusetts) thats stirring things up.

The Boston independent influence is clear, Helium is on a quest to improve the quality of knowledge online. It works like this – there are user contributed articles on a subject, visitors read them and rate them. The highest ranked article goes to the top and the authors get paid via advertising revenue. Articles are chosen to reflect different viewpoints on the topic, making it very easy to get a complete picture of the issue. Helium has also introduced Helium Debate -its unique peer-review rating process to improve quality of debate on any topic. Helium Debate allows users to submit a debate topic of their choice as either a pro or con position. The result is an ordered list of pro arguments presented against an ordered list of con arguments on any subject. The best argument for each side of the debate, according to a jgroup of peers, rises to the top.

Techcrunch seems convinced - "It's an interesting model that's proved more compelling than I thought it would once I started using it."

Helium hopes to rope in serious writers and academics, so that users actually benefit from well thought out and well informed ideas, rather than scan through pages of half baked comments!

Mercextra puts it neatly:

"The blogosphere is full of threads where people insult each other as much as possible. Helium is trying to bring a little civility and objectivity back to the conversation."

Word From Helium – Our Chat With Them

Where did the initial idea for Helium come from?

Helium was founded on October 10, 2006 and is on a quest to build the best user-contributed reference there is. Helium is the first to take the strengths of a user-contributed content site, knowledge-sharing and multiple points of view, and apply the ordering capabilities of a peer-review ranking system to make it easy for a consumer to gain insight quickly from subjective content.

Helium is an advocate for the writer in all of us. Helium provides an outlet for anyone to share what they know – on virtually any subject matter. Helium's audience provides recognition to the writer. In addition, feedback from like-minds is provided on submitted pieces through Helium's patent-pending peer-review and quality ranking process.

How would you define Helium as a brand?

Helium is for everyone. It's a directory of real-world knowledge, powered by people like you. Helium encourages people to write about their passions, interests and experiences. It is like a marketplace of knowledge.

There are three elements that are at Helium's core:

Writing

• Instant Audience: Millions waiting to read YOUR point of view.
• Sharing is satisfying. It feels good to mentor.
• When you share, Helium shares back, with cash earned from advertising.
• Make money posting on favorite topics.

Rating

• You be the judge: Compare A to B, decide which article is better. Be part of the Wisdom of Many.
• Through many ratings by many people, quality rises.

Finding

• Way Beyond Search: Real advice from real people, on a wide variety of topics.

How does Helium encourage visitors to use RSS technology?

Right now, there are RSS feeds at the bottom of every page, of every channel. Users can subscribe to the feed and get an up-to-date list of all the articles in a given channel. In the upcoming rev of the site, there will be RSS feeds to specific story leads, by category. Also, prolific writers at Helium will have RSS feeds to their articles.

How does the spirit of competition help improve the user experience at Helium?

There is a lot of friendly and fun competition at Helium. Every article is rated for quality by the cooperative member community, and this encourages people to write articles to the best of their ability. We like to term this concept "coopertition." It feeds off the innate desire to be number one.

So far, what are the most popular subjects and categories?

Some hot topics right now range from popular culture (American Idol), to sports (Stanley cup playoffs), to philosophy

What type of characteristics do you look for in potential employees?

At Helium, we are a small, tight-knit team. We are also a startup, which means everyone has to pitch in to make our website outstanding. So, it is important that every employee at Helium be a team player and willing to dive in and get the job done.

Helium is hot or not? Our take on it.

We used Helium to check out their take on online job hunting. It was a thumbs up vote. Not only was the section delineated into employers, online jobs, etc., there was no dearth of either information or advice. Many wrote from personal experience, some were responses to questions raised in earlier articles…there were links to other sites and blogs as well. Like our researcher put it "it was like an organized search for people who don't have much time." Bitten by the poker bug? Helium had some insightful articles on the game. I will be using Helium as a supplement to Wikipedia for research.