When Bad Ideas find VC's money - Shopping website & WhatTheHell Award

Here I am going to list few shopping website that don't make sense at any level other than being well packaged and meeting some VC's (Venture Capitalist - as my good friend would call it poor S@#K$r) checklist for a Shopping web 2.0 site. Have we reached a web 2.0 bubble? These website would validate it - excess supply of money chasing few good ideas and irrational exuberance (anything social networking gets money).

Here is my WhatTheHell list

1) Stylefeeder



2) This Next



3) Yub



4) Crowd Storm (Winner of WhatTheHell Award)

Building Boeing 787 - Interactive guide

Pandora & Finetune - Internet Radio

Pandora is a site for music lover. You enter songs 0r artists that you like and it streams out similar songs to you. Is a great way to find new music for free

Also read about the bill to save Internet Radio. Pandora is for US listening due to the licensing restriction. If you are outside use you could use finetune. Finetune is similar to Pandora which allows you to create your own playlist and share it too.

Buyer Beware -- Price Optimization

Price optimization software now making it possible to price product based on customers behavior, sales history, competitors' price, product mix and the fact that people are hard-wired to love sales - when we see good deal (mark down), a different part of the brain lights up than with a loss (price rise)

Read more about it in this AP article - Software helps some stores decide when the price is right

Some results of price-optimization software:
Like many national companies, one electronics retailer priced batteries the same all over — until SAP's Khimetrics software showed that consumers in Dallas were generally willing to pay more for batteries than people in Boston. The data revealed another twist: The battery that had the highest "price sensitivity" in Dallas had the lowest price sensitivity in Boston. In other words, while Texans would buy this particular battery only within a narrow price range, Bostonians were far less picky. The store altered its prices accordingly, sold more batteries and made more money.

A grocer charged high prices for ice cream but frequently offered deep discounts. Consumers largely bought ice cream only during the promotions. Khimetrics advised reducing the regular price of ice cream and running fewer sales. Eventually revenue and profits rose.

At a store that offered an array of paintbrushes, the best-seller was its cheapest one, at $1. DemandTec suggested the store stop selling the item. The software showed that doing so would help the store sell more higher-priced (and more profitable) paintbrushes because the key factor in paintbrush sales was whether a customer was buying paint, not the price of a brush.

How was pricing done in the past or still done?
According to survey conducted at the Pricing Institute’s 18th Annual PriceX Conference held in Chicago, Illinois in June, found that:

1. 61 percent of companies use a spreadsheet to determine price not a specialized pricing application or vendor
2. 56 percent of companies have some sort of pricing strategy in place
3. 44 percent of companies have a dedicated pricing person or department responsible for pricing
4. 35 percent of companies consider pricing a top priority.

Reuters reports another survey, this one of members of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), found that 38 percent of respondents reported higher prices during the second quarter. Additionally, 43 percent of respondents anticipated raising prices during the next three months.

Companies that have price optimization products (click on the image):

Netvibes - About having the web the way you want it

Whats different about Netvibes? How does it stack up against say a rss reader or my.msn.com or my.yahoo.com? For one Netvibes users will two (2) pages for every account: a private page, where you subscribe to all the content for your personal, everyday use, and a public page, where you can allow others to access your favorite content -- everything that you love on the web.

Here is one more thing you will like about it if you have a widescreen monitor it will fill it up end to end plus no annoying google ad or flashy ads.

Netvibes is about having web the way you want it. Exactly the way you want it. Delivered to you.

So check out it out for yourself: Netvibes Also check out Moby's Netvibe page.

To read more about guy behind Netvibes read it article in business 2.0 "Web users feel the 'Vibes'

List of similar web services
Pageflakes
Protopage
Google Homepage
Start
My Yahoo
My MSN

New Shopping Comparison Website -- Shopwiki

Will shopwiki give shopzilla a run for it money? Swiki's got some neat features like buying and gift guides - to help through the research stage of shopping. As it is a wiki everyone can update it, you can also post videos of products. Also check out the stated web crawling technology (click here)

Another shopping website trying to break into a niche - stylehive. Stylehive is a collection of all the best products, brands, designers and stores discovered and tagged by the Hive community.

Also heard at Techcrunch

Stylehive ... a social bookmarking site that is focused on shopping... believe that there is promise in this space, which includes the just funded Kaboodle, as well as Wists and the upcoming Plum. Why? Because 80% of online shopping is “research” and only 20% is actually “buying”. Stylehive addresses the 80% piece of the market.

Find Owner of a Brand

Want to know who owns a particular Brand? Find Owner Search allows you to:

• Find the owner of a brand name
• Find all the brands owned by an individual or company
• Find brands in a given area/category.

To start your brand search Click here . Find Owner Search can be very helpful for:

• Advertising agencies to track companies, their brands and competing brands for purposes of gaining new business and/or naming new products and services.
  
• Marketing and Media companies to track all the companies and/or Brands in one category.
  
• Consumers for quickly learning the address and other brands owned by any company for purposes of buying new products and services, complaining to senior management, or seeking a job at a particular company.

Global Brand Survey & Apple Q2 Result

Apple 2Q Profits up by 88%

Apple Inc. blew past Wall Street expectations Wednesday, posting quarterly profits that jumped 88 percent, fueled by strong sales of its iPod players and Macintosh computers....(more)

Global Brands Survey/Ranking

Google rises to the Top of the BRANDZ™ 2007 Ranking of the world's most powerful brands with a brand value of $66,434 Million. To read the complete article click here (pdf)

Compare it with 2006 BRANDZ 2006 ranking click here

Global Brand Survey 2007 -- Click here to hear the podcast

Compare it with BusinessWeek brand Scorecard 2006/5--

• 2006 Click here
• 2005 Click here

Customer service Survey

MSN Money-Zogby customer-service survey. Read more about it click on the article below

The Customer Service Hall of Shame
How companies were ranked

Here's a look at our full results:

	"Poor"	"Fair"	"Good"	"Excellent"
Bottom 10
Sprint Nextel	40%	28%	25%	7%
Bank of America	30%	25%	32%	13%
Comcast	30%	33%	28%	10%
Time Warner Cable	29%	35%	28%	8%
AT&T	26%	36%	31%	7%
Citibank	24%	34%	35%	8%
Wal-Mart	23%	32%	32%	13%
Verizon	22%	31%	36%	11%
Wells Fargo	21%	27%	38%	14%
DirecTV	20%	29%	33%	17%
Dishonorable mentions
Dell	19%	26%	40%	15%
Circuit City	19%	35%	39%	8%
Best Buy	14%	31%	42%	13%
Home Depot	13%	29%	43%	14%
Sears	12%	33%	45%	10%
Macy's	10%	30%	47%	13%

Google Map Mashups

World Time by moving your cursor over it
Website : QClock

Locate the cellphone towers Click on the picture


Locate the area covered by a zipcode area of your county and more. check out this mashup
website usnaviguide

Steven Wright <<< Funny

STEVEN WRIGHT - When The Leaves Blow Away.

More of Steven Wright Quotes:
99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
On the other hand, you have different fingers. -- Steven Wright
I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.
So I said, "Got any shoes you're not using?" -- Steven Wright
My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted. -- Steven Wright
Someone sent me a postcard picture of the earth.
On the back it said, "Wish you were here."
-- Steven Wright
Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country.
-- Steven Wright
I spilled spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone. -- Steven Wright
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Steven Wright
"Did you sleep well?" "No, I made a couple of mistakes." -- Steven Wright
My dental hygienist is cute. Every time I visit, I eat a whole package of Oreo
cookies while waiting in the lobby. Sometimes she has to cancel the rest of
the afternoon's appointments. -- Steven Wright
My socks DO match. They're the same thickness. -- Steven Wright
Officer, I know I was going faster than 55MPH, but I wasn't going to be on the
road an hour. -- Steven Wright

FlashEarth Vs Rest of the Map website

And the winner is FlashEarth. Very smooth navigation, enhances microsoft Aerial map really makes MS aerial map look like cool Web2.0 app! What next an mashup app to make msn search work??? FlashEarth lets you view maps from 8 different site, it does not include google earth... Check it out FlashEarth

Do It Yourself (on the web) Art

Paint like Jackson Pollack -- Click here




For serious A Cappella competition check out -- The Varsity Vocals International Championship of A Cappella.

NYC new Congestion Pricing or Fees or Tax depending on which side of the fence you are on <<< Global Warming

Read on PhysOrg.com

The most controversial idea in the plan (NYC Plan 2030), from the mayor's Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability, is a proposal to charge motorists for driving into Manhattan below 86th Street on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Trucks would be charged $21 a day and cars would be charged $8, on top of the city's already expensive parking.

It is similar to a system that London (Congestion Charge) has used since 2003, and officials there say it has significantly reduced congestion.

The scheme applauded by environmentalists and alternative transportation groups, but is politically tricky for New York City because it would have to be enacted by the state Legislature, and many lawmakers from outer boroughs and the suburbs may not support it.

Read Full speech hear -- Click here

Cool new IM and more -- MEEBO

meebo.com is a website for instant messaging from absolutely anywhere. Whether you’re at home, on campus, at work, or traveling foreign lands, hop over to meebo.com on any computer to access all of your buddies (on AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ and Jabber) and chat with them, no downloads or installs required, for free!

meebo launched in September 2005 and received funding from Sequoia Capital in December 2005 and Draper Fisher Jurvetson in January 2007. Today, our users exchange over 80 million instant messages daily. We (the meebo team) are just a fun bunch of people trying to bring IM to the web!

Check out their other products

Meebo Me

Meebo repeater

Will Ferrel in the Landlord <<< Funny ( FunnyOrDie.com)

As per PC Mag

FunnyOrDie also features user-generated comedy videos, allowing anyone to upload their clips. But unlike YouTube and other popular user-generated sites, the viewers' ratings for the videos determine their fate—thus the name of the site—with only the highly rated staying on. Those with negative reviews are banished to the "Crypt" section of the site.

Sources said FunnyOrDie.com has been in the works for months, following an overture by venture capital firm Sequoia Partners to Creative Artists Agency, which represents Gary Sanchez Prods., the company run by Ferrell and McKay.

Sequoia knows a thing or two about successful user-generated website having provided early rounds of funding to YouTube. The company also delivered venture capital for YouTube's parent, Google, as well as Yahoo! PayPal, and Meebo. Sequoia also was one of the first investors in Cisco Systems, Oracle and Apple.

Want to watch the Video click on the picture or click here

Famous people and their View on Faith - Einstein

Interesting article about on Time Mag about Einstein's view on faith.

For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God's existence. For Einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine providence. The fact that the world was comprehensible, that it followed laws, was worthy of awe.

Also on a related note here is a link to page where you can find out more about Einstein...was he slow learner as a child?..Did Einstein believe in God? ..Did Einstein think in pictures rather than words?..

Travel Deals website

New York Times has this interesting article about how companies are mining through travel data to find travel deal. Sifting Data to Uncover Travel Deals sites the following website.

• Farecast.com
• airfarewatchdog.com ( to find deals that include companies that don't share data)
• Flightstats.com (if you wanted to see which flightsare most prone to problems/delays)
• milemaven.com (best mileage programs)
• pointmaven.com (earn the most hotel points) update 4/22 read more about at consumerist.
  
• Cheaptickets.com
• sidestep.com

Lying at workplace - Survey and Analysis

On my way back from work I was listening the radio the other day and I come across an interesting commentary about lying in the workplace. It's a commentary by Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times and can be heard on marketplace.org. Here are a few things that caught my attention.

"Workplaces are hierarchies. That means we kiss up and kick down ...stretching the truth..."

Most insightful comment

"...the most dangerous people in business are the ones who believe their own lies."

very true!

A survey by careerbuilder.com concludes that one in five workers lie and Nineteen percent of workers admitted they tell lies at the office at least once a week This article also states the following

The most common lies workers say they have told at the office include:

• I don't know how that happened (20 percent)
• I have another call to take or I'll call you right back (16 percent)
• I've been out of town or out sick (10 percent)
• I like your outfit or you look great (8 percent)
• I didn't get your e-mail, voicemail or fax (8 percent)

The survey also states that When asked why they felt compelled to bend the truth at work, respondents cited the following reasons:

• To appease a customer (26 percent)
• To cover up a failed project, mistake or missed deadline (13 percent)
• To explain an unexcused absence or late arrival (8 percent)
• To protect another employee (8 percent)
• To get another employee in trouble or look better in front of a supervisor (5 percent)

Another website anonymousemployee.com confirms that 85 percent of hiring managers claim that they are less likely to offer a promotion to an employee who has been caught in a lie either to them directly or to other employees of the business. Also addes that

However, the most common reason for lying at work is to change the subject or avoid a topic. This includes denying knowledge of an event or situation, saying that a call will be returned, claiming that another call is coming through, or even that they were not present when certain information was sent out.

So I come across this social network website which is about radical self promotion biznik or is it about lying in the non-hierarchical world.

Music : Indie band - will be in NY 1 & 2 May 07

Peter Bjorn and John are a Swedish indie rock band, formed in Stockholm in 1999. The current members are Peter Morén on vocals, guitar, and harmonica; Björn Yttling on vocals, bass and keyboards; and John Eriksson on drums, percussion, and vocals. To date they are best known for the 2006 single "Young Folks". What their music videos

Reservior Dogs Intro - Remake