BizAg: Multi-Site Business-for-Sale Search [The Startup Review]
May 29, 2008 — 02:09 PM PDT — by Paul Glazowski — — 2 Comments
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STARTUP DETAILS:
Company Name: BizAg
20-word Description: Search businesses for sale from multiple websites
CEO’s 100-word Pitch: BizAg aggregates business for sale listings from multiple classifieds sites into a single comprehensive search solution. We are a vertical search engine of businesses for sale. Searching businesses for sale is inefficient and difficult. Listings are everywhere, making it hard to compare listings and make informed decisions. BizAg improves that experience by offering the largest database of business for sale listings. Advanced search tools and market information enables buyers to find their perfect business.
Mashable’s Take: Until this week, BizAg was kept under a private beta lock, which presumably kept its user numbers very low, but now that it is publicly accessible, it may not be too much to imagine it as a relatively popular front end for its market.
There are of course numerous business-for-sale listing services on the Web. BizBuySell is a biggie. BizQuest is another prominent option. Yet most individuals who browse those sites are likely to use one engine to great degree, and others with significantly less regularity. (One might draw an analogy to such habits as one does the usage patterns for broader search tools like Google Search or Yahoo Search or Microsoft Live Search.)
Therefore, BizAg works to help seekers of business for sale to expand their options. It’s job is to search multiple sources for listings of businesses advertised for sale. As it finds them, it presents them; with results that can be organized by age (of advert), asking price, location, and of course, business name. BizAg also presents users with a data grid atop main section of the page to display business trends and statistics. Things like average asking price, average cashflow, average revenue, and cashflow and revenue multipliers are shown within the box, as are popular states for businesses are displayed, though that selection appears to be a static one and not amenable to keyword specification.
There’s no question that BizAg is an eminently simple service. It seems as lightweight as a search engine can be. And that’s fine by us. After all, what more do you need? You want something to get you from A to B (or in business search, “A to Z”) as quickly as possible. In that capacity, BizAg appears to deliver. Perhaps it could expand its reach to more listing sources. Variety and thoroughness are key in the search arena. For a startup nearly fresh out the gate, however, BizAg has logically covered the largest bases first. It should now work to delve deeper - into harder-to-reach places, so to speak. That is where it will prove its true mettle.
Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials
Ping This!Revision3 CEO Speaks DoS, Media Defender, And The FBI
May 29, 2008 — 12:47 PM PDT — by Paul Glazowski — — 1 Comment
As many Web video fans may have recognized, Revision3, the production company responsible for shows like Diggnation, PixelPerfect, Systm, Tekzilla, and popSiren, wasn’t itself this past Memorial Day weekend. It hit a rough patch. Or, to be more precise, the rough patch hit Revision3. And not so much a rough “patch” per se, but rather whopper of an attack.
And in case you’re curious as to what terrible spell caused the downfall of numerous in-house access, including the public-facing site, RSS server, and even the corporate email system, Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback today offered a very detailed, well-rounded explanation. The gist of his voluminous blog post: It’s all Media Defender’s fault.
Indeed, the group oft referred by critics to be naught but an abusive purveyor of digital waste - it’s speciality is Denial of Service attacks, or DoS for short - and which is reported to have been under the occasionally employ of both the RIAA and MPAA, as well as individual media companies among the likes of Sony and Universal Music, was discovered as the sole producer of a torrent of SYN packets sent the way of Revision3.
Evidently, some tech folks at Revision3 recognized that there was “some unauthorized use of (its) tracking server” (one culprit of such unsavory activity just so happened to be Media Defender), took steps to stop the unwarranted activity, and subsequently triggered Media Defender’s personal botnet to initiate a massive stream of SYN packets in an attempt to reconnect to Revision3’s servers. So, an unfortunately brutal DoS onslaught with non-malevolent intentions.
Naturally, Louderback maintains a measure of reserved anger in his public response to Media Defender’s attack. As the CEO of a venture funded video production outfit, Louderback wouldn’t be doing his company any favors by speaking in entirely explicit fashion. Even so, one can clearly grasp that Media Defender was in the wrong last weekend and in the wrong some time before then, when it pilfered server power from Revision3 to suit its purposes as the action man behind the record and movie industries’ copyright protection efforts. Louderback of course doesn’t do what many might wish him to, which is to speak of the potential for a lawsuit to claim financial restitution for 3-4 days of lost business.
But in time, any details to that effect will likely surface sometime in the near future. As with all things controversial and Web-related, an issue of this sort and this high of a profile sits upon a porous foundation, through which leaks are bound to occur. Perhaps a courtroom session is called for? Perhaps a settlement may emerge from this ill-begotten encounter. At the moment, all that the public is being told is the FBI is “looking into the matter.” Whatever the end result, this looks like another big hit (or miss, depending on how one prefers to see it) for Media Defender and its parent company, Artists Direct, that went very badly for the sender. And justly so, I say.
Matt Mullenweg Loves His Kindle [podcast]
May 29, 2008 — 12:00 PM PDT — by Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins — — 3 Comments
What do you do if you have a chunk of time slotted to hang out and talk with the creator of WordPress and CEO of Automattic? You do what everyone else does in the Web 2.0 world - you talk about Twitter!
This Friday past, Matt took some time out to hang out on Mashable Conversations to chat with me and you guys, not because he had anything to pitch me, but because he’s a genuinely nice guy who when he says offhandedly at a WordCamp that he wouldn’t mind coming on your podcast at some point, gladly obliges.
Given that we had no particular agenda of topics to talk about, we chatted briefly about what’s in store for the next version of WordPress (here’s a hint - WordPress is going to be tackling video in their next version, and from the sounds of it will be an ambitious undertaking), and then I went down the laundry list of hot topics in the blogosphere at the moment.
I didn’t bring up Twitter just for the sake of talking about it - a while back, Matt announced the release of a special theme for WordPress called Prolouge, which we covered here at Mashable. The idea behind the release was to provide small to mid-sized teams a way to have Twitter functionality without putting the company business out there for the world to see. It’s a great idea that they not only gave to the world, but use themselves internally at Automattic.
In the release blog, though, Matt had made an interesting statement about the theme:
Some folks have suggested that using WordPress, Prologue, and RSS you could create a pretty effective distributed version of Twitter. This isn’t something we’re personally interested in, but we’ve made the theme available as open source under the GPL so if you want to hack around it yourself you’re welcome to.
I tried to pin down with him what he thought the feasibility of this plan was, and the likelyhood of it coming about given the chronic downtime Twitter has been experiencing lately.
The biggest problem that Twitter has experienced, with regard to it being down all the time, is generally regarded as it’s scalability problem. This is an area that Matt could speak to with some authority, as WordPress has climbed the various Mt. Everests in terms of high usage situations, and generally weathered all the adventure without a hitch.
Aside from the Twitter topic, we also talked about the future of blog content, RSS, comment fragmentation, and how much he loves his Kindle (in which I took the opportunity to shamelessly appeal to Jeff Bezos, Mashable Conversations Listener, to send me a review unit).
It’s definitely a riveting conversation top to bottom. Whether you’re a WordPress user or just a user of the Web, the conversation is definitely interesting.
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Veronica Belmont’s Top 10 Up-and-Coming Web Applications
May 29, 2008 — 10:47 AM PDT — by Adam Ostrow — — 10 Comments
In the world of Web celebrity, few have become as well-known in the past year as Veronica Belmont, who first gained acclaim as host of CNet’s Buzz Out Loud, then moved onto Jason Calacanis’ Mahalo Daily, and most recently took the reigns at Revision3’s Tekzilla Show. Along the way, she even interviewed our own resident Web celeb, Pete Cashmore, at MashMeet LA (embedded below).
Now comes our chance to interview Veronica, as we debut our new “Celebrity Top 10 Series,” where we’ll be asking both the Internet and otherwise famous to compile lists of their tech-related favorites. To kick things off, we’ve asked Veronica to tell us her favorite 10 up-and-coming web applications, a topic near and dear to our hearts at Mashable.
Without further ado, here’s Veronica’s Top 10 Up-and-Coming Web Applications:
1. Brightkite
With Dodgeball.com going the way of the dodo, Brightkite has stepped in as the new location-based social network. I like the ability to post notes and images to places that I’ve visited, and it seems like they’re poised for more widespread adoption than Dodgeball was (might have something to do with Google basically closeting Dodgeball after purchasing them).
2. Dropbox
Dropbox will be the answer for anyone who needs to share files and documents with others, or to sync files between computers. As a former .Mac user, I prefer Dropbox because of it’s slick web interface.
3. Pownce
People often wonder why there needs to be another microblogging service, but I think Pownce is much more than that. Being able to comment directly within a post helps to foster better conversations, and the file and link sharing is really convenient.
I haven’t quite figured out how to work RTM into my everyday life, but it shows a lot of promise. If you have a lot of tasks that need to get done, RTM helps you organize and stay on target with RSS feeds and iCal reminders.
5. Friendfeed
Friendfeed is yet another way to aggregate content from all of your various social networks, and clue your friends into what you’ve been checking out lately. It seems to be the main choice for the Twitter refugees during downtime, as you can also make standalone comments and replies to posts.
6. Rupture
The new brainchild of Napster founder Shawn Fanning, Rupture is a gaming social network that will pull info and track the achievements on all your games, and from all platforms. From Halo 3 to World of Warcraft, you’ll be able to see what your friends are up to (and how much you pwn them in all your games).
7. Trulia
Apparently these are good times for buying a new home, and Trulia is a fantastic way to browse listings in your area. Each listing gives you information about the home, including price, the year it was built, prior sale history, photos, and much more. Way better than the guessing game on Craigslist.
8. Downforeveryoneorjustme.com
The name of the site speaks for itself. Find out if your favorite website is really down for the count, or if it’s a problem on your end.
9. Qik
This service gives you the ability to live-stream video from your Nokia N95, and it will also automatically post a notice to Twitter if you want to receive live chat comments. Yes, it only works on the N95 now, but they’re working on supporting new phones soon. It may seem superfluous, until you get streams like this one of the Mars rover landing that might not have been available otherwise!
10. Seesmic
A network based around video is nothing new, but Seesmic is really reaching out of build video conversations with their members. They’ve been likened to the Twitter of video, and they recently acquired the app Twhirl. It’s not as easy, at least for me, to come up with an interesting video clip as opposed to 140 characters of text, but I think they’ve got some cool stuff lined up for the future.
Trulia Launches Snapshot Visual Search Tool
May 29, 2008 — 10:12 AM PDT — by Paul Glazowski — — 8 Comments
Trulia, a real estate search site which stands among the best in the business and which offers users detailed discovery of properties for sale as well as quite detailed analysis of real estate markets, has launched a new utility called Snapshot, powered by Microsoft Virtual Earth, that overlays housing data atop an interactive map that is nothing short of a visual treat. Once the user specifies a city or town to view, all basic browsing on Snapshot is done via images. The user can grab any area of the map to move it about, just as you would Virtual Earth in its primary setting.
As you can see, the theme is rich with gray and black hues, with Trulia’s trademark green providing accents for navigation functions and quick views of particular properties. If you opt to see more extensive details of a location, you’re whisked to its primary page on Trulia, where, if the property happens to fall under the watchful road-going eye of the Google Street View van, you can also take a peek at the front door and the surrounding neighborhood.
Trulia surely recognizes that Snapshot is heavy on eye candy and low on substance, but the new front-end seems well integrated enough into main database of the website to prove useful for those who wish to take a bird’s-eye view to home shopping. If you feel that basic, linear search results aren’t quite what they used to be, and you’re in the market for a new roof - or just curious - Snapshot is certainly offers a nice fresh feel to Trulia’s already well-regarded search engine.
Video: Live from Tokyo Demo. Utagoe is RSS, Chat and Streaming
May 29, 2008 — 09:50 AM PDT — by Kristen Nicole — — 1 Comment
After meeting with Japanese government entity METI (the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) while in Tokyo this week, it was nice to meet some of the startups that are working on various projects in Japan. There is one in particular that also happens to be launching tonight, called utagoe.
A new service from the makers of Channel.is, utagoe is an RSS video service that combines television and other online programming with live video chat and live video streaming. Utagoe is an all-encompassing tool that looks to combine the majority of your personal video consumption tools in one place. The videos themselves are played on a customizable screen, where you determine the order and size of the video content that plays here.
As utagoe can be used for live video chat, there’s also an option to use this service for live video conferencing as well. Utagoe grew from the necessity of Channel.is’ user-generated broadcasting data to have a web app that allowed them to share their video experiences in a social manner. In terms of aggregating video for multiple purposes, however, Utagoe is looking to redefine video RSS readers, to a certain extent.
Utagoe Demo from Kristen Nicole on Vimeo.
While the underlying concepts of Utagoe seem to touch on existing services like Seesmic and Splashcast, the centralized multimedia approach that Utagoe is after also reminds me of Jacked, which provides video content alongside interactive forms of data. It seems like a far stretch to compare Utagoe with Jacked, especially as Jacked is a pretty specific use case scenario for viewing sports videos, but the potential for Utagoe to become an individualized video news room is interesting to think about.
In order to become more practical, however, Utagoe will likely need more integration with other apps and types of RSS content. Moving a step further in this direction, Utagoe’s next release will be an iPhone version of its service.
Create Rounded Corners For Images with RoundPic
May 29, 2008 — 09:43 AM PDT — by Alana Taylor — — 7 Comments
RoundPic is exactly what the name suggests: an image editing site where simple, square photos can be uploaded and smoothed out to create sleek, rounded corners.
The service is almost too easy. You simply upload your picture or enter the URL of the image, and click “Round It!” You can then save your new pic or customize it further by changing the size, background color, and how round the corners are. Once it’s complete, just click download and you’re good to go.
RoundPic is currently working on adding new sizes for rounding, borders, and featuring the option to save as html, png, gif, or bmp (currently you can only save pictures as png).
The site is so plain that it reminds me of old-school Geocities or Angelfire websites, but for those of us who blog or work with images all day and don’t have time to be exploring complicated photo-editing tools, RoundPic is the obvious solution. Finally, Photoshop for Lazies.
11 Web Applications to Check Out as Twiistup Finalists Revealed
May 29, 2008 — 09:34 AM PDT — by Paul Glazowski — — 1 Comment
Twiistup 4, an event to be held on July 17, 2008 in Santa Monica, California, and of which Mashable is a media sponsor (Pete will be one of the judges), has announced its list of 11 startup finalists to be offered stage time to demo their products and services.
Ordinarily, Twiistup provides a venue for 10 chosen companies, but due to greater-than-expected interest, one more slot has been added to this year’s lineup. The 11 companies to be presented this summer are:
Based in South Pasadena, CA, Big Stage is a media company whose breakthrough technology allows users to easily create and integrate a life-like 3D avatar of themselves into everything from famous movie scenes, TV shows and video games, to music videos, short video clips, virtual worlds, still images, user-generated content, instant messages, emails, social networks and more - instantly.
Based in San Jose, CA, BookRenter is the first online book rental service. BookRenter.com replaces traditional bookstore sales with online book rentals for students at schools throughout the nation.
Based in Venice, CA, Compulsion is a simple, easy to use tool that makes video clickable. The clicks become links that turn the video into an entire interactive universe of an individual’s design. Users can offer or sell those links for click and shop, gossip, trivia, news, music, more video, or anything imaginable.
Based in Las Angeles, CA, The LOUD3R Enthusiast Network is made up of in-depth, topic-oriented Web sites that are designed for the enthusiast and the curious who want to quickly find the best, richest content about a specific topic.
Based in Austin, TX, Minggl is a social interaction manager. Mashable covered this pick before. The Minggl toolbar makes it easy to manage information, communication and navigation across social networks.
Based in Los Angeles, CA, Musicshake, Inc is the world’s first online UGM (User Generated Music) creation service that provides music composing solutions aimed at the general public (a.k.a. music dummies) without previous musical knowledge or expertise.
Based in San Jose, CA, Phonevite, a startup we at Mashable mentioned several months ago, is the new, fun and simple way to send announcements and reminders over the phone, in the user’s own voice.
Based in Los Angeles, CA, Seethroo is a behavioral-targeting technology designed for social networks that specializes in user-generated content.
Based in Vancouver, BC, Strutta, a startup Mashable covered just last month, brings players together from around the world in the spirit of true competition, from grassroots scrappers to all star pros.
Based in Santa Monica, CA, Tools To Life is the world’s first free online self-help social network with real programs and community-driven support networks.
Based in Los Angeles, CA, Twiddla is a free, real-time online collaboration tool that offers simplicity and accessibility. It doesn’t require plug-ins, installs or downloads, and users don’t have to work around complex firewalls or advanced scheduling.
Live from Tokyo: What the Japanese Government Really Wants for Web Biz
May 29, 2008 — 08:25 AM PDT — by Kristen Nicole — — 5 Comments
You may have noticed my Twitter stream chronicling the important aspects of my Tokyo trip (organized by Lunarr) thus far, like heated toilet seats. But today I got a chance to meet with several companies (mostly startups) that are working to affect change in online Japanese culture. The first meeting was with The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), which is a branch of the government that works on various policies related to business and commerce.
How does that relate to the online world? For one, the way in which METI is working on implementing governmental structures for IT software, human resources and open source projects. It’s backwards, when compared to what we do in the U.S. METI has a distinct focus on the creative process for promoting innovation, which will in turn provide a system that inherently recognizes the thought leaders that can drive ideas and implementation of a particular solution.
This process represents a mindful consideration of the way in which the end result can be achieved in a beneficial manner towards consumers, legality, and commerce.
Will this plan work?
Government intervention doesn’t typically occur in the early stages of idea implementation for IT-related solutions in the states; the government usually waits until there’s a mess to clean up. So in attempting to spur innovation through programs like open source initiatives and the Genius Programmer or Super Creators groups that one of our hosts Hisashi Katsuya, Venture Development Executive, Japan Representative, at IBM’s Venture Capital Group, is helping to run, there’s a government program here in Japan that is really trying to push the creativity end of innovation.
Signal vs. Noise vs. Really Smart People
When we think of open source programs, there’s a perspective one could take in terms of an inherent drive towards innovation versus the perspective that open source merely enables more noise. Picking up on the signal from the noise could very well be the good idea in the lot of many bad ideas, but isn’t always a direct way in which innovation is achieved.
Nevertheless, it’s an important aspect of the innovative process, as it extends tools to a broader set of people. Tie this in with other things METI is doing, such as working with human resource departments and actively seeking out singular thought leaders is a multi-faceted approach to driving innovation. To given an example, METI is looking to work with larger corporations like Nissan and Toyota to identify problems, work with them (using the aforementioned initiatives) in order to solve problems, and have a modeled set of standards that can be spread throughout the rest of the business world.
The government gets a firsthand look at the types of IT development that is going on within the private sector, and has an easier way in which to establish standards for legalistic purposes when the time comes.
The Future Looks So Sci-Fi
One way in which METI is hoping to use its influence for streamlining businesses is to tie package delivery services with mobile phones–why have a package delivered to your home or office when you can have it delivered to wherever you are, based on mobile access and tracking communications with the delivery service?
That may seem a little off kilter, but the representatives at METI gave some additional examples of theoretical projects that could be of interest, such as a unique ID system that creates a web/mobile component for anything and everything for which you’d like to assign a unique ID. This could be for objects like tables, advertisements, offline groups or meetings, restaurants, and more. This data could be used for personalized mobile, interactive browsing that creates a map of recommended places to shop and eat, according to your preferences.
A unique ID given to an offline meeting could be married with photos and audio and video recordings from the meeting, along with a calendar, group email, geo-location tagging, basic blogging updates and team task management. It all sounds a bit sci-fi, and there are plenty of logistic issues that arise from tossing around such ideas, but it was interesting to hear such theoretical applications discussed by a government entity. Of course, one of the largest benefits of METI being involved on such a low level (as far as development goes) is that it’s possibly able to better establish standards from a legal standpoint, and across companies that may otherwise not communicate with each other in an early stage.
iTunes UK To Soon Launch Movie Sales And Rentals
May 29, 2008 — 08:01 AM PDT — by Paul Glazowski — — 3 Comments
While US-based customers of the iTunes Store have been privileged to purchase and download video content in the form of television programs and feature films, consumers in the UK have had to make do with TV offerings only. Soon, however, Apple will be announcing its start of sales of movie titles pulled from the catalogues of four studios - Disney Pictures, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. - which will purportedly be priced similar to those affixed to physical DVD copies of new and archival releases. It has also been reported that Apple will simultaneously make available the option to rent movies.
According to Dan Sabbagh of The Times of London, though prices for DVDs generally fall somewhere within the range of £6 to £25, the average cost for movies sold through Amazon and Play.com, roughly £12.99, is “an indication of the potential pricing” for movies sales within the UK iTunes Store. Of course, as with movie studios’ desires to maintain vibrant DVD sales within the US, they will be naturally price purchase-to-own movie sales so as not to undercut their DVD businesses, which presently comprise a significant share of annual revenue.
No word yet as to whether Apple has secured a movie release schedule in line with that of the studios’ DVD calendars for the UK market, as it did in the US earlier this year. Also, Sony Pictures and Universal Studios are both said to be absent from the list of initial partners for the coming launch. A number of studios smaller than the industry’s largest, like Lions Gate and MGM, meanwhile, have purportedly joined the effort along with the first four major contributors.
Postica Offers Virtual Sticky Notes with File Sharing
May 29, 2008 — 07:59 AM PDT — by Alana Taylor — — 8 Comments
If you’re the person who works at a desk with hundreds of hot pink and yellow Post-It notes pasted all around your computer, then it might be time for you to upgrade to Postica. It’s a new application that creates virtual sticky notes that can be shared with friends.
Postica provides a blank space where notes can be dragged around and saves their location so that it looks the same on any computer. It’s fairly simple to attach a file, change the color of a note, and e-mail it to another user.
Postica, like the wiki-style app Protonotes, might be useful for those of you who enjoy using Post-Its 2.0 and have been wanting to share your desktop notes with your friends. It might even save time for setting aside files instead of e-mailing them to yourself.
But if you already use the hundreds of “reminder” and “file-sharing” apps, software, and sites that exist, Postica probably won’t phase you in the least.
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