Joshua Saunders

A new site has launched this weekend called First 30 Days.  The website is intended to provide self-help advice and information for people going through life changes.  For instance, the site will help you get through the first 30 days of becoming pregnant, a breakup, taking a new job, starting a business, etc…

The site is founded by Ariane de Bonvoisin, a former corporate strategist at Bertelsmann, Sony, and Time Warner.  Seed funding was provided by former Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons and a $5 million series A just closed with Parsons, Hearts Corporation and the New York City Investment Fund.

What’s appealing to me is that the site integrates the massive self-help industry in a web 2.0 atmosphere.  The site plans on launching two viral widgets, one a facebook app which provides stats on how many people are going through a similiar situation as you and the other is a widget that delivers inspirational advice to people’s personal sites.

Overall, I think the potential is huge.  One thing I thought was funny (and shown on TechCrunch) was two lists the site has posted.  One of the top five lists is for Switching to a Mac and the other is for Improving Your Sex Life.  Can you guess which one is which?

A new startup called ControlC runs all copy and paste functions through a web service.  Essentially when you copy something, a permanent copy is saved to your account.  You can then go back through your permanent clipboard online or share items on your clipboard publicly.

Which brings me to the questions… what’s the point?  I can’t recall any time where I have wanted to share information on my clipboard with the public.  Or anytime I wanted information on my clipboard from 2 weeks ago.  If MSWord ever asks me on close whether I want to keep the contents on the clipboard, I answer no.  If there was a quick button to see your clipboard history, then fine, but logging in to an online account to get this info is a hassle.

But if you want to try them out, they’re in private beta.  Use code beta4040 when signing up.

GPS Technology continues to grow, from tracking your pets to asset tracking and monitoring employees, the possibilities are endless.  But since this is a business blog, I thought I would discuss how GPS technology could provide asset tracking and monitoring functions to ensure your business is being run efficiently.

I have worked on a few safety consulting projects related to GPS asset tracking products and services.  The products vary in a number of different ways, such as the information provided to you and who does the monitoring.  One product that’s a technical leader in the industry is the GPS Insight Vehicle Tracking System.  The system is a hardware and software solution.  The software is web-based, giving you access to your data anywhere with an internet connection.  Unlike many other solutions, their hardware plugs directly into the vehicle’s diagnostics port, making installation extremely quick and easy.  Better yet, it allows you to monitor more than just location.  Remotely monitor odometer readings, speed, vehicle fault codes, fuel consumption, idle time and more.  Basically a commercially available On-Star (their commercials advertise monthly emails about your cars diagnostics).

How does it work?  Well as you know, GPS or Global Positioning Systems use satellites that send a signal to a receiver and track its movement.  Using mapping software, you can plot exactly where a vehicle traveled.  GPS Insight provides highly customizable maps with a lot of options to suit your needs.  Their maps are updated every two minutes, allowing you to constantly keep track of what’s going on and find out where your trucks are.  Many other GPS asset tracking solutions are not provided power by the vehicle and are instead run off batteries, allowing run times of a few years.  But the disadvantage to this is that in order to conserve power, they aren’t “pinged” as often, which means you won’t have near real-time results.

Using GPS technology isn’t practical or useful for everyone.  But if you run a business with a lot of mobile assets (trucks, equipment, etc…) or even employees out on deliveries, then this is absolutely necessary.  Make sure your employees are actually working when they’re away from the office.  Make sure your drivers aren’t driving places they shouldn’t be and make sure they take the quickest route.  Make sure your drivers aren’t speeding.  Find out remotely if there are any problems with the vehicle.  If you have drivers out making multiple deliveries, quickly find out where they are at so you can reroute them if necessary.  Read more at the Insight Blog for GPS Tracking.  What’s also unique is they have a support wiki to help customers setup their product.  Check out the GPS Insight support wiki for customers here.

I recently heard about this website called GiftGirl.com.  The site is for men who need help with picking out gifts for the women in their life.  It has hundreds of products and shows you who the gift might be good for and for what occassion.

There is already stiff competition for this type of thing.  Gift Girl is really going to have to make a mark with a big marketing campaign and some good PR.  Sites like findgift.com, surprise.com, and pronto.com already offer similiar services.

There is one HUGE flaw I see that is going to hinder the success of this website.  They charge $20!  The site’s tagline is “Isn’t her happiness worth $20?”  This is a very good sales pitch, but not enough to convince me.  The internet is full of free information and free advice.  You can find articles on Yahoo! or MSN on what gifts to give, or browse free gift sites.  Why in the world would you pay $20?  You could browse around for free and see the products, so I’m not exactly sure on what you get for the $20 membership, they don’t make it clear.  Another reason not to pay.

What Gift Girl should do instead…  No membership fee.  The site lists products from other retailers.  Gift Girl should be charging these retailers to list their products.  Have an extra charge for exclusive or featured products.  Maybe they are already charging retailers, but this really needs to be the focus of their business model, not charging consumers.  I give the site one thumbs up, out of two.

Stuck sitting in wasteful meetings multiple times a week or even every day?  I think we all are sick of sitting through pointless meetings.  In fact, the worst is to have meetings about meetings.  Yes, my team used to have two meetings a week with our project manager just to discuss what we were going to talk about in two other meetings that same week.  Talk about a waste!

Well now a company called PayScale, which offers the “world’s largest database of salary information” has come to your rescue, to prove how much money is being wasted.  The program is called Meeting Miser and it calculates a meetings costs.  Simply input the location and titles of the people at the meeting and it spits out your wasted meeting costs.  Fun to play around with, probably not very practical.

Online photo sharing has been growing for years, especially as more users continue to sign up on social networking sites such as facebook and myspace. Sharing pictures with friends and family is one of the best parts of being online in a digital world. That being said, a new company called Bitnik is not only making it easy for you to share your pictures, but also making it possible for you to edit your pictures.

 Imagine having the capabilities of Adobe Photoshop right in your web browser. Adjust colors, add effects, sharpen, crop, rotate, remove red-eye, and much more. Grab pictures from websites, upload photos, or have them imported automatically from online accounts such as Flickr, Facebook, or Picasa. All of these tools in a simple to use interface that is incredibly fast. I don’t know how they do it, but yes, new software called Picnik is doing all of this. And best of all, it’s free!

This really is the next generation of online productivity software. I don’t know if I have ever been so impressed with web-based software in my life. Take a test drive at www.picnik.com , you don’t need to sign up to try it, you can use one of their test pictures. Of course this software is in beta testing right now, they are still adding features and they are planning to roll out some type of pay membership in the future (from what I hear it will be for a more advanced version of their tools).

 In the past couple years, a new way of raising money for new business ventures has appeared. In the past, you options were limited to the 3 F’s (friends, family, and fools), banks, angel investors, or venture capital. A new way of borrowing involves person-to-person lending, right over the internet.

The leading website is called Prosper. Borrower’s can receive a loan of up to $25,000. You create a profile and enter in personal information; Prosper runs an imediate credit check with Experian and places you into a credit grade based on your Scorex credit score. You can then create a listing to borrow money where you will set the amount, maximum interest rate you are willing to pay, and provide details about your request to attract bidders. Lenders then bid on your request and can bid down your interest rate to a much lower level.

Lenders on the otherhand can deposit money into Prosper and bid on loans to fund. Bidding is done in $50 increments and loans are only dispersed if the loan gets 100% funded. Once the loan is funded, the interest rate will be bid down until the listing expires. It provides a great way to earn a good return on your money and another way to invest.

What’s the advantage of borrowing or lending on Prosper? Borrowers can get rates much lower than what their bank will give them. Rates for borrowers with excellent credit can get unsecured loans for as little as 7%. Borrwers with bad credit may gets loans as high as 29%. Lenders have the potential to earn a very good return and diversify their holdings based on the risk they want to take. They can loan to all bad credit borrowers at 29% and risk not getting paid back, or risk to excellent credit borrowers at a much lower rate. I have 20 active loans out at the moment at an average interest rate of about 19% and every single one of my loans has been paid on time thus far (loans are paid in monthly payments for 3 years).

I consider myself pretty seasoned with Prosper now, so feel free to post any questions if you have them.