Internet

Websites as desktop applications are becoming and increasingly popular trend as WiFi and mobile internet increase their reach and user base.  Rather than connect to the internet and direct the browser to a specific website, the user can experience the website as a regular computer program.  Many times desktop versions allow users to broaden their experience through increased or new features.  I have chosen 5 websites of the tens of millions out there that I believe to be better experienced as a desktop application rather than through their actual website.  Feel free to add your favorites in the comment section.

eBay. The popular auction website’s desktop app allows for more targeted searches so that shoppers can find what they really want.  eBay’s desktop app also [click to continue...]

Back at the time of it’s inception, gather.com was one of the premier websites for writers to showcase their work and abilities – and snag a few rewards for doing so.  As time rolled on they remained the same and added an element of “newsiness” to their site by incorporating the Gather Essentials (major categories for posts – Money, News, Politics, Food, A&E, Movies, etc.)  In recent times, it seems that gather has moved away from any sort of creative or writers showcase and has become in their words “the premier social networking website for the 35+ crowd”.  Now that the social networking giant FaceBook has all but snagged every last bit of that crowd and allowed them to socially network in a popular and much easier way than was available on gather, it seems that gather is somewhat lost yet again.

I will give credit to gather for [click to continue...]

Susan Boyle completely owned the Twitter Top 10 trends list once again on Sunday.  Susan Boyle is still a trending topic, but she is now at about number eight and will most likely fall off the map at the mercy of a few sporting events yet to happen this week.  Twitter trends are a great way to find out what the majority of twitter users are talking about, but the trends are only temporary.  It would be nice if someone developed a twitter app to track the most consistently tweeted words or phrases.

If someone were to develop such an app and perform the analytics I am almost convinced that, excluding all articles and pronouns, the “f”-word would be near the top of the list – if not at the top.  Now, the f-bomb is no Susan Boyle, but [click to continue...]

I have always held PartnerUp.com as an invaluable resource for entrepreneurs looking to join up with others, grow their team, network, or simply learn from and interact with other like-minded individuals.  However, until now I have always found PartnerUp to be a bit old fashioned and poorly designed.  It seemed as though it was unable to really live up to its full potential.

While design should not diminish the helpfulness, effectiveness, value, or overall usability of a website it does affect a users overall impression and will to use a website.  PartnerUp’s user interface [click to continue...]

A growing trend amongst the increasing amount of social media adopters is to take advantage of integration tools which cross-network certain social networks and social media applications.  As more internet users (namely those from FaceBook) adopt twitter, they are making an attempt to kill two birds with one stone by porting their twitter updates to FaceBook.  It is my position that those who use social media in this way to not have an accurate understanding of the services that they are using.

Whether intentionally or not it seems the the prompts for updates are somewhat reversed based upon current usage of the services.  Twitter begs of users “What are you doing right now?” where as FaceBook kindly wonders “What’s on your mind?”  More often than not users are more apt to tweet what is on their mind in the form of [click to continue...]

In terms of search engines, Google is Old Faithful.  Since 1996ish, Google has managed to guide internet users through the interwebs to answer queries and find nuggets of knowledge.  While Twitter has been around and fully functional since 2001, it wasn’t until late 2008 going into early 2009 that users and popular internet personalities pointed out the extreme value of the real time twitter search engine.  WolframAlpha was released this week to much fanfare and while it is not a search engine in the traditional sense of the word, it is sure to make certain regular queries much easier to answer.

Google. Google has been the go-to search engine for all queries – common, niche specific, or otherwise.  Trendwise, Google can expect more of the same.  Their large search portfolio including trends, blogs, [click to continue...]

Ben Kauffman, entrepreneur and founder of mophie and Kluster, has struck again.  Quirky.com is somewhat of a  follow through on Ben’s original mental concept of Kluster.  Kluster was originally meant to be a platform where ideas and inventors collaborated with designers, engineers, creative namers, etc on product ideas.  Kluster quickly morphed into an online collaboration platform and their software is now used by many for such collaboration.  Kluster’s NameThis.com has seen moderate success for both business owners seeking to name their product or business.

Quirky.com takes a few elements of both of the Kluster platforms and combines them into one stunning product development service.  Quirky.com’s main purpose is to address the common inventor’s conundrum.  People have ideas, but lack the capital and perhaps innovative improvements and feedback needed to bring that product to the market.  For $99 [click to continue...]

…at least in terms of clever advertising.  Intel, the ultratechnologized company most famous for making computer processors, was recently hit up for $1.45 billion for abuse of market power (see full article at Forbes). While they might not be the hottest or most loved tech company at the moment, their new commercials are absolutely genius and poke a bit of fun at the uber-geek, but it is fun for everyone.  Check it out.

This is the first of two of these type of ads so far, and I am hoping that they will turn it into a bit of a series.  Note to self – if your company ever ends up in trouble, be sure to hire an excellent marketing and advertising team…

The general idea and principle behind CarsForAGrand.com is not necessarily new.  I guess you could call CarsForAGrand more of a “SpringOff” than a “Startup” – but I have to admint that what the guys behind the website are doing is phenomenal.

At its core, CarsForAGrand is an eBay niche store website that aggregates cars on eBay priced less than $1,000.  The website offers users the ability to narrow the results by area code and locality – and to subscribe to an RSS feed of local cars so that a good deal on a cheap car is not missed.  While the idea is not new or simple, CarsForAGrand is brilliant.  It is the epitome of entrepreneurship – providing a simple solution for a common problem.  People want cheap cars, CarsForAGrand delivers. [click to continue...]