How to fund your new web startup

An interesting post from WebWorkerDaily about how to fund your new web startup.

http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/04/09/funding-your-web-work-dream/

Twiddla.com - Team Collaboration Online

Twiddla is free web-based meeting place that makes it simple for geographically dispersed people to collaborate on projects.

Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Browse the web with your friends or make that conference call more productive than ever. No plug-ins, downloads, or firewall voodoo - it's all here, ready to go when you are. Browser-agnostic, user-friendly, mom-approved. It also allows one-click audio chats too.

So if you are looking for a tool that allows you to communicate and collaborate in real-time with a team that is located all around the world, check out Twiddla.

Web application development made easy

Web-based application development is generally not considered to be a task undertaken by non-programmers. But that thinking is about to change with the launch of a new set of tools that make it easy to develop web applications.

"Rollbase is an on-demand application development and delivery platform for businesses to rapidly find, create, customize and share web-based applications using point & click, drag & drop tools within a standard web browser. Rollbase brings the power of rapid application development to business users, IT professionals, and web developers who may not have the time, resources, or expertise to create on-demand applications using traditional software development methods. Rollbase is a state of the art Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud Computing Platform, enabling businesses to focus on application innovation rather than the software and hardware infrastructure behind it. In conjunction with the Rollbase Platform, the Rollbase Application Directory is an on-demand application ecosystem where users can browse, test drive, and install business applications built and published by experienced Rollbase users and partners with a single click. Rollbase requires only a browser and an Internet connection."

Voting is now open for the 2008 Webware 100!

Webware has opened up the user voting on the 2008 Webware 100. This is their yearly awards program where Webware users vote for their favorite Web 2.0 apps.

Go vote now

Control + C - A web service on Cut and Paste

ControlC is an interesting and useful service which helps you save time by organizing and storing the data that you cut and paste for use.

Once you have signed in and installed the software, every time you hit CTRL+C, the data is stored on ControlC website in your account and also on your local clipboard. The advantage is that you will not have to worry about copying sand searching for the same data over and again and it can be directly accessed from their website. You can keep these links as public or private. If made public, e can be viewed by your friends also.

All content uploaded from your clipboard is encrypted to protect your data completely. You can optionally, however, unencrypt and permanently store the data in your account, and share it with the world.

I think I am going to find it pretty useful why researching for my posts. As I can keep copying interesting information while researching on a topic and the go through all the information at once and make my posts richer.

Conducting Online Meetings/web conferencing - Absolutely Free

My first exposure to online meeting/web conferencing was through Webex and GotoMeeting. However, these are paid services.

However, the cost of these services in no more a concern as there are a plenty of free web conferencing services that are now available which are either absolutely free of cost or they cost very little. Here is a list of free web conferencing services.

List of free services

1. Yugma
2. Vyew
3. Zoho Meeting
4. DimDim
5. WebHuddle


List of a few paid services

1. Webex
2. MixMeeting
3. GotoMeeting
4. Microsoft Office Live Meeting
5. Adobe Connect

Web Services Revenues: From where is the money coming?

Through this post, I am trying to clarify my own understanding of how most of the free web services actually make money and from where this money actually comes from. For this post, web services mean services such as email, social networking websites, online bookmarking services, blogs, knoweldge portals, applications like Expensr, among others. We will look at
revenues coming to them directly from these services and not as an offshoot, for example, as a consultancy project for the guy who runs the show.

So, where does the revenue come from? Advertisement...

I think advertisement is the single largest source of revenue for all these services. If they don't place advertisements on their websites, they will die within no time.

Now who are the real advertisers. A real advertiser is one who has a real, consumable product or service - music labels, automobiles, furniture stores, property, movies, books...thelist is very big.
The web services (as we mentioned above) are also advertisers. They will place ads to promote their website. Surely their advertisement will add value to the advertiser, but the total value added to the system would be nill as they act as both producers and consumers of ad revenue. By their advertising, there is no incremental revenue for the entire websphere.

This makes me think that the entire websphere is feeding on the promotional/advertising budget of the real product/service companies.

I would really appreciate any feedback on these thoughts in order to consolidate my understanding of how this entire system is working.

MOLI - Separate you social and professional life

MOLI is a new service launched by a US-owned company. This again is a networking platform but with a different view. MOLI feels that on the internet on needs to keep it's social and professional life separate. And this is what it aims to do. Here you can create multiple profiles that can individually be shared with different groups. It offers multiple benefits to the users.

Multiple Profiles - Create different profiles for the different parts of your life: friends, business or anything else you choose.

Privacy - Use privacy permissions to decide who gets to see and interact with the different sides of you. Profiles can be public, private or hidden.

Share - Upload photos, videos, music, or text and share it with everyone on MOLI or just the people you choose.Customize your profiles with custom backgrounds, drag and drop functionality and useful tools like interactive event calendars, RSS feeds, blogs, message boards, video chat and much more.

Original Content - Get access to fresh trend setting content, created daily for moli.com - articles, audio, videos and more...

This idea of creating multiple profiles and privacy permissions is what sets them apart from other social networking sites like FaceBook. MOLI also recently got a funding of about 30m dollars.

However, the point of concern seems to be that most of the people who are active on the internet are maintaining their profiles with various websites like FaceBook, MySpace, Hi5, LinkedIn, etc. Now why would they add one more to their list if most of their requirements are being met with the existing networks. What would rather happen is that FaceBook and MySpace will also work on these features to allow people to maintain multiple profiles and provide advanced privacy settings.

Choosing a browser for a better web experience

All my life I have used Internet Explorer for browsing the internet. There was practically no good competitors whom you can depend on for a better experience. We all moved with IE from version to version. But looking at the scenario now, IE is not alone there are atleast three challengers as far as I am concerned.

Till the last month I had IE and Firefox installed on my machine and I used to alternate between the two (mostly using IE while using Firefox whenever I read about how good it is).

Recently, however, after installing IE 7, I realized that I made a big mistake as everything started falling apart and my system became much slower. Then I uninstalled it and reverted to IE6. Last week, I noticed that I am unable to post on Blogger as there was some Javascript error (from both IE6 and Firefox). I thought of installing Safari and trying using it. Bingo! It worked perfectly fine. I just got a bit more interested in browsers and also installed Opera and it works fine here also.

Now, I am trying to work mainly through Safari and Opera and am trying not to use IE at all.

This blog provides a good comparison and background of the 5 popular browsers around.

Surely, there is a better web experience after IE and Firefox.

What's the value of blogs like The Learned Man

I've been spending some time on going through a few blogs that have some name and are also popular in their circle. 

In the past few days I really enjoyed reading ReadWriteWeb blog , TechCrunch, ProBlogger, the blog about making money online.

I also used to visit the blog The Learned Man because I heard about it from some. The blog claims to have about 700+ members and caters to the niche e-learning industry in India.

I subscribed to all the 4 blogs in my NetVibes home page and have been following the stories. To my surprise, the learned man blog did not see any change or new post in the past one month. It was last updated on December 24, 2007 with information which was already there in everyone's mail boxes. Before that it carries a post on 13th November and one on 25th October. The post on November 13 is just a reproduction of information from www.livemint.com 

This is making me think about what value does such a blog adds. It might have worked very well for the blogger himself as a brand tool but adds little value to the readers. I think a blog should not only report news from other channels but also provides it's own content, analysis and info that will help people in their industry.

Let's us see where my blog is headed.

After a close analysis, I have kind of carved a niche for my own blog and it has to do with:

1. how web can help people improve their live by making use of various web technologies, and 
   
2. how web can be used as an effective medium to fulfill all learning related needs. 
   

All my recent posts have been focusing on these two areas. For example the story on Qtrax is a great breakthrough in terms of how people access music, and the story on password managers about how people store their important information.

Teaching Sells: Great program and nice people

Recently my wife and I subscribed to the online program Teaching Sells launched by the the famous Copyblogger and his associates. The program was about how to builds and sustain successful membership website and offer great learning content through Internet. I was very excited about the program as I am from the field of e-learning. I had a decent experience on the website and the information provided was great. The courses run on moodle platform. I had paid a fees of $97 for the 3-month membership.

Their membership runs on a subscription basis. So, after my initial 3-moths are over, I will be charged again for the next quarter. Hardly did I know anything about it, and one fine morning I received a message from my credit card company that i have been charged $97 for this membership. Initially I was in shock as I never thought it was possible. At the same time, I had no intentions of renewing my membership with them as I wasn't able to use it effectively. We talked to them over email and they instantly refunded the entire money. I was glad and understood that I was dealing with the right people.

In this age on Internet and online payment, one finds it difficult to trust on people you have never seen and probably never going to see also. But this proved to be an absolutely genuine group. I'm glad I went through this experience.

Getting paid for Online Surveys

I really got paid! In the past few months I had heard a lot about online surveys that paid. I was actually not convinced at all but wanted to give it a try. So, I joined up GlobalTestMarket Survey site. Instantly they started sending surveys. For each survey you earned a few points (50 to 100 points). They said they'll pay once I have 1000 points. Soon, by attending about 15 surveys I had 1000 points. Two weeks from then, I today received my check for Rs. 1800, thats about Rs. 120 per survey (approximately 15-20 minutes spent on each survey). 

I am not sure of any other survey websites but I will definitely recommend this one to all.