Smart Coupons for Smart Phones?

The mobile coupon idea is floating around and there is no one dominate player. The basic idea is to use your cellphone as a mobile coupon repository. When you want to redeem a coupon, you show or swipe your phone at the retailer's checkout. It has so much potential but the user experience is not friendly yet. Two big problems are: not enough specific coupons and too many off-target coupons sitting in your phone's inbox.

I imagine there are much bigger players wanting to join in but are waiting to see what the little players come up with. The bigger players are happy watching the little guys try to explore this new landscape, and they will join in when the right approach is evident. The risk to the big players is that one of this smaller players may discover the best approach and may experience an explosive, viral growth, at which point it may be too late for a bigger player to gain market share.

Read NYT's article: Cents-Off Coupons and Other Special Deals, via Your Cellphone

Design Outside Your Comfort Zone

This excellent article challenges you to think outside of your comfort zone. It talks about changing your designing style, but some of its points can be easily extended to other areas of skills as well.

Visit the WebDesignerDepot.com

Missed Adobe MAX 2008?

I missed it, too. Outside of my day-to-day job I don't have much time for anything else. So I could not get away to travel to San Francisco this past November. However, there are now plenty of videos of the seminars that happened there. Check them out on Adobe TV and see what great things are coming.

Adobe MAX Events
Intro To Catalyst
Wireframes with Catalyst

KickYouTube: Downloads for YouTube

With KickYouTube.com you can easily download any YouTube video to your hard drive. Here's what you need to do:

1. Visit any YouTube video
2. In the address bar insert the word "kick" immediately before youtube.com
3. Choose where to save on your hard drive

Here is a review by Lifehacker.

Street Photography: Clues

Look at these stunning photos captured somewhere on the street. Aside from their beauty, there could be hidden clues on some of them that could help steer your ideas about real-world needs. There could be some patterns in these photos. A moment of pause for pondering could reveal the clue you have been looking for. If your product or service is targeted at people, it is very important to study their movements, behavior, thrills, and fears.

The Beauty of Street Photography

MIT's Mobile Apps

Look at what students at MIT are doing. In a 13 week class they come up with and program real-world, mobile apps. It is very interesting to know what these young kids are thinking and to target your app to follow similar endeavors.

MIT students build mobile applications in 13 weeks

3D Mac Interface

Apple is very clever. Look at one of their patent filings for a radically different interface. The article talks about this interface replacing the current desktop. But can you think about how this would look like or function on an iPod Touch or an iPhone? It seems very few people can envision that far into the future. Apple's team of geniuses seem to do that so many times.

I have already seen so many, many great and amazing things Mac OS X can do that Windows may never do for another ten years. I think the Mac is so far ahead of Windows that is not even funny any more. Even Linux is so much better than Windows. This pending 3D interface will mostly be another giant leap ahead for Mac OS.

The only thing I don't like about the Macs is their price. They are so expensive relative to Wintel machines. But if I had the money, there is no question I would own a Mac.

Apple working on 3D Mac OS X user interface

GetSatisfaction: Your New Customer Service?

GetSatisfaction.com could be your next customer service. They are developing a social network of people who are helping each other with all sorts of issues concerning real-world companies. Their site says their current user base covers 7,863 companies and 7,622 products and services. They provide a widget to add to any site through which your existing online users can connect with this pool of "customer service reps" who are in fact just ordinary folks like you and I.

Read Fast Company's review

FotoBooth: Capture Instant Webcam Pics

With FotoBooth and the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) you can capture pics from your webcam, save them to your harddrive and instantly send them to Flickr. I can imagine a third-party service piggy-backing on this. You would use FotoBooth to capture pics and save to them to the harddrive. Then you would use your AIR application to read the pics off the harddrive and use them to perform a new service.

FotoBooth Pixel Bender Edition
FotoBooth at MAX 2008

Recyclables Sent To The Dump

This is a sad story. Recyclables such as cereal boxes are being sent to landfills because there are no more buyers for this stuff. Because of the downturn in the economy, it is cheaper to produce new cardboard, than it is to recycle. This is also true of other recyclables such as plastic and metal. Can anyone think of other uses for these recyclables? I thought of something, but I cannot go live with it just yet because it may be profitable for me.

NYT: Back at Junk Value, Recyclables Are Piling Up

Free Calls With iPod Touch

Now you can make free phone calls with the new, free Truphone app for the iPod touch. More features are on the way. Look for the Truphone app at the App Store under Social Networking.

Truphone

Tell-A-Friend Marketing

This new widget allows any visitor to your site to instantly send your content to their friends at Yahoo, Gmail, or Facebook. If you think your content is worth spreading, you might want to put this widget on your site.

Tell A Friend @ SocialTwist.com

SpinVox: Dictation in Any Format

Your voice can now be delivered in near real-time in any format you like. For example, live events can now be sent as text via email to all your email subscribers. You can also deliver the text directly to your blog or social network. That means you can update your blog via a voice call.

SpinVox.com
Springwise review

How To Power Google Search

This site teaches you how to become a Google power user. Very good stuff to know about using Google.

Dumb Little Man Tips

Meermeer: New Website Testing

Adobe's MeerMeer will change the way you test websites. It is an online service that works through Dreamweaver. Whenever you make a code change, the changes are uploaded to Adobe's servers and you can get instant screenshots of your code running in different browsers/platforms.

However, I suppose this only works for html, javavscript sites and not dynamic server scripted pages. We'll wait and see what Adobe does about this.

Sitepoint's review of Meermeer

Catalyst Changes Flex

There is an incredible tool coming from Adobe Labs that will profoundly impact how Flex development is done. I've been involved in developing a complex online Flex RIA and one of the most tedious pieces was getting the app to look like the designer's requirements given to me as PDFs and PNGs. I find this skill of transfering a design into code very scarce, and so are the online examples. Just as a picture can say a million words, so can a design be converted a million ways into code, but only one combination works best.

Catalyst will fill this scarcity and you can see a preview at Adoble Labs. Sitepoint also has a nice review. In a nutshell, this tool will do the conversion from design to code. One limitation I see is the interactivity of charts and graphs and this might just have to be done the old fashion way.

For it to be successful, designers will need to learn how to work with it and get familiar with all the new interactive elements a Flex RIA can have. It is a new step in a designer's work flow. The designer still has to work within Illustrator, Photoshop, or Fireworks and then import that file into Catalyst. At that point, the designer would need to work with the tools within Catalyst to convert design elements into interactive Flex elements.

Developers on the other hand, just need to import the designer's Catalyst file into Flex Builder and get rolling.

AlivePDF: Flex PDF API

Here is an open-source ActionScript 3 library for generating dynamic PDFs. It works great within a Flex interface. If you have a Flex-based application and need some kind of PDF support, you need to take a look at this.

AlivePDF.org

PhotoJoy: My New Screensaver

Photojoy is really cool. It has some amazing effects for showing photos on your desktop as a screensaver. I use it to show photos from Flickr that I find interesting. For example, at the moment I have mine showing backpacks, bags, skateboards and students.

Photojoy.com

Interactive Video Objects

What are interactive video objects? Adobe is experimenting with turning any objects inside a video into interactive objects you can manipulate. So for example, if a video contains a group of friends you can separately fast forward or backwards that one person without changing the others. The way Adobe is achieving this is very clever. You'll have to see this demo video to get a better grasp of this.

This is radically crazy! Can you think of what people might do with this? I think it may turn out to be like a Photoshop for videos. With Photoshop you can take parts from different photos and blend them into a new photo which never was real. Now people will blend parts from different videos to create a new video which never happened! You will be able to create hilarious America's Funniest Videos or frame your worst enemy and show the video evidence to the police. I think Adobe is creating a monster.

Adobe's Interactive Video Object Manipulation

Smaller SLR Cameras Coming

The new technology these cameras are based on is called Micro Four Thirds. It works by eliminating the complicated mirror system inside today's cameras. These mirrors are used to direct the image to the peephole. Someone got clever and added a really tiny LCD inside this peephole which now acts as a replacement for the real peephole. The benefit is professional digital cameras can now be much thinner.

See David Pogue's review of one such camera, the Panasonic G1.

2itch: Your Midnight Taco Run

Help is on the way. Now you don't need to go out scavenging late at night to find something good to eat. Just visit 2itch.com and you'll find all sorts of businesses open 24x7. Hurry and submit your own locations so you can help other lost souls out there.

2itch.com
Springwise Review

LeadVine: Your SalesForce

The concept:crowdsource the sales force. The "crowd" finds sales leads for you and you pay a referral fee.

What this means to you: Now you don't need to hire your own salespeople. Just let the "crowd" sell your stuff, anywhere in the world.

Leadvine.com
Springwise Review

Carpooling With iPhone

Look what you can now do with the iPhone and soon with other phones. The iPhone keeps track of your travel routes and matches you up with others who travel similar routes. It also shows you pictures so you can decide whether to share a ride or not with any of these matching people.

 

iPhone RideShare App

Prawn: Fast Nimble PDF Generation

If you are using Ruby then this provides an easy way for you to dynamically build PDFs on the fly. Suppossedly it is super fast and super easy to do.

 

Prawn

Get Your Flickr ID

If you do not know what your Flickr ID is, then you can use this 3rd party service to find it. http://idgettr.com/.

CIDA: Creative Industries Development Agency

If u r in any creative industry, these people might be able to help.

Here are their own words:

Welcome to CIDA - the leading support organisation for the creative and cultural sector.

We support those working in all areas of the creative and cultural industries - in fact almost any creative sector you can think of!

If you're a creative individual, business or arts organisation looking for support to take your creative business or project further, you'll find it here, whatever stage you're at.

YouNoodle: Startup Predictor

Take the test to see if your start up will make it and if it is worthy of investor's attention and money. If you are passionate about the idea you are working on, the results of this test will not mean much to you. But if you are a bit uncertain about your idea, perhaps the results might help you refine your idea.

YouNoodle.com
NYT article: A Start-Up Says It Can Predict Others' Fate

10 Adobe AIR Apps

You must know about these. Know what they do and how they do it. Know about their interfaces. Then apply this new knowledge to your own AIR app. Google all these mentioned apps to get the downloads.

10 Multimedia Adobe AIR Applications You Must Know

Flash 10 Fabric

You have to see this to believe it. Look at what you can do now with Flash Player 10. You may need to download it and install.

http://justin.everett-church.com/fp10demos/cloth.html

Drag the clips to make it spin. It's so wild. I think it's soooooo crazy!!! It just makes me wonder about the algorithms and mathematics behind this. The people at Adobe are brilliant!

So what can you do with this? Perhaps someone could build a game where one of the scenes is a character jumping on a trampoline, which can now be made to look more realistic. Or how about a game with Superman and his cape realistically waving thru the air. Or how about the game of Joust with the ostrich wings really flapping. I think any scene where wind is interacting would be a great place to use this new technology.

Free CSS Templates

I ran into this site that offers free templates based on CSS layouts, as opposed to using tables.

 

FreeCSSTemplates.org

 

Here are some highlights taken from their site:

Released for FREE under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license

Very lightweight in terms of images

Tables-free (ie. they use no tables for layout purposes)

W3C standards compliant and valid (XHTML Strict)

Provided with public domain photos, generously provided by PDPhoto.org and Wikimedia Commons

SMTP to SMS Address List

Here is a list of the email address domains for major cellular providers. This is handy for DIY developers who want to build their own SMS-based service:

 

 EmailTextMessages.com

 

Here is another:

http://www.notepage.net/smtp.htm

iPhone VOIP Options

Here are various sources for saving on calling minutes on your iPhone and instead making a phone call using any of these Voice Over IP services.

11 Great Tools for Making VoIP Calls on the iPhone

10 Online Photo Editors

If you are a photographer, these are apparently 10 Online Photo Editors That You Definitely Need To Bookmark. Not everyone can afford a full-blown Photoshop software so these are definitely worth looking into for saving some big bucks. In some respects, some people even prefer these online tools over a fat-client software.

Future of Social Networking

This is a very interesting glimpse of what the potential for mobile social networking could be like.

I Saw The Future Of Social Networking

More Free Icons

Some of the best things in life are free. When it comes to icons and icon sets, there are many talented designers and artists that choose to provide beautiful and useful icon sets for commercial and/or personal usage.

In this collection, you'll see 40 beautiful, free icon sets that you can use in a variety of ways (websites and/or your desktop). In total, you'll find close to 3000 invidual icons showcased in this article.

A Useful Wireless Service

Here come the new services based on wireless hardware that transmit signals via BlueTooth, WiFi, RFID, etc. One such service is a wireless home security system that can be installed by a homeowner without tearing up the walls. It uses stick-on sensors that use tiny "watch" batteries and communicate back to a console you can place anywhere in the house.

NYT article entitled: Wirelessly, Home Security Becomes A D.I.Y Project

Broadcast Your Ideas

If you want your ideas to really spread, make a video about them and post it to YouTube, Instructables, MakeZine, etc. Read about what this guy did with the Wiimote and then see his videos.

NYT article entitled If No One Sees It, Is It An Invention?

RailsPlayground: Excellent Support

I just need to mention this because these people are far and above any other hosting service I have ever had.

Over the course of the last ten or so years I have done business with different hosting companies for my personal shared hosting needs. Up to now I have not experienced any other service as good or better than the service I have received from RailsPlayground.com. Their technical support to me has been quick and very helpful.

However, I think their level of support has gone beyond what I expected. Whenever I have needed to install any type of component or application on my hosting, they have generously done it for me for free, plus they have done it very speedily. Of course, with any installation there are unforeseen issues that arise after testing the new installation. Incredibly, they turn around and fix the issues until the installation is done right and again all for free. I have even offered to pay them for their time and effort and they say no thank you.

In a world where people are losing their jobs and tightly holding on to what they have, I asked myself, "are these people for real". Thank you RailsPlayground. I am extremely satisfied with your service. I wish you great success. The least I can do for you is brag about your excellent customer service. Visit them at RailsPlayground.com.

Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner

Stanford University has some very good lectures given to their students for viewing by anyone for free. The lectures are aimed at people with an entrepreneural spirit. Needless to say, the lecturers are the cream of the crop in their respective fields. I hope to learn as much as I can from them.

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/

CrowdSourcing Primer Videos

Don't know what crowdsourcing is? Do you want to take advantage of a crowd to source your product? Take some hints from these short video clips at the Wired Video Library.

 

Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe

Free Adobe Flex Training

Adobe has a week's worth of free online training for Flex 3.

 

Check it out

Omgili: Relevant Search Results

I just started using Omgili and for what I need to find, it sure beats using Google. Omgili returns results from conversations people are having. It's results are more subjective than objective. I think I like this type of searching better, however, there is still sometimes when I definitely need to use Google. This just proves, the world is not entirely dominated by Google.

Omgili.com

Map of Foreclosures

I'm not sure why I did not write about this sooner. I have know about this service for quite a while. With it you can browse across all the nation for homes that are for rent, for sale, or foreclosed.

HotPads.com
TechCrunch review

Built-in 3G for PC

Looks like there is a PC manufacturer who has already decided to include 3G connectivity on its laptop, along with WiFi. To mobile professionals this makes a lot of sense. One question I have is: will I be able to easily send SMS and make voice calls from this laptop?

 

Asus Eee PC to get embedded 3G

Earth Class Mail

I saw David Pogue's video coverage of this new service and think it is pretty cool. You sign up for a new mailing address. You have all your mail forwarded there. They scan the front and back of all your mail. You then have the options of Archive, Shred, Scan, Transport, etc. If you chose Scan, you can view your mail's internal content the next day. If you choose Transport, they send you the mail to your true physical address. Of course, there are fees for all this and it is more than I want to pay at this time.

http://www.earthclassmail.com/

A New Kind of VC

Read NYT's story entitled A New Kind of Venture Capitalist Makes Small Bets on Young Firms to get a leg up on how to get venture capital and who other entrepreneurs recommend.

Best Notebook Ever (for Mac)

I've been listening to the MacCast.com podcast that I download from iTunes, and I recently learned about what may be the world's best notebook of all time. Of course, it works on the Mac. They have an extensive video tour of their product broken up into separate movies. If I had a Mac, this is one app I definitely would need to use all  the time.

Check out Notebook at CircusPonies.com

CellSpin Uploads Your Phone's Multimedia

Don't you hate taking all those pictures and videos with your cellphone and then having them "stuck" inside your phone because you can't figure out how to upload them to your computer and then to the web? Now there is CellSpin.net with which you can instantly upload to many different sites all at once. You can upload to Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, etc.

Read Demo's Review about CellSpin

SkyFire: Super Fast Mobile Browser

SkyFire.com has produced a super fast mobile browser for your phone that
compresses any website and speeds up delivery to your phone. It supports all
javascript, AJAX, and Flash. This is now the mobile browser to beat because
not even the Safari on the iPhone can currently play Flash.

OpenClip: iPhone Opensource Clipboard

OpenClip.com has an open-source clipboard for the iPhone that works across applications. It is worth looking into and supporting their work.

Fonolo: Cut Thru Phone Menus

Now you don't have to navigate through all those phone menus when you call a business number. Just register the business phone you wish to call and the menu options you wish to get to. The next time you need to call just go to http://fonolo.com/ and it will call you back when it has reached its destination and you can continue with the call. It is amazing.

Here is SpringWise's review.

Mobile Banking: BIG, HUGE, ASTRONOMICAL

This story found at Bank Technology News, is one of the best stories I have read concerning the global mobile banking trend. If you want to understand what is happening around the world with mobile banking, you really should read this story. If you are in the banking or financial industry, you must inform yourself about this stuff now.

It is now foreseeable that in the future banks may never again directly interface with its customers, via its present use of tellers, ATMs, websites, etc. Banks may become just back-end processing service providers. The mobile banking providers may become the real banks of the future.

Big Calling

Wipe Out Malware

Here are some links a friend sent me to wipe out malware with some simple tools.

Lesser Known Weapons To Trick Out Your Malware Arsenal

Malwarebytes

Startups in India

Want to know about the latest startup companies in India? This website keeps track of all this and has an RSS feed.

Pluggd.in

UK/Germany SMS Payments

The U.K. and Germany now have their own mobile payment system called LUUP. There are so many of these popping up. It's going to be a real battle to see who will dominate the world. These kinds of services are being coined peer-to-peer payments systems.

eTranzact: Nigeria's Mobile Banking

Nigeria has a new service called eTranzact.com by which its people can conduct transactions by cellular phone. This is just one more example of the growing trend for using phones to conduct monetary transactions. Stay tuned for more stories like this because this really interests me. Here is the source from which I learned about this:

eTranzact, Nigerian banking system and the future of e-Payment in Africa

Path to Mobile Payments

This story about mobile payments sheds light on what decisions need to be made in terms of payment processing before mobile payments can really take off. A lot of the terms discussed are over my head, but it's good to know these discussions are already happening because I intend to take advantage of mobile payments for myself and for my clients.

I recently read this story in Bank Technology, a magazine I get for free:

How Will Payments Ride Rails

2Lingual: Bilingual Google Search

I am fluent in Spanish and English and so the 2Lingual.com service is very useful to me when doing Google searches. Be sure to have the Google setting to show results for both languages you are using.

PicLens

If you have a site with photos or videos you may want to partner with PicLens.com because they offer an incredible interface for browsing your photos or videos. I definitely plan to use them once I have my site up full of photos. I am now using it to browse my Flickr and SmugMug photos.

Plurk: A Twitter Killer?

I recently ran into this article entitled Social Media Wheels Keep On Turning‚ And Fast! and discovered a service called Plurk.com which is similar to Twitter. According to the article Plurk does many more things better than Twitter. It argues that Twitter is more popular because it was first to market. I took at look at Plurk and it has a very interesting interface. I'd like to know what you think of it in comparison to Twitter.

Managers for Outlook Email

If you use Outlook for email there are two plugins you can use to help you manage all your email. Wired magazine has a good review. Here is an excerpt:

Among other cool tricks, Xobni spots hidden patterns in your email usage. It identifies, for instance, who your most important contacts are, what time of day they typically send email, and how long it takes you to reply to one another.

Xobni.com
ClearContext.com

International E-Commerce Blog

I stumbled upon a new blog about International E-Commerce.

http://www.dobbeltaa.dk/

I am sure if I use Technorati.com I can find more.

China Payment Systems

I finally got busy searching for payment systems for China, and I stumbled upon some new ones I had not heard about. It turns out payment systems and trust are lacking in China and just beginning to get known. I read an interesting article that sheds light on the current situation in China. Here are some payment systems to keep an eye on.

Ecapay.com
YeePay.com
Alipay.com

If you know of any international payment systems, please let me know.

mChek: Another Mobile Pay

A while back I wrote about the California-based Obopay. India has their own version called mChek.com. There is also news that Obopay plans to expand its services from the States to India. Hopefully into China soon.

Need a Voice?

If you have a script for someone to read who has a really nice-sounding voice then you can find voice talented people at:
Voices.com
Voice123.com

On the other hand, if you have a great voice, you can sign up to sell your voice talent.

PollDaddy: Create A Poll

Want to create a poll? Just use PollDaddy.com and send out to your targeted audience to participate. Then collect and analyze the data.

Flip It ʇı dılɟ

I found this Flip tool from the story on TechCrunch. I tried it within my corporate Lotus Notes and yes it works there too. ¡ǝɯosǝʍɐ sı sıɥʇ

SlideShare.net: My New Research Tool

I started using SlideShare.net as a research tool because it provides me with concise information in the form of slides. People who want to share their presentation slides upload them for anyone to see. I am current conducting research on "social e-commerce" and "social networks". Many slides provide links to other useful information such as books, blogs, etc.

ThisNext: Explore, Shop, Rave

Here is a social network of people who are exploring products, shopping and raving about products they like. It is a good source of people to which you can push your product so they can spread the word about it. I need to do the same, once I get my product done. I have seen others like this service and will need to review what those are. I will come back and update this list. You can also help by commenting about others you may know. Thanks!

ThisNext.com

Watch Global Twitters

At TwitterVision.com you can watch near real-time twits (or tweets) as they happen. It's like watching TV but only of all the global twitters talking. It is amazing to ponder that this is happening live, perhaps with a few minutes of delay. What else could be possible to monitor in near real time across the world that is useful for individuals?

What about all this data that TwitterVision is showing? Is it possible to build some historical trends about its content? For example, where are the most tweets coming from? What are the top 10 things people are doing in the morning, at noon, and at night? What two countries mutually follow each others' twits the most (does this mean these two countries are the friendliest to each other)?
Is it also possible (perhaps using Microsoft Labs Translations) to translate all the twits into the viewing user's preferred language?

It is very interesting that today there are people all around the world talking about the iPhone. For example, I just learned the iPhone has sold-out in Seattle city-wide. People all over are mentioning the long lines. Just from this, you can tell the world needs more iPhones and you can tell people hate long lines. What other needs do people have that are obvious in these conversations?

TwitterVision is almost like being God and watching all these conversations. Of course, it would be overwhelming for any individual to monitor all of them as they happen. Perhaps one could apply various filters to refine the types of conversations one is interested in. The hard-core monitoring and trend analysis would need to be done by super-computers.

SocialCalc: A Wiki Spreadsheet

Need to build community-managed spreadsheets of data? Use SocialCalc along with SocialText to get a full-featured wiki with spreadsheets. What would this be useful for? Think of any public data that would be useful to have online and managed by the same people who use it.  You could initially seed the data yourself. Then let anyone who uses it be able to manage it as well.

SocialCalc

iPhone Incredible Apps

I'm sure everyone is hyped about the iPhone being available in stores tomorrow and I'm sure every other blog has some kind of story about the iPhone, so I decided to put out my two cents worth of blogging on it as well.

I just got done reading the NYT article For iPhone, the 'New' Is Relative and here is an excerpt I like about some of the apps coming for it:

Apple has demonstrated 16 of these programs, including an instant message program, an eBay auction tracker, medical references and a touch-sensitive musical keyboard; the best of them exploit the iPhone's orientation sensor, wireless technologies and other high-tech components.

One coming program, called iCall, will give you free phone calls when you're in a Wi-Fi hot spot. Another, called G-Park, exploits G.P.S. to help you find where you parked. Yet another, Urbanspoon, is "a cross between a magic eight ball and a slot machine:" you shake the phone, and it randomly displays the name of a good restaurant nearby, using the iPhone's G.P.S. and motion sensor.

You can also expect to see a time and expense tracker, home-automation remote control, voice recorder, Etch-a-Sketch, a recipe box, tip calculator, currency converter, e-book reader and so on.

Above all, the iPhone is about to become a dazzling hand-held game machine. The games revealed so far feature smooth 3-D graphics and tilt control; in one driving simulator, you turn the iPhone itself like a steering wheel, and your 3-D car on the screen banks accordingly. Other games exploit the multitouch screen, so you and a buddy can sit at opposite ends of the screen and fire at each other.

myJambi: Market Your Services

Here is another service by which to market your skills to the world. On the other hand, if you are looking for a freelancer, you can look here as well.

MyJambi.com

Others I can think of now are:
freelance.com
guru.com

They are easy to find, just google "freelance"

Citi Mobile: Pay by SMS

Citibank is testing a new system in the Philippines that allows registered users to pay merchants by texting. This sounds a lot like one of my concepts for paying by text for which I have reserved the domain textpaying.com. So when you go to a restaurant, your waiter will ask, "Will you be textpaying today?"

Read about CitiMobile.

Ashley Furniture Uses SMS

Read about the success Ashley Furniture is having with text messaging.

Also take note of how they are building up their database of permission-based phone numbers of users.

Also note how they use different keywords appearing in different print ads so they can measure the response of each ad.

Very interesting. I'm sure you can think of how to apply this knowledge to other industries.

They are using MobileStorm

Tips For Own RoR Social Network

Nice list of tips/plugins for coding your own social network site with Ruby on Rails (RoR).

Building A Social Networking Site in Rails

Acrobat.com

This is really cool. Adobe has put together some really nice collaboration online tools, such as Buzzword, ConnectNow, Create PDF, Share, and My Files. Creating your own account is free. I think I will need to plan on using these tools more and more. The interfaces are really good looking and are based on Flex.

Acrobat.com

Build Your Own Wikipedia

Just follow these instructions to install and host your own Wiki site using MediaWiki, the same engine that runs Wikipedia.com, and runs on Apache, PHP, and MySQL.

Lifehacker's Set Up Your Own Personal Wikipedia

As an alternative, they also recommend Instiki which runs on RoR (ruby on rails).

SMS Information

I think this site has some very useful information about SMS, modems, gateways, etc.

http://www.smssolutions.net/

All Flex Explorers

From time to time I need to look at examples and samples of some things that are possible to do with Flex. Here is one person's list of so called Flex Explorers which I think is very good.

Sharp Mind Flex Explorers

Firefox 3 Features

I will keep this list of new Firefox 3 features handy so I can learn to use it better. Since Firefox is the one application I use the most, I should definitely learn to use it better.

Freshbooks

Just in case you are in need of an online accounting package, I have heard and read very good reviews about Freshbooks. In their own words: "FreshBooks is an online invoicing and time tracking service that saves you time and makes you look professional..."

The Web20Show.com interviewed one of its leaders and he sound very cool and funny and is a very down-to-earth guy.

Web Developer Tools

As a web developer, be sure you are familiar with these tools with which you can optimize your website.

15 Tools To Help You Develop Faster Web Pages

Build Your Site for iPhone

With this new tool you can build your website to appear great on an iPhone.

iUI

Pitch Your 60 Seconds

New site of 60 second video pitches of startups. Get yours in today, or watch what others are thinking.

Elevator Pitches

First Signs: SMS Getting Cheaper

It has long been argued that present SMS rates are excessively expensive in contrast to other data transfer services. Now there is a story coming out of the Philippines that Telcos are being pressured to reduce their rates. If your services depend on SMS, now may be a good time to look overseas for your SMS provider.

Telcos get 7-day deadline on lower voice, SMS rates

Here is another story on the NYT entitled Europe Moves to Cut Charges for Text Messages.

Send E-mail Thru SMS

A new service offers you the ability to send emails via text messaging. Check out the details:
Now, send e-mail through SMS

Company:
http://www.myduniya.in/

My Tech Needs

I have started a new blog to better describe what my current technology needs are for my own personal projects. I like the wordpress format for blogs because you can more readily see other people's comments. My new blog will contain any solution which I am looking for and any suggestions from my readers. As I put together my personal projects, I often run into nice things to have but which I cannot locate or do not yet exist. Perhaps you can provide me one of these solutions and we can mutually profit.

MyTechNeeds.wordpress.com

Mashable's Open Source Social Platforms

Here is Mashable.com's list of their top 10 social news, social networking, and social bookmarking open source projects for building your own social site.

Open Source Social Platforms: 10 of the Best

Lovdbyless Open Source Social Network

In reading about Insoshi.com I just found out about Lovdbyless.com, another open source social network project built with Ruby on Rails. It seems these things are just getting started. It is so good to know there is a lot of interest in using RoR for social networks. Thanks to all the contributors and the funders to these projects. Please support them with your blogging, money, etc.

Insoshi Open Source Social Network

I just found out about an open-source social network built with Ruby on Rails. I found out from the author of RailsSpace.com, Michael Hartl. The project is called Insoshi and is actively being developed. If you are developer you can help build it. If you want your own customizable social network, download it and install it. I hope these guys can make it, because RoR is awesome. Insoshi could become very hard to beat.

Business Use For Twitter

This 3 Minute Twitter Challenge video talks about how companies should be using Twitter to monitor everything that is being said or asked about their own company. The narrator talks about how he posed a question to a company and within three minutes got a response because someone who works for the company was monitoring all conversations about the company using such services as Tweetscan.com, Terraminds.com, Technorati.com, etc. I actually need to start using Twitter as well. They have some nice videos at Twitter.com about what it is used for. I can't get you the exact urls right now because twitter is down for the moment.

Mobile Coupons With Mobeam

You hate to clip out all those coupons you get in the mail or in the newspaper and then you even forget to take them with you to the grocery store. Would it be great if you could look online for the products you intend to buy and then see if there are any coupons for those products? Then send a collective barcode of those coupons to your cellphone and redeem them with a simple scan at the register?

Enter Mobeam.com. Check out their videos at:
http://www.bnettv.com/player.php?id=905
http://www.ecrio.com/products/mobeamdemo.htm

Gen Y Is Changing The Web

Find out why Gen Y is changing the web and how they are doing it. If you want to keep abreast of where the web is heading then you need to understand this group of people and what their expectations are.

Why Gen Y is going to change the web

Pose Question, Get Answers

Here is another site you may want to keep track of. It is interesting to read to know what kinds of questions are popping up. It seems one could ask the right kind of questions to get people talking about your service/product. You could turn this into a marketing tool.

Fluther.com

Most Popular Videos: How-To's

Make a "how to" video, post it on YouTube and you could get plenty of hits. That is a trend covered by the NYT.

Read the article "Making Money, The How-To Way"

Here are some how-to sites: WonderHowTo.com, VideoJug, Howcast, ExpertVillage, Graspr, and MetaCafe

Shanghai World Financial Center

 I saw the documentary about the building of this structure on the National Geographic Channel and decided to look for it online. Here is one awesome video about it. This is one place I hope to visit in my lifetime with my family. I want to walk across that glass-floor observatory 1600 feet above the ground. It looks amazing.

http://www.shanghaihills.com/en/highlight/oim.html

China's Micro-Retailers

Stories like these get me excited about my personal project. People all over the world are getting ready to sell to other people around the world. The financial services needed for these transactions are also starting to pop up, such as Alipay and PayPal (International).

This is a must read, to know what I am continually envisioning.
Ebay Heads East by Fast Company

Get Your Own LiveMesh

Microsoft is giving you 5GB of storage that you can share across all of your devices (desktop, laptop, cellphone, XBox, etc) and even among your friends. Here is one of description of one of Microsoft's examples for using LiveMesh

Microsoft rolled a quick clip illustrating Mesh power: A mother uses a smart phone to capture footage of her son jumping into a pool. As the video is saved to the mobile device's memory, it's transferred to a digital photo frame. Meanwhile, it's also synching with the father's iTunes account, allowing him to watch the nearly live footage whilst waiting in an airport. It's then sent to a Zune, a car dashboard, another smart phone and back to an Xbox 360 console that two other boys are playing poolside.

--Taken from the article "Microsoft Seeks Mesh Sizzle"

HEMA Online Store Jam

HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam . Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands . HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany In June of this year, HEMA was sold to British investment company Lion Capital. 

Take a look at  HEMA's product page. You can't order anything and it's in Dutch but just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens.
This company has a sense of humor and a great computer programmer.

Nice Way to Compare Fonts

I found this online tool with which to compare fonts to each other, up to three at a time. It seems very useful when I am trying to fit some text into a narrow space, like a table cell, and want it to be as legible as possible.

Typetester

Obopay: Transfer $ w/ Cellphone

Forget banks and all the hassles of setting up external transfer accounts to and from other banks. Needless to say, any of your friends may have reservations about giving you their account numbers. But which of your friends would ever hesitate to give you their cellphone number? I doubt this would be of concern.

Well now, that is all you need. Transfer money from your cellphone to their cellphone. It works by registering your account information at Obopay.com. Anytime you send or receive money, the system will know your account info based on your cellphone. Your friends do not need to register their account info, unless they want to. Instead, they can go to Obopay.com and request the system to transfer the money you paid them to their bank account info.

Check out the demo at Obopay.com

Here is a nice video about what this service is all about.

MobiCash: Pay By Phone

These folks seek to put a new button into today's online shopping carts. By clicking this new button, people will be able to charge their purchases to their cellphone bill. This may eliminate the need for credit cards.

One trouble is, how will they ever pull this off, considering there are millions of shopping cars already out there? Of course, they can partner with some major players, like PayPal or Google Checkout, but it is a totally different checkout process.

MobiCash

Be Wary of Craigslist

Check out this story bit from ecommwire.com:

The bizarre event, at least, the second of its kind to strike Craigslist, involved a Classified Ad posting that invited individuals to "take what they wanted free of charge" from a house in Jackson County, Oregon. The ad was a hoax, but it generated a real world plundering of a man's home. Last year, a similar plundering scam struck a woman in Tacoma, Washington. In her case, windows, doors, and even the kitchen sink, were stripped out.

There is a better alternative for social classifieds called Collabotrade.com. Read the full story Collabotrade.com Solves Craigslist's Plunder Problem

2G, 3G, 4G, EDGE, LTE?

What do all those alphabet soup of terms mean? Sure they all refer to cellular or broadband technology, but I just don't get what it means to me or what company uses what acronym. Here is a handy short history and explanation.
What's the deal with 4G?

TableFinder: Restaurant Tables Worldwide

This English service is seeking to be your online reservation hub for reserving a table at participating restaurants worldwide. It works on the honor system. If you make a reservation thru their system at a participating restaurant, and you keep your reservation, you get bonus points which you can redeem for discounts at some restaurants. If you do not show up, then you get some negative points and after so many, your account gets disabled for a period of time or indefinitely.

If you own a restaurant, it costs you nothing. They say "we earn our money from commisions from our partners." I wonder who these partners are and how they really make their money.

TableFinder.com

England's Dot Com Boom

Check out this great news coming out of England. It seems everyone there is looking into starting their own Web 2.0 startup. There are lots of ideas and conferencing going on, and of course, lots of venture capital.

TimesOnline story "The New Dot Com Boom"

BuddyPromoter: Launch With Help

This is what I am talking about when I talk about web 2.0 marketing or viral marketing. This tool empowers you to easily spread your word by connect others to your own space. With it you can easily send friend requests in MySpace, Facebook, etc. I know I will be using this whenever I get my things going.

BuddyPromoter.com
$1 BuddyPromoter Promotion
Mashable Review of BuddyPromoter

Expensive SMS Texting

This article makes me think about how expensive text messaging really is. I do hope text messaging plan prices come down further soon.
Mobile SMS: Do you even *know* you're being ripped off?

PhotoShop Express

Photo professionals now have another choice for not only online album storage but also for photo editing. Adobe's PhotoShop Express features both. So now you only need to upload your images just once. And since these guys are the creators of the desktop Photoshop, their tools for this express version must be pretty awesome.
Read the NYT review.

Flex Filter 100K Records

This guy did an awesome flex example of using the filterFunction to search through a datagrid of 100,000 records. The performance of the filterFunction is very, very good, thanks to Adobe.

Filtering DataGrid from 100,000 data with multi conditions

Shopwindoz Global Buyers/Sellers

This marketplace serves buyers and sellers from all over the world who have or want uniquely created products. Their shopping cart is very interesting. It can have several different subcarts each with a separate checkout process. This accommodates your purchases from different sellers who may live in different parts of the world and therefore have different shipping charges to your destination.

shopwindoz.com

SMS to 30 Languages

This service is simply amazing. You can now SMS in your native language and the recipient can receive in any of 30 different languages in both text or audio. It automatically translates the text and does text to speech. You can now send an SMS to faxes, landline phones, email, etc.
CNN Money Review
SMSDemo.net

A Possible Partner: Wyndstorm

Wyndstorm.com sound pretty cool. I may want to give them a try to help me get my ideas off the ground. I picked them up on my Google Alerts for social marketplaces. Good luck to them.

gotoAndLearn() Awesome Videos!

I followed a link from my friend's blog at http://www.gorbatov.blogspot.com/ and found these awesome video tutorials about Flash, Flex, AIR, ActionScript, etc. There is one video that I am particularly interested in which is about using AIR to capture photos through a webcam. I am also looking for some info on using AIR to send out SMS through a GSM Modem. Please let me know if you find someting about AIR and SMS. Thanks. The video tutorials are at:

gotoandlearn.com

Lovely Charts

I hate using Visio because it is not intuitive. Now I can use LovelyCharts.com and get all my flow diagrams done fast and easy. I can also do site maps, organizational charts, etc. It is really cool.

Here is another service which also looks easy to use but it looks too much like Visio. It is called Best4c.com

AtlasPost: Map of Blogs

I have this blog on Blogger.com and every now and then I will click on the Next Blog button to see someone's interesting blog. It is always a random blog I see whenever I click the Next Blog button. It make me wonder what other blogs are out there. I am especially curious about what other blogs are written by people near my location.

Enter AtlasPost.com. These people have the right idea about how to connect people with blogs and photo albums. Now I can actually see what other bloggers live near me and get an idea about what they are blogging about. In the future I imagine their maps will have "layers" by which I can easily filter down into bloggers with similar interests as me. There could be layers for gender, interests, last blog update, etc. So I could search for all males who have posted something within the last month about skateboarding and who live near me.

14 Ways To Use RSS Feeds

Here is nice list of possible ways to use RSS Feeds. Here is another one I just thought of: for your online bank use RSS Feeds to show your pending activity.

14 Ways To Use RSS Feeds

SlideShowPro.net is Awesome

The is one of the best slide show presentation components I have ever seen. It supports both still images and video. It runs in Flash.

SlideShowPro.net

Flex Manual Data Binding

I just thought this was a very interesting way of doing databinding than the normal way of doing it in Flex.
It uses the ChangeWatcher class.

Image Editing on AIR

These guys are using Adobe AIR to rewrite many of the modern image editing tools and make them even better. All of their tools have a name based on a bird. Check out A.viary.com

Goodbye Analog Cellular

If you are keeping up with what is going on in the cellular world, you might have come across this interesting story that puts into perspective how we got cellular service in the first place. In the early days of cellular service, the technology used was actually based on analog. Now the last remaining big analog cellular service providers are permanently fading out this service. The biggest U.S. mobile operators, AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless, will close down their analog networks on Monday.

SitePoint CSS Reference

SitePoint.com has just release their new CSS Reference website where you can get all your CSS questions answered. Sitepoint always does a fantastic job at explaining anything about the web. Their books are excellent and I own many of them.

The Fair Use Project

This is just a word of encouragement for those of you who are trying to do your own thing, as I am. Stanford Law School has started the Fair Use Project to help protect your own creativity from power-hungry copyright owners who want to strangle the true meaning of "fair use". If your work of creativity is based on someone's copyrighted material, then help is on the way. It seems some people these days are trying to eliminate the "fair use" provisions meant to protect you. I hope some of you will take the time to show your support for the Fair Use Project with a blog, etc.

I first learned about them from reading the NYT article "A Tight Grip Can Choke Creativity" about how J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, is trying to prevent a small publisher from publishing an encyclopedia about Harry Potter. What a loser. She might even try to sue you for dressing up like Harry Potter when you sell your old costume at a garage sale. Heaven forbid you make a profit from that costume.

Track My Shipments

Here is another twist on tracking all your shipments, of which I had previously written here. This new service called TrackMyShipments.com receives all updates to your shipments via email. Just direct all your tracking emails provided by your shipper to them. They parse the emails and they provide all the info for you when you login.

Census RIA Benchmark

This is a nice tool for comparing the data throughput of various data transfer technologies, such as JSON, XML, E4X, AMF, etc. See the difference and decide for yourself which is the best for your own situation. Some of the faster ones require an expensive server-side piece of software. One transfer technology not shown here is BlaseDS as of this writing. Adobe's BlazeDS will supposedly be even faster.

Census RIA Benchmark

Pro Photo Touchups

Need a professional to touch up your photos because you don't have time or because you are not a Photoshop expert? Now you can outsource the touch up process to PicWash.com. For a small fee, they will make your photos have the hollywood appeal. Read the KillerStartups review.

Another Online Powerpoint Tool

Here is yet another online tool for creating and displaying presentations that would normally be done with PowerPoint. One nice thing about these presentations is that they are Flash movies which opens up so many other possibilities like having animation,audio and video within your presentations. Check it out.

FlyPaper Studio

SezWho: More Comments

I guess I spoke too soon. There is another service called SezWho.com that is also offering comments for your site. Just add a few lines of code to your site and presto! You will get the ability for users to leave comments on your site. StartupSquad review.

Auctions for Ads Placement

Do you have an audience on your website and some spare real estate on your site? If so, you may want to auction off that extra space to advertisers who will bid against each other to place their ads in your space. I think this is a great idea for both advertisers and webmasters. Check out the KillerStartups review. Then go check out PlaceMyProduct.com.

Disqus: Add Comments

JS-Kit now has a great competitor for adding comments to any site with just a few lines of code. Check out the StartupSquad review. The new service is called Disqus.com It is just one more thing you can add to your site without having to code it yourself or without having to hire someone to code it for you.

Inside RIA

O'Reilly and Adobe have teamed up to bring you a site dedicated to everything about Adobe's approach to RIA. You will want to keep track of this site if you are into the latest and greatest stuff about Rich Internet Applications.

InsideRIA.com

Very Nice Flex Stuff

This guy has a collection of some very nice components for Flex. Very impressive. He is not the author of any of these, unless he explicitly says so. He just uses his blog to keep a collection of all the nice Flex stuff he finds. He is like me, but specifically for Flex.

Flexed

I found his blog when I was searching for adding styling to Flex Alerts.

sCommerce Site

There are various definitions of what an sCommerce site should be. One thing I would like to see is the ability for users to submit their own products via photos, videos, tagging, etc. And to let others comment and further tag these products. One such site to begin to do this is DesignsToLove. It is a site I intend to study further. Good luck in your own sCommerce endeavors.

Free Ads to Get Funded

When I get ready to ask for some big time money, this is one place I may consider to advertise in, since it is free. Anyone can do it. Just briefly describe your biz and how much you seek. Supposedly interested venture capitalists will see your add and contact you.

BizFlip.com

Neat Javascript Projects

This guy has done an awesome job of simplifying the coding and implementing some neat javascript tools. Check them out at his blog.
Fabio

Photo Editing on Your Site

I think this story is significant. Picnik is offering an API for any website to add photo editing. This means the visitors to your site can edit any photo right within your website. How can you apply this to your situation? Well if you have an ecommerce site with photos of your products, you can now allow your customers to customize those products. They just edit the photo and submit back their customizations to that photo. You then will have an exact photo of what the user wants to buy from you, so you can produce it.

Picnik API

Free AT&T WiFi

AT&T is making all of its 10,000 wifi hotspots available to its broadband subscribers for free. Check out the story in NYT. Then use the AT&T WiFi Locator to find hotspots near you around the world. I guess it is now time to switch to AT&T for my broadband.

RoR Learning on Steroids

Watch these hour-long videos to master Ruby on Rails programming. A lot of them are free. Others are just $9 USD.

Experienced developers have said that PeepCode is "fantastic and the price is a steal." Designer/developers have said they are "exactly the type of instruction I need to pick up new things and understand how they work." Others have said they are "phenomenal", "quality" and "totally worth more to me than $9!"

Peepcode.com

Logo Design Inspiration

Get inspired for designing your next logo by looking thru these galleries of logos:

 

LogoSauce.com

Faveup.com

Logopond.com

Which Map Service to Use?

If you want to build a map mashup but don't know which service to use (MapQuest, Yahoo, or Google) then here is a quick comparison list of their features.
Google Maps vs. Yahoo Maps vs. MapQuest - API's

10 Must-Read Blogs For 2008

I Stumbled Upon this list and I think this is what I will be reading soon because I am very interested in what is going on in the Social Networks world. It is a list of the top 10 blogs you must read to keep abreast of what is going on.
Top 10 Blogs

Most Advanced Maps

This has got to be some of the most advanced maps I have ever seen. You can interact with these maps in so many ways. You can hide/show multiple layers of data. You can adjust the "time" period to view how the data changes according to time.
Go to Not Your Mama's Maps and view the Video Demonstration.
See the Live Demo.

SWFIntruder Tests Your SWFs

I first learned about this from InformationWeek.com. Here is an excerpt:

A Google security engineer says hundreds of thousands of Flash files are vulnerable and a considerable percentage of major Internet sites are affected.

To check if your swf files are vulnerable, use the Google tool called SWFIntruder.