Posted by Tom Blue on March 23, 2009 under Companies, Technology | 
Producteev is an online task management platform. I joined last Thursday and I haven’t stopped using it. I didn’t really think that I was going to enjoy it, but I believe it has replaced the Excel system that I had setup for myself.
Why is it so great? For one, it allows you to efficiently use the space available. I like the ability to view all of the tasks that I need to do, but being able to click on each to see a quick pop-up of all the extra information I need about the task. Secondly, the grouping. I like to be able to group my tasks under certain categories such as marketing; operations, etc. This makes me slightly more organized. Third, I like how their feedback form is right there for you. You can immediately send them a note stating what improvements you suggest for the site. And by the looks of it, they move pretty quickly on adding these improvements. Lastly, I love the fact that it is free.
What I don’t like?
There are a couple of features that should have been done from the get go that were not created (or I can’t find how to do it). #1. I can’t seem to sort the tasks. I want to be able to prioritize my day. #2. There should be a way to increase the size of your groups(ie lists).
I will say that the developers of this site are quite intuitive though. They really have simplified the process and I will definitely be using it in the future.
Posted by Tom Blue on March 17, 2009 under Companies, Technology |
I downloaded Xobni quite awhile ago, but I just thought about them again recently so I figured I would give their plug-in a review. Xobni has an Outlook plugin that allows you to view statistics and data about the other person that you are emailing. For example, if you were to email me, I could view any public information about you that is in LinkedIn, Facebook, & Hoover’s.
The Good: See above. It is great to be able to fairly quickly see someone’s information when their email comes in. This really helps sales people because you can find out how large their company is(revenues), and a direct link to their LinkedIn page so you can find out more about that specific person. This is very helpful in sales. Personally, I could care less about someone’s facebook page. I am not going to befriend an acquaintenance, but maybe some disagree. Another thing I like about it is seeing the recent history section of the plugin. You can see what recent emails you have had with this person. This makes it much easier than doing a search in Outlook.
The OK: Although the above features are nice, it takes a little while to load, and I don’t like how much room it takes up inside of Outlook. My Outlook seems crowded enough as it is, I am not sure how long I can keep this thing up. This was the sole reason why I hid the plugin after I first downloaded it. It just took up too much space.
The Bad: Sometimes Clunky. They have a piece called Xobni Analytics which is interesting if you want to see who you have been emailing. This isn’t very interesting to me, but maybe to people that are in Support or something. The problem was that Outlook froze for about 40 seconds when I loaded this feature. In addition, I have gotten some Outlook errors after I loaded Xobni that I never got before. They went away after awhile but after first downloading I did get a couple of errors. Given that my Outlook is already finicky as it is, I am hesitant on having something on top of it…
Posted by Tom Blue on March 16, 2009 under Uncategorized |
I just read this post on Blellow so I figured I would do a review on it. Blellow is like Twitter, but with a business focus. There are many of these sites out there, but I do like the way they have theirs setup.
I think the best part of Blellow is their “Groups” section which allows you to discuss certain topics with fellow people that are interested in the same subject. This is very similar to listservs except much easier. With a listserv you are emailing the entire group and they seem to fill up your inbox very quickly. The only problem I see with this is the spam. I already noticed some posts like “check out my site” If they can stop people from spamming it could be quite useful.
Blellow has other sections like blogs, projects, and meetups. I guess they are trying to handle everything that is business focused. I do believe that is quite bold, but you never know. I will definitely take a look at their site in the future, but I will only be focused on the Groups section.
Posted by Tom Blue on March 12, 2009 under Companies, Investing, Technology |
Kaching is a site that allows its users to make virtual stock picks. It also allows you to follow the portfolios/trades of other investors. The idea behind it is for you to be able to follow those users that are consistently doing good(or maybe bad as well). At one point they want to charge users to follow certain people.
What I like about this concept is that you have a 3rd party that is verifying the user actually made the suggestion and/or virtual trade. I say this because I have personal experience with this. Awhile ago I was looking for investment advisors that have daily emails with specific stock picks. I found quite a few that looked really good and had impressive results, but I couldn’t verify that they indeed made these trades when they said they made them. With this site you can verify it. It is also a good way for the advisor to make some extra money.
There was a similar idea called Clearstation that was started during Web 1.0. The difference is that I don’t believe Clearstation ever planned to get people to sell their advice… It was later acquired by eTrade.
Usability: The setup and use of the site is quite simple. I knew exactly what do from the beginning. I was able to buy some stock and follow some users immediately. It is a clean and simple site.
Future: Although I really like the site and concept I think this is a tough time to be starting this site/service. I don’t think that many people are excited about investing in the market right now….
Posted by Tom Blue on March 11, 2009 under Companies, Technology |
I just joined this service Meehive. They are trying to provide a customized newspaper for you. Immediately after you create an account they gather your interests and feeds you would like to be subscribed too. It is a very simple setup I do have to say.
I was always confused why companies like Netvibes and Pageflakes didn’t make it super easy for people to get started. Most people don’t RSS so why don’t you make it easy for people to setup. Well, that is what Meehive has done.
The layout of Meehive is very clean and I like how they show the top stories with an image, etc. The only problem I see is that I was not allowed to move around the layout of my page. I want to be able to have certain feeds on the top of my page because they are most important to me. I assume this is something they will change in the future…
Posted by Tom Blue on March 10, 2009 under Uncategorized |
I have seen a lot of people on Twitter discussing Freemium and how it should be the business model of the web future… I also noticed this article byJeff Tinsley. For those of you don’t know, freemium is basically a business model that focuses part of its revenue(and/or marketing) on free services/information and part of its revenue from a premium subscription.
There has been a lot of discussion about this type of model in the past few years and it seems it is at a peak right now, but it is a very old model and concept. Hoovers.com has been giving away bits of information online since 1995 while some customers opted for a more detailed subscription. My company, Lead411, has been doing the same since 2001.
Even before the web, magazines would offer some people free subscriptions so that more eyeballs were viewing their ads.
This is not an old concept, people are just just changing their focus because all of the sudden they realize they can’t survive on just ad revenue during bad times.
Posted by Tom Blue on March 5, 2009 under Companies, Marketing |
There is a lot of blog discussions going on about how RIM has decided to make a minimum price of $2.99 inside their Blackberry App Store. This means that all developers must charge at least $2.99 per application if they decide to charge for their appliction. A lot of people don’t understand this, but I think it makes sense. Blackberry has always been more business focused and they don’t want to alienate their current customer base. They don’t want cheap apps that are unprofessional. ..
