With addresses -- both real and virtual -- becoming increasingly transient, Tigerbow reconciles an important e-commerce question: how can I see a real item to a virtual address? People change jobs and locations with an ever-increasing frequency, and yet they fail to update people on their new location, because their online presence remains the same. This, however, becomes a problem when people want to send things other than e-mail.<br /> <br /> Tigerbow provides an elegant solution and approach: if I need to want to send you something, I\'ll send you a real gift to your virtual... More >>

With addresses -- both real and virtual -- becoming increasingly transient, Tigerbow reconciles an important e-commerce question: how can I see a real item to a virtual address? People change jobs and locations with an ever-increasing frequency, and yet they fail to update people on their new location, because their online presence remains the same. This, however, becomes a problem when people want to send things other than e-mail.<br /> <br /> Tigerbow provides an elegant solution and approach: if I need to want to send you something, I\'ll send you a real gift to your virtual address; then Tigerbow pings you and asks for your real address (plus approval), and BOOM -- a package gets delivered to your mailbox. I am no longer frustrated by not knowing your address. Old friends, family members, and semi-stalkers, rejoice.<br /> <br /> Their website, tigerbow.com, carries a large, yet finite set of gifts -- I think implementing what they do on current retail websites is much more effective (and they\'ve started going that). I also would be concerned about they make money -- there are a lot of lucrative approaches here, but getting the right revenue generation model is absolutely critical. (I don\'t know if taking a small cut from each sale, which sounds lucrative in the aggregate, is the right approach.) But Tigerbow has the right mix of skills -- tech and tech finance backgrounds -- to make it work.<br /> <br /> The ability to bridge the real and the virtual holds more promise beyond online retailing -- and online retailing itself will soon be a $100-billion-dollar-a-year industry -- so it\'ll be interesting to see how Tigerbow plans to grow beyond casual gifts aimed to savvy customers in the online B2C market. << Less

This site was hyped a lot and so I decided to try it out. This review is from my perspective as a user.<br /> <br /> It\'s wonderful. Amazing! But only for books. That\'s what upset me the most. After entering a lot of my books I wanted to enter movies and mostly my music - which is what I really collect a lot of and, yes, have duplicates so really need a good tracking package. So I looked at CollectorZ, iTrackmine.com, and Delicious. They\'re all really good for what they cover but I couldn\'t use CollectorZ because it was about $150 for everything. I liked iTrackmine\'s mobile ... More >>

This site was hyped a lot and so I decided to try it out. This review is from my perspective as a user.<br /> <br /> It\'s wonderful. Amazing! But only for books. That\'s what upset me the most. After entering a lot of my books I wanted to enter movies and mostly my music - which is what I really collect a lot of and, yes, have duplicates so really need a good tracking package. So I looked at CollectorZ, iTrackmine.com, and Delicious. They\'re all really good for what they cover but I couldn\'t use CollectorZ because it was about $150 for everything. I liked iTrackmine\'s mobile access (really useful because I have a ton of music). And Delicious was really beautiful.<br /> <br /> So, GoodReads -- my suggestion to you is to diversify. But until you do, I think you\'re limiting yourself. << Less

Nanosight has a patented low cost optical nano-particle tracking and detection technology. It is not only positioned as a category-killing device company, but also sits at the heart of a broad range of innovative new applications that are capable of facilitating breakthroughs in diagnostic, material development and other particle detection applications.<br /> <br /> It first generation product the LM10 uses a laser light source to illuminate nano-scale particle. Particles appear individually as point-scatterers moving under Brownian motion. The system can instantly recognise a... More >>

Nanosight has a patented low cost optical nano-particle tracking and detection technology. It is not only positioned as a category-killing device company, but also sits at the heart of a broad range of innovative new applications that are capable of facilitating breakthroughs in diagnostic, material development and other particle detection applications.<br /> <br /> It first generation product the LM10 uses a laser light source to illuminate nano-scale particle. Particles appear individually as point-scatterers moving under Brownian motion. The system can instantly recognise and quantify the size distribution of particles and can highlight agglomerates and contaminants.<br /> Results are displayed as a frequency size distribution graph and output to spreadsheet. In addition, video clips of images may be captured and archived for future reference.<br /> <br /> This platform in itself is competitive on a like-for-like basis with alternative, but much more expensive nano-particle detection technologies. However, successive generations of Nanosight instruments are adding additional capabilities that ensure the devices will be unrivalled in their capabilities.<br /> <br /> As well as scientific instrument sales, broader applications include homeland security, medical, defence, water, food & agriculture, particles sizing, nano-particle safety etc. These markets are potentially huge and all lack viable sensing devices. <br /> <br /> The management team is excellent. << Less

DocStoc which lets people share documents is on to something huge, and their business model (at least the primary one that I see) is elegant and simple. There are tons of documents out there which are not online. DocStoc lets people share these documents via their site and also allows them to embed them onto their own blog, website, etc. And DocStoc then makes money by showing Google ads around these documents. <br /> <br /> The number of offline documents that there are is staggering and so getting this content online is a huge opportunity. DocStoc has done some smart thing... More >>

DocStoc which lets people share documents is on to something huge, and their business model (at least the primary one that I see) is elegant and simple. There are tons of documents out there which are not online. DocStoc lets people share these documents via their site and also allows them to embed them onto their own blog, website, etc. And DocStoc then makes money by showing Google ads around these documents. <br /> <br /> The number of offline documents that there are is staggering and so getting this content online is a huge opportunity. DocStoc has done some smart things to facilitate this, specifically:<br /> <br /> (1) In terms of ease of use, the site is outstanding. They have features that let you upload numerous documents at one time.<br /> (2) DocCash - Recently, they rolled out a feature in which users who upload docs can share the Adsense Revenue 50/50 with DocStoc. This is a great incentive to users to upload their docs and a great way for DS to continue capturing content. While the money for a user may not be a lot, it\'s more than the powerpoint sitting on your hard drive was collecting for sure.<br /> <br /> Their ease of use coupled with DocCash feature give me hope that this idea is one that can catch on. If consultants and others who generate prodigious amounts of content jumped on the DocStoc bandwagon, they also stand to become a bit of a knowledge hub.<br /> <br /> There are also premium offerings they might offer to corporates who are notoriously bad at knowledge management. Think of it as a private-labeled DocStoc. That said, I think their adsense revenue model has some serious potential.<br /> <br /> Why not a 5 star rating?<br /> (1) Their competitor Scribd is bigger and doing quite well. I think this market has room for at least 2 players so this is not a deal killer but as it relates to DocCash, users interested in the money will go with the platform with better payouts, conversion, etc.<br /> (2) They need to better incent users/readers of documents to rate them as this will help determine what is valuable vs not. Controlling the signal to noise ratio as their library grows will be important. In using the DocStoc service, I\'ve seen many things with many views but few ratings<br /> (3) Although scale is a barrier to some extent, there doesn\'t appear to be a serious technological hurdle to replicating their business. Again, I do think having traction with users could be the biggest deterrent for an upstart but as long as DocStoc continues to figure out ways to make it easy for users to upload docs, they should be fine.<br /> <br /> Even with these challenges, I think the company is tackling a great big problem in a way that positions them to be successful. << Less

Squidoo\'s stated purpose is to let people find and create their own pages - called \"lenses\" - about topics that interest them. If that sounds a little murky, you\'re not alone. At its most basic level, lenses are simple web pages that a user will create, and then publish on those pages anything under the sun. In this way, it\'s very similar to blogs. The difference lies in how Squidoo lenses are most commonly used. In contrast to blogs, where individuals editorialize their opinions on a wide range of topics, Squidoo lenses tend to be centered on one specific topic and typical... More >>

Squidoo\'s stated purpose is to let people find and create their own pages - called \"lenses\" - about topics that interest them. If that sounds a little murky, you\'re not alone. At its most basic level, lenses are simple web pages that a user will create, and then publish on those pages anything under the sun. In this way, it\'s very similar to blogs. The difference lies in how Squidoo lenses are most commonly used. In contrast to blogs, where individuals editorialize their opinions on a wide range of topics, Squidoo lenses tend to be centered on one specific topic and typically attempt to be more informational, rather than opinionated (although how well each author implements that principle is obviously debatable). For example, you\'re likely to find lenses on Jackie Robinson\'s biography or a summary of the events of Woodstock. <br /> <br /> As a result, Squidoo tends to look strikingly similar to Wikipedia. Again, there is a notable difference though - Wikipedia uses community collaborating in order to create authoritative articles, whereas Squidoo lenses are created by a single author, who can then choose to either accept or reject edits made by others. There is no real content moderation. If a lens on President Obama is seen as grossly biased, a person\'s only recourse would be to say so in the comments, or else start a lens of their own to dispute the first one.<br /> <br /> Therefore, Squidoo falls somewhere in-between blogs and Wikipedia. Since I\'m not too sure that there\'s a market demand for either a less-authoritative version of Wikipedia or less-opinionated blogs, Squidoo will either blaze the trail in a new niche market, or else be little more than another promotional venue in the social media landscape. << Less