1. Person to person parking space rental: Peasy.com is an online marketplace for parking spaces, enabling drivers to search for and book spaces before they leave home, and letting British homeowners monetize unused parking spaces by adding them to the network. More »
2. Stress-free car shopping: American buyers who are in the market for a new car, but don’t want the headaches of searching and haggling for the best price, now have an alternative that can help them sidestep the usual dealership woes. More »
3. Integrated auto insurance for teens: A combined package of insurance and a GPS tracking device (the ‘Safety Beacon’), Teensurance offers parents the ability to monitor their teenager’s behaviour on the road. More »
4. Mobile car rental, wherever it’s needed: Aiming to become more nimble, car rental company Europcar is introducing mobile car rental facilities in the UK. Small rental booths are hooked up to the company’s central booking system and are manned by an agent during peak hours. During off hours, customers can drop off keys and make their own reservations over a built-in reservation hotline. More »
5. Car dealership catches female fever: Although research finds that women are responsible for the bulk of purchasing decisions, one arena that continues to overlook this important target market is auto dealerships. Not so at Vancouver’s Clutch. More »
6. Ridesharing with a social twist: One of the problems with traditional carpool matching sites has been the anxiety most people feel when faced with the prospect of sharing a car with someone they don’t know. The solution? Tap into the power of social networking. More »
7. Insurance discounts for GPS-guided drivers: Drivers who use GPS devices are less damage-prone than their old- school brethren. Which is why a Dutch insurance company is giving them 10% discount on their auto insurance. More »
8. Crowd clout & Japanese auto parts: An Australian start-up is focusing on a ‘group buying’ niche: parts for Japanese performance cars. Auto Group Buy aims to combine the purchasing power of car owners with a keen passion for modifying, tuning and styling their vehicles. More »
9. Zipcar uses mobile GPS to pinpoint nearest car: Zipcar members can use their GPS-enabled cell phones to find the nearest vehicle and make an instant reservation, making spontaneous car-sharing easier than ever. More »
10. Navigate with your own voice: While most personal navigation devices come with a variety of voices to select from, from soft-spoken to stern, they all get boring after a while and aren’t, well, personal. Now they can be: it’s possible to have your own voice, or that of a loved one, tell you when to turn right.

Source : Springwise

We say almost, because the spending is a bit less lavish than before, and because — unlike 1999 — many of the new crop of startups have real promise. Here are 10 pre-IPO, pre-acquisition companies worth watching in 2008.

23andMe

There’s a lot you could buy with $1,000, but for that price 23andMe offers something never before sold to the masses: your DNA. Are you predisposed to prostate cancer? Glaucoma? Heart disease? 23andMe, profiled recently in Wired, can tell you. The implications could rock the medical world — and the ethical one. As the science of genomics continues to improve, 23andMe should be able to provide ever-better information. In 2008, it will also provide social networking between customers who share traits ranging from ethnic origins to disease profiles.

• Founders: Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki
• Funding: $12 million, from Genentech, Google and New Enterprise Associates
• Employees: 30

37Signals

There’s a reason nobody ever uses the phrase, “It’s as simple as computer programming.” But Chicago’s 37Signals has made life simpler for programmers and small businesses alike with products such as Basecamp (project management software) and an increasingly popular open source web framework called Ruby on Rails. The company ditches the philosophy of “more features, more better” in favor of simplicity and accessibility: Focus only on the most important features and make things easier to use. The company itself embodies its keep-it-simple philosophy: Fewer than 10 staffers, working from humble offices, create programs quickly and nimbly adapt them based on user feedback. 37Signals released version 2.0 of Ruby on Rails in December, which should give many programmers a happy new year.

• Founders: Jason Fried, Ernest Kim, Carlos Segura
• Funding: Undisclosed sum from Bezos Expeditions
• Employees: 8

AdMob

When AdMob launched in 2005, its prospects did not look bright. As a startup mobile-advertising network, it would have to compete with Google, and how feasible is that? But AdMob has defied the odds. While Google is just four months into testing a mobile version of its advertising network, AdMob has already served 12 billion ad impressions to mobile users. As more consumers buy web-enabled mobile phones, the prospects for mobile advertising can only improve.

• Founder: Omar Hamoui
• Funding: Undisclosed Series A from Sequoia Capital; $15 million Series B from Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital
• Employees: 65

BitTorrent

As a peer-to-peer, or P2P, download protocol, BitTorrent was perfect for illegal file sharing. But in late 2007, the parent company of that protocol — also called BitTorrent — unveiled a potentially disruptive new use for its P2P technology: a platform that software providers and media companies can use to help customers download high-resolution files faster (and legally). By reducing distribution hurdles, BitTorrent will make online video and software sales increasingly viable in 2008 and will challenge the notion that the idiot box is the primary way to get your CSI fix.

• Founders: Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin
• Funding: $28.75 million from Accel Partners and DCM (formerly Doll Capital Management)
• Employees: 60

Dash

Today, GPS is a one-way street, with a satellite beaming instructions to your device. You turn left because a chip inside your GPS device calculated that would the best route. In 2008, Dash will chart a new course with Dash Express, a GPS that learns from its users. If a Dash owner is moving 5 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone, Dash servers will realize he’s in traffic and warn other Dash drivers to choose faster routes. Sure beats calling 5-1-1.

• Founders: Brian Smartt, Mike Tzamaloukas, Steve Wollenberg
• Funding: $45 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, Skymoon Ventures, Crescendo Ventures, ZenShin Capital Partners, Artis Capital, Gold Hill Capital, and several individuals
• Employees: 85

View the other 5 startups

Kelowna entrepreneur Nick Kellet is hoping that his successful board game is the gift that keeps on giving.

And the 44-year-old hopes next year will see him break even on his investment of between $150,000 and $200,000 on GiftTRAP.

“I was trying to think of board games and my daughter Freya, who was six at the time, asked, ‘How does Santa decide what to give children?’” Kellet said yesterday.

“It was like, ‘Wow, that’s a brilliant idea.’ I did some research and I discovered there wasn’t a single game about giving gifts.”

That was four years ago and the game, which sells for $29.99, was launched in October last year.

Since then, 10,000 sets of the game have been sold worldwide.

GiftTRAP recently got a boost when it was named Best New Party Game of the Year by Games Magazine, and it should be in Chapters bookstores in time for Christmas, said Kellet.

“Since man got out of caves and first created some surplus through ploughing fields and making stuff, we have been giving gifts,” laughed Kellet. “But why is gift-giving such a trauma?”

The problem is trying to pick the right gift for someone.

Then there are those gifts that people don’t want.

“You have to open them and practise your best fake smile and say, ‘That’s lovely, Grandma. Thanks very much for the tie.’ “

Kellet says his research shows that 35 per cent of gifts people receive are “unwanted and unloved.”

“When you play this game you have a lifetime’s pent-up frustration of bad gift-giving coming out,” he said. “You win by being good at giving gifts and by getting given the right gifts.”

Kellet hails from England and board games were a childhood passion.

By the time he was a teenager, he was having meetings with representatives for U.S. games giant Milton Bradley, pitching board games based on business, balancing and dieting.

“It was, ‘Nice try, no cigar,’” said Kellet, who lives in Kelowna with his wife, Julie, and three daughters.

He became a high-tech entrepreneur and moved to Vancouver after selling his company in 1999 to Business Objects.

He worked for Business Objects as vice-president of new initiatives until last November when GiftTRAP started to take off.

Kellet says 11,000 more games have now been manufactured and the bulk of those have been pre-sold.

“For next year, we have already got deals in place to publish this in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Portugal and Spain,” he said.

He has distributors in Canada, the U.S., France, Germany and England.

“The world is cluttered and crowded with trivia games, but there aren’t any other gift-giving games,” he said. “Got a review from someone in Norway saying that this was the best game they’ve played since Cranium.”

And Kellet said the gamer website Boardgamegeek.com, where GiftTRAP got an average rating of 6.9 out of 10, put it in the top 20 of party games of all time.

“There are 1,000 new games launched every year,” he added. “So to get this far is a pretty good achievement.”

Source : Canada.com

By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek
December 28, 2007 03:25 PM

AOL on Friday stopped development of the Netscape browser, saying the respected brand that launched the commercial Internet in 1994 had little chance of ever regaining market share against its archrival Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s Internet Explorer.The Web portal, which took over Netscape Navigator in the $4.2 billion acquisition of Netscape Communications in 1999, said development on the browser had recently devolved into a “handful of engineers tasked with creating a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions.” Firefox is the open source browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation.”While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer,” Tom Drapeau, director of development, said in a Netscape blog post.

While once commanding 90% of the browser market, Netscape Navigator now accounts for less than 1%, and AOL had no interest in spending what it would take to revive the brand. Instead, the company, which was once a subscriber-supported portal, preferred to spend its resources on its transition into an ad-supported Web business. The change left “little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be,” Drapeau said.

Instead, AOL said it would leave it to the Mozilla Foundation to do battle against IE. When AOL acquired Netscape, the latter company was working on converting its browser into open source software that was later called Mozilla and became the foundation of Firefox.

Mozilla also was the underpinning of version 6 of the Netscape browser released in 2000. The Mozilla Foundation was formed in 2003 and AOL continued to develop versions of Netscape based on the work of the foundation.

“Given AOL’s current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically acclaimed products, we feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape-branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla, and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox,” Drapeau said.

As of November 2007, IE accounted for 77.35% of the market, and Firefox 16.01%, according to Internet metrics firm Net Applications. Netscape had 0.6%.

AOL planned to release security patches for Netscape Navigator 9, the latest version of the browser, until Feb. 1, 2008. After that, all active product support would end for all versions of the browsers. AOL, however, planned to post a Netscape Archive link for people who wanted to download versions of Netscape without support.

Besides the archive, two other sites offering information would continue to exist: UFAQ and the Netscape Community Forum, AOL said. Netscape.com would also remain live as a general use Internet portal.

The Netscape browser made the commercial Web possible by providing a ubiquitous platform to view and interact with Websites. The browser was based on the Mosaic browser developed by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at the University of Illinois. Andreessen and James Clark, former patriarch of SGI, founded Netscape Communications in 1994.

The Web software maker was among the stars in the dot-com era of the mid- to late 1990s, becoming the most successful public stock offering of its time. Netscape Communications forced Microsoft to restructure its entire product line to become Internet compliant.

Microsoft’s tactics in grabbing market share from Netscape Navigator with IE was one of the main issues in the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust cast against Microsoft. The software maker was found to have abused its Windows monopoly and was forced to make changes in its business practices.

He’s Todd Brabender — whose clients include the SummerSled (it works on grass) and Litecubes (the glowing ice cubes). His latest PR pitch, for the Fish ‘n Flush toilet fish tank, begins: “It’s a unique new product whose decorative appeal could turn the bathroom into the most talked about room in the house.”

Mr. Brabender, who is 41 years old and a former media person himself, is the kind of PR guy journalists hate to love — but love nevertheless. An old-fashioned press agent with newfangled powers, he blasts emails far and wide from the basement of his flagstoned mid-American home. Media elites may fume over coverups and spin, but for reporters with holiday news holes to fill, a bulletin about guppies in the toilet is cause for elation.

As Lisa Reicosky wrote in the Canton, Ohio, Repository: “Sometimes in this business we receive press releases we just can’t ignore.” That was the first sentence of her story on the Fish ‘n Flush. “The toilet fish, yeah, that caught my eye,” says Ms. Reicosky. “I’m part time. I need the PR people to give me my ideas.” The Repository (circulation 65,000) gave the Fish ‘n Flush 241 words.

At least 500 newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations — online and off — have taken this bait in a year, says Mr. Brabender. He figures it would have cost the makers of the Fish ‘n Flush a million dollars to buy that kind of advertising. As it is, except for Mr. Brabender’s $2,500-a-month fee, they haven’t spent a penny.

“It’s all Todd, generating PR for us,” says David Parrish of AquaOne Technologies Inc., in Orange County, Calif. AquaOne designs leak-control hardware and uses a clear-plastic showroom toilet tank to display it. “We were standing around one day,” Mr. Parrish recalls, “and I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we had fish in it and you flushed it and the fish didn’t go down?’”

Thus the Fish ‘n Flush came to be. A Web site went up with a mail-order price of $299. Somebody who knew somebody put AquaOne in touch with Mr. Brabender. His release went out and orders came in. With no advertising and a “how did you hear about us” box on the site, AquaOne could draw a straight line from media plugs to sales.

“We see the geographic pattern,” says Mr. Parrish. “If we get orders from Bangor, we know Todd’s done something in Bangor.” Sales have reached 1,000. Now Mr. Brabender has launched a second Fish ‘n Flush campaign. The vehicle isn’t a new story, just new reporters.

“There’s such turnover in the media,” he said one workday morning, “we’ll hit people who missed it last time.” Clean-cut and clear-eyed, he sat at his computer fielding Fish ‘n Flush queries: the DIY Network, Exceptional Parent Magazine, the Muncie Star Press. Said Mr. Brabender, “We’re out on the dance floor one more time.”

It’s a crowded one. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts roughly 100,000 Americans in journalism but 235,000 in public relations, most of them in big organizations. But technology has not only given rise to mobs of small shops between the coasts, it has also turned the humdrum news release into a reviled variant of spam.

For reporters offered a chance to disseminate “relationship advice” from a porn star-rocker power couple, or to cover “the top 10 reasons label printers make great gifts,” the delete button is never far away. To survive the cull, a pitchman needs a gimmick.

Mr. Brabender’s: “funny yet functional,” a newsroom natural. That’s why CNBC’s “The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch” wanted Michael Daoud on the show. Mr. Daoud invented the Xshot — a stick you screw onto a camera to take pictures of yourself — and on the day of the New York taping, he got on the phone to Mr. Brabender for a pep talk.

“Don’t sound like a circus hawker,” Mr. Brabender told him.

“Right, right,” said Mr. Daoud.

“Keep an eye on Donny,” Mr. Brabender said. “If he glazes over, wrap it up. Don’t spew. Be a well, not a fountain.”

“A well, not a fountain,” said Mr. Daoud. “Great advice, Todd.”

After hanging up, Mr. Brabender said, “My goal is make it easy for the media. Media people like easy stories. I know. I’m a former media guy myself.”

From 1988 to 1994, Mr. Brabender worked at 6News, a Lawrence TV channel with two daily newscasts and long stationary shots of traffic on a Kansas River bridge. He grew up in Rock Falls, Ill., where his father was a salesman for Senco nail-guns. (“It’s a great nail-gun,” says Mr. Brabender.) His “blood boiling” to be a newsman, he came here to the University of Kansas, got a journalism degree and then went straight onto the crime beat at 6News.

“Bike thefts were up one year,” he says, but when his wife got a job at more pay for half the hours, he quit to stay home with their two kids, and signed on with a service that monitors mentions of corporate names on TV. “I saw stories about new products,” Mr. Brabender says. “I thought it would be neat to be a person who got the media interested in stories like that.”

He says he had thought most successful PR types lived in New York or Los Angeles, but in 1996 a friend of his, Cathy Hamilton, dreamed up a gag gift — Boyfriend in a Box — a set of sham snapshots and love notes to help women fend off advances. She asked Mr. Brabender to publicize it. He did. The gag went over big, and the next thing he knew, Mr. Brabender was founding Spread the News PR, his own firm.

To start, his research tools were a yellow pad and a chair at the public library. Now, for $850 a year, he logs on to ProfNet, where reporters looking for sources tell PR people what they’re up to. For $3,500, he gets MediaSource, a list of reporters that he uses to make sure his release for SingingCoach learn-to-sing software, for instance, doesn’t go to somebody who covers national security.

Mr. Brabender doesn’t want to be a pest. He doesn’t send out samples, except on request (and hardly ever sees, much less uses, any of the products himself). And he tries never to send a release to one reporter more than three or four times.

He doesn’t pitch himself, either. Weird clients just attract weirder ones, enough this year to pull in fees of $300,000. Not that the play Mr. Brabender gets them is totally ecstatic. In November, Esquire magazine consigned the Cone-i-Vore pinecone picker-upper to its “things we won’t be covering this month” column. On the other hand, Lena Fiore can barely believe what he did for Toilet Tattoos.

“People say PR is a frill, but it’s such a necessity,” says Ms. Fiore, who is 43 and lives in Macedonia, Ohio. The Toilet Tattoo, a decorative toilet-seat appliqué, was her invention. “I have a white commode,” she says, “and I wanted to cover it without using a germ-harboring rug.” She has them manufactured in Minnesota.

A friend led Ms. Fiore to Mr. Brabender. “There was a sincerity about him,” she says. He blasted out his release in September, announcing “a unique new bathroom decoration.” By his count, the news has filled 1,229 inches of space in 131 newspapers, including six inches in the Oconomowoc Enterprise of Oconomowoc, Wis.

“People are skeptical of advertising,” says Ms. Fiore, who doesn’t do any. By itself, she says, Mr. Brabender’s release has brought half a million Toilet Tattoo sales to her Web site, at $9.95 apiece. “I don’t know what it is about newspapers,” says Ms. Fiore. “When people read about something, maybe it’s more real to them. They seem to believe it whether it’s true or not.”

Source: StartupJournal.com

A genetic anomaly allows a young man to teleport himself anywhere. He discovers this gift has existed for centuries and finds himself in a war that has been raging for thousands of years between “Jumpers” and those who have sworn to kill them.

The trailer of highly anticipated Jumper is ready for us.

Watch the trailer

” … iphone.com – is owned by Apple itself, but when Steve Jobs announced the product early in 2007, Apple didn’t own the iphone domain yet. One expert estimates that Apple paid at least $1 million to buy that piece of valuable Web real estate… “

Source: McAfee

” By the end of 2007, at least 8,000 URLs (Uniform Resource Locators is the technical term for web addresses) using the word “iphone” will be registered, according to a well known domain expert. “

McAfee has done research on a new and dangerous cyber practice known as typo squatting. Typo squatters register domains using common misspellings of popular brands, products, and people in order to redirect consumers to alternative Web sites. These squatter-run sites generate click-through advertising revenues, lure unsuspecting consumers into scams, and harvest email addresses to flood users with unwanted email. In other words, a typical consumer who misspells a popular Web site URL has a 1 in 14 chance of landing at a likely typo squatter site.

Source:  McAfee