Ajax Girl

Obesity rates have reached epidemic levels in many countries, with an estimated 32% of American adults considered obese. Every year, many of them try countless new dieting fads, exercise regimens, and questionable dietary supplements, but their motivation often sputters out as they see slow results.

In the last few years, many of these determined individuals have turned to YouTube to share their weightloss journeys with their peers, who often respond with heartfelt and supportive comments. But YouTube doesn’t offer a dedicated community for the weightloss crowd, so its functionality is limited.

WatchMEmelt, a TC50 DemoPit company that launches tomorrow, is looking to fill this niche with a community site dedicated to helping users chronicle their weight-loss efforts. Users are encouraged to post video updates on their current progress, exercise regimens they’ve developed, and lighthearted clips to boost morale. The site includes standard community features like forums and groups, where members can share their difficulties with other users who may be in a similar situation (for example, there’s a group for gastric bypass patients).

The site is the creation of Brian Edward Kenny, an entrepreneur who was once obese and managed to lose 50 pounds over the course of a few months. To help increase the site’s exposure, he has recruited Marty and Amy Wolff, two finalists from the television show The Biggest Loser.

At launch the site is a pretty barebones effort, but the defining element of WatchMEmelt’s success will be its community, not its easily-replicable technology. There are many weightloss destinations on the web, including Traineo and 3 Fat Chicks, but this is a vast market that could easily support a number of successes - I could see it becoming a very popular destination provided it can build a supporting community that can self-moderate negative comments and helps members reach their goals.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/TDOGPF_gcI8/

Our good friends AJ and Gary Vaynerchuk launched PleaseDressMe recently, a search engine for tshirts. Kind of a brilliant idea over there. How many times have you been looking for a shirt you saw on someone by Googling the phrase, or browsing through every tshirt site out there. Do you know how many tshirt sites are out there??

This is a great example of meeting a need in a very niche market doing something incredibly simple: Give people a box to type in and return what they’re looking for. Slap on an API and some very simple widgets and you’ve got a way for vendors and retailers to integrate your site into theirs, and everyone wins.

I really love these simple solutions people have been building lately to meet very simple and obvious needs. It’ll be interesting to see how PleaseDressMe develops over the next few months. Well done, guys!

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1242-pleasedressme-meets-a-niche-need

Google on Thursday announced that it has used its Gears Geolocation API to make searching for businesses and locales in your area easier on Windows Mobile devices.

According to the company, Search with My Location approximates your location based on Cell ID technology already employed by Google Maps and returns businesses in that area. If you’re looking to find the best Italian restaurants in your area, you can input “Italian restaurants” into the Search field, and it will return a list of Italian restaurants around your location. But it goes beyond businesses and restaurants. Google said that if you want to know the forecast where you are, simply type in “weather” and it will return the weather for your area.

So far, Search with My Location is only available on Windows Mobile phones for users running Internet Explorer Mobile (a full list of compatible phones can be found here) in the US and UK, but Google said that wider support will be available as it continues to enter into agreements with vendors.

To use the new service now, surf to Google.com, click the My Locations link, and get started.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/z4AJk1L6dD4/

iPhone use in the epicenter of the technology world is on the rise, according to research released by Meraki Thursday.

According to the company, which is creating Free the Net, a free wireless network in San Francisco, it has witnessed a significant uptick in iPhone usage as it continues to roll out its service. Of the 150,000 devices that have used Free the Net, the iPhone accounts for nearly 20 percent. At its lowest point months ago, the iPhone accounted for just 6 percent of all the devices connecting the network.

Obviously iPhone usage in San Francisco isn’t indicative of usage elsewhere in the world and it’s tough to gauge how popular it really is in different areas, but this is even more evidence proving the iPhone may be more popular than RIM and others want to admit.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/d2GqIrIi_g0/

Louis Monier, Cuill’s VP Product, quietly resigned from the newly launched search engine last week, we’ve heard from a reliable source.

This is a big blow to the troubled search engine - Monier was recruited away from Google a year ago, where he was working on advanced search products. Prior to Google he was the head of search at eBay and was the cofounder and CTO of AltaVista. He is widely considered to be on of the founding fathers of Internet search according to search experts Danny Sullivan, John Battelle and others.

Why did Monier leave? We’ve heard but haven’t confirmed that he and CEO Tom Costello just couldn’t agree on the Cuil product road map, and that the botched launch didn’t help things much either. Monier won’t return our calls, and we have an email in to Cuil for comment.

So far Cuil doesn’t seem to have a lot of stickiness with users. Tons of traffic at launch, but it spiked right back down immediately afterwards (Google Trends, Compete, Quantcast).

Update: Vince Sollitto, Cuil VP Communications, confirms Monier’s departure and says he will remain on board as a consultant, continuing to contribute and advise the company. “I’m told by Louis that he believes strongly in the goals and potential of the company, especially its technology,” Sollitto said, adding “We think this will be the best role for the company and for him going forward.” Sollitto says there were philosophical differences in approach and style between Monier and the other management, and that the new consulting role provides the best way for Louis to contribute to the company going forward.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/KFWLxytdguA/

Nokia’s Ovi service was originally a simple photo-sharing system that took emailed, uploaded, and MMSed images from your phone or computer and put them online. Fair enough. Now, however, Nokia is adding some compelling features to the online suite to make it considerably more usable for personal and enterprise PIM and file sharing purposes.

The first and most important update is their file sharing system. After installing the Nokia Ovi Suite on your PC or laptop - it doesn’t work with Mac although there is some talk this will be remedied - you can visit all of your files remotely via a browser on your phone or on another computer. You can preview and download any file - from documents to your CONFIG.SYS file - and upload files to your computer. Obviously you have to have your computer on to do this, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Read more…

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/urOxzuzpihs/

Microsoft and RIM announced today that they have struck a deal that will see all BlackBerry smartphones running Microsoft Live Search.

The deal’s specifics weren’t released, but Microsoft’s ability to bring Live Search to the BlackBerry is a major development in the mobile space and is a direct challenge to Google, which is currently providing the iPhone with its search and will feature Google Search in upcoming Android-based devices.

The next battleground for search will be mobile, and Microsoft can gain a foothold by striking presumably lucrative deals with device manufacturers to feature its search over others.  (Much like Internet Explorer comes as the default browser on many PCs).   Even though the iPhone is selling extremely well, it’s still trailing the BlackBerry and if Windows Mobile devices are added to the equation, Microsoft now has significant mobile search market share to use as a platform for its mobile advertising endeavors.

Live Search will be rolled out in BlackBerry phones by the end of this year.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/GeqFkc9I2bY/

Amazon has again announced that it will start selling US-produced wine to its American customers by the beginning of October.

But before you start getting excited about buying wine online, there’s one catch: it will only be available to people in about 26 states due to interstate regulations, but the company is working with New Vine Logistics, a firm that specializes in interstate transactions, to avoid any legal issues that may arise in the process and attempt to increase the distribution of wine as time goes on.

Amazon is jumping in on the wine craze at the right time. Annual wine consumption is on the rise and the Stonebridge Research Group said American wine sales last year were between $30 billion and $32 billion. But e-commerce sales accounted for just 7 percent of those sales and few services online can connect wine lovers with US-produced wine.

Age restrictions will obviously play a major role in Amazon’s plan to sell wine and there’s currently no indication of how it will stop the sale of the alcohol to minors. Regardless, Amazon thinks it’s on to something with selling wine on its site and wants to capitalize on the growing market.

Amazon invested $30 million into Wineshopper.com in 1999, but that site lasted one year. Now we’ll see if this venture lasts any longer.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/IN2ThTEdtYU/

The last company to present yesterday at TechCrunch50 was picked by the audience from the more than 100 additional companies vying for attention in our DemoPit.  Every attendee got three TC50 poker chips that they could give to a DemoPit company each day, and the one with the most chips at the end of the conference became our 52nd finalist.  This year’s winner was Iamnews, a crowdsourced newsroom with ambitions to one day take on AP and Reuters.

Iamnews is a news assignment hub for blogs and news Websites.  It is a tool for crowdsourcing news.  A blog or any Web publisher can use it to solicit submissions from citizen journalists—videos, photos, links, Twitters, notes, or full articles  The Web publisher then takes all the submissions and pulls together the best ones to create a post or article..

Israeli founder Nir Ofir, who is also the founder of Blog.tv, explained:

The problem is most small to medium publishers do not have the resources to tap copyrighted news and photos. We allow publishers to create news assignments, invite reporters to come in and collaborate in the creation of news. You can invite your own reporters, or we can match you with reporters.

So a blog that wants to cover an event like next year’s TC50, for instance, could put out an assignment and solicit reports, photos, and videos from other bloggers at the conference and attendees themselves.  Crowdsourced journalism just took a step forward.  The site is still in private alpha, but we will have invites soon.

Panelist Q&A:

Loic Le Meur:  Who are you targeting?

Nir Ofir: Bloggers and small publishers that do not have the resources to create news. They don’t have news teams so we want to create news teams for them .

Don Dodge: Who gets paid and how?

Ofir: What we are planning to create is a market layer, collect all the footage and news created this way and distribute it to other media brands, and allow other contributors to make some revenue.  Today’s media brands are buying news from AP and Reuters.  What we want is for them to buy news from us.

Jeff Weiner: When you got the assignment desk component it looked pretty interesting. Is there any element to what you are doing that will allow you to get critical mass faster than other content exchanges out there?

Ofir.: We don’t want to be a destination site. But by creating partnerships with destination sites we hope to create a bigger network, because they are the brands and the editors.

Weiner: Will you be assigning reputation value to the individual contributors?

Ofir: Exactly. We are planning to create some kind of an eBay feedback mechanism so you as a publisher can decide this is someonethat I can trust, this is someone I can buy news from him.

Sean Parker: Will the readers be able to say there was a factual error in this?

Ofir: We are supplying the Publisher the tools from the creation of the article until it is published. So I guess we are not supplying this kind of solution.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/EoS7WCmm-oA/

(bigger version)

First person to solve the maze and link up the solution in the comments section gets $50 off their 37signals product of choice.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1243-37maze-first-to-solve-it-saves-50