A new Facebook application / business idea: SaveAnAlien.com. The story-line is that a comet is soon going to hit a far off planet (there’s a countdown on the site) killing all 10 million aliens, all of them unique and cute (randomly generated by computer algorithm). You can save one, unique alien by “adopting” it and moving it to safety in Antarctica (i.e. on your Facebook page). Your unique and cute alien can then be digitally added to your photos, cared for and printed on t-shirts (that cost $$) (as well as do other cute things that cost $).
I think this is a great use of the viral nature of Facebook and they have a revenue plan built-in that’s not advertising. Way to go.
Check it out.
Bernard Lunn at Read/WriteWeb has ten great tips for starting a company without taking outside funding. Of course, the most important tip is have a product that makes money. “Bootstrapping” or “self-funding” does not mean putting up your own money and risking your family and future. The strategy is simple: release a product people want to pay for and grow from there.
I’m not sure I agree with “don’t bootstrap and then take VC funding”. There are a lot of situations where this could work: expanding into a new market, for example.
I’m a huge believer in charging for something that is worth while. I fully believe Facebook could have charged all their users and then taken over the world (a $0.99 text message phone-bill charge to each user to enable viewing of their friend’s pictures would have met little resistance and would have generated an ungodly amount of money).
A recent report by Portio Research is predicting that 75% of the people in the world will carry a mobile phone by the year 2011. We are already seeing reports of how mobile phones are changing societies, cultures and markets in developing areas (see the Indian fishing markets story). In the West, we’ve been living with the changes for a few years and enjoying the new ones. What happens when everyone can reach everyone else instantly? And what happens when the phones become more powerful?
This video is a perfect example of why the movie companies are in big trouble. I am not much of a video game fan (though I did recently buy a 360 and Halo 3 to check out what the hype was), but this video is amazing. The Halo 3 game comes with extremely easy to use movie-making tools that allow players to replay action from a game from any camera angle and to zoom, pan, fly and change angles (just like a real director). The video can then be easily shared and uploaded to the internet.
This particular video is a amazing-videos, fox-news, caught-on-tape clip of players last moments. The fact that the in-game physics create such a realist world is almost as impressive at how easy it was for this player to share his experience with the world.
Why would anyone sit and watch a movie when they could play in the Matrix like this (and share the experience with friends). Cool.
Mixlister is a playlist sharing community. Use Mixlister to create and share a playlist with friends or to invite the public to contribute songs to a playlist you are working on. You can customize playlist page layouts, send playlists as an e-card and embed playlists in your website, blog or MySpace page. Using the Mixlister widgets and tools, you can easily connect the songs and playlists you find online to your personal music collection - making it easy to explore and discover music you never knew you had.
The super-secret-stealth side project we having cooking is a fun-to-use virtual world (MMORPG) application for the masses. We are exploring what makes things like Second Life, World of Warcraft, Club Penguin and Habbo Hotel fun, engaging and how they can be improved. There is nothing to report now except that it is under development. Step one is to build the world framework. Step two is to build the world creation tools (map editors etc.). Step three is a character editor. At that point we’ll release a beta so people can start playing around. We are just about finished with step two.
And yes, we are keeping an eye on MetaPlace
Bostogo helps people keep in touch with what their friends are up to using text messaging. You can use Bostogo to let you know when friends are near by, keep a mobile blog, keep in touch with your “entourage” or post pictures from your phone. The kids love it.
FixTunes is the ultimate application for cleaning and organizing your music collection. It will scan your computer for music and automatically correct and misspelled or missing songs tags (like Artist, Album, Title, Year etc.) and add album artwork. Your music will look beautiful again.