Vyrotek

I can’t believe it but someone actually implemented the idea I had some time ago. Sadly my friends didn’t seem to think it was a good idea when I tried to pitch them idea for a project we should work on.

So what is LinkBee all about? Basically it’s a TinyURL type service but they insert an ad on the site that you’re linking to and YOU make money off it! That’s right, they share 50% of the revenue with you. Its easy to create and manage a collection of links using their site and they also tell you how much money you have made so far. There is even the ability to refer friends and earn revenue from the links they share!

It’s easy to Sign Up for LinkBee, it literally takes 5 seconds. If you have a decent twitter following this is definitely something to check out.

Lately I’ve been getting excited about a new startup that is based here in Salt Lake City and about to go live. They are called S5 Wireless and they track stuff without GPS! They have essentially created a small microchip that can be attached to almost anything which enables you to track its location with GPS accuracy. Another amazing thing is that it works great indoors. They sell their service OEM to anyone who wants to track something. They expose a simple webservice that when queried with the identifier of the chip they will respond with its current location. They aren’t quite live yet but I did speak to them on the phone for a few minutes to try and learn what I could. They informed me that they plan to have their webservice API and marketing details polished and ready for use around 3rd Quarter.

So, how does it work? How much does it cost? Check out their site for a bit more information.
http://www.s5w.com/Products/FAQ.html

Also check out some other articles people have written about them.
Gizmondo – Poor Man’s LoJack
ABC News – Utah company takes crack at problem of tracking

UPDATE:

I found a article that covers a Q&A session with the CEO of S5 Wireless and its very interesting. There is a bit more information in this one. Check it out here – S5 Wireless Interview with David Carter, CEO

Here are some parts I found the most interesting:

“If you just imagine all of the things that are of value to you, would you pay $10 or less for a tag and a couple of dollars a month to keep up with them, to know where your children are when they’re out with the family car or on a camping trip in the mountains with the Boy Scouts or the Girl Scouts?”

“The location and telemetry information is then sent to the customer in near real-time. The tracking accuracy is comparable to GPS, and we can deliver about 60 bits of telemetry with every transmission, enabling monitoring of fuel levels, temperatures, heart rate, etc.”

This concept is simply amazing. The idea of making a new tab that floats makes complete sense on a phone with touch capabilities. I hope some of this stuff makes it to the final version.

Video: http://azarask.in/blog/post/firefox-mobile-concept-video/

Have you heard of Songza.com ? Basically you search for any song and it plays it right there on the page instantly. You obviously can’t download the songs but you really don’t need to when you can just type in whatever you want and play it. Many of the songs have links to their music videos on YouTube or other information. It seems they make their money through Ads and they may get a cut from Amazon if you buy the song from their link. Check it out!

Today I had the opportunity to attend the Utah CodeCamp and I learned quite a few new things. The main reason I wanted to go was to listen to Mark from Medicity give his presentation on the new Asp.net MVC Framework. He probably gave one of the best presentation there today. I made sure it was clear at work that I had high expectations, so maybe that helped?

So what’s the big deal about the new MVC Framework? Oh it’s only the best thing to happen to Asp.net ever! I never really played with classic Asp much but I’m told it has some similarities and you might feel like things are moving backwards, but it really is for the best. If you’re familiar with how JSP (yuck) works with the MVC pattern then a lot of the new things will feel very familiar.

The biggest shock to me was how they have basically eliminated the page life cycle and the traditional postback. Until now, in Asp whenever you wanted to fire some click event the client posted back to the aspx, recreated the entire page again firing off the pageload and all the other junk and THEN invoked the click event. That has always bugged me! It is such waste of time to recreate an instance of a page that you’re probably going to throw away anyway.  That’s because the majority of the time you direct the user to different page when they invoke some event. Now, your buttons invoke specific ‘actions’ on your controller and the controller decides what data to pull from the model and what view to use.

I’m not going to go into much more detail now but I’ll try share any new findings in future posts. Until then, check out Scott Gu’s blog for more info!

Thanks Mark for an awesome presentation!

An interesting article about Android’s mobile strategy. Check it out.

“Here we are months away from the launch of the first Android hardware, and Google along with the Open Handset Alliance is gearing up for the war against Apple and the vaunted iPhone. However, given the recent revelations regarding Google’s approach to quality control, or lack there of this war may be over before it even gets started.”

Check it out here! – http://androidguys.com/2008/04/21/why-the-iphone-is-poised-to-crush-android/

I remembered hearing about a really great site that helped you manage your money a while back but I was never able to find it again until tonight. Thankfully another blog I read decided to review it just recently. Mint.com looks to be a fantastic service that I am very interested in using. I am still playing with it right now but it seems to offer quite a bit. Here’s their description of what they offer.

“It automatically pulls together your bank, credit union and credit card data, and provides up-to-date and amazingly accurate views of your financial life – from the big picture to specific details, in a friendly and intuitive way.

In addition, Mint goes beyond visibility and analysis; providing personalized money-saving and money-making suggestions. Mint provides users an average of $1,000 in savings opportunities during their first session. Plus, Mint is accessible from your desktop, laptop or cellphone.” (Mint.com – About)

The first thing I love about the site is its clean and simple design. I really don’t like using the website my bank provides but Mint’s GUI seems to be very intutive and inviting… And its Green! (Best color ever, take that Noah!) So, I am testing the site as I write this post and I will try to describe my experience.

Since the service is free I obviously went looking for how they make their money and its actually very nice how they they do it. There is a page called ‘Ways to Save’ and from here they detect things such as my cellphone bill and compare it to what other people are pay with other companies and provide a list of ‘offers’ that could help me save money. I have no problems with this kind of advertising because it’s not a banner ad, yay! What I REALLY like about this site is how I can associate each past transaction with a custom category/tag which will make the pretty charts make more sense. This was one of the areas where my current bank’s site had problems. They did an ok job at reporting what charges fell into what categories (like Housing, Food, Gas, etc) but there were a lot of things it couldnt categorize. But, it seems Mint already does a much better job at know what the right categories are because I have only found a few unknowns so far. Another feature that is very useful is the ability to search my transactions. Now I can find out when was the last time I had Del Taco. (Sept 12) I am still trying to figure out what all these graphs and trend charts represent but I am sure they are useful as well. They use many different algorithms to show change in spending such as if you are spending more or less than you normally do in many different categories such as entertainment or restaurants. In conclusion, this site rocks.

Check it out for yourself! www.Mint.com

If you haven’t heard Amazon is putting on an awesome competition. Until I heard about this competition I didn’t know anything about all the different types of web services that Amazon provided. I had heard that you could make your own type of store front using a service they had but I was never interested in trying to sell books. Then, with the announcement of this challenge I started to investigate the services they had. I wanted to learn what the big deal was because in the details of the challenge it mentions:

“The Amazon judges’ panel will review all applications and choose five finalists, based on originality and creativity of the idea, likelihood of long-term success, how well it addresses a need in the marketplace, and implementation of pay-as-you-use Amazon Web Services.” (AWS Start-Up Challenge)

I had no clue what they meant by ‘Pay-As-You-Use’ and I was defintely intrigued. What I learned is that Amazon provides some incredible services that have nothing to do with selling books. So the idea is to come up with some great idea that uses their services and Amazon will give you some cash and invest in your project. Below is a list of the services that are available to use:

• Amazon E-Commerce Service (Amazon ECS)
• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) – Limited Beta
• Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) – Limited Beta
• Amazon Mechanical Turk (Beta)
• Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
• Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
• Alexa Site Thumbnail
• Alexa Top Sites
• Alexa Web Information Service
• Alexa Web Search

I am personally interested in the new Flexible Payments Service. You could basically create your own better PayPal type service. The incredible thing about it is that it allows you to make Micropayments!

So why am I suddenly interested in the value of my domains? Because someone just recently contacted me and is interested in http://www.mormonade.com. I have a handful of domains that I use for various projects. Vyrotek.com was my first domain and I’ve had it for years now. I could have probably bought a better domain back then that is worth quite a bit now…oh well. Today I’ve been running all my domains through a site called http://www.dnScoop.com which appraises your domain’s worth. It takes your google page rank, domain age and other random things to calculate how much yoru domain is worth.

UPDATE!
Below are the appraisals I have found so far for Vyrotek.com!

dnScoop.com : $1422 

leapFIsh.com : $5,265

Make me an offer!

Last night I decided to investigate something called Micopayments a bit more. Essentially it’s the idea of making a very small purchase for a product or service online. Since we’re talking cents and dollars the biggest problem is making it worthwhile for sellers. The easiest way to make a purchase online is normally with your credit card. But, credit card companies charge per transaction and if the transaction is not sufficiently over that fee then the seller actually loses money. I think whoever comes up with the best way to do micropayments online is going to make a pretty penny.

After I was done reading about micropayments I found a link to various Business Models. It was very interesting to read about all of them.