This Just Found

USB Cell: good design, good product,

2007-03-20T22:05:00.000Z

USB Cell: good design, good product, check it out
http://www.usbcell.com/products I am entering into Engadget territory almost, ain't I :)

Bidnip : another eBay ecosystem member

2007-03-20T21:23:00.000Z

Ecosystem - a crucial and critical element for success in the digital world, and you know you are successful when every customer touch point of yours is developed or tweaked by ecosystem partners, like www.bidnip.comRest to follow

Quotiki: a digg+technorati for quotable quotes

2007-03-20T21:20:00.000Z

www.quotiki.com More to follow

PeekVid: A clean interface to all your free video needs

2007-03-20T19:49:00.000Z

www.peekvid.com reverses the YouTube trend, it has fixed categories and sections for all videos. I love it, I feel like seeing Ali G, I go in there get high-quality quick loading video but most importantly the episode I want. . It's clean interface is a delight to the eyes. Interestingly, this is what the service has to say about piracy, copyright and the rest

Peekvid does not contain any content on its site, but is merely an index of available links on the Internet. Peekvid is committed to an industry solution that will provide a mechanism to compensate artists that create the work you enjoy watching. Peekvid would like to be part of the long term solution.

Interesting isn't it, I mean nothing new or special, just well-articulated!

endless.com : many good reasons to experiment

2007-03-20T19:36:00.000Z

Amazon recently launched endless.com, the first time the online retailer has created a separate Web address for one its product lines: shoes and handbags

Interesting, I thought to myself and here are 3 key reasons why this is a great move:
1. Market Size and Growth (From e-commerce news): In 2002, online footwear sales, at $954 million, was about one-fifth the size of the $4.4 billion online apparel business, according to Forrester Research. Last year, footwear had surged to $2.9 billion, or about one-third the size of the $9.6 billion sold in apparel. There is more growth ahead. Online shoe sales are projected to increase 22 percent in 2007 to $3.5 billion.

This is not a market to take lightly, is it!

2. Customer Demographic: I am not saying Amazon's female shoppers wouldn't shop for their shoes and handbags on the site, but the product line can definitely do with unique, independent marketing strategy and tactics. By Amazon not co-branding or endorsing it, endless stands on its own in the customer's eye, not being tinted by either the "book-seller" association (which in my opinion is antiquated) or more importantly "the site that sells everything" association.

3. Learnings in Customer Experience: Customers swear by Amazon's customer experience on it's site and order fulfillment. (You don't get to be the highest ever rated ASCI service provider in customer satisfaction just like that!). This is the kind of lock-in you want this fickle "competitor is a click-away" world. But there's a huge disadvantage, isn't there: how do you change. Well, experiments at the margin like endless will allow Amazon to get customer feedback in a real environment and possibly plug it back to the main service. (For those who haven't checked out endless even after reading so far, check it out to know what I am talking about, you can't see a trace of Amazon on the site)

So, will we get more endless'es from Amazon; I wouldn't bet on it, not on too many at the same time anyway

CommunityWalk: Simplicity is rare these days

2007-03-20T18:29:00.000Z

www.communitywalk.com

StumbleUpon: stumble your way across the net

2007-03-20T18:28:00.000Z

There are a lot of "community browsing" services out there ; essentially, you highlight which pages you like, and it starts showing you other pages you may like. Delicious falls under this category as well, though at a slight tangent. The one I like the most is StumbleUpon; and not that it means it will be as big, but is backed by the same guy who backed Google (ok I agree that's a lame statement to put in there, but then again Ram Shriram's name does put a lot of clout to a new venture)

You get a toolbar installed, select the topics you would like to have in your stumbling and then just stumble! The thing about these services that you want is really the quality of recommendations; I get 1 in 4 pages which are read-worthy and 1 in 10-15 which are great, and that's a pretty good ratio. Many of the services that I write about on this blog are discovered through SU. And the Google integration is great

How does it make money - well for one, it directly asks companies to let their webpages get shown during a user's stumbling so its a nice monetizing that way and then they have premium customers though honestly I cant see many people converting

LibraryThing: get awesome book recommendations

2007-03-20T18:12:00.000Z