Jackson Snow’s UFO Site Offers Believers and Sceptics a Space to Share and Debate
Jackson Snow is the CEO of AlienUFOBelievers.com, a site where UFO believers can share their evidence with others. The site was conceived as a place where both believers and sceptics alike can come together and share their views on this controversial topic. On the site visitors can check out and rate videos, pictures, sightings, and theories, separating the bogus from the credible.
The idea for the site came about after one of Jackson’s friends called him to tell him that he had seen a UFO. Incredulous, as many people would be, he didn’t begin to believe until his friend sent him the pictures of the incident.
After that I’ve been curious and amused by the subject. The more I hear about it, the more I realize that there are legitimate-sounding accounts out there among a sea of baloney. That’s what gave me the idea to start a site where people could help identify the difference”.
Michael Reich’s Site Allows Members to Play the Stockmarket at No Risk to Their Pockets
Michael Reich is the co-founder and CEO of a social platform for virtual investing called UpDown.com. This website offers users the possibility of testing their investment skills by providing them with $1,000,000 of virtual money to invest. UpDown.com provides a platform for people to improve their skills through collaboration, competition, and aggregated wisdom. While playing this sort of “fantasy investor” game, they not only get the chance to learn but also get the chance to earn real money without the risk of real financial loss.
UpDown helps educate consumers about investing in a fun, informative and compelling way that has never been done before”.
Members of the site can create their very own competitions with friends and see who does a better job of investing their money.
Gourmet Goodies on Brad Perry’s New Site
Brad Perry is the CEO of WholesaleGourmet.com, a site which offers gourmet food items which was launched on September 1, 2008. The website, according to Brad, took about 3 months to complete because of the 500 products that had to be added. The products sold on the site are typically those that are used in gift baskets, and sold at gourmet food shops or specialty supermarkets. The site offers very competitive prices as well as free shipping, something which customers can certainly take advantage of.
Brad’s family is a local distributor of fresh flowers who recently started carrying gourmet food for florists that make gift baskets. They had a warehouse full of product that were being sold only to a local market, something which frustrated Brad and ultimately got him thinking of how these products could be marketed to a much larger audience.
I couldn’t stand to see a warehouse full of product only being sold at local market”.
Richard Cloutier’s Site is Keeping Track of WP Themes
Richard Cloutier is the man behind WPThemesNews.com, a site that features free and/or premium WordPress themes in order to reduce the time and effort required to stay up to date with new releases. WPThemesNews.com aggregates feeds from different sites that offer WordPress themes in order to facilitate the experience for users by having the updates conveniently in one place.
The idea, like most, came about because of a necessity. Being a web designer, Richard loves WordPress as well as WordPress themes. He used to bookmark a lot of sites offering WordPress themes and visited them every day to see what they’d released. This, of course, was very time consuming but instead of simply adding the site’s feeds to his Netvibes, Richard though about an alternative.
I knew that many people would love to have something to get those updates quickly too. So I thought about a feed aggregator script”.
Marc De Daele’s Site is Answering Users’ Questions Around the World
Marc De Daele is the CEO of MyMiaMia.com, a question answering service that, unlike other startups, has offices in several different parts of the world. This internationally diverse company is distributed geographically in four different countries with its headquarters based in Hong Kong, main offices in the Philippines, and other offices in Belgium and Australia. This site offers its visitors, as well as anyone with a cellular phone, the opportunity to submit a question and get it answered within minutes via SMS or e-mail. The service is ad-funded and therefore free to its users, and has the benefit of being accessible to all countries around the globe.
The idea for the site was derived from a prototype developed by Jo Lerount, a well known expert (and entrepreneur) in the speech and language technologies business. Once the idea for the service was fully developed, Neuro Linguistic Programming and IT specialists were hired to program MyMiaMia.com and a test system and test call center were build in the Philippines. Funding for the company came from 7 private investors from Belgium and a holding company was created in Hong Kong. This holding company was funded with about $500,000 seed money and owns all I.P. and marketing rights of MyMiaMia.com, funds research and development, as well as the operations and call centers in the Philippines.
Alan W. Silberberg’s Venture to Empower the People of America
In this very unique election year, a website like You2Gov.com is proving to not only be useful in providing information but in giving people the possibility to interact with each other and voice their opinions. This website, which is a labor of love for Alan Silberberg, allows people to speak up and even get in touch with the policy makers themselves in a way that hasn’t been done before. Because of its mix of news site and social networking, people have a chance to become truly involved in the issues that affect them as a society.
The internet is a medium that can reach a vast amount of people and You2Gov.com is taking advantage of it, using to inform as well as to offer a means for concerned citizens to interact and be heard. The site, which was launched mid July of this year, is growing rapidly. More and more people are becoming involved and average page view numbers keep getting stronger. Alan told us that the idea for the site came about because of a concern.
Ralph J. Shapira, who is the other partner, was concerned about the possibility of the election being decided by the super delegates in the United States. We started looking at tools that could empower and enable citizens to become more powerful, more easily” Alan told us.
Alper Sümer Güç’s New Site is Helping People Communicate in 23 Different Languages
Alper Sümer Güç is the creator of HowToSayIn.com, a site that allows users to translate words and phrases into a variety of different languages, 23 to be exact. Alper told us that he is very interested in web APIs, so when he found the Ajax language API he decided to explore it further and came up with the idea for his site. No outside investment was needed for putting together the site as he did all the work himself. He works from his home, which is located in Istanbul, Turkey, publishing this and other sites that he creates. At the moment he’s working on a local site that will launch in a couple of months.
Alper spends a great part of his time on the web looking for new technologies, finding tutorials to learn from, and getting as much knowledge as possible so he can continue to pursue his passion of building websites. So far HowToSayIn.com seems to be doing well; people must really be interested in learning new languages as the site is getting around 10,000 unique visitors on a daily basis.
Mitch Trale’s Site Invites Food Lovers to Share Their Culinary Passion
Mitch Trale of FoodProof.com brings us a site that features food in a whole new light. Unlike other food sites out there, FoodProof.com allows people of all culinary backgrounds to come together and talk about the dishes that they love most, swap recipes, and simply converse on a topic that delights everyone. Mitch told us that the idea for the site came about in response to a lack of everyday food communities on the web. There are plenty of sites that focus on gourmet cooking, and although those sites cater to a wide audience they also leave a void in terms of simple home cooking that lots of people enjoy just as much.
Everyone cooks something, and even if it’s simple and tasty, it’s valuable” says Mitch.
That’s why FoodProof.com invites anyone with an interest in food to create a blog, post recipes, photos, or videos of anything food related that they think is interesting. The site is an easy-going place where people can share their food experiences and hopefully take away something that will add to their culinary palette. The site highlights the egalitarian approach to food that those involved hold and what they think makes it matter.
Darian Shirazi - CEO of Fwix.com
With the August 21st launch of Fwix.com, 21 year-old Darian Shirazi has embarked on another internet venture. This young entrepreneur has been in the internet business for about six years, having begun his career at eBay when he was only fifteen years old. In 2007, Darian was featured as one of Business Week’s Brightest Entrepreneurs in the U.S. Age 25 and Under and it’s easy to see why. His experience is one to be envied, having worked for companies such as Facebook, headed Fotodunk, Redux, and now Fwix.
Fwix.com allows users to track local events using popular sharing sites as a source. Darian tells us that the idea came about while he was vacationing in Croatia with one of his friends this past July. While abroad they went over ideas and after a lot of thought and work, it became what it is today. It took them some time to figure out how to get the site to actually work the way they wanted it to, especially how to get it to update the content every 15 minutes. The idea is for users to find information that is relevant to their locale and that’s interesting to them.
We want them to think of us as the place where they come for news about what’s going on in their area” said Darian.
