CRM

One-Stop Workstation
We’ve probably all been there – keeping several different passwords for different applications, updating different worksheets for this process and that. Even worse, because of all the disparate tools employees utilize, reports generation takes longer than one would care to admit. This archaic practice requires a lot of employee log hours and doesn’t do much for efficiency. Bitrix24 replaces all of the separate tools you use for correspondence, contacts, projects, tasks, everything. A single platform, and at the end of the day, whatever information you need is right at your fingertips.

CRM
CRM, or customer relationship management, is a tool that allows businesses to manage their interactions with clients, customers, agents, sales prospects and other contacts. Without CRM or the efficient usage of CRM, most businesses are doomed to die a natural death. With Bitrix24’s CRM functionality, contact history, interaction and new events such as messages, phone calls and/or meetings are logged, stored and managed.

Sales Funnel
Sales funnel, commonly referred to as sales process, is another Bitrix24 functionality that serves as graphical representation of the performance of transactions and the stages they are in. And because it’s graphical, data interpretation is easier than it’s ever been.

Sales funnel

Security
Cloud-based data storage is fast becoming the trend nowadays. And when people think about storing, disseminating and managing sensitive data through the cloud, the questions that are oftentimes foremost in their minds are, “How safe is it? Does it really work?” Bitrix24 employs a seven-layer security system that is perhaps unparalleled in the industry, so that even in unsecured connections such as public Wi-Fi, e-mail and data access is as safe as access on a secure server.

Convinced already? Like, seriously? Believe me, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The features I described above are just a few of so many. But don’t just take my word for it. Head on to their site now and see for yourself what they’ve got.

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http://www.mobocruiser.com/

Entrepreneurism runs in Melody Hsieh’s blood. Her parents operated an auto parts factory in Taiwan, where she once worked at the age of 8.

“I learned early in life that hard work and smart work are the essential ingredients to running a successful business,” she said.

So after college in 2000, Hsieh decided to start a company, with family money, that sold scooters. By 2003, sales at her ASA Products surged to $3 million.

But in the next three years, annual sales quickly plummeted to $300,000. “My mistake was that I had no long-term strategy to build my brand,” she said. “I was just pursuing a hot trend, and not paying attention to competition, customer service or marketing.”

In 2006, she took a hiatus from her company and went back to school for her MBA. In late 2006, she relaunched a new product — Mobo Cruisers — a line of three-wheeled cruisers for kids and adults. “This time I applied what I learned in school about marketing, operations and research before I launched the brand,” said Hsieh.

Today, Mobo Cruisers is sold through Target and Toys “R” Us and expanding into Canada. Hsieh, who’s a new mom to her three-month-old son, said she’s busier than ever now. “Women can do it. It’s hard but you don’t have to give up one role for the other,” she said. “Have a routine that works for you and stick to it.”

[Via - CNNMoney, HT - Easy Money]

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http://scan.me/

Before Apple released the iPad 2, Garrett Gee made a lucky guess. “I knew it was going to have a camera, and because of that I just imagined that there would be a blog post or something similar on the top 10 new apps for the iPad 2,” he says.

Gee wasn’t just the average college student geeking out. A student at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, he is one of the founders of Scan (scan.me), which allows iPad, iPhone and Droid users to scan quick-response (QR) codes.

Gee’s push to get his hands on the iPad 2 and get it to his iOS developer was motivated by his desire for Scan to be the first QR-scanner app available specifically for the device–thereby earning a spot on those top 10 lists. Thanks to two sleepless nights, he succeeded.

Gee’s path from student to entrepreneur started in 2009, when he received a smartphone for Christmas. With that device, the then-freshman scanned his first QR code and realized there could be apps and software that were less clunky and easier to use. At a web-design conference, he met Twitter creative director Doug Bowman, who encouraged him to pursue his idea.

Gee recruited classmates Kirk Ouimet and Ben Turley to help launch Scan in February 2011. The idea was to use simple online and mobile tools to give users a better option for scanning QR codes, and to offer a polished option for businesses that wanted to create those codes.

“There are many, many sites where you can go and create your own QR code,” Gee concedes. “Remember when Facebook and Twitter were first getting popular, and businesses large and small all hopped on and started creating Twitter accounts and Facebook pages? They didn’t really know how or why; they were just doing it because they thought it was important. It’s been the same story with QR codes. People see them popping up all over the place, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, we should probably use QR codes for our marketing.’”

Gee, Ouimet and Turley took second place in BYU’s business plan competition in April 2011–a status they parlayed into funding. After 16 trips to pitch to investors such as Google Ventures, Menlo Ventures and the co-owner of the Boston Celtics, they had $1.5 million. Gee waded through the offers while balancing school and travel as a forward on BYU’s semiprofessional soccer team, often taking conference calls in airport bathrooms along the way.

The team used that capital to build a platform and user base that earned Scan 10 million downloads in the first year. The actual scans derived from those downloads grew from 12 million to 21 million between September and October 2011. The next move is to develop a monetization plan. Today the software to read or create codes is free of charge; future options will include premium content and mobile-commerce templates.

Gee, now 25, is working toward graduating from BYU. For now, the dual student-CEO role is serving him well. “People relate to the student world quite well,” he says. “You could say I play the ‘student card’ quite often when I’m meeting with big companies. It definitely scores me empathy points.”

[Via - YoungEntrepreneur.Com]

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http://www.trademarkia.com/

Trademarkia is an online search engine that helps small-business owners sift through the more than six million names, slogans and logos that have been trademarked in America since 1870. The Web site, which went live in September 2009, grafts a user-friendly interface onto a colossal database, built with free information provided by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It also serves as a lure, steering visitors who want to apply for their own trademarks to the law firm of Trademarkia’s co-founder, Raj Abhyanker, and offering other fee-based services such as domain registration, logo design and automated alerts that notify trademark holders when marks similar to their own are filed.

Employees: Eight full-time. In addition, in the last three years, Trademarkia has generated enough business to help Mr. Abhyanker’s law firm grow from a solo practice to an international operation with more than 190 employees, including more than 60 lawyers.

Founders: Mr. Abhyanker, 36, Trademarkia’s chief executive, is a lawyer and serial entrepreneur who previously founded FatDoor, a social networking site for neighbors. (In 2007, Mr. Abhyanker was ousted as chief executive of FatDoor, which later transformed into The Dealmap and was purchased by Google in 2011.) He founded Trademarkia with Dongxia Liu, 39, a software developer and the former vice president of engineering at Imagekind. Ms. Liu now serves as chief technology officer.

Location: Trademarkia is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., in the same building as Mr. Abhyanker’s law firm, which also has satellite offices in India, China and France.

Pitch: “We want to make applying for a trademark as easy as getting a domain name,” Mr. Abhyanker said.

Traction: Based on the strength of Trademarkia, which gets nearly three million page views each month, Mr. Abhyanker expects his legal practice to file for more than 13,000 trademarks this year (about 10,000 American and 3,000 overseas). “We’re basically the law firm that represents the most small businesses in terms of intellectual property,” he said.

Revenue: In 2011, according to Mr. Abhyanker, Trademarkia brought in $1.3 million in revenue and the law firm brought in $5.5 million, excluding government filing fees that passed through both companies. He said he expected both figures to grow by 50 percent this year.

Financing: No outside money. “I had a bad taste about venture capital,” Mr. Abhyanker explained, after losing control of FatDoor. He bootstrapped Trademarkia with about $25,000 in seed money. As for the law firm, he added, that began in 2005 with $1,000 from his savings, a small office over a Palo Alto rug store, a used desk from Craigslist and a Web site he built himself. While he doesn’t plan to pursue venture capital, “I’d like to have investors that are other lawyers,” he said, adding that, he’s considering using crowdfunding from California-licensed attorneys.

Marketing: Trademarkia spends roughly $1 million each year on paid search advertising, mostly Google AdWords. Even so, Mr. Abhyanker said, most of Trademarkia’s traffic relies on word of mouth and in-bound links from other sites, such as Wikipedia.

Competition: Online rivals include LegalZoom, the legal documents company that offers a smorgasbord of services, and The Trademark Company, which offers registration packages starting at $149, undercutting Trademarkia’s basic offering by $10. Competitors also include big international law firms, such as Greenberg Traurig and K&L Gates, which have dominated the trademark space.

Challenge: Mr. Abhyanker isn’t shy about his ambitions. “Our goal, in the end, is to build the biggest law firm in the world,” he said. He wants to do that in two ways: first, by making other types of public data – including patents, copyrights and incorporations – “more interesting and accessible” to consumers. He also plans to rebrand Trademarkia with a new name, LegalForce, and wants to pivot the company into a hybrid with both a strong online presence and brick-and-mortar storefronts serving mostly business owners, available for franchise by independent attorneys. He envisions the latter as “the Apple store meets H&R Block” and hopes to have between five and 10 of them open within 18 months.

[Via - NYTimes.com]

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http://www.bigcommerce.com/

All venture capitalists have got startup business plans piling on their desks every single day. But how many of them are the breakthrough ideas worth investing in? Australian BigCommerce has proven right to the Massachusetts based venture capital firm General Catalyst. “We quickly signed up our first 1000 customers within three months,” says Eddie Machaalani, the co-funder and co-CEO of BigCommerce, “and now we’re about to hit 20,000 customers after just 17 months.

Mitchell Harper, the other co-founder and co-CEO, explains “you can set up your own online store in a few clicks. We’re growing so quickly because we’ve made it really easy to sell online.”

If you’ve got a product and you need an easy way to sell it and advertise it, BigCommerce might be exactly what you’re looking for. All the marketing tools have been built in and the list of features is countless which targets all potential kinds of client s.

There are e-commerce newbie’s looking for tools to start with: web-based control panel, automated email marketing and almost one hundred store designs. There are e-commerce owners hoping to update and refresh their software with push to Facebook and eBay, SEO and Google Website Optimizer. And there are website designers looking for a ready platform to work with; they’ll look into painless software updates, unlimited design flexibility and premium hosting. To cut the long story short, BigCommerce has got everything for everybody.

The company overview does sound like a cliché online success story. Two IT geeks, a brilliant idea, a lot of hard work, right place, right time, huge demand and a spot on investor. (General Catalyst have also believed in BigFish, airbnb, iWalk and many others). This is how Eddie Machaalani speaks of the beginnings of their cooperation. “When we made the decision to raise capital and did our U.S tour to pitc h different VC firms, General Catalyst had already done a ton of due diligence on the market opportunity, our company and our competitors. They were very eager to invest in the company.”

BigCommerce have recently announced $2M integration fund to follow the market developments and create new better features. The software has now got built-in Pinterest and Quickbooks integration, referral system, a live chat, abandoned cart plugin and many other improvements. They tent to release new features every two weeks.

The software seems to be ahead of its competition (Shopify, Zencart, Magento) according to various online discussions, blogs and comparisons and is only getting better and smarter. E-shopping cart is gaining the whole new meaning. And what does it mean to you? Only one way to find out. (Here is a link for $100 coupon or 30 day free trial provided by BigCommerce for our readers).

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - Madconomist.Com]

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Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

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1. We Are All Weird

Weirdness takes many forms. When everyone else is carrying nylon computer bags and sporty backpacks, weird people insist on an “old-fashioned” leather briefcase (guilty). Many people think it is weird to go to over 50 Grateful Dead concerts and own recordings of hundreds of their concerts (also guilty). Is it weird to spend six hours on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in a dingy rec room playing Dungeons and Dragons? To collect chewing gum wrappers and own over 2,000, with examples from over 50 countries? To read instead of watching television? To ride a bike instead of driving? The weird is us. And the weird is you.

2. Extreme Cuisine: The Weird & Wonderful Foods that People Eat

Jerry Hopkins has raised the bar in food scholarship - Extreme Cuisine is an extremely entertaining read and a primary source for anyone interested in how (with recipes) and what other (often rural) world cultures eat. A most worthy successor to Unmentionable Cuisine. Great color photography inserts. Hopkins provides scholarly detail about some subjects some pet-lovers might find less tasty (eating dogs, cats, horse, monkeys, etc), some which are most assuredly unknown by most (eating rooster combs, wattles & testicles) and has a good sense of humor by including dumpster diving and eating roadkill. As Anthony Bourain learned, Hopkins is the perfect guide, the “Old Hand” to the other (than American style packaged foods) food worlds.

3. Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die

in 1700 there were less than 100 causes of death. Today there are 3,000. With each advance of technology, people find new ways to become deceased, often causing trends that peak in the first year. People are now killed by everything, from cell phones, washing machines, lawn mowers and toothpicks, to the boundless catalog of man—made medicines. In Final Exits the causes of death—bizarre or common—are alphabetically arranged and include actual accounts of people, both famous and ordinary, who unfortunately died that way. (Ants, bad words, Bingo, bean bag chairs, flying cows, frozen toilets, hiccups, lipstick, moray eels, road kill, starfish, and toupees are only some of the more unusual causes.)

4. Crazy: Notes On and Off the Couch

While the professionals are trying to help people resolve their problems, the therapists themselves are often depressed, anxious, and prone to panic attacks. They take antipsychotics, self-medicate with booze, and struggle in their own relationships. The ones who are providing the perspective are often the ones with the most on their plate. In short, they are just as “crazy” as the patients. Crazy is the story of how one mental health professional deals with his own personal problems and those of the people he treats. Part exposé and part memoir, it reveals what therapists really think about their profession, their colleagues, their patients, and their own lives.

5. Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude

Amy Bloom’s latest book, Normal, gives those of us who are familiar with her fiction another opportunity to luxuriate in her distinctive, elegant prose. Those not familiar with Bloom’s work are in for a rare treat: a book which employs this writer’s considerable talents (as both a psychotherapist and an artist) for an attentive and comprehensive examination of people whose lives include (but are not limited by) transgender, crossdressing and intersex issues. Bloom doesn’t create “characters” in her exploration of these people; instead, she puts her artistry to work in giving voice to the living, breathing human beings who have the same range of responses as there are fascinating situations in this book.

6. Normal Gets You Nowhere

An amazing succession to her first book, “If You Have To Cry, Go Outside,” Cutrone dives into deeper issues with complete honesty and witty humor that leaves readers feeling inspired. Topics in the book are what many people have contemplated between one another in conversations for years but have never had the nerve to stand up and defend their beliefs or opinions for the sake of revolutionizing change in multiple aspects of current issues and self-awakening. She stands up on a literary soap box to encourage people to question, reflect and embrace free thinking for positive reformations in society.

7. Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices

You probably don’t expect to find yourself compulsively reading a book called an encyclopedia of anything, but then you probably don’t expect to be reading about men who coax angry bees to sting their penises in order to make the organ swell and become more sensitive. The 750+ listings here will propel you from amazement to amazement as they carry you from abduction as a sex act to zoophilia (sex with animals). You will be repelled and excited, entranced and titillated, shocked and sucked right into the world of sexual extremes and oddities. And, all the time, you’ll be making mental notes of which entries you just have to tell this or that friend about.

8. Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original Psycho

In the autumn of 1957, the nation learned of a nightmare unfolding in the little rural town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. A local recluse and simpleton by the name of Edward Gein murdered Bernice Worden, the owner of the local hardware store. A murder, even in 1950’s America, wouldn’t grab the attention of most folks, but this crime did. Local police searching Gein’s farmhouse uncovered a soul shattering house of horrors. Not only did they find murder victim Worden in the most degrading condition, the police also discovered pieces of human bodies inside the house. Gein had fashioned soup bowls out of human skulls, masks out of human faces, and furniture out of human flesh. Every hour spent in the farmhouse turned up even more horrors, enough to make even the most hardened cop sick to his stomach. As the official inquiry deepened, America learned that a human monster lived in the most unlikely of settings, a man who embodied virtually every ghastly psychopathology known to modern science. The name Eddie Gein became synonymous with evil and he quickly became part of the dark side of American pop culture.

9. Letters of the Lost - Suicide Notes

Letters of the Lost is a collection of suicide notes. For many victims of suicide, writing a letter, or an email was not on the agenda. This book communicates the terrible loneliness there is in deciding to kill oneself. It covers people from all backgrounds, ages and gender, and hopes to enlighten people on why so many of our friends and family decide they cannot take this life.

10. The New Weird

This avant-garde anthology that presents and defines the New Weird—a hip, stylistic fiction that evokes the gritty exuberance of pulp novels and dime-store comic books—creates a new literature that is entirely unprecedented and utterly compelling. Assembling an array of talent, this collection includes contributions from visionaries Michael Moorcock and China Miéville, modern icon Clive Barker, and audacious new talents Hal Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, and Sarah Monette. An essential snapshot of a vibrant movement in popular fiction, this anthology also features critical writings from authors, theorists, and international editors as well as witty selections from online debates.

[Via - Madconomist.com]

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http://determix.com/

Before the rise of the Digital age, research and forensic scientists, biologists, and botanists, painstakingly identified each and every living organism by searching their various ranks in the Nomenclature Code rule book. Using advanced technology however, has made it possible to simplify these steps in just a couple of clicks on the computer. Determix has created Lysandra Online, an internet-based, biological database that classifies all organisms using interactive catalogues and identification guides. Everything is basically there; and unlike a trip to the library, it wouldn’t take a day to find a strange organism’s Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species classification—all in one sitting.

This is good news to scientists all over the world. Lysandra Online is co-authored by leading specialists in the fields of zoology and biological sciences; and it uses complex algorithms to search for an organism’s specific hierarchies. It makes things even easier by adding illustrated catalogues, handy navigation, and print output in its features. And here’s the best part: it can organize random search lists from the general catalogue and even create mini-presentations. Some of its published works include beetles and butterfly classification, butterfly identifcation database, and all that can be easily accessed via website.

The best part, however, is that it’s free. All its database and facilities are available after installation, and some of its demo databases don’t even need registration. Today, it is used as an accurate guide to biological classification, and Determix has now released a commercial version of its database that contains completely illustrated tools, maps, and pictures for better identification.

[Via - MadConomist.com]

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Happy Thanksgiving weekend to everyone!

P.S. If you are into odd news, you’ll love our sister site MadConomist.com

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We understand that most startups don’t have any cash to burn, so our services cost only 50 US Dollars. Moreover, our service is risk-free, which means that if you decide that you don’t like any names (domains) we suggest for your startup, you get your $50 deposit back. You pay us only if you like our work.

We are very different from naming agencies and brand consultants. This is how the process work. First, you register as client. Then, you create your order and specify what you want - how long your domain should be, which extensions are desirable, does it have to have certain keywords or not, etc. The order goes active as soon as you make the deposit (we accept credit cards, paypal, bank transfers, invoices, and all other conventional payment methods). Within minutes (yes, minutes) you start receving suggestions from our contributors (we’ve got over fourty thousand registered copywriters and several hundred are active at any given time). You mark incoming suggestions as liked or disliked to steer our contributors in the right direction. When you see a domain that’s perfect for your startup, you register it first and then mark it as picked. Contributor who made that suggestion will get half of your deposit. Once again, if you aren’t happy with our work - the money is returned, no questions asked. You aren’t risking anything when hiring us.

We also do names and slogans, and our projects aren’t limited to startup names. We’ve been hired to name software, restaurants, product lines, adult websites, strip clubs, even dogs. So if your project needs a name, we’ll happily assist you.

Source - Startup names

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1. Scheduling/To-Do Lists and Tasks – RememberTheMilk.com

RememberTheMilk is an online scheduling and task management service application. Its main selling point is that it integrates with all of your personal electronic devices: Android phones, iPhones, Blackberry and other PDAs, Twitter, MS Outlook, Gmail/Google Calendar, and many more. From your phone you can access your calendar and tasks that you have entered on your home computer. With this app you can even remotely manage your employees. While basic functions on RememberTheMilk are free, you can use the more advanced options for only $25. These might include iPod touch interface add-ons or synching RTM with Windows Mobile devices.

2. Domain Naming and Branding – PickyDomains.com

Need a new domain name or product slogan? PickyDomains.com is a domain naming and marketing service that offers you original ideas with no obligation or risk. When you place an order for a new name, you pay only $50 and you will start receiving suggestions. If you want to use one of the names PickyDomains pays a portion of the fee to the person who came up with the suggestion. If you don’t like any of the suggestions, you can have your fee refunded, with no obligation. Here are some of the over 1500 sites they have helped develop: Xutta.Com, NadaPay.com, Simplytics.Com, DiskScout.Com Coderria.Com, Nogeno.Com, and GymGenius.Com.

3. Web and Graphic Design – 99Designs.Com

In 2010, 99Designs won a Webby award and they have since been featured in many tech magazines and blogs with good reviews. 99Designs is a service that specializes in graphics such as logos, templates, icons and many other types of design. They have a huge membership of graphic designers who charge much less than traditional design firms would. You can purchase an original logo for approximately $99. Most graphic design firms would charge you at minimum, $295.

4. Sales and Marketing – oDesk.Com

Like 99Designs.com, Odesk is similar but they offer a wider range of outsourcing services. It is particularly good for sales lead generation and business prospecting. For example, if you are a doctor who works with law firms, preparing expert testimony for personal injury cases, you need to contact lawyers in that field. Through oDesk, you can employ competent marketers from Thailand, Russia, or India for a very low hourly fee. You can write your job description to be extremely task specific, even telling them exactly where to find the leads and what to do with them. You could, for instance, offer .10 cents for each lead generated and email sent. Contacting 1000 prospects that would have taken you weeks, could instead now cost only $100 and can be done by several remote employees in a matter of hours.

5. Competitive SEO/PPC – iSpionage.Com

If you run an internet business and want to keep tabs on what your competition is doing with their SEO, iSpionage will be invaluable. All you have to do is search your competition’s URL and you can see which keywords they are using, their position and if they are buying PPC ads. You will find out approximately how much money they have spent and can even access the text for their AdWords ads, and how much traffic they are generating from their SEO. Their free service lets you search up to 10 domains or keywords per day, but for a fee of $59 to $129 you can have full access to all the information.

6. Corporate Intranets – BitrixSoft.com

This service is your one-stop shop for corporate intranets. You may not have heard of them, but almost 60,000 sites in Russia for media, government and corporations use it. With Bitrix, a competent programmer would be able to get corporate intranet, including employee pages, forums, messaging, blogs, video conferencing, and e-mail, in place very quickly. Their fees vary, depending on the size of the intranet service you need.

7. Social Network Building – Microworkers.Com

Feeling sad that you have no followers? Does no one ‘like’ you on your business Facebook page? This can be a real problem when you launch a new corporate Facebook page. At Microworkers for under $100 your social networking page will have hundreds of members right from the beginning. Now you won’t have to spend your own time trying to get a few ‘friends’ and Twitter followers. At Microworkers.com you can pay as little as .10 to .15 cents apiece for people to ‘like’ you on Facebook or ‘follow’ you on Twitter.

8. Invoicing and Business Processes – SideJobTrack.Com

The economy is bad and everyone is moonlighting, so how do you keep track of all your extra jobs? You can find quite a few online services that can perform invoicing and other business services. SideJobTrack.com is specifically designed for part-time contractors or people who do work on a variable basis, which is what sets it apart. You can create your own invoices and estimates from many different templates. You don’t want to pay for a standard invoicing/billing service if you only do these jobs a few times a year. Especially since SideJobTrack is absolutely free!

9. Software Translation – Transifex.net

If you are a software developer and want to market your program abroad, you might need to have your application translated into as many as 15 different languages. Often, programmers ask their users to translate the application in their native language or they may hire separate translators for every language. Transifex was originally created for open source translation projects but now offers its services for commercial applications as well. They have done translations for Firefox, Meego, fedora, GNOME, and django. At $30 EU per month, it’s very inexpensive. In comparison to other companies such as eLance the quality and speed is much higher and the fee much lower.

10. Legal Services– BatesExpress.com

Unless you work for a law firm, it is probably a good thing if you don’t what the Bates numbering system is. Lawyers, paralegals and clerks have to manually add Bates numbering, also known as ‘stamping Bates,’ to every single document in order to have courts accept them. BatesExpress provides a service that will automatically apply Bates stamps to any legal document, Word file, e-mail, image, or PDF file. BatesExpress has a free version as well as a paid version with more functionality.

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