DiscoveringStartups -Tech Startup Reviews

Moodler is a mood status updater and allows you to track the mood of your social network. It is also a convenient way of organizing snap polls on a trending topic

Moods lend the much needed semantic meaning to organizing information from your social network

Snap polling on practically any trending topic in real time. It doesn’t get bigger than that.

Not worked out for the moment. Probably advertising and trend information.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.moodler.in

Schooner has created a novel MySQL Enterprise Appliance built on a patent-pending integration of enterprise-class flash memory, Intel® Xeon multi-core processors, low-latency interconnects, and an optimized implementation of MySQL. This scalable solution delivers dramatic performance improvements over traditional servers, allowing the replacement of 8 or more of them with a single Schooner Appliance.

Schooner has emerged as the first company to bring such a solution to market and takes a holistic approach to optimizing these technologies to create servers optimized for the widely-used MySQL open-source database. Schooner’s appliances are delivered on a standard IBM server with innovative system architecture and software by Schooner.

Schooner’s game-changing technology results in dramatic server consolidation, 50 percent lower cost of ownership, 90 percent less downtime and new business opportunities based on fast access to terabyte-scale data. Some Schooner customers have replaced 12 standard servers with a single Schooner Appliance; others have seen a five times speed-up in their ad hoc MySQL database queries.

The performance issues, difficulty handling massive data growth, and energy inefficiencies associated with the scale-out of datacenters running MySQL are expensive problems for the enterprise. It was seeing these pain points that led Schooner to create a new generation of data-access appliances—ones that yield companies up to 11 times performance improvement and cut total cost of ownership more than 50 percent.

There are powerful new technologies ready for prime time, including enterprise-grade flash memory from suppliers such as Intel, the Intel Xeon multi-core microprocessor family which can support massive software parallelism, and high-speed Ethernet interconnects. Using any one of these technologies alone can improve performance and remove a bottleneck. Schooner’s innovation stems from its overall optimal use of all of these technologies together, running an implementation of MySQL tuned to exploit the parallelism offered by the multi-core processors.

Schooner sells its Appliances to a wide range of customers worldwide, from Web 2.0 properties to enterprise users. Schooner sells through direct sales and indirect channels including IBM, which is a worldwide reseller of the Schooner Appliances.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.schoonerinfotech.com/

Milton helps you manage your contacts, projects, and finances – all through one simple web-based application. Milton gives you everything you need and nothing you don’t to run a small service-based or freelance business. Manage your contacts, projects, and finances, including task management, time tracking, invoicing and expenses. Milton does it all.

Milton integrates contact management, project management, and finances into one application, designed specifically for freelancers and small service businesses. This is in stark contrast to stand-alone CRM and project management apps, not targeted to any particular market,

There are 5.7M small service firms and freelancers in the United States alone, and each one of them needs resources to effectively run their business.

We charge a monthly subscription fee to access Milton.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.yourmilton.com

Discover what your Facebook friends like on fbLike! fbLike provides Facebook users with a unique way to enjoy the web and see what their friends like. Search the real-time web and find interesting Facebook applications, games, groups, pages and more! Popular categories include sports, video, humor and International sites for France, UK, Italy and India.

fbLike adds a unique layer on Facebook’s existing platform and provides users with a dashboard to better experience the web and share their interests. While the existing Facebook platform helps users share content within their friend network, fbLike extends the user experience beyond their friend network and provides a peek into what millions of users are sharing/”Liking”.

Facebook has over 400 million users and the amount of content is overwhelming for users with a lot of links, photos, pages, etc. fbLike is an attempt to present a virtual dashboard for Facebook users by streamlining the content and making use of the FB’s Open Graph platform

- Recommend applications to users
- Sponsorship from premium websites who want to be featured
- Video sponsorship – trailers, upcoming movie clips, etc.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more:

ClearFit is a web-based tool that makes hiring easy for small businesses. We get candidates, assess their fit and qualifications and then generate a personalized interview template for each.

The system is patented and built with a predictive engine that leverage psychometrics. Psychometrics have been used for years by Fortune 500 companies and are proven to help predict employment success. Unfortunately, until now they have been expensive and the set up costs were huge. We’ve changed that.

While people are critical to the success of every business, hiring is a disaster. Despite all the “technological innovation” around hiring in the past 10 years, the results continue to be poor. High turnover, short tenures, and a huge number of “bad hires”.

ClearFit actually helps predict who will succeed in a job and it is built and priced to appeal to the nearly 10million, badly underserved small businesses in North America that hire each year.

Set-up is only 5 minutes and the first 5 candidates who apply are free. After that, employers pay $349 if they want to see all their other candidates (no matter how many there are).

We have about 900 companies that have used ClearFit to hire. Most of our business so far has come from either referrals or repurchases (hiring for other positions). We do plan to start marketing aggressively soon.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.clearfit.com

The Clyde Fitch Report provides news, information, reviews and commentary on the arts and politics in the U.S. — and in particular where those areas of American life meet.

There is no website currently that examines the nexus of arts and politics in American life. The site is also explicitly devoted to being bipartisan.

Unlike websites on the left or right that deal exclusively with politics (i.e., Daily Kos), and unlike websites focused on one artistic discipline (i.e., Playbill), the Clyde Fitch Report has the potential to act as a cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, cross-political hub of discussion and debate.

What the site needs is business development partner who can grow several areas simultaneously, changing the focus from the current New York-centric and theater-centric model to one that is more national, bipartisan and driven by news, commentary and information concerning the entire range of artistic areas, including but not limited to film, music, dance, digital, visual art, architecture and the like.

Advertising and sponsorships.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.clydefitch.com

WhatFriendsDo is a webtool to coordinate care, support and help for a friend going through a serious illness or life-changing event. Whenever someone is going through a crisis, everyone wants to help; this site provides tools for communication and help, along with guidance and suggestions.

WhatFriendsDo is a “take action” site. The site includes blog, guestbook and photos, which allow two way communication. Additionally, the calendar feature enables friends and family to help in the specific ways their friend needs. The PayPal feature allows for donations when financial assistance is needed. Tips for what to say/not to say, do/not to do are included in What Friends Need to Know. What Friends Do for Cheer offers ideas for getting in touch and staying in touch. Suggestions are posted monthly for group events, both practical and whimsical. Daily cheer ideas celebrate special activities with instructions for making any day special.

The concept of helping a friend in need is nothing new; pulling everyone together in one spot, on the internet, is what people are ready for and expecting. Today’s society is very mobile and counts on staying in touch instantly, but does not always know what to do and how to respond in difficult situations. WhatFriendsDo.com is a one-stop-site to obtain information as well as provide support for a friend in need. Because a team can be created instantly people do not have to figure out how to do this on their own. The market is huge, as nobody is exempt from life challenges, and when a crisis occurs, everyone wants to communicate and help – it’s what friends do.

Our original business model assumed revenue through ad clicks, affiliate purchases and sponsorships. We are in the process of implementing co-branding; an organization’s look and feel overlaying our technology.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.whatfriendsdo.com

Student Spill LLC—often known by the acronym of SPILL, standing for “Supporting Peers in Laid-back Listening”—is an online peer-based support system that allows college students to “spill” about their problems via email, and get personalized feedback from other local students with experience in their specific issue. Whether students are struggling with roommate problems, homesickness, worries about the future, romantic relationships, body image issues, concerns about sexuality, or even just a bad day, they can go to www.studentspill.com, choose the campus they’re writing in from, and vent about it. Within 24 hours, these anonymous “spillers” receive messages of support from 6-8 of SPILL’s volunteer “student facilitators” who provide feedback, empathy, and resources for that specific problem.

The company itself offers this service to colleges, universities, and distance-learning institutions as a mental health resource for their students. In turn, we provide them with reporting of the specific issues that students on their campus are dealing with, giving them an insider view of student problems.

Currently, no other online peer-based support services are in operation, nor have they successfully been able to start due to restrictions from campus counseling centers. SPILL, however, has formed a relationship with University Health Services, and is highly supported by counseling centers as an additional resource for mental health support. Though SPILL does not wish to be a replacement for counseling, students have expressed concern with being “exposed” or “embarrassed” by sitting in a counseling waiting room, with 40% saying the potential for being seen is enough to deter them from getting help. Similarly, campus counseling centers often have limited hours, and are not available late at night when students may need to talk to someone most. In addition, many students say that there is relief in sharing problems with another individual who is the same age and “on the same level” instead of a medical professional who may have graduated from college 30 years earlier and may not be on the same page. Since both parties’ identities are kept confidential, it allows troubled students to get encouragement and campus resources from peers when they may not know where to turn.

The need for mental health support services is apparent, and SPILL provides a tool that is greatly accepted and appreciated by both students and university personnel.

In addition, most schools have large sums of money reserved for “preventative programming” or “direct student services” used to purchase things like alcohol awareness programs or sexual assault intervention programs for anywhere from $50,000-80,000 annually. Unlike these, however, SPILL is not restricted to one specific issue, and gives students an outlet for all types of stressors. UW-Madison granted SPILL with $70,000 for 2010 after seeing the impact the program made within one year, and the company has been approached by over 25 interested schools over the last year. The program originated at UW-Madison and has since begun operations at 4 other colleges in the US. An additional 7 other campuses–schools such as Berkeley and Purdue–will be set up over the summer of 2010.

We will sell membership to the program and its documents to the universities at a yearly subscription fee, with an additional one time fee for initial start-up. Fees will vary based on school size, and specialized reporting can be purchased if the school expresses interest.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://studentspill.com/home/home.html

SlideRocket brings presentations to life in the cloud, creating stunning, high-definition, collaborative communication tools with quantifiable impact, no matter the platform, location or venue.

SlideRocket is reinventing presentations with its feature rich, innovative platform that lets you create, manage, share and measure your presentations in one complete and integrated application. Benefits of SlideRocket include:
*Create stunning presentations that engage your audience
*Access your presentations anywhere
*Cross platform compatibility for PC, Mac and Linux
*Measure message impact and audience engagement from presentation analytics
*Easily record audio on your slides enabling on demand presentations
*Share presentations via a link, or embed in a web site or blog
*Secure presentations to ensure corporate information is protected
*Manage a library of presentations, slides and assets across the organization
*Conduct HD web meetings and share presentations in real time

Since the creation of PowerPoint 25 years ago, presentations have climbed the corporate ladder to become second only to email in their importance to organizations. Forty million presentations are presented every single day, yet professionals still rely on old-fashioned presentation software, essentially creating static digital brochures. While other business applications such as email and word processing have moved to the cloud, why haven’t presentations? Professionals are constantly sharing, collaborating and in need of real-time analytics. SlideRocket gets this, and is tackling the lack of innovation in the space by helping users to efficiently build stunning and dynamic presentations that clearly communicate value, allow for interaction with the audience and provide measurable results with presentation analytics.

SlideRocket is software-as-a-service and offers basic accounts for free, individual plans ($12/month or $120/year) and business plans ($24/user/month or $240/user/year).

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.sliderocket.com/index_b.html

Ruxter is an online application providing small businesses and organizations free and easy access to self-service mobile marketing.

Following the free registration, users gain access to the Ruxter Site Builder application, a easy-to-use template allowing a mobile-optimized website to be quickly created using an organization’s own text, graphics and links.

A Ruxter Site Owner’s mobile website can be viewed on any mobile device with a browser. When combined with our low-cost integrated texting capability, this allows Ruxter users to quickly launch a mobile marketing campaign for their business and begin reaching their customers with mobile coupons, news, and events sent directly to their mobile phones.

Ruxter gives anyone the power of the mobile web and permission-based mobile marketing, simply and at low cost.

Traditional mobile marketing has been dominated by apps, agency-driven mobile campaigns, and custom mobile web development. None of these fit the needs of the over 25 million small businesses in the U.S. This market has been underserved by low-cost mobile marketing tools. Ruxter fills this gap by giving anyone access to a free mobile-optimized website and low-cost texting for a simple, low-cost mobile marketing campaign.

Ruxter follows the ‘freemium’ model of online applications providing a simplified and low-risk entry into mobile marketing for small businesses and not-for-profit organizations. This low barrier-to-entry service, combined with the lightweight aspects of mobile sites; allow Ruxter to scale from launch to substantial traffic and volume without large investments in IT and staffing.

Ruxter’s revenue is derived from multiple sources: first, from bulk text/SMS sales to individual Ruxter site owners, secondly, from the Ruxter Mobile Advertising Platform, which allows Ruxter sites to extend their reach through hyper-local mobile advertising. Lastly, Ruxter provides modular “Expedite Mobile Startup” tiers of service providing new customers with site development and mobile marketing assistance.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.ruxter.com