JoTForm – Online WYSIWYG Form Builder
Today we had an interesting submission which can make life easier for a lot of people from novices to professionals. We all use forms on our websites to collect information about things like feedback, contact, polls etc. Creating forms is a hassle and sometimes the submission process can be a pain. JotForm is a solution for embedding a professionally designed form quickly and easily into your web pages.
The application is very user-friendly. A WYSIWYG interface is provided and creation of the form is as simple as dragging and dropping your required elements on the canvas. A little tweaking is all it takes to make the form look exactly the way you want and then you can give an email address where all the responses will be emailed. The generated code can then be used on your web page and bingo! you are good to go.
The service is free if your submissions are up to 100 per month. There are subscription plans available for the heavy traffic users.
What they say about themselves
JotForm is a web based WYSIWYG web form builder. You can drag and drop fields into your form visually. Create your form, and use the widget code provided to post it in your web site. Create contact forms, feedback forms, surveys, event registration forms, jot application forms, facebook forms and file upload forms. JotForm is free upto 100 submissions per month. If you will receive a lot of submissions, a Premium version is available at an affordable price.
Why it could be a success
A great resource especially for beginner web masters giving them the opportunity to create forms on-the-fly. They already have some pretty big shot clients which show you the potential and power of such a service.
Funding4Learning – A Crowdfunding Platform
Technology is helping millions around the world. The latest trend is crowdsourcing, where a lot of people around the world pool their resources together to complete a task. Funding4Learning takes the immense potential crowdsourcing has to offer and makes it possible for people to contribute towards the education of students who are unable to meet their expenses.
Working as a coordinator, Funding4Learning allows anyone to start a fund raising campaign. The persons starting the campaign are required to state in clear terms the goals of the campaign and the funds which are necessary for their needs plus any information they wish to let others know to make them understand the need of contributing. A reward system must be offered to the contributors although Funding4Learning does not ensure that it is actually realized.
The website uses Paypal for payment processing and takes a 5% commission on every successful campaign.
What they say about themselves
Funding4Learning is the first worldwide crowdfunding platform dedicated entirely to facilitate the financing of studies and educational projects around the world. The numerous financial restrictions and lack of funding for education, specially in emerging countries, is a major problem that hasn’t been addressed by both institutions and the media. Anyone can create a campaign where they tell their story, set a funding goal in accordance with the tuition fee, and offer interesting rewards to contributors. Funding4Learning allows users to create campaigns, share it with the online community through social networks, engage fans, track information about contributors, and collect money.
Why it could be a success
We can think of several reasons why this could be a success but the first thing which comes to mind is the noble idea. Helping students with their finances can make a difference in their lives by allowing them to concentrate on their studies rather than trying to make ends meet.
Seembee – Personal Document Management
Access to information anywhere, anytime is vital in business. We all know that keeping paper documents is cumbersome and difficult to file and retrieve. The solution is electronic archival and retrieval systems. These systems can be used to store huge amount of information at a relatively low cost and the data can be saved virtually at any place around the world. The problem is people still rely on paper most of the time. So the question about how to easily convert these to electronic format.
Take an example where you need to file some documents relatively quickly and on the move like a store receipt. Seembe is an iPhone application which provides you with the ability to take snapshots of a document, give it a title, assign tags for easy searching and add notes to it for recollection. This document can then be uploaded to your account for access at the office or home at a later time.
The application is free and the subscription charges are nominal. This application is an example where an occasional document needs to be filed electronically. For bulk volume, you have to look elsewhere.
What they say about themselves
We are offering an online personal archiving system, accessible anytime and anywhere. The smartphone is used as a front-end, for acquiring data and for quick viewing. The web environment provides extended capabilities for processing and manipulating the stored data. Fast, efficient and user friendly.
Why it could be a success
The facility to store any document electronically from a picture to a menu card or a classroom note, Seembee provides an easy to use interface packed with some powerful features. Its a pity that the application is targeted only for iPhone, and can use an expansion to other platforms as well.
peggsit – Quick Job Market
If you are looking for a quick way to find someone to do a job for you or you are looking for small work opportunities and you live in the California Bay Area, peggsit may be able to help you. A service similar to Craigslist, it aims to bring together employers and workers in the area for the mutual benefit for everyone.
The process is simple. Employers post their jobs along with the estimated budget in the listing and the workers can browse the listing to find the jobs which suit their specialty. Both parties can then correspond online to finalize the requirements. There are no fees involved and job posters are required to pay the applicant on the day the job is completed.
What they say about themselves
Ever wish you could hire someone to assemble your IKEA furniture? Do you want to earn $50 cutting the neighbor’s lawn? peggsit.com connects individuals and small businesses needing short-term help with local people willing and able to get the job done.
Why it could be a success
By giving the community a chance to help itself out by putting employers and workers in contact through a simple application, peggsit can soon become the next outsourcing portal for Bay Area. What they need is to expand their service to other cities to maximize the interaction and possibly incorporate a payment procedure to ensure the fairness of the process.
Knowledge Notebook – Making Learning Fun
Have you ever wondered about the best medium and technique there is for people to learn? I think when presented with visual data, I seem to focus more and learn a concept easily and quickly rather than reading it in text format. No wonder professors prefer the use of presentation slides in the lectures these days. Students too, take notes in classes which usually result in a lot of cluttered ideas and they are usually a headache to sort out and review.
Several software applications are available which help to organize and file the notes so that they can be of use later. We are going to talk about Knowledge Notebook. This software lets you take notes like you would in any word processor application. The notes can be filed using multiple tags. Now this alone would not make it stand out from the crowd.
What makes Knowledge Notebook great is the ability to make connections between different notes either using a visual or a textual approach. Helping you organize your notes into different categories, allowing you to create flash cards for quick memorization of ideas and examining and grading your learning by taking quick assessment tests makes it a truly unique application.
The price tag is $38, which in my opinion is a little high, specially for students on scholarships and lower financial status. Maybe they should incorporate some kind of support for these students as well.
What they say about themselves
A software that accelerates student learning. The starting point or the focus is on learning instead of the activity of note-taking. For business people and journalists the application is simply for note-taking.
Why it could be a success
Easy to use and can help in the final days leading to the exams by presenting a clean, summarized and comprehensive review material. Overall a solid application although I am not too enthusiastic about the price.
iTweetLive – Twitter Branding
A lot of businesses are using Twitter service to reach out to their clients. Twitter helps to connect people quickly and without any exaggerated costs. iTweetLive is a recent addition to the long line of application enhancing the Twitter experience for the user.
The application lets you search potential clients through keywords. Those who are matched to your specific business model can then be reached via personal or group messaging facilities. Using promotional advertisements, news and event announcements, a business can access the market easily while keeping the costs to a minimum.
Another interesting feature is the RSS feed which can be used to send tweets periodically to a predefined list of subscribers. In addition to this, real time monitoring of every activity makes this a nice resource.
What they say about themselves
iTweetLive is a Twitter management tool, created to maximize engagement with your targeted audience and increase brand exposure through personal, mass, real time conversations. Use iTweetLive to talk with a mass of people in a personal way . Talk to groups of people with a click while keeping it personal and fun.
Why it could be a success
Whether you are aiming for personal communication or reaching out to a group of clients, iTweetLive can help you in managing all your informal client communication needs. Using a per client charge, businesses can economize, budget and analyze all the costs in real time.
Facebook Email – They Just Flicked the Switch
Other users have reported this over the past few days but Facebook just flicked the switch for us, turning on their Email service integrating with Facebook messages. This could be a big move and potentially push a lot of Email traffic into the Facebook eco-system, which they can of course then scan, analyse and monetize.
I’ll be sticking with Gmail for now but after turning this on Facebook have no doubt leveraged their hundreds of millions of users to become one of the biggest email providers in the world at the flick of a switch.
China Attempts to Launch Asian Pixar or Dreamworks
The Chinese authorities’ have launched a 4.5 billion Yuan (around $350 million) complex aimed at mimicking the success of American animation powerhouses Dreamworks and Pixar. It’s been prompted by the success of Dreamworks’ Kung Fu Panda, the first animated film to take more than 100million yuan in China at the box office. The Chinese government’s response was to build this massive state sponsored complex outside of Beijing to churn out rival animated films. But it’s not easy for the state to effectively sponsor innovation, even in a liberal and open society. In China where the government is authoritarian and dicatorial (to put it lightly) creating innovation by diktat is not likely to out-do the free thinking creatives at Dreamworks, Pixar et al. in California. Quite how the Chinese expect to make money of their intellectual property in a country where the rights of content creators are routinely ignored and international copyright law doesn’t exist is another question altogether!
Perhaps the Chinese government/people will only care about enforcing copyright if they manage to create some intellectual property of their own worth protecting…
Birthday Gorilla – Personalized SMS
Customer relationship management or CRM is essential to the success of every business. It helps in finding and securing new clients, retaining existing ones and even entice former clients back for business opportunities. Effective CRM can reduce the costs of marketing and client service.
A major focus of business marketing is the advertisement of services on a personal level rather than focusing on a generic model. Using a personalized and targeted approach, a message can have a more profound effect on a customer. This is where Birthday Gorilla comes in.
Essentially, a marketing service, Birthday Gorilla helps businesses in reaching out to their clients by wishing them happy birthday via SMS and allowing them to attach personalized service offers like rebates which the customers can enjoy on this occasion. Following the KISS principle, the website is very user-friendly. You simply have to click on the date, add the necessary messages and the system will send out the SMS on the specified date. Each SMS costs around 25 cents and the basic plan starts from $4.50.
What they say about themselves
Birthday Gorilla is a SMS powered marketing site that enables businesses to market and engage with their customers on their birthdays. Using our service, Birthday Gorilla will automatically wish your customers a happy birthday on behalf of your business, via SMS. Businesses can then capitalise on this thoughtful contact by attaching a coupon or reward at the end of the SMS. Birthday Gorilla is a cheap and effective marketing tool for any sized business.
Why it could be a success
Well, who wouldn’t be happy if someone wished them happy birthday. By engaging your customers through personalized messages, businesses can make clients feel welcome and important to them. This in turn will translate into loyal clients and more revenue.
Let’s Gift It – Group Gifting Made Easy
Let’s Gift It is a relatively new website launched back in December 2010. It implements a simple business model giving users the opportunity to send gifts to other people. You may be wondering how this is different from other gift services. Well, it is, because it allows the gifts to be sent as a group.
The process is simple. All you need is a free account to start the process. Then it is up to you to choose an appropriate gift and send out invites to your friends or colleagues directly or via social networking websites like Facebook. Users can then visit the link and chip in with whatever amount they like. The contributions are anonymous as far as the recipient is concerned although the organizer can see this information. Everything from packaging to shipping is then taken care of automatically through the service interface.
Let’s Gift It uses Authorize as the payment processing system. The service also provides APIs for merchants to incorporate this functionality in their websites.
What they say about themselves
We help people buy and gift as a group. Lets Gift It is innovating in social commerce and gifting. We are one of the best social media apps enabling retailers and wish lists by providing a technology solution for social buying in electronic commerce. E-business and online merchandising sites are using social media campaigns to reach and engage with groups of buyers. Let’s Gift It taps into social networks to provide our e-Commerce partners with an alternative payment solution by deploying our SaaS group gift technology.
Why it could be a success
Simply put, small contributions pooled together can be used to buy something nice for a person you care about. Instead of individual gifts, people can use group gifting to buy something big and relatively expensive like iPod or a PS3.