WebFugitive.com, Out To Launch.

The new local business review and ranking service at BizVotes.com exposes the best restaurants, plumbers, dentists, and other types of businesses across US cities. Business reviews and ranks are determined based on consumers’ experiences, meaning visitors can read reviews from real customers just like them, and local businesses can benefit from word-of-mouth marketing.

If a business takes care of its customers, it will naturally rank well at BizVotes. We aim to put the power back in the consumers’ hands, as their votes expose the truly best businesses in their local city or town.

Recent research shows that people tend to strongly trust information from those they consider to be like them (such as friends, family, neighbors, etc.). It’s also no secret that word-of-mouth marketing is one of the best ways for businesses to bring in new customers. The April launch of BizVotes.com, a new service where consumers can rate and write reviews of local businesses across the US, offers a hybrid of the two: both a consumer research tool and marketing platform for businesses, all while facilitating two-way communication between local businesses and their customers.

Open communication and Web-based conversations have become vital elements of the surge in social media. The potential for this interaction on the Web has led to an increase in “social consumerism” in recent years. From online product reviews to company blogs, consumers now have the ability to interact with companies publicly, making suggestions, complaints, or offering praise and recommendations.

At the same time, sites like Digg allow the average Web browser to vote on important news stories and what’s promoted. BizVotes.com combines the two, allowing customers to quickly vote for businesses they’ve had a pleasant experience with, whether or not they want to invest more time into writing a detailed review.

“Gone are the days where a business can just self-proclaim they are the best,” says Richard Parker, Founder and CEO of BizVotes.com. “If a business takes care of its customers, it will naturally rank well at BizVotes. We aim to put the power back in the consumers’ hands, as their votes expose the truly best businesses in their local city or town.”

BizVotes.com is a free site, and unlike many websites involving businesses, the site’s allegiance is with the consumer. Businesses listed at BizVotes.com cannot buy additional votes or preferential placement. The database currently contains approximately ten million businesses, and consumers or business owners have the ability to add listings for businesses not currently included.

My Thoughts ? Great concept, a new better business bureau. Finally people will stop going to Starbucks.

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Fun, giving and cash prizes are now available at www.iPlayiGive.com, a Web site that makes it easier for individuals to donate money to causes they care about - and provides them with an opportunity to win cash prizes up to $250,000.

Donors tell the Web site what their social concerns are (i.e. the environment, animals, education, etc.) but the actual work of finding respectable, trustworthy organizations is left in the hands of iPlayiGive.

Money is pooled with other customers’ contributions into a trust account with specific amounts earmarked for charities based on categories selected by the donor. Based on categories selected by individual contributors, iPlayiGive searches through a database of over one million organizations and finds a set of candidate organizations matching contributors’ interests. iPlayiGive then writes out checks to the recipient organizations once a quarter and sends a report to contributors listing the names of charitable recipients, how much money they received, and how customer selections were distributed across categories.

“People are busy, but still care about and want to improve society,” said President and cofounder Dr. Serban Porumbescu. “iPlayiGive simplifies the giving process by letting customers choose categories specific to their giving interests. The task of researching and finding a trustworthy organization is left to iPlayiGive.”

Prize drawings are designed to give odds of winning that are better than most lotteries and sweepstakes, he adds. In addition, unlike many existing lotteries and sweepstakes, iPlayiGive.com guarantees the grand prizes will be won each and every time a drawing is held.

iPlayiGive provides two types of charitable services. One is a traditional-type charity service in which iPlayiGive contributes money to organizations based on its customers’ selected interests. The other is a microcredit service that helps distribute loans to entrepreneurs in poverty stricken parts of the world like Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The great thing about the microcredit service is that the customers’ contribution is multiplied over time. When a loan is repaid the money is loaned out again in perpetuity.

“Keeping our customers’ information private and secure is extremely important to us,” says Vice President and cofounder Lael Heinig. “We never share our customer’s information with the selected organizations which allows the customers to rest easy knowing they won’t be contacted for additional contributions.”

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 Personal weather stations which are part of the WeatherForYou.com and HAMweather Personal Weather Station programs now have a rich, exciting new way to display their information. With the introduction of PWSweather.com these independent providers of weather station data now have graphs, tables, archived information and more for their use. And the Internet browsing public has an easy way to find weather information from thousands of stations that are closer and more relevant than traditional sources.

Thousands have installed personal weather stations throughout the U.S. and around the world. Since 2000, WeatherForYou.com and HAMweather have displayed near real time weather data from these stations. When a station owner has their own Web site, WeatherForYou.com includes this information so the public can find out more about their local station. In cases where a station does not have a Web site, their data is displayed with informative graphs and tables on PWSweather.com.

According to WeatherForYou.com founder Joe Torsitano, “We’re extremely excited to provide weather station owners a new way to present their data and the public the ability to easily find weather information closer to them.”

Visitors to PWSweather.com and WeatherForYou.com will find much more relevant information to their location than from other similar services. Most often when looking up weather information, current conditions like temperature come from the closest station operated by the National Weather Service. These official sources can be many miles away, thousands of feet different in altitude, in a totally different climate and an hour or more old. Personal weather stations bring weather information close to home, filling in the gaps in official reporting.

Most personal weather station owners want their neighbors and the world to be able to see their weather information. PWSweather.com provides an outlet for them to do so through an easy to use web site. Using the map, visitors can zoom in on their local area to find a weather station close to them. Clicking on that station’s information will open a summary of the current weather. Inside of that summary a link will show details including graphs and archived data.

My Thoughts ? Innovative. Customization is important to all new web companies. Now if you could only customize the actual weather …

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An experienced team of PhDs, software engineers, and former entrepreneurs, hailing from top universities throughout the world such as Harvard, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Peking University, and Princeton, has launched the public beta version of iSeeCars.com after having it in alpha for several months for testing and user feedback. iSeeCars.com is a revolutionary new Web2.0 search engine for used cars that gives consumers a powerful way to search for cars for sale across the Web and to discover and find the right car at the right price more easily, quickly and smartly. iSeeCars.com automates many of the manual, time-consuming steps that a consumer typically goes through today in the online search process.

With just one click, users of iSeeCars.com will be able to see used car listings from thousands of websites such as car classifieds sites like Craigslist, Cars.com, and Google; newspaper sites like New York Times and Boston Globe; and auction sites like eBay along with many local dealership websites

“With just one click, users of iSeeCars.com will be able to see used car listings from thousands of websites such as car classifieds sites like Craigslist, Cars.com, and Google; newspaper sites like New York Times and Boston Globe; and auction sites like eBay along with many local dealership websites,” said Jim Lee, a Co-Founder. “Think of iSeeCars.com as the Google for car classifieds. We conceived of and developed iSeeCars.com as a result of our personal frustrations with our own experiences in having to go through the tedious effort of performing multiple searches on multiple websites such as Craigslist, Cars.com, Autotrader and in having to spend an enormous amount of time manually combing through the car classified listings looking for the right car deal.”

My Thoughts ? Great concept. Well received. Now I can finally find an AMC Javelin at a great price.

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GreenEnergyChoice.com, a leading green energy site offering customers options to switch to renewable energy and purchase Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), suggests 5 simple ways for consumers to be green on Earth Day.

Ahhh Earth Day, a day where people commit to help raise environmental awareness around the world to promote a healthy, sustainable planet, is celebrated today, Tuesday, April 22. Earth Day is an event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities — more than a half billion people participate every year. One of the best ways to support this effort is to become involved.

GreenEnergyChoice offers 5 simple ideas on how you too can be green and contribute to the success of Earth Day:

• Minimize time spent in the car. An easy way to help reduce those harmful emissions is to leave the car at home for short trips. Also, consolidating errands into one big trip is more beneficial than making several smaller trips from home and back. Carpooling to and from work is another way to contribute to the environment as well.
• Unplug non-essential appliances. Many home appliances use low levels of energy even when they are turned off. Unplugging these appliances completely or plugging them into a power strip and turning the strip off are both ways to help reduce energy consumption.
• Scrape that dish! Instead of rinsing a dish before placing it in the dishwasher, scraping it is just as effective and doesn’t waste any water.
• Go green on grocery bags. An innumerable amount of plastic grocery bags are disposed of every single day — and the recycle rate is extremely low. Saving and re-using plastic grocery bags or getting a special cloth bag just for shopping are both great ways to be green.
• Renewable Energy Credits (RECs): When a consumer purchases an REC they ensure that somewhere on the grid, someone is receiving the benefits of green energy instead of fossil-fuel power. Doing so can help push renewable energy to the forefront of consumption, and helps reduce carbon emissions.

For a more long-term option, one of the simplest ways to make a difference in the environment is to purchase a renewable energy plan. GreenEnergyChoice customers can use the free online ordering system to research renewable energy plans — with the electricity that powers their homes being produced directly from resources such as wind, water, solar and more. Customers in areas that do not offer wind energy rate plans can still research other clean and affordable renewable energy options from several well-known and trusted energy companies or purchase RECs to offset a portion or all of the carbon emissions from their annual energy usage. Either of these options helps consumers participate in saving the environment for more than just one day out of the year.

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