Re: The Wow Factor

From: Scott Allen <scott_at_thinkingforaliving.com>
Date: Mon 14 Apr 2003 09:03:00 -0600

www.bruceclay.com/searchenginechart.pdf - OK, this may be old-hat for
some of you SEO veterans, but this is an absolutely indispensable
reference for anyone dealing with search engines. It's just a really
nice visualization of some otherwise very complex, incestuous
relationships.

www.hiveware.com/enkoder_form.php - Really cool spam-prevention tool. It
encodes your e-mail address in such a way that spambots (unless they're
SUPER-sophisticated) can't harvest your mailto: links, but they look
perfectly normal to the typical user.

www.openoffice.org - It really does hold its own against MS Office
pretty well.

www.lonelyplanet.com - Absolutely the best user interface and most
interesting information for a world atlas / travel guide I've seen on
the Web. And it's REALLY fast, too - would like to know what they're
running on their end.

www.webtrain.com - WebEx-like conferencing for less than 1/3 of the
price, with integrated e-commerce and VOIP included.

www.discount-hosting.com - $10 a YEAR hosting including 50 Meg space,
5Gb/mo. Bandwidth, PHP, 5 Meg of MySQL space, etc. No frills (no mail
servers), no upgrades, but for small static or PHP-script-based sites,
you can't beat it. I run a dozen domains on there and have had zero down
time.

www.cafepress.com - Although I've heard that the logos wash off the cups
if you put them in the dishwasher, it's pretty unique. They offer a huge
variety of ad specialties (T-shirts, posters, mugs, undies, etc.) all
print-on-demand with zero setup cost.

www.ryze.com, www.ecademy.com - Unbelievable the amount of business
connections I've gotten through these sites.

www.trendwatching.com, www.springwise.com - These are the two coolest,
hippest, most stylish newsletters you'll ever see about new trends that
represent market opportunities, and about specific new business
ideas/opportunities based on hot new trends.

www.onlinebusinessnetworking.com - This is my new site (shameless
self-promoter at work), but I put it in here because I couldn't believe
a) how fast we got TWO major New York agents wanting to represent our
book, and b) how fast the distribution of our weekly tip and featured
site has grown, not directly, but through free syndication. We're
supposedly reaching something like 30,000 people in less than six weeks
after launch.

Hopefully everyone will find at least one thing in this list that wows
you, too. I'd love to hear feedback on these from everyone.

Scott Allen
http://entrepreneurs.about.com
www.onlinebusinessnetworking.com
www.searchenginemanagers.com
www.speakingofbusiness.com




Received on Mon Apr 14 2003 - 10:03:00 CDT