New to QBase:

Shrink the Web

ShrinkTheWeb empowers webmasters to easily (and with little to no knowledge of HTML) show website previews next to links (or using a mouse hover bubble). This service is free for 99% of users...

FD Career

FD Career is your personal and professional development community. Every time you gain an internship, get a high GPA, or become a leader of an organization, you level-up on the site.

Aircell

After winning the FCC's recent air-to-ground spectrum licensing auction, Aircell is spearheading a Wi-Fi revolution that will change the airline and business aircraft passenger experience

implu Corporation

Implu is an online tool for prospecting, networking and market research. No other site keeps you informed with daily news, custom searches and daily email alerts.

Refocus Imaging

Refocus Imaging, Inc. is an early-stage company headquartered in Mountain View, California. Refocus is taking the next big step in photography, transforming the camera into a powerful computational platform.

Top Discussions

Would you use SaysMe?
SaysMe is a new service that allows users to buy and create your own TV ads that get shown on TV. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see why anyone would want to do this as an individual. Maybe I’m missing something.

Yahoo Widget TV
So yahoo and intel have teamed up to bring interenet functionality to regular television sets. Using existing technologies such as flash, javascript, xml, etc they hope to have you the viewer use the tv to surf the web for things like tracking stocks, sports teams, etc.

Remember, QBase is a free service that anyone is welcome to edit and/ or add their own startup. If you’re not on QBase yet, what are you waiting for, and all content is syndicated through Tradevibes to Mashable and ReadWriteWeb as well.

What was hot on QBase last week + QBase Exchange is a post from: The Inquisitr

New Companies

GT Solar
GT Solar International (NASDAQ: SOLR), based in Merrimack, NH (USA), is the parent company of GT Solar Incorporated, and is a global provider of ingot casting furnaces, polysilicon reactors and…

BumpTop
BumpTop is a fresh and engaging new way to interact with your computer desktop. You can pile and toss documents like on a real desk. Break free from the rigid and mechanical style of standard…

Shopflick
What is Shopflick? *It’s a great new way to discover the most fascinating sellers and coolest new products online. *Watch entertaining videos directly from the designers, merchants,…

Etchstar
Etchstar.com started because we thought electronic devices like iPods and cell phones were boring so we searched for a way to express our creativity through technology. Etchstar.com is an on-demand…
UberSpat – UberSpat.com is a debating site that allows users to submit articles and blog posts, much like people do on Digg. This evidence can be submitted in support or in opposition to a debate. This evidence…

Top Discussions of the Week

New User Interface
What do you think about the new profile interface for Facebook?
Is Digg worth $200M? Should Google buy it?
Google is again rumored to be looking to acquire Digg. This time for about $200M. Do you think Digg is worth that much? They have roughly 25M monthly unique visitors, so the price is roughly $8 per monthly visitor.
Scopings – new kind of a recruiting platform
We have recently launched a different kind of a recruiting platform for beta, called Scopings – I would love to get your opinions about it.

If you’re thinking about advertising, the top 728×90 spot on The Inquisitr is also displayed on QBase, adding thousands of extra page views to the mix. Details here.

What was hot on QBase Last Week is a post from: The Inquisitr

Fever Pitch

TradeVibes is running the Summer Fever Pitch contest with an aim in finding the hottest new startups on the planet. The winner gets a one-hour meeting with well known investor Ron Conway. Check out a list of participating companies here and vote Bullish for the companies that you think deserve a shot. Voting has already started and the company that’s ranked the highest by August 15th will win the prize.

If you would like to enter your company, go to your company’s QBase profile and add “feverpitch2008” to your company’s list of tags. Then reach out to your friends and fans and get them on to QBase to vote. The contest rules can be found here.

New to QBase

DimDim – Dimdim’s founders hoped to make the world a smaller place – by creating a simple, free service that lets everyone everywhere to communicate using rich media in real time.
Conectados, Inc. – Conectados is a Spanish language social network to find others who share your interests. You can share photos and videos and blogs with others in the community.
Challenge Games – Challenge Online Games (Challenge Games) creates online games that are fun and easy to play whether you’re a serious or casual gamer.
OmniDate – OmniDate provides singles with virtual dating environments (e.g., a virtual coffee shop) where they can get to know each other before meeting in person.
tomatic – tomatic is a holding company by Thomas Marban that funds and creates micro web properties and currently runs popurls and readbag.

Top Discussions

Dimdim’s Future
The concept behind Dimdim is nothing revoutionary, but among its competitors, I think it is the only one that is open source. Additionally, its presence around the globe – it has an office in India – will undoubtedly give Dimdim an advantage on the global market. The next few months will be very crucial for Dimdim as it upgrades features and markets apps.

Lab Pixies – Good Business Model?
It looks like Lab Pixies has a nice product and I think, a viable business model. This company is a widget maker that makes little applications you can add to your homepage (google, netvibes, etc) Some of their widgets allow users to search amazon from their home page or add google maps.
Do you think this info/user sharing can be a good source of revenue? I do. Do they have…

What was hot on QBase Last Week + Enter the Fever Pitch Competition is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you’ve not jumped in to QBase yet, it’s a great place to discuss the latest startups, contribute links and information, and even get some traffic back.

New to QBase

Where the Locals Eat – At Where The Locals Eat, we’ve assembled a hardy band of certified foodies — passionate gourmands to near-omnivores – who eat out a lot and know the difference between a restaurant special and a special restaurant.
MyGallons – Save money by pre-purchasing gas at today’s prices, then fill up with your MyGallons Card when prices rise.
Identi.ca – Identi.ca is a micro-blogging service based on the Free Software Laconica tool. If you register for an account, you can post small (140 chars or less) text notices about yourself, where you are,…
51.com – 51.com is the largest social network service provider in China. 51.com is committed to offer its users stable services to store their personal data such as photo and blogs
fring – fring is a mobile Voice over Internet Protocol (mVoIP) application that allows users to make free calls and live chat over cellular data networks or a Wi-Fi connection.

Top discussions

Quant Doerr Scoring
A reader of my venture scoring blog wanted me to start a thread about Quant Doerr.

Well, its a proprietary stat regression analysis of past venture successes, and essentially I am trying to predict and score early stage venture funded companies. I have setup a virtual fund which has invested in over 10 deals since last October.

Where Locals Eat – Is it different enough?
There seems to be lots of sites for selecting a place to eat, yelp, chow hound, etc. Where Locals Eat adds the new feature of combining GPS and the new iphone to literally direct people to a restaurant in real time. Do you think this app and the tons of content on their site will keep users coming back for seconds?

Remember, if you’re a startup, and you’re not on QBase/ Tradevibes yet, you are missing out on eyeballs from The Inquisitr, Mashable and ReadWriteWeb, so get moving, and click here to sign up.

What was hot on QBase last week is a post from: The Inquisitr

Every now and then we’ll be updating what’s hot and new on QBase. If you haven’t checked it out yet or registered, click here. All data is user contributed and shared across the Tradevibes network, including Mashable’s MashCoInfo. You can also add relevant stories from other sites or your own site, and the service also includes startup discussions and even social voting on the biggest stories of the day. If you’re a startup and you’re not listed yet, what are you waiting for?

New to QBase

Buybak – BuyBak offers retailers and online sellers websites with the ability to purchase online directly from consumers their no longer wanted consumer media (Books, CDs, DVDs, and Games) and Consumer…

Bookswim – Bookswim is a netflix style rental service for books targeting students. BookSwim launched in May, 2007, is America’s only nationwide hardcover/ paperback online book rental library club with free…

Playfish – Playfish is a social games company that develops and publishes video games on social networks like Facebook. Founded in October 2007 by casual and mobile games veterans and backed by Accel Ventures…

Frengo – Frengo is the global leader in creating and powering social media and entertainment services on top of popular social networks and across mobile devices. Frengo builds upon the “social graph” of…

RateItAll – RateItAll is an online community built upon one of the most extensive and diverse online databases of opinions, ratings, and reviews in the world. Participating members of RateItAll can earn cash for…

Top Discussions

How do you like Kosmix’s new general search engine?
Kosmix just revamped their site to be more of a general search engine instead of a bunch of topic specific vertical search engines (health, cars, travel). The search results is a mashup of their own results plus searches from YouTube (videos), social networks, and other sites. It feels very crowded to me. I’m curious on what others think…
Interesting View of Current Events
If you haven’t checked out Soda Head it’s a fun site that let’s you read public comments and share your opinion about current events. I think it’s a great time waster but lacks in the real information.
Can a site survive/thrive as simply entertainment?

What was hot on QBase last week is a post from: The Inquisitr

Scale is important when offering any service like this, which is why we’ve teamed up with Tradevibes for the service as opposed to doing it by ourselves.

As I wrote in my review of companies in this space June 12, Tradevibes appeal comes from its collaborative approach to data, being a focused wiki from the start that values user contributions as it is built on them. That collaborative model extends to data sharing with other sites, for example Mashable has a similar deal in place with Tradevibes, so contributions from QBase will also appear on Mashable’s service, as their contributions will be visible here.

There was some emotion involved with going with a product like this, however a compelling pitch and product ultimately won the day for Tradevibes. It is not an attack on anybody else, despite the delusional private rants of one competitor preceding this announcement. I have long preached that the build it and they will come days have past, and Tradevibes is a company that gets it, while others are completely clueless. I also have faith in Tradevibes ability to move forward in a competitive space, with investors such as Dave McClure and Ron Conway backing the company.

Please feel free to visit QBase and register if you haven’t already (you sign up for a Tradevibe’s account, so you can use it across any Tradevibes derived property). Naturally you can edit or add information about any company, including your own, and you can also add links to stories on companies as you see fit (no spam please, but context is perfectly fine). If you do need to place company information on your blog or website check out the easy to use widget on each page. You’ll be seeing them regularly here on The Inquisitr (not every post, but where they fit and add to a story), and it’s a handy feature.

Introducing QBase is a post from: The Inquisitr