Pajama Entrepreneur

I don’t know whether to call Pudding Media the most loathesome business model in the world or the most cynical, or both. Pudding Media is the latest company to take advantage of the “free services in exchange for ads” business model. We’ve seen free Wi-Fi in exchange for viewing ads (MetroFi) and free mobile phone service supported by ads (Blyk).

Now comes Pudding Media, founded by two guys who used to do intelligence work for the military. You can see where they got their ideas. This is the ultimate monetization of phone surveillance or snooping. They have a web-based phone service that lets you call any phone number for free (in the US for now), but they (or rather their software) listen in on your conversations and display ads on your browser.

Here’s what the NY Times says:

. . . Pudding Media is eavesdropping on phone calls in order to display ads on the screen that are related to the conversation. Voice recognition software monitors the calls, selects ads based on what it hears and pushes the ads to the subscriber’s computer screen while he or she is still talking . . . The company’s model, of course, raises questions about the line between target advertising and violation of privacy. Consumer-brand companies are increasingly trying to use data about people to deliver different ads to them based on their demographics and behavior online. Pudding Media executives said that scanning the words used in phone calls was not substantially different from what Google does with e-mail. Still, even some advertising executives were wary of the concept.

You might think it’s not different from Gmail, Google’s free web-based mail service that delivers ads on the side. But I think it is. There’s something very intimate about phone calls and I would be completely freaked out if strangers, even if it were a software bot, were listening in on mine. Of course Pudding’s founders don’t think so, having been in the military intelligence business. Does it help them to have the former chief privacy officer of Microsoft on their advisory board? It depends on whether you think Microsoft is a friend or foe of privacy.

I think most people will be freaked out by the idea even though Pudding says they don’t record your conversations.

Where it might work well: the sex chat industry

But I can see where it would be quite popular: in the sex chat industry. The caller dials a number via Pudding’s web-based service, sees ads on the side while he or she is chatting — although I think this destroys the pay-per-chat business model of sex chat businesses unless they offer this free version to their customers in exchange for seeing ads on a web browser (and the ads actually make up the lose in revenue).

Stylefeeder.com is the latest personal online shopping site that allows you to bookmark items you like (an iPhone, Gucci shoes, Dior bag), find “style twins” (people who share your taste), get product recommendations specific to your taste and solicit advice from others in the community about items you are thinking of buying. It’s a social network and bookmarking site around shopping that tries to match people’s tastes. Stylefeeder makes money by taking a cut on purchases made via your recommendations.

I signed up for a Stylefeeder account and found it very easy and fun to use. The best way to make use of Stylefeeder is to install a browser plug-in button so that whenever you find an item in an online shop, you can simply add it to your Stylefeeder list.

For example, you go to a store, click on an item, click the Stylefeeder button to add to your Stylefeed. A box pops up that allows you to pick the photo you want associated with the item and to edit any information about it. Click “add” and that’s it. You can also edit to add tags to the item, and add it to any groups that you have joined in the Stylefeeder community.

Stylefeeder is like Kaboodle, the other social shopping site that’s been around for a while and has a larger audience. Kaboodle describes itself as “social shopping community where people discover, recommend and share products. Kaboodle’s powerful shopping tools allow people to organize their shopping through lists, discover new things from people with similar style, get discounts on popular products and find best prices. At the heart of Kaboodle is a fun and engaging community of people who love to shop.”

Both sites encourage users to make lists of favorites, to tag items, create or join groups, make recommendations, rate items, etc. Kaboodle was recently sold to Hearst Magazines. The rumored price is $40 million (Kaboodle raised $5 million in VC funding).

I like Stylefeeder more than Kaboodle because Stylefeeder looks better and is easier to use. It’s less cluttered, more “Web 2.0″. Stylefeeder also lets you place widgets on your blog, website, Friendster and MySpace pages, and it has a Facebook application. But Kaboodle has the advantage in terms of the size of the community so if you are looking to join a group of beauty junkies who have already posted a lot of items, Kaboodle is better . . . for now.

There is such a demand for online sites that do taste search, not just for shopping, but also for travel, entertainment, eating out, and home decor. I expect Stylefeeder to attract a large audience very quickly.

Stylefeeder and Kaboodle founders motivated by similar problem: finding things that match their taste

The similarities between Stylefeeder and Kaboodle extend also to the founders. Both sites were started by couples who had difficulty shopping for things online to decorate their homes. In the case of Stylefeeder, she couldn’t find decent lighting in the US (see http://www.stylefeeder.com/about.html). Kaboodle’s About page says the founders were remodeling their home and couldn’t find products that matched their tastes.

Stylefeeder’s founder goes into his obsession with taste search, finding whom to trust when it comes to restaurant reviews, etc. (http://blog.tech.stylefeeder.com/).

I love Wordpress, the software behind this blog and Rosecantine. It’s easy to use, fun and versatile. And there’s a huge community of developers writing widgets and plugins, and creating beautiful templates for it. Mashable posted a list of more than 300 Wordpress tools so if you have not yet bookmarked that page, do so now.

Skype has been down for 24 hours. There is an alternative to Skype. It’s called Gizmo Project. It allows the same free calls to other users of Gizmo (and other VOIP networks and devices that use SIP). You can also make very inexpensive calls to landline and mobile phones, and get a phone number in certain countries.

If you call often from a computer to a landline or mobile phone, the quality fo the call is much better than on Skype (at least for a Mac user). So I use Skype for calls to my other Skype contacts, but Gizmo for calls to regular phones.

The quality of calls between Gizmo users isn’t always good.

Mashable has just created a Web 2.o marketplace for entrepreneurs who want to find software developers, sell or buy companies, provide development services, etc. Mashable was inspired by the recent trend of companies listing themselves for sale on eBay but apparently, they claim they got more leads from Mashable. Among the categories are websites for sale (and wanted), jobs available (and wanted) Facebook development services, software providers, etc.

Anyone who lists within 48 hours (starting August 14, 2007 — 03:15 AM PDT) gets a free listing. Mashable is thinking of charging $120 per month for listings but they’re open to other suggestions. 

Go to the Mashable Web 2.0 marketplace: http://market.mashable.com/ 

Om Malik posted an article today about Skype on the iPhone: “It took me less than two minutes to get up and running. Sending messages was as simple as typing SMS messages.” A German company has figured out a way to let iPhone owners use Skype via the browser on the iPhone (since you can’t install applications on the phone yet). I am sure AT&T is not too pleased about that but then again, they did not cripple the Wi-Fi functionality on the phone.

Meanwhile, Farhad Manjoo, Salon’s tech columnist, says that several UK ISPs are threatening to block access to BBC’s online videos. The problem is that the BBC uses a P2P application called iPlayer which allows people to view thousands of BBC videos online. ISPs say it’s a bandwidth hog and since they buy their bandwidth (wholesale) from BT, it’s costing them a lot of money and slowing down the network. Tiscali, a UK ISP, wants the BBC to pay them or else. The ISPs threat is making a lot of people scream for net neutrality rules in the UK where ISPs cannot block content at will if the content provider does not pay. Perhaps the ISPs simply have to charge more. Other countries are, for this reason, encouraging the deployment of fiber networks which provide much more bandwidth (at lower prices too).

I am on a roll. This week I weeded out time-wasting activities such as Twitter and Jaiku. I closed my account at Linked In, stopped responding to stupid emails, and deleted 75% of my RSS feeds. To get organized and save even more time, I decided to try Backpack, an online application from the amazing folks at 37 Signals, creators of Basecamp (project management and collaboration), Highrise (simple CRM) and CampFire (group chat). There’s a free and paid version. The free version does not include the Calendar and limits the number of pages you can create.

Here is how I use Backpack:

• Created FAQ for journalists who call me and ask the same questions about municipal wireless networks
• Make daily list of things to do
• Created trip planning page for upcoming trips with links to airline ticket, hotel reservation numbers, maps, interesting places to visit, restaurants to try
• Canned email responses I can just cut and paste into a response
• use Calendar to send me SMS alert before appointments

There are many more uses I will find for it, but I just started today and already I feel very organized and calm.

If you want to try it, please click on this link .