It was a difficult decision, but we have decided it is the end of the road due to lack of activity. Thanks to everyone that visited and supported us in the past.

Spigit is a new business community tailored towards entrepreneurs wanting to post their new business and/or product ideas, gather feedback, form a team and running the idea through a market simulation game.

A “launchpad for emerging technologies”, the simulation engine gives the entrepreneurs an opportunity to test their ideas against simulated market forces with a share trading, review and voting system of Spigs (a thumbs up vote) and a Scrap (as it is obviously described).

“Through our proprietary simulation they can build and refine an idea, find the right resources to contribute, create buzz, and calculate a multitude of targeted metrics to provide insight into viability and simulate the likelihood of success. The spigit simulation engine measures and quantifies interactions on social networks. The spigit simulation engine captures dynamic feedback from all participants, tracking hundreds of dynamic events and through a series of algorithms, computes results producing valuable predictions and identifies key social connections to maximize professional and economic gains.”

With the Spigit business simulation, the entrepreneur has to go through 3 distinct stages - The Incubation, Validation and Emergence. The entrepreneur or founder of the business must complete several requirements, criterion and milestones to advance to the second and third stages. The 3rd stage allows the founder to pitch their ideas to believers for its IPO and managing the IPO ensuring maximum return on investment for all its sponsors and investors. The idea that gains the highest peak market capitalization over a quarter wins the game with a Spigit Splash! Award.

This is a useful and invaluable business exercise for the would be business. While creating a less risky scenario for judging public demand, it is a proving ground of sorts for new ideas so that entrepreneurs can decide whether or not an idea has legs before investing real time and money.

The only hesitation I would have in going through this simulation is the fact that ideas that are put out to the public as an imaginary company have the likelihood to be stolen by another person or company. At the moment, Spigit does not offer any special patent protection for the new ideas, therefore one must be careful and extremely comfortable with publicly putting your idea there. You may want to get legal advice on how to protect your idea or individual documents before exposing it on Spigit.

Spigit is co-founded by Paul Pluschkell (CEO) and Padmanabh Dabke (CTO) and is based in Pleasanton, California.

PingMe keeps track of things you need to do by creating a Ping i.e. a set reminder that you can receive by Email or Phone Text Messaging.

Pings can be used to remind you of social events, sales activities, task coordinations, important tasks and more. Being interactive, you can automatically reply to that Ping to reschedule it for another date or time. Logging into your customized PingMe page allows you to see your reminders arranged as interactive Post-it type notes neatly organized and tagged appropriately.

There is also a handy Contact System that allows you to share, send and receive Pings from friends, family and co-workers easily. What is extremely useful is that PingMe can be set to constantly bug you until you finish doing or confirm the task in question - a kind of online interactive alarm clock snooze feature like what Microsoft Outlook has on your desktop and much needed in the mobile world.

Developed by Zetetic LLC, PingMe is a perfect way to “keep intouch with yourself”, stay efficient, organized and to keep up with your busy schedule — a perfect Life Hack. Zetetic LLC makes 2 other software packages to include STRIP (A Secure Tool for Recalling Important Passwords for the Palm) and simAXS (A Single Sign-on simulator)

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 15 — Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced that its award-winning office productivity software, StarOffice(TM) (http://www.sun.com/staroffice), is now available through the Google Pack software download service. StarOffice is Sun’s commercial implementation of the popular open source office suite OpenOffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org) and supports Open Document Format (ODF). StarOffice is also compatible with Microsoft Office documents and is supported and indemnified by Sun. Google Pack is a free collection of essential software to help users set up their computers, find things faster and stay safe online.

In addition, Sun also announced that it has added web search functionality to all StarOffice products, enabling online search capabilities directly from its productivity suite. This new functionality is now available through the Google Pack download.

“Using ODF within StarOffice allows for interoperability and choice among those seeking free and open standards-based office productivity applications,” said Rich Green, executive vice-president of Software, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “With OpenOffice.org adoption growing at nearly three million downloads a month, we are seeing overwhelming adoption and exciting new opportunities emerging. We are absolutely thrilled to offer a new version of StarOffice that includes Google’s web search capabilities.”

Google Pack offers users a safe and easy way to install all the essential software they need in a matter of minutes. The addition of Sun’s StarOffice gives Google Pack users free access to an enterprise-strength office application. Starting now, users can install StarOffice as part of the Google Pack installation process. For more information about Google Pack, please visit http://pack.google.com.

About StarOffice

StarOffice software is a powerful, affordable, and comprehensive office productivity suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, database, drawing program, web publishing application) that runs on Solaris(TM), Windows and Linux. Compatible with Microsoft Office, it includes a built-in PDF export tool and supports ODF, XML, Flash and HTML. Based on OpenOffice.org software, StarOffice software suite is indemnified and supported by Sun Microsystems.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision — “The Network is the Computer” — Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://www.sun.com.

    FOR MORE INFORMATION:
    Chhandomay Mandal
    Sun Microsystems
    (603) 589-0576
    chhandomay.mandal@sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, Solaris, StarOffice and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

Me.dium is a cool browser download that shows you the activity behind the web pages you browse and other web pages others are looking at.

Their concept is based on the fact that in the real world, the people and activity around you affect your decisions and behavior, and that “no one has ever been able to benefit from these environmental influences online.” Me.dium allows you to do just that i.e. revealing the hidden and the online world clearly.

When you load up the software, you’ll see a floating iconic map of other pages based on Me.dium’s recommendations, the characteristics of the page you are looking at, or the pages you have recently visited. The other pages that are recommended are tailored to your browsing preferences automatically. Other floating web page icons are based on real time web pages of other Me.dium users currently on the web.

Clicking on the a featured “Talk” tab, allows you to simultaneously chat with the individual users on that particular website and subsequently put him/her on your friends list.

For the security minded guys out there, Me.dium only stores 4 things when you use the software - web-page (URL) visits you choose to share with us, your most recently visited web-pages, your list of friends, and any profile information you choose to share with us.

“Me.dium never captures log-in information when you are visiting a secure (HTTPS) website or accessing authentication information stored in your system’s cookies. For example, if you’re logged into an e-mail program, such as Yahoo! Mail, your e-mail is not visible to users; rather other users see a blank Yahoo! Mail log-in page without any personal identifying information. Similarly, whether you choose to be anonymous or not, Me.dium does not have nor does it give anyone access to your computer or files.”

Me.dium is a twist in usual online social networking and allows you to interactively discover your likes/ dislikes based on online environmental behaviors. A great concept and a great tool!

About Me.dium

Me.dium is a Boulder, Colorado company and is founded by David Mandell, Robert Reich and Peter Newcomb. Currently headed by Kimbal Musk, it officially launched on August 6th and currently supports IE7 and Firefox.