For many Web startups, the elections offer an opportunity to showcase their technologies and reach people who might never otherwise hear about them. Vineet Choudhary launched his startup Perspctv around the elections. The site is a one-page dashboard that gives a snapshot of how Obama and McCain are doing in the polls, the news, the blogosphere, and Twitter, among other things. The site proves nothing about the election’s outcome, but it does provide a useful dashboard for monitoring it from different perspectives.

But the election site was just a dry run. The real point of Perspctv is to give marketers a way to monitor how their brands are being talked about across various media. As the election concludes, Choudhary is transitioning the site to become a new-media dashboard for marketers. You can already search for any terms and see how much online buzz they are generating. The screenshot above, for instance, shows a comparison of “Android,” “Blackberry,” and the “iPhone.”Source:TechCrunch

Finnish mobile giant Nokia has announced that it is trimming down and cutting over 600 positions, mainly in marketing and sales departments. The Nokia Research Center (NRC) will also focus on fewer research areas in the future.

Nokia is also closing an entire site (Turku) by the end of January 2009, but hopes to relocate all of its 220 employees to Nokia’s site at Salo or in the capital area in Finland. The changes in the Markets unit, Nokia Research Center and in other Nokia functions will come into effect on January 1, 2009.Source:TechCrunch

During a demonstration run of a Tesla Roadster in Southern France, the driver (who was demoing it for the passenger) attempted to take a wet corner a bit too fast and ended up going off the road, smashing the front left and rear right quarters of the car. The passenger was thrown clear, luckily not through the windshield, but miraculously neither party was seriously injured.

Back in April, Yahoo acquired IndexTools, a provider of analytics software based in Hungary. Today, that service has re-emerged as Yahoo Web Analytics, and is being offered as a limited beta to customers of Yahoo Small Business – the company’s suite of tools for helping small businesses market and sell products online. Additionally, the tool will also be made available to select Yahoo advertisers.

As you might expect, Yahoo Web Analytics includes integration with other Yahoo products. For example, you can analyze the effectiveness of Yahoo search marketing campaigns and track how well individual products within your e-commerce shop are trending. The product will naturally be compared to Google Analytics, the free offering from Google that has similar integration with AdWords.

While it may be late to the party, Yahoo Web Analytics is apparently a big upgrade for Yahoo Small Business customers. Mashable contributor Sean Aune is a user of the service, and sent along the following screenshot as an example of what the service’s rather archaic reporting looks like today:

If nothing else, if you look at the screenshot below of the new service, it would seem that Yahoo Web Analytics has just received a long overdue upgrade:

Yahoo plans to roll out the service gradually to its Small Business Customers through the end of the year and expand the offering to other users in 2009.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Yahoo Acquires Analytics Company IndexToolsGoogle Analytics Gets a Beautiful New InterfaceGoogle’s Urchin Software Released As Public BetaGoogle Analytics Announces New Features, Urchin UpgradeE-mail Organizer Xobni Goes To Invite-only BetaCompete to Launch Search Analytics–Its First Paid ServiceQuantcast Launches New Analytics Tools

Source:Mashable!

Company Name

CarZen

20-Word Description

CarZen is a new car research and buying site that provides the most simple and personalized experience anywhere.

CEO’s Pitch

CarZen is the most efficient and powerful car search tool on the Web that provides the most simple and personalized experience. We are focused on delivering content better and faster and pain-free experiences that empower consumers to make better car-related decisions. CarZen is auto enlightenment. Visit www.carzen.com.

Mashable’s Take

The news of automotive woe has been made abundantly clear over the past few seasons. GM, Ford, Chrysler and others have all experienced drops of one degree or another. All are cutting output. The financial crisis that has reached global proportions is also naturally impacting consumer decisions.

This doesn’t necessarily mean cars won’t be purchased. They will. Only, there is ever more prominence being given to the matter of what cars will be bought up. And that’s where CarZen comes in.

The choices available to consumers in the auto market is pretty immense, which the consumer largely enjoys. But it also means that doing one’s due diligence in researching an appropriate vehicle isn’t a five-minute exercise. People pore over data for hours, even days, visiting and revisiting websites of auto manufacturers and review sites and fiddling with brochures and debating things like utility and aesthetics. What CarZen aims to do is eliminate much of the scavenger hunt.

The way in which CarZen functions is, in a word, elegant. Not only are the layout and colorway friendly, but as you traverse its various pieces, it’s clear that quite a bit of thought has gone into its creation. Attention to detail has definitely been paid. Graphical transitions don’t crowd out the data, but they do seem to add an extra bit of weight to the whole project. It’s like the proverbial car door test. Does it open and close with a secure thunk, or is it a little rattly, for lack of a better word? CarZen displays quality throughout.

You may think it’s not social enough, that it’s more about aggregation of statistics than collective critique. And for the most part, this is true, at least for the time being. But given the parameters set by CarZen’s creators from the outset, I find it to be a really pleasing creation. It’s no real replacement for an amalgam of AutoBlog, Top Gear, Fifth Gear, Edmunds and the rest, but it definitely has its place among the mix. It makes car searching a smidge easier, and if you’re torn between makes and models, price points, sizes, and styles, CarZen makes the shopper’s role less hectic. If that sounds like something you could use, then by all means do. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

To get your invite, go to the CarZen homepage and enter your email address, and CarZen will follow up with your username and password.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

The Wall Street Journal rolled out their long awaited new look over the weekend, and I actually had a chance to take a look at it yesterday due to all the AIG/Lehman brothers mess as I tried to get a handle on what was going on. What’s interesting, aside from the design itself is that they’ve implemented community and social networking features that are almost completely unique to the web we all know and love; the WSJ socnet is (like much of the featured content) behind a paywall.

PaidContent called the new look “dark and brooding,” but I think it’s just the newspaper being overly emo and dramatic amidst some particularly depressing economic news-cycles.

Fellow Mashable writer Leslie Poston wrote about this earlier yesterday over at Tech.Blorge that the Journal may have completely missed the boat putting their social network behind a paywall.  I’m not sure I’m in complete agreement:

The Wall Street Journal decides to launch its own social network. Unfortunately, this is one of many attempts at entering the social media for enterprise space that screams “You’re doing it wrong”.

How is the Wall Street Journal missing the boat with their attempt at community building? For starters, they have made their community an exclusive, behind-close-doors paid subscription service. By trying to be another FaceBook or LinkedIn for paid subscribers and excluding casual visitors and readers, the Wall Street Journal effectively eliminates the most important aspect of social media for enterprise - community building.

While I’ve never been a fan of the pay-wall in general, there have been a number of situations where I think it’s a very viable business model. PEHub, for one, offers some of very advanced information that’s available by paid subscription only. The information contained therein is generally only useful for a very short and finite period of time, and the folks it ends up being useful to usually have the money to pay for it.

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal came from those same roots.  In recent years, they’ve gone a lot more mainstream with their editorial policies, not to mention their readership.  Chances are, though, if you use the Wall Street Journal as your filter on the news, you belong to a somewhat elite community.

Getting access to the minds and the contacts within that elite community are almost as much of a selling point to pony up the fee to get behind the paywall as the content itself.

In other words, mark it on your calendar folks, because we may be witnessing the first successful attempt to sell access to a social network.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:YellowPages Redesigned to Better Accommodate Local SearchFacebook Profile Redesign: Sandbox Now Open to DevelopersFacebook Sets Second Redesign Launch Attempt for TonightStop The Press - Mashable Redesign Leaked!BoingBoing Gets a Gadget Blog, Comments and RedesignFacebook Puts Off Early April RedesignYahoo Rearranges Homepage, Moves Logo To Center

Source:Mashable!

vLane is a new automotive research site that can help car buyers by providing a great deal of information from other car buyers and owners. They try to accomplish this by accumulating as much opinion and information that they can about vehicles from people with real world experience. Users can gather a ton of useful feedback because it isn’t the usual marketing hype or sales propaganda.

Considering the Source

The most important element to vLane is its reliance on its members for their thoughts and opinions on vehicles. After all, you will be relying on those opinions a great deal when you’re researching a vehicle to purchase. Think of it like the Ebay ratings for buyers or sellers, only applied to cars. You can add other members whose opinions you trust as a contact just as you can on social networks. This way, you can build a knowledgeable and helpful circle of friends that can all help one another when it comes to researching vehicles.

Don’t become a Deer caught in the headlights

The vFinder feature is a helpful tool for finding the exact vehicle that you want and need. There are plenty of sliders to help you select all of the options that you want in the vehicle. OK, none of this is ground-breaking but the thing that makes it different is the ability to ask questions about anything you want. The vLane community will usually respond with answers to your question in much the same way that Yahoo Answers does.

Research and Analysis

The Research area provides even further ammunition as you search for the best deal for your vehicle. It has reviews from owners of that particular vehicle as well as Polls which track the questions that other car buyers have had for that model. It’s a great way to learn things you never would’ve thought to ask about or look into. The comparison feature is another very useful tool as you can narrow down your search and pit them head to head, feature for feature.

Everything Old is New Again

Don’t be misled, vLane isn’t just about new cars. The service is also geared (no pun intended) towards helping car buyers find the best deals for previous used vehicles. One of the best places to look is their Classifieds section which is like Craigslist for cars. Simply enter your zip-code and the make and model and other criteria and you’ll get a list of all the vehicles that match your description in your area.

Conclusion

vLane’s concept of aggregating all of your research information for buying a vehicle in one place is strong and long over-due. It’s also a great feature to be able to communicate with other people who are also performing research as well as people who know something about the vehicle you’re interested in. The only thing that feels missing is the actual process of purchasing your vehicle online. It doesn’t appear that you can even purchase a vehicle through vLane at this point in time. There is a link to PriceQuotes which is another service that specializes in online car purchases thru large chains such as AutoNation, AutoWeb, CarDirect and others. Still, if all you want to do is conduct serious research for your next vehicle then vLane is your ticket to ride.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name: EasyAutoSales

20-word Description: EasyAutoSales makes selling cars online easy for both dealerships and private sellers.

CEO’s Pitch: The online automotive classifieds business is stale and it needs to be updated. As Internet technologies get better and distribution costs get cheaper, we do not feel it is fair or necessary to charge dealers outrageous monthly fees to simply post new and used cars on the Web. This is why our new and used cars listing services are free. Our main features include:

- Free listings with support for unlimited high quality photos and video.

- Basic inventory management for small dealerships.

- Easy inventory imports for mid sized dealers or large auto groups.

- Automatic inventory export to AOL Autos, MySpace, Walmart.com and more!

- (Coming soon) Social/peer online marketing features.

Mashable’s Take: There is ample proof that selling cars online, in various venues of large dimensions - eBay, Edmunds, AutoTrader, Yahoo Autos, CarOcean etc. - is far less expensive than doing the same in more tangible ways, such as billboards and newspaper advertisements and so forth. But if you’re a car dealer or a private owner looking for even less of a financial hit when posting information on one or more vehicles for sale, EasyAutoSales, based in Atlanta, GA, may be the place to go. Free listings (ad-supported), after all, are hard to beat.

The way EasyAutoSales functions is basic enough. Sellers post various bits of data on specific cars, including VIN number, odometer reading and the like. The standard stuff, more or less. Other details can be written in full if desired. Buyers who then find listings, either at the EasyAutoSales home site or external places it publishes to, can contact sellers via email, phone, or a public comment/chat system. Visitors can also flag items or sellers if something or somebody is deemed misleading.

Design-wise, EasyAutoSales is neither better nor worse than its competitors. It’s relatively easy to navigate. It offers a good set of search options; the local filter perhaps being the most necessary and sensible implementation of all. The photo slideshow is a nice touch to an otherwise static presentation. It is effective for sellers for the fact that so many photos can be added, and buyers naturally can benefit from this. Really, the only seeming downside is its selection of distribution channels.

Auto sellers tend to consider the biggest sites on the Web, in order that they target the largest audiences possible. And while EasyAutoSales covers more than a half-dozen unique locations other than its own, they don’t rank among the top destinations searched. The current list of sites available to sellers on EasyAutoSales includes: AOL Autos, Local.com, Walmart.com/Oodle, MyRide, Vast, Overstock Cars, Google Base, and Military.com.

That being said, listings are free, so there’s little or no loss to be had in using EasyAutoSales. And the gain could well be a sale.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

Let’s face it: Social media has become one of the hot buzzwords in tech circles. It used to be Web 2.0 and social networking, but now we have moved on to a broader term that encompasses not only social networking, but blogs, podcasts, user-generated content, social bookmarking, microblogging, and lifestreams. The rise of all these forms of new media has also created demand for people who can help companies position and market themselves within this new realm.

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research has been compiling a list of people who hold social media jobs. The list is nowhere near comprehensive, but the company hiring social media marketers, community managers, strategists, specialists, and consultants is impressive. Microsoft, IBM, Intel, GM, Cisco, AMD, Nationwide, MTV, and Google are only the beginning of this list. Companies big and small are hiring people at a rapid pace for social media roles.

But a year or three from now, will companies still be hiring for these positions? Should you be adding to your credentials so you can market yourself as a social media expert? Are social media jobs a fad or are they here to stay?

To answer that question, you really to have ask a different question: What’s the point of a social media job? Read the job description for any social media job listing and you’ll come across evangelist, community, marketing, engagement, and viral quite often. The jargon, though, can be summed up in two words: retention and growth.

Companies generally have one overarching goal: to increase profits. And anyone can tell you that keeping current customers (or users) and adding new ones is directly related to that single goal. These two things, keeping current users happy and adding new users, are the purposes of social media jobs.

And that’s why these jobs are here to stay.

Social media allows people to spread their message to hundreds, if not thousands, of friends, followers, and strangers. Some companies can only dream of that kind of reach, while others pay millions in advertising for the same effect. Digg allows a website to emerge from obscurity to prominence and Twitter allows a company to respond to customer complaints quickly (I’ve had personal experience with Comcast’s Twitter account).

As more social media tools pop up and current ones expand, the need to respond and promote to a growing online community will only grow. Companies that simply ignore the blogs and social media risk huge public debacles and lost revenue (just ask Sony how bad it can get).

Even if the title changes, the role of the social media marketer or manager is not going anywhere. Building community, reaching out to potential customers, building stronger relationships, creating buzz - they are fundamental goals to every company. So long as people use social media to share their thoughts and their complaints, the need for people to fill social media jobs will continue to grow.

And the companies that fill those roles now will be ahead of the game.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Steve Jobs Subpoenaed For Backdated Options CaseThe Daily Poll: How Did You Follow the Steve Jobs Keynote?eBay Cuts 125 Jobs WorldwideMySpace Jobs UK LaunchesCareerBuilder’s Facebook App Searches Personal DataBe a Digg Rockstar with Social Media Firefox ExtensionApple Giving iPhone Customers $100

Source:Mashable!

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name: CarOcean

20 word description: CarOcean - find best offer from “car ocean.”

CEO’s Pitch: A service that offers search and access to advertisements from the most popular auto sites in one place. Our highest priority has been ease of search and filtering existing ads. We’ve also put a lot of effort into increasing the speed of the search engine and the site itself.

We have made every effort to keep our advertisement database up to date, but sometimes some are out of date. To help control this issue, every advertisement has a frame with options. We’ve tried to keep the user interface as clean and simple as possible and would appreciate any comments you have on it. To contact us use the form here.We will do our best to improve the quality of the CarOcean service and will post each new functionality on our main page.

Mashable’s Take: CarOcean is a new UK-based classifieds search engine with a focus on the automobile trade. So far it’s aggregating classifieds and automobile sales advertisements from AutoTrader, eBay and Auto Exchange & Mart, providing users with a broader glance at available cars that are for sale. Upon entering a search query, you can sort your results based on various criteria (i.e. mileage, size, power) further narrow down the results by clicking on various filters like color, year, price and registration date.

All of these filters are actualely expandable, so there are additional filter options for each main category. For instance, the color filter can be narrowed further for a specific color like beige, red, etc. Such filters can be very helpful when it comes to finding the car you’re looking for, and heavy filter options for a niche search engine like CarOcean are possible given its focus on the automobile industry. As maintaining such a dynamic database can be quite overwhelming, CarOcean leaves some of the work to its end users, offering interactive reporting features so that things like expired advertisements can be marked by users.

One thing that may be particularly helpful for CarOcean users would be member accounts that allow users to bookmark and save listings, or even an entire search. While adding member accounts may be a large undertaking for a niche search engine like CarOcean, the site already offers URLs for any given search, which can be shared with friends. It wouldn’t be too far of a leap to offer RSS options to follow a given search as well. Another useful next step for CarOcean could also be recommendations based on user activity, similar to Oodle, which provides its third-party data for informing end users which prices are average (or otherwise), and more.

Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials

TechAddress: Tell me a bit about your company, what it does and what’s your value proposition?

FuelEmpire: FuelEmpire, LLC was founded by three “car nuts” - who happen to understand the constantly evolving online world- to develop online tools for automotive enthusiasts to build, share, and promote their passions. Our flagship site, FuelEmpire.com serves as a place for users to share photos, vehicle stats, and other data about their cars to other enthusiasts. Additionally, we offer customizable website addresses (URL’s) to help every car owner personally promote his or her ride. FuelEmpire is developing a suite of tools for our users that are simple to use and to the point.

TechAddress: What makes your company stand apart from your competitors?

FuelEmpire: Too much of a good thing can, in actuality, be a very bad thing. FuelEmpire focuses on creating free, easy-to-use tools for everyone. All of our sites feature simple, clean layouts and intuitive interfaces. It’s our belief that the user is at our site to accomplish something, and as such the user experience is at center stage in all of our application development.

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

FuelEmpire: Some of our recent features have quickly become our most popular. Profile shortcuts are a big hit with users. A user can create a profile on FuelEmpire.com to show off their vehicle, and they can assign it a custom URL. There are several to choose from. For example, you can see one of our founder’s vehicles at http://xeno.istoofast.com. The shortcut URLs provide an easy method for people to promote their vehicles. We expect our competitors will be looking to imitate this feature shortly.

Another popular new feature is the Favorites feature. As simple as it is, users can select vehicles that appeal to them and attach them to their own profile by marking it as a favorite. This builds community and has become quite popular.

TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience?

FuelEmpire: Car enthusiasts! And not just those sitting behind a computer screen; we’ve made sure that our tools are easy enough for anyone to set up their own FuelEmpire profile in a matter of minutes.

TechAddress: Any new things in particular that you’re working on right now?

FuelEmpire: We’re really excited about our next-generation universal automotive classifieds site, ListOBO. Users will be able to combine the ease of community posting forums with the success of auction sites to buy and sell their automotive parts and items. The site will integrate with other sites in the FuelEmpire Network to link what people want to what people have.

TechAddress: Where do you see your company heading in the future?

FuelEmpire: We plan on making FuelEmpire a literal ‘empire’ of users and websites. Eventually, all of our tools will be integrated and become a universal one-stop shop for automotive enthusiasts. We believe strongly in the FuelEmpire brand name, and plan to create an entire lifestyle around our ideas.

TechAddress: Any negative feedback or criticism regarding technology and services?

FuelEmpire: None in specific. I would like to point out, however, that technology is easy to abuse. It would be very easy for a company to overpopulate the feature list now days. Application development on the web has come a long way and it’s easier than ever to overcook. We’re giving our best efforts in providing all the right features to guide that missile in with precision.

TechAddress: So what would you say is the guiding principle behind your company?

FuelEmpire: On every product we build, we ask ourselves, “Is this something we want to use?” If we aren’t passionate about using one of our sites, we can’t expect anyone else to be either.

TechAddress: What is the mission of your company and what are you bringing to the market that is innovative?

FuelEmpire: Our goal is to make simple and focused tools for the end user. We strive to build products that people want to use, and then offer it for less than they would expect to pay for it. In our current stage, that often means a huge value to users, as all of our products are free to use! Our upcoming product ListOBO.com will change the way people think about buying, selling, and trading online.

TechAddress: Where are you in terms of funding and your lifecycle?

FuelEmpire: We’re developing new features every day, but as a small company, we’ve managed to keep costs down. Currently, FuelEmpire LLC is self funded and “in the black” (pays for itself) for day to day operations. Our sites grow every day from purely word-of-mouth advertising.

TechAddress: If your technology or service is not formally launched yet, when’s the launch date?

FuelEmpire: The latest version of FuelEmpire.com officially launched in September, 2006. We are working on new products and features every day, and our various tools are in various stages of release.