NY-based HealthiNation has raised $7.5 million in Series B venture capital the company announced today. The funding round was led by Intel Capital and previous investor MK Capital also invested in the round. HealthiNation creates original health videos on a variety of topics including birth control, cancer, diabetes and how to quit smoking.

HealthiNation launched in mid-2006 and their videos are also provided to a variety of cable networks including Comcast and Verizon.

Seeing as HealthiNation is based in NYC, I immediately thought that perhaps they should partner with another health-related service here in NYC, OrganizedWisdom. We interviewed OrganizedWisdom this summer and the HealthiNation videos would be a good complement to the OrganizedWisdom offering. I do notice that OrganizedWisdom has a page about HealthiNation. 

I noticed that HealthiNation uses infomercial actress Pat Murphy in many of their videos. Does this hurt their credibility when their lead speaker was just shilling for forex loans last week and is now talking about birth control?

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Company Name

ecomii

20-Word Description

ecomii is the first and only comprehensive and trusted resource designed to clarify the confusion of “green living” and offer millions of Conscious Consumers the information and tools necessary for making informed, practical, positive green lifestyle choices. It’s like WebMD but for the environment.

CEO’s Pitch

Most consumers are aware of global warming, but they don’t get the urgency of it and that it’s largely solvable. The missing ingredient is the force of public opinion. So what does spark change towards a greener lifestyle? For one thing, many are prompted to take green actions if they think others like them are doing it. This ‘everybody’s doing it’ pitch is almost never used around energy conservation. If people hear their neighbors are changing their habits, they’ll reduce their impact further. It was with these principles in mind that ecomii ™ (pronounced e-koh-mee) was founded.

One of the most exciting areas of ecomii.com will be ecomii Action (www.ecomii.com/action) which provides simple steps to begin maintaining a “green lifestyle.” ecomii Action cultivates all the key areas for success offering a unique interactive community linked by social ties and common perspectives about the environment to act together collectively contributing to the health of our communities, our nation and our planet – one concrete goal at a time. ecomii Action’s fun and accessible tools for enrolling friends and family in making simple strides towards greener living, enables friends and family to work together on common causes, compare their progress to their social circle as well as to the greater ecomii population.

Mashable’s Take

ecomii has established a service centered around green living and the environment. There’s a tremendous amount of data out there about this topic, so aggregating the best of this information in one centralized location online makes a great deal of sense.

There are a lot of useful tips on a variety of topics from green parenting to being healthier by eating organic food or walking instead of driving, which also helps the environment by reducing pollution. There’s also a good amount of information on ways to save on expenses by making purchases in bulk, how to clean your house without purchasing cleaning products loaded with dangerous chemicals, etc. There are tips on making your life less stressful and more productive as well. So, besides learning new ways of saving the planet, you could also find ways to save your health, finance and stress.

One of the nicest features is the goals section. This is a great place to go to find inspiration for accomplishing something. If you’re not sure what goals you want to tackle, this area could help you make the right decision for your lifestyle. It’s an excellent way to motivate and challenge yourself and others. Examples of current goals are “BYOB: Bring your own bag to the store,” “Eat Organic Foods,” and “Choose Earth-friendly diapers.”

ecomii has other features aimed to inform and engage its community. For example, the Debatables area is an interesting feature. It’s sort of like a game where you are presented with controversial topics and you get to vote on them and see the results of the poll. It’s a good way to see where your personal views fall in line within the community.

The ecomii Action part of the service strives to help members get in gear and put what they’ve learned into use. In essense, it’s a social network where you work on common goals with other like-minded individuals. You can help and encourage each other to find ways to live greener, healthier and hopefully happier lives.

There’s a lot to digest on ecomii and it could be overwhelming the first time you visit the site, but that’s really a good thing. There’s plenty of food for thought and tons of inspiration for changing your life as well as contributing to making the world a better place. As the old saying goes, if you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem. ecomii seems like the place to go to find the answers we need for greener living.

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.

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Grockit, the mysterious online learning site that has been operating in stealth for the past year and has raised a total of over $10 million, has finally revealed itself to the public, and it doesn’t disappoint. The site calls itself a “Massively Multi Player Online Learning Game”, taking gaming concepts that have made World of Warcraft a massive hit and applying it to what amounts to an online SAT study group.
Source:TechCrunch

Rumors are back suggesting Revolution Health is looking to merge with another company. Only this time, it’s with another health information portal: Everyday Health. And together, the companies believe they can finally supplant WebMD as the most trafficked site in that space.

According to the Washington Post, the companies are still engaging in negotiations and no firm plans have been agreed upon yet. But if an agreement is struck, they will move fast to get the deal done.

I’ve written about several health startups including iMedix and NY-based OrganizedWisdom. Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak with Keith Schorsch, founder and CEO of Trusera. Trusera is a Seattle-based startup attempting to make sense of health online.

Keith explained that Trusera helps people share real world health information with others. The idea for Trusera came to him when he was ill and doctors in Seattle couldn’t figure out why. A friend in New Jersey suggested that it might be from a tick bite and it turned out that it was lyme disease. Once he told his doctors of his friend’s suggestion, they were able to treat the illness and get Keith back to full health.

When I asked Keith to sum up what Trusera is in one sentence, he replied, "It’s a site for people who want to take hold of their health". The site allows people to post questions and answers along with a content section similar to a blog. There’s a social network and a Facebook-style news feed showing the latest content posted on Trusera.

Trusera officially launched in June with a beta period from March. The company has 15 employees and is currently angel funded. Keith wouldn’t share any user stats with me.

Regarding their business plan, Keith noted that they are running some ads and are launching an ad network on site in the coming week. There’s also a variety of premium services coming soon and he also says there’s value in the platform. This is similar to OrganizedWisdom and their white-label solution.

Trusera features good health related content and could become a strong health-related social network over time. Keith asked me for my thoughts on the service and Web site and this is what I shared with him.

• I don’t get what the site is about or offers when I come to the home page.
• I would move the signup/membership widget off of the right bar - it’s distracting and since the majority of people will only browse, use that space for better messaging - do you really want your visitors’ first impression to be a captcha?
• The search goes to a typical search results page (which didn’t provide many relevant results) - my suggestion would be to create topic pages for the most popular terms - Keith talked about focusing on search engine optimization and topic pages would certainly help with that
• The site design needs to be much warmer - the logo colors are warm but the rest of the site isn’t - health is nothing something people look at unless they have to - make people feel at home and comfortable
• The site feels way too loose - as if they stuck on thing after thing without considering integration

Thanks to Keith for spending some time with me yesterday.

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ZocDoc, the online tool for searching local doctors and making appointments online, has just announced its Series A round of funding. Led by Khosla Ventures, this round has extended $3 million in investment funding to the New York-based startup. Launched nearly a year ago, ZocDoc has been building up its user base on both the doctor and the patient end, rolling out its service on a city-by-city basis.

This has also grown in conjunction with its practice-by-practice strategy of providing its service to dentists, dermatologists, ophthalmologists and primary care physicians, which has probably been its most successful implementation thus far. Tackling the health care industry on a practice-basis has allowed ZocDoc to adjust its strategy and technology offerings, enabling it to better achieve the growth its seen in the past year. According to ZocDoc, there are about 90,000 available appointments through its service at this time.

With the recent round of funding, ZocDoc is looking to expand its service even further, to cities beyond NYC. That means that there’s a heavy focus on the local market as well as the practice market, giving ZocDoc two levels at which to promote its service. That’s double the work, so ZocDoc will have to double its staff–something the company has already done in the past 6 months, from five to ten full-time employees.

As we’ve also seen a growing trend in Web-based personal assistant service and other initiatives like Google Health which aim to provide more ways in which consumers can control their information as well as access necessary local resources, there’s a great deal of opportunity for ZocDoc to continue its current expansion strategy and hopefully become more valuable in the integrated Web space. To that end, ZocDoc will be releasing a Facebook and an iPhone app for additional appointment-making capabilities, as a result of its recent API offering.

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There are a number of golf-focused websites that can help you connect with a broad network of players, write blogs, meet up for games, find local courses and generally live the life of the green as much as you wish. We presented you with a selection of such destinations earlier this year, in fact. Well, here comes another. It’s called GolfGrouper. It’s very basically drawn, and even a bit rough in places. But it’s new, and just beginning to build its network of users. Some adjustments are surely in order.

Granted, the front page is indeed generic-looking. It could certainly lose its promotional image, if nothing else. The graphic hinders the establishment of a much simpler layout. But if this doesn’t trouble you too much, and you’re just looking for a nearby course, want post yourself available as a golf partner, or put together a quick notice of a local tournament, the site may have some use to you.

The best course of action to take at GolfGrouper is just as its name describes. You can establish a local circle of users on the site, and the intended network effect can then carry some potential. A one-at-a-time build-up of users, without any grounding in content, is likely to make the service a laggard. This is place built solely for matching golfers. No lingering. No wasting time. Just find what information you’re after, and and play the links.

Of course, convincing friends to become members is the hardest part, so the site really ends up being a bit hit-or-miss in that respect. But given the right concentration of attention in places, it could become valuable to certain sets of players quite quickly. Also, the service is open to a global user base. Things of this sort are known to fall flat in some locations while taking off in others.

Source:Mashable!

Alright, so maybe Apple thought MobileMe would fare only a little better in grabbing $99-worth of attention from prospective registrants for its cloud-based application package than its relatively morose-feeing .Mac selection of services. (MobileMe is the replacement to .Mac.) Who’s to say. Whatever the case, the company most certainly failed to estimate the level of interest it received the day the program, along with the iPhone 3G, had its launch. Now Apple is atoning for the miscalculations and the mismanagement. How so? First came the 30-day account extension. And as of Friday, it appears Apple is publishing a status page expected to show updates “every other day.” The updates are written by a so-far-unnamed individual, and have purportedly been mandated by Steve Jobs.

Says Apple in its debut post, a particularly regretful loss was 10% of messages received through MobileMe between July 16 and July 18, a week after the product had been released. Problems over mail are said to have affected 1% of members. All in all, it will be several days before “restoration of full access for all…accounts” is completed.

As with efforts by the likes of Amazon and Twitter and others to more closely chronicle the goings on of server-side activity, this move by Apple is no doubt appropriate. Yet what is unusual about the establishment of an official blog of this sort is its rather open, mea culpa-like dimension. The company is generally notorious for its secrecy, an aspect of management that recently drew increased concerns about the CEO’s health circa his previous two public appearances. The only prior moment when Apple itself took action to assuage vocal public rumblings was when it released credits to consumers who had purchased first-generation iPhone handsets within the first two months of its launch, after it decreased the price of those devices by $200.

It’s hard to say whether this establishes a benchmark of what to expect from Apple in the future concerning various technical hiccups. Given recent communications by the company at large and by its chief executive, one might presume a trend is forming. But old habits die hard. What worked before to large extent will almost definitely remain the norm. The company’s customer service has often been touted by consumers and the press as one of particular effectiveness. Only at extremes - the MobileMe debacle certainly fits the profile - should one expect Apple to keep the public so abreast of internal goings on. A support page has also been published on the matter.

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