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Filed under: Business, Commercial

Make your small business sound big with Grasshopper

GrasshopperOne of the challenges small businesses have is in developing trust in their customer base. While some customers are happy to work with the small guy, others need the impression of size to help them feel comfortable that they're not dealing with a fly-by-night organization.

This is a particularly difficult challenge for virtual companies, which are companies consisting of team members that are spread out geographically.

How do you have a single company phone number for a team of people that are spread out in different cities? One solution is Grasshopper. In fact, that's exactly how 37signals' CEO Jason Fried decided to manage his phone for his office hours, where he sets aside dedicated time to speak with customers, prospective customers, or anyone with an interest in or question about 37signals.

While Google Voice seems to be getting all the press these days, it's a solution that focuses on the individual. If you're trying to run a team and present a cohesive, "bigger business" image to your customers, you might need to step up to something like Grasshopper. While not free, Grasshopper has plans starting from $9.95US per month, making it accessible to even the earliest of startups.

Filed under: Business, Web services

Local business finder RedBeacon wins TechCrunch50

Whether you love TechCrunch or hate it, you must admit that the TechCrunch50 conference does a decent job of generating exposure for startups. I had never heard of this year's winner, RedBeacon, before TechCrunch50, and I have no doubt that the publicity the company gets from the event will be at least as valuable as the $50,000 prize. RedBeacon is a local business finder that TechCrunch describes as comparable to OpenTable, but for booking services instead of making dinner reservations. You can enter the type of service you want, and it will give you a list of recommendations to browse, with reviews, hours and even how each business is rated on Yelp.

Like last year's winner, Yammer (a Twitter for businesses), RedBeacon is best described by comparing it to an existing product. At least this year's finalists, while derivative, seem like they fill important gaps in our online lives. Threadsy aggregates incoming messages from all your social networks. AnyClip attempts to beat YouTube and Hulu at showing you the specific movie scene you're looking for (although I have no idea how they're going to get that past Hollywood lawyers). Although it's not the most glamorous of the bunch, my vote would go to CitySourced, a mobile app for photographing and reporting issues like potholes to your city government. Not only does it feel like the freshest concept out of the final four, it also might do some civic good.

Which startup should have won TechCrunch50?


Filed under: Business, Developer, Social Software

Facebook announces winning apps in FBFund


Facebook's FBFund is a $10mil initiative to provide funding for startups that are doing promising things in the Facebook app or Facebook Connect area. Recently, 18 startups were chosen to receive a whole bunch of money and attend Facebook's Rev09 incubator program this summer.

All 18 winners (and two non-profits, who can't get a cut of the money due to the structure of FBFund) are listed on Facebook's Developer Blog, but I want to highlight a few of the apps that look most likely to catch on in a big way. Nutshell Mail, which was featured on Download Squad back in February, consolidates all your social network subscription emails into one periodic digest, keeping your inbox clear. Sortuv finds local businesses that are "sortuv" like ones you already know and like. Gameyola is a platform for casual Flash games.

Do you think any of the FBFund projects will take off? Let us know which ones you love or hate in the comments.

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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