ComparisonEngines

I’ve just sent out the first ComparisonEngines.com job newsletter. You can sign up for the weekly newsletter here.

There are 3 jobs this week:
1. FatLens – Senior Infrastructure Engineer
2. SquareTrade – Collaborative Engineering in J2EE / Open Source
3. Become.com – Account Manager

Go to the Job Listings page to find out more about each job.

ComparisonEngines.com’s readership is growing extremely quickly…
We accept all types of jobs from vertical search and e-commerce companies…
List your job on ComparisonEngines.com for FREE.

SideStep has a new company spokesman: Patrick Stewart who played Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG). This is obviously (as the WSJ points out) a “direct challenge to rival Priceline.com, whose ads have long featured William Shatner, Captain Kirk on the original Star Trek.”

Really smart move! (Ok, I’m biased…I’m a TNG fan).

Read the full WSJ Story.

This news comes a couple days after the death of James Doohan who portrayed Montgomery Scott on the original Star Trek.

There seems to be a rumor floating around the valley that Google is re-launching its homepage. I’m not going to even call Google for confirmation. No company comments on rumors. Just look out for a new Google homepage very soon.

Ok, now that the Always On Innovation Summit is done, I want to let you know what’s next for ComparisonEngines.com:

-Travel comparison engines (expect to see interviews with Kayak, SideStep, and others very soon)
-Review of MSN Shopping Beta
-Interview with Michael Yang about the launch of Become.com’s comparison shopping service
-A brief history of comparison shopping
-Interview with Shopzilla
-Interview with Smarter.com
-Interview with PriceRunner
-eTail2005 Conference – Now that I’ve talked with most of the shopping comparison engines, it’s time to talk to the merchants. Even after the Shopping.com and Shopzilla deals, shopping comparison engines are still flying under the radar screen of most merchants. Through my own tests, I’ve found the ROI through shopping comparison engines to be 3-5x greater than through other popular online marketing channels.

Update: Peerflix won the CEO Pitch Award at AO Innovation Summit!

Please note that this is off-topic for ComparisonEngines, but there are many innovative companies/technologies out there, and I want to share some information that I find interesting.

Billy McNair, co-founder of Peerflix made the pitch.

Ok, this is one to really pay attention to. Smart and simple business. You will definitely hear a lot about this company in the future. Here’s the deal: 75% of househoulds have a DVD player. Last year, those households bought on average 19 DVDs. Most people just watch a DVD once and then put it on the shelf to collect dust. While owners could sell those DVDs at a local store (like Tower) or trade the DVDs in for discounts on new DVDs (Blockbuster has a program like this), Peerflix allows people to trade their DVDs. As a member, you creat 2 lists: the first is a list of the DVDs you own, the second is a list of DVDs that you want. Peerflix sends you a welcome kit with envelopes for the DVDs (you pay for postage). The trading then begins. Peerflix charges a $0.99 fee per transaction. No membership fees, no monthly fees. The company has no inventory, no distribution centers. Peerflix is starting out with DVDs, but there are obviously many other products to expand into.

Please note that this is off-topic for ComparisonEngines, but there are many innovative companies/technologies out there, and I want to share some information that I find interesting.

Moderator:
Eric Janszen, President & CEO AutoCell (moderator)

Panelists:
1 – Mark Heesen
2 – Barry Kramer
3 – Julie Levenson
4 – Jonathan Medved
5 – Janice Roberts
6 – Gus Tai

What’s driving the new interest in VC? What stages of VC are private investors involved in?
1 – VC is a cyclical business. You have to look at things from a 5yr perspective. So you have to look back at the bubble to get a real comparison. Why are we getting this money? Because LPs have the money. They are looking for any place to put their capital. Eventually, you’ll see a lot of LPs very dissapointed that we’re not taking in all the money. But long term they will be happy because we’ve learned from the bubble.
2- After the bubble burst, a lot of the VCs had to spend time tending to their investments. Now that we’ve gotten through the legacy investments, VCs can turn their attention to newer stage cos. Read the rest of this entry »

Please note that this is off-topic for ComparisonEngines, but there are many innovative companies/technologies out there, and I want to share some information that I find interesting.

Stepan Pachikov, CEO EverNote

Everyone would like to have a photographic memory, which means we want to:
-easily capture all types of information
-always have that information available
-quickly find what you are looking for
-share selected memos with others

Our mission is to bring to market the most effective and easiest tool to capture and reacall everything we want to remember in any place at any time. EverNote is the single place for all notes.

How it works…
Whenever you want to add information, you just type note at the bottom of the page. You can assign categories to every note. We’ve developed an application for desktops and smartphones which allow you to always have information available. We’ll make money through charging people to synchronize the information across all channels.