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DomainTools – Information about Domains

DomainTools enables an advanced whois lookup about a specific domain or about the domains owned by a specific person. If you ever wanted to find out who is behind a specific website, who is running it and what other domain names does he have, this is the right tool for the job.

A domain name is a string, usually ending in “.com”, “.net” or “.org”, that appears at the top of the window when people navigate on it via the Internet. Although new Internet users tend to have Google on their homepage, and navigate directly on sites by typing desired keywords in the search box (without ever knowing the actual domain name of a site), a memorable and easy to remember domain name is still an asset nowadays as users tend to remember the brand as they become more advanced in Internet usage and more loyal to their favorite sites.

As opposed to other whois tools, DomainTools has several improvements. First, they provide a shortcut for quickly accessing the whois information: just type “whois.sc/example.com” (without the quotes and with the actual domain instead of example.com) and you’ll be redirected to the DomainTools whois page for that domain. Secondly, in addition to standard whois information, you’ll find out how many other domains does that person have registered, and for a fee, what those other domains are. In the registration tab you’ll also be able to see the registration status for the other extensions (is example.net or example.org available?).

DomainTools has, every month, 2 million unique visitors. According to its Wikipedia page, the site is in the top 200 Internet sites (in Alexa ratings). The company is based in Seattle, United States. They make money via multiple sources: they sell domain reports for a fee (as mentioned above) and they offer domain monitoring services (which are free only up to specific limits). Recently they’ve begun letting you know when a domain is taken but available for sale via a 3rd party provider; those links include the ability to track the referrer and I suspect DomainTools gets a commission in case the sale actually happens.

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23andMe – Genetic Testing For Your Health

23andMe - Genetic Testing for your health23andMe is a privately held company located in Mountain View, California that enables people to find out information about their genetics (by ordering a saliva testing kit) and to discover potential health issues associated with their genes. The company name reflects the number of paired chromosomes in humans.

In the past, 23andMe used a subscription model where people would pay an upfront fee for the saliva kit and the initial genetic testing, and then, every month, a nominal fee to stay up to date with the research applicable to the discovered genes. As of May 2012, the company discontinued the subscription service to new customers (the current price includes ongoing updates, previously part of the “Lifetime Subscription”).

The company was created by Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki in 2006. In May 2007, Wojcicki married Google co-founder Sergey Brin. In December 2008, their son, Benji, was born. In 2009, Linda Avey left the company. The company’s web traffic revolves around 100’000 unique monthly visitors.

23andMe is conducting a study regarding the Parkinson disease. They hope to discover correlations between specific genes and the probability of getting this disease, which might enable people in the future to find out about their predisposition to it and give insight into possible prevention steps before the disease’s onset. In April 2012, the company posted a YouTube video around these efforts, featuring Muhammad Ali‘s story.

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Geocaching: Outdoor Treasure Hunting

Geocaching: outdoor treasure huntingGeocaching.com is an outdoor treasure hunting game. The site offers several quests in the form of GPS coordinates in order to encourage players to explore their neighborhood and locate hidden containers, called geocaches, using GPS-enabled devices and then share their experiences online.

The company behind the service, Groundspeak, was founded in 2000, and since then, their community has grown steadily upwards. The site attracts nowadays around 300’000 unique visitors each month.

The original founders were Jeremy Irish, Bryan Roth and Elias Alvord. They’re now located in Seattle, USA.

Geocaching is a hobby for millions of people, combining high-tech GPS devices, a natural instinct for exploration and outdoor physical activity to create the perfect fun for a weekend exploration. Couples proposed, engaged, got married and shared this common passion for decades, to name just a few of the things geocaching facilitated across the years, as you can see in the video below.

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FamilyLeaf – Private Family Social Network

FamilyLeaf - Private Family Social NetworkFamilyLeaf is an attempt to provide a private social network to members of the same family or to communities of close friends and acquaintances, small in number.

There have been in the past attempts to create similar sites, such as MyFamily.com, Famento.com or FamilyCrossings.com, but FamilyLeaf makes things very easy to get started and it’s completely free to use, at least for now. The webapp currently displays an invite signup screen, as it wants to prevent growing too fast too soon, but it’s expected to be able to obtain an account relatively fast.

FamilyLeaf was founded by Wesley Zhao and Ajay Mehta, two childhood friends. Compared to other early-stage startups, they took the effort to make the site as friendly as possible to foreign traffic. There are already localized versions in Italian, French or Spanish.

The site is backed by Y! Combinator and has been featured in the media in extensive reviews, such as this one (which appeared in TechCrunch). During their initial launch month, FamilyLeaf had 2’000 unique monthly visitors.

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AnkiWeb.net – Review Decks Online

Ankiweb: Review decks onlineAnkiWeb.net is a system for spaced repetition, which displays flash cards based on how often they’re successfully remembered. The stand-alone desktop program, called Anki, was the starting point: a simple free flashcard program. Nowadays it runs on smartphones and most computer platforms, or on the Internet via AnkiWeb.net.

The underlying technique, spaced repetition, can do wonders for people wanting to learn a set of facts or a new language. In fact, Anki got recommended as the ideal tool to learn the vocabulary of a new language in a LifeHacker featured article.

The Fool’s Workshop also reviewed Anki: they mention that Anki’s strongest areas are in the statistics it provides, its tagging abilities, its strong interval study centered approach and its “card model”.

Despite running mostly on mobile phones or desktop computers, AnkiWeb managed to attract a significant online presence, averaging over 3’000 unique monthly visitors in the last 12 months.

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ScreenLeap – Share Your Screen

ScreenLeap is an Y-Combinator backed company that aims to “make screen sharing sexy”. With just one click, the app enables users to share their screen to any device with a browser, instead of 15 steps that are required for the most popular alternative available nowadays, Cisco WebEx.

Despite being launched in February 2012, the app already had 10’000 unique monthly visitors in March according to Compete. The media coverage is partly responsible for this, as the app was featured in TheNextWeb and TechCrunch; it will be interesting to see if they can keep and grow this traffic level once the media coverage wears off.

ScreenLeap was founded by Tuyen Truong, a serial entrepreneur whose previous attempts include TeamWork Live, a productivity suite that failed to achieve critical mass.

The BetaKit article hints about potential revenue streams in the near future: while the screensharing services will remain free, there are plans to introduce additional features later on, including voice integration, branded pages and integration with enterprise client sales and support systems.

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CVMaker.in – Freely Create Professional CVs

CVMaker Create Professional CVs for FreeCVMaker.in is a webapp which allows people to create a professional-looking CV in .pdf format by specifying their info in a easy-to-use web interface.

The site offers several templates under which resumes can be created, including models such as executive, elegant or bold.

The site has been created by Kailash Nadh and launched to the public in October 2010. His portfolio includes an impressive track-record of web projects. He’s also a photographer.

The app’s traffic hasn’t reached yet critical mass, being currently visited by under 1’000 unique monthly visitors, according to Compete. However the app shows potential due to its accessible interface, free-to-use terms and the ability to download at the end the CV as a .pdf file.

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Udemy – E-learning Platform

Udemy: Online e-learning platformUdemy.com is an online e-learning platform, launched in 2010, where teachers and students can meet and participate in online classes available for free or for a specific fee on their website.

Unlike competitors such as the recently-launched Coursera, Udemy doesn’t restrict the classes to university-taught courses: anyone is free to sign up as a teacher and create its own content. In order to make money, Udemy charges a commission when someone purchases a membership to a paid class.

Udemy’s traffic has been growing steadily and they are approaching the moment where they’ll have on average 100’000 monthly unique visitors.

Udemy was founded in February 2010 by Eren Bali and Gagan Biyani. It launched to the public in May 2010 and received 1 million dollars in seed funding and 3 million dollars in Series A funding, from partners such as 500 Startups, MHS Capital and Lightbank.

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TaskRabbit – Do More

TaskRabbit: get things doneTaskRabbit.com connects neighbors to get things done: it uses social, mobile and location-based technologies to bring people together.

The service connects ‘TaskPosters’, people who need help, with ‘TaskRabbits’, a network of fully vetted and background-checked individuals, who have the time and skills needed to complete the job. It also includes a category of services called virtual assistance, for those that are searching help over the web for vacation planning, usability testing or remote academic research.

According to Compete, the site averages around 100K monthly unique visitors. According to the Alexa stats, it ranks within the first 10’000 sites in the US.

TaskRabbit was founded in 2008 by Leah Busque and it is headquartered in the city of San Francisco, California. Up to the end of 2011, the company received a total of $24.7 million dollars in funding in Seed, Series A and Series B rounds. At the beginning of 2012, the company was headed by Eric Grosse, CEO.

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Buffer – Social Media Scheduler

Buffer: Social Media SchedulerBuffer is a social media scheduler application. It allows anyone to write social media posts during the weekend or in the evenings, and have that content distributed in equal periods of time across the week in his Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn accounts. In this way, each post gets the attention it deserves and readers are not suddenly flooded with content.

According to its CrunchBase profile, Buffer was founded by Joel Gascoigne and Leo Widrich and received $400’000 in venture funding at the end of 2011.

After the funding round, the app experienced significant growth. Nowadays, according to Compete.com, Buffer has several hundred thousands unique visitors each month.

Buffer has several pricing plans. The free pricing plan is limited to 1 Twitter, 1 Facebook and 1 LinkedIn account, while the paid subscription plans offer more advanced (or unlimited) benefits.

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