I saw a post about housefront recently on springwise and thought it could be a great tool in the hot Toronto property market.
I think it could be a great service to offer. There have been many times when I have seen a house, liked it, had to 1. call a number, 2. leave a message for the agent, and 3. he/she would call back with the price of the house.
I think that's too many steps. This service would be very simple: You see a house, you text the address or a number on the plaque, and you get its price sent to you.
Technology has been adopted fairly quickly in housing. viewit.ca brought video to this space and myhood.ca has the mashup + user reviews - but both are online tools, to be used at home. I think a text service could complement these for people who just want to get the price quickly and easily.
Anyone think this could fly?
11.10.2007
Biz Idea - texting house price
11.07.2007
OPEN Forum - Seth Godin - Tonight!
This isn't Canada-specific: Tonight on Open Forum, Seth Godin will be online for a live webcast on design, after which he will also answer questions through a live web chat.
The session starts at 9pm EST. You can find out more info at OPEN Forum.
10.30.2007
Jelly - Canada?
I had to share this because A. I think it's a really cool and fun event, B. It shows the positive energy/community of people working at startups in other cities like NYC, and C. To see if people would be interested in co-organizing it here.
Jelly was started by Amit Gupta a little while ago - you can check out their video.
Sure there are spaces like Indoor Playground and Centre for Social Innovation, but I think this type of fluid sharing of work-space and ideas is something entirely different and takes things like democamp to a whole new level.
What is Jelly? from Amit Gupta on Vimeo.
So..anyone?? :)
10.23.2007
Another social networking site...
facebook + LinkedIn = Probook - do we really need this?
probook.ca - I saw their group on facebook recently - it looks like it was started by Queens grad students. I normally try to focus on the positive side of new ventures but I honestly don't see this going far.
I'm trying to imagine their strategy for this site. I assume they feel that LinkedIn is not fun enough or social enough. I agree with them there...
But...
LinkedIn is well established in Canada so they're not serving an un-met market. If they're trying to go after new-grads I'm not sure what the use would be for a bunch of recent grads to have their own community when they want to be on LinkedIn trying to connect with people who can GIVE them job leads.
Site design is ok but pretty basic. They don't really have any features that facebook does not have, and I think people use FB and LinkedIn for different purposes. I've seen more and more people taking their work info off their FB page, which tells me they don't want to mix work and play.
PS - If my info is wrong I am not really at fault - I tried to get in touch with them to do a question/answer post last week, but no response yet.
10.17.2007
CLUTCH by auto/ONE - BC
Clutch is the sister-company of auto/one, the high-end alternative to your usual car dealership. What auto/one offers to guys, clutch does with females...for females. Their dealerships are in BC.
When it comes to improving consumer experiences, buying a car has a lot of room to improve. Clutch provides services to make the experience better..improved customer service, zero dealership footprint, full-day test-drives are all part of the deal. Not sure how their pricing compares to traditional dealerships.
I guess in the high-end used car market such services will be of value where price isn't the main purchase driver.
