Trends Updates

---

• FashionStake Reinvents itself as an Online Boutique Where Customers Vote for Designs and Designers
• Introducing The Six Most Astounding Successful Startups, Courtesy, SXSW Accelerator
• Presenting Projeqt: A Highly Creative Web Publishing Tool Adding Luster To Online Presentations
• Google Brings 44 New Languages For Editing Purposes In Google Docs For Mobile
• CeBIT 2011: Archos Announces The Launch Of An All New High End Tablet For IFA 2011

FashionStake Reinvents itself as an Online Boutique Where Customers Vote for Designs and Designers Posted: 06 Mar 2011 01:21 AM PST FashionStake is hoping it will be third time lucky. The startup has reinvented itself three times in just six months of its launch. Daniel Gulati and Vivian Weng, both Harvard Business School graduates had launched FashionStakes in September 2010. Their vision for the venture was of a site where consumers could support emerging designers by buying "stakes" in not-yet-produced collections in exchange for discounts and other privileges when said collections were manufactured. There weren't many takers of the concept amongst the consumers who showed clear preference for pre ordering items at a discount. FashionStake in its turn readjusted its vision to offer the opportunity to customers to pre-order clothes from a small coterie of young designers. The production plan was prepared based on the pre order quantities and it was possible to offer attractive discounts. Since the reworking of the format did not yield the desired result the site has taken on a new avatar again. Now, FashionStake functions more like a traditional online boutique that stays true to its roots in independent design, heavy discounts and customer engagement. The additional feature is that users can vote for designers and pieces through a weekly ballot. It brings back the customers to the site and helps designers gauge demand and trend. Alexis Maybank, a co-founder of luxury flash sales site Gilt Groupe, has become the latest investor in FashionStake in order to add muscle to the site and help it increase its activity. Via: mashable

Introducing The Six Most Astounding Successful Startups, Courtesy, SXSW Accelerator Posted: 05 Mar 2011 05:55 PM PST The SXSW Accelerator competition, which is a part of the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) event, is one of the biggest and most vibrant platforms for start-ups and seed stage companies, who though might have brilliant idea for a successful business, yet are marred by financial restraints. The SXSWi, that is comprised of some 14,000 attendees  has proven to be a highly lucrative starting point for any start-up company and though only 40 companies are selected year for the finding process, the immense value and financial backing provided by the SXSWi event has proven to be invaluable for a number of firms that started off as an idea, but have now grown into prominent global online entities. The Accelerator program is in par sponsored by Microsoft Bizspark and this year the SXSW 2011 conference will become host to the Mashable SXSWi House 2011, that will open new venues for start ups to grow and flourish. Here are six of those names, who began only as a dream, but now have reached the heights of immense success and popularity: Twitter: The world's foremost and most cherished micro-blogging service, Twitter, that entered  into the SXSW 2007 conference, experienced the true effects of the event first hand. Though launched a good nine months before the conference, Twitter invested some $11,000 to showcase its service on flat screen monitors in the hallways of the venue. To make the investors and attendees realize the importance of Twitter, the social networking big hitter designed a custom Twitter service for the event, where in the attendees were enabled to sign up by simply sending a text message and then follow some high profile names present at the conference. Foursquare: The pioneer and a leading name in location based social networking service for mobile platforms, Foursquare, owes its immense success to the SXSW conference, as after  a nerve racking presentation, Foursquare finally achieved success in making the investors realize the uniqueness of their idea. Six months after the SXSW conference, Foursquare, received its first round of venture capital, largely due to the impact of the presentation made at the SXSW conference. PhoneBooth Free: The SXSW 2010 conference witnessed the arrival of not one but five phone booths, that were the prop for the recently established start up, PhoneBooth Free, a free small business calling service. Due to the creative genius of the presentation idea, PhoneBooth Free immediately became the talk of the conference, with the company booth being flooded with numerous attendees. With such and innovative idea and a marvelous presence at the conference, PhoneBooth Free experienced immense interest from the Press and the investors in the first two days of the conference. GameSalad: One of the foremost free game creation services, GameSalad, owes nearly all of its success to the SXSW Accelerator competition in the year 2009. At the time, GameSalad was a mere start-up company with no more than five employees. At the pre-competition event called, Tech Cocktail, Jonathan Hunt of GameSalad had the opportunity of interacting with venture capitalists and angel investors present at the conference. Before the end of the Tech Cocktail event, GameSalad had secured its first investment check. The following five months after the conference, GreenSalad was provided an additional funding of an astounding $1 million and soon became a pioneering platform for the development of all games featured at the prestigious Apple Apps Store. Foodspotting:  The highly interactive and engaging culinary information service, Foodspotting, that through its iPhone application enables the users to share photos of various dishes and cuisines, owes its exposure into the market to SXSW conference. It was at the SXSW 2010, that Foodspotting via its engaging, "I Camera Food" t-shirts campaign, created a huge brand awareness for itself, leading to a larger user base. Tim Ferriss: One of the foremost authors of lifestyle design related articles, Tim Ferriss, proudly owes his success in the field of writing to the SXSW 2007 conference, where in front of packed crowd, Mr. Ferriss gave a presentation in regards to his first book, 'The Four-Hour Workweek'. The applause and interest he gathered at the prestigious conference proved to be more than enough for his career to skyrocket. Soon after the conference, part from considered an accomplished author, Tim Ferriss also made a career as an advisor in the field of startups and investing practices. Via Mashable

Presenting Projeqt: A Highly Creative Web Publishing Tool Adding Luster To Online Presentations Posted: 05 Mar 2011 05:39 PM PST To give the most compelling and mystifying online presentation, one has to focus on two most important factors, the facts and above all the presentation style of the topic at hand, to help audience better understand the whole concept, as well to keep them engaged in an interactive environment. Most users, especially the creatives despite all their efforts get the presentation all wrong and while trying to  infuse creativity, end up making the presentation quite lengthy and uninteresting. This where an all new start-up firm, Projeqt comes into play. This highly creative spin off entity from TBWA provides the users with essential tools including Flickr photos, RSS feeds, tweets, YouTube or Vimeo videos, to help put together a fascinating presentation, regardless of the topic. Co-founded by David Lee, Projeqt came into existence as per a web enhancement project Mr. Lee was working on for the creative advertising agency, TBWA. The project called for a more immersive client work display for the ad agency, that was to be made without the use of the essential Adobe Flash component. Projeqt provides its users with working tools, where in the first one can be used by artists to create portfolios for their work and other tool, that is more on a corporate scale, enables businesses to create immaculate presentations for brand awareness and reaching out to the masses. Projeqt essentially provides the users with valuable tools to create a slideshow for their presentation and then add names, tags, photo, text, video or feeds to make it more engaging and interactive. As of now, Projeqt is under the Beta banner, with more than 2,700 beta testers running the tools for testing and improvements. These beta testers are using the service to create professional slide shows for a variety of realms including personal start pages, press rooms, virtual classrooms and company websites.

Google Brings 44 New Languages For Editing Purposes In Google Docs For Mobile Posted: 05 Mar 2011 05:32 PM PST The online equivalent of Microsoft Office, Google Docs, that has been now become one of the foremost means of document creation and sharing service, due to its immense and highly successful grip on the cloud computing concept, has now announced the addition of 45 new languages to the Google Docs for Mobile service. This incredible service lets users view and edit documents, spreadsheets and other formats right from their mobile devices, whether they be smartphones, tablets or any other supporting mobile device. Furthermore, users can easily send a link to their documents and then share them with other users in real time, while also providing them with editing rights, if they so choose to. Currently mobile document editing feature is only available on Apple iPhone and Google Android 2.2 (Froyo) powered devices, while spreadsheet editing is open on all mobile platforms. The addition of 4 new languages now makes Google Docs all the more enticing for users who are tired of creating documents and sending them back and forth via e-mail. Some of the languages added to the list are Korean, Hindi, Japanese, Dutch, Turkish, Ukranian etc. To enable the language of your choice, visit Google Docs from you mobile browser and then select a document to edit. This will bring up the mobile editor and you can choose which language you wish to edit in. Via Google Mobile Blog

CeBIT 2011: Archos Announces The Launch Of An All New High End Tablet For IFA 2011 Posted: 05 Mar 2011 05:27 PM PST One of the foremost French consumer electronics company, Archos, at the CeBIT 2011 in Hanover, Germany, has now announced the introduction of an all new high end tablet device, that the company plans to launch the IFA 2011 in Berlin later this year. This new line of tablets are sure to be devised to provide some sort of competition to the incredibly famous Apple iPad (though I guess, iPad 2 might prove to be too much for Archos) and other tablets such as the likes of Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 etc. However, the most striking fact about the announcement of the new high end tablet is that, Archos in its statement has revealed that the company itself is in dark as to the hardware it would be incorporating in the new tablet (strange right? It might be a surprise for Archos too!). Though it would make no sense whatsoever as to why a company would announced a product, without having the slightest idea to the components that are to be placed in to the product, yet the tablet market is so fierce, that such tactics aren't surprising. However, some believe that the hardware of the new high end tablet from Archos will be quite similar to the tablets of the current generation, as the Archos tablet could very well be powered by Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core processor and running tablet specific OS in the form Google Android 3.0 'Honeycomb'. Via Netbook News & Tablet Blog

You are subscribed to email updates from Trends Updates To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610