Startup Weekend Charlottesville | March 23-25 2012

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Have a great idea for a business and looking for help and inspiration? Check this out:

"Startup Weekend is a 54-hour event where developers, designers,
marketers, product managers, and startup enthusiasts come together to
share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups".

What a great idea. Kudos to those bringing this to Charlottesville.

 

Get Your Group On: Introducing Posterous Groups

Posterous gets Groups! I see LOTS of potential to use this for personal projects, volunteer activities, business/client communications and more.

My take: Maybe not as swish as Google Wave: but then again, Wave was buggy and then it tanked. Definitely more visually appealing and user friendly than Google Groups and Google Sites, both of which I avoid because of the lackluster GUI.

Do you see a use for Posterous Groups? If you're already a Posterous blogger, I bet you do.

 

Farm to Table, an online coop helps expand the market for local farmers in Charlotte

Farmers Fresh Market is a virtual "Farmers Market" linking growers, chefs, and individual buyers. Once orders are placed online, local growers process them, and we deliver them - picked and shipped within 24 hours! The goal of the program is to provide the freshest and most flavorful local produce in a convenient and sustainable manner.

props to treehugger for the link

 

 

 

Lower your Comcast bill...a lot. Seriously.

I swung by Best Buy in Charlottesville earlier this week to buy a new tv ( thanks to the guys at UVA-Mess for all the buying advice) and walked out with a 30$+ savings on my monthly Comcast bill, with an upgrade to two DVR boxes.   

How? you ask.
 
It turns out that Comcast now has Sales Reps stationed in the tv department at Best Buy whose purpose is to find and retain Comcast customers.  This includes working to "re-bundle" existing customers who are unhappy with their monthly charges.  The Comcast rep saw me hovering by the TIVO display while I waited to check out, and overheard me grumble that I already spent "too much" monthly on tv service.  She rushed over to intervene and as a result, my bill dropped from about 138/month ( for two tv's and internet ) to 105/month with upgraded service. In one year, the savings will cover half the cost of my new 40" Samsung flatscreen.  My Dad's bill ( just for television ) dropped by nearly 50$/month!  
 
The bottom line is that the Comcast package you bought 5 or 10 years ago has likely become more costly each year.  Plus, any upgrades you've made over the years to your service added cost without any review of the underlying bundle.  In the meantme, new customers are getting betters deals. Unjust, for sure, but now you can stop by Best Buy and do something about it.  The only thing you need to remember is that these rates are fixed for a year only, at which point, they'll jump back up, so make sure you make a note to go back in and renegotiate in 11 1/2 months.  
 
Drop me a comment with your savings!
 
 

Google Labs introduces Living Stories: news on the fly.

News, made for the Web.

The Living Stories project is an experiment in presenting news, one designed specifically for the online environment. The project was developed by Google in collaboration with two of the country's leading newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

All in one place
Complete coverage of an on-going story is gathered together and prioritized on one URL. You can now quickly navigate between news articles, opinion pieces and features without long waits for pages to load.

check it out online at livingstories.googlelabs.com

 

 

Read Your Newspaper on Your Home Computer !! circa 1981

The thing that really caught my ear in this report was their estimate of 2-3000 ( yes, that's two to three thousand ) "home computer owners" in the Bay Area!