four web businesses amongst top Kiwi start-ups

To see what is hot in the e-business space right now, check out four of New Zealand’s top start-up companies for 2008 — four web businesses praised for their strong ideas and great execution.

Here’s an article explaining them, and below are links to their websites:

Bookhabit – an online book store with an innovative business model for self-publishers
Endemic world – an online design store for N ew Zealand products
Unimarket – an online (SaaS) multi-tenant eProcurement solution
Celsias – a website that helps people and organisations do practical things to combat climate change.

feeling the love with Windows 7

Following on from our post last month about the effectiveness of giving away stuff online, here’s a piece about the benefits Microsoft is reaping from giving away copies of its latest operating system Windows 7, one year in advance of its official release.

Microsoft’s current operation system Vista has had screeds of negative press and relatively poor sales. As a result, Microsoft has pushed forward the release of Windows 7 and made it publicly available so that people can play with it and give feedback on its performance.

The move has met with widespread public acclaim and has also pulled Microsoft into the 21st century as far as online business models go.

a glitch in Google’s cloud computing service

Google has made much of its cloud computing or software as a service (SaaS) offerings, hyping them as the new, efficient and cost-effective way to do business.  This blog post from Wired shows Google may still have some SaaS glitches to be ironed out.

It also shows that people’s nervousness about putting confidential documents in the cloud may be around for some time.

turn your cellphone into an internet connection

If you’re on the road a lot and need access to your e-business, you can easily turn your cellphone into a router that picks up your broadband account and sends it to your laptop to allow you to use the internet wherever you are.

Here are two software products that do this:  JoikuSpot and wmwifirouter.

(I have not tried either product and was simply interested to know of their existence. You will need to check if they work with your phone.)

‘best of breed’ open-source tools for common business needs

Here’s a directory of best-of-breed open source applications and tools with solutions to many common business needs … web-conferencing, HR tools, system security, blog software, project management and a whole lot more.

(The list was compiled by the open-source evangelists at Wellington-based software company Catalyst.)