Rev2.org

So you have the next hottest startup idea burning your idea tree and ready for development.  All you need is a good name for it and a domain to match.  Easy right?  “Not so fast,” your marketing sense tells you.  In order to hit it big on Web 2.0, you need a short, catchy, and brandable domain and name.  “MyKillerNewStartupPlanForWeb20.com” is not exactly, shall we say, memorable.

There aren’t very many short domains available anymore.  Even 5-character wonders like “9oxt3.com” are hard to get and aren’t exactly useful.  BrandBucket.com is in the business of helping you find the right domain for your new business.  While the domain brokerage and domain exchange sites aren’t new, Brand Bucket is a little different.

The names that Brand Bucket has in its listings are generally 6 characters or less, are brandable, and are currently for sale.  They are marketable names with potential, which is the point.

The site works similar to eBay or Amazon in that you can browse through the available domains, filter them using a few search filters, and flag them for your “Wish List” or “Watch List” so you can go back and compare those you liked later.

Many of the available names have simple logos or renditions to give an idea of what its current owner or seller thinks it would be good for.  Every domain I saw while browsing through was definitely something someone would fine useful.  There weren’t any lame 9oxt3 ducks, that’s for sure.

I found the simple searching by industry type to be the best filter, though imagination could turn some domains in one list into something useful on another.  Domains you wish to purchase can be bought straight through Brand Bucket, no haggling.

Prices are set by sellers, who pay a fee to Brand Bucket when their domain sells, and range from $100 to several thousand, depending on the brand/domain’s uses and other characteristics.  A few include ready-made websites, but most are just domains and logos ready for branding.

Definitely worth a search, the site has a lot of nice listings, is easy to use, and the free Domain Evaluator app is worth a try as well.  Brand Bucket is based in Los Angeles, California.

Tired of looking like you wear diapers under those khakis?  Want to look like a monkey sex god instead?  Bonobos.

(Cue the too-pretty male models, made to look like chimpanzees, with cheesy hats with little ears on them, on a white stage with white blocks to romp upon in their all-khaki trousers while chasing young women in summer dresses around the set)

Bonobos.

(Tinkling music with a hint of rainforest background sounds commences)

Bonobos.

(Then the marquee, in black lettering at center screen:)

Bonobos. When khaki brings out the jungle instinct.

Wow, I missed my calling.  I should be making fashion commercials.  There are three things that set Bonobos apart from most other khaki pants on the market: they aren’t Dockers, they make your butt look good, and they cost a lot.

Available only online and in limited quantities, these pants are upscale, trendy, and single-handedly battling KDB.  No, that’s not a secret Soviet agency of days gone past, though it could be a Communist Conspiracy of some sort.  KDB is Khaki-Diaper-Butt and it’s the sole mission of Bonobos to fight this evil phenomenon.

Amazingly, Bonobos is named after an endangered chimpanzee of the same name.  Which is interesting, since this chimp is primarily known for its unquenchable sexual appetite.   How does an animal that loves getting it on become endangered?  Maybe it’s better not to ask.

Bonobos appears to be a pretty successful endeavor so far.  The company has been in business for nearly two years, has 18 employees, and made $1.6 million in revenues last year.  With offices on both sides of the country (New York and San Francisco), Bonobos has an interesting marketing strategy.  Part hype, part fashion “business as usual” and part affiliate marketing, the company seems to be growing quickly.

The company’s founders, Brian Spaley and Andy Dunn, decided not to go the usual retail route because they found that most men prefer to just grab what they need and be done with it (perfect for online shopping) while women like to browse, handle the merchandise, and become involved with it (not good for online selling).  Since they do men’s wear, they went with the online-only model.

Great stuff and interesting to see a successful online fashion design company making it.

Going into open beta very soon, OrganIP (organip.digitrad.com) is an app that replaces phone numbers with names or, more precisely, matches names to phone numbers.  Whether you know the number or not.

Without going into speculation about the unusual name of this app, let’s look at its function instead.  It’s safer territory.

It’s intended use is to connect phone numbers with your social network.  Specifically, it takes your Facebook, Gmail/Gtalk, and the new .tel domains and matches them to phone numbers.  Near-future additions include LinkedIn, Windows Live, and Twitter.

It’s a Web-based app, meant to be accessed from a mobile device, that works in an amazingly intuitive way.  After putting in the name (assuming you’re logged in), the app searches your social networks for matches.  If, say, “Robo” is your friend on both Facebook and Gmail, it will retrieve both as matches and present them to you.  You can then choose one or the other.  Many Facebook accounts, you may have noticed, have phone numbers attached in the user’s profile.  Using that, it will call them.  Some Gtalk accounts have similar numbers listed.  If you’d rather, or a number isn’t found, OrganIP also lets you send a voice-to-text message or just a straight voicemail.

Some privacy concerns immediately arise, obviously.  The good news is that OrganIP has thought of these and taken steps to work with them.  It should be obvious that if your social profiles on your sites don’t have public phone numbers, you won’t receive calls through OrganIP as it won’t access those numbers.  Even if it does find the number, if your profile is set to keep that private, it will not present it to the caller.  Instead, it goes straight to voice mail.

OrganIP is currently accepting applications for open-beta launch later this year.  Their initial presentation of the app at DEMOfall09 last month did not go very smoothly, but the app will be free while in beta, moving to a monthly fee structure once it goes public.

Online merchants and web portals/sales sites often find a processing company and (often) a gateway for online processing when they first begin and then feel stuck with that solution for the duration.  Fees from some of these merchant gateways can be pretty steep.  Especially for online purchase transactions, which have a high fraud rate that processors control by charging higher fees to the merchant.

TransFS.com wants to change how merchants find their processor and empower businesses with the ability to let processors compete for their business.

The idea is awesome and definitely empowering, allowing the business owner to shop around easily for better terms and rates.  With online processing and merchant services being a well-established and normal way of doing business today, it’s good that tools like TransFS are showing up to give businesses a better way to find the services they need to conduct business.

The way it works is simple.  The business owner fills out a form with the information you’d normally give to a merchant gateway to set up an account: percentages of online, mail order, and phone transactions (card-not-present) and on-site (card present) as well as monthly sales volumes and average transaction size.

Processors then bid for your business, giving their most competitive offer.  These are shown to the business owner by TransFS in a side-by-side comparison list for easy decision making.

Amazingly, TransFS beta series showed an average of 40% savings in fees from testers who switched from their current gateways to new processors found through the site.  TransFS monetizes through fees paid by processors competing on the site for new business and the site is free to use by business owners/entrepreneurs.

TransFS was founded in 2008 and recently received grant from the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center (CEC) on October 13.  The startup is based in Chicago, Illinois and also recently released their free iPhone app (OS 3.1 or later) for processing credit cards through an iPhone.  The app is unique in that it can be used through any merchant gateway, so it is not tied to one provider.

TransFS is definitely one to keep your eye on.

Is there really a need for another online survey tool?  Survey says: yep, if it’s more than just a Facebook app or lame “get paid to take…” offer.

Survs.com is a new survey-making tool and service that has recently come out of closed beta.  The site offers survey building, hosting, and statistical delivery tools for building professional surveys with third-party verification.  Nothing new there, really.

What changes is the survey tool itself and how it can build a survey using logical progression.  So the flat, one dimensional surveys most often offered by other survey sites are replaced with more dynamic, structured surveys instead.

So if the survey asks for specific information on, say, car make and model, it can then take that and go to the next logical step asking for specific engine type, body style, etc. based on that earlier answer.

What Survs does is take the complex and informative surveys that large companies like retailers and auto insurance giants use (through expensive marketing tools) and make them possible for the little guy as well.

The other great strength that is immediately noticed when using this site is the great (simple) design of the site itself and its masterful use of AJAX to make surveys easy to create for instant, real-time updates and saves of the survey-build in progress.  This alone makes it much quicker to build a survey (even a simple one) versus many other apps.

Survs also works on the back-end for the survey collection and extrapolation.  Surveys can be sent through multiple channels (email, Web, etc.) and responses from each are tracked separately, but can be combined for the overall data charting.  This ads the ability to track which channel you get the most and/or fastest responses from.  So email might deliver faster response, but over time your website might generate more responses in total.

There is a free subscription which allows one user, up to 200 responses per survey, and unlimited survey building and sending.  Paid accounts begin at $19/month and offer more functionality and responses.

Survs is a product of Enough Pepper Lda based in Lisbon, Portugal.

One of the greatest problems that small businesses and new startups face is credit.  Not only their own credit worthiness, but the credit they must extend to their service partners and other businesses they deal with.  Few startups or small businesses have gone through life without getting stiffed at least once after completing their half of the bargain.

Chasing another business through court is an expensive, time-consuming and often fruitless process.  Cortera.com hopes to cut down on those renege situations by supplying small businesses with Dunn and Bradstreet-style ratings based on the feedback that other businesses give in the community.

Think of it as the Better Business Bureau meets Facebook.  Basically, business profiles are created by and reviewed by members of the Cortera community (other businesses) and reviews culminate into total rating scores.  What’s more, if the business in question does have a D&B rating, Cortera will list that as well.

The reviews are a lot like those on Amazon and eBay, though obviously more business-oriented.  To vote, a user must be a registered business on the site. Ratings include overall community ratings, payment ratings based on criteria like promptness of payment.  Each rating criteria has a full explanation and those doing the rating can ad comments that others can read as well.  The total ratings (Community Ratings) listed have the total number of people who left feedback to get that score.

Cortera (in its current incarnation) was founded earlier this year and is based in Boca Raton, Florida, Quincy, Massachusetts,  and with software/development offices in India.  The debut for the publicly-accessible Cortera website took place in September at the DEMOfall 09 event after launching in July.

Information on businesses listed with Cortera is available free of charge and requires no account.  Registration is required to rate listed businesses, however.