Filed under: World wide web, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

MySpace has rolled out its anticipated site-wide redesign this day. There’s a shiny new search engine which displays results from your friends first and lets you sort your results by movies, music, the web, or all of MySpace. And site navigation has been improved so that it takes less clicks to get from one part of the site to another.

There’s also a new video player which supports higher quality videos playing at 480p resolution. That makes the MySpace video player a lot nicer than YouTube’s current offering. But if you’re a MySpace traditionalist, don’t worry, the site still has its obnoxious side. For example, when you visit the main page you’ll be greeted by a large advertisement which pushes the content about halfway down the window. Classy, right?

And of course, if you’re worried that you won’t recognize MySpace with its new look and all, you can always install a Firefox plugin that’ll alert you any time you accidentally find yourself on the social networking site.

[via TechCrunch]

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Filed under: College, Debt, Insurance, Health, Bankruptcy

Too many young adults are uninsured and it’s not looking any better for the class of 2008. High school graduates totally lacking health insurance now stands at 38%, while 34% of college graduates also lack coverage.

Young adults are often bumped off of their parent’s insurance, whether it’s on their high school or college graduation day. Even if they’re able to secure a job with benefits, those often don’t kick in until several weeks, or even months, into employment. The result is a lapse in coverage that can create financial havoc on a young person’s ability to save.

“One of the reasons young adults aren’t covered is because they think it’s too expensive,” says Robert Zirkelbach of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a health insurance company lobbying group. “Individual health care coverage is more affordable and accessible than is widely known.” According to Zirkelbach, 90% of young adults who apply for insurance are offered coverage, and the annual premiums average $1,359 for ages 18 to 24 and $1,534 for ages 25 to 29.

What is too expensive, are bills when their payment isn’t supplemented by insurance. Medical bills have the power to bankrupt you fast. Even if you’re the picture of health, one false step could potentially put you in financial ruin.

“A lot of people feel invincible at that age, but I would never tell people not to have insurance,” states Dave Hernandez, and founder of Wealth Engineering LLC in Scottsdale, Ariz. “It’s the last thing someone at that age considers because they’re in top mental and physical shape with the whole world ahead of them,” he states. “But accidents happen.”

Short term insurance policies can last a couple months to a year with an option to renew, helping people in need of intermittent coverage. “Short term policies generally have low monthly premium, but tend to have exclusions like preexisting conditions,” states Zirkelbach. “If you’ve an extensive history it will be difficult to get coverage. But health care coverage is more accessible and affordable than is widely believed, especially for that young age group.”

One option for young workers in good health is catastrophic insurance like Blue Cross’s Tonik and Core 5000 plans. Tonik offers bare bones plans with high deductibles ranging from $1,500 to $5,000. For as tiny as $73 a month, depending on age and health, your care will be covered (after you meet the deductible), including emergency room and hospital stays.

Catastrophic plans often have a lifetime cap –Tonik’s is $5 million — so make sure it’s high enough to cover a major medical crisis. Keep in mind these plans rarely include maternity benefits.

On the internet resources such as ehealthinsurance.com are good places to compare the premiums, deductibles, prescription benefits (as well as important caveats on mental health and maternity coverage) from all the major insurance companies. Student specific coverage is also offered, as long as you’re under 29 and either a full time undergraduate or graduate student.

Medical bills can mount quickly, either leaving you with a future of debt, or burdening your family with a massive liability. So get health insurance. “For a couple hundred bucks a month,” states Fernandez, “it’s worth it.”

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Filed under: Debt

Late on rent? Loan shark breathing down your neck? Can’t fill your car with gas to get to work on Monday? Assuming all available funds and traditional sources of credit are tapped out, here are 25 (legal) ways to raise cash in a few days. We list them in order from least to most desperate.

You’re out of cash. What do you do? Hit up Mothers and Dads.

No, not your mother and dad, silly. Moms and Dads; those worn-out individuals with small children under five who barely remember what it’s like to go to a restaurant and not spend the evening quelling tantrums and wiping up spilled water. There are a lot of part-time jobs you can get in order to turn a quick buck, but exercising the babysitting option is one of the most immediately lucrative. Supply and demand, you know.

I mean, babysitters earn upwards of $10 an hour these days. Offer to sit for friends’ children Friday or Saturday night. The parents will be only too happy to hand you cash when they return. One friend of mine used to leverage her evening take by mentioning casually that she’d be happy to spend the night with the kids for $100…which was always swiftly obliged by the male half of the equation, if only so he can get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Reliable babysitters are in high demand. You can nearly name your price. Indeed, as a parent, I’ve been known to offer last-minute desperation bonuses for a sitter who’ll show up on a moment’s notice when the original sitter is a no-show. I gave one girl her regular pay plus a $50 tip, just to thank her for pinch-hitting at the last minute. (It was cheap compared to losing out on my $300 theater tickets).

You probably superior have some experience with kids, either through raising your own or having had a lot of babysitting experience.

What if you’re a young male, and nobody is prone to hire you to watch their children? Offer to wash automobiles, mow lawns, weed backyards or haul crap out of the garage. Help folks move. Use your brawn, in other words. And state your hourly rate up front and insist on cash.

Other quick cash options? House-sit for friends of friends (friends by definition, will expect you to feed their cat and take in their mail for free. People you only know by association won’t). Walk dogs. Haul recycling. If you’re handy with a musical instrument, go to a tourist spot and busk.

Mostly, use your brain. There are a lot of options for those cash-less souls who’re willing to work.

All 25 ways to raise swift cash.

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Filed under: College, Cards, Debt

If you have had a loan, credit card or any other type of credit line in the past 21 years, TransUnion is offering up to 9 months of credit monitoring services as part of a class action lawsuit settlement. You can opt for the basic service which includes 6 months of credit monitoring as well as unlimited access to your credit report and TransUnion credit score. This option grants you to still receive some form of cash from the settlement. If you don’t care about the cash portion you can opt for the enhanced service which nets you 9 months of monitoring and a mortgage simulator to help you see what your mortgage rate would be as well as access to your insurance scores.

The credit monitoring service offered by TransUnion provides 24 hour monitoring and email notification of major changes. A credit expert notes that all consumers can benefit from a free credit monitoring service and that TransUnion’s credit monitoring is top notch. Experts are less impressed by the mortgage simulator and the offer of a TransUnion score because the number isn’t your real FICO score and less than 5%of banks use the TransUnion number. While it isn’t the same number the TransUnion score is usually within 40-50 points of your FICO score and might at least alert you if your score is drastically lower than it should be.

While I think this is a good deal for a free service that might prove useful, it’s sad that it is only coming about due to a lost lawsuit based on TransUnion’s greed. You see back before 2001, TransUnion was selling customer information to marketing lists and others. That’s right this credit monitoring is just a way of saying sorry, even though we didn’t do anything wrong, for all of that junk mail you used to receive!

You can visit www.listclassaction.com to sign up for your benefits, which you can activate after the court accepts the settlement.

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Filed under: Audio, Social Software, web 2.0

YourSpins is a social network site dedicated to those who love remixes. To start remixing your music, you’ll need to download a plug-in for your media player (Windows Media Player, Quicktime and WinAmp are currently supported) as remixes are created from within the player. From there you’ll be able to download the completed song with all the associated parts from the site to start your remix.

YourSpins has worked together with musicians to provide you with tracks that you can play with. This means each songs will have multiple instruments for you to choose from. And because all the tracks are provided, you won’t run into issues of certain parts not being in tempo or instruments playing in the wrong key.

When you’re done, the finished remix will be saved to your YourSpins page where others can listen to your mix. Points are given out depending on how well your mixes are received. Overall points are grouped in levels ranging from “Noob” on up to the “Omnipotent Grand Overlord”.

If you want to give it a “spin” without downloading any plug-ins, you can try out their ecards service. While it doesn’t give you the full experience it does give you a fun taste of remixing.

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Filed under: Video, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Instructional videos or on the web reviews can sometimes be difficult to follow. Depending on watch you’re watching it might be nice to have a second video displaying additional information that would aid in the presentation. Viddix may have found the answer to this in the form of their iPanel.

Once you’ve uploaded your video to the website, you’ll need to add cuepoints. These cuepoints allow you to add text, links, photos, html pages, charts or other media rich files that your viewers can read and interact with. Viddix also provides cuepoint presets to ease the production of your video.

From begin to complete, the production concept is straight forward and the average user shouldn’t have many issues with producing their own videos.

While still in beta, we find the concept very useful, especially since we’ve started taking guitar lessons.

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Filed under: News, Blogging, Social Software

Fav.or.it is a new kind of RSS aggregator, somewhere in between a pre-set collection of feeds like Alltop and a full-on Google Reader-style service. It had been in closed beta, but now’s it’s opening to everyone. It includes a set of 2000 of the most popular and interesting feeds, and provides recommended stories based on what you’re reading, how long you spend on it, and how you rate it. Basically, Fav.or.it tries to pay attention to what you’re paying attention to. Also, as we reported earlier, your comments show up in Fav.or.it and on the original story.

It’s no reason to abandon Google Reader, but if you’re not already reading RSS feeds, this is a good introduction to managing them. With it’s Top-Story-focused, categorized startpage, it reminds us more of Google News than Google Reader in some ways. Whether Fav.or.it gets a good user base is going to be depend on how happy people are with its recommendation algorithm. Even if you just think of it as site that exposes newbies to a couple thousand top blogs, it’s doing a useful service for the World wide web.

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Filed under: Raising money, Bain Capital, Venture capital industry, Private equity industry, Investments, Public or private?

LinkedIn is the social networking operator that just about every business person has received an invite to join from at least one person they know.

The company issued a press release this morning noting that it has secured $53 million in additional funding in a capital raise. This was its fourth and largest round of funding and is said to value the company north of $1 billion. What is perhaps more interesting than anything is that the finding was from a private equity-led group rather than from venture capital. Bain Capital Ventures, the VC unit of Bain, led the financing with additional reinvestment from the company’s existing investors:

• Sequoia Capital,
• Greylock Partners,
• and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Over 23 million professionals use LinkedIn to keep in touch with old contacts, to reach new contacts, to problem-solve, and more.

To top matters off, CNBC hosted the head of the company, Dan Nye, earlier this morning and the hint of going public was much more than a hint. It seems like you can probably anticipate an S-1 filing with the SEC in the relatively near future if things continue, although that timing could be later in 2008 or into 2009 or even never. But the ‘we are going for valuations much higher than this’ line was a hard one not to notice. Personally, I’ll go ahead and ‘bet the over’ that we see an IPO filing in the coming months as long as market conditions don’t go further awry.

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Filed under: Borrowing, Debt, Entrepreneurship

It’s always interesting to learn about a financial lending firm that arrives on the scene during a monetary crisis. In this case, I’m thinking of GlobeFunder, a direct-to-consumer lending company. I half wonder if the executive management team thinks it’s the unluckiest company in the world — or if it actually feels very fortunate. After all, with a credit crunch, there are fewer borrowers who have good credit and can get a loan. But with a credit crunch, it certainly will have plenty of people who want to borrow from the company.

So that brings me to GlobeFunder. I thought I’d let everyone — entrepreneurs in particular — know that there’s a new financial lending firm on the scene, and it’s eager to lend you money. Well, hold on, before you get too excited. It’s eager to lend you money as long as you’ve good credit. Yeah, there’s always a catch.

(If it helps, you’ve to have a credit score that’s at least 640.)

Anyway, GlobeFunder can offer people $25,000 in unsecured loans, depending on your state’s laws. They’ll also soon be offering home equity and auto loans.

So I asked Ben Decio, the president and co-founder of GlobeFunder, what he thought about the current economy, and he is actually sounding very optimistic, not at all like an entrepreneur who thinks he started his company at the wrong time.

“The U.S. economy is still the engine that runs and drives the global economy,” stated Decio. “The past six months have shown how the economists were wrong that the emerging markets could stand alone. A slowdown is now global, not just here in the U.S. We’re still by far the largest consumer of goods on a global scale. We will see a correction and most likely a slow, upward growth next year, and in the new few years to come.”

Well, that’s nice to hear.

Furthermore, Decio added, “The sky isn’t falling, but the economy is taking a needed breather that might hurt some folks in the short run. Look at Blue Chip companies that are outside of the financial services or housing sectors — they’re still posting healthy profits and hitting their quarterly numbers. The U.S. economy, as it has so many times before, will adapt and come out stronger than before.”

Geoff Williams is a business journalist, primarily for Entrepreneur.com, and the author of C.C. Pyle’s Incredible Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

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