Webware

Call me a killjoy, but I usually find it difficult to get excited about small business accounting software. I just took a look at CashView, though, and talked to a few people about what it does. It performs a much-needed function for small businesses and could save a lot of them a lot of time and hassle.

Here's what it does: When you get an invoice from a service provider, you either e-mail it (for PDFs; if it came as a Word or Excel file, convert it) or fax it (if it came in the mail) to the address or number that CashView set up for you. Then you go online to handle the paperwork, attaching the account information, the payee, the amount, the invoice terms, and the name or names of the people in your company who need to approve the bill.

CashView stores and routes invoices.

Cashview then routes the bill to the person who needs to approve it, and it also stores all the information about the bill along with an image of the bill in your account.

Once bills are approved, the system will pay them on the dates you wish, by transferring funds from your business checking account to payees. It also integrates with QuickBooks and QuickBooks online (I did not test this).

The service tracks payment status. It has a full list of reports, too.

Assuming that this startup company doesn't go belly-up and lose all your data, using CashView means that once you've got a bill stored in it, you can throw out the paper copy. CashView can help make a small business more paperless and streamline payment processing.

It's a simple, nicely executed service. My only nitpick is that it will be priced at $1 per bill processed after the current free beta period. Although that probably represents a great value considering how much time it saves, I see penny-pinching small business owners cringing every time they send an invoice through the system.

I would not be at all surprised if Intuit or Microsoft acquired this business.

(Previous coverage from DemoFall)

We gave Matchmine a small writeup from the DemoFall conference yesterday, but I wanted to dive into the concept here a little more. What Matchmine is trying to do is create a universal preferences system. The pitch is that instead of rating the movies and music and blogs you like on each site you go to that has ratings, you rate your preferences once, and then any future sites you go to can grab those prefs immediately to serve you recommendations that will be good for you.

By telling Matchmine what you like, you create a key that can be used by other sites.

The recommendations are created independently of any site's users, and thus can't be based on collaborative filtering, where you're matched with items based on what other users are buying or rating. Instead, Matchmine finds items for you based on a database of attributes attached to each property in its database. If you rate Western movies highly, it will find more of them for you. If you're partial to Oscar winners, it knows that, too. Of course, the more items you rate, the better your results should be.

The company plans to make money be selling its technology to content marketplaces, and it already has deals with some second-tier music and film sites like Fuzz, FilmCrave, and Peerflix.

There's a standalone recommendation application that connects you to Amazon and other stores to buy things.

These sites, though, already have their own databases of media as well as their own rating systems. Sites that support Matchmine will let their users import their preferences, but they don't, yet, export. So any work you've done on Peerflix, for example, to rate your favorite movies won't get exported to your Matchmine preferences set. And it's unlikely that the major commerce/rating sites, like Amazon and Netflix, will adopt technology that commoditizes what for them is a key service. I really don't think Amazon sees its recommendation engine as something it can outsource.

On the other hand, Matchmine can send transactions to any store it wants, including Amazon and Netflix, and pocket affiliate fees for doing so. The service's standalone recommendation engine does just that.

One of the things I don't get about Matchmine is that it stores all its preference data locally, on users' machines, in a background executable file that the user then authorizes applications to access. This lets users control their information, but it's a very un-Web concept: It's not portable and it sucks up resources on the PC. The service also makes a big deal about privacy, since it doesn't store any personal information with your preferences. But as soon as you import prefs into a commerce site, you'll be matched up. So I don't quite get that.

Matchmine is a noble experiment. The company is trying to take very personal information about users--their likes and dislikes--and give that data back to us for us to use and control as we wish. That's fantastic. It looks like it's going to be difficult to make it work as a business, though.

This was the most entertaining idea at DemoFall so far, and probably the most ridiculous: MixGet (site not live yet). It's technology that turns individual cellphones into synchronized music players. So if you have a crowd of people together, one person's phone might play a guitar track, another vocals, another drums.

The presenter tried to justify this product as a potential new kind of ringtone, but I'm not sure I see it. This project is from Redsquare Ventures, which is trying to bring Russian entrepreneurs' ideas to market.

I love this idea. But I don't see the market.

From Demo: Truphone works on mobile phones that have WiFi and can route your calls over the data network instead of your cellular connection. Pretty useful for saving money, especially for international roaming, when calls cost a fortune.

The big news is that the company has managed to port Truphone to the iPhone. So now you can make really good use of that WiFi radio in it. In the demo, the presenter showed a call from a phone with no SIM card in it.

FastCall411: Now this is clever. If you're looking for a service provider, you tell FastCall what you're looking for (for example, a plumber), and then it dials up to ten plumbers at once on your behalf. The first provider to respond is the one you're connected to. FastCall also builds profiles of providers based on how responsive they are.

If you've ever dialed around for someone to handle a service need for you, you'll appreciate this for sure.

From DemoFall 2007.

We're back live from Demo. Next up: Three search companies. Or are they?

• Baagz is pitched as a social network with a strong search component. But it's really a site where users can create pages around certain interests, and drag components on to them, like media files, widgets, and chats. It has a nice alerting feature. But really, it's yet another social network.
• Trovix is a fairly cool specialized job search engine. It parses your resume (which it keeps private) and what you're looking for, and tells which jobs match you experience and wishes. This is interesting, because it takes the automatic analysis of resumes that HR people are accustomed to using and gives that technology to job seekers, too.
• SpaceTime is updating its glitzy 3D search interface (review). Very Star Trek. But get out your Dramamine.

Three more companies making new micro-applications that track and deliver media preferences.

Matchmine allows consumers to figure out what kind of media they like by creating a MatchKey, or a visualization of their preferences.

Just give a ZIP code, date of birth and rate some movies, blogs, etc. with a star system a la Netflix. Users can share their MatchKey with friends and/or advertisers, but not any personal information. The Facebook widget version show what the person has in common with his or her friends--like Flixster, but not in list form. Matchmine has an API online for developers to create their own cute little widgets or different ways of visualizing preferences. Partners of Matchmine get access to the media in a MatchKey if the MatchKey has been shared. This, of course, helps them deliver relevant ads to you.

MuseStorm makes widgets. It's a platform for making desktop widgets and mobile apps, and then lets customers monetize them. The presenters say it can be done in three minutes--Facebook apps, Google Gadgets and a variety of desktop applications. Users don't need to know anything about making widgets, just how to make a PowerPoint presentation. MuseStorm creation process works in a similar manner way--by creating a series of slides. MuseStorm says it tracks impressions and unique visitors to each widget.

FeedHub delivers just the stuff you want via RSS. How does it do it? Based on your personal preferences. Nice. It isn't a new feed reader, instead it improves the relevancy of your feeds. FeedHub works with Google Reader, Bloglines and more. Once you've uploaded OPML files, FeedHub analyzes what you've uploaded and shoots you back the stuff via RSS that you've shown you like the best. It knows this by what you've clicked on or sent to a friend. You can also explicitly say which sources you do or don't like, and a small icon shows how and why it thinks you will like something. Also links up with your blog, your Digg profile and more.

I don't like Webex's web conferencing product. Nor GoToMeeting's. I get invited to online demos using these tools all the time and I find both products resource hogs that are slow to get going, and that make it hard for me to take notes on my PC while watching a presentation. But what really bugs me is that I know the people who invite me to these demos are paying big money for these apps. They shouldn't have to. Screen sharing and conferencing is becoming a commodity feature. See all these stories for examples.

There are two more products entering this market being shown here at the DemoFall conference (more stories). The most interesting is DimDim, a free, open-source conferencing and screen-sharing app with what looks like a ton of flexibility. You can share a presentation file if you upload it to the Flash-based service, in which case nobody needs to download any code -- very nice. Or, if you want to share your screen, you (the presenter) will need a small download, but other participants will not. The service also offers video and audio conferencing, or will optionally use a free conference bridge via telephone.

If you want to put your own company label on DimDim, or install it on your entreprise's servers, you'll have to pay to license it, but it's otherwise free when running on DimDim's hosts.

And then there's Yuuguu, another free screen-sharing app. This one is designed more to replciated the convivial office experience for people who are not actually in the office. It's based on buddy lists, like instant messengers, and requires a download to work. But once your work buddies are online, it lets you easily share your screen and do voice chat over the connection.

I haven't used either of these tools for real meetings yet, so I cannot vouch for their speed or stability. But I like what they are doing: challenging big, entrenched, expensive products with new, leaner products and much more palatable pricing models.

Wait, there are still more tools for small businesses to get stuff done shown here at the conference this morning.

CashView.com lets small business users see all their documents online. It's a service for sending and receiving invoices, approvals, and commenting on them. There's also a calendar that shows when money is due or to be paid to you. It lets you review and zoom in on documents. The docs get online by faxing them to CashView and they upload them for you. Some people might actually have to buy a fax machine first.

Batch Book is a contact organizer. Each employee has a profile with hire date, schedule, personal details and specific project assignments. Companies or clients can also have their profiles created. Business owners can see any communications sent to and from different clients or partners. Users can also create mailing lists, labels and e-mail lists and to-do lists.

PlanHQ says it will help a business achieve its business plan. Every action item is in the browser and linked to a company goal, so you don't get off track, apparently. Managers can set priorities and deadlines. It also shows the history of actions and what is coming up. Each employee has a profile of goals and action items, called "what's on your plate." Everyone can also see what everyone else on the team is scheduled to do. It also has a feature that shows projected profitability based on what different parts of the company (marketing and sales, finance, executives) are doing.