The Melt update: Great logistics--and free bacon!

The mobile ordering site went live recently for The Melt's chain of grilled cheese restaurants. The best feature of the app (and The Melt in general): you can add bacon to any sandwich for free. Although since the grilled cheese sandwiches themselves are $5.75, "free" is a bit of a stretch. But still, hey, sort of free bacon!

In the interest of research (and lunch), I checked out the new mobile site and the in-store follow-through at a nearby Melt location. What I found was a bug in the system (presumably a temporary problem), but also … Read more

From creator of Second Life, yet another P2P commerce play: Coffee and Power

Philip Rosedale, the founder (and still chairman) of the company that made Second Life, is back with a new company in the hot consumer-to-consumer commerce space that TaskRabbit and Gigwalk are making popular. Coffee and Power is his creation. It is a little different from the other entries in this space, but conceptually not too far afield.

Coffee and Power is designed to be a marketplace for doing, "small, fast jobs," Rosedale says. He's proud that the service was built using itself (for the sake of this story, please ignore the chicken-and-egg problem). There are about 88,… Read more

Reporters' Roundtable: Frontiers in search

Go ahead and raise your hand if when you want to search for something on the Web, you think of Google. Yup, it's most of you. But upstarts are always trying to chip away at Google. From Microsoft to MC Hammer, search is the holy grail for many startups.

Yes, that's right, MC Hammer has a search startup, called WireDoo.

Today we're talking about different approaches companies are taking to take on search, with:

Paul Sloan, the executive editor in charge of startups for CNET. Harry McCracken, editor of Technologizer and a columnist for us and for Time. Jim Lanzone, president of CBSi and therefore the boss of everyone else on this show. Jim is also former CEO of Ask.

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… Read more

Two new money-making platforms for social content creators

"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." That simple comment by Andrew Lewis on a MetaFilter post in 2010 did a great job, I think, of capturing some of the subconscious discomfort users accumulate as they put more and more of their lives on social networks like Facebook. But two new social products on display at the Web 2.0 Summit earlier this week, Chime.in and Mightybell, turn the equation around a bit, allowing social network contributors to take some of their content and turn … Read more

Kevin Rose demos Oink: Check-ins for things, not places

SAN FRANCISCO--At the Web 2.0 Summit, Kevin Rose of Digg fame showed off Oink--a service for checking into and rating "things," as opposed to places. Oink is the first product from Rose's new company, Milk.

You can rate, for example, the best teas at a specific location (Example: Samovar Tea Lounge) or all the teas within walking distance. Rose says early Oink users are mostly rating food and drink. But also seats at venues, attractions at theme parks, and so on.

There's a gamification element to Oink that will pay users back. "I'… Read more

Foursquare moves toward ditching check-ins

SAN FRANCISCO--Interviewed at the Web 2.0 Summit, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley talked about how the location check-in app is becoming more passive.

"One of the big hurdles we have is that you have to think about using it," he said of Foursquare. "If we can lower that barrier, we can juice the experience."

That's why the company recently launched the Radar feature, which, once you turn it on, collects info about where you are, the direction you're going, and so on. It'll tell you if people you like are nearby, and "… Read more

CX: Good sync product, doomed market

CX is another cloud storage and sync product, like DropBox, SugarSync, Box.net, Bitcasa. It looks like a strong offering, with unique tools for sharing. But this product doesn't matter.

That's because while the market for sync products is going to keep growing for a while, it's a dead concept. And I say that as the biggest user and promoter of file sync software that I know.

Before I get into why I think every product in this category is doomed, let's look at CX pitch in some more detail.

"The real value in content … Read more

This is getting too easy: Giftly makes better gift cards

Nothing quite says "you're special to me" like a happy birthday note on your Facebook wall, does it? The person sending the note doesn't have to remember your birthday--Facebook does that for them--and the effort to post the note is so low it can be done between sips of coffee.

Yet these gestures matter, computer-moderated or not. We are social creatures. We get a little pleasure zap in our brain when someone recognizes us, gives us something, or tells us something personal, no matter what the impetus to do so was.

So if it's the … Read more

Wheelz launches car sharing for college campuses

Another car-sharing service is launching today. Wheelz does the same thing as RelayRides and Getaround: If you have a car that sits unused from time to time, it lets you rent it out to other people, like AirBnB can do for an apartment that you leave vacant.

Wheelz is more focused than its competitors. It's designed exclusively for college and university campuses. The service is going live initially for Stanford students and employees.

CEO Jeff Miller made it clear to me that his company has learned from the hit that AirBnB took when one of its members' homes was … Read more