One rule of thumb in business is to make use of money-making models that work. In this day and age, recommendations, matching algorithms, and online advertising are tried and true–when done right. Yelp, Pandora, and Google Ads prove it. Everywun, Mylawsuit.com, and MyGameMug are three companies that presented at the Plug and Play Expo on Thursday that have also applied these principles to their services.

Everywun knows that most people have a pet cause, and that for some, recruiting allies or advertising their volunteerism is a badge of pride. To that end, Everywun has created a money-making system that lets you embed virtual badges in support of your cause into your blog, online profile, and social network.

When your contacts click the badge, advertisers pay up in exchange for getting their logo seen. Everywun is a lot like TheHungerSite.com, except with a more transparent Web site and with widgets that come to you instead of a static site that makes you go to it. That makes it highly visible with a win-win value proposition: sponsors get good press, you get peace of mind, and the Everywun fund in question gets cash for nonprofits, microloans, and community projects. Presumably, Everywun also gets a modest cut for staff fees.

Mylawsuit.com’s founder, attorney Michele Colucci, would like you to go to her company’s Web site the next time you need a lawyer to represent you on either side of a civil case (specifically, torts law). Mylawsuit.com, though still under wraps, will be a recommendation and referral site where citizens can find local, specialized lawyers who are willing to take a cut only if you’re awarded money. Mylawsuit.com will snag 5 percent of the commission for facilitating the deal.

It sounds like a decent way for citizens to find affordable legal aid, but it is yet to be seen how Mylawsuit.com will handle the libelous remarks of sour clients who have lost their cases.

For serious gamers, MyGameMug could be quite a find. Calling itself a social matchmaker, the service, which launched this past August, pairs you up with other like-minded players of multiplayer online games after quizzing you on almost 40 questions to determine your gaming style, playing intensity, and preferred genres.

It should come as no surprise that the two founders, both active gamers, developed MyGameMug after getting fed up with trash-talking opponents.

The quiz results feeds the algorithm that produces your suitable companions and also passes on demographic details for serving you targeted ads, the company’s sole source of input.

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The Muxtape logo.

(Credit: Muxtape)

Muxtape founder Justin Ouelette says the bureaucracy of the music industry was just too much for him to deal with. That’s why he took down the playlist creation Web site, which became a hipster craze earlier this year, after spreading largely via word of mouth. It’ll be relaunching soon, he says, but strictly as a service for independent bands to share their own music.

“I walked away from the licensing deals,” Ouelette wrote in a transparent, albeit navel-gazing letter on Muxtape’s home page. He’d hired a lawyer and tried negotiating, with varied reactions from the major labels.

In August, the Recording Industry Association of America finally complained to Ouelette’s host, Amazon Web Services, and Muxtape was shut down. Frustrated with negotiations that were going to take months, he decided to give up.

“They had become too complex for a site founded on simplicity, too restrictive and hostile to continue to innovate the way I wanted to. They’d already taken so much attention away from development that I started to question my own motivations. I didn’t get into this to build a big company as fast as I could, no matter what the cost; I got into this to make something simple and beautiful for people who love music.”

Ouelette, a former employee of InterActiveCorp’s Vimeo, created Muxtape this spring. Legal questions were instantly raised–though downloads were not permitted, Muxtape had not negotiated with record labels. A minor riff of scandal also came into view when gossip blog Valleywag deduced that Vimeo founder Jakob Lodwick, who had departed the company months ago, had funded Muxtape, creating a potential conflict of interest because Ouelette had quit his job at IAC to run the start-up.

The site was also allegedly burning through cash because of server demands, and it needed a revenue stream–but that would’ve put it on even shakier legal ground.

Soon, Ouelette said, Muxtape will return as “an extremely powerful platform with unheard-of simplicity for artists to thrive on the Internet.”

He spelled out his vision: “The new Muxtape will allow bands to upload their own music and offer an embeddable player that works anywhere on the web, in addition to the original Muxtape format. Bands will be able to assemble an attractive profile with simple modules that enable optional functionality such as a calendar, photos, comments, downloads and sales, or anything else they need.”

The Muxtape format has gained serious hipster cred from the site’s initial burst of popularity, but there’s a problem: bands already have MySpace profiles, as well as iLike concert listings, and they can upload their music to Imeem.

The idea of a cleaner, more unified site for bands is attractive; the idea of competing with News Corp., which just launched the MySpace Music service for its social site, is less so. It echoes of what happened with Napster founder Shawn Fanning when he tried to legitimize the service–it lost steam as a subscription music service and was finally sold to Best Buy earlier this month for $121 million.

Ouelette’s indie spirit is admirable, but the fate of his restructured venture doesn’t look good.

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There will never be enough ways to search through Craigslist.

To help in the hunt, there’s a new tool called Search All Craig’s Lists that does the dirty work for you–scouring all the cities and countries with local Craigslists and compiling them into one index that can be searched extensively, and with ease.

It uses Google custom search, which is fast but not as precise as using Craigslist’s own search tool. You can narrow down what area of the country you’re in, but that’s only so helpful. In my search for the video game Call of Duty 4, I got results from Seattle all the way to Reno. Knowing Google search parameters helps narrow it down even further, but it’s not nearly as simple Craigslist’s, which let you narrow it down by neighborhood.

Where sites like this come in handy is when it comes time to find obscure items. Something like a stamp or coin collection might be something somebody is willing to ship, whereas most goods on the service are for in-person pickups only. They can also be helpful in case you’re trying to track down stolen items, especially where you’re not sure how far the thief has taken your goods, which in my own personal experience was not that far. A service like this would have helped me dig through the results that much faster.

Another service that does this is Crazedlist, which keeps you inside the confines of Craigslist’s search engine, and shows all of the results from all of the various cities in the same window. However the “hack” Crazedlist uses requires toggling a certain setting on your browser, which many folks may not be comfortable with.

[via Lifehacker]

See also: Find stuff faster on Craigslist–if you dare

Search All Craig’s Lists lets you search through every single Craigslist all around the globe using Google custom search.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

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The popular microblogging site Twitter announced and launched a refresh of its interface on its company blog Thursday. Updated tabs, a new design customizer, and Ajax work on the back end are the major features of this release.

Twitter’s redesign sports a more attractive following/followers display and better tab placement.

The most noticeable UI change is the move of the smaller tabs that were on top of the timeline to the right sidebar, where they can occupy more space, making them larger clicking targets. They also moved the following/followers/updates stats to the top of the page and made them larger, so now I can really see how deflated my follower numbers are.

The Twitter Blog also notes that moving the tabs to the side was necessary to make room for future tabs since space was limited in their previous location. While Twitter doesn’t clue us in to what features might be housed in these new tabs, Summize (now Twitter Search) is a likely candidate for some sort of inclusion since Twitter’s old search box disappeared in this update.

The most important change, in terms of functionality is the addition of AJAX to the “Home” and “@Replies” pages. Their new implementation allows you to refresh the items in your timeline without having to reload the whole page. This makes for faster load times and less bandwidth intensive reloading of pages.

Twitter’s new design customizer.

Twitter also introduced a new design customizer with this release, which allows you to change the colors on your Twitter profile with the help of a color wheel. Instead of typing in color codes and hoping that you got all of the colors right, they are now reflected in real time as you change them on the page. This is an awesome implementation of this feature and makes it far easier to create a good looking profile.

Other than the new Ajax functionality, this update is purely aesthetic. Even though we have not seen any major features added Thursday, this redesign has paved the way for a larger future update, which Twitter promises is coming soon.

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The most important business benefit that service-oriented architecture (SOA) can provide is the ability to respond swiftly to change - thus helping to “future-proof” a company’s IT investments. On November 19-21, in the San Jose Fairmont Hotel, California, at SOA World Conference & Expo 2008 West Sponsors and Exhibitors will be viewed as the leading companies driving the future of Enterprise IT and delegates will have the opportunity to cast their vote for their favorite SOA technology providers.

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On Friday, Google’s Picasa Web Albums rolled out a new page that highlights community photography, with featured shots from its users, a stream of live updating uploads, and a game that makes use of media that’s been geotagged.

Of all the new features, the “Where in the World?” game is the most fun. It lets you guess where a photo was taken by clicking on a giant world map. You’re awarded points for how close you were, with closer guesses racking up massive points. It does this using shots that have been geotagged, although that doesn’t necessarily make it easier. Success in the game comes from shots that contain landmarks or language markers with local signage. If the shot doesn’t have any of that, which seems to happen more often than not, you’re playing with pure luck.

Picasa’s new Explore section outlines some of the newest and most interesting photographs from Picasa users. (Click the image for a larger version.)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The featured photo section is also a great start but hardly the exploratory experience competitor Flickr has established for itself. There’s no way to sort by date, and Google has not made it clear how the photos have ended up on the front page by hiding how many people have viewed and bookmarked each shot.

One thing missing from the equation is more ways to explore the actual users. You can still get to someone’s profile with all their public shots, but there’s not yet a community spotlight for interesting photographers.

The Where in the World game lets you guess where photos were taken. You’re lucky if there’s some sort of language or landmark…otherwise it’s anyone’s guess. (Click the image for a larger version.)

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

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Joost on Friday finally took an important step forward by announcing that its desktop software would be getting phased out to make way for a Web watching experience. The only problem is that special software is in fact still required–and we’re not talking Adobe Flash.

Whether you’re on a Mac or a Windows machine, you’ll still need to install an executable file on your computer to view videos. The new plug-in sits on your desktop taskbar even when you’re not viewing the site, and apparently only begins to pipe data back and forth to other users when you’re watching Joost videos.

The new version of the site will be available for beta testers in about two weeks time, although I’ve had the chance to nose around and watch a few videos on it today. Despite the need for software, it’s impressive. Videos start playing in just a few seconds and when toggled for full-screen, the quality scales up nicely.

Like before, there are pre-roll ads, although I found them less intrusive and disjointed than Hulu’s experience. The only anti-user ad interference I stumbled across was when a pre-roll ad kept me from being able to scroll through content on a playlist. I had to wait about five seconds for the ad to run before I could get back to finding something to watch. Not cool.

The new Joost player runs right in your browser as long as you’ve got a small peice of software running on your machine. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

The biggest thing missing from the new Joost is the feeling of immersion. The Joost application, for all it’s faults, took you away from your desktop and everything else you were doing. Like up and comer Boxee, which runs off the core of Xbox Media Center, it’s something that had personality and a really marvelous UI. The new version feels a tad sterile, although when it comes to browsing through episodes and series, there’s noticeably less lag, and hey, you can continue to get work done on your computer at the same time.

The Joost software sits in your taskbar, ready to serve up vintage Star Trek.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

Noticeably gone from the new Joost (at least for now) is the user chat. You can still comment on a video and favorite it, but the feeling of a real-time experience has gone out the door. There’s also a feature called “shout it out” that lets you flag the video with various pop culture acronyms like LOL, HOT, PUKE, and the generally useful WTF. Clicking on any of these will play a canned sound clip and alert you of your flag, although it has no noticeable effect.

Ultimately the Joost experience comes down to the content and the various ways to dig through it to find something good. While the existing playlists are very good for this, when you’re searching by TV network or content provider it’s still difficult to simply browse by shows. For instance, clicking on MTV took me to a player that randomly began playing Laguna Beach. Ideally, it would jump me to a list of shows where I could drill down a little deeper–like what was available before.

Software aside, I’m excited to see Joost hop onto the Web. There’s a lot of good content on there that you can’t find elsewhere, and experiencing it in your browser will seem like second nature for newcomers–that is as long as they’re willing to jump through a software hoop.

More screens after the jump.

Joost’s new channel guide is pretty straightforward, with a featured section and categories you can drill down into.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

Joost’s video player is on the simple side, and fades in and out with mouse movement. You also get a description of the show when it’s in full screen mode.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

You can find friends from existing networks by plugging in your account credentials.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

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