Web/Internet

The power of the internet should never be abdicated to one specific groups' ideas orspecifications. Especially since the ever-increasing community of web-users have specific skills and needs that could benefit from a more efficient product. People should be able to enjoy the power of the web without having to becoming experts on software technology. Firefox makes this possible. Firefox is easy to install, intuitive to use, and remarkable in its ability to bring the complexity of the web to people through a comfortable interface.

The challenge is in organizing the initiative. Lead by Director Mitchell Baker, the Mozilla Corporation - which is a subsidiary of The Mozilla Project, a non-profit organization - engages in its mission to preserve choice and innovation on the Internet. Mozilla Firefox has done its part to change the web while Firefox 1.5 continues on the same path. Firefox is changing the web by providing an innovative product that's worthy of people's trust. Long ignored by the internet juggernaut Internet Explorer, Mozilla is finally beginning to catch their attention due to their incredible growth that's taken almost ten percent of the market in less than a year.
So what's Mozillas secret? They rely on the talents and opinions of the users, trusting in their opinions for a product that works. Mozilla recognizes that people want a better product than what they currently have, so they determine the needs of individuals through a loyal user base who pass Firefox along by word of mouth. Thousands of Firefox users spread the knowledge of their product by installing it on friends' computers, participating in ad contests, or engaging in Firefox's "Tech-evangelism project." Some are employed to do this, some are volunteers, some contribute through code, others by testing, and still others by encouraging people to try Firefox. Firefox recognizes that together, we can create the product consumers both need and deserve: a product that respects the human beings that use it, harnesses the power of the web, and gives people extraordinary choices in their online lives. How interested are people in having an option in services? Very! Rather than feeling pressed into one option, people have flocked to Mozilla offering their talents and services to help develop the product. Mozilla is literally a product that arose out of the needs of society. It's also an open-source program which means that anyone can use or modify the code.

With the user in mind, Mozilla wants to ensure that they don't feel abused by their computer services or that their computer is completely out of control with pop-ups and other unwanted actions. Mozilla's world provides multiple layers of defense against intrusions motivated solely by meeting the needs of all of us! We see Mozilla as a prime example of disruptive innovation and the understanding that people want something more in their product experience. Mozilla asserts that as a vast community of internet users we can overcome "the oppression" of our internet service by utilizing all of our talents as an intricate team motivated by the prospects of a better internet experience.

Many of us don't possess the capacity to grow award winning hydrangeas, roses, or tomatoes. But that doesn't mean that we don't enjoy a pretty plant. And what about the urban dwellers whose garden consists of a window box brimming with "can't kill 'em" geraniums? Don't they deserve to be in the know? You Grow Girl thinks so. The You Grow Girl website was launched in February 2000 and has since blossomed into an online community that speaks to a new kind of gardener, a modern, time pressed gardener who just wants their plants to thrive. With experiments, humor, art and interactivity, You Grow Girl sets itself apart from the traditional bumper crop of flat, impersonal commercial gardening websites.

You Grow Girl offers lots of helpful advice on how to keep your botanicals in tip top condition. Look to "The Lab" for answers about burning scientific questions like "Which roadside apple tastes the best?" or "Do houseplants grow better when they listen to the pop stylings of New Edition?" Submit your mini-garden art to a growing gallery of diverse images or share your expertise and trade your seeds with fellow gardeners in the Forums. You Grow Girl's main objective has always been "a commitment to producing a site that promotes exploration, excitement and a d.i.y approach to growing plants without the restrictions of traditional ideas about gardening." You Grow Girl focuses on organic growing, because too many people take the incredible abilities of Mother Nature for granted. They want people to know that organic growing doesn't have to be hard, in fact, once you get the hang of it it's rather easy. Not to mention environmentally safe. You Grow Girl believes that organic growing has the power to "foster a respect for nature that will extend beyond backyards."

You Grow Girl is empowering a previously unrecognized demographic - the hip, urban gardener. They're capitalizing on honest information, common sense, and straightforward language to reach an audience that hasn't been spoken to before. The concept of You Grow Girl embodies its name. It's an empowering tool to help women (guys too) get to the next level by saying, "you're just as valuable as the gardener with an acre plot or one of those little gardening knee pad things."

Whether you're looking for a perfect, one of a kind gift or you want to make postage stamps with your face on them, Zazzle is the place to get it done. People everywhere are paying attention to this online retailer and taking advantage of the endless possibilities they offer. Zazzle is the meeting of imagination and on-demand manufacturing that allows you to create, share, and celebrate your unique interests and passions.

In 1999, Zazzle began pioneering new printing technologies enhanced with proprietary, automated manufacturing systems to produce high quality, on-demand products. In 2003, Zazzle.com was launched in order to test the user experience. Since then, Zazzle has continued to innovate by improving manufacturing efficiencies, expanding the online customer experience, and growing their online community. Zazzle products are able to generate exposure for charities and causes, unite teams, schools, and businesses for various events, and to commemorate birthdays, graduations, and family reunions. Creating and buying products on Zazzle is surprisingly easy. First, choose from a list of customizable like t-shirts, cards, and stamps. Then upload your own pictures or choose from already existing digital images. Next, use their online tools to choose colors, text, fonts, and layouts. Each product is produced and shipped to you in 24 hours.

Zazzle has a number of different collections you can shop for existing images. The "Special Collections" section includes images from Disney, the Family Guy, Neopets, and the movie Robots to name a few. This collection also offers more historical images from venerable institutions like the Library of Congress, the Boston Public Library, and The Hoover Institution. They also have a "Community Collections" section that features individual artist's work from across the globe. If you choose to be one of the Community Collections contributors, you can publicize your images through a Zazzle gallery where any Zazzle customer can look through your stuff, comment on it, or get in touch with you. As a contributor, you also earn royalties every time others purchase your creations. And if you don't like any of the existing imagery you find, you can always create a new design from scratch.

Zazzle puts the customer in control. It allows them to buy small quantities of 100% personalized goods at a reasonable price. Zazzle has become a new medium, allowing everyone from soccer moms to professional artists create work that reflects themselves, their personalities, and their interests. Zazzle is innovative because they put unique products within everyone's reach, and can turn even the most novice customer into a graphic designer.

Struggling to find the perfect gift, or just forgotten that it's your anniversary? Well, look no further than Gifts.com. Gifts.com provides an engaging facility whereby you can budget, organize for and find the best gift with the least amount of pain of difficulty. No more scouring stores at the last minute trying to find that perfect gift. Using a powerful gift search engine and a team of gifting experts, Gifts.com combs the Web to uncover great ideas personalized for anyone on your gift list. Gifts.com also offers a suite of interactive, personalized services that enable you to be a more organized gift giver. Similar to Google, Gifts.com is focused on finding your needs in a uniquely individual way, rather than promoting specific products or brands through unnecessary search results. It combines editorial sourcing with its propriety personality-based gift finder to deliver the most relevant and unbiased gift options. So the world's the limit.

Gifts.com enables you to search for gifts not only by price, but by the age of the recipient, gender and interests that span across hundreds of retailers, and allows you to save your results in one place. This shopping experience allows you to search from the comfort of your home, and find exactly what you want (with help from an array of personalized searches) and incredibly simplifies a normally nightmare process. In addition, Gifts.com provides links for family and friends who can create an on-line wish list with links to the specific product. Gifts.com asserts that "The art of gift giving has never been so fun and easy!" Leigh Zarelli, Vice President of E-Commerce and Merchandising said: "Finding a great gift for (someone) can be difficult. At Gifts.com, you tell us about that person and we search the web to bring you unique and personalized gift ideas suited to (their) specific interests, personality and taste."

Finally, Gifts.com provides reminders for special days with continuously updated gift ideas for its users. It offers free, need based, uncluttered and specialized information providing an incredible, hassle-free customer experience. Gift-giving has never been a better experience.

CNET Networks has been awarded for their online advertising by going "beyond the banner," offering unique, interactive, and need-driven experiences to their users. CNET is a vast portal supported by individual brands and with specific emphases that are driven by the unique needs of the customers who visit their sites. By focusing on the collective knowledge and wisdom of their users, CNET matches the correct product with the users passion. In addition to their social networking and experience oriented websites, CNET is leading the way in online innovations by bringing public reviews online, introducing price comparisons to the Web, and offering rich-media ad opportunities. From the early years until now, CNET has foraged the path for applications like incorporating TV into the internet, a venture that ultimately established them as the source for interactive web sites. As CNET develops they continue to sustain their commitment to increasing the collective wisdom and passion of their users. Their emphasis on wisdom is paying off big.

CNET offers many fascinating brands that are innovatively disruptive, one of which is the site digitalhome.cnet.com. With an ever-increasing flow of new technologies people have little time to keep up, and one of the most important areas to keep up to date with are our homes. However, seeking the right advice for household projects can be expensive and time consuming. This is where CNET comes in. With their easy 1-2-3 step options, users can scroll over a digital image of a house and find project ideas for different rooms. Digitalhome.com offers advice on everything from buffing up the garage to making your PC and entertainment center flow. This site builds individual knowledge for customers by teaching them how to carry out a variety of projects and allowing them to make more educated decisions on their purchases. CNET has captured the field of need-based products by educating and interacting with their customers. CNET Networks has been awarded for their online advertising by going "beyond the banner," offering unique, interactive, and need-driven experiences to their users. CNET is a vast portal supported by individual brands and with specific emphases that are driven by the unique needs of the customers who visit their sites. By focusing on the collective knowledge and wisdom of their users, CNET matches the correct product with the users passion. In addition to their social networking and experience oriented websites, CNET is leading the way in online innovations by bringing public reviews online, introducing price comparisons to the Web, and offering rich-media ad opportunities. From the early years until now, CNET has foraged the path for applications like incorporating TV into the internet, a venture that ultimately established them as the source for interactive web sites. As CNET develops they continue to sustain their commitment to increasing the collective wisdom and passion of their users. Their emphasis on wisdom is paying off big.

CNET offers many fascinating brands that are innovatively disruptive, one of which is the site digitalhome.cnet.com. With an ever-increasing flow of new technologies people have little time to keep up, and one of the most important areas to keep up to date with are our homes. However, seeking the right advice for household projects can be expensive and time consuming. This is where CNET comes in. With their easy 1-2-3 step options, users can scroll over a digital image of a house and find project ideas for different rooms. Digitalhome.com offers advice on everything from buffing up the garage to making your PC and entertainment center flow. This site builds individual knowledge for customers by teaching them how to carry out a variety of projects and allowing them to make more educated decisions on their purchases. CNET has captured the field of need-based products by educating and interacting with their customers.

If you're sick of giving golf balls and jewelry as presents to your loved one every birthday, you should take a peek at Signature Days. Signature Days is a company that offers unique experiences as an alternative to predictable presents like white briefs and fuzzy slippers (not that there's anything wrong with fuzzy slippers). Founded in June 2004, Chicago-based Signature Days is the leading online provider of experience gifts for every occasion. They offer a unique selection of over 1,500 different experiences and activities in all metro areas throughout the U.S., including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego and Washington, DC. If you're interested in buying a Signature Day package but don't want to spend a lot of money, fear not. Gifts start at as little as $25, with an average price of anywhere from $70 to $300. The idea of freedom to choose and break out of the mold of everyday life is cool, but not necessarily new. Signature Days founder and CEO, Andrew Playford, picked the idea up from catalogs and phone-in companies who provide similar services in the UK. At Signature Days, we believe that memorable experiencesâ€"the experiences that enrich us, challenge us, or simply entertain usâ€"make the perfect gift.

The gift giving process works like this, your gift recipient will receive a Signature Days Gift Pack via USPS, UPS (or e-mail if you're in a hurry). The elegantly designed Gift Pack includes a Gift Card, along with instructions for redeeming the card and booking the experience on the Signature Days site. When you purchase an experience, you have the option to add a Trading Pass, which allows your recipient to place the value of the Gift Card into a Signature Days account. When he/she purchases an experience, this amount will be automatically deducted from the total. So basically, you can't give a bad gift with Signature Days, and if you're really not sure what to get there's always the option of a gift card.

Google has taken over the world. Everyday we talk about "Googling' it, and through its powerful search engine Google has created one of the most intrinsic modern brands. Not bad for a company that has been around for less than a decade. And there's still more innovation to come.

The irony is that Google's success and innovative disruption is based on placing the wants and needs of their customers first. Google understands that clients are not seeking an infinite array of options, but rather we need to easily find what we want, and we want to avoid the clutter of advertising that makes so many websites unpleasant! Co-founder Larry Page explains the "perfect" product he has in mind: "The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want." This focus is what has propelled them to corporate success. They've put their money where their mouths are by ensuring that "the interface is clear and simple, that pages load instantly, placement in search results is never sold to anyone, and advertising on the site must be relevant content and not a distraction." Google thrives off of a straight-forward, customer driven philosophy with a core value of not compromising the integrity of their results. Consumers love the simplicity and effectiveness of what they provide, and hundreds of millions of people come back each day for that reason. Perhaps best of all is that Google has helped us squash those awful pop-up pages.

Google is never satisfied with what they're doing and are continually looking to innovate. True to their standard, Google continues providing choices for their customers, offering a growing list of customer experiences and consumer interactions.

Google continues to grow its customer experience, and have one of the biggest public share listings ever (share prices has shot up to $400). But they aren't content just being the most powerful search engine, they want to be a total information provider in a conscientious way. They're involved in a number of projects, the most interesting (even if it has been controversial) is their goal to scan all books and create an online information warehouse that anyone in the world can access. One of the reasons why their customer base continues to grow is because they've continued to show that what really drives them is the desire to provide solutions for people.

What's most amazing is that Google's growth has come through customer satisfaction and not from an expensive ad campaign. Today it would be impossible to think of the internet without thinking of Google - how's that for brand power?

Are you on the other side of the world from your family, and tired of paying exorbitant fees for international calls? Skype is a cool new service providing the facility to make those calls - for free! In what's being called one of the largest shifts in consumer product use since the threat to the railroads by increased use of cars and airplanes, internet telephone systems are circumventing the network "tracks" provided by existing cable lines, and are connecting people in an aggressive and innovative way. It's no wonder that 240 million people have downloaded Skype over the last two years, and distances between people are disappearing as quickly as the Berlin Wall fell.

Skype utilizes a unique peer-to-peer network that allows people to talk over the internet, a model that's provided them with instant growth (at any time they have about 5 million active users online). Part of Skype's success can be accredited to two successful innovations. First, they provide people with the ability to communicate on the internet through firewalls, and second, rather than spending millions on hardware and other commodities, Skype harness its users' computers to do the work, connecting in a peer-to-peer fashion. In short, Skype delivers relief to those pesky phone bills by giving individuals and businesses a system that's easy to use. Depending on your connection, the voice quality can be amazing (this is constantly improving), and it's always secure. Skype is also realizing the direction that the communications business is headed, and is connecting their telephone services to other communication services such as instant messages. They even offer conferencing and video call facilities that provide major cost savings to businesses. Now anyone can integrate personal presence and instant messaging features into websites and applications like online gaming, e-commerce, communications and productivity tools; instantly building community and connections between people who can chat and alert others to their online availability. By opening up its platform to the web, Skype has created the largest open instant messaging platform in the world.

Although Skype's free services include only Skype-to-Skype calls, contacting traditional telephones through Skype is surprisingly cheap. Skype offers a low, by-minute rate to contact others which bests rivals such as AT&T and CallVantage by 56%, offering rates as cheap as .017 Euros per minute! They have completely disrupted telephone companies, whose international business is shrinking at broadband speeds. But the real power of Skype is in the way it makes it possible for people to easily communicate over long distances in a tangible experience. It looks like Skype will do for communication what Google did for information.

The abundance of web merchants has made it increasingly time consuming and difficult for online shoppers to compare products and prices across retailers. Pronto is catching on to the increased customer demand for a simplified online shopping experience. Rather than bombarding customers with unwanted advertisements Pronto gets personal! With Pronto (an affiliate of the interactive corp. IAC) consumers can now compare items and prices from tens of thousands of online merchants instantly while shopping on their favorite retail Web sites. Pronto also provides users with unique features that help them find additional savings on desired products. For example, users can set "Price Alerts" that specify a target price for products they want to purchase and Pronto will alert them when the product has hit their desired price. Pronto innovatively provides customers with an improved online shopping experience through personalized research and coupon offerings enabling the customer in the search process to find what they need when they need it. For the shopper, this experience is priceless. As in other examples, Pronto is disruptive providing a unique innovation dedicated to customer success.

Bookcrossing.com is one of those great ideas that was started with a true passion to make life more interesting. This unique online community was started by Humankind Systems Inc., a software/internet development company based out of the Midwest. Bookcrossing came about thanks to Ron Hornbaker, a partner at Humankind, who was looking to create an innovative, groundbreaking community website in an effort to escape the day to day toils of constructing e-commerce sites and email server applications. The idea for Bookcrossing officially materialized in 2001 after Ron and his wife, Kaori, began paying attention to sites like PhotoTag.org and WheresGeorge.com. Sites like these exist with the sole purpose of tracking items that people set free for others to use. Ron realized that books were a potential market for a similar application, and was surprised to see that nothing else like Bookcrossing already existed. Later that night Ron and Kaori made their plan official by buying and registering the bookcrossing.com domain name and set to work sketching logo ideas. Upon approval of the idea from his business partners, Ron programmed the site, a process that took about four weeks to complete. BookCrossing.com was launched with $500 (for a press release), the only money to date that's been needed to promote this site. About a year after the official launch Book Magazine ran an article on BookCrossing, acting as a catalyst for countless attention from TV, radio, and newspapers across the globe. BookCrossing reports about 300 new members each day, a category in the Google Directory, and it's even been added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as a new word â€" not bad for a company that started for just for the fun of it!

So what does BookCrossing do? BookCrossing lets you share books with people around the world; you can also track their travels through assigned serial numbers given to each book. Almost 3 million books have been registered by nearly 500,000 BookCrossing members. And while BookCrossing may seem to be largely about the books, their real purpose is to connect people. BookCrossers are generally thought to be well-traveled, adventurous, literate, and fun loving (not to mention generous). On the BookCrossing website you can look at archives of previously released books, or track a book that's currently in the wild. If you're a releasee, you can choose to make Release Notes that specify exactly where your book was left. BookCrossing is reconnecting those of us exhausted by technology through an age-old medium of communication: written literature. Kudos to BookCrossing for proving that curiosity and adventure never have to be replaced by cubicles and timecards.