Jason Unger

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I have a million ideas for products. Literally.

Ask anyone who has ever worked with me, especially Andrew, who I've dragged along on a million cockamamie plans to strike it big.

(My biggest fault is that I have difficulty following through with new ideas, but that's a whole other story.)

Now when it comes to product ideas, it's easy to think of something that serves little to no purpose and has no chance of making money (see: Web 2.0).

So when I was browsing the DVD rack at Best Buy last year, I came up with what I thought would be a useful and potentially profitable idea.

You see, I always have this problem of not knowing when a "deal" is actually a good deal. Is that TV show boxset actually a good price? Is that thing cheaper here? How would I know?

These days, the answer is an iPhone (no, I did not have the idea for that — someone else did). But if you don't have an iPhone, how can you comparison shop when you're no where near a computer?

Simple: SMS information about the product to a service, which spits back prices from Amazon, Froogle, Buy.com, etc. Then you know if you have a deal or not.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Too bad I was one year too late on it.

iPhone users have their own application for it, pricecheckah. And even Amazon is getting into it, offering products for sale by text message.

Obviously, it's a good idea, if there at least three services doing it (or something like it). I'm not convinced it's a dumb idea to try and run with it, but I'm not nearly as excited about it as I once was.

Yes, believe it or not, I enjoy watching the Fox Business Network.

I know I'm only one of like three people who watch it, but it's actually pretty enjoyable. While there's a significant focus on stocks and the market, they do a decent job of talking more about companies and business than, imho, CNBC.

They don't really cover politics, which is good, but they obviously get it into it when necessary (like the proposed stimulus package, or the presidential candidates' views on taxes). And yes, there is the famous "fair-and-balanced" perspective, but I consider it more sensationalist journalism than right-wing mongering.

We'll see if the channel has a significant lifetime, but given the number of cable channels that should be dead (and aren't) and Rupert Murdoch's big pockets, I'm guessing it'll be around for awhile.

Flame away.

Ever wondered how startups pay for their products? I know I have.

Read more »

Promotion is a big deal. Any marketing person will tell you that, but even development and idea folks know that half of the success of a product is getting it in front of the correct eyeballs.

There are plenty of free ways to promote your content online, but the other day, I came across a great example of free real-world promotion.

Read more »

I'm on a variety of social networking sites — not MySpace though (nor MyFace) — but they are all just that: social. However, I just signed up and spent some time working on my LinkedIn.com account.

If you're not familiar with the site, it has many of the same social networking functions of a Facebook or Friendster, but it is focused around building work and business connections.

Read more »