Chad Blodgett

My wife and I took our two boys to a new business here in Utah called Jump On It. We loved it and so did the kids.

Jump On It is a huge warehouse filled with trampolines that are so close together that you never have to touch the ground. You just bounce around the world, from trampoline to trampoline (they even have them on the walls). They have a few bouncy houses for little kids to play on, and a little toddler section filled with toys. They have dodge ball, basketball and other sports/aerobics to keep people entertained. You can even rent a snowboard-type-thing to practice tricks on the tramp.

I spoke with the owner for a bit about his business and his vision for future. It is interesting to compare his new business with Kangaroo Zoo (another new business that opened up a few months earlier about 2 miles apart). Kangaroo Zoo JUST has bouncy houses, but they have a ton of them - with a lot of variety (slides, inflatable obstacle courses, castles, etc.). The age demographics are obviously different (Kangaroo Zoo going for the younger crowd) however, when I asked my four year old son which place he liked better - he said Jump On It, which was a surprise to me.

Check them out and let me know your opinion.

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Wendy’s has come under some fire for their video commercials on YouTube. Apparently they have created videos that trick the viewer into thinking that a normal user created and posted the commercial, when, infact, it is a corporate controlled commercial.

That bugs some people.

Wendy’s, and other companies, are very smart to tap into the YouTube audience. This video has been viewed close to 600,000 times. Aside from production costs, this was very cheap for Wendy’s.

Coke, wary at first, has now signed a formal deal with Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, the creators of the first exploding Diet Coke-Mentos video These video’s have become so viral and popular (I’ve heard reference to these video’s on Letterman, etc) that Coke has decided to listen up and look at this new distribution medium.

Does your company have a YouTube plan?

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iVillage, a popular website for women, is launching iVillage TV

They will be simultaneously airing the show on TV and the Internet – and they wll be allowing for interactive participation via iVillage.com.

MarketingVOX reports…

The show will feature interactive elements including live-chat at iVillageLive.com, with selected portions of the chat scrolling across the screen during the show’s broadcast. Mobile phone users can also text questions and comments to the show as it is being aired.

Very interesting move. I love the fact that users can express themselves and the chats portions will be displayed on air. I’m anxious to see how it pans out.

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“Oh, you are just a big kid,” said my mom as she patted me on my shoulder, “that stuff doesn’t interest me at all.” My mom was in town and came along with my wife and I as we began our search for new cell phones and a new cell service provider. She was responding to my overly excited tone when I showed her something that I thought was a great idea…cell phone tattoo’s!

There were two kinds…

1. Customizable tattoos where you print one of your own photo’s or designs onto the tattoo and then stick it on your phone. It is easily removable so you can change it often. $9.99
2. Pre-designed patterns, colors and skins that stick on. $9.99

I love the idea and business model behind these tattoos.

First, they are targeting the 15-21 year old market. These consumers are looking for ways to stand out and be different. They already customize their MySpace profile, backpacks and other products. So, why not the cell phone? Also, the term “tattoo” plays to this demographic.

Second, the manufacturer heavily promotes the fact that you can should change your phones tattoo often – which creates repeat business and loyal customers.

Third, virally marketing their phones. If Motorola has cooler tattoos, or gives you more freedom to customize the outer look of you phone, then you can bet that the above demographic will be coming.

My question is at what age does this type of customization die out? 21? 23? 25? What custom desires do the older demographics have? Any?

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Eons.com is a social network for 50+ year olds. Interesting.

Most of the 50+ year olds that I know are NOT very internet savvy, or computer literate. In fact, they are techno-tards to be blunt. But, my exposure to that demographic is limited (since I am half their age).

I wonder what kind of adoption this new site, which was founded by the Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor, will have, especially since some of the features include interactive games? Am I the only one wondering if 50+ year olds play games?

There are some great features and content on the site that no doubt bring value to the user. The features that stand out the most are a longevity calculator and an obituary database (where you receive alerts when someone you know passes on).

There are some business advantages to Eons.com since their demographic wants to spend money and save time. Users can write goals that they want to accomplish (i.e. take the family to Hawaii) and then Eons will serve them ads that help them achieve their goal. Creative - I like it.

I will be twisting my parents arms to have them sign up and tell me their opinion. Let me know what you think as well.

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I must be out of the loop because I just heard about Pandora.com. (I did feel better knowing my buddy Jeff only heard about it a week ago).

Pandora is a music project where you tell it a song, artist or band that you like and it helps you discover similar music and artists based on a number of elements. Here is an explanation…

Pandora’s recommendations are based on the inherent qualities of the music. Give Pandora an artist or song, and it will find similar music in terms of melody, harmony, lyrics, orchestration, vocal character and so on.

How does Pandora make such accurate recommendations?…

Pandora, you might remember, finds relationships between tracks by employing trained musicians to listen to them and note down key features - you seed the radio station with some tracks you like and it automatically plays songs with similar properties. (mashable.com)

I personally have been very impressed with the recommendations that pandora has given to me. I entered some popular bands U2, Pearl Jam, Dixie Chicks; artists Jack Johnson, Joe Cocker, Justin Farren and Paul Simon (thanks to sean, although Pandora is not yet cool enough to have justin in its database), and now I am listening to some great tunes that I am not familiar with.

Its all totally free if you don’t mind a radio add once in a while. Give it a shot and tell me if the recommendations you get are accurate.

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Unless it is groceries, shoes and most clothes, I do all my shopping online. A couple of reasons for this…

• I hate shopping.
• offline shopping limits my choices in products, substitutes, vendors, manufacturers, and price.
• reviews - when I am in BestBuy I am limited in the opinion (biased) of the salesmen. On-line I can read anyone’s opinion of the product or service which makes me feel that I am getting honest, helpful knowledge to help in my purchase.
• Background - similar to reviews, I can check the background of the company that I am purchasing from. Instead of trusting the “authorized” cell-phone re-seller in the kiosk at the mall (who might not be around in 3 months), I can review all the good and bad of the company.
• I get a package in the mail. The delayed gratification is awesome. You know what I mean? When you buy $65 worth of books, some of the joy is taken away in line when handing the cash over. Regrets? Remorse? Wondering if you could have restrained yourself more? All these feelings are gone using the internet because you haven’t held, seen or touched the product yet - so when it magically arrives at your door you are amazed! You bought it yesterday so the pain of departing from your cash is gone and the product is sweet! It looks even better then it did as an image online!

So, I came across FruCall the other day and have enjoyed using it. Frucall lets you dial in, enter the bar-code of the product you are thinking about purchasing, then receive price quotes from vendors online like Amazon, buy.com, etc.

I have only used it a couple of times, once when I took my little sister to a sporting goods store to get some volleyball pads. There she was, trying on numerous pads, and so I strolled around the store checking out their equipment and what it would cost me online. In most cases it was significant savings (even after shipping, Frucall asks you for your zip code and calculate shipping for you).

FruCall will eventually add a service where you can purchase the product and have it shipped to you with just a push of the phone button. FruCall also has customer reviews, product recommendations, etc.

I’m a fan - even though I will only use it on occasion. Let me know what you think.

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Odeo came out with Hellodeo this week - which in my opinion is awesome! Hellodeo allows a user to quickly record a message from their webcam and then gives the user the code they need to add their own video to their website or blog. I have used YouTube and Google video both to post video - but neither are quite as easy (in fact I uploaded a 1.3 gig video two days ago, and just received “verification” that it is now on google video ready to display. Two days! In this day-in-age that is way too long!)

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The tree houses that I built as a kid were great because of my imagination. If I were to look at them today I would realize that they were probably hazardous to my health.

However, the building of the house was fun part. After it was built we didn’t hang around in it that often.

Now that we are adults we can get a house like this! Although, I think I would still build my own You can click on the image to see a larger version.

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SupCast is a new technology that allows you to post test messages, pictures or voice messages to your SupCast Player. That player can be inserted on your blog, website, MySpace, FaceBook, etc.  You can see my SupCast Player at the top of this blog.
What I like about it is that you can leave one message and if your freinds subscribe to your SupCasts then they will receive your messages to their phone (meaning they don’t have to go to your blog or other site - they get it off-line). So, I can now alert all my friends with one phone call instead of calling everyone (of course I would call everyone for dialogue reasons, but if I just have an announcement or something then I would use SupCast).

I can see some potential usage on WeightLossWars - however there would need to be some improved features (i.e. commenting on test message, images, or voice messages, leaving a VM on other peoples SupCasts, etc.)

Anyway - if you are reading this, please join SupCast and let me know so I can test out the subscription part of the service. Again, everything is free so lets test it out.

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WOW! I haven’t posted forever!  That will change as of today… I will be more loyal to my one reader (my wife) and the occational stumbler.

My lack of posting has been partly because I launched another business.  I have always been intrigued by lead aggregator business models, similar to LowerMyBills.com.  Recently I was discuss some marketing and business problems with chocolate fountain owners and decided to throw up a chocolate fountain lead aggregator.

We did a little research to discover how many searches are performed on various chocolate fountain keywords, and decided that we ought to try it out.  After the first 7 days we received over 16,000 impressions and about 800 clicks!  Pretty good for 7 days. 

We are working out the kinks, but seem to have found a promissing niche.

If you have tips or advice or references, etc on Lead Aggregators as business models please let me know.

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