COD: Instagr.am and the keepsake cellphone photo

A picture is worth a whole heckuvalot of tweets and texts, so I was intrigued when I heard the concept behind Instragr.am, an iPhone app that lets you make and share attractive photos of what you are seeing and doing.

While cellphone photos have certainly come a long way, they tend to look pretty flat and poorly lit. What Instragra.am does is offer filters that let you give your blah blah pics a stylized appearance that makes them less "throw away," more something you might want to have around.

Have a look of this example pic from their blog, which shows the nice results you get from one of the app's 11 built in filters.



I keep asking myself, "could that really be a celly pic?" I am impressed.

That's not all this service offers. They have also figured out ways to speed the processes of uploading and downloading photos. Which is quite a nice thing indeed.

You can share your photos with friends, or on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr.

I am very happy that their effort focuses on making photos less throwaway. While digital cameras have made it easier to take pictures, I think they have led us all to devalue homemade images. So I want to send them a personal thank you for their concept. Photos are very important to me, and clearly to them.

Completely utterly absolutely free at this point. This SF start-up plans to explore a variety of financial models after they get some critical mass going on.

Get the app on itunes. And if they are in the business of answering prayers, soon in the Android shoppe. Pretty please...

COD: Tinypay.me - sell it right now

Since the advent of eBay, tens of millions of people have used the web to buy and sell items. At first people were content to wait the several days it took for an auction to commence and run its course. Then more and more people wanted to Buy it Now!

Today, the people of TinyPay.me are out to get people buying and selling at warp speed.



Say you have a vintage Steiff teddy bear that no longer fits into your world. You join TinyPay -- which takes less than 60 seconds, and upload the photos, videos, etc. that will help showcase Bearington C Bear to best advantage. He and every other item get their own customizable page and url.



The site provides a robust and secure backend, and even enables you to build a personal profile and store.

Instead of waiting for people to search for items, the site takes a proactive approach, pushing out "news" of new items through an extensive distribution network including Google and social media. They even deliver news of Bearington's availability to dedicated collector communities who may be even more likely to be interested in his fuzzy charms.

Someone snaps him up, the transaction takes place on the purpose-built platform, and you ship him off to his new digs. The site takes a percentage of the sales price, just like eBay.

I mentioned special interest communities above. You can create your own community and even get a cut of the sales made through it. There's no cost to create a community -- naturally the site is very interested in attracting the avid as users.

And apparently they will soon be alowing websites that carry the content to curate offerings made on their sites!

From where I sit, it's the proactive promotion of items and the distribution network that set this site apart from their eBearing rivals. This Netherlands-based outfit has definitely developed an interesting concept. After all, few have failed to make fortunes when they deliver instant gratification to passionate people!

COD: With Venmo, lending money to friends may no longer be a bad idea

We've all heard the adages related to financial relationships between friends. But Venmo is out to change the CW on friend to friend financial exchanges with a mobile app that lets to text and receive real money payments with your BFFs.

This Philadelphia-based start up connects friends (and businesses) by enabling pay by text. You simply download the iPhone or Android app and link a credit card to your account, Voila, you are ready to go. If you don't use one of these platforms, you can also join by sending the company a text message.

Here's a brief interview with one of the founders:



So why is the world aching for this application? Well, think about all the times when money comes between you and your friends. Splitting restaurant checks. Lending small sums, getting paid back, and even making small surprise gifts to lift spirits.

With Venmo, you and your friends get to avoid the $3 gypsy ATM fees (and the $3 your bank probably charges you on top of that) just by doing something you already do multiple times a day -- text.

I'll wager that transactions between buds are a prime reason for the demise of friendships. When you rely on memory or that over time "it'll all work out," there is always the risk that someone -- or even both parties -- will feel like they got the short end of the stick. Venmo makes all that would be angst and resentment disappear.

You can even include memos to help you communicate and remember what you were paying or being paid for.

The company charges nothing zip nada for transactions between friends. They make their money through transaction fees they charge local businesses that join the program so they can accept payments via text.

Hey, sooner or later we'll probably be paying for everything with our phones. Venmo can get you started with those frequent transactions between friends.

COD: CloudFlare: Solving a host of site-side problems

We all know that some basic site issues like slow load times can suck the life out of a website. For that and a host of other things, now there is CloudFlare.

CloudFlare is a "new model" site performance, security, and analytics solution. This Palo Alto-based start up offers performance, analytics, and security solutions that most sites can deploy in just a few minutes. There's no hardware or software to install. Once on the CloudFlare platform, site traffic is routed through their "intelligent global network" that optimizes the delivery of web pages at the fastest rate possible.

But it doesn't stop there. By having all of the traffic pass through their platform, CloudFlare blocks threats and limits abusive bots and crawlers that waste server resources and bandwidth.

Not every bot, of course. Useful bots like those from Google pass right on through. But by blocking bad agents, site performance is enhanced and threats reduced.

Additionally, the site offers strong site side analytics, and provides a fail safe mechanism that keeps your web site up even if your servers go down.

Here's an interview vid of CloudFlare's CEO, from this year's TC Disrupt:



Given the growing number of spam and hack attacks on today's web, the need for such a solution quickly becomes apparent. And by providing its suite of services without affecting your hardware and software infrastructure, they have made deployment and costs very manageable.

Actually, beyond manageable. The basic level of service that provides the performance optimizers is free. A more robust package adds more security and analytics, and costs just $20 a month for the first site, and a fiver for each additional site. You can combine basic and pro services and get one consolidated bill.

The pro version offers what looks to be a very useful and intuitive dashboard that, among many things, shows you the recent threats and attacks on your site so you can take appropriate actions. It also affords the opportunity to block traffic from bad actor urls, even entire countries.

An enterprise level offering offers world class security and analytics credentials at very affordable rates.

There are no long term contracts, and monthly fees make it a solution that most businesses can well afford. Cool stuff, and this structural and payment model is definitely the wave of the future.

Company of the Day (COD) is Back

After an 18 month hiatus, I am going to try to return to the tradition of reviewing a company a day on this site. Hey, my traffic isn't like Yahoo's, but I figure every little helps when a small outfit is looking for publicity and trial. I want to help in my own small way. If you are looking for snark, look elsewhere. For me this is about focusing on offerings I like and adding a few more electrons to their quest for publicity and broad scale awareness. Each day I'll be posting one at around 9AM Pacific time. I hope you find them interesting. First one arrives in just one minute!