PlumReward Mobile Coupons
September 18, 2009
As taken from PlumReward.com
PlumReward in a nutshell
What is it?
A device (or kiosk) and reporting system that enables you to send timely coupons and promotions as text messages to your customers on their cell phone while being able to track their visits and coupon redemptions at your business.
How does it work?
There are two ways that PlumReward works:
1.
When a customer makes a purchase at your business, they enter their cell phone number into the PlumReward device. They will receive a text message that asks them if they would like to receive coupons and promotions via text messaging. Once they respond YES, then you can send them text messages with coupons and promotions to their cell phone. Each time they make a purchase at your business, they enter their cell phone number and PlumReward logs their visit. They can earn free items or discounts based on the number of times they’ve made a purchase at your business.
2.
In all of your other marketing (eg. newspaper, radio, TV) you can tell people to text a certain code (eg. PIZZA) to 50240 to receive a coupon. They will then be signed up, and the system will operate as stated above.
What are the benefits?
- Increased revenue. Proven success rates with targeted messages sent directly to a subscriber’s cell phone.
- No more loyalty cards. Your customers can log each of their visits using their cell phone number and earn rewards for visiting more often.
- Track customer actions. Our web reporting tool will tell you who has received coupons, redeemed coupons, when your busiest and slowest times are, which marketing campaigns are the most successful, etc….
To read more about PlumReward go to http://PlumReward.com
Whitepaper compares cloud messaging platforms, Amazon SQS and Linxter
By Jason Milgram
Cloud-based computing promises to revolutionize distributed applications, capitalizing on the ubiquity of the internet and allowing corporate IT departments to provision a wide variety of information services without having to assume responsibility for every piece of the puzzle.
This is how Libertas Technologies, one of our partners, begins their recent whitepaper in which Linxter and Amazon’s Simple Queue Service (SQS) are compared. Comparing Cloud Messaging Platforms, an eight page no-nonsense report, does a great job stepping through a series of benchmark tests and highlighting key differences between Linxter and Amazon SQS. The differences primarily came down to ease of use and performance.
| Platform | Messages Sent Per Second | Messages Received Per Second | Number of Data Packets | Number of Bytes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linxter | 18.6 | 6.7 | 578 | 337 kB |
| SQS | 1.9 | 0.9 | 4,442 | 2,336 kB |
What their chart says:
- Linxter was almost 10x faster than SQS for messages sent per second and 6x faster for messages received
- SQS sends 7.7x more data packets and transmits 6.9x more bytes than Linxter when sending the same number of small messages – the difference is much greater when the messages are larger than 8KBs
What you won’t find in the chart, but you’ll find in the report:
- Linxter is much easier to use with far less coding
- Linxter’s fees are simpler and more straightforward (with SQS you are charged for each request and it can take between 4 and 7 requests to send a single message from point-to-point)
- Linxter provides these additional features which are not available with SQS
- asynchronous – both message sending and receiving are non-blocking to your program and run in the background
- message polling – no need to write your own message polling code
- local transactional queues for sending – messages are not taken off of local queues until it is verified they are received, even when a program instance is shutdown and restarted
- communication channel management – back-end management of communication channels and ability for program instances to self-manage their own channels
- automatically created individual cloud queues for message retrieval – no need to parse messages in a shared queue to determine who they are for
- self-managed cloud queue awareness – no need to write code for updating your program instances on what queues to use, this is all self-managed and dynamic
Additional features that Linxter provides:
- built-in Internet connection retries
- automatic message sending and receiving retries
- dynamic endpoint reconfiguration
- tags for messages
- message non-repudiation
- file attachments for messages
- file chunking
In conclusion, Libertas suggests that both cloud messaging services are great in that they are both solid offerings that eliminate the need to “roll your own” communication foundation to connect disparate apps or integrate disparate systems. However, because Linxter and Amazon SQS differ significantly in implementation, price model and performance, Libertas suggests thoroughly evaluating both solutions before implementing. Lucky for you, we’ve even made evaluation a snap! You can run your own benchmark tests using our open source Performance Tester.
KickStartz Weekend this week June 18-20, 2009
June 16, 2009
KickStartz Weekend 2009 is this week and we are getting geared up for everything. For those of you that can’t be there, you can check out the live streaming video here. We will also be recording the event and will publish it on our YouTube channel here.
Startup Profile: Linxter
June 9, 2009
Linxter is a cloud-based framework that provides message-oriented middleware as an easy-to-use service. With Linxter, developers dramatically simplify the development of their message-enabled products and services. Any application, device, or system that can access the Internet can quickly and easily be connected for secure and reliable communication.
With Linxter, you can focus on the core value of connected applications instead of the communication infrastructure needed to connect them. There is no need for hardware or specialized coding. Integration takes just minutes. Complexity is not just moved off of your servers and onto ours — it is eliminated. All of the communication plumbing is provided in an easy-to-use configurable environment that gives you granular control over how your programs interconnect and interact.
Applications that are Linxter enabled can exchange messages – regardless of their platform, network, or location – while maintaining independence from each others’ internal processes. No special holes need to be opened in your firewalls or those of your remote offices, business partners, customers, or the service providers they use. You can modify any configurations on the fly (that’s right, no downtime) to meet your business needs, even as they change.
Adaptive business solutions are critical today when change occurs faster than ever. Everything around us is quickly becoming Internet enabled (iPods, clothing, toasters… anything), and it is essential that we have a system in place to securely, easily, and dynamically connect all these things for free-flowing exchange of data. This is Linxter, a client/cloud approach to middleware that provides superior flexibility and scalability over the traditional client/server model.
Read more about Linxter at http://www.Linxter.com
KickStartz Weekend 2009
June 3, 2009
As promised, you knew I would have to mention my own entrepreneurship event here in South Florida.
The event is called KickStartz Entrepreneurship Weekend. The event will be held at DeVry University in Miramar on June 18-20, 2009. We will have lots of food, a number of industry experts speaking, and will have lots of great prize giveaways. Now the first question I always get is, isn’t this like Startup Weekend? My answer to this is no it is not. Although the format is similar (multi-day event) it has many differences. First and foremost we are a not for profit that selects a charity to sponsor for each event. Additionally, we employ the concept of Open Space Technology to administer the event. We are focused on putting Florida’s startup community on the map. The event at DeVry will be our first but we expect a good turnout. I will blog more about the event as more information comes out as well as how it went.
Welcome to the Florida Startup Blog
September 3, 2008
SpringStage is a new startup founded by David Cohen, Alexander Muse and Micah Baldwin. Our objective is to build a network of online, offline and media properties in an effort to promote entrepreneurship. Our focus is on local community development and in an effort to generate local content we are looking for a writer who is connected to the regional startup scene to blog about startups, entrepreneurs, venture capital and interesting people in your area. If this sounds interesting apply online below: http://www.texasstartupblog.com/startups/startup-blog-network/
