Women2.0 is a San Francisco based organization focused on encouraging and supporting women in the field of entrepreneurship. We’re thrilled to share that the site is now using ZapTXT to power notifications via IM, Skype, Email or Mobile device. The Women2.0 community, the press and other interested folks can now receive filtered notifications on topics of interest across the site.

“We are a group of ambitious women and always have to balance our full time jobs, with full time passions. We are confident ZapTXT is the perfect tool for our community. Our members can now be in sync about upcoming Women 2.0 events through the channel of their choice. ZapTXT is a perfect fit for my lifestyle.” said Shaherose Charania of Women 2.0.

Women 2.0 hosts events and mixers that provide a forum for women entrepreneurs, to help launch new companies, network with experienced entrepreneurs and executives and to meet investors. The group also hosts a Ning-powered social network for Women Entrepreneurs so if you are a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned one that has wisdom to share, take a look here.

The group hosts an annual Pitch event where finalists will pitch to a judging panel of investors, executives and seasoned entrepreneurs for the chance to earn top prizes of cash and exclusive meetings with iconic investors. The deadline for submitting a business plan is April 1, 2008.

Women2.0 was founded by Shaherose Charania, Angie Chang, Shivani Sopory and Wen-Wen Lam and has a impressive Steering Committee that includes Rachel Cook, Chris Shipley, Rebecca Weeks, Katherine Barr, Ellen Levy, Alka Gupta, Carol Sands and Shannon McClenaghan.

We also join TeXtra, mogulus and realgirlsmedia (RGM) as media partners with Women2.0 and we plan to do a lot more to help get the word out in the coming months.

Special thanks to Shaherose Charania and Angie Chang for making this happen.

To follow the latest at Women2.0, subscribe to this ZapTask.

Cheers, Sameer

technorati tags:ZapTXT, Women2.0, Notifications, Ning, Shaherose+Charania, Angie+Chang

Marjolein Hoekstra of CleverClogs fame announced the release of a nifty application she built for PodHandle that presents content (using RSS feeds) from over 50 podcasting professional consultants and relevant Google Blog Search queries. The application is designed to benefit those in the podcasting consulting business by making available a searchable list of podcasting related resources.

Instead of just publishing a list of feeds (or OPML for the more technically minded), Marjolein chose to build an application using Grazr which enables effective feed management, browsing and searching. Marjolein has graciously shared the process of creating this application for the benefit of others looking to do something similar to what she has done for Podcasters.

Paul and I had the opportunity to work with Marjolein on this to get ZapTXT integrated into application and as always, it’s great working with her.

Congratulations to Marjolein on a successful release. I’m sure we will be seeing more of these very soon.
Cheers, Sameer

technorati tags:Marjolein+Hoekstra, CleverClogs, ZapTXT, RSS, Grazr, Podcasts, Podcasting, Podhandle

technorati tags:TechCrunch, TechCrunch40, TC40, ZapTXT, Events+RSS, Events

Ask.com, the 4th largest search engine just released a new look and a boat load of features to its results page. ResourceShelf has a nice run down of the new release here and the news has lit up Techmeme as well and here’s a detailed review on Search Engine Land.

First, congratulations to the Ask team for a very very nice product. The user interface is clean yet allows for additional contextual results across media types. This seems to be very useful, especially for well known search terms. Say you are looking for new info on Maroon 5 - you can now get all of the results - Bio, Images, Event Search, Encyclopedia, Lyrics, Popular Tracks and related names, in a very non-intrusive way. In other words, if you want to explore, its all there and if you want to ignore it, it’s not competing for your attention. In particular, the contextual integration with iLike for this use case is very well done. Another broad search test for “Pizza” also showed good results with additional categories such as Business Listings, Shopping, Videos. You get the picture.

My first impression was that the new Ask.com is now as much of a discovery service as it is a search engine. For the example I used above, bringing in data such as events, lyrics and images into the fold means that there even more of a dynamic nature to this than ever before. The interaction design and final destination points across each result type made me realize that instead of fighting other search engines on relevancy of data already indexed on the web, there’s an opportunity to service those users that are searching for information that may not have shown up as yet. A concert, a new song, a new pizza restaurant, what ever. To me, this new design is well suited to this notion.

2 suggestions:

First: Expand the recommendation engine. For example if I did a search for events for Maroon 5 in Boston and there’s no events, show me where they are playing anyway say in a 100 mile radius, along with the no results found.

Second: Michael Fergueson, Ask.com’s user experience guru, does cover some important points about how this design allows for better user retention and repeat visits in this interview with Andy Beal. However, I think Ask might still be closing the interaction loop prematurely. RSS can be an effective tool to continue the engagement with the user beyond the search results page. Since you know I’m interested in a Maroon 5 show in Boston, give me a feed to subscribe to so I can get a heads up about an event in Boston when it gets announced.

Looking forward to using this more when outbound RSS is enabled. That’s when it gets very relevant to our user community.

Nice job!
Sameer

technorati tags:RSS, Search, Discovery, Ask.com, Ask3D, ZapTXT