I had to read the “more information” page a few times to understand what Zumbox is actually offering. Basically, for every street address in the U.S., Zumbox has a corresponding private and secure webpage. They are able to deliver paperless mail online. Your mailbox appears like this:

Seems like a pretty cool service, even though I’m still kinda confused on exactly how it works. Your thoughts?

More and more small businesses working on a tight budget are relying on online printing to maintain a look of professionalism while saving cash. With new, sophisticated technology, workflow is streamlined and production more efficient. 

It’s amazing that I can get $500 business cards for about $26. That’s about 5 cents a piece – they must rely on volume because I’m not sure how they stay in business! I used to go to FedEx to get all my printing stuff done. I didn’t realize I was being ripped off until I discovered the world of online printing. Their overhead is much lower and, like I said before, their technology streamlines everything to make it an ultra-efficient process.

I suggest if you’re a small business working on a limited budget, consider using a site like psprint.com. They offer everything a full service print shop would. It’s nuts to waste money on expensive print shops when you have resources like this at your fingertips.  Whether it’s poster printing or business card production, there’s no need to go to expensive print shops anymore. Good luck with your endeavors and I hope this tip can save you some of your hard-earned cash.

The Gmail team still felt people weren’t connected to the grid enough, so they rolled out an offline version of Gmail (lab version). It’s powered by the Google Gears engine, which switches to a cached version of Gmail stored on your hard drive when you lose your internet connection. You can also compose messages while offline and sync to Gmail’s servers when you regain your connection. To turn it on, you must install Google Gears. A pretty cool new feature, but I doubt I’ll use it.

When I fired up my Google Reader this morning, I noticed that it had a new look. It reminds me of the new default Gmail layout. It’s a little bit cleaner with more whitespace and square edges. The left column now has collapsable navigation with a softer pallette. They also promoted the shared list to the main left nav.

Buildasearch is new service that allows a user to build their own search engine in minutes.  http://www.BuildaSearch.com is a 100% web-based service which allows anyone to build a customized search engine or site search within minutes. BuildaSearch provides users with a simplified user-interface and a code free environment.  Users can build a multiple-site search consisting of 15 sites or less without a single line of code.  One of the cool features that BuildaSearch provides is a simple API which allows site owners to host their search creation on 3rd party servers.  BuildaSearch also automatically renders an iPhone/ iPod Touch search for all custom search engines created.

Little Rock, Arkansas based startup socialRN.com is a new initiative that’s focus is to bring nurses in the healthcare community together.  Its goal is to provide a platform for healthcare professionals to interact and learn from one-another’s experiences.  There have been attempts to present a social network for nurses by other organizations, but none have provided a clean-designed and fluid interface.  The socialRN.com website provides a Web 2.0 interface and gives nurses a forward-thinking platform in which to come together as a community.

socialRN is currently in open beta.  It is privately held and self-funded.

Website: http://www.socialRN.com

With its public launch, NuConomy has reinvented the idea of web analytics. The platform’s analytics automates the annoying chores of slicing and dicing data and building reports. Its intelligent data mining engine continually monitors every aspect of site traffic and user behaviors and automatically highlights the most important things to make businesses better. These insights are available onsite or via email/RSS feed. Watch out, Google Analytics!

Personal finance startup Mint has officially left beta. The online software downloads bank transactions, credit card transactions and loan data into a clean interface for better tracking of your finances. The service is completely free. With the way the economy is going, people are scrambling to save any way they can. This has translated into a huge user increase for the service. The new features include investment tracking, 401k managment, and more flexible budget sheets.

If you’re like me, your back pocket is a collection of receipts, which usually end up getting thrown away. There’s no easy way to keep track of the accumulation of these annoying pieces of paper. Shoeboxed has taken a unique approach to this problem – just email them all your receipts and they will scan and categorize them for you. You can even export the receipt data to your favorite accounting software. Mail-in plans start at $9.99 per month.

Today Google sold Performics, a division of DoubleClick, to Publicis Groupe. The main reason is that Performics does search engine marketing and optimization, a clear conflict of interest for Google. It doesn’t want to be attached to a product that is involved in these services. 

According to SmartMoney, “Performics will position Publicis Groupe and its clients to capitalize on the increasingly profitable search spending market. According to Jupiter Media, the search market represented an estimated $9.9BN in 2008 and is projected to grow at a 12% compound annual growth rate through 2012. Performics has over 150 search engine marketing (SEM) clients, representing over 200 top global brands.”