Secret Escapes Attracts...

Secret Escapes , the exclusive flash sales for luxury hotel rooms along the lines of and Voyage Privé in France and Gilt Group in the US, is announcing a second funding round, although they are being coy about the level. Suffice to say this is a site which is pretty much ‘coining it’ amongst users, having attracted 750,000 active users since January this year and claims to be doubling turnover every three months. Tom Valentine, MD of Secret Escapes declined to give a figure for the new funding but said its “supporting major new marketing initiatives” to the tune of £5 million in 2012, so I think it’s safe to expect some TV advertising.

Venturocket Launches An...

It may not be receiving quite as much media coverage as the VMAs at the moment, but we’re all acutely aware of the fact that the economy remains in the toilet. Unemployment is still over 9 percent , and articles like this one detail just how long it takes for the average American to find a job — and that job seekers are giving up on the search after as little as 5 months. Of course, part of the problem is there just aren’t enough jobs being created, but it’s also true that the present state of job sites and marketplaces today leaves a lot to be desired. Venturocket , a job connection service based out of San Francisco, is today launching a new spin on the old model that it hopes will prove to be a more effective way to match job seekers to the right employers. With an AdWords nod, to boot. For starters, Venturocket Founder and CEO Marc Hoag says that he wants his service to dismantle the old job search standards and rebuild the model from the ground up. For Hoag, this means no more resumes, no more cover letters, and a dearth of classified ads. Out with the old, in with the new. Venturocket also does away with listing charges and membership fees — for both job seekers and employers — the startup instead only charges a small fee when an actual connection is made, i.e. the job seeker gets called in for an actual interview. As an alternative to resumes and applications, the service requires prospective employees to list their skills and proficiencies in those skills — by selecting them from a common pool of choices, removing the interference of duplications and picky search filters. But here’s where Venturocket’s model sets it apart from the rest: Job seekers actually bid on the keywords that describe their level of expertise at a particular job or skill, so that you’re in very real terms, putting your money where your mouth is. Are you an expert developer? Well, then you might say that you’re worth $20, and prospective employers pay that price to speak with you, and you pay that price in return. Essentially, Venturocket is bringing the same model Google’s AdWords uses to determine the payment structure for its ads to the job search process. It’s a different (and perhaps slightly higher method) of determining the cost-per-connection, but Hoag says that he thinks that, by having providers and seekers pay the same nominal fee, it will ensure that both parties are genuinely interested in one another — and that a connection will be made. A quality connection. Otherwise, the service is open to jobs in every sector, and is free to join, search, and use for job postings. Job skills are easily sorted and selected, serving results from commonly-used listings and related fields. Venturocket wants to eliminate your having to spam hundreds of job posts and employers with your resume and a hastily written cover letter, by allowing employers to pick only from candidates with the best skill matches, leaving job seekers to relax in knowing that they will automatically be contacted by companies — that they don’t have to waste time drafting a saccharine cover letter or prepare a professional headshot. Now, some may be put off by the fact that you have to spend money to bid for the top keywords, but as Hoag pointed out, there is generally a misconception that it’s wrong or not feasible to spend money as part of the job search. In reality, people spend a lot of money looking for work, and with Venturocket’s model, you only pay for the skills that best describe your level of expertise — and the employer pays the same to get in touch with you. Hoag said that he realizes this model may not be appealing to the top 2.5 percent of job seekers, but the other 97.5 percent of people are the ones that really need the help. Now, of course, as to the price of keywords, Adwords’ model runs the gamut from $1 to $100, and just as for Venturocket, the price of keywords is going to be determined by competition. So there’s a chance certain titles are driven up, but Hoag says that, like Adwords, he expects the average price to be far lower — under $2. One might also think that this model would find people adding hundreds of keywords to describe their levels of expertise, but Hoag says that he wants to limit these to manageable numbers to incentivize completion, so employees can enter up to 30 keywords, while employers can add up to 15. Venturocket is testing an interesting solution with its new service, and it will be really interesting to see if the Adwords model tests well in the job marketplace. The idea has some real validity to it, but can people really become comfortable with a service that circumvents the traditional job assets like resumes and cover letters and replaces them with keyword bidding? Chime in and let us know what you think. For more on Venturocket, check ‘em out here . Crunchbase VENTUROCKET Company: VENTUROCKET Website: http://www.venturocket.com Launch Date: 6/1/2011 Venturocket is a marketplace where job seekers bid on their skills to compete for job opportunities and employers cherry-pick the very best talent. The price job seekers bid reflects... Learn more

Slovenia Launches Super...

The threat of corruption is ever-present in areas like government spending, where miles of red tape, billions in assets, and a legitimate need for secrecy at times presents a potential trifecta for would-be defrauders. Slovenia, only a few notches lower than the of course upstanding USA on 2010′s corruption perceptions index , is no nest of vipers, but as a country in transition from communism, their risk is perhaps greater. But the set of data is smaller, more manageable — which makes unified and transparent for monitoring of government spending more feasible. The country’s Commission for the Prevention of Corruption has just launched such a tool, called Supervizor , and it’s live right now if you don’t mind operating it in Slovenian. The display of information is quite slick, as you can see, and intended for public consumption: Compared to, say, the US Patent Office website, which I’ve been navigating frequently of late, it’s a breath of fresh air — though the two are not strictly speaking in the same category. The data right now goes back to 2003, just before Slovenia joined the EU, likely coinciding with an improvement and increase in bookkeeping for that particular transition. It’s from public sources like the Ministry of Finance and Public Payments Administration, and the Committee is careful to say that it takes no responsibility for their accuracy. A strange appendix to a service where accuracy and responsibility are paramount, one is tempted to remark, but the sad truth is that numbers like this are only as strong as the weakest link in the chain, and in a bureaucracy (and all governments are bureaucracies to some extent) there are many, many links. All the same, the information is not hiding in endless monospace text files linked from obscure ministry sub-pages. This is about access and transparency, things which ideally might lead to accountability but are not necessarily its companions. It’s also tempting to say that something like this can’t be scaled. Surely enough, scaling won’t be easy, but then again, if you tried to describe the databases being managed by Facebook right now to a sysop or designer from five or ten years ago, they’d probably say they couldn’t scale what they had either. We’re still some distance from being able to track spending at quite this level of granularity, and with this level of accessibility, but there are plenty of projects that aim to do just that. Try entering a search term at the bottom of the main page . I found that putting the initials of their political parties seems to work, but for example “vojaški” (“military”) doesn’t. Kudos to the engineers and designers who put Supervizor together; I hope we’ll see more of this kind of transparency from other governments and companies. Update : I really should have included a link to USAspending.gov , which does substantially similar tracking of federal grants and contracts (though not state or city). I should admit that I didn’t think the US’s site would be as solid as it is, though I don’t think it provides as great of detail as Supervizor. Mea culpa, but at least it’s good news. [via Funky Karaoke and Hacker News ]

CarabinerKey Is Part Ca...

You might remember the Split Ring Key , a clever twist on the keyring by designer Scott Amron that let you hang your keys on another key. The split-ring design, however, made it a chore to add and remove keys. Solution? Put a hinge on that sucker and ta-da: the CarabinerKey . Seems like a handy addition to your keychain — might even simplify things a bit. The site says you can order them, but I’m guessing they’re not quite to the level of retail availability. Price isn’t set, but the old keys were $8, so I’d guess these would be a bit more due to the multi-part manufacturing. $10 maybe? Whenever they’re ready to ship out, you’ll find them at Keybrid or CarabinerKeys .

Hey BT, We Put A Countd...

We recently brought your attention to the scandalous delays BT Openreach is capable of when being asked, in simple terms, to connect a central London building up to a fibre broadband connection. At the same time the UK government – and the local Greater London Authority – has been convening meeting after meeting to try to work out how to help the emerging technology cluster in East London, we have, in effect, a monopoly lumbering on, blind or just plain stupid when it comes to the level of service most modern businesses expect of each-other.