Larry Andreini thinks he can take on Pixar. The founder and CEO of Ridemakerz, a rapidly growing chain of stores where boys can custom-build their own toy cars, is building a virtual world for his 6-to-12-year-old customers and their cars. This virtual world is in closed beta right now, and will launch early next year. So will Pixar’s World of Cars and startup Webcarzz (here’s some good background).

There is a gap on the Web between Webkinz and Club Penguin and the more adult social networks of MySpace, Facebook and beyond, particularly for boys. Other than Pirates of the Carribean Online, there is not much out there yet. Andreini wants to parlay the loyalty of his customers into a virtual world where they can design and play with the exact same cars they can buy in his stores. Making that connection between the virtual and the real, even if it’s just a toy, is where he thinks he’ll have a leg up on the competition. The virtual world he is building is also pretty advanced and goes way beyond being a slick brochure for his products, although it is that as well. Kids don’t have to buy a car to play in the virtual world, but the experience is better if they do.

The Ridemakerz virtual world is being designed by the Electric Sheep Company, which has a lot of experience designing virtual experiences for corporate clients in Second Life. But this virtual world will be entirely browser-based, built on top of its Webflock technology platform (which I wrote about in July). I was given a preview of the virtual world last week.

Before I get into the virtual world, it helps to understand the experience in a Ridemakerz retail store. Boys come in and pick one of 70 different car body types and paint schemes. These are scale plastic-mold replicas of real-world cars that Ridemakerz licenses from GM, Ford, BMW, and other car companies. Then the boy tricks out his ride by picking the wheels, hubcaps, a chassis, sounds, and other options. He takes all the parts to a pit and then builds his car right there in the store, and then his mom or dad pays for it. A basic model costs only $27.50, but the options add up and a single car with radio control can cost $120.

Andreini opened his first store in June, 2007, and now there are a dozen across the country. His first store in Myrtle Beach, SC hit $1 million in sales 87 days after it launched. This year, that same store hit $1 million in sales 53 days after June 1. He’s raised $23 million to date from Norm Pozez, whose father founded Payless Shoes, and Build-A-Bear Workshop. Build-A-Bear, which operates a retail chain with a similar concept around building teddy bears, is also a strategic operational partner.

Ridemakerz offers online sales on its Website right now, but they are pretty minimal. Andrieni estimates the e-commerce business will bring in about $250,000 this year. But he plans to invest $3 million to $4 million a year in his new virtual world. He predicts:

I think the virtual experience is going to dwarf our real-world experience.

The virtual world is a combination of a social network, video games, and a complex inventory system. Boys can design their own virtual cars online just like they can in the store. Electric Sheep took CAD files of all the body designs and measured all the parts with micrometers to render how each car looks. Then they converted that into Flash using 3D Studio Max and Papervision3D. There are 649 million different combinations, and each one can be made into a real car and bought, so Electric Sheep had to figure out a way to make sure that only parts that really fit together could be created virtually. Depending on what parts a boy picks, it will affect the performance of his ride.

Alternatively, a child who buys a car at a store can enter the unique Ridez Identification Number (RIN) number printed on each one at checkout and he will get a virtual replica of that exact design. So he can play with the same car at home and online.

Inside the virtual world, each child’s avatar is his car. He can drive around and see the cars of other members who are online. There is no text chatting (for child safety reasons), but each car has different “Zmotes” that get cooler the more points that are acquired. The Zmotes start with things like puffs and smiley faces and graduate to explosions and lightening bolts. The roads in the virtual world lead to different activities, including a junkyard crane video game and a pitstop crew game that teaches time management.

Sibley Verbeck, CEO of Electric Sheep says:

We are trying to take the best parts of virtual worlds, MMOs, kids worlds , and bring that out on the Web.

Once Ridemkarz launches this basic version, it can keep adding activities and destinations inside the virtual world. There are already plans for user-generated content, such as letting boys design their own race courses and then race their virtual cars on them. In the future, boys also may be able to create their own outlandish designs that won’t necessarily be buildable.

It is an ambitious effort from an unlikely startup. Can they go up against the Pixars of the world and win the race to create the first truly successful virtual world for boys? Or will this be seen as nothing more than a way to hook kids on buying and upgrading their Ridemakerz cars?

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=4937f9a514b9b93000d5c5bemaxX=168maxY=57" border="0" alt="AmazonWinterLogo.jpg" title="AmazonWinterLogo.jpg" width="168" height="57" /Raising his price target from $46 to $54, Barclays analyst Douglas Anmuth calls Amazon.com (AMZN) a long-term recession winner:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"We believe AMZN's business model is structurally sound the company's competitive position is actually strengthening during the current downturn as certain retailers close stores have challenges obtaining inventory. We expect Amazon to continue to gain share of both overall retail e-commerce, we expect the company to return to DD growth when macro stabilizes./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"We lowered numbers signif. on 11/18 we are 19% 15% below cons. EPS for 4Q08 2009 based on revs mgn concerns. But our call is L-T based on need to focus on quality companies that can come out of downturn stronger./p pAmong the top 500 Retail Web sites Web metrics firm HitWise monitors, Amazon.com saw the most traffic on Cyber Monday -- an increase over its own 2007 traffic by 21%./p pstrongSee Also:/strong a href="../../2008/12/cyber-monday-traffic-amazon-killed-amzn"strongbr //strongCyber Monday Traffic: Amazon Takes The Prize (AMZN)/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/xZ_OHdksEKY9KHLPDcktAlioESg/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/xZ_OHdksEKY9KHLPDcktAlioESg/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=hhKMHpaN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=hhKMHpaN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=ZrVmfK2Z"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Sf19d5jp"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=jNfUNXIq"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=jNfUNXIq" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=FmLupHNL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=YrHTSDhy"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=fdBYnGtD"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=ZF2bCANY"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/RO8QxZc5uO0" height="1" width="1"/

iZ3D's been doing the whole "3D monitor" thing for years now, with its first baby -- a 17-incher -- ringing up at $1,499 back in 2005. In the latter part of last year, you may recall that a 22-inch version emerged for $999, and now that 3D is all the rage, it's making a second push to clear out all that dusty inventory by lowering the price in dramatic fashion. As of this month, the MSRP on the switchable 3D / 2D display is just $399, and that includes three pairs of passive linear polarized glasses, all the power and video cables you need and gratis membership in the firm's "upcoming 3D gaming league." Oh, and if you're feeling fancy, you can snag a custom-painted model from Smooth Creations at $549 apiece. So, any takers yet? Or are we holding out for free-after-rebate?

[Image courtesy of ICEAV]

Filed under: Displays

iZ3D's 22-inch 3D monitor stoops to $399 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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div align="center"a href="http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Iz3D-Llc-926684.html"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/12/12-4-08-iz3d_livegaming1.jpg" //abr //div iZ3D's been doing the whole "3D monitor" thing for years now, with its first baby -- a href="http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/03/the-iz3d-lcd-monitor-helps-you-get-your-game-on-in-3d/"a 17-incher/a -- ringing up at $1,499 back in 2005. In the latter part of last year, you may recall that a 22-inch version a href="http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/28/22-inch-iz3d-lcds-are-now-available-just-under-a-grand/"emerged for $999/a, and now that 3D is a href="http://www.engadgethd.com/tag/3d/"all the rage/a, it's making a second push to clear out all that dusty inventory by lowering the price in dramatic fashion. As of this month, the MSRP on the switchable 3D / 2D display is just $399, and that includes three pairs of passive linear polarized glasses, all the power and video cables you need and gratis membership in the firm's "upcoming 3D gaming league." Oh, and if you're feeling fancy, you can snag a custom-painted model from Smooth Creations at $549 apiece. So, any takers yet? Or are we holding out for free-after-rebate?br /br /[Image courtesy of a href="http://www.iceav.co.nz/images/content/articles/iz3D_LiveGaming1.jpg"ICEAV/a]pFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/displays/" rel="tag"Displays/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/04/iz3ds-22-inch-3d-monitor-stoops-to-399/"iZ3D's 22-inch 3D monitor stoops to $399/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.engadget.com"Engadget/a on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:33:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Iz3D-Llc-926684.htmlRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/04/iz3ds-22-inch-3d-monitor-stoops-to-399/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1391041/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/04/iz3ds-22-inch-3d-monitor-stoops-to-399/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/iElBWMKvv5uKrtYFLdxS7vdwmUc/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/iElBWMKvv5uKrtYFLdxS7vdwmUc/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=oAerhJD2"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=oAerhJD2" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=qJZuhHIE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=qJZuhHIE" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~4/DQIbQ0GaFv0" height="1" width="1"/

Quote: Gartner's latest and greatest analysis of the global smartphone industry is in, and there are quite a few interesting nuggets tucked within all those percentages. For starters, the sector still managed to grow 11.5% in Q3 2008 compared to a year prior, but that increase is the smallest since it began tracking. Of course, given the current economic climate, we'd say it's a win to see any number not in the negative. Moving on, we see Nokia maintaining its numero uno status with 42.4% market share, though it did recognize a rare decline in sales of 3% year-on-year; as for RIM, its BlackBerry phone sales increased an amazing 81.7% in Q3. We're also clued in to why Apple was rumored to be hacking its iPhone production some 40% in Q4, as the company has some two million units of inventory built up in the supply channel. Finally, we're told that "for the first time (meaning in this quarter), iPhone sales exceeded sales of Microsoft Windows Mobile devices worldwide and in North America," and beyond that, "open-source initiatives like Android and Symbian Foundation [are set to] challenge Windows Mobile's licensing model in the short-term." Need we really reiterate how badly WinMo 7 is needed? Engadget.

Mr Ballmer must be all sorts of happy :eek:

div align="center"a href="http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200812040446DOWJONESDJONLINE000411_FORTUNE5.htm"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/12/12-4-08-iphone-omnia.jpg" //abr //div Gartner's latest and greatest analysis of the global smartphone industry is in, and there are quite a few interesting nuggets tucked within all those percentages. For starters, the sector still managed to grow 11.5% in Q3 2008 compared to a year prior, but that increase is the smallest since it began tracking. Of course, given the current economic climate, we'd say it's a win to see any number not in the negative. Moving on, we see Nokia a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/11/03/nokia-still-atop-global-market-share-chart-after-q3-2008/"maintaining/a its numero uno status with 42.4% market share, though it did recognize a rare decline in sales of 3% year-on-year; as for RIM, its BlackBerry phone sales increased an amazing 81.7% in Q3. We're also clued in to why Apple was rumored to be a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/11/04/analyst-sez-iphone-3g-production-could-fall-40-in-q4/"hacking its iPhone production/a some 40% in Q4, as the company has some two million units of inventory built up in the supply channel. Finally, we're told that "for the first time, iPhone sales exceeded sales of Microsoft Windows Mobile devices worldwide and in North America," and beyond that, "open-source initiatives like Android and Symbian Foundation [are set to] challenge Windows Mobile's licensing model in the short-term." Need we really reiterate how badly a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/09/23/windows-mobile-7-pushed-back-to-second-half-of-2009/"WinMo 7 is needed/a?pFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/cellphones/" rel="tag"Cellphones/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/04/smartphone-numbers-are-in-iphone-sales-exceed-windows-mobile-sa/"Smartphone numbers are in: iPhone sales exceed Windows Mobile sales for first time/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.engadget.com"Engadget/a on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:01:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200812040446DOWJONESDJONLINE000411_FORTUNE5.htmRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/04/smartphone-numbers-are-in-iphone-sales-exceed-windows-mobile-sa/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1391106/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/04/smartphone-numbers-are-in-iphone-sales-exceed-windows-mobile-sa/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/yY1Zw85JQwFeNvW74xhb82x7gXs/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/yY1Zw85JQwFeNvW74xhb82x7gXs/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=IyRBXlCv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=IyRBXlCv" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=71ni54qd"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=71ni54qd" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~4/qTW_drWvoy8" height="1" width="1"/

Gartner's latest and greatest analysis of the global smartphone industry is in, and there are quite a few interesting nuggets tucked within all those percentages. For starters, the sector still managed to grow 11.5% in Q3 2008 compared to a year prior, but that increase is the smallest since it began tracking. Of course, given the current economic climate, we'd say it's a win to see any number not in the negative. Moving on, we see Nokia maintaining its numero uno status with 42.4% market share, though it did recognize a rare decline in sales of 3% year-on-year; as for RIM, its BlackBerry phone sales increased an amazing 81.7% in Q3. We're also clued in to why Apple was rumored to be hacking its iPhone production some 40% in Q4, as the company has some two million units of inventory built up in the supply channel. Finally, we're told that "for the first time (meaning in this quarter), iPhone sales exceeded sales of Microsoft Windows Mobile devices worldwide and in North America," and beyond that, "open-source initiatives like Android and Symbian Foundation [are set to] challenge Windows Mobile's licensing model in the short-term." Need we really reiterate how badly WinMo 7 is needed?

Filed under: Cellphones

Smartphone numbers are in: iPhone sales exceed Windows Mobile sales for first time originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BF-AUTO-SALES (Used-Car-Dealership) Call us 24/7 Office TEL # 416-304-1261 Ex.2 or Cell # 416-817-6855 TWO YEAR WARRANTY AVAILABLE !!! Call for more information; we're happy to help. Will help you ship overseas... to OVER 15 YEAS OF EXPERIENCE..... [ Sunroof, Automatic, Keyless Entry, Power Locks, Power Mirrors, Power Windows, Power Brakes, Adaptive Cruise Control, Tilt Steering, Anti-theft, AM/FM Stereo, CD Player, ABS, Alloy Wheel, Driver Airbag, Passenger Airbag, Air Conditioning, Dual Air Bag, Goodyear Tires, Split Folding Rear Seats, Rear Defroster, Ventilated Seats, Anti-Lock Brakes, Rain Sensor Wipers, Side Impact Air Bag Tinted Windows, Flood Lights, 4 Doors, 4 Cylinder good on gas] .... We are located: ( 999A Dundas St. E. Toronto, Ontario M4M1R6 @ Dundas Broadview ) Financing Available! http://www.bfauto.ca BEST-OFFER !!!!!!! BFAUTO SALES ( Contact Sales Team Fetsum Zeray )br / br / [ FULLY-LOADED TOP BENZ C230WZ Class Sport manual 6Speed Shift 174,417km] br / br / [ FINANCING + TWO YEAR WARRANTY available] http://www.bfauto.ca Inventory Clearance Sale !!! Call us today !!! We're happy to help

The iPhone application, Amazon Remembers, lets shoppers send photos of products to Amazon and matches them with products in its inventory.

div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/42/f9/0009f942.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/42/f9/0009f942_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_653634"//a/divbr/ div class="center"bDave Brubeck / John Salmon, Piano - Chromatic Fantasy Sonata, Rising Sun/bbr/ Classical | Label: Naxos | FLAC (tracks), Scans | PT: 54:39 | rel: 2004 | 95 + 83 MB/divbr/ Dave Brubeck's stature as a composer of so-called classical music got another boost with the release of this recital by his piano virtuoso friend and disciple John Salmon -- who clearly gets the composer's endorsement in Brubeck's liner notes. The major work on the disc is Brubeck's half-hour-long Chromatic Fantasy Sonata, which in itself amounts to a major addition to the sparse American classical sonata inventory.

Google announced today that advertisers will be able to buy commercials on The Hallmark Channel and The Hallmark Movie Channel through the Google TV Ads service starting early next year. While the deal will give Google access to both networks’ national audiences, the announcement did not indicate how much inventory Hallmark would make available to the search giant.

While Google struggled to get its TV ads service up and running, with just DISH Networks using the service, the search giant is starting to gain some traction in its strategic shift to targeting programmers. The Hallmark deal comes just a few months after NBC opened up some of the ad inventory on its Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth and Chiller cable channels.

Heading off Google before it could dominate the TV ad space like it does the search ad space was one of the reasons behind the creation of Canoe Ventures, the joint initiative of the six major cable companies to sell targeted ads and interactive services across those networks. Both entities talk about delivering better data from users to create more optimized ads. Canoe CEO David Verklin gave a fiery speech at NewTeeVee Live where he delivered the message: “Don’t count out the television business.”

Amazon has released its application for iPhone, and while users will likely appreciate the simple mobile shopping experience, there is one especially noteworthy feature: Amazon Remembers. This option lets you take a picture of an item you see in stores and then upload it to Amazon, who will then try to find and recommend similar items that you can buy online.

Since the Amazon app taps into both its own inventory and that of the thousands of merchants to which the company provides e-commerce tools, essentially, this is sort of like a price comparison service that can be tapped whenever you’re out shopping. That might not sit so well with brick-and-mortar stores, as consumers simply use them to get a look at the physical goods, and then turn to their iPhone to find the best price online.

The way Amazon Remembers works isn’t quite as cool as you might think though. According to The New York Times, the photos are actually analyzed by freelancers in the Mechanical Turk program, meaning the response won’t be instantaneous. Nonetheless, it should be a pretty cool way to make sure you’re getting the best price, or find other gifts, when out shopping this holiday season.

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Oil prices hovered near a 3-1/2 year low Wednesday ahead of the government's weekly inventory report.img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rss/money_latest/~4/yF1lJ7Hctik" height="1" width="1"/

My business is very small and very new, so I'm looking for free stuff...I know...aren't we all...
I've already got the site set up through hostmonster, using iWed, and I havea business account with PayPal. But when I went to put a shopping cart on my site through PayPal...it looked really complicated. Entering all these codes for each product!?!? I have a lot of inventory!
I'm super super novice when it comes to all this technological stuff - which is WHY I'm using iWeb. Isn't there a program out there that's compatible with iWeb where you just drag and drop the buttons where you want them, and then activate the buttons??? Then they link to Paypal or something? HELP!!!
Kdance411