Deal Radar 2010: Centrro, Oakland, California

Centrro is a vertical search engine for personal finance that focuses on credit report information, credit cards, mortgages, and auto loans. The Centrro site allows people to shop anonymously for loans and credit before they actually apply for these products. >>>

Deal Radar 2010: Bolt Creative, San Francisco, California

Bolt Creative is a small game developer and publisher for the iPhone platform that recently made headlines when its game Pocket God was voted Best App Ever in a contest run by Jeff Scott, whose blog monitors 140,000 apps. >>>

Deal Radar 2010: Layer 7 Technologies, Washington, DC

In the past year, adoption of Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) has accelerated with the advent of cloud computing, which uses these technologies to programmatically connect applications and infrastructures between the cloud and the enterprise. Layer 7 Technologies provides security and networking solutions for connecting applications across the extended enterprise and cloud. Its products address SOA and cloud governance, XML firewalling, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, and two-way authentication, among others. >>>

Deal Radar 2010: Firm58, Chicago, Illinois

Firm58 provides financial management software to capital markets firms. The company’s SaaS-based platform is designed to help clients better manage post-trade processes such as billing, profitability reporting, client commission agreements, and soft dollar programs, thus increasing revenue and operational efficiency and lowering costs. >>>

Deal Radar 2010: 99designs, Australia

99designs is a marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design. The company runs contests through which clients submit design briefs to the site along with how much they want to pay. Designers registered with 99designs submit their entries, and the client chooses which design they want and pays the winning designer. This approach has proved popular among entrepreneurs, given the proliferation and profitability of sites like 99designs, but it has often passionate critics. >>>

My New Year’s Resolution

I wish you all a happy 2010, dear readers!

I was reflecting back on 2009, and thinking what would be a good synthesis of the work I have been doing, and how I might succinctly summarize a New Year’s resolution for myself. Here is what I have come up with: >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Regent , Frederick,Marryland

Deal Radar continues to focus on education with a discussion of Regent, an on-demand, SaaS provider of financial aid management solutions that make it easier for institutions to be current and compliant with the latest federal and state regulations and updates. Regent’s goal is to offer tools to automate and manage every aspect of the financial aid life cycle, and a system that enables institutions to standardize and centralize management of financial aid, increase productivity, ensure compliance and control costs. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Operational Memory LLC,Raleigh, North Calorina

This week’s Deal Radar series begins with coverage of Operational Memory LLC, which launched its first solution, a social networking application for enterprises, in September 2008. Founded in 2005 by two “soccer dads” who got to know each other and their areas of expertise over several seasons of girls’ soccer, the SaaS company is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Co-founder Michael Trapp, an expert in systems/software development, and his partner, a mysterious senior executive at a Fortune 25 company whose name Trapp won’t divulge, worked nights and weekends to develop OpMem’s structure, features, and algorithms. >>>