Get out of your cell phone contract

The WSJ has a rundown on companies that will buy your current contract and resell to somebody else, in a legal way to get rid of your cell phone contract. It's good for buyers too, because you can get much cheaper phone service with a shorter contract life.

Social networking for kids and their moms

Two new venture-backed startups go after the stay-at-home market.

Industrious Kid, founded by former execs at Ascend Communications, just got $6M in venture funding to start Imbee, a MySpace-type social networking thing for 8-year-olds (and above).  At $40/year I just don't see it taking off, though.  Any parent involved enough with their kids' internet use will be involved enough to chaperone them on MySpace for free.  Why bother with less?

 

Club Mom wants to be a social networking site "for moms, by moms".

Again, I'm not sure what the market is.  Everybody wants to create a "community", but rather than force people to come to you, I think the future is in aggregation -- let people go wherever they want, and you come to them.

The gathering storm

Here's the National Weather Service radar showing what we can expect to hit Seattle later today:

Which cars have best resale value?

The Wall Street Journal has this summary, based on Kelley Blue Book's survey for the 2007 model year:

For the first time, Acura beat out BMW for the top spot in the sedan category.  Honda Odyssey was #1 for minivans.  All of these vehicles are expected to retain 48% to 56% of their new value after five years.

Mercer Island School District Survey

You have until December 5th to fill out the Community Technology Survey for the Mercer Island School District.  It's open till December 5th.

The district is auditing their technology operations and invite the community to provide input.

Drinking Liberally on Mercer Island

Looks like there's a regular get-together for Mercer Island liberals:

http://www.drinkingliberally.org

• Second and fourth Wednesday of each month (next meeting January 10), 6:30-8:30 pm
• Roanoke Tavern, 1825 72nd Ave SE (map)
• Skipping December because of vacations and holidays
• Hosted by Robert Clark, Amanda Clark, Carol Friends and Bert O'Malley,
• mercer (at) drinkingliberally.org
• Join the Mercer Island mailing list

Maybe they could organize it to be held jointly with the Conservative Enthusiasts (they often meet at the Mercer Island Library). I bet you could get a lot more people to come.

Google Transit does Seattle

They started in Portland about a year ago, but now Google Transit has a site for Seattle. 

For example, it says that for me to get from home to my office right now (at 6:30 on a Saturday morning) would take 58 minutes.  That is, 58 minutes after my bus arrives near home, which won't be till 8:52am.

It seems to be hooked into the same GPS systems used by other sites, but the UI is the best I've seen yet.