Looking over this list, we have multinationals like Wayne Enterprises, and lowly coffee shops like the Central Perk, but the one consistent question you should have in the back of your head is: Are they hiring? Now that the economy has gone to hell, hopefully these guys have some job openings

The Best Fictional Companies in TV & Film

Vandelay Industries
The venerable corporate behemoth run by mastermind George Constanza of Seinfeld fame. George was a latex salesman for Vandelay Industries, and Jerry actually ran an entire condom manufacturer out of his 900 square foot apartment in New York City.

Speaker City
In Old School, Vince Vaughn aka Bernard ‘Beanie’ Campbell, owned a number of Speaker City Franchises, and he ran a number of the commercials in the movie as well. It turns out, this supposedly fictional company, is actually a real Canadian electronics retailer.

Dharma Initiative
Jack, John, Kate, Sawyer and the LOST crew are constantly battling with the good/evil Dharma Initiative, which is responsible for any number of mysterious scientific experiments they conduct on this remote island paradise/bermuda’s triangle of an island.

Binford Tools
Host Tim Taylor, of Tool Time fame, promoting Binford everyday at work. Home Improvement the television show was one of the longest running comedies, and was the spawn of Pamela Anderson’s career, as she was the inaugural ‘Binford girl’.

Hudsucker Industries
Back when Paul Newman was still alive and Tim Robbins wasn’t a political radical, Hudsucker industries invented the hula hoop and revolutionized the civilized world. Hudsucker also led to Robbins inevitable demise, but it is one of the great mega-corporations of our fictional world.

Shelbyville Nuclear Power Plant
While not as famous as Springfield’s nuclear power plant, Shelbyville is the neighboring town everyone loves to hate. As Ned Flanders famously shouted at Shelbyville while driving away with their lemon tree, “Yes, eat all of our shorts”.

Acme Corporation
Who can forget the makers of dynamite and really really bouncy springs, and all numbers or seemingly single-use products like Acme. Their entire product line seemed to consist of weapons, that were completely ineffective, used to kill Roadrunners. Still, their design and labeling are design marvels even in today’s standards.

Central Perk
The best damn cup of coffee in New York City, otherwise known as the hangout for the Friends cast. Whether Gunther was constantly fawning over Rachel or one of Phoebe’s memorial performances at the Perk, it is our favorite coffee shop, aside from “The Coffee Shop” in Seinfeld of course.

Wayne Enterprises
Who else could have enough money to build extremely expensive, high performing tools for stopping crime aside from Bruce Wayne, CEO of Wayne Enterprises? Forget that question and remember that Wayne Enterprises is a Worldwide corporation that is involved in Biotech, Steel, Shipping, Shipbuilding, Aerospace, Chemicals, Medical, Electronics, and Entertainment.

Did I miss your favorite fictional company? Let us know in the comments who you think should be on our “all time” list.

If you’re like me and enjoy Macs in any flavor and variety, you’ll be extremely happy to see this ultra-portable running Mac OSX. The MSI Wind, which already is a beautiful laptop, has just been cracked by some engnireering Spaniards, despite the Wind not having been released up until this point.

To see the step-by-step, be sure you read Spanish and head over to InsanelyMac and let us know in the comments if you’ve hacked your MSI Wind (when it arrives).

MSI Wind-Macbook Air Killer

These sales & marketing resources will help you craft your pitch, and develop winning strategies to help you drive advertising as well as purchase-revenue. It’s important to understand sales as a piece of the larger marketing pie, and you shouldn’t be focusing strictly on the smaller sales goal without taking into consideration the entire marketing objective of your startup. I’d suggest reading these blogs on a weekly basis or subscribing to them to keep them ready in your RSS reader.

Top 10 Sales & Marketing Blogs to Help You Sell Better

B2B Lead Generation Blog
Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch, Inc. part of the MECLABS Group that owns MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill 2006) and the B2B Lead Generation Blog with expertise related to B2B marketing, lead generation and complex sales.

Duct Tape Marketing
John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of “Duct Tape Marketing – The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide” published by Thomas Nelson, with foreword by Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth and afterword by Guy Kawasaki.

bBlog: The sales, marketing and business weblog
The bBlog, is a frequently updated weblog that links to leadership, sales, marketing and business intelligence compiled by XPLANE. The bBlog helps executives, managers and employees frame the events of the day within the context of the larger business landscape. We link to sales and marketing resources, thought leaders, new ideas, new ways of doing business and lessons learned. bBlog has been published continually since 2000.

Marketing Opus: Sales Channel
Chances are you know Frank Rumbauskas as the New York Times bestselling author of Never Cold Call Again, but there’s so much more you may not know. Frank is also a highly successful internet marketer, Web 2.0 pioneer, Google-certified AdWords Professional, and a serial entrepreneur including businesses you’d never know were owned or started by him. According to Frank, he’s able to be successful in any business because he simply duplicates the same business & marketing system that has already proven effective over and over again.

Chrisg – The Business of Blogging & New Media
Chris Garrett is a professional blogger, Internet Marketing Consultant, new media industry commentator, writer, coach, speaker, trainer and web geek. He was also a founding member of Performancing. You might know him from his past writing for such sites as ASPToday, ASPAlliance, Threadwatch, or more recently, ProBlogger, The Blog Herald, FreelanceSwitch, Cogniview, AdSavvy and CopyBlogger.

HubSpot Inbound Marketing Blog
HubSpot’s vision is to provide a (killer) marketing application and provide great advice to small businesses enabling them to leverage these disruptive effects of the internet to “get found” by more prospects shopping in their niche and to convert a higher percentage of prospects into customers.

SalesMotivation.net – Jet Fuel for the Sales Professional
I have been a top producing Sales Professional for over 17 years. I have sold for large corporations and small start up companies. I believe that Sales is one of the most challenging yet rewarding fields an individual can choose. You have the ability to create your own destiny and determine your level of success. I take my profession very seriously, but have a great deal of fun achieving my goals. My wish is for you to do the same.

Heavy Hitters Sales Blog
Everywhere I go it seems like I meet someone who is writing (or wants to write) a book. Since today is the official release date of Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom: Proven Sales Warfare Strategies, Secrets of Persuasion, and Common-Sense Tips for Success, I thought I would take a moment to tell you how the book came about.

The Shameless Sales Blog
Shamus Brown has written more than 300 articles on selling and is the creator of the Persuasive Selling Skills Audio Program, a self-study skill building program for sales and business professionals. Shamus Brown is a professional sales coach who helps both businesses and private individuals increase their sales. He has over 20 years of in the trenches sales experience and practices what he preaches in selling the services of Industrial EGO Sales, the sales training company he founded in 1999. Shamus has sold large-ticket computer technology software and services for companies such as IBM, Dunn & Bradstreet, and PeopleSoft, in addition to three successful software startups.

Ad Sales Blog
Josh Gordon is president of Smarter Media Sales.com where he works with publishers to maximize their online and print revenue through training, consulting, and representation. Gordon is the author of four books on the subject of selling and persuasion and is an internationally recognized expert on the subject. He has been covered on CNN, CNBC, National Public Radio (on PRI’s “Marketplace”), The Fortune Business Report, Wall Street Journal TV, and WCBS Radio. His books have been translated for publication in Germany, China, Korea, and Taiwan.

Early on your business, you’re most likely still at your day job or you might be removed from your co-founders and you’re going to have to rely more and more on remote communication and virtual project management. Even for partners in the same office, often times a lot of work takes place at home, on the go and you want to have a central location to organize all of your brainstorming sessions, to-do lists, and goals and milestones.

Update: As a special promotion for Wise Startup Blog readers, John from MyIntervals has offered a special 60 day free trial of the service, simply head over to MyIntervals.com/wise.

3 Best Free Project Managent Solutions for Startups

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, virtual project management doesn’t take place in a 3d environment as this 90s depiction represents. Project management does, however, allow you to interact with co-founders and employees in a web-based environment where all data is shared and exchanged freely allowing you to make decisions to help your company start earning revenue.

I’ve used the majority of these project management solutions, and while I will admit there’s not “best” solution, these are some pretty great options, and the best way to find out if you’re the right fit is to take the free trials, and see if the solutions will work for you.

Basecamp

Basecamp comes from the 37signals guys notorious for providing innovative ways to communicate in virtual worlds in the most simplified way possible. Their BasecampHQ project manager is the essential of minimalism and falls just in line with the GTD (Getting Things Done) principle and gives you just the right tools to accomplish your goals in your company. They offer accounts for larger companies going up to $100/month, but they do offer a free version that I definitely suggest you check out. You can only have 1 project, but for testing purposes, this is perfect (and actually kind of addicting, too!).

In addition to the essentials, they include an email tracking system that allows you to log all email chains and conversations between clients, employees, and customers. You can also use email as a means to add and discuss content within the system. Simply reply to emails from the Basecamp system and the comment is added to Basecamp, all from your email. Personally I’ve found this to be the biggest advantage to Basecamp, seeing that I hate going on web-interfaces, I’m glad I can get my work done from my iPhone or Blackberry without having to log on.

5pmweb

This is one of the best designed, easiest to navigate project management suite I’ve seen in awhile. It blazes past the competition when it comes to flow-charting and gantt charts and has a wonderful simple, fun, interface that allows you to easily organize projects, tasks, memos, and employees.

While they are actually one of the newer project management suites on the block, 5pmweb definitely holds its own when it comes to deliver features. Just like Basecamp, they have integrated email compatibility so you don’t have to constantly log into the web interface as well as great timelines for project management, RSS integration, and a beautiful dual-pane interface that is reminiscent of dual monitors. I personally really enjoy the simplicity and ease of use of 5pmweb, and even though I’m currently using Basecamp, I am leaning hard on switching to 5pmweb due to their great feature package. They offer a free 14-day trial and then their plans begin at only $14/month (or $2.80 per user).

Goplan.info

This is actually a project management suite that I was referred to by some friends on Delicious. And upon never hearing about them I had some initial second-thoughts, but after trying out the service I was very impressed. As you can tell from the screenshots, they have a lot of similarities with Basecamp in the UI, but that’s where the similarities stop. Goplan is has the capabilities to take on the needs of an advanced project management suite with their developer API as well as ticket tracking for bugs and such.

One of the best features was the ability to talk to team members through their inline chat program. While I also thought Facebook chat would be nothing special, I find myself using Facebook chat all the time, and it’s the same with Goplan. For some reason, the ease of use and instant-nature of chat is great a project management feature. Another cool feature (coming soon) is the addition of instant messaging alerts when items change in the dashboard. Like all project management suites, Goplan emails you when there is an update to the system, and with this instant-messaging notification, the connectivity and ease of use will increase dramatically. Goplan offers free accounts for up to 2 projects and plans starting as low as $10/monht.

There are a number of directories, forums, and marketplaces that allow webmasters and business consumers purchase and bid on web properties. Some of these forums have strict bidding processes and secure transactions, while you may be warned that some sites do not have the strictest guidelines and you may get burned. Remember, if it’s too good to be true, the other guy’s a Nigerian Prince.

The best places to buy and sell your websites:

Sedo.com

Sedo is definitely one of the most popular domain-exchange sites on the internet. They’re built into products like 1and1.com and allow you to easily park domains, and have bidders come to you. They have about 362k visitors per month and millions of domains for sale, definitely an A+ site.

BuySellWebsite.com

These guys actually have a team backing them, and they get about 17k visitors per month from Compete, so they have a good collection of products for sale, including domains as well as currently existing web properties.

DealaSite.com

These guys have an auction-type bidding system where you can make bids on properties in the hopes of grabbing them at a discounted rate, as well as giving site-owners the ability to sell their properties more quickly. These guys get 9k visitors and have about 1,000 properties currently for sale.

SitePoint Marketplace

These guys are also in the big boys when it comes to domain-exchanges. Of their services offered, you can sell advertising space, sell domain names, buy premium websites, hire employees, exchange links, and about 20 other similar services. With 600k visitors per month, you should definitely start your hunt here, but be warned, since it’s such a big exchange, you may pay inflated prices and will be bidding against everyone else in the world.

WebsiteBroker

One of the nicest interfaces when it comes to the domain brokers, these guys have a quality system that allows you to buy and sell domains and websites, buy and sell premium websites, and even get your website appraised for its sale value. At about 20k visitors per month, these guys are a great place for quality content, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing them grow quickly in the future.

BizBuySell

This directory is actually an all-around online business exchange. You can buy and sell pretty much any business in the world. You can also find brokers who will help you buy or sell your business, and help you maximize your dollar amount. In addition to web domains, you can also find franchises, which is a nice plus for a web directory. With 240k visitors per month, this is a powerhouse that definitely should be checked out.

Tidget

Tidget is one of the smaller marketplaces covered in this best of, but definitely something you shouldn’t ignore. They offer a variety of services including websites, domains, content, graphics, advertisements, link exchanges, and even software licenses. Their listings are pretty sparse at only 2k visitors per month, but be sure to keep checking back here for some great content in the future.

Digital Point Forum

Some of the best places to find quality web-content and domains are the forums spread across the web. And digital point doesn’t disappoint. With forum topics ranging from adsense help to link-building techniques, Site Point covers it all. Their buy sell trade directory is a great place to find great domains and sell your product to fellow members who know their shit, so to speak, when it comes to web site management. At over 800k visitors per month, these guys are the powerhouse.

Wicked Point Forums

Like the guys at digital point, forums are where it’s at when it comes to buying and selling domains. Wicked Fire is a newer site than digital point, but their content is the same and you might say better in some areas. Their biggest discussions come from affiliate marketing, traffic building, and design, development & programming. At 80k visitors per month, this is a fast-growing community that has a great selection of content and advice.

I am a HUGE energy drink fan, having tested almost everything on the market. My life requires me to constantly be on the go, and for that energy, I turn to energy drinks.

In this post we won’ go into the fact that caffeine produces a spike and then crash, because that’s boring and not as sexy as talking about the best energy drinks However, it should be noted how much caffeine a normal person should consume in a given day. The average adult can safely consume 200-300mg of caffeine per day.

Which breaks down to a maximum of 3 1/2 – 8 oz. Red Bulls

So at Grooveshark, we currently don’t yet have enough money for energy drinks (sponsors welcome), but once we do, these drinks will be on the top of our shopping list:

Sugar-Free Rockstar Energy Drink

Caffeine: 160mg
Cost: $2/each
Size: 16 oz.

Sitting around coding all day doesn’t do wonders for the ol’ physique, so it’s important to supply our engineers with the trimming effects of diet/sugar-free drinks. This Rockstar flavor is really quite nice, and is my personal favorite out of all the drinks showcased.

it’s important to supply our engineers with the trimming effects of diet/sugar-free drinks

And I especially like to use these for making cocktails, as it creates the best mix of flavors for a nice drink. These come in 16oz. varieties standard but are also available in bladder-bursting 32oz. and cute 8oz. Red Bull-like varieties.

Monster Lo-Carb/Sugar-free

Caffeine: 160mg
Cost: $2/each
Size: 16 oz.

This drink also has quite a nice taste to it without the aftertaste found in Red Bulls. It has about the same color as the Rock Stars, but it’s not quite as sweet. I like to drink these in the morning when I forego coffee and find they have a nice taste in the morning as opposed to the harsh taste of Red Bull in the AM. Coming in the same size varieties as the Rock Stars, these drinks are pretty much interchangeable.

I like to drink these in the morning when I forego coffee

Monster has a number of different flavors including their Juiced line which is made with real fruit juice, but unfortunately none of them are available in the sugar-free varieties. Of the “sugar-full” items, I’d say the Guava is probably the best tasting for those of you sugar freaks
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Enviga Rasberry Sparkling Green Tea

Caffeine: 100mg
Cost: $1/each
Size: 12 oz.

The Envigas came with the claim that they helped people to lose weight. The actual claim was if you drink 3 a day, you can lose up to 60-100 calories in one day. Well, this is a no-duh for anyone with any nutritional knowledge; energy drinks contain caffeine, caffeine increases heartrate and also metabolism. Envigas do have green tea extract in them as well, which has been shown to increase calories burned, so it’s not all marketing hype.

For those of you who are new to energy drinks, this is a great starter

This is not your typical energy drink, and luckily it doesn’t the same premium as the others. I picked up a six pack of these from Publix today for $6. For a 4-pack of Rockstar, you’re normally looking at $8, so I was extremely happy with this pickup. That being said, these drinks do taste quite yummy and could actually be tolerated while eating/drinking normal foods. For those of you who are new to energy drinks, this is a great starter; my girlfriend loves them!

Red Bull Sugar Free

Caffeine: 80mg
Cost: $2.50/each
Size: 8.3 oz.

This may be surprising to some, but the Red Bulls don’t actually have that much caffeine. There was a product that got recalled, Cocaine, that claimed to be 350% stronger than Red Bull, which would put it at around 240mg for an 8 oz can, which while pretty damn-high, ain’t no cocaine. So I’m sure all of you have tried a Red Bull and can attest to the fact that it tastes pretty bad. To me, I kind of enjoy the bad taste, and try to attribute it to “it working.”

To me, I kind of enjoy the bad taste, and try to attribute it to “it working.”

The same phenomenon you have when you take medicine or eat healthy food, you kind of expect it to taste bad if it’s actually good for you. I also like Red Bulls because they’re normally sold in the smaller 8 oz size, because normally I feel bad about drinking 160mg of caffeine and 16 oz. of sugar-free crap, so the 8 oz size is refreshing. Unfortunately, the Red Bulls are the most expensive per-ounce, so you probably want to save these for special occasions.

For more information on energy drink caffeine content check out The Caffeine Database.

Photo Credit:

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