GameTrainer offers training services for video games. With video games ? and online games in particular ? becoming more complex, inexperienced gamers face a serious challenge to enter a new game. Basically, GameTrainer fills a need that comes from the inability of videogame producers to make their game easily accessible for occasional players.

Baffled by "automated phone trees"? You know, these never-ending menus that you have to navigate through before reaching the feature you need (or better, a human being)? Fonolo, just like Bringo, help users take a shortcut.

Cake Financial is a community website targeted at individual investors to share strategies, see what other invest in, and track performance, among others.

Sidetaker is the funny one of the lot. It allows people to anonymously make a private argument public, and let the visitors vote on whose side is right! From bathroom behaviour to cheating, everything goes...

MySpace Music, the new MySpace venture that will distribute music online starting next week, will take several major labels on board. Doing so, it also excludes independent labels and brings together the complete supply chain of the music industry, from artist to distribution. Techcrunch argues that a MySpace Music antitrust lawsuit is imminent.

This in itself is big news and might significantly disrupt the music distribution business, with traditional labels on one side and online distributors (stores such as iTunes, streamers, and so on) on the other. If MySpace Music is too successful, we might face a greater evil than if the major labels continue fighting for themselves through the RIAA. If MySpace Music does not have exclusivity or better deals than other online distributors, then it might give birth to a new, healthier music distribution model. Wait and see!

It is even more surprising that MySpace, which is recognized as a haven and a platform for independent artists, enters an alliance with major labels. Indeed everybody knows that independent artists are particularly at odds with the major labels' stranglehold on the industry. Of course the MySpace we know will continue to exist, but we may wonder if MySpace is not selling its soul, or is not letting the wolves in.

The first browser war (1995-2000) ended with Microsoft Internet Explorer winning over Netscape Navigator. Netscape open-sourced its code through the Mozilla Foundation, which eventually gave birth to Firefox as a new contender to MSIE supremacy. The second browser war (2004-2006) resulted in a draw, effectively placing MSIE and Firefox on equal footing.

The stakes got higher in the last years, because more and more functions that normally depend on the operating system are taken in charge directly in the browser. In other words, the web is becoming the platform, and the operating system is progressively becoming less relevant. Nowadays browsers are used for much more than "surfing the web"; they blur the line between product and service, between website and application, and between what is remote and what is local.

I believe that we now enter a third browser war because (1) the stakes are higher and equilibrium cannot last much longer and, more importantly, (2) Google Chrome entered the market.

Google Chrome has the potential to disrupt the market because, besides the company's reputation and power, it builds on Google's long-term efforts to abstract the operating system by offering a real browser-based platform with products such as Google Docs, Google Desktop, and many others, as well as opening its API to third party developers. Don't mistake Google Chrome for "just another browser". More than a product, it represents the Google stance: "we want it all".

Ironically, Google might achieve the same position Microsoft occupied a few years ago (and still now to a lesser extent): setting a platform standard and developing a vertical monopoly bundling the platform (the "browser") and the applications (the services running on the platform).

Whether Google succeeds or not, let's just hope they do not become evil.

I am always amazed how few web startups offer simple solutions to real-world, complex problems. These last weeks, among the many startup websites I visited, only two captured my attention.

Mint allows users to manage their personal finance, with many aspects being automatic (hence vastly superior to your average Excel sheet). It's free, and their revenue model relies obviously on target advertising (no ugly banners or annoying pop-ups).

Geni (from the word genealogy) is a website that offers you to build your family tree. That's original, to say the least. I'm not familiar with this activity but I know that it is tremendously time-consuming. It's only natural to leverage the social web to build and discover family trees. Geni's revenue model is not as obvious as Mint's, since (1) it is free and (2) it cannot infer users interests from family ties only (users do not share any commonality except interest for family trees). However, it is a great start to build a community website to blog, share pictures, calendars, events, etc. and it is not difficult to imagine integration with social networks such as Facebook for example.

Let me stress once more the importance of execution when ideas are so cheap. These ideas are dead simple and not new, but these two startups cut through the clutter thanks to great user accessibility, features, slick design, and (I guess) good marketing.

In the web world and IT in general, PR is undergoing massive changes as PR professionals discover that they can't simply push their stuff to a limited number of well-identified journalists but have to take into account all kind of influencers such as web writers, bloggers, digg-ers and twitt'ers.

Ultimately, PR is not a profession but an activity that every entrepreneur has to deal with personally. How? By participating in the community that is related to his/her venture.

An insightful TechCrunch post by Michael Arrington describes what PR is in the information age:

Take the time to start reading blogs and other publications that cover what you?re doing. Go to an event or two. This should be fun for you, since they?re writing about stuff that you?re spending all your time on. You?ll start to see links to other relevant sites, and before long you?ll fully understand who?s who in the space, get a feel for people?s personalities and passions, etc. Leave a few thoughtful comments. Better yet, start your own blog and link appropriately. And in your leisure time participate in the fascinating conversations occurring on Twitter and FriendFeed.

Suddenly you are no longer just a spectator with an agenda. You are now part of a community. You are a person that gives and takes. Someone who makes the overall network stronger.

Well said. Let's do it.