Culture Kitchen: Culinary Travels from the Comfort of Your Own Home

People travel the world to experience other cultures and taste foreign cuisine. Now, you can do all of these from the comfort of your own home and kitchen. Culture Kitchen brings together a group of seasoned home cooks from different cultural backgrounds. This group, also known as Culture Kitchen’s Master Cooks, share their knowledge of their native cuisines by showcasing their culture and heritage through tried and tested recipes and the stories behind them.

Culture Kitchen was founded by two young women who met in graduate school. Both avid travelers and food lovers, they got together and collaborated on a project that allows people to travel the world while remaining in their kitchen.

A different Master Cook is featured on their website every month and customers can order an Ethnic Cooking Kit which ships out every 3rd Wednesday of the month. This kit contains 3 recipes, a shopping list for fresh ingredients and the tools you will need, non-perishable ethnic ingredients that are hard to find on this side of the world, and a fabric bag to keep your ingredients in. Each kit can feed up to 6 people and is great for special occasions or when you’re feeling adventurous and want to whip up something different in your kitchen.

VidCaster: Keeping Things Simple

A lot of companies hire web developers to give them an edge in creating wonderful websites that not only attract customers, but represent the company as well. Other companies, on the other hand, especially the smaller ones, prefer a do-it-yourself approach. This saves a lot of money in the sense that they don’t have to pay people to do the job for them. Several webhosting companies now offer easy to navigate web building tools that allow people to create their own websites whether they are tech savvy or not. Building a website that’s filled with text and maybe a couple of pictures and a video or two is easy to create, but building a video-based site is a whole different matter.

What a lot of people do is they upload their videos to YouTube and embed the video player onto their sites. This is an easy fix; however, they are not getting the most out of their video uploads. One company decided to focus on this problem. VidCaster offers companies the opportunity not only to upload their videos directly to their websites, but to easily manage the videos and even monetize them as well. With VidCaster’s platform, customers can upload their videos onto their cloud and customize the theme before publishing it on their websites. They can then share the videos easily on social networking sites and get accurate performance reports and analysis across all sites and devices from which the videos were viewed. 

VidCaster’s platform can also be used alongside video streaming services such as YouTube, Vimeo, and a whole lot more. This feature allows for a more unique flexible solution which VidCaster provides for each of its clients. Some of VidCaster’s success stories include that of their work with the MIT Enterprise Forum, Turnstone Furniture, Indiana University Student Television, and 500 Startups.

Steven Bangerter and the BangerterSheppard Team’s Expertise in Real Estate, Financial, and Religious and Nonprofit Risk Management Matters

Steven Bangerter serves as Managing Partner of Bangerter Sheppard, PC, a practice with offices in Oakland, Los Angeles, and St. George, Utah. The firm’s attorneys hold qualification to practice in Nevada, California, Utah, and Idaho and hold diverse experience spanning insurance coverage and defense, personal and catastrophic injury, and business litigation.

Mr. Bangerter and his team have extensive knowledge of corporate, real estate, and financial transactions. The firm services the needs of diverse clients including individuals, multinational corporations, and privately held entities. Counseling lenders and borrowers, attorneys assist in drawing up and negotiating the secured loans that are essential in developing, financing, and purchasing commercial property. The practice also represents clients in transactional elements of mergers and acquisitions, asset-based loans, and corporate structuring and compliance. Working closely with real estate developers and owners, BangerterSheppard consults on issues relating to land use and entitlement, and maintenance and operation of corporate facilities.

Among Mr. Bangerter’s primary areas of focus is nonprofit and religious organizations law, and the risk management issues specific to such groups. Steven Bangerter holds Church Law and Risk Management certification from the University of Cambridge, having completed the institution’s Risk Management for Churches and Schools course. For the past 19 years, he has notably represented GuideOne Mutual Insurance Company and its insured, helping the firm maintain preeminent status among non-profit and religious organization insurers worldwide. Mr. Bangerter has experience in lecturing to industry groups on matters concerning religious and non-profit insurance law. 

Saving Precious Time with FastCustomer

Most people hate having to call up customer service to resolve an issue because of the long waiting time. Most customers have to wait on queue for an hour or so before they can even talk to someone. That’s a lot of time wasted on hold instead of doing something more productive. That’s what Aaron Dragushan thought while he was waiting on hold to speak to a customer service representative sometime in early 2011. He then thought that it would be better if he could just tap a button on his phone and get a call back when it’s his turn in the queue.

 

He worked with co-founders Steph Hay and Paul Singh on what they thought to be the perfect solution for this waiting on hold problem and came up with a program that allows customers to get a call back from customer service representatives when their turn on the queue came. They tested it on Hay’s phone, and it worked. Today, their company FastCustomer has over 100,000 users and has collectively saved their customers more than a million minutes of waiting on hold.

500 Startups: Sowing the Seeds of Entrepreneurial Success

Venture capital companies are like angels sent from heaven to aspiring entrepreneurs and the growing number of these venture capital and startup incubator companies has helped countless internet startup companies get their feet off the ground. One of the standouts in this field is 500 Startups. Founded by Dave McClure, 500 Startups aims to provide early-stage companies with funding, mentoring, and help with design, data management, and distribution.

While most venture capital companies provide entrepreneurs with a seed fund and not much else, 500 helps their community of startups succeed by providing them with what they need, not just funding. 500’s partners and venture partners have extensive experience in corporate leadership and some even come from a successful entrepreneurial background which helps them arm their companies with everything they need to learn to be successful

500 Startups has more than 160 startup mentors, each with years of experience to share with their companies. At the moment, 500 Startups finds companies to nurture through a referral system wherein mentors, founders, and venture advisors recommend which companies to invest in. Once chosen, each company goes through an accelerator program where they are provided funding, their own workspace, and a mentor to guide them along the way. The companies are also given access to a unique design network and a large distribution platform to help them build and grow their company, and so much more. 

500 Startups has already launched its 4^th batch of companies and is busy searching for and developing the next big thing in internet startup business. Some of their famous alumni include TaskRabbit, a marketplace where people can post and apply to do errands and odd jobs within their neighborhoods, 72Lux, a high-end checkout for luxury shoppers, and WePay, a payment processing site that helps companies and organizations collect money and manage their group funds online.

Living a Healthier Life with Voxiva

People often need encouragement and reassurance when switching to a healthier lifestyle. We often get this from family, friends and healthcare providers who support us on our journey towards better health. It gives us the feeling of empowerment and strengthens our will to stay on the right path.

Voxiva offers the same encouragement and empowerment through interactive health services people can get through their mobile apps and services. To date, Voxiva offers support for people going through various health issues like smoking cessation, diabetes self-management, and maternal and child health. These services are made available to the public as a part of healthcare packages and plans. Voxiva launched the free Text4Baby service in 2010 with the help of its many partners which includes the US Government. Text4Baby is an interactive educational service that targets new and expectant mothers and teaches them about keeping themselves and their babies healthy during pregnancy and after birth.