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Crazy Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com http://www.contextmediainc.com/ Shradha Agarwal and Rishi Shah were writing an article on out-of-home media for their university's business magazine in 2006 when it dawned on them: This would make a great business. TV screens had become de rigueur in taxicabs, shopping malls and high-rise elevators. But the Northwestern University undergrads saw an untapped opportunity to bring multimedia content to a more targeted audience: patients in waiting rooms. "My grandmother passed away young from diabetes complications," Agarwal says. "Rishi's father is a diabetes specialist. We saw how small bits of information at the right time and place can make a huge impact." Their idea was to sell doctors' offices prepackaged video segments containing tips on diet, exercise and other lifestyle tweaks patients could make to improve their health. A TV screen in the reception area would broadcast this programming, modeled after seg...

Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com http://www.hitbliss.com/ With only a few legal options for accessing TV programs and movies over the internet--pay upfront (Netflix, Amazon, iTunes) or sit through advertisements (Hulu)--it was inevitable that an alternative model would emerge. HitBliss, an online streaming site developed by husband-and-wife team Sharon Peyer and Andrew Prihodko, offers popular shows like NBC's Battlestar Galactica and hit movies from the likes of Paramount Pictures, Focus Features and Universal Pictures. Users can purchase titles from the HitBliss Store for roughly $4 per movie or $2 per TV show. But the revolution starts with the HitBliss Earn service. Viewers in Earn peruse the same titles but sit through advertisements to bank money--about 25 cents per ad viewed--that can later be used in the HitBliss Store. To earn payouts up to twice as quickly, Earn users build a profile, adding their location, gender, age, income and browser search history. With that in...