Hi.Q launched today with articles in Wired, NY Times, Entrepreneur, VentureBeat and many more.
This one is from today’s Wall Street Journal:

Adding a new tune to the chorus of health and wellness startups, Hi.Q is emerging from stealth with an app and funding.

Unlike Fitbit Inc., MyFitnessPal Inc. and dozens of other startups that enable users to count steps and track eating habits, Hi.Q tests health knowledge. The hypothesis is that the more users know, the better choices they will make.

The free app functions like a game with players completing quizzes and competing against others for mastery of nutrition, exercise, medical conditions and other topics. The quizzes, which prompt players to connect to articles from the Mayo Clinic, Wikipedia and other sources to learn more, include more than 10,000 questions across 300 topic areas. They test everything from the healthiest items to order at amusement parks to how to prevent osteoporosis.

“Everybody skipped a step in the quantified-self movement. The first step is education,” Hi.Q Co-founder and Chief Executive Munjal Shah said. “With this (app) we want to create a true instrument that improves knowledge that then helps with health.”

For Mr. Shah, a serial entrepreneur who sold his last company to Google in 2010, Hi.Q is as much a professional quest as it is a personal one.

The day after Google purchased Like.com Inc. for a reported $100 million, he was running a 10K race when severe chest pains forced him to stop…

Read the rest of article

Get the Hi.Q App

This is what happens when you let the bizarre lust for a “pure” dot com dictate your name, via ValleyWag. Click pic to engorge:

“Bitly, Borkly, Barnly, Molestly, Strinkingly, Happily, Crappily, Maply, Morply, Dottly, Dootly, Godly, Angrily. It’s bad enough when every new startup is just based on the one that came before it. Now they all sound the same, too.

The Wall Street Journal says there are 161 startups that end in “ly,” “lee, or “li.” They’re all trying to get the same money, from the same people, and probably doing a lot of the same things. It is a sea of suffixes, sadly apt in the age of digital me-too-ism.

Looking at this Pinterest collection (Pinterestly.com is taken) will make you nauseous, a massive Milky Way of non-inspiration.

The Atlantic Wire quotes one startup “name consultant” who says all that needs to be said, really: “They’re planning on getting bought in a year, their name essentially doesn’t matter.” That worked for Summly, didn’t it?”

Startup Names Hurting Startups

In 2002 when we named Igor, Igor.com was not available. Sure we could have registered Namingpedia.com or Igorly.com. But the name is more important than the dot com, so we live at IgorInternational.com. Just ask Elon Musk, he doesn’t own Tesla.com, they are at Teslamotors.com, and rightly not Tesla.global or Tesla.company or Tesla.guru (or any other silly gTLD)).

All single-word domains were taken back in the last century. Here is a list of the most common domain prefixes and suffixes to help you find a workaround and register a great dot com name.

And make sure to enter your new dot com name in Verisign’s Internet Official Contest for a chance to win up to $35,000.

David Duquette