Cellphone service lets you “prowl” for dates
Looking for a date, but too busy to sit at your computer combing through profiles on dating websites? Now you can do it anywhere you take your cellphone. Zogo, a cellphone technology company, makes it possible for members of its service to search and contact each other via cellphone. Think Match.com on your cellphone instead of a PC. You can browse profiles using a Web-enabled phone to make an instant connection.
And if you thought that GPS function in your cellphone wasn’t useful, Zogo has what it calls a “prowling” feature that allows members to connect with others in their immediate area – they’re even given priority status for being out and about. “This enables spontaneous, and immediate, dating on the go,” says the company. “With just a few quick clicks on the cellphone, a member can hook up right on the spot.”
Currently most of the members of the service are in the New York City area, but Zogo is banking on the trend sweeping the nation.
It’s Feb. 14; please be my … divorce lawyer
Valentine’s Day didn’t go as planned? Online attorney-finder LegalMatch says the number of divorce cases submitted to its website spikes 36 percent in the weeks surrounding Valentine’s Day.
“It happens every year – it’s the darnedest thing,” said Don Keane, vice president of marketing for LegalMatch. “We think it has to do with the heightened emotion around the holiday.”
LegalMatch users fill out an extensive questionnaire about their legal cases, which are sent to local members of the company’s network who decide whether they want to take on the case.
LegalMatch also says that prenuptial-agreement submissions climb 28 percent and annulments increase 21 percent around Valentine’s Day.
“There’s a heightened level of scrutiny around relationships,” Keane surmised. “During Valentine’s Day, people tend to put their relationships up to a mirror, take a good look at them and ask, ‘Is this everything I want?”‘
Tool puts fancy twist on screw-cap wines
Screw-cap wines have moved beyond the realm of Boone’s Farm with an increasing number of higher-end vintners coming around to the idea that they actually preserve wine better than traditional corks.
Even that knowledge can’t quite eliminate the fact that opening screw-top wine – even an expensive bottle – feels, well, tacky.
Enter the Wine Fritz, a new tool created by Shari and Tom Scholten, owners of the Fritz Alpine Bistro in Keystone. The restaurateurs invented the wine opener, which fits over the top of the wine bottle and aids in unscrewing the cap, as a way to add a little presentation to the process. The Scholtens say the tool also amplifies the cracking sound that’s made when the cap’s seal is broken.
“Wine is all about presentation and celebration, and I wondered why screw caps couldn’t have a tool that gave them more presentation,” Shari Scholten said.
The couple debuted the Wine Fritz earlier this month at Trios Enoteca in Lower Downtown. The restaurant joins California Cafe and the Fritz Alpine Bistro as an early adopter of the new system.
The couple is selling the Wine Fritz online at winefritz.com and is working to make it available at retail stores.
Freebie runs ad for high-priced ski resort
Jerry Jones, the Avon real-estate broker in charge of selling Sunlight Mountain Resort, is casting a wide net in his quest to fetch $50 million for the ski area and 450 acres of developable land.
That’s why Jones purchased advertising space in the Denver Daily News, a free publication distributed throughout the metro area.
Jones admits it’s fairly uncommon to advertise a high-priced item like a ski resort in a free publication, but he said the spot has already yielded at least one interested buyer.
“You never know when you’ll get a hit,” said Jones, who has previously helped sell several other Colorado ski areas, including Sol Vista and Berthoud Pass. “There’s a possibility that someone with the ability to spend $50 million will see the ad.”
Jones, who is selling Sunlight on behalf of the resort’s group of 32 investors, has spent about $20,000 on paid spots, including advertisements in a ski-industry trade publication, an aviation magazine and online.
Jones said the Denver Daily News “cut us a very good deal” on the spots because the publication’s owner, Jim Pavelich, was Jones’ neighbor for 10 years until 2004.
Many boomers only dream of empty nest
Baby boomers have plenty to worry about as they get old, including surging health care costs and whether they’ve saved enough for retirement.
To make the situation worse, between 2000 and 2004, the number of U.S. households with children over 18 who still live at home has increased 70 percent.
And it’s not just children who live at home that are a financial drain for boomers: Young adults ages 25 and 26 receive, on average, $2,323 per year in financial support from their parents, according to a University of Michigan study.
