Lottay's CEO talks about "old media"

Yours truly was on the PBS news show Nightly Business Report this month. I gave an editorial about "old media", specifically the television industry.

A few years ago, before I joined Lottay, I ran the television web site, ABC.com. Eight years of working at The Walt Disney Company gave me insights into where the TV industry is heading ... and the sight ain't pretty....

Check out my commentary.

Chinese New Year starts on February 14, 2010

We're two weeks away from scaring off bad spirits and wishing for a fruitful harvest. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, I speak of Lunar New Year, often just called Chinese New Year.

The Chinese New Year follows the ancient lunar calendar and was originally tied to harvest times in an agrarian society. As with many things Chinese (my parents are Chinese, so I can talk this way), tradition and custom and symbolism all got intertwined, so much so that many people who celebrate the Lunar New Year have no idea what it's really about.

For many contemporary Chinese and people of Chinese extract, the Lunar New Year is a time to wish people well. This wishing often takes the very tangible form of giving people money as a gift. Specifically, older people give younger people money in red envelopes (red packets, known in Mandarin as "hong bao"). The red envelope is packed with symbolism in Chinese culture. Well, actually it's packed with cash, but you get it.

Lottay.com is a web site for making the giving of money as a gift fun, personal, and secure. So we thought, Let's offer a Chinese New Year version of Lottay!

Gong xi fa cai! Gong hay fat choy!

Get married, get broke

Wow - just read this report about the cost of weddings in America. I'm so glad I got married a long time ago :-)

The graphic on this article originally from BridePop is startling. Look at those bar graphs! $45,000 for the average wedding in San Francisco! Must be all those high-tech millionaires getting hitched driving that up :-)

On Lottay.com, we've seen that some of our users are using our web site to create wedding registries. Of course, on Lottay, all gifts given are money, transfered via PayPal person-to-person, so the newlyweds are going to end up with cash. Not five toasters, ugly table linens, and an anti-microbial reverse-osmosis water filter*.

What these couples have realized, smartly, is that the best gift they could receive for their wedding is money. After all, starting off a new life of coupledom and cocktail parties requires cash, not five toasters. And, you've just spent $28,000 for your wedding if you threw it in Boston (see article). You. Need. Money.

So go ahead and create a wedding registry on Lottay, state what you want to use the money toward, and get the cash. Your guests will feel good about giving you just what you want, and you'll have a way to pay off your credit card bills from the wedding.

*That was one of the gifts my wife and I received at our wedding. There was no card attached to it, so we don't really know who re-gifted, er, thoughtfully gave us that present.

Lottay has a new home - Ventura California

At the beginning of this month, Lottay Inc. moved offices. We are now headquartered in Ventura California, one of the surfing capitals of the west coast. That's "surfing" as in ocean wave-riding :-) Though, in our case, we're housed in a high-tech incubator and we're an Internet company, so we surf the Web too!

The incubator Lottay is in is called the Ventura Ventures Technology Center. The Center is a space for tech startups to get off the ground, talk shop, find camaraderie, and store our surfboards (the V2TC is four blocks from "C Street", one of the best surf spots along the Pacific Ocean in southern California).

The City of Ventura runs the incubator, and they have been terrific landlords for Lottay.

The V2TC recently threw a launch party. Here's the scoop on that.

Contest Round-up! Win money!

Lottay.com is sponsoring not one, not two, but three - count 'em! - three contests online right now this week don't wait offers end soon TO WIN MONEY.

DealSeekingMom has our contest here.

MomSpark has a Lottay contest here.

MomsWhoSave has our contest here.

Now, shoo, go, run - enter those contests!

Wishing you a lottay luck,

Harry

CEO

Lottay.com

MomSpark.net contest sponsored by Lottay - win $100!

Attention attention - visit our friends at MomSpark.net and enter for a chance to win $100! Didn't get the Christmas gift you wanted? A hundred Bennies could do the trick then :-)

The contest is here: Lottay - Online Gifting Made Easy - $100 Giveaway

Thank you, MomSpark.net!