Spartan Race Overview by CashSherpa.com

If you are like me you are already planning on fun things to do this summer. If you are looking to get in shape and have fun doing it you might want to book a spot in the Spartan Race.

Have you ever watched reality shows like Survivor, where a few celebrities are put on a deserted island and told to rough it up? Or a group would be brought to a series of difficult obstacles and they would need to go through them, completing them for the amazing of the crowd? Or perhaps you’ve seen military movies where well trained soldiers go through intense training at the boot camp. If you’ve ever wanted to be in one of those positions, then thanks to Spartan Race, this may finally be your chance. Here’s what this race is about, and what you can learn from the event.

Spartan Race is an event that first debuted in 2005, and is described to be a true test of will. There’s now several races happening each year as part of the event, and they all include a combination of racing, crawling under barbed wires, going above obstacles, and more. Regardless of which event you embark on, one thing is certain, it’s going to be grueling and hard. Only the most fit physically should go into some of the more difficult ones such as the Death Race, but the entry level ones are open to the public, and thousands of people sign up to try it out. Some become legendary, winning race after race, others barely finish. It’s a race that’s harder than any other race out there, and has been featured on TV, on ESPN and other major networks.

The reason for the name is that Spartans, especially after the movie, have been equated with strength and pure force of will. The event itself was designed by seven high class athletes along with a Royal Marine to be brutal and harsh. Comparing this to trail races, mud runs, or even many boot camps, this will beat them all, and require even more concentration and physical strength. Many races can be done like the obstacle course, the Spartan Sprint, Super Spartan and even the Spartan Beast. Few can finish them all, but those who do can go on to the Death Race, the world championship of obstacle racing, and an endurance race like no other.

Even if you don’t think you have what it takes to compete, these races allow spectators and sell tickets to see people compete, and they are shown on TV. Recently, the organizers upped their prizes and offered $100,000 to the winners of Death Race. They never expected how popular Spartan Race would become, with thousands of people signing up to try their hands at this event. While this year’s final event hasn’t happened yet, they expect around 10 people finishing at the end. It will for sure be an event to watch.

Zipwhip Review Textspresso Machine at CashSherpa.com

There’s a lot of innovation going on in the mobile industry, and even something as old as SMS, or text messages, can be improved in many varying ways. That’s the thought behind Zipwhip, a Seattle startup that invented a process where text messages could be sent and received from a phone number, and relayed to a computer, whether that be a desktop PC or a notebook, via the company text messaging cloud. The idea isn’t new, but this startup is going farther with actual implementations, along with cool examples of what’s possible by combining many different technologies.

The idea behind their technology is simple, and in many ways it’s nothing new. A text message is simply a small amount of text sent from any cellphone. It goes around the network and usually reaches another mobile somewhere else. But in the middle, providers can transmit the message over the Internet as well. And that’s what this company is doing. It’s also not the first company to do this. Twitter is perhaps the most popular example, where anyone can send a tweet from a cellphone by sending an SMS to a specific number, and it gets translated into a tweet. That’s the whole reason for their low character allowance. But in the case of Zipwhip, instead of just converting the message into text, they have an API where people can build applications on top of this.

One of their most striking examples is something they showed a local TV station, and that’s the textspresso machine.The idea is that they take a normal coffee maker, then add a series of robotic arms and motors, all connected to a computer. Then, using their platform, they connect the text messages to those motors. By sending an SMS to the textspresso, they can have it make a coffee of a certain type for them. It’s a pretty impressive concept, although they only built it as a demo for their offices. They published the plans for free, but to get it, you would have to build it. Still, it’s just one example of many things possible with their platforms. For now, it seems like they are still building much of the services offered, but anyone building apps around their platform can go to the site and register.

Zipwhip isn’t the first company to dabble with SMS and probably won’t be the last. The good thing about text messages, even though it’s an ancient technology, every phone supports it, and almost everybody carries a mobile phone with them now. So as far as the small company goes, they are likely in this for the long run. For four years they have been building their text messaging cloud, and will likely innovate even more in this field in the future.

Seattle Based FutureAdvisor Review at CashSherpa.com

Investment advice can be hard to get. Most people have a retirement saving account, a 401k, maybe some mutual funds. But they don’t really know how their investments are doing, or even if they are the right types of investments for their needs. Instead, they rely on common wisdom, or go see a financial consultant. The problem with financial consultants is that they are usually paid by a company, and their job also includes pushing their products such as mutual funds or life insurance. That’s the reason why Bo Lu co-funded FutureAdvisor along with Jon Xu out in Seattle. This new type of web site offers free financial advice, and can be useful for anyone looking to get better savings.

The way it works is fairly simple. All you have to do is go on the site, create an account, and answer a few questions about your financial profile and your goals. Then, their system creates a target portfolio that meets those needs. You can even import your own investments and see immediately how close they are to your target goal, and compare with what’s available out there. Finally, you get recommendations on how to maximize your savings while minimizing your costs. The site is well designed and boosts that it takes just 2 minutes to get started, with the whole process being completely free. The way this new startup makes money is by offering more personalized financial advice through a gold level which costs $49 per year, and even video calls with staff members at $195.

It’s a fairly unique idea, and the new business caught the eye of investment firms like Sequoia who financed its first round, allowing the two co-founders to get started. On their help site, they fully describe their methodology and how they arrive at the conclusions that they do. By favoring low fee index funds, they base their process on solid market research and long standing strategies as explained in many financial books. According to their claims, they save up to 80% on fees for their users, and the report you get at the end of the process focuses heavily on the savings you can make on those fees if you follow their advices. With the paid accounts, you can even get personalized alerts for when new investment opportunities appear.

It’s worth noting that anyone who is looking for investment advices should consult a financial professional, but for most of us, people who don’t want to pay for advices or don’t have someone on call for the millions of dollars we don’t have, a site like FutureAdvisor is an interesting alternative, which you can try for free and see if the advices they give you make sense for your situation. The site is still in beta but has appeared in many major publications like the Wall Street Journal and VentureBeat.

CafePress Review by CashSherpa.com

A lot of businesses and organizations look for additional promotional items, usually known as swag, for many different purposes. Maybe you need to monetize an activity, and want to sell t-shirts or mugs with your logo on it. Or perhaps you’re doing an event and you want to reward people by offering mouse pads or phone covers. Regardless of the reason, items with a customized logo are very popular. They are great for customers, and they advertise the business or event through that custom logo, so that’s a plus for the business as well. But if you want to offer all this swag, what company should you go with? CafePress is one of the most well known online service in this field, so let’s see what they offer, and how good they are.

As mentioned, there’s a ton of different items that can be customized with a logo or image of your choice, and CafePress offers almost all of them. Whether that’s t-shirts, posters, mugs, cases, children toys, stickers, and many more, you’ll find that on the site. If you browse what they already have in stock, you can find a lot of popular shows like Big Bang Theory, along with many generic topics like April Fools or the 2012 elections. But for a business, their core business is to provide you with your own customized items. All you need to do is sign up for an account and then click the Design Your Own button, which brings you to a page with all the same items, but nothing printed on them. From there, you can upload your own logos and images, creating your own line of items that you can then sell. The site provides you with your own storefront, a way for people to see all your swag available through CafePress.

The amount of money you can make will vary on the items you offer along with the prices. Each item has a base price, and then you add a markup which is the amount of money you make. Because these are real, actual items, and not digital goods, the base price is usually fairly high, so it’s unlikely you’ll make a lot of money through sales unless you manage to sell a lot of items. To help you do that, you can share your swag on various sites and social media, and market them yourself. As for what other people have to say about this site, reviews seem to be mixed. Looking through past clients, it seems like a lot of people like their ease of use and the vast selection, however there’s quite a bit of complaining going on about the quality of items. It seems like CafePress uses fairly low grade materials, at least according to some of the reviews, which means you shouldn’t expect the best quality out of your swag.

Still, if you’re looking for a way to make side income for your business, selling promotional items is always an interesting way to go about it. And CafePress allows you to offer these items without having to go through all the trouble of making them yourself. Whether you want to use their site or someone else is up to you.