We’re pretty excited about this launch. We did a lot of really great things in the code, so that users can comment/like/save pretty much any of the wedding pictures, or forum posts, and it’s all extremely DRY and RESTful.

We may try to extract some plugins from the latest launch… More to follow.

We’re pretty excited about these new features – and hope they’ll help a lot of people plan their weddings (or other big events)

First, we have created a partnership with Modern Girl Invitations so that we can provide some designer wedding website themes that have matching modern wedding invitations.  :-)

Second, we’ve written guest blog post: why you should make a wedding website.

Third, we now let users purchase their own domain names! During testing I bought some neat domain names, such as www.websites-wedding.com

Finally – our legendary CTO Paul is working on a wicked-cool new way of using music on the site.

First off, I’m kind of amazed that givedo.com was available.

This was born from the idea of ‘Search for the cure’. Using a google custom search we can collect revenue from adsense for search.

In the vein of not being evil, we figured that we’d set up a platform for charities to quickly and easily build their own branded search engine and funnel search ad revenue to them.

So that is givedo!

Startup-Australia.org is a wiki that contains a range of resources that entrepreneurs will find useful. It’s new but already contains lots of great info about a range of things including funding, events, and startups.

Instead of finishing my blog post I’m just going to add what I know there instead. I suggest others do the same.

I’ve been playing around with this list for most of the day and have published press releases in a number of places so far. It’s a very painful process though. There was way too much cutting and pasting today….

TechNation Australia is a technology news, review and analysis site with a focus on startups and Internet companies in Australia.

It was born out of Open Coffee, a Sydney based bi-weekly meetup of entrepreneurs.  I think the blog is a great idea and hope that it will develop into a useful resource for Aussie entreprenuers.  By continuing to provide great content it can help the startup community flourish and let startups down under gain exposure into other markets.  A commonly perceived challenge among startups in Australia seems to be the geographic isolation.  This does not need to be the case, especially as the world continues to flatten.  If you are part of, or know of startup that you would like to see featured please contact TechNation (see their contact page).  If you are interested in startup news – please subscribe to the feed.

1. Pick a lawyer that speaks succinctly. A number of the candidates I spoke to would drag on their sentences well after they made there point. When paying by the (6 minute) chuck of time – brevity is golden.

2. Ask about experience in a specific area that you will need. There are a lot of general lawyers. I’m looking for a lawyer that knows about startups. If they don’t have small tech company experience I’m less interested.

3. Try to get a referral (okay – this one is an obvious one.)

Grants come from a number of different branches of government (state, federal) and from different departments within those branches (trade, industry, etc). Here is a complete list of the grants available in Australia. But, that list is way to long to go through and in includes grants for a whole range of things. Some are targeted directly at businesses, some at venture funds that will in turn fund business, some at specific industries (tourism, etc).

After investigating most of the day I found 4 grants and tax rebates that are directly useful for tech startups in Australia.

Commercial Ready Grant & Commercial Ready Plus Grant

These grants can be used to fund the following

• Research & Development
• Proof Of Concept creation
• Early Stage Commercialization

These things are fairly vague but basically help you get a product to market. Both grants need to be matched $ for $. They are effectively the same. Commercial Ready Plus is faster to get and is used for grants from $50,000 to $250,000.

This is for future spending. (you can’t claim expenses that you’ve already paid).

To apply you must first submit an online inquiry and then AusIndustry will get back to you in a few days. This is ideal for a company with other funding that they can match.

COMET Grant

This one seems somewhat strange to me. From what I can piece together, you apply to the COMET program and are assigned a business adviser. The adviser helps you put together a business plan which is then used to apply for the grant. If you get the grant you pay the business adviser a success fee.

This looks like it’s probably more work then a commercial ready grant, and has more restrictions on what you can do with the money. On the other hand, you can get more money without having to provide matching funds. This is probably best to do if you don’t have other funding. In tier 1 (of 2 tiers) you can get $64,000 from a grant by matching it with only $16,000.

This is for future spending. (you can’t claim expenses that you’ve already paid).

The restrictions imply this is geared towards less established companies, but I don’t see why you couldn’t apply for COMET & Commerical ready at the same time.

R & D Tax Concession:

You get 125% of the money you spend on R&D back after tax. I think you apply for this at the end of the tax year.

This is for recouping some of the money you have already spent.

Export Market Development Grants (EMDG)

You get back 50% of all export costs above $15,000. In my case, export costs include marketing a website service used internationally.

This is for recouping some of the money you have already spent.

A few other useful tools:

Traffic Stats:

I’ve found 3 good tools that track traffic. None of theme seem to be overly accurate for small sites. Even for medium sites the numbers often don’t match the truth. (Comparing visitor stats from google analytics vs these tools shows a very significant underestimation for me). I know these stats sites track mostly US visits, but even taking into account that they seem to underestimate. I use them with the hop that they equally underestimate everyone.

Here are 3 sites that I use to check stats:

Alexa: (often said to be inaccurate by techcrunch)

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=www.momentville.com

Quantcast: (They do a good job of providing more info about the type of visits)

http://www.quantcast.com/momentville.com

Compete: (they have pretty graphs that let you compareup to 5 websites at a time)

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/momentville.com/