It's been awhile since 1) I've posted anything on the blog, and 2) I've given an update on our progress so I thought I'd do both with a single blog post.

We officially "soft launched" last week after knocking all our high & medium priority bugs out of the system.  We currently have approximately 20 companies participating, with many more to come in coming weeks/months. 

We are continuing to get a great response from companies of all sizes in the Austin area about the MinutesNotice location-based advertising network.  Local businesses need easy & effective ways to advertise on the Internet, and that's what we're providing.  Chains need ways to manage and empower their local managers to advertise limited-time offers, specials, discounts, etc. to willing customers.  They also want to target online consumers by zip code (home, work, etc.).  Fortunately, new technologies such as social networks and location-based services are helping to make local customers reachable.  We collect the advertisements and make them available to consumers through these new technologies, along with some old technologies like e-mail and mobile phone.  This message really seems to resonate with local business owners/managers who have few options in the old media advertising world.

As you can imagine, live data has exposed a few bugs here and there that we didn't expect.  So we're fixing a lot of these before we go bigger/broader with our rollout.  In the meantime, if you're compelled to look save a few bucks, check out some of the deals that local Austin businesses are offering at our consumer site, youpons.net.  We'd love your feedback… and local businesses would love your patronage.