ModCloth is a San Francisco-base women’s apparel retailer. They believe that the shopper should also be the buyer, by encouraging customers to vote for and comment on designs that the company is thinking about putting out in their line. ModCloth only puts out designs for sale that get a certain amount of votes. MadCloth is basically allowing customers to make production decisions. By doing this they are making sure their clothing apparel is what the customers want.

The social nature of this site has gotten this company a lot of attention and netted ModCloth $19.8 million in a preferred stock deal with Accel Partners. ModCloth plans to use these funds to expand its social platform. ModCloth has been growing very aggressively over the last three years, which is a good sign for success.

If you don’t follow sports but are interested in gambling or you are interested in gambling but do not follow sports, centsports.com may be the site for you. Centsports allows inexperienced or aspiring sport gamblers to test the waters before deciding to actually risk losing money. The catch is that while you can’t lose money, you can actually make money.

Funded by the site’s sponsors, centsports gives each user 10 cents to start out with and bet however they choose. If successful, users can continue to accumulate money. If they ever gain over $20.00, they can cash out and pocket the earnings. If they lose all of the money, they start all over again with 10 cents.

The obvious benefit is that there is no risk involved. Obviously though, it is very difficult to ever actually make money through the site. To reap profits, one must use their own money on other online gambling sites. The most important benefit is that it shows prospective gamblers just how difficult it is to bet on sports and serves as a caution to many users.

Alan Schaaf, a 21 year old college student, created the website imgur.com in February of 2009. He did all of the coding work for the site in his spare time and continues to maintain it by himself when he finds time in between his classes and other activities.

The website itself is a start-up image hosting service. Concerned by what he saw as the complexity or annoyingness of other image hosting sites, Alan thought that he could create something simpler. Imgur, therefore, has an extremely simple interface that allows people to post photos online and distribute them using links to the rest of the internet.

Imgur has gained notoriety mostly as an image hosting service for content that appears on other social networks. On websites like Digg.com and particularly on Reddit, most of the image stories that are submitted are via imgur links. Because of this, the site has gained unbelievable amounts of traffic – over 88,000 new images are uploaded every day, and 94 million are downloaded – using a whopping 13 terabytes of bandwidth.

The site’s wild popularity shows what can happen when somebody with a little bit of time and determination and a really good idea gets to work on an internet start-up. In only 2 years, a college student could change the face of the internet.

Starting today, The New York Times is no longer allowing unlimited access to their website for free. Instead, they are now letting users read 20 articles online per month. Once those 20 articles are used up, the website will require users to pay a subscription fee to gain access to more online content.

There are some notable exceptions to this rule, however. First, subscribers to the print edition of the New York Times will always be able to read it online for free. Second, if users come to articles by clicking links on social media sites (such as twitter or Facebook), they will always be able to view articles for free.

This decision reflects a significant change in the structure of the newspaper business and their online business model. Obviously, with subscription rates in free-fall, newspapers have realized that offering their paper at a cost when the same content is available online for free is an unsustainable business model. But how will consumers react to the limits and fees? Though allowing free access through social media links is a step in the right direction, it seems like the New York Times is only going to frustrate users and drive them to other sites. With content available for free everywhere online, what makes the Times any better than any other site? Only time will tell whether this strategy will work out.

Perhaps the company would be better served by using a strategy of online advertising to generate revenue for their site. Or, perhaps, they could follow The Economist’s lead and offer a limited number of stories online with the opportunity for paid subscribers to access a digital edition.

I’m sure many of us young entrepreneurs have ideas we’d love to see implemented. Unfortunately there are all kinds of obstacles to starting up our startups, from funding to simple personal motivation. It’s hard to draw upon our limited energy when everyone’s so busy and stretched thin.

I chanced upon a young online startup that might help remedy this problem. Check it out:

http://www.startupcrave.com/