ReadWriteWeb

There's a new online booking service on the block, and it's called Book'd. While there are several other SaaS outlets for small enterprise to do this sort of thing, two simple characteristics make Book'd standout.

First, it's the only booking service ReadWriteWeb could find that also allows your enterprise to do online invoicing on top of up-front payment.

Book'd is brand new, but to our thinking, it's already got a jump on many of its competitors through plain old good design. Both the administrative interface and the public sites you can build are attractive, intuitive in navigation, and easy to manage.

Today, the much-lauded microlender Kiva announced it will begin a pilot program of loans to U.S. small enterprise. Kiva began in Africa, and after four years has since expanded to 44 countries, mostly in the developing world.

The test will start with 45 U.S. businesses, ranging from baked goods deliveries to child care and taxi drivers. For now, the loans are limited to New York and California, though Kiva is actively seeking new Field Partners to move in to more regions in the U.S.

Box.net, the popular document hosting and sharing service, announced a major redesign of its user interface today, which also puts a lot more emphasis on social features like profiles and activity streams. The new version of Box.net also focuses on collaboration and effectively turns Box.net into a social network for small to medium-sized businesses and groups.

Start-ups should have a simple value proposition that is easy to understand. In a recession, that proposition should be "we save you money, NOW". Or maybe, a tad harder, "we bring you new revenue, NOW". With the emphasis on urgency. You can always save money by making sacrifices. But if you can save money by simply reducing a bill, without reducing the service, who would not do that? That is what Validas says they can do: "lower your wireless cell phone bill". You can cut your landline bills by using Skype, but don't you just love figuring out all the ways your cell phone company manages to increase your bill?

Credit crisis. Blah, blah. Cut costs. Blah, blah. Don't you just love it when you get an alarm call from your hotel at 9.15 when your meeting is at 9.00? At ReadWriteWeb we have been sounding alarms about the economy for a year (here, here, here and here...enough already), suggesting strategies to cope with the coming downturn.

But what about now? This is the time to be audacious. The world has changed, totally and irrevocably. Change is the entrepreneur's friend.

Credit crisis. Blah, blah. Cut costs. Blah, blah. Don't you just love it when you get an alarm call from your hotel at 9.15 when your meeting is at 9.00? At ReadWriteWeb we have been sounding alarms about the economy for a year (here, here, here and here...enough already), suggesting strategies to cope with the coming downturn.

But what about now? This is the time to be audacious. The world has changed, totally and irrevocably. Change is the entrepreneur's friend.

Thanks to all who sent in their stories of gritty entrepreneurs. To those who just copied the standard PR spiel with an opening line about "gritty entrepreneurs", please stop! We will be doing some interviews. Right now we are parsing through the incoming stories to classify and spot some trends.

The first big question that jumps out is: where are the profitable VC funded web ventures?