Hotbar Adds Services and Pizzazz to Browsers
BY SUSAN MAEL
Israeli start-up Hotbar.com has created a plug-in that adds life to an everyday web browser. The application is a 140KB download that adds a narrow toolbar below the existing browser real estate with buttons for news, shopping, deals, games, e-cards and the web, a button with hundreds of links broken down into categories and sub-categories. There's a "tools" button too that connects users to online radio, price comparisons, translation and virus scanning; it can send wireless messages.
Hotbar co-founder and CEO Oren Dobronsky stresses that although it is an end-user application, Hotbar focuses on providing a service for e-businesses. The dashboard offers companies that have a "good service or technology" a new platform that exposes them to millions of users. It's made deals with more than 30 "leaders" that pay fees to be included on the toolbar. Hotbar gets paid for performance, although Dobronsky says that some of its partners pay additional registration, transaction or slotting fees as well.
Partners include MySimon for price comparisons, AltaVista for search, Keen.com for Q&A with experts and CNET for news among others. Dobronsky says that the company will be adding new services or links weekly. The toolbar is customizable and users can choose from more than 37,000 "skins" to give a browser personality. The skins - images of animals, nature scenes, sports and dozens of other categories - can be instantly applied to a browser's gray toolbar and changed at whim. The Hotbar application, which Dobronsky calls "the dashboard to the Internet," came out of a nine-month beta this week. To date, 7.8 million users have downloaded the dashboard. It works with both Internet Explorer and Netscape browsers on PCs. A Mac version is in development. The year-old company, which is in the midst of a second round of funding, has 40 employees at its R&D center in Israel and 12 in the New York City office it opened three months ago.
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