NJ Startups: Allweb, MallStand, Payintele Launch; crafterMania (now weCraft) Rebrands; and More

Allweb: Back in November 2012, NJTechWeekly.com attended a launch for NJIT Enterprise Development Center member Allweb Technologies (Newark), which had been working on its identity-theft protection product for more than three years.

“We think we have made a breakthrough in managing people’s online identity in a secure manner,” Adnan Qadeer, Allweb CEO and cofounder, said. His product protects identities, enhances user convenience and compliance and helps users “forget about passwords,” he said.

Passwords are a “pain point” for users, Qadeer noted. As people sign up for more and more Web and other services, they have no choice but to create and divulge more passwords. People choose easy-to-use — and often easy-to-steal — passwords. Fake websites are created to capture user names and passwords, leading to identity theft, he said.

Companies are spending a lot of money per employee annually to ensure that employee passwords remain secure, Qadeer added, and educational institutions are struggling with how to validate students taking online courses.

Allweb’s solution, called AllWebID, “addresses these problems in a unified manner. We created an ecosystem to manage people’s identities,” said Qadeer.

The company has developed a cloud-based system through which users can securely store their login credentials. When they try to log in to that “storage locker” in the cloud, they have to demonstrate their identity, much the same way bank customers have to prove their identity when they visit their safe-deposit box.

“You go to the cloud-based locker by providing your fingerprint, which gets matched by the service to authenticate that you are the right person. If someone doesn’t have a fingerprint reader, there is an alternative,” said Qadeer.

The service will send a PIN to your cellphone that is unique for a specific instance. If you type in that PIN, it will validate that you are the person holding that phone and will let you in.

The solution, a Web app integrated with the browser, protects users’ most important cyber asset, Qadeer noted — their online identity — preventing identity theft.

Allweb won the 2011 NJTC Venture Conference award for best information technology company and, more recently, the NJEN Posters and Pitches event for best pitch.

weCraft.com: crafterMania.com, whose founder, Aaron Price, is a fixture in the N.J. tech community  as organizer of NJ Tech Meetup, has undergone complete rebranding and launched a beta version of its new website, weCraft.com. Price says the new website and name more completely reflect the site’s goal: to be a place where crafters can get together, socialize through crafts and buy project supply kits.

Speaking about the new name, Price said, “We wanted something that more effectively represented the community we are trying to build … We never felt the old name quite captured that well. I love that the new name is short and sweet and also represents the community behind the crafter movement.”

Price believes the rebranding will help the company better connect with the people “we hope to inspire. The new name does a much better job of letting a person or a project rise to the top. We are an inspiration marketplace. Inspiration comes from people and projects — that’s the community. The new name lets them come first.”

The business model is the same as before, he noted: e-commerce and providing inspiring projects for people to make; however, with the rebranding and website redesign, “we made a concerted effort to start with the community. We think there is opportunity to help the craft community better express themselves creatively online,” he said.

In the near future, crafters will be able to communicate with one other and find new ideas on the relaunched site. “Soon we will be selling the supplies for people to be able to make those projects themselves,” Price noted.

MallStand: MallStand.com, a Hoboken-based startup, launched on Dec. 5, 2012. The company has created a new social shopping platform that integrates social deals, online food delivery, price comparison shopping and a consumer-to-consumer marketplace. MallStand is trying to help small businesses make the transition to the world of e-commerce and create an online presence for themselves. The company is the brainchild of Andrew Jensen, who came up with the idea in 2011 but was told it would take too much money to bring to market.

According to Sam Gherman, who handles marketing for MallStand, the site provides shoppers a centralized online location at which to mingle, shop and share. The startup is now at seven employees and has already undergone a site redesign since the December launch. The company is planning to develop a mobile app that complements the website, and is redesigning its mobile website to match the site redesign. Said Gherman,“Our Food Court section [featuring online food delivery] is currently only serving Hoboken and Jersey City.”

Payintele: Payintele (Robbinsville), which NJTechWeekly.com covered when the company presented at a Princeton Tech Meetup, released its Web and iPhone apps on Jan. 27, 2013. Company founder Avinash Kuttuva said the platform lets users make mobile payments without exposing their credit cards and bank accounts. “You can use Payintele to pay friends [and] businesses or get paid by friends and customers,” he noted. Business owners can accept payments with the Payintele Point of Sale application, available for Windows and Mac. Kuttuva said the company is in the process of getting merchants on board.

Embedle: At the end of January 2013, the folks at Embedle (Somerset) made significant changes to their “bookmarklet,” which we covered here. Users can now add a message promoting their blog posts, products and services or another special message by embedding the promotion in the link to every page shared. The messages can be updated as needed. Users can even cut and paste their Embedle links to other sites like Facebook and LinkedIn so the promo message is preserved. The company has also included an improved tweeting scheduling function.

The Embedle bookmarklet now works with iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android devices. From one of those mobile devices, users can visit  Embedle and follow the instructions in the “How to Tweet via Embedle” section.

Is your New Jersey startup launching? Rebranding? Pivoting? Have you received investment money? Made a breakthrough sale? Been accepted to an accelerator? If you have big news about your startup or are a founder with New Jersey roots who has news, contact NJTechWeekly.com so we can write about you. Put “NJ Startup” in the subject line and send the email to  esurden@njtechweekly.com.