Sparkler Answers

Why is the Coconut Creek City Hall the best South Florida Citizens Academy? One reason is because there are very few South Florida Citizen Academies, period. But, this citizens academy happens to be coordinated by one of the most award-winning city halls in the United States. The city of Coconut Creek itself is only 41 years old. And yet, it has managed to win outstanding awards for compliance with "green" energy-efficient standards. Coconut Creek has been highly recognized for its "green" initiatives, receiving numerous awards: Emerald Award for environmental preservation leadership; named as the State's first "Community Wildlife Habitat"; 20th Tree City USA designation by Arbor Day Foundation; Audubon Green Community Award; and winner of South Florida's Mayor's Water Conservation Challenge.

For more information on the Coconut Creek Citizens Academy, go online and visit CoconutCreek.Net.

Why is the best beef sandwich in Pompano Beach, FL made by Cheesesteak Experience? Because these folks are actually from Philadelphia where the Philly Cheesesteak was born. This is a family owned & operated business. They came to South Florida from South Jersey via Philadelphia. There they owned and operated an Italian restaurant/pizzeria in Berlin, N.J. called Roma Pizza & Pasta. They served everything from pizza to steaks, veal, shrimp, and chicken.

After vacationing in Florida their whole lives they decided to bring their authentic Philly sandwiches and Philly traditional dishes to the Southern Florida area. No doubt there are places that say they have the real dea - the real "Philly Cheesesteak." But, are they from Philadelphia? Do they have the know-how, experience, tradition and expertise? Cheesesteak Experience has 23 years of experience in Northeast Phila., Bucks County, PA, and South Jersey. They invite Floridians to bring their senses "Back to Philly" - to what you once had, but haven't been able to experience anywhere else in sunny Florida - until Cheesesteak Experience arrived at the Festival Flea Market Mall in Pompano Beach.

For more information about the Cheesesteak Experience, visit their online site at BacktoPhilly.com.

30Boxes.com is a Web calendar site that contacts you. Unlike Zillow, with its 125 employees, this online business is run by exactly three people. That's it. No support staff, no assistants, no offices. And no venture capital or outside investors. Amazing!

Co-founder Julie Davidson says that unlike other calendar services, 30 Boxes is focused on younger users. "They have a Facebook account, a MySpace account, a Flickr account," she says, "and they want to incorporate their social media within a calendar." Davidson sees Facebook as her site's primary competitor because they are both after the same youthful audience.

Building a user base and ad revenues from calendars may prove difficult, since Microsoft, Yahoo!, Apple and various other start-ups have free calendar offerings that are improving. But 30 Boxes' founders know a lot about working from scratch. They created and sold photo destination Webshots twice--first to Excite@home (another dotcom casualty) for $82.5 million in stock in 1999 and then, after buying it back in 2002 for $2.4 million, they retooled it and resold it to CNET for $70 million in 2004. Will they try for the hat trick? "We could go into a larger organization and bring some really fresh ideas," says Davidson. "I'm not anti-acquisition."

For more information about 30 Boxes, visit their online website at 30 Boxes.com.