| | View this email in your web browser | | | | TODAY'S COCKTAIL OF TECH STARTUP STORIES:
The latest cocktail of emerging technology news, people, startups, products, and innovations for the true tech enthusiast.
| Make Your Event a Hole in One with myhub | | Friday, September 27, 2013 5:00 PM | Will Schmidt |
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Eric Hubbell, CEO and founder of myhub, knew the path ahead of him would not be easy when transitioning from the golf industry into the world of tech startups. Nevertheless, he left his secure job with KBS Golf Shafts behind and made the big leap. About 5 years ago, Hubbell moved from Vermont to Colorado and found himself swamped with fun activities to take part in with his friends. As popular as he was, though, connecting everybody together was often frustrating and time-consuming. The group had created their own social web calendar, but nobody ever seemed to act on it. Ideas would get put on the back burner because nobody could effectively coordinate or raise the money necessary to make it happen. Instead of giving up, Hubbell's entrepreneurial spirit emerged and showed him an opportunity to create a powerful group event planning service while improving a part of the web that he had long seen as underdeveloped. The green was far away, but his tee shot was solidly hit down the fairway - before rolling into a bunker. The initial design of myhub was tough, to say the least. A lot of the APIs that Hubbell was working with were pretty green, and recruiting the proper team was easier said than done. But as many golfers do, Hubbell understood the dependent relationship between patience and success. He focused his efforts, hit out of the sand, and landed on the green. Slowly, the myhub team was selected based on how well they outperformed the sum of their parts, and a final product was finally ready for release. But then iOS7 dropped and myhub found itself outdated almost overnight. When he approached his ball, he realized the hole was much further away than he initially thought. Instead of making a hasty two-putt for par, Hubbell called the release back, took his entire team back to the design and feature development phase, and flattened everything. Re-examining how myhub fit into iOS7 was a strategic move that led the team to add multiple features, like a payment model, to enhance the overall user experience. He sized up his shot and sunk a birdie instead of par. Use myhub to create events, send invites, and collect funds all in one place. By blending together elements from social networks, professional event planning sites, and peer-to-peer payment platforms, Hubbell is working to capture everyday group planning. Throw a happy hour to unite your fantasy football league on Sundays. Set up kickball games that people will show up to on time. Rent that beach house with your good buddies, and collect payment before making the commitment. It’s all possible through myhub. "We built myhub for the generations that grew up with the advent of social media," says Hubbell. "They are socially active, many have disposable income, and on average they love doing fun things. We will make them love organizing events."
Myhub was featured at Tech Cocktail’s Denver Mixer & Startup Showcase on September 16th. The post Make Your Event a Hole in One with myhub appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Caring About Employees Is Not A Talent Strategy | | Friday, September 27, 2013 4:00 PM | Susan Strayer LaMotte |
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Almost every founder has the same mentality: talent can make or break your business. From finding the best talent to maintaining a strong culture, founders regularly wax poetic about how much they care about their people and their culture. We all know that people and culture matter. The real question is what are you doing about it? Founders and leadership teams talk culture and people but rarely have an actual strategy in place. They've got values, cool perks, and equity packages to offer. But ask what the strategy is, and they fall silent. Let me be clear: caring about employees isn't a talent strategy. Imagine if you rolled out new product features just because you thought they'd make your users happy. Engineers everywhere know there has to be a roadmap. You don't add new features to make users happy if they're not part of a plan to grow your user base or you know they'll be outdated in six months. Product development conversations are tied to revenue, growth and vision. So why don’t startup leaders think about talent in the same way? Founders and investors don't know how. But when they do, it changes everything. Enter Dan Berger, CEO of Social Tables. Unlike most founders, Dan has both work experience in HR and has sought out mentors with HR experience. He uses terms like "hiring yield" and "employer of choice" regularly in conversation. More importantly, he doesn't just care about his employees and culture. He can answer the question, "What are you doing about it?" Social Tables is putting rigor into their hiring process. They're starting to track employee satisfaction and aligning business goals directly with individual employee performance. They're building out a competency model for their sales team so they can hire, coach and develop around specific success drivers. Sound too corporate? Too formal? Too focused for a startup that should be spending time on product and growth. Try again. Founders' conversations with investors are always strategy-based. Talent conversations should be the same. So, how do you ensure you do more than just say you care about employees? Define what you can do to attract, manage and retain the talent you need to grow. You've likely already got a set of values. Look for ways you can pull those values through: hire for them, manage to them, fire for them. Don't make exceptions. Align perks with those values, and define work rules-specific examples of how the values play out. Share those examples with current and future employees. If they don't want to-or can't-behave that way, they shouldn't be a part of the business. At exaqueo, we use the term self-selection with our clients. We encourage them to be really clear and transparent about both the work experience and performance expectations. The clearer you are about the good and the bad up front, the more likely people who don't fit will weed themselves out. For every employee-related activity from adding perks to surveying your employees, ask, "Why are we doing this?" It's important to define a connection back to the business. Will it help the bottom line? Will it save money? For example, founders often use headhunters early on because it seems easy. Is that the right reason? What does that do (or not do) for your business? Adding perks is another seems-like-this-is-fun idea. But with each perk, each benefit, ask why and make sure there's a business reason. Create an actual strategy for what you need to do. Based on your growth plans, determine what kind of talent you'll need and when. Market an honest depiction of your values, work environment and performance expectations. Create a hiring process that accurately assesses for those things. Then manage people to those values and expectations. This doesn't all happen overnight. And it doesn't happen alone. Just like the rest of your business, you need time, guidance and advisors. But like finance, legal and sales, make it a priority to have a talent strategy. Don't just talk about it. The post Caring About Employees Is Not A Talent Strategy appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Complete Your Bar Inventory in Minutes, Thanks to Partender | | Friday, September 27, 2013 3:00 PM | Will Schmidt |
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If you think that the bar business is an easy one, think again. It’s kind of like professional sports: the successful ones just make it look easier than it actually is. The reality of the situation, as Nikhil Kundra, CEO of Partender points out, is that bars lose an average of 23 percent of their inventory due to theft, over pouring, and spillage. "Almost one in every four drinks goes straight down the drain, because full inventory takes so long to do that no one can do it every day or week," explains Kundra. "To make matters worse, the costs associated with shrinkage, the loss of inventory, cause 60 to 80 percent of bars and restaurants to fail within three years."
One of the industry standards to prevent loss, increase bottom lines, and remain in business is to do inventory every day, but the archaic pen and pad method can take anywhere from six to 24 hours to complete. Kundra and his team decided to digitize the whole process, reducing the time to inventory to mere minutes. Bar managers and owners have an on-screen image of a bottle, like Jameson, and they simply drag the leveling bar to where the liquid is inside the bottle. From there, they just swipe left and right to get to the other bottles on their digital shelf. After the completed inventory session, Partender automatically emails you a purchase order. Combined in the order are analytics that determine what booze is selling the best, what bottles to be swapped out for better margins, if your last happy hour worked, and what factors might be causing shrinkage. "I was actually at 3 Day Startup, and got frustrated trying to come up with ideas on Friday night," explains Kundra. "My teammates and I wanted to meet up with some girls we knew were bartending down the street. They texted us at 2 am saying they could not meet up until 7 am because of inventory. We never did hang out with them, but we finally had our idea right then and there."
Kundra and his team didn’t just throw their due diligence to the wind with this idea. In fact, they conducted concentrated case studies, showing that their digitized platform can provide accuracy up to 99.2 percent for bar managers and owners. Additionally, the results from their current clients show an average 6 percent increase to the bottom line in only three months of use. "Other competitors claim that they do not alter operational or social behavior, but they still introduce expensive, over-engineered technological burdens that force staff to change their behaviors," says Kundra. "We take the Steve Jobs approach and use whatever is in your pocket; no bulky proprietary hardware."
The Steve Jobs approach seems to be working for Partender, as they have customers in Florida, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Sydney, and even Tony Hsieh’s Gold Spike in Downtown Vegas. According to these bars, Partender is the best thing since the lift of Prohibition. Partender was featured at Tech Cocktail’s Downtown Vegas Mixer & Startup Showcase on September 12th. The post Complete Your Bar Inventory in Minutes, Thanks to Partender appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Who is Atlanta's Hottest Showcasing Startup? [POLL] | | Friday, September 27, 2013 2:27 PM | Zach Davis |
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Tech Cocktail has traveled the country, from Dallas to DC, Boise to Boston, uncovering the hottest startups in more than 20 cities. Now, the word is out: winning startups from each city will go onto the next round and get the chance to qualify for Tech Cocktail Celebrate, our new national startup competition held in Downtown Vegas on October 23 – 25. Atlanta, here’s your chance to show us what ya got! Join us at Atlantic Station for an evening of Atlanta’s hottest early-stage startups and cocktails with your neighbors and technophile friends. We’ll have a gaggle of startups on hand showcasing their goods, but before the event kicks off, we want to know what you think: Who is Atlanta’s Hottest Showcasing Startup? Let us know your thoughts by answering the poll at the end of this post (ends at 6:00pm local time on the day of the event - get the official rules here). The winner will be announced live at the event and will receive the following: Invitation to Tech Cocktail Celebrate, invitation to an upcoming Tech Cocktail Week, recognition in the editor’s note of the weekly newsletter and a post to go out the day following the event, as well as the honor of being recognized as Atlanta‘s Hottest Showcasing Startup. Don’t miss out. The Startups(Startups: apply to showcase) - AudioActiv - AudioActiv is dedicated to protecting high-end portable speakers so people can truly, take music everywhere. The VAULT Series is the first water, dirt and impact resistant line of speaker cases that also deliver hi-fi sound. Originally developed for the Jawbone BIG JAMBOX, VAULT cases are now available 5 of the most popular portable Bluetooth speakers on the market.
- Cooleaf - Cooleaf uses activities and unique experiences to bring 'corporate culture' to life for our employer clients. By allowing employees to easily join or create activities they love (e.g. Yoga, cooking classes, running clubs, etc), we enhance camaraderie, team spirit, employee engagement, and ultimately, the health and wellness of employees. Representative clients include Alere, Woodward Academy, Dekalb Medical, Atlanta Tech Village, and many others.
- Give to Win - The lack of a marketplace for cause-related products, the absence of a cause-marketing platform for small businesses and organizations to be able to utilize for more effective partnerships, the imbalance in local relationships between nonprofits and businesses–our platform wants to ensure that supporting local organizations reaps benefits for the businesses so they can and will continue to do it and in order to encourage the support of socially conscious local businesses.
- Grapeword - Grapeword serves up awesome deals, rewards, and events without the spam. Local businesses create and manage their own deals, and consumers decide what they want when they want it. The platform really heats up with Karma. Consumers can get a better deal and earn Karma by spreading the word about the businesses they love via social media.
- Nanofiber Solutions - We developed a broad technology platform unlike any other competing solution in the market today, to create and align nanofibers to create almost any kind of human tissue, tackling a $20 billion annual opportunity with the first nanofiber implants in the world.
- Synappio - Synappio brings companies who use email marketing into compliance with email service providers’ policies, and keeps them in compliance through automated best practices.
- Uruut - Uruut is the first crowdfunding platform built from the ground up to serve the non-profit world. Our multi-source funding model celebrates the participation of businesses and foundations in concert with the individuals who believe in a given cause. The platform’s post-funding transparency tools keep donors connected to their dollars as they are put to work.
The post Who is Atlanta’s Hottest Showcasing Startup? [POLL] appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| The IdeaLists Share 3 Tips for Outsourcing Creative Work | | Friday, September 27, 2013 1:00 PM | Kira M. Newman |
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The IdeaLists is a website for outsourcing creative work, and its history is aptly filled with outsourcing. The original website was built by a Latvian designer and Indian developers. The startup has also hired writers to do content marketing, and partners to help with events. While outsourcing is sometimes seen as a backup plan, founder Adam Glickman insists that it's often the best option. "If you want a pro, get a pro," he says. "The best people tend to have their own shops and not want to go work within a company."
The IdeaLists now has over 5,000 members offering their services in photography, film and video, design, strategy, and PR. For companies who need creative work, you can now head over to The IdeaLists and create a brief. The IdeaLists's platform will help you write the brief and estimate your budget, and you don't have to reveal details like company name unless you want to. Creatives bid on your project, and The IdeaLists takes a 10 percent commission if you accept a bid. The IdeaLists also offers a more hands-on concierge service for finding the best match. This model has already attracted tech companies like General Assembly and Airbnb. When I spoke to Glickman, he offered three tips for getting the most out of any creative outsourcing you do. 1. Make sure your work gets prioritized. Contractors and agencies charge a higher hourly rate than employees, and you're not their only client. To get the project done quickly, make sure everyone's on the same page about schedule and expectations. 2. Pay up. Outsourcing to sites like Fiverr may be cheap, but it's probably not the best idea for designing your logo and brand identity. "Logos are not something that you just want to give to someone that's on a crowdsourcing site that doesn't have a day job," says Glickman. 3. Get help with branding. You might worry about how to find a creative professional who understands your brand and vision. But, in fact, their job is to help shape that vision. Creatives are right-brained thinkers who can offer new perspectives on the best way to craft your message and give your startup personality. The post The IdeaLists Share 3 Tips for Outsourcing Creative Work appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Harper Reed: Obama's Tech Team was Not Diverse, Republicans Have a Tech Advantage in 2016 | | Friday, September 27, 2013 12:14 PM | Kira M. Newman |
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At a Tech Cocktail Sessions Chicago event last night, in the spirit of owning up to failures, former Obama for America CTO Harper Reed admitted that the campaign's tech team wasn't very diverse. "We did not do a good job [in terms of diversity] on the tech team for Obama's 2012 reelection campaign. For the most part, we hired all white dudes," said Reed. "We didn't mean to. It was just easier and they were available immediately. If we had to do this again, I would spend more time solving that problem."
Reed emphasized that innovation comes from diversity – something that Google has long recognized – and urged the entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts in the audience to take it seriously. "Don't be afraid to hire people who look differently from you," he said, repeatedly joking about his weird red beard. "We all have to be paying attention to this." Reed couldn't predict much about the 2016 campaign, but he did mention that the Republicans have an advantage in terms of technology: Andy Barkett, a former engineer at Facebook. "The Republicans have a tech edge on the Democrats. They have a very good CTO that came from Facebook and the Democrats are just like, 'We're awesome, we did it in 2012,' and the Republicans are like, 'Never again,'" he said.
Reed started off his keynote talk with a shoutout to the Chicago startup scene, which has grown significantly since he last gave a talk at Tech Cocktail. Just yesterday, for example, Braintree was acquired by PayPal. "Chicago is creating products. We're shipping startups. This is what I want to see," Reed said. He also didn't say much about his latest venture, Lunar Technology Corporation, which is working on mining the moon, a mobile commerce platform. Instead, he retold the story of the Obama campaign – how his massive team of 120 tech staff build solid platforms that were the foundation of apps for volunteers. They amassed lots of data to send targeted emails, which estimated the exact amount of money you would contribute and knew whom you influenced on Facebook. But in the end, the campaign wasn't about technology, he said. "We couldn't innovate on technology; we could only execute." It was actually about people: a great team of A players, always being creative, taking lots of measurements. Reed reiterated that he won't be going back into politics again: the long hours are only worth it for a candidate like Obama whom he believes in. "It was really great to win, it was really great to interact with the smartest people that I've ever interacted with, and I would do that again. I was there for the president, and the president can't run again." "It's the craziest thing I'll ever do,” he said. “You have more pizza than you ever thought was possible, you stay up later and you get up earlier than you ever thought was possible, and then it's very rewarding. And when certain things happen, everyone cries because you're so happy and you're so excited, and it's very positive and it's really fun. I would recommend it one time. The problem is once you'e done it, you'll do it again because you're like, 'I did it already, I already saw the hard part.’" "That's my worry – 2016's going to come around and they're going to call me and I'll be like, ‘I'll be right there.' So I'm saying publicly no right now."
The post Harper Reed: Obama’s Tech Team was Not Diverse, Republicans Have a Tech Advantage in 2016 appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Inside the Company Culture of Eventbrite | | Friday, September 27, 2013 11:00 AM | Kira M. Newman |
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 In 2009, Eventbrite raised funding and was gearing up to triple its employees in less than a year. Fearing what this would do to their culture, cofounder Julia Hartz started thinking. "What would happen if a founder of a company . . . focused on people?" she wondered.
Four years later, at over 200 employees, Eventbrite is a company that Hartz sees as not just happy, but impressively productive. And her job continues. "I focus my day and my life, really, on the people of Eventbrite," she says. Below, Hartz shares more about Eventbrite's culture and what it's like to be a "Briteling." Tech Cocktail: What are Eventbrite's cultural values? Julia Hartz: The values that govern the work we do and the culture we build are the same. And we make sure that every Briteling knows what those principles are. We have seven: Accessible, Empowering, Delightful, Dedicated, Innovative, and Genuine. Tech Cocktail: What perks do you have for employees at the office? Hartz: Here’s a list of the perks we offer at Eventbrite: Food and Drink - Four catered lunches a week
- Two catered breakfasts a week
- An array of healthy beverages and snacks
- Two kegerators equipped with kegbots (that the team banded together to buy)
Health and Wellness - In-office massages every Monday and Wednesday
- In-office chiropractor and acupuncture visits once a week
- Yoga classes two nights a week
- A discount at the nearby tennis club
- A $60 monthly health and wellness stipend
- Regular educational sessions on health and wellness
Tech Cocktail: Where do employees eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner? Hartz: When we moved into our current office, we completely gutted the space. And a major focal point of our office design was creating the big, sunny kitchen where we gather together for meals and company celebrations. Having a communal space where we can be together is really important for creating opportunities for Britelings to connect with people they don’t normally work with day-to-day. Tech Cocktail: What unconventional things might someone see while walking through your office? Hartz: We definitely have some flair. There are lots of dogs running around; there are fierce ping-pong competitions going on constantly in the game room, the design team made a giant Jenga set that is set up by their desks that is currently all the rage, and a bunch of conference rooms have been recently decorated by Britelings to reflect some of the very unique events that have been held on the Eventbrite platform. Tech Cocktail: Do you have any lunchtime or after-hours events for employees? Hartz: There are plenty of opportunities for the Britelings to get together and express themselves: we host happy hours, team outings in the city; we have an annual talent show, and an annual holiday party. We also have Brite Camp, which is an opportunity for employees to teach a lunchtime class on their area of expertise. We organize philanthropic outings with local charitable organizations, and the hungry and fit gather for "bike to breakfast" so that they can ride together. The post Inside the Company Culture of Eventbrite appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Chicago's Hottest Showcasing Startups Are. | | Friday, September 27, 2013 10:00 AM | Zach Davis |
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Last night was Tech Cocktail's Chicago Mixer and Startup Showcase at 1871. As always, we held our Hottest Showcasing Startup series, including the pre-event Reader's Choice online poll, as well as the Best Pitch award, as determined by the Live SMS poll. Chicago’s HOTTEST SHOWCASING STARTUP - READER'S CHOICEVideoJuice - VideoJuice is a social fundraising platform, where we ask and you answer the question, "What would you do to raise money for your favorite cause?" Creative deeds to help you fundraise for your personal or charitable needs. Chicago’s HOTTEST SHOWCASING STARTUP - BEST PITCHFurywing - Furywing is revolutionizing gambling entertainment for players that grew up with Nintendo controllers. We create and license games you are familiar with playing but add a gambling element of chance to them. It's like Angry Birds with gambling. Congratulations to both startups. For your win, you receive invitation to a future Tech Cocktail Week, as well as inclusion at Tech Cocktail Celebrate, our national startup showcase held in Downtown Vegas on October 23 - 25. The post Chicago’s Hottest Showcasing Startups Are… appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| egoBoom Will Change Outdated Internet Opinion Sharing | | Friday, September 27, 2013 9:11 AM | Will Schmidt |
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The online feedback mechanisms of today fail to address a need for easily measuring explicit opinions. We see the typical "Like" option on Facebook as a perfect example of this. While that may be an easy way to quantify data, it remains ultimately ambiguous. The solution for a lot of people has been user comments, which are rich in data, but even those remain difficult to evaluate outside of their context. This leads to an information gap that prevents businesses and users from acquiring insight into the reciprocal party's life. Steve Kurtz had his fill of it, so he designed egoBoom to aggregate, analyze, and report on quantitative psychometric feedback through the use of data collectors. Simply put, egoBoom is a better way to share opinions. In congruent fashion, Kurtz shared his opinions on his platform and how it provides crucial insight into the rift between self-image and public perception. Tech Cocktail: What is the driving philosophy behind egoBoom, and how does it give value to your startup? Steve Kurtz: egoBoom's platform has so much potential to change the way we collect and look at data online that we are afraid to limit ourselves to a narrow band. I suppose we run the risk of spreading too thin, but I have always subscribed to the “go big or go home” philosophy. I find it difficult to get honest opinions from people online; just spend two minutes looking at the comments in YouTube. Even when the opinions are worthwhile, they are still difficult to quantify or analyze at scale. That makes egoBoom valuable both to individuals and businesses alike. For individuals, egoBoom is primarily used to get constructive feedback about their multi-faceted personality. For business, egoBoom is the best method available for quickly and easily collecting quantified psychometric feedback. Tech Cocktail: How are you marketing egoBoom to potential clients? Have you had any success yet? Kurtz: We market from both a bottom-up and top-down approach. Since our business is geared at individual users and businesses looking to reach them, we are talking with CEOs and marketing folks just as much as we are getting involved in simple forums and blogs. Like any startup, egoBoom has had its fair share of challenge. That being said, we have managed to achieve a lot through good old perseverance and readily available six packs of beer. Landing Bloomberg News as a customer would have to be our biggest success to date. We are also in the hunt for $1 million in seed funding, so keep your eyes peeled for our next big thing. Tech Cocktail: How are you outperforming your competition? Kurtz: Since we are forging a new market space, we only have indirect competitors like Thumb, Voto, and SeeSaw. These apps all allow users to publicly gather opinions using a single, simple metric based around photos. egoBoom has nearly a dozen different methods for collecting data on everything from an individual’s personal, professional, or creative life. We have the more robust platform. Our Technicolor coat is definitely woven from the threads of those that came before us; egoBoom lets people crowdsource information into their personal, professional, and creative life in a completely new and engaging way. Social media democratized the sharing of information, but crowdsourcing is going to change things in ways we can't even imagine yet. egoBoom was featured at Tech Cocktail’s Downtown Mixer & Startup Showcase on September 16th. The post egoBoom Will Change Outdated Internet Opinion Sharing appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Make Your Own Ads With Film This | | Thursday, September 26, 2013 5:00 PM | Will Schmidt |
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"There is a move to the collaborative economy across various industries, and we see [it] in the creative spaces demonstrated by establishments like 99 Designs and Swiftly," explains Ryan Budke, CEO of Film This. "When it comes to the video space, that collaborative economy tends to focus too much on professionals and not enough on the amateur who loves a brand, movie, or product." Budke co-founded Film This with Trey Long to engage the loyal customers and amateur videographers in the world. They work directly with brands to create engaging video challenges and incentives for fans who want to submit and post personally created videos to social media pages. "Back in the day, we noticed that videos on YouTube got either recreations or views," says Budke. "Chocolate Rain was the first video that had parodies, and what struck us was how people wanted to create videos and put their personal stamp on an idea."
That inspiration drove Film This to establish a twofold model. First, brands achieve mass publicity without having to spend beaucoup bucks on a marketing strategy. Second, film enthusiasts and diehard fans have an opportunity to create their own, personal content. For example, fans can currently submit their ideas on how the final season of Breaking Bad will end in three minutes or less. First, second, and third place each get a year, six months, or three months paid subscription to Netflix, respectively, plus extra goodies. As Film This keeps growing, you could see people filming their runs in Nike shoes to win free shoes for life. Local pizza places could offer free pizza for amazing ads. You might even win a trip to the red carpet for the premier of the Avengers 2 - if you have the best homemade Iron Man suit, that is. "By having fan-created videos that are based on a brand’s challenge, you have videos that are more fun, more creative, more interesting than just a regular 15-second video on a social network," says Budke. "The ad is made by a friend, or connection, that is more likely to be watched."
And in a strategic move, Film This pushes every video, vote, and interaction to Facebook and Twitter. Sponsored ads do in fact get stricken down, but remember that all the Film This ads are actually user-generated content. Film This does not exist just for professionals, but for everyday people who want to create and have fun with videos. Aside from the countless ad challenges, the team has developed plain video challenges for those who simply want to hone their video making skills: creativity is their main goal over all else. Focusing on that creativity first ensures that the best content will bubble up out of the sea of creativity rather than simply the most viewed videos. Everybody already has a high-powered video camera in their smartphone; all they need is a good reason to use it more often. Film This wants to be that spark. Film This was featured at Tech Cocktail’s Los Angeles Mixer & Startup Showcase on Septermber 5th. The post Make Your Own Ads With Film This appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Hyperloop Makes Major Development Advancement | | Thursday, September 26, 2013 4:27 PM | Will Schmidt |
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Back in August, Elon Musk's Hyperloop designs found a home at JumpStartFund where the project's green light was voted on by the public. Many people labeled this a pipe dream, but today JumpStartFund announced that Hyperloop is one step closer to reality. Dr. Marco Villa, former director of mission operations at SpaceX, and Dr. Patricia Galloway, the first woman president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, will lead and manage the development of the Hyperloop project. Additionally, JumpStartFund is accepting applications for anybody who wants to work full-time on the project in exchange for equity. Since the initial 28 days of voting are over, Villa and Galloway will be calling on JumpStartFund members to participate in different advisory groups to collaborate on every aspect of moving the Hyperloop forward. In effect, they will create a new company to bring Hyperloop to life and will create a team surrounding its development. "There does not seem to be any technical issues on this project that we can't solve; even if we do not know right away, we will figure it out," says Villa. "What is different today is the opportunities that crowdsourcing and crowdfunding offer in getting dreams and innovations off the ground," adds Galloway.
CEO and founder of JumpStartFund Dirk Ahlborn is showcasing the true potential of crowdfunding with this project as more than 20,000 people have visited the website seeking information on the Hyperloop. The hope is that some will be drawn to lend their expertise to the project, and scale tests can begin by the end of 2014. The post Hyperloop Makes Major Development Advancement appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Why Moveline Relocated to Downtown Las Vegas | | Thursday, September 26, 2013 3:00 PM | Kira M. Newman |
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Moveline is a company that helps you move, so they know a thing or three about moving. They can tell you about free and fun things to do in Austin, apartment terminology in New York City, and how to find a sublet in San Francisco. But when it came time for them to move – after a stint in New York with TechStars – they still weren't sure where to go. If you had told them they'd be living in Las Vegas a year later, they might not have believed it. But here they are: 15 employees, with plans to hire 12 more in sales, customer service, and engineering. It all started with a chance encounter with the VegasTechFund, downtown Vegas's startup fund run by the Downtown Project. They convinced Moveline to come for a visit in April – a very different kind of visit than most people take to Las Vegas. Instead of gambling and nightlife, they went to community meetups, tours, and gatherings. Instead of annoying tourists on the Strip, they met startups, entrepreneurs, and artists. Part of the allure was Zappos’s and the region's focus on customer service and hospitality. Moveline lets you take a video of the belongings you have to move, then get quotes from three to five moving companies. But what customers love are the "move captains," customer service people who give you advice and support along the way. Moveline decided to relocate in early July, and the VegasTechFund participated in their funding round in mid-August. (Their total funding is now $3 million.) Their office opened later that month, and Moveline has started collaborating with the Downtown Project to assist fellow Vegas immigrants. They love the supportive community, who sends emails daily welcoming them and offering to help. The biggest challenge for Vegas, says cofounder Kelly Eidson, is its image. "Everybody thinks about Vegas as the Strip and has their preconceived notions," she says. "It's just going to be the effort of the whole community in sharing all of the things that people don't know about yet." Moveline is doing their part, with blog posts like "5 reasons to move to Vegas." And their big dreams of hiring hundreds of people don't hurt, either. Thanks to Movelive for sponsoring the September Tech Cocktail Week! Tech Cocktail received $2.5 million in investment from the Downtown Project. The post Why Moveline Relocated to Downtown Las Vegas appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Sprint Rolling Out 4G LTE Coverage across the Country | | Thursday, September 26, 2013 1:00 PM | techcocktail |
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This post is sponsored by Sprint, the title sponsor of our Tech Cocktail New York City mixer. We thank them for their support! Sprint's 4G LTE coverage is now available in 185 markets across the country, and Sprint is continuing its rollout this fall. 4G LTE offers data up to 10 times faster than 3G, stronger signals (including indoors), and fewer dropped calls. It's available thanks to new equipment installed in Sprint's cell towers. July saw 4G LTE landing in the Bronx and Brooklyn in New York City, with plans to expand officially to Manhattan, Staten Island, and Queens in the coming months. On top of that, Transit Wireless and Sprint are working together to bring Sprint voice and data to the subway, starting with 36 stations in midtown and Chelsea. Sprint is also working with ExteNet to provide better 3G and 4G LTE coverage to the top floors of the Empire State Building, where wireless reception can be spotty. 4G LTE is already available in big cities like Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Juan. And the following markets rolled out in mid-September: - Alabama: Anniston/Oxford, Montgomery
- Georgia: Macon
- Louisiana: Alexandria, Houma/Bayou Cane/Thibodaux, Lake Charles, Ruston
- Michigan: Allegan, Bay City, Monroe
- Mississippi: Greenville
- North Carolina: Kinston, Lumberton
- Oklahoma: Enid, Lawton, Muskogee, Oklahoma City, Stillwater
- Oregon: Salem
- Pennsylvania: Bedford, Juniata and Mifflin counties
- Texas: Amarillo, Beaumont/Port Arthur, Corpus Christi, Del Rio, Longview, Lufkin, Midland, San Angelo, Victoria
- Wisconsin: Fort Atkinson, Marshfield/Wisconsin Rapids, Sheboygan, Whitewater
To take advantage of Sprint's 4G LTE, consider the following plans: - My All-In: Unlimited talk, text, and data, plus 5 GB of hotspot data, for $110/month
- Unlimited My Way: Unlimited talk and text for $50/month, plus data charges
- Virgin Mobile USA: A prepaid plan with unlimited talk, text, and data for $55/month
- Boost Mobile: A prepaid plan with unlimited talk, text, and data for $50/month
To learn more about how 4G LTE works, check out the infographic below: 
The post Sprint Rolling Out 4G LTE Coverage across the Country appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Fortique: A digital boutique for your creative fortes | | Thursday, September 26, 2013 11:17 AM | Stephanie Nguyen |
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Fortique is the Etsy for event planners, photographers, interior and graphic designers, and more. From emerging freelancers to established small businesses, members gets their own digital storefront that features their unique story, portfolio, client reviews and the option to contact them for your next wedding, corporate event or brand re-launch. In planning to throwing an exquisite 30th birthday party for her sister, Stephanie Olvey, founder and CEO of Fortique, quickly realized that event planning was a cumbersome endeavor. All of the expensive event planning power players were at the top of her search results, and the the best, local freelance photographers and planners were hidden through recommendations and word-of-mouth. Finding quality, affordable event help was a conundrum.  “We realized that these creative industries were fragmented [and] there was no sense of community,” explains Olvey. “Most [people] lack the budget necessary to position themselves effectively with consumers.” For one event, clients often need multiple resources like event planners, graphic designers and photographers. Fortique offers a one-stop shop to sift through a network of creatives to find the talent that fits your needs.
Many creative freelancers who have been seeking a sense of community to market their brand turned to unconventional platforms to serve as their storefront and portfolio. While Pinterest is traditionally used to sort and save your favorite ideas, many designers and illustrators are leveraging pins and boards as a way to brand themselves. Now, with Fortique, members can have access to a marketing platform and a community of creative people to help them build their business. In less than a year, Fortique has seen their network of curated entrepreneurs grow, ultimately giving consumers a variety of quality, affordable options to choose from. One client that began her freelance photography career on Fortique is now inundated with freelance opportunities and sees the potential to turn this into a full-time job. Olvey says that personal success stories like these drive her passion in this industry. “It is stressful to start marketing your skill set without a network. We help budding entrepreneurs build a following and pursue their dreams.”  When it comes to planning a DIY Pinterest-worthy, hipster wedding, you are no longer at the mercy of your Google queries for local event planners and creative talent. Find yourself at Fortique.
Stay tuned to the latest updates and follow @Fortique on Twitter. The post Fortique: A digital boutique for your creative fortes appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| DC Tech Meetup: Demos, Demos, Demos | | Thursday, September 26, 2013 10:16 AM | Ronald Barba |
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With the music reverberating through the floor and that golden dome showering rays of euphoria down at us, things sure got #turntup at this week’s DC Tech Meetup. Okay, so, the music came from another event that was taking place in the basement, but nevertheless Sixth & I Historic Synagogue was replete with enough tablets and smartphones (and their attached human bodies) to light up the deep closet I hid in throughout my adolescent years (SPOILER – future DC Tech Meetup theme: startup raves). While I was envious of the party going on downstairs, it’s always a fun time when iStrategyLabs CEO, Peter Corbett, is at the helm. The event was strictly devoted to startup demos, with a whopping 12 listed on the evening’s agenda. The following 12 startups did their best to impress us with their crowdfunded, 3D renderings of flower daycare centers. 
Cofounder and CEO, Omri “Bob” Shor started the night with the MediSafe Project. Motivated by his father’s previous insulin overdose, the mobile app is a cloud-supported medication management system that allows individuals and their loved ones to keep track of their daily medication intake in real-time. According to Bob, 146 million Americans take daily meds, with someone dying every 19 minutes from incorrect dosage or medication. The company recently closed a $1M round. Goodshuffle cofounders, Erik Dreyer and Andrew Garcia, started off their presentation with a simple (yet odd) question: “How many of you own a power drill?” While I had hoped that this would venture toward an inappropriate joke, the question was appropriate considering the nature of Goodshuffle. The basic idea: a rental market for neighborhood goods. Need a ladder for a painting job that you’re working on? Get on Goodshuffle to see if someone nearby is willing to rent out their ladder. Eventually, Dreyer and Garcia hope to work with local hardware stores to rent out their tools. Destinalo is a vacation booking platform that hopes to create the most authentic, cultural experiences for tourists. The platform aims to connect tourists with local merchants, business owners, and guides who don’t have the online presence afforded to mainstream travel-related businesses. While cofounder, Cristina Huidobro, admits that the platform is currently only available for travel experiences in Chile, Destinalo hopes to eventually spread its model to other countries. Preamp.fm is a site that wants to improve the way we find local, live music. According to creator, Charles Worthington (SO typically Harvard, amirite?), “Concert calendars would work better if they loaded as a video playlist.” Well, that’s precisely what Preamp.fm does. After selecting your city or specific music venue, information on immediate/upcoming performances by bands or musicians is accompanied by video tracks sourced directly from YouTube, allowing you to preview their music. Preamp.fm recently launched its festival feature, allowing you to preview bands featured in upcoming music festivals. Social Radar is another fruit of Michael Chasen’s (digital) loins. The former CEO and cofounder of Blackboard debuted the highly-anticipated mobile app with the same enthusiasm for which he has become renown. Social Radar allows you to learn more about the ways through which you’re connected with the people around you. Aggregating data from your social media accounts, the app gives you information on 1) whether you know someone located near you, 2) how you know that person, and even 3) that person’s current location. Social Radar also provides you with some information on people within a degree of separation, to provide you with some conversation fodder when introducing yourself. There’s also a chat function built into the app. With regards to privacy concerns, Chasen notes that users can choose to share their activity publicly, among friends, anonymously, or choose to be invisible. “Think of [BloomPop] as the Etsy for flowers,” says founder and CEO, Shavanna Miller. Miller began her presentation by showing the crowd the differences in quality between flowers received from places like 1-800-FLOWERS and bouquets produced by local florists. The takeaway: flowers delivered in boxes to your loved ones are no bueno. BloomPop provides an alternative to current online- and phone-order flower services by providing an online marketplace for local, high-quality florists. Once you insert your preferences into the platform (type of flowers, colors, etc.), BloomPop shows you various bouquets to choose from, as well as lists the corresponding floral businesses. Currently only available on Android, Kilo gives users the ability to quickly create video content in a unique way. Founder Barbara Lee demoed the app, which affords many different features, including stop motion, action replay (with customizable action paths), and living panoramas. The content produced through Kilo can easily be shared to a public or private feed, as well as to other non-Android devices. Although I myself am not a parent, CareLuLu was definitely one of my personal favorites of the evening. Founder and CEO, Patrick Matos, certainly got the attention from parents in the room after demoing the online platform. It’s a very detailed, but user-friendly platform that serves as a central resource for child care providers nearby. Information on each center is collected by CareLuLu itself, even going so far as sending their own photographer to shoot on-scene to provide high-quality photos on the website. The platform offers a fully customizable search experience, allowing parents to determine things like distance from their home, weekly costs, hours of operation, languages taught, and whether a daycare center operates under a specific philosophy (e.g. Montessori). When asked about the authenticity of parent reviews of daycare centers on CareLuLu, Matos explained that daycares have no control of the review system, and that CareLuLu attempts to verify every review submitted. The company is currently working on ways to manage the waiting list barrier at certain daycare centers. In a nutshell: crowdfunding for real-estate projects. Through Fundrise, literally anyone is given access to invest directly in local real-estate projects for as little as $100. “All of these people [can] come together to essentially build [their] own city,” says cofounder, Benjamin Miller. There are no middlemen involved in the Fundrise process, creating the potential for increased returns as well as greatly reduced fees. SurveySnap is site survey software aimed at improving the surveying process for those in architecture, engineering, and real estate. Users can smart-pin photos, notes, sketches, and even audio to specific locations on floor plans, as well as easily create PDF and web documents with one tap. According to CEO and cofounder, Ryan Sears, the goal is to “truly standardize the way site surveys are done.” “I’m here to dispel the myth that [Social Tables] is a wedding planning startup,” said founder and CEO, Dan Berger, at the start of his presentation. “Think of us as an AutoCAD for hospitality.” Social Tables provides software that gives users the tools to plan out the layout of an event in detail. A well-regarded startup in the DC tech community, Berger demoed the Social Tables software with some awed responses (including from yours truly). The software looks into every detail of the event, including guest list management and their respective table assignments to social graphing every person’s profile to see whether or not they’re best fitted somewhere else. By far the coolest feature is the software’s 3D rendering function, allowing users to view venues and even tour event walk-throughs in 3D. VP of Sales and Marketing, Jason Rozenblat, demoed @Pay. @Pay provides a two-click checkout experience directly from email. This allows people to purchase items directly from email promos sent from companies. The steps: 1) click to request transaction request, and 2) receive confirmation of your purchase. Some other big announcements from the night: The post DC Tech Meetup: Demos, Demos, Demos appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| 4 Hottest Interactive Education Startups for Kids in 2013 | | Wednesday, September 25, 2013 5:00 PM | Drew |
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Interactive education isn’t just a buzz word; it’s here to stay because it works. Unlike a traditional classroom setting, interactive education not only works with kids on their level, but also makes a lot of sense when it comes time to transition into a career. Whether a kid wants to be a doctor, astronaut, or entrepreneur, his or her career is going to be all about interaction and technology. Shouldn’t the learning experience stimulate that? There are a slew of interactive education platforms and programs picking up dust in 2013, but four have risen to the top. As a parent, it’s wise to start researching which program might be best for your kids. On the other hand, a hodge-podge collection might be the better approach. It’s time to increase involvement when it comes to education, starting with these top four contenders. 1. littleBits Based in New York as an open-source library, this platform boasts electronic modules that snap together — kind of like the LEGOs of yore. They’re the perfect solution for more hands-on activities; the type of learning that many kids naturally lean towards. Building prototypes of projects while getting a solid dose of electronics education in the process is the perfect “building block” for future engineers. By using these “little bits,” kids begin to understand exactly how electronics come together. Prices for packages range from $89 to $149, so there’s truly something for everyone and every budget. 2. Roominate Developed by engineers who are committed to gender balance in the STEM, Roominate is a kit that features modular pieces, a motor circuit, connectors, and walls so children have everything they need to design furniture or other pieces of a home (or room) such as lights. However, this project isn’t just a product. With funds raised from a Kickstarter campaign, the real purpose is to encourage more children to become technology innovators. Prices range from $30 to $50, which is an affordable way to kick off a career. 3. Linkbot Kids and robots go together like peanut butter and jelly, and Linkbot makes it easier than ever for kids to become acquainted with the robotics of the future. With a jolt of math and computer programming teaching along the way, these robots are educational as well as modular. Kids have the opportunity to build them piece by piece, and they can effortlessly connect via different pair buttons. It’s also an option to record the motions of the robot, then transfer that information into computer languages including C and Python — then have the robot automatically repeat those motions. 4. LocoMotive Labs This collection of learning apps is designed especially for special needs kids. By teaching math calculation and how to tell time, kids who struggle with rote memorization can get a leg up via handwriting recognition, number tracing, and other key practices. The apps complement the Common Core State Standards for Pre-K through second grade, which 45 states have already adopted. Although the apps are specially designed for children with special needs, any child can benefit from these activities. How can parents help their kids get more involved with back to school shopping, especially when it comes to items beyond clothes and just-for-fun gadgets? Introducing these types of interactive products is a great way to start off the school year with plenty of ambition and excitement. There’s absolutely no reason why learning and advancing can’t be fun, especially when you match your child to the right product. Check out one of these four options, and you’ll help your budding professional move onto the right track. The post 4 Hottest Interactive Education Startups for Kids in 2013 appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Today is ERA's Demo Day in New York | | Wednesday, September 25, 2013 3:24 PM | Will Schmidt |
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Today the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA) is hosting its investor demo day in New York City. The IAC Headquarters is the venue for the event, and there are 10 total startups pitching to a crowd of investors, ERA alums, and press members. The summer 2013 class is composed of product innovators that maintain a focus on NYC-related industries and business. They are solving problems across multiple fields like education technology, advertising technology, search functions, communications, product discovery, and retail. The four-month journey through ERA has given them the resources they need to jump start their companies by combining hands-on help, seed capital, co-working spaces, free legal help, and expert leadership. ERA companies also get direct access to leading members of the NYC and broader tech communities. The ERA 2013 summer class is: - Agolo: A social discovery platform that uses natural language processing.
- Admittedly: A virtual college guidance counselor platform.
- ClosetDash: A platform that lets women shop for new fashions using their existing fashions.
- Gigzolo: A marketplace for musicians and photographers.
- Machinio: A vertical search engine used for industrial machinery.
- Metropolist: Socially curated local recommendation top ten lists.
- Nutmeg Education: Assessment solutions that provide individualized earning for students.
- Piiku: A premium video advertisement network for content paywalls.
- Rockerbox: A display advertising solution for audience intent retargeting.
- Tapactive: A membership-based service that provides clients with unlimited workouts for a monthly fee.
The post Today is ERA’s Demo Day in New York appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| BUZZtheBar: Order Drinks From Your Smartphone | | Wednesday, September 25, 2013 3:00 PM | Will Schmidt |
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If you are like me, then you love to get to the bar early and beat the crowds. Not because you are a curmudgeon and a misanthrope, but because once it gets packed to capacity, getting your next beer can take forever. Sure, bars have awesome point of sale systems, but good luck ordering anything if the bar is unapproachable. Richard Liang was a bartender heavily entrenched in the hospitality industry before he transitioned into an entrepreneur. With Robert Estelle at his side, he founded a simple solution for the issues that surround ordering at crowded establishments: BUZZtheBar. "Bartenders and wait staff spend half their time processing credit cards, which leads to up to $600 an hour in lost revenue during peak service time," explains Liang. "This leads to longer customer wait time, customer dissatisfaction, and missed profits. Every time a credit card is swiped, the bar loses out on around $10."
His app allows users to order and pay for drinks from their smartphone and is fully free to download. Bars that sign on get a proprietary receipt printer and sensor that works alongside the existing point of sale systems, printing receipts from in-app orders with a number, name, and order list. When the order is filled, the bartender simply places the receipt on the sensor which then notifies the proper parties that their order is ready for pickup. The customer approaches the bar, flashes their phone to the server, and gets their drinks. "From an inventory perspective, you need to be able to turn your inventory quickly to make money if you are an establishment," explains Liang. "Also, the customer has to be able to actually get through people and up to the bar."
In this scenario, the physical bar itself is considered the inventory space available to the establishment, and the longer somebody has to wait to access that space, the less money the venue is going to make. BUZZtheBar prides itself on essentially extending that inventory space to infinity. And since the learning curve is virtually non-existent, the hospitality industry, which has a reputation for high turnover rates, does not have to fret over training time. The system is already familiar to bartenders, thus they understand how BUZZtheBar is supposed to work and how it actually makes them more money. "We had a bartender change shifts in the middle of the night and fully train the replacement in minutes," says Liang. "Most competition that does this is coming at it from the consumer perspective, but we approach from the server's side of things."
Because BUZZtheBar interacts with the customer at the point of sale, Liang and his team are dually wielding their platform to contextually advertise for alcohol brands. So far they have increased sales of specific brands by over 200 percent through menu positioning. The road ahead looks pleasant, as they are welcoming several new alcohol brands as customers. They plan to roll out updates to include social interactions and pre-ordering in the very near future, so stay tuned. BUZZtheBar was featured at Tech Cocktail’s Downtown Vegas Mixer & Startup Showcase on September 12th. The post BUZZtheBar: Order Drinks From Your Smartphone appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Delivery of Data or Food, Cloud Does It All | | Wednesday, September 25, 2013 1:00 PM | Doug Crets |
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When it comes down to the most important things in life, it's basically hunger and taxes. Scale that to a world online that is fragmented when it comes to services for this kind of reality, and you have a huge opportunity for app developers and cloud-based businesses. A web commerce world enabled by cloud and platforms-as-a-service (PaaS) is beginning to show the early stages of tools-based portals that enable traction and growth for a whole range of businesses, from food delivery to income tax reporting. At Tech Cocktail's NYC Mixer, two Microsoft Bizspark companies took the stage to vie for a shot at a Las Vegas pitch contest.  David Bloom, CEO, Ordr.in Ordr.in, started by former American Express executive David Bloom, positions itself as the API portal for all food and restaurant transactions on the web with the construction of a Windows SDK and a reference app for Windows 8, with built-in cooperation with Microsoft evangelists. With a newly inked deal with Delivery.com, Bloom believes he's got a PaaS that anyone can use for building an app for the restaurant or the delivery market. The platform is Azure-enabled. Says Bloom, "We imagined a whole world of innovation around restaurant e-commerce, not just one app, but an infinite number of apps supporting an infinite number of tasks." "It's hopefully going to unlock that publisher and developer activity through the whole windows ecosystem [around restaurant and foods vertical]," says Bloom.  Anupam Singhal, CEO and Co-Founder, Monaeo Monaeo sits on the other side of the spectrum of services - a mobile app for the individual and enterprise that uses data to spot leakages and overages costing HR departments billions of dollars each year.When HR can't accurately pinpoint where employees spend their time, they run the risk of charging too much or too little income tax and then losing out at the end of the fiscal quarters. Both companies worked with Microsoft evangelists and leveraged the Azure platform to make refinements in their companies. Apunam Singhal, co-founder of Monaeo, says the idea for this SaaS for income tax came when he and his wife were living and working in different cities when he was with the private equity firm, Silver Lake partners. When he would spend time visiting her in Boston, a clock was ticking that would have drastically changed his income tax obligations. "I came dangerously close to being treated as a Boston, Massachusetts resident," says Singhal. "While all of us consumers are using location for social, ads, etc. for enterprises, there is no location being leveraged inside of enterprises," he says. "With a SaaS for taxes, our value proposition for the tax payer is to give them better visibility into what their location footprint looks like, to proactively plan and optimize exposures, to protect liabilities." This makes a lot of sense to HR personnel who have ever had to report for an audit and found even their own stringent record-keeping to be lax in the eyes of an IRS attorney or accountant. The fundamentally interesting thing about both of these companies is that they seem to herald a shift from apps for the enterprise or the consumer to platforms and services for the enterprise and the consumers. Microsoft BizSpark is a program designed by Microsoft to satisfy the technical and the tools requirements for anyone building these types of businesses. As long as the businesses themselves are less than five years old, making less than one million in revenue, and are building for the cloud and for the apps ecosystem, they qualify. You can find more information here at Microsoft BizSpark. The post Delivery of Data or Food, Cloud Does It All appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| A Book in 5 Minutes: "The Age of Context" by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel | | Wednesday, September 25, 2013 11:00 AM | Kira M. Newman |
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Don't have time to read? Here's a quick but comprehensive summary of "The Age of Context" by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, released on September 25, 2013. Who should read this: Readers interested in the future of technology, including entrepreneurs who are hoping to build successful applications that leverage mobile, social media, big data, or location-based services. Elevator pitch: Contextual technologies – which "understand" things about you and your environment – are the latest evolution in tech, made popular by Google Glass. This book describes how contextual technology will influence the way you live and work in the future. We already have fridge magnets that can order your favorite pizza, car software that disables the gas on stolen vehicles, and radiation detectors in Japan; imagine what the future will bring. Authors: Robert Scoble is a startup liaison officer for Rackspace, spending his time reporting on the latest startups, gadgets, and innovations. Shel Israel writes for Forbes and provides reports and analysis for businesses. They also collaborated on the book Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers. SummaryContextual computing is the most recent development in the progression of technology. It refers to the fact that technologies are starting to "understand" things about you and your environment – things like your schedule, your location, and your heart rate. The main issue these technologies raise is privacy: the reason they can do such amazing things is because they're gathering more and more information about us. Five forces are shaping the age of context: - Mobile. Cell phones now exceed people on the planet, wearable computing is booming, data costs are dropping, and app downloads have gone wild.
- Social media. Almost 1.5 billion people are on social networks, and businesses are using them to connect with customers, humanize themselves, and learn.
- Data. The size of the Internet is expanding at an exponential rate – leading to the idea of big data. But it's little bits of data delivered to us exactly when we want them (thanks to search) that are really impacting our lives.
- Sensors. Sensors in technology can emulate three of the five human senses: sight, touch, and hearing. Sensors can talk to us and to each other.
- Location-based services. Our location is one of the most important parts of our context.
Google GlassGoogle Glass is the flagship contextual device, aware of where you look, your location, what you're doing, and your intentions (like shopping). The retail price will likely be between $200 and $400, and it may take five to ten years to go mainstream. But the uses are endless: from sports to medicine to law enforcement to gaming, to name a few. But competition exists: PairASight and Oakley already make digital eyewear, and Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, and Nokia are reportedly working on similar devices. Many critiques focus on Google Glass users spying on others, but that's difficult: you can't take photo or video without a light turning on or a ping sound that others will notice. The real issue is Google spying on us: what they'll do with all the data Glass collects. They seem to be a responsible company in that regard, but we can never be sure. ShoppingPart of what we lose with online retail is the personalized experience of walking into a store and being greeted by the owner, who knows what we’re looking for. But contextual technologies can help bring some of that back. Uber, for example, can learn your limo habits and dispatch a car to pick you up before you request it. VinTank knows when wine enthusiasts enter Napa Valley and works with their winery partners to send exclusive coupons and offers. These "right-time experiences" will start to deliver what you want when you want it, just like your neighborhood shopkeeper. CarsThe car industry is another area where contextual technology is ubiquitous. Cars have an event data recorder similar to the black box in airplanes, tracking location and other data. They can learn your preferences in seating position, gas stations, restaurants, and more. They can brake automatically to prevent a crash, or turn on windshield wipers when it starts raining. The issue here is how third parties will use this data, including insurance companies, the government, and used car buyers. While some car makers want the car's computer to be your digital hub, it's best if your smartphone assumes that role. Our phones go everywhere with us, we choose the operating system, and young people are increasingly preferring phones to cars. Self-driving cars, which use contextual technologies to sense the environment around them, can be safer and more energy-efficient. Google is already testing its driverless cars, which use an expensive rooftop spinning device with laser imaging detection and ranging (lidar) technology that can "see" lane markers, signs, people, and cars. Driverless cars will be especially appealing to the blind. But to go mainstream, they'll have to overcome the "freaky factor," become affordable, and maneuver government regulations. They’ll probably go mainstream in five to fifty years. New UrbanistsThe New Urbanists are a group of people who live in cities, are educated and financially comfortable, and use smartphones but rarely use cars. They are interested in connecting with local government to improve urban environments, and they do that using plans and 3D models shared in the cloud. The maker movement, popular in cities, also follows this same spirit of community improvement. HealthHealth sensors, gadgets, and social networks are a big trend lately, from pills with sensors that can tell if you've taken them, to the Fitbit and Nike+ Fuelband, to the FAST scanner that can detect cancer cells and test treatments on them. The challenge will be convincing current stakeholders to abandon the status quo in favor of better health. Wearable technologyWearable technology is making us healthier, more informed and aware, and more productive – ranging from bras that shock rapists or detect cancer to t-shirts that can charge devices. As the trend continues, wearable tech will become more and more integrated with our bodies, eventually leading to implants. But unlike the science fiction, we will still be in control. PCAs PDAs flopped, only to have smartphones take center stage years later. But the next generation of smart devices will be PCAs: personal contextual assistants. PCAs are open, cloud-based mobile platforms that communicate with other apps in order to figure out your intent and anticipate actions you might want to take. For example, they can message coworkers that you're running late, suggest you drop by the mall for a sale, or schedule a recurring mortgage payment. Some leaders in this space include Google Now, EasilyDo, Atooma, and Lola by SRI. HomeIn the contextual home, devices communicate with each other and with us to make things safer and more sustainable. Door locks, windows, bathroom mirrors, toothbrushes, and refrigerators will all become smart, understanding when we want things from them. Some of the leaders in home sensors include SmartThings, WigWag, and CubeSensors. TVs will also be able to suggest customized content depending on who's watching, and robots will become more ubiquitous. AdvertisingIn the past, marketing and advertising have been annoyingly un-tailored to us as individuals. The contextual future of advertising, however, is pinpoint marketing: where you get offers of goods and services based on where you are, what you're doing, and what you might do next. Revenue will likely come from micro-commissions: for example, Google Glass might suggest that you watch a movie at a nearby theater, and receive a small commission when you pick up your ticket. In one sense, privacy isn't a big problem because you can turn off these notifications when you want. But it becomes a problem when contextual technologies can start to guess your mood and share this information with others. TrustThe conflict between security and privacy isn't likely to be resolved anytime soon. But it's clear that, in the long run, consumers will want to do business with companies they trust. That means plain-language terms of service, the ability to "go private" or turn off tracking for awhile, and not assuming we want to share information with others (or, at least, ways to correct false assumptions). Grade: AIn truth, "contextual technology" sounds like a complicated and less-than-interesting subject. (Perhaps the industry needs a rebranding.) But through pages and pages of fascinating examples, Scoble and Israel have made it incredibly accessible. A big part of the book's allure is the authors' ability to imagine the future. We may think we're so modern nowadays, walking around with our smartphones and their new fingerprint-detection technology. But reading The Age of Context will make you realize how much further we have to go. One idea that struck me was walking into the bathroom in the morning, brushing your teeth with a cavity-detecting toothbrush, and seeing medication reminders on your smart mirror. So futuristic, yet so simple at the same time. And if you like that, you'll surely enjoy the last fanciful chapter of the book, called "Reunion: 2038." The post A Book in 5 Minutes: "The Age of Context" by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Y.CO Domain Name Sold to Y.CO Luxury Yacht Company | | Wednesday, September 25, 2013 10:16 AM | Kira M. Newman |
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Today, Y.CO became the first luxury brand to acquire a single-letter .CO domain, y.co, following in the footsteps of companies like Google (g.co), Twitter (t.co), and Amazon (a.co). Y.CO is a yachting company, with services to help you sell, purchase, charter, manage, and build yachts. Around 1,100 yachts are available to charter around the world, ranging in price from $45,000 to $2 million for a week. On board, guests may be greeted by an executive chef, personal trainers, dive instructors, or beauty therapists. They can enjoy beautiful art collections and interior design, new technologies, and "high-tech water toys." While guests are chartering a yacht, they might try some scuba diving, wakeboarding, waterskiing, or fishing. Y.CO also has partnerships for on-land experiences, ranging from a tour of the pyramids to a Borneo orangutan sanctuary visit to a treasure hunt in the Mediterranean. Y.CO also launched an iPad app today where interested users can browse yachts for sale and charter, save a list of favorites, and contact the Y.CO team for help. 
Y.CO was founded in 2003 by Gary Wright and Charlie Birkett, who met six years earlier onboard a yacht where Wright was captain. They both have decades of experiences in yachting and boating. The news comes just as the 2013 Monaco Yacht Show is kicking off today. Tech Cocktail is proud to call .CO a partner and sport the tech.co domain. The post Y.CO Domain Name Sold to Y.CO Luxury Yacht Company appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
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