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Tonight’s New Tech Meetup: Put it to a Vote

February 5, 2008

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UPDATE: I’ve added a video of “exit polls” after the new tech meetup so you can see what people thought. The video is at the bottom of this post.

Tonight’s Denver/Boulder New Tech Meetup was packed, despite the fact that the caucus was happening at the same time. That should say something about the dedication of our tech community.

Each New Tech Meetup starts with job openings and event announcements. We heard from the Boulder Innovation Center followed by the Silicon Flatirons. Silicon Flatirons is hosting an event on March 4, prior to the March New Tech Meetup. Paul Jacobs will keynote at the Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Entrepreneurship in The Information Industries event. For those attending the New Tech Meetup afterwards, there will be no charge.

In total, five companies presented tonight. Those five, in order, were: Whereyougonnabe.com, YowTrip, J Catapult, Corybant Developer’s Toolkit and Reference Vault.

Whereyougonnabe.com’s tagline is “helping you meet your friends more often.” Peter Batty explained that they’ve announced their service as of today. The primary function of this spatial networking application is to connect up with friends and business contacts in the near future. If you’re heading to a bar and see that someone else in your vicinity is a friend, you can send them a quick message and let them know. The application is built with Google API and will start with Facebook and branch out from there.

Questions from the audience revolved around privacy concerns. Peter put fears to rest by mentioning there would be privacy settings. The audience was pretty stoked about this idea. Several members of the audience were curious about future features for this application.

I liked the idea of being able to use this application to connect with people in my vicinity, but already do exactly the same with Twitter, on a daily basis. So, for me, because I tend to create meetups on the fly, it would be a redundancy. For those that plan further in advance, it might be a worthwhile tool to explore.

YowTrip asks Where will you go next? Similar to whereyougonnabe.com in theory, but in practice it is about planning and sharing trips with friends. If you’re headed to Australia and you want to invite your friend to go along with you (virtually or otherwise) you can use the site to collaborate in terms of planning, chatting and photo sharing. The one point I would make as a frequent traveler is that I already have my systems in place to connect with other travelers and have tools to upload photos, chat and maintain my lifestyle at home just as I do abroad. I wonder how YowTrip will market itself and whether it will partner up with other travel networks in the future.

J Catapult was presented by Boulder-based Inversoft owner Brian Pontarelli. He refers to J Catapult as a “next generation web development rapid application platform.” Inversoft is essentially a home grown open source component-based dev toolkit similar in concept to Ruby on Rails. The difference being that Inversoft is targeted at big enterprises. Texture Media, of Boulder, is currently using J Catapult on some of its client’s sites, including IZZE. It’s early (he released Milestone 1 just yesterday), and really it’s a question of adoption.

Corybant Developer’s Toolkit presented a Voice-Email Integration system. They demonstrated an email being sent over the phone and answered using voice recognition. In the spirit of the elections, we were asked to vote on whether we, “have (or can imagine) a product/service for which there is compelling value in adding these communication services on a pay-per-use basis?” Definitely seems like this could be an interesting option for developers currently building voice response systems that may be looking for a head start.

Reference Vault was up last. Erik Rank, their Senior Web Developer walked us through the site. The purpose, he said, was to help you get a better job. He presented some facts and figures on how competitive the job market is. Reference Vault allows you to request, store and decide which job references to display on your page at Reference Vault or other places (including your blog, via widget) around the world wide web. You can get a reference once and use it forever. The idea appeals to me, although I have seven references at LinkedIn that are on my public profile (and I can choose whether or not to make those public, too), so I wonder how often I’d log in to Reference Vault. If I were a job applicant actively seeking employment, I can definitely see how something like Reference Vault would be a great resource for collating and storing my references.


Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

VCIR presenting companies announced

February 5, 2008

The presenting companies at next months Venture Capital in the Rockies were announced publicly today for the first time. They are:

Albeo Technologies, Inc.

Albeo Technologies develops and sells patented solid-state lighting (SSL) systems for industrial and commercial businesses. The products improve profits for customers by reducing energy, maintenance, materials, recycling, and cooling costs. Albeo products are designed to replace the billions of lighting systems found in buildings in every city around the world.

Altela, Inc.

Altela serves customers in need of creating clean, pure water from highly salinated and contaminated water sources. Altela’s products desalinate and decontaminate highly challenged water sources without the energy intensive equipment, high temperatures, and high pressures of other water desalination technologies such as reverse osmosis.

AVA Solar, Inc.

AVA Solar has commercialized an advanced process for manufacturing cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film photovoltaic modules. AVA Solar has perfected a robust, industrial-scale, continuous process for producing solar PV modules at an industry-leading cost per watt.

Control4

Control4 is the platform for the “Digital Home’. Control4’s hardware and software allow all the systems of the home to work together to create a truly “smart” home while leveraging the products consumers already own. Control4 home automation software allows almost any home appliance from a Surround Sound Receiver, to a refrigerator, to a TV to become the “heartbeat” for the home. Control4 hardware fills in the gaps to make automation possible for every consumer today.

DAZ Productions, Inc.

DAZ strives to bring 3D art directly to the masses by delivering the highest quality digital 3D content and software at the most affordance prices. With a continuing effort at creating realism and diversity in every figure DAZ makes, and a commitment to providing excellent service and support, DAZ works to inspire 3D fans to “Unleash the Artist Within”. DAZ also offers premier 3D software programs such as Bryce 5 (a 3D environment package), Mimi Pro (a 3D lip-sync program), and DAZ Studio (a 3D proposing application) all at rock-bottom prices.

FamilyLink.com

FamilyLink.com uses technology to connect families to their history and to each other. The goal is to become the leading genealogy company in the world, and to build the largest social network for families.

FiltrBox

FiltrBox is focused on distilling the chaos of online content into relevant, actionable intelligence for knowledge workers. The innovative content monitoring service allows users to define and customize “topic filtrs” that find new articles from both mainstream and blog sources that are directly relevant to the users’ business world or personal interests.

FormatDynamics

Format Dynamics makes print advertising work for the online world, delivering media solutions that advertisers want and web publishers need. The company creates new ad inventory by optimizing how web pages print and extending onscreen advertisements into print, enabling new revenue opportunities.

Go Fast Sports & Beverage Company

Go Fast created a leading premium energy drink and well recognized lifestyle brand.. Go Fast Energy drink contains a balance of high quality, energy-enhancing ingredients, and provides consumers with a longer, smoother, more sustained energy boost, without the “jittery crash,” of many other energy drinks.

ISONAS Security Systems, Inc.

ISONAS designs, builds and distributes the first control panel-free, computer network-based security Access Control system. ISONAS Security Systems’ hardware and software Access Control products provide the most advanced physical access security for buildings and workplaces across a wide range of industrial applications. ISONAS’ products connect directly to the building’s TCP/IP network, eliminating dependence on old fashioned, hard wired panel-based systems.

Newmerix

Newmerix provides a comprehensive software suite designed to manage strategic, lifecycle change across enterprise applications. The Newmerix Automate! Suite gives senior management of enterprise IT organizations control and visibility at every stage of the application lifecycle. Newmerix delivers Configuration Management, Change Management and Release Management which streamline IT processes and ensuring business success.

Socialthing, Inc.

Socialthing! consolidates popular social websites into one interface. Socialthing! is a digital life manager that puts what you do online into one place. It allows users to see everything that’s going on with your friends in all the sites they use and to post stuff to multiple places at once.

Tendril Networks

Tendril builds an Energy Management System (EMS) that facilitates a dialogue between Utilities and their consumers on how best to manage energy consumption. Tendril’s EMS is an open standards based platform comprising Utility load management software, in home devices such as thermostats and smart outlets and a web-based consumer energy portal.

WBS Connect

WBS Connect is a leading international provider of high bandwidth Internet Protocal (IP)-based telecommunications services to the rapidly growing IP network services market. The Company has created a very cost efficient, private broadband network and a sales distribution structure that allows it to provide a comprehensive suite of products and services in North America and Europe.

Yieldex

Yieldex is providing unique technology for in-depth, accurate, and fast analysis of online ad inventory and availability, providing ad sales and operations personnel with the visibility needed to identify, quantify, and recover the lost revenues that result from inefficient use of available inventory.

Zayo Group

Zayo acquires and operates fiber optic based telecommunication carriers. Zayo has gained new and broader sets of service offerings that appeal to different customer verticals each with diverse telecom needs.

Zonder

Zonder provides a highly-scalable on line inventory management and distribution platform that enables consumers to instantly find and book vacation homes, cabins, condos and villas across the Caribbean, Central and North America, through a variety of channels. Zonder consolidates inventory from thousands of professional property management companies into a searchable database with real-time availability.

VCIR is open to the public (registration fee required) and is February 26 - 28, 2008.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

February 5 Boulder Open Coffee: New Startup Resources, Meetups

February 5, 2008

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Solid turnout for this morning’s Boulder Open Coffee Club. Jennifer Ross and Patti Miller presented on behalf of Boulder Tech Bootstrap, a new resource for startups and entrepreneurs in the Boulder community. Looking for a place in the local tech startup/bootstrap community to share resources? This is it. Jason Mendelson pledged to put up law documents while emphatically adding that he is “not fucking responsible” for getting you out of trouble should you use one and run into a problem. We all look forward to seeing these documents.

Several new tech meetups were announced, including one for a new “green” tech meetup (slated for February 27, but subject to change), Podcamp Colorado (date not yet set) and Boulder Women Engaging Technology (check the calendar for details). If you have an event you’d like to see on the calendar, please get in touch.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |