We Found A Morphing Tactile Keyboard Startup At Eureka Park CES 2013

A startup in California is working on getting their technology implemented into smartphones at the OEM level. They report that we should see their Tactus product on smartphones soon. So what does it do?

Tactus is a morphing tactile keyboard that literally just pops out of the phone. We’re not talking about some cheesy slide out qwerty keyboard or any kind of hardware accessory. As you’ll see in the almost unbelievable video, the keyboard just morphs right onto the screen.

In the interview the Tactus representative says that their CEO was inspired by Steve Jobs because he refused to switch to a Blackberry or other smartphone with keyboard built in.

Tactus’ technology is called “Microfluid technology” which makes the keyboard rise out of the screen and then when you’re done with it, it disappears as quickly as it appears. Our co-founder and CEO Nick Tippmann got a chance to play with it during this interview and said it was nothing short of amazing.

The startup showed it off to the TechCrunch crowd at their booth in the parking lot of the convention center where Matt Burns reports that it was the most popular demo during the entire show, stealing the thunder away from the likes of the Pebble Watch, Oculus Rift and Razer Edge.

TechCrunch called it “the future” and we’d have to agree. Check out the video below:

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Tony Hsieh Considering ZBoards For Downtown Project? Check Out Their Pitch! CES 2013

The problem is simple, you want to get from point A to point B and the distance is just a little too far to walk, and a little too close to drive. Sure you can take a bike but then you need to worry about keeping your bike safe, and the fact that you could work up a little sweat and soil your clothes for the rest of the work day.

California startup Zboard has the answer. Zboard is an electric skateboard that works fundamentally the same way a regular skateboard does. Well at least it kind of sort of looks like a regular skateboard.

The Zboard seems to be powered by the same kind of technology that Segway’s use by moving your body forwards and backwards or leaning.

If you lean forward while riding the Zboard it speeds up and goes forward. You can move your feet, applying pressure to the left and right sides to make the Zboard turn. It also comes with a brake that will stop you when you lean back.

It’s a new wave of hipster transportation. So cool in fact that Zappos CEO and Downtown Project founder Tony Hsieh hinted in a fireside chat at CES that he may be considering getting Zboards for the downtown Las Vegas community. For Hsieh, the Zboard answers the question “How do you connect where you don’t need a car, possible electric boards that are electric”.

Check out Zboard’s pitch from the Launch.It event at CES 2013.

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CES 2013: Inventor Jamie Siminoff Creates Christie Street, Crowdfunding For Inventors, VIDEO

When inventor Jamie Siminoff turned to Kickstarter for his latest invention he started realizing how flawed the Kickstarter model really was for inventors creating great products. Often times he noticed that inventors weren’t thinking the entire process through.

In an interview at CES 2013 with nibletz.com Siminoff told us that inventors sometimes go to Kickstarter with a great idea and a funding goal that barely covers cost. Their ideas get quickly validated by folks who oversubscribe on their project, but at the end of the day they go in the hole by netting down less than it costs to even make a product.

Other inventors may take a prototype product to Kickstarter that they had made at one factory but don’t take into consideration the factories that they may actually use when trying t scale a product up.

That’s why he created ChristieStreet, a crowdfunding site that is about inventors and their products. ChristieStreet uses a familiar crowdsourcing model once projects go live, however the team at ChristieStreet vets out the product answering questions like those above. Siminoff has real discussions with inventors before letting their projects go live, and even offers advice to young entrepreneurs with a great idea, on how to make the idea even greater and less costly.

To that end there are currently just three projects on ChristieStreet and each one has it’s own “cool” and “wow” factor. Right now there’s a wireless doorbell with camera that allows the user to view who’s at the door on their smartphone. They also have a bluetooth product that’s a headset with cool shapes like a skull and crossbones. The final project right now is a Powerbag type backpack on steroids complete with the capability of charging three devices at once, one of them being a laptop.

Siminoff says anyone with an actual invention can apply to ChristieStreet. In fact, in the video interview below he says how easy it is to get the product submitted and looked at. Siminoff and his team have seen their share of winners but also their share of products that most likely won’t make it out of the lab.

Check out our video interview from CES 2013 below.

Revestor Is Simplifying Real Estate For Investors On The Web And Mobile

If you’re in the market to buy or sell your home in a traditional way there are plenty of resources for you. When it comes to mobile we immediately think of Zillow. On the web there’s hundreds of websites that will easily access MLS listings for you and make it easier for you to do your own work on buying or selling your home before bringing a real estate agent into the mix.

For those looking to buy or sell real estate as investors though, the tools are quite limited.

San Diego startup Revestor is all about real estate from the investors perspective. The tools out there today allow investors to sift through hundreds of thousands of listings but they don’t take into consideration the important information for investors when it comes to looking for the best deals.

“Revestor is a multidimensional patent-pending real estate search engine that finds homes-for-sale by the highest potential cash flow based on the average rents in the area. Revestor can be accessed for free on the web or on the iPhone as a free App. Our goal in 2013 is to be the #1 ‘must have’ tool for real estate investors and real estate agents who work with real estate investors. Revestor solves one of the hardest problems in real estate investing: finding deals in the first place. Instead of spending hours sifting and sorting through multiple websites and archaic spreadsheets, Revestor does all the heavy lifting by presenting potential listings/opportunities to our users so they can go out and do their due-diligence. We simply give investors and agents a better place to start from. Users can expect User Profiles, Foreclosure Auctions, Advanced Searching, Alerts, and Advertising to be released in 2013.” Founder & CEO Bill Lyons told us in an interview.

We talked in depth with Lyons about Revestor, check out the interview below.

Startup Weekend Company Breadcrumbs, Lets You Know Where You’ve Been

A San Diego startup, called Breadcrumbs is helping people keep track of where they’ve been using their smartphone. It’s like automated checking in but could be more useful later on. Maybe you want to keep a journal of the places that you’ve been. Perhaps the next time you’re in a city or town you want to easily be able to recall a place you ventured into on your last trip. We travel so much around here that it’s easy to mistake some downtown areas with others.

Breadcrumbs is innovating at the EvoNexus incubator in San Diego, alongside other great startups like Nulu Languages, TomNod, Antengo, Barc, and Fashinoning Change. The company also received a $50,000 seed investment from Qualcomm Labs.

Breacrumbs is another success story out of Startup Weekend. Founder Joel Drotleff had pitched the original idea at San Diego Startup Weekend, citing the fact that he could never remember how long he spent at the dog park. The other co-founders joined him for the weekend project and now today they have a product in the Google Play store for Android and the iTunes App store.

Breadcrumb’s Sean Dominguez told nibletz in an interview:

“It’s a pretty cool story. We all met at Startup Weekend San Diego back in June when Joel, our CEO, pitched an idea for creating a self-tracking application since he never knew how long he was spending at the dog park. We all thought it was a cool idea, joined the team for the weekend, and ended up taking the Qualcomm sponsored prize that weekend – as well as another prize at Qualcomm’s event Uplinq two weeks later.”

Obviously they caught the most important eyes at Qualcomm who has continued to support the venture. We got a chance to have a more in-depth discussion with Dominguez check out the rest of the interview after the break.

California Startup: SportsBoard Brings The Coaches Clipboard Mobile & To The Cloud

About 8 years ago software entrepreneur Gregg Jacobs was watching his youngest son try out for club lacrosse and soccer teams in California. What he noticed back then was that coaches for both sports were feverishly keeping notes on clip boards, turning pages, and scribbling things down wherever they could. Jacobs knew from his software background that there had to be a better way, however smartphones were just on the cusp and tablets hadn’t even been invented.

FastForward to 2011. With smartphones growing increasingly fast and iPads taking a firm place in the home and in enterprise, Jacobs decided to revisit that idea, and started California startup SportsBoard.

SportsBoard, in it’s simplest form is a player relationship management system for coaches. Think SalesForce or ACT for coaches to manage players. The platform has a cloud based component and a mobile component which allows coaches to quickly make entries for later analysis from their iPhones or iPads. When they get home, back to the office, or the gym they can quickly sync to the cloud and manage their teams on a desktop or laptop computer.

SportsBoard is now optimized for ten different sports; Soccer, Basketball, Baseball, Lacrosse, Football, Ice Hockey, Field Hockey, Tennis, Volleyball and Rugby. Jacobs tells us that Softball is in the pipeline as well.

Over the last eight months over 100 Division I through Division 3 colleges have adopted SportsBoard as their player management system.

We got a chance to interview Jacobs about SportsBoard and growing his startup just far enough outside the valley, to be considered “everywhere else”

Interview With LA Startup Mobile Roadie, Powering Thousands Of Apps

Los Angeles startup Mobile Roadie is packed with talent and it shows. This mobile app development startup allows anyone to create a mobile app presence in just minutes. They already power over 5,000 apps and mobile websites across 40 countries. Huge brands like Harvard University, Red Bull, Cirque du Sleil, Wynn Las Vegas and even the Staples Center rely on Mobile Roadie to take them to the mobile screen, the hottest screen available in 2012.

Last May the company launched a native iPad creation platform and also a self service mobile website product. Their platform allows creators to integrate Youtube, Brightcove, Flickr, Ustream,Google News, Facebook, Twitter, RSS and more sources to bring content into apps.

The company has a presence in the US, UK, France, Spain, Australia, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Turkey, China and Japan.

We got a chance to interview Mobile Roadie, check out the interview below:

Memphis Grizzlies Star Rudy Gay Featured In Los Angeles Startup MyStorey

Rudy Gay, Memphis Grizzlies, myStorey, LA Startup,California startup,startup

Memphis Grizzlies star forward Rudy Gay will be featured in myStorey (photo: nibletz LLC)

A new startup in Los Angeles called MyStorey is set to debut with some celebrity heavyweights in the mix, including Memphis Grizzlies star forward Rudy Gay.

myStorey is a we-commerce platform where users build online stores through the stories of their lives. They allow people the unique opportunity to tag the things in their personal photos from Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, or their blog and aggregate those tags into a shoppable store so that others can discover and shop them too. Celebrities, bloggers, brands, and even everyday people have found immense value in myStorey’s ability to transform their digital content into shopping opportunities.

myStorey worked with Rudy Gay’s social team to leverage his social media content and use it to highlight the products from his everyday life. myStorey will highlight some of the clothing and accessories that Gay wears in everyday life along with some of the luxury items that help bring his swag like his Audermars Piguet watch.

Anyone can use myStorey, whether you’re the average Joe or a trendsetter, myStorey lets you highlight the things you wear everyday and then helps people discover those items and purchase them.

Other celebrities participating at launch include:

US Open Surf Champion Lakey Peterson
Fitness guru Chalene Johnson
Jacksonville Jaguars Quarterback Jordan Palmer
Miami Marlin’s player Bryan Petersen
Miami Marlin’s player Logan Morrison
Beauty Biz CEO and expert Sumita Batra
HoneynSilk.com fashion blogger Stephanie Liu
Beachmint’s Social Media Coordinator Vaneza Pitynski

myStorey seems like a very innovative platform, and with the star power they’ve recruited in the beginning they should be in good shape for a successful launch. We got a chance to talk with the team behind myStorey, check out the interview below.

California Teenage Serial Entrepreneur Creates EdTech Startup StatFuse

Jeet Banerjee is a 20 year old entrepreneur from Fullerton California, a town outside Los Angeles. He started his first startup at age 17 and sold it. Since then he’s had numerous other innovative ideas and he’s also written a book called “The Pursuit of Passion: Entrepreneurs Guide To Turn Hobbies Into Successful Businesses.”. Now he’s teamed up with 18 year old Supan Shah to create an EdTech startup called StatFuse, that really benefit students in their age group.

Their idea actually came out of a bet. Shah bet Banerjee that he could get into Harvard. There was a lot riding on this bet and neither young man wanted to wait the four months it takes to find out if he was accepted. They were shocked to find there wasn’t a website where they could quickly enter grades, extra curriculars and test scores to see if getting into Harvard was even a possibility.

Like all other great startups, this idea steam rolled into an entire suite of patent pending tools for prospective college students to use. Now StatFuse can estimate your chances at getting into a school, keep track of your applications, provide tips to improve chances of getting into colleges and even give virtual campus tours.

While there are other college preparation tools out there, StatFuse has been created by two incredibly intelligent founders who are currently at the age where their tools would be the most relevant.

We got a chance to interview Banerjee, check out our interview below.

California Startup: RaffleForGood, A New, Easy To Use, Raffling Platform

As the holiday season continues we will continue profiling as many social entrepreneurs and their startups as we can. Greg Hoffman and Ben Daniel are two of those entrepreneurs. Their California startup, RaffleForGood, is exactly what the name suggests, a raffle platform to do some good.

With the rise in use of the internet businesses big, small, for profit and non profit want to use the internets vast reach to offer prizes in raffles to raise money for charity. The problem is, that posting a product on the internet, and raffling it off isn’t just time consuming, but there are mountains of legal red tape that prevent companies from raffling things off at their own whim.

RaffleForGood handles all of that for their users. They’ve simplified the raffling system down to just about listing a prize and starting the raffle.

“Basically, Raffle For Good is an online fundraising platform for organizations to raise money through an interactive, skill-based raffle system. Companies donate items to causes they support. The causes then list the items on their personal Raffleforgood.com subdomain, at which point they direct their supporters to purchase tickets. It’s a fun reinvention of the raffle designed to make online fundraising more effective, engaging, and exciting, for all parties involved.” Hoffman told us in an interview.

Check out the rest of our interview with Hoffman below:

Los Angeles Startup: Upperatus Is Making A Difference With T-Shirts INTERVIEW

Yesterday we brought you the story about Utah based startup HeadCase who is trying to make a social difference with their unique, premium headphones. Today we’re turning to Los Angeles and social entrepreneur Jeff Kudlishevich and his LA startup Upperatus.

Kudlishevich’s startup, with a really cool name, is taking uniquely designed t-shirts, pairing them up for social causes, injecting celebrity spokespeople and donating a portion to charity. We’re not talking about 50 cents or a dollar, no that’s all been done before. Upperatus builds in $11 of each t-shirt sold to the paired up non profit organization.

This month Upperatus has teamed up with classical singer Nathan Pacheco and artist Dan Mccauley to donate $11 per shirt sold to Save The Bay (The Santa Monica Bay for those of you keeping track).

The Upperatus site describes this month’s charity below:

The Santa Monica Bay is the centerpiece of Los Angeles’ beach culture, and the geographic center of the LA region. Stretching from Malibu to Palos Verdes, the bay is where millions of Angelenos relax and work. Because of their economic, ecological and recreational value, our waterways and the ocean are critical resources worth protecting.

Santa Monica Bay beaches average 45 million visits per year

The Bay generates more than $1 billion in visitor spending annually.

Tourism accounts for more than 500,000 jobs in the greater L.A. area

The population of Los Angeles has skyrocketed in the past 100 years and it’s putting a lot of pressure on our environment. In the mid 1980s, improperly treated sewage led to dead zones in the Bay and harmful water quality. Thanks to the efforts of Heal the Bay and its supporters, the EPA mandated stricter sewage treatment processes, resulting in greatly improved water quality.

Despite the amazing gains, your Bay faces ongoing challenges, from marine debris to overfishing. The good news is that you can help protect our beaches and oceans. And remember, watersheds connect you to ocean, no matter if you live on the coast or 60 miles inland.

If you haven’t noticed, with the holidays upon us we’re featuring more social entrepreneurs. Upperatus is another great way for the slacktivists to get involved, and you get a cool shirt in the process. What makes Upperatus even better is that they’re changing the shirts and the causes every month so you aren’t stuck with the same shirt and your money going to the same cause.

We got a chance to interview Kudishevich. Check out the interview below.

With Election Over California Startup VIRURL Stages Banner Ads Protest At ad:tech

The votes have been counted and we have a new President, so what are the protestors going to do now. Well a Santa Monica startup in the ad space, called VIRURL used them to protest annoying banner ads on Thursday at ad:tech. ad:tech is one of the biggest digital advertising conferences in the world and is held annually at the Javits Center in New York City.

VIRURL is promoting a new “viral” ready content based ad unit called the SlideOut. The “Slideout” widget for web publishers is a tool designed to serve and monetize relevant partner content to site visitors unobtrusively. That partner content, in the form of a “recommended content” link is served to the user when they navigate to the bottom of the page, intuitively offering extra sponsored content that may be of interest. The feature has recently gone live on HollywoodAssistants.Tumblr.com, one of the most popular Tumblr blogs on the web.

VIRURL used the protest as an almost flash mob like way to garner attention for their new product. It looks like it worked.

“We’ve built a company on an entirely different premise. It’s a business model that empowers advertisers in a way that the broken banner model never could. The energy we ignited today is just the beginning of our revolution. Virurl’s tools and technology are delivering 20x engagement (in terms of click through) and those numbers speak for themselves.” VIRURL CEO and Co-Founder Francisco Diaz-Mitoma told Nibletz.com exclusively.

“This is the next step in killing off the banner ad, which is going on 20 years as the most popular way to ineffectively monetize the web. The web has evolved by leaps and bounds in those two decades and so should its advertising,” said Diaz-Mitoma. “Web consumers hate banner ads and publishers and advertisers don’t make money from them. The new VIRURL Slideout solves this problem by positioning paid content in such a way that it gets a visitor’s attention without diminishing their online experience.”

“VIRURL already offers a 20x increase in CTR engagement over traditional banner advertising, and a new option like the Slideout can only serve to increase that engagement. Every time a user clicks on that VIRURL ‘Slideout’ on a blog or Tumblr like ‘Hollywood Assistant,’ the publisher makes 60% of the revenue from that transaction,” added Diaz-Mitoma. “This is all done with just a snippet of code, not only maximizing profitability for publishers, but doing so with complete ease-of-use. VIRURL offers unprecedented transparency and customization to both advertisers and publishers, as well as those they are trying to reach.”

Linkage:

Check out VIRURL here

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LA Startup FindHire Hopes To Be The Next Generation HR Software INTERVIEW

Los Angeles startup FindHire is hoping to be the next generation HR software. The startup, founded by Michael Dennis and Ryan Herman, blends contact management, project management and sourcing software for recruiters. Their web based solution makes it easy to access anywhere, across multiple locations or just one in home office location. The scalability and features give FindHire a serious advantage over other similar platforms.

Dennis and Herman were childhood friends. Dennis went on in recruiting and Herman got into development. They came back together as adults to create FindHire.

We asked Dennis how he came up with the idea for FindHire and he said:

“With my HR industry knowledge, I wanted to make an impact on HR technologies. With so much time-wasting software available, I realized I needed to fix this broken process and help people enjoy recruiting again. This intrigued Ryan who is a programming guru, and with this notion, we started building the next generation of HR software. Our hope is to alter the way companies hire and make the process fun and easier to manage.”

Check out the rest of our interview with Dennis below.

Manage All Your Bookmarks, Logins & Passwords With LA Startup MySocialCloud

Over the years browsers have become much more intuitive. All of the commercially used browsers have a keychain feature which allows you to save your logins and passwords, and even pre-populates them for you when you visit websites frequently. The problem with this current password storage method is it’s a cinch for anyone who gets access to your computer to view all of your passwords. In fact, one of the only real negatives I have with Mac’s is that they keep a similarly unsecure key chain on your hard drive as well.

There are a few startups out there that are tackling this problem with various password vaults. Most of these options keep your passwords in one spot and you need to remember the password to your vault and then look up the password by service.

Los Angeles startup MyScocialCloud is looking to streamline this process for you by storing your logins in the cloud. They make your passwords easily accessible by a browser plugin or bookmarklet. The best part is that they also keep your bookmarks organized as well. You don’t have to go searching through a password vault to find the password. MySocialCloud gives you the simplicity of a browser side or hard drive based keychain, but in the cloud, and more secure.

We got a chance to talk with Stacey Ferreira, the founder of MySocialCloud about her startup. Check out the interview below: