Startups Archives - Page 127 of 144

Portland Startup: Churchkey Can Company Gets Tech Investors For Their Nostalgic Beer

This isn’t the first time that tech investors have backed a food and beverage startup. Tech Investors came out in droves to back Jonathan Kaplan, the creator/founder of the Flip video camera with his chain of grilled cheese restaurants called “The Melt”.

Entourage star Adrian Grenier and former Nike designer, Justin Hawkins have teamed up to found the Churchkey Can Company. Churchkey makes what’s being dubbed a “Pacific Northwest brewed Pilsner style craft beer”, however it’s not the beer itself that has everybody talking, but rather the can it’s packaged in. Churchkey Can Company is putting their beer into a flat topped churchkey opening can.

Before pull back lids you may remember having a can opener in the house that had a diamond shaped end on it. You would puncture the soup can on both sides and pour the soup our of one of the triangle shaped openings. The opposite opening made sure that the soup poured out smoothly. That’s the same idea behind Churchkey Can Company’s flat can. A style of beer can that dates back to the 1930’s.

ChurchKey Can Company’s flat top steel cans are made out of all recycled steel. Grenier and Hawkins turned to the Ball can company to manufacture the cans for them. According to some, the flat top can and the church key opening actually locks in the freshness.

“It’s about the joy of drinking good beer – from the people you drink it with, to where you drink it, and with this unique package, how you open it,” said Justin Hawkins, Churchkey’s co-founder and creative director. “We didn’t make these traditions, but are keeping them alive with Churchkey.”

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Israel Startup: SellARing Delivers Ads Over Ringback Tones INTERVIEW

While some may shrug at the thought of another ad network, an Israeli startup has created a way of advertising that some may find less obtrusive than push ads in notification bars and even banner ads on their favorite free apps. Sellaring utilizes the time that you’re waiting for another party to answer the phone to deliver up to a 10 second ad.

Now before you write it off, think about it for a second, that time you’re waiting for your party to answer the phone you can’t do anything else on your phone. If you do you’re multitasking and the ad would be reduced to background noise anyway so it’s really a better place to deliver an advertising message. There are over 300 advertisers who definitely think this is a good idea.

When you put SellAring next to other alternative forms of advertising you may not think it’s such a bad idea. SellAring also features a call to action at the end of the call so if you hear about a great deal in the ad while you’re waiting for your other party to answer, you can quickly act on that ad, or choose to ignore it. The choice is yours.

SellARing’s founder found out some interesting things about the ringback tone experience before creating SellARing. First off he found that the actual time the phone rings on the callers end isn’t an actual reflection of how long it takes for the other person to answer. You can actually test this theory at home by calling yourself from another phone. You’ll notice that in some cases even 5 seconds is wasted before the call initiates, even if the caller is available to answer on the first ring.

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Chicago Startup: Journatic Under Fire For Partnership With Chicago Tribune

Journatic, a chicago based new media startup that delivers content for some of the major newspapers across the country in a quasi-syndication form, has gone under fire for inking a partnership with the Chicago Tribune. In reading about this all over the internet it seems a bit crazy that they’ve had such blowback from Chicago.

The company produces content for cities all over the country including, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Miami and other large metropolitan areas.

The Tribune deal has come under fire because the newspaper giant laid off many of it’s local beat reporters in lieu of using the Journatic service. Journatic is actually based in the Chicago Tribune tower so the Tribune didn’t go far for this outsourcing, and unfortunately it’s the way many papers are going, as they lose more and more readership to the internet.

It was widely reported that Journatic’s executive editor Peter Behle offered Journatic staffers a $50 bounty to not engage in conversation about the upcoming lucrative deal with the Tribune and instead talk to a supervisor. They probably didn’t want Tribune reporters asking Journatic reporters about the deal out on smoke breaks in common areas in the Tribune Tower.

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Startup Quickbyte: Austin Startup: InView Technology Raises $2M For Compressive Sensing Technology

A two year old Austin based tech startup called InView Technology has announced that they’ve raised $2M in funding to further it’s research on compressive sensing technology. InView’s compressive sensing technology uses advanced mathematics to calibrate sharp photographic images.

InView Technology plans to start building prototypes of their technology in June and start production in August. Their compressive sensing technology will be important in surveillance, maritime navigation pollution monitoring and public safety. Their technology makes it easier to take sharp photographs in low light conditions and even detect images hidden by smoke of fog.

“Compressive sensing will revolutionize the architecture of cameras used in a wide range of applications, including surveillance, maritime navigation, materials research, medical imaging and pollution monitoring,” said InView CEO Bob Bridge.

InView just presented their technology at the SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing Conference in Baltimore Maryland this past week.

This $2 million dollar round was led by El Paso based Cottonwood Capital Partners. Q-Tel, which led the company’s first $4 million dollar round also participated as did Texas’ emerging technology fund.

Source: Austin Statesman

Boulder Startup: Orbotix Has A Fan In President Obama

Boulder Colorado based startup Orbotix Has been working on their smartphone controlled ball called Sphero for the better part of the last two years.

The company had a working prototype at the International Consumer Electronics Show in 2011. Last Fall they started filling their preorders. These days they are continuing to support their developers in bringing fun interactive apps to the ball.

An iPhone or Android can control the $130 ball. Through a smartphone app you can drive the ball, rotate the ball and play games like golf, and drive the cat absolutely crazy.

One of the most fun things to do with the ball is drive it down the sidewalk and watch the people’s reaction.

That’s exactly what President Obama did with the ball. He had originally noticed someone else controlling the ball. Obama remarked how cool the ball was and of course they let him try it.

“Excuse me — give me some space to drive my ball,” Obama said to the crowd of onlookers before taking control of the ball via iPhone, reports the DenverPost.

Sphero joins a host of other smartphone controlled toys. Orbotix may have hit the big time with their latest fan.

Check out the video here at the source: DenverPost

Dallas Startup: Qwiqq Check Into The Things You Love And Buy; Is Great For Merchants Too

In 2012 using your mobile smartphone you can check into almost everything. You can check into venues, concerts, stores, malls, the music you like and the tv shows you love. Now you can check into the things you buy and love with Dallas’ Qwikk.

The Dallas startup, founded by John Phan and Jack Wrigley, launched in 2010, right as another startup focusing on things people like was starting to bubble. Yes I am referring to Pinterest. But here’s the deal. I’m a 30 something year old man and while I have a Pinterest account, I feel out of place on the network that is admittedly geared towards women.

Qwiqq isn’t like that. It’s about sharing the deal you just got or the great thing you just bought. Perusing Qwiqq is not about just beautiful dresses and recipes for cupcakes. Qwiqq’s intuitive and easy to navigate user interface allows you to post about anything. Categories include health, food, bar, fashion, beauty, arts and entertainment, sport, tech, pet, home and car. So yes dudes and geekettes can post about their favorite phone, computer or that sweet ride.

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Oregon: StartupWeekend Near LockDown; Man Threatened Explosions And Guys

It’s unclear if the man removed from this weekend’s startup weekend event in Portand Oregon was a contestant or not. Oregonlive.com is reporting that a man who was removed from the event started tweeting threats of explosions, guns and violence.

The threatening tweets have been removed however as a precaution the rest of the event is near lockdown with only one guarded entrance being used for the remainder of the event.

According to the report, police responded to Portand’s first StartupWeekend event at 10:39am this morning. The man had gotten loud with event organizers and eventually left on his own. Later in the afternoon he started tweeting things that had event organizers concerned.

One of the organizers told oregonlive.com “They were very strange posts that were interpreted as maybe threatening to the people at the meeting,”

Portland State University beefed up security at the event and the StartupWeekend organizers offered refunds to anyone who didn’t want to stay after the disruption. From what we can tell the event has continued.

Portland Police spokesperson Sgt. Pete Simpson said “There’s no criminal act based on what the officer learned from talking to the people, but certainly concerning enough that calling the police was the right thing to do,”. Police apparently contacted the man again who said he has no intention on returning to the event location.

source: OregonLive

Austin Startup: Tabbed Out Fuels TGIFridays New Mobile App, With Pay On Phone

one of the largest casual dining chains in the country announced the availability of their exciting new app. While many restaurants have mobile apps, TGIFridays is the first national casual dining chain to include mobile payments as part of the app.

Now, with the new app, customers can order on their phone while in the restaurant, and then pay the bill via their phone. The self ordering eliminates any confusion between you, the server and the kitchen. The mobile payment part insures the safety of your credit card information. It also means that you can pay or leave quicker. How many times have you had dinner and a movie hindered because you waited so long for the server to bring your credit card back?

The best part of it is that Fridays used the Austin startup Tabbedout to integrate their mobile app and the ability for mobile check out. With the availability of ISIS just around the corner, mobile wallet is going to become more and more popular.

“This new app puts the Friday experience at guests’ fingertips – whether they’re looking for the closest Friday’s to celebrate and indulge or if they want to pay their bar tab quickly,” said Ricky Richardson, chief operating officer at T.G.I. Friday’s.

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We Are At CityGrid Hackathon LA All Weekend Long

This weekend, we’ll be at the CityGrid Los Angeles Hackathon which brings together people of all different backgrounds, in a move to make local discovery better via both the Web as well as the Mobile space. From Friday the 27^th of April till Sunday the 29^th individuals who’ve never meet will take part in build products for the future.

North Carolina Startup: Mobile Foods To Tackle Tracking The Food Truck

The mobile food vending space is growing ten fold every year. According to the National Restaurant Association there are some 15.6 million Americans that eat at mobile food vendors already. Mobile food vending has exploded in the last five years, no longer are we talking about just hot dog carts, food trucks have become the in-thing these days.

According to research prepared in Mobile Foods’ presentation for the Duke Startup Challenge session that just ended there are somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 mobile food vendors in the US. There are 20,000 in Austin, Dallas, Houston and Los Angeles County alone.

One of the tricky parts with your favorite food truck is finding out where it is on any given day. Now if you have a regular truck that you eat at you probably know where they are going to be, maybe they post their schedule on the truck, online or have some kind of email list that you can subscribe to. Mobile Foods hopes to solve the Food Truck location problem for you.

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Las Vegas Startup: Rumgr Is Like A Garage Sale On Your Phone

We constantly hear about Google alumni and Facebook alumni who have moved on to greener pastures with their own startups. Today we turn to Las Vegas and a new mobile startup called Rumgr. It’s founders are alumni of online shoe site zappos.com

The startup was born out of an idea from co-founder Dylan Bathurst. Las Vegas’ 8newsnow.com (which for a tv station does a kick ass job of covering Vegas startups) reports that Bathurst was looking to unload some old housewares that he was storing with a buddy. He didn’t want to wake up early and have a garage sale, and most likely didn’t want to deal with a bunch of fake buyers wanting to paypal him $5,000 for his microwave in Nigeria, using craigslist.

So what he decided to do was take a bunch of pictures of the stuff he was selling and put those pictures on his phone. He showed off his wares to his friends and was able to sell everything. That’s when he thought to himself that this kind of thing would make a great app.

Bathurst teamed up with Ray Morgan and Alex Coleman two other developers who previously worked at Zappos the Las Vegas online shoe retailer. The three co-founders liken Rumger to a gigantic yard sale on a free app.

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Startup Interview: Meshin’s CEO Chris Holmes, Plus You Could Win An iPad!

Most app developers and development companies have been going to iOS before the Android platform. Trends are showing that’s starting to change. One of the companies that has released to Android before iPhone is Meshin.

Meshin’s co-founder Kristen Galliani explained to Nibletz.com that Apple doesn’t allow apps to call into other apps, that was one of the main reasons they needed the more open architecture of Android to build Meshin, an email and message aggregator, and Meshin Recall. Meshin Recall syncs with Evernote and helps organize your notes by using dates from your calendar. There is a lot more in store for Meshin Recall. The Meshin team is on the tip of the iceberg of the contextual intelligence space.

Meshin is about to unveil their Meshin Recall product for iOS and they are currently looking for Beta Testers to sign up. If you sign up for the iOS beta and refer the most people you could win one of those flash “New iPads” go here to do that.

Meshin came out of the Palo Alto Research Center with their biggest chunk of funding coming from Xerox (remember that little company that makes copiers and fathered the Mac?). PARC needed someone to bring Meshin to life and that someone is Chris Holmes.

With more than 25 years in the tech start up arena and some huge accomplishments under his belt he was the perfect fit.

Check out the interview after the break

Ohio Startup: Former Navy Seal Starts Earl Energy, CleanTech Generator Company

Doug Moorehead is a retired Navy Seal from Cambridge Ohio. He also happens to hold a materials science degree from MIT and an MBA from Harvard. Wired reports that his military service spanned South America, the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea.

As the President of CleanTech startup Earl Energy he is drawing from his experiences in desolate areas, military training, and education to create solar diesel generators. During his military duty he would see enormous generators powering very little. Also as part of his military duty he would guard “countless” fuel convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those convoys would be transporting fuel at $35 a barrel or more. They also had a casualty rate of one soldier for every 24 convoys.

Keep in mind in the desert the fuel isn’t just powering vehicles, it’s powering everything.

The biggest load on the traditional fuel based generators employed by the armed forces is the constant running of the engines. Moorehead has created generators with solar panels on top. In addition to the solar panels the battery mechanism he has created only require the engine to run in short bursts. While traditional generators run for 24 hours at a time, Moorehead’s generator engines run for 4 to 5 hours a day, drastically reducing the amount of fuel needed to power them.

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St.Louis Startup: Busy Event Is A Complete Event Management Solution Designed By Industry Veterans

Let’s face it at this point in time event apps are a dime a dozen. There are good established event apps like Eventbrite and there are some new comers to the space that may prove to be disruptive. On the other side of the spectrum it seems that anyone who’s hosted a birthday party for their three year old has come up with an event app. BusyEvent is actually neither.

The St.Louis startup was founded by Brian Slawin and David Schenberg two St.Louis area event industry veterans with over 40 years of experience. There complete approach to events works off the idea that you need to do more than sell tickets and check people into the door in order to have a great event. BusyEvent is part of the Microsoft BizSpark program. They are more than just an event app. Slawin tells Nibletz.com:

“BusyEvent is a live events technology company. We have developed a mobile web app for event producers that helps make their events easier to manage and more profitable to produce. Our premier product, gomobile.pro, puts an entire tradeshow into your phone, making it easier to find and connect with the people, products and information event participants are interested in.”

We got a chance to interview Slawin about BusyEvent and here’s what he told us:

Who are the founders of BusyEvent and what are your backgrounds?

Brian Slawin: Since the mid-90s, Brian has been working in the events industry, designing, building and managing tradeshow programs and technology products for dozens of Fortune 1000 clients like Domino’s Pizza, HP, Ameriprise and H&R Block, Toyota AirSports and many others. A strong operational leader with a clear communication style, he has successfully managed cross-functional teams, has a demonstrated aptitude as a hands-on software engineer and managing the use of numerous technologies.

David Schenberg: David is a veteran of the events industry with 20 years of experience designing, managing and selling technology that motivates people to meet and do business together. He has experience with major brands like AB, HP, M&M Mars, Domino’s Pizza, H&R Block, Ameriprise Financial, Marriott and Ritz Carlton. He leads the way in the use of emerging technology and his clients trust him to help navigate the ever changing landscape.

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