Startups Archives - Page 143 of 144

CEA Opened Eureka Park In 2012

The Consumer Electronics Association, the producers of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), this year introduced a new area to CES. Over the years CEA has added several category specific areas to the ever-growing show floor. China, Korea and Japan all have their own areas in addition to the ability to spring for a full booth on the main show floor.

Eureka Park was housed in the Venetian hotel which was also home to the exhibits in the 70000 area and PMA which is the photography convention that merged with CES this year.

Putting Eureka park in the Venetian hotel as opposed to the convention center, allowed CEA to offer start-ups their own place to play and show off their wares, apps and ideas. It also allowed CEA to offer booth space at the largest trade show in the western hemisphere at a lower cost than the premium spaces at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

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Motorola Solutions Venture Capital Participates In $2.6 Million Round For Retailigence

Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, the VC arm of Motorola Solutions, has participated in a $2.6 million dollar round of financing for Retailigence Inc.

Retailigence Inc has partnered with 70 major retail firms to date. Their client base, which encompasses big names like Whole Foods, H&M and Nordstrom, just to name a few, gives Retailigence access to their inventory systems. Retailigence then extrapolates that data from the inventory systems and pushes it to the cloud. Once in the cloud apps like Shopsavvy, Pic2Shop and Layar access the data to offer end users real-time inventory data on the items they are searching for.

Retailigence has 20 employees at their Palo Alto headquarters. They are going to use this round of financing to improve analytics, and expand their reach into Asia.

“They have a great vision and the kind of data analytics that retailers want,” said Reese Schroeder, a managing director of Motorola Solutions Venture Capital. “We have a very broad reach into the market with so many retail customers. There’s a lot of opportunity for us to collaborate on bringing some of these next-generation solutions to our customers.”

Source: WSJ

Twitter Acquires Summify To Boost Content

Twitter has acquired news aggregator Summify. Summify is a Canadian based start-up that aggregates stories across social media based on the amount of shares. The more a story is shared across Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader the higher it ranks on Summify.

Summify has an iPhone app and began service as an email delivered summary of news.

Twitter’s acquisition will eventually result in the Summify website getting shut down and Summify employees relocating to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. Twitter hasn’t made a statement on how it will merge Summify into their current technology, but reports around the internet suggest it has something to do with Twitter’s new Discover tab.

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Uber Facing Outcry From DC Taxi Cab Association

Uber is one of those start-ups that many of us love. It works great in the major cities that they are already in. In fact our Editor in Chief, uses Uber in New York City without fail.

If you’re not familiar with Uber it is a car service that allows you to order up a car for where you need to go via an iPhone or Android app. There is a set rate of $7.00 for the initial trip and $3.25 per mile. The meter is tracked on your smartphone and the customer and Uber know exactly what is charged at the time of the trip.

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First Online Pawn Shop Pawngo Named Start Up To Watch By Inc Magazine

Pawngo, the world’s first online pawn shop, has just been named one of the top 7 start-ups to watch in 2012 by Inc.com.

Pawngo takes the uneasiness out of going to a brick and mortar pawn shop to sell or get a loan on your wares for times when you really need the money. It also helps protect people who want to sell their stuff from the sketchiness that can come from back alley Craigslist deals.

When you get started with Pawngo you tell the website what you have to sell. They make an assessment of the item you are pawning and then they email you an offer. If you accept the offer than they mail you a FedEx label to send your item to them for free. After that you get your cash.

Pawngo is backed by Daylight Partners, Access Venture Partners, and LightBank.

Pawngo CEO Todd Hills said “The entire team at Pawngo is both proud and excited by Inc.’s announcement. It shows how far we have come with our hard work and dedication to revolutionizing the pawn industry. While we will enjoy the honor we have already began looking forward to 2012 and how we can continue our already stellar performance in the industry.”

Got something you want to pawn? Try it here

Northern Kentucky Accelerator Looking To Jump Start Start Ups In Greater Cincinnati

A new start-up accelerator going by the name UpTech is hoping to fuel start-ups in “informatics” in the greater Cincinnati area.

UpTech is looking for up to 50 early stage start-ups in the northern Kentucky and Cincinnati area. They plan on investing up to $100,000 in each company. UpTech plans on having several rounds over the next three to five years and will have 10 winners overall.

UpTech already has investment experts and advisors lined up from CBS, Cisco, Dell and Proctor & Gamble. UpTech companies will also get support and advice from the new $60 million dollar College of Informatics at Northern Kentucky University.

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Self Funeral Planning Start Up To Be Featured In Season Premiere Of Shark Tank

When the next season of ABC’s Shark Tank starts two women from Minnesota will be pitching their unique start-up called Mywonderfullife.com.

Mywonderfullife.com was founded in 2008 by Sue Kruskopf and Nancy Bush. The website helps people plan their own funeral. Although the business is 4 years old these two women have been bootstrapping mywonderfullife.com as a side project and are hoping to get a much-needed cash flow injection from the judges on Shark Tank.

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Start Up: Hitch.me Uses Your Linked In Profile For Dating?

A new start up called Hitch.me is taking love and social networks to LinkedIN. Social networks are very important parts of everyone’s life. A few years ago you may not have wanted your parents to know that you met your fiance on match.com, today it’s almost common practice to date someone from Facebook or Twitter.

Dating, after meeting through a social network, can get the small talk and the uncomfortable part out of the way. After all social networks typically reveal your likes, your dislikes and your personality at a more comfortable level.

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Exclusive: Gigantic Crunchies Statue Almost Ready

In between designing the gigantic Android statues that sit on the lawn of Google’s building 44, sculptor Themendous has another big tech client. AOL’s TechCrunch has commissioned Themendous to design and sculpt larger than life sculptures for their events. Themendous did all of the sculptures for the 2011 TechCunch Disrupt events.

Now he is hard at work designing and sculpting a gigantic Crunchie award. The Crunchie sculpture will be on display at the TechCrunch Crunchie in a couple of weeks.

Themendous: Webpage Blog Twitter

CES 2012: Surf Easy Personal Internet Web Browser

At CES 2012 we met with the investors of a new start-up called Surf Easy. Surf Easy is a personal web browsing product.

The Surf Easy personal web browsing solution is actually Mozilla’s Firefox on a secure and encrypted USB flash drive. When you put the Surf Easy USB key into a Mac or PC it asks you for your password and then opens up your own personal, private and secure web browser. Unlike traditional web browsing, everything you browse while using Surf Easy is stored on the USB key.

The Surf Easy web browser keeps your cookies, passwords, and history safely on the key itself and send your information encrypted to their cloud based servers. This way whether you are using your own computer, a hotel computer or a friend’s computer your information stays with you.

Surf Easy also saves your bookmarks, and as much history as you would like so you can pick up where you left off. They were at CES 2012 in Eureka park with their private investors.

Surf Easy may miss the boat though, as the service costs $60. We’re not sure that the price makes it an attractive solution to something that can be easily replicated. We are also nervous about the fact that they wouldn’t allow us to self test.

CES 2012: Check Out WipNet Use Your Home’s Coax For Your Network

Wi-fi boosters that use your homes existing copper wire in your AC or electrical lines are nothing new. Motorola, D-Link, Linksys and just about every other company with a specialty in networking have introduced some kind of two box system that does just that. The folks at Wi3 Inc have designed something a little different that works a lot better.

The WiPNet system uses your homes existing coax cable lines to give you the option of a hardwired ethernet connection or a wi-fi connection at each box location.

The modular boxes connect to your homes coax via existing coax outlets. As you can see in the video there is an “on the wall” solution for the modular box as well as an above ground box for those that have coax cable that comes through the floor.

WiPNet uses a technology called “Mocha” that distributes the signal at its original speed throughout the coax lines.

You can find out more here

CES 2012: Check Out Cubelets Robot Construction Kits For Kids By Modrobotics

The erector set has stepped into the next century with a new product by Mod Robotics called Cubelets. Cubelets are a modular building block robotic construction kit for kids. Mod Robotics is targeting kids aged 8 and up but at they explain to us in the interview younger kids have enjoyed cubelets as well.

All kids like to start with putting blocks together. One of the reason brick blocks like Lego’s or Megablocks are so popular is because kids like “clicking” them together. Cubelets allows you to “click” together blocks like children are used to, however the nearly 30 different blocks are divided into three important categories Sense Blocks, Action Blocks and Think Blocks.

Some blocks have motorized wheels, others can be controlled by light, motion and proximity, while other blocks block communication. Each block has a different function which allows the constructed robot to do different things.

As kids use the cubelets longer they realize what each block does and have come up with some wild stuff.

Check out the video for a brief description and to see Cubelets in action. This is actually one of the coolest things we saw at CES this year.

CES 2012: ecoATM Lets You Recycle Your Old Phones And Pays You For It

One of the coolest things we saw at CES wasn’t at a booth, it wasn’t even in one of the halls, it was just a small machine near the entrance of the food court. This machine however, does some pretty awesome things, and we definitely think you’ll be seeing more of this machine in the future.

The machine I’m talking about, is the ecoATM. The ecoATM is a kiosk about the size of a Redbox that allows consumers to sell their old mobile devices and MP3 players to ecoATM for resale or recycling. The ecoATM can recognize over 5000 models of cell phones, and many of the major MP3 players. The way it works, is if you have an old cell phone, or a few old cell phones, you can take them to an ecoATM and the kiosk will scan, identify, and find the best market cell price for your device. The best part is the fact that it is all automated, with no assistance required. You just bring your phones in, and leave with cash.

When you first bring your phone to an ecoATM, you pick which device it is, and then receive a small ID sticker to place on the back of your device. The machine will then scan your phone, and after comparing your device with images and specs of a “perfect” model it was trained on, it will determine the condition of your device. Then a charging wheel will spin until your charger appears, and after plugging it in, it will determine if the device is still functional or not. After all of this is completed, the ecoATM will give you a price for how much your device is worth, and spit the cash out in the given dispenser. You can do this with multiple phones at a time as well and MP3 players and cell phones in the same transaction. Most of the phones are given a new home if in good enough condition, and if not ecoATM will recycle the phones so you can feel good about getting rid of your old phones, and have some extra cash in your pocket while you’re at it. ecoATM has told us they are currently in mostly west coast areas, and their goal is to work from west-to-east in the US, soon giving everyone a local ecoATM to stop by.

CES 2012: Autoref.com Makes Car Buying Easier

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjQ1c0U-_90&version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0]

One of the most painstaking things you can do in life is buy a new car. Of course the payoff is always great, you in a brand new car, it’s a big pain point for many consumers.

One of the most painful parts of the car buying experience is that actual haggling. You know what you want, you know what you want to pay but some car dealer feels he needs to take a good 4-8 hours of your day to show you cars you don’t want at prices you don’t want to pay. That’s where autoref.com comes in.

Now the “ref” part in Autoref has nothing to do with “reference” it actually stands for referee. The Autoref referee isn’t the referee between you and the car dealers, it’s between the dealers and the dealers. Autoref has designed a system to allow car dealers to bid against each other for your business.

It all starts with you signing up for Autoref. Once signed up you let Autoref know everything you can about the car you want and what you want to pay. From there you let them “hold” $33. If you actually test drive just one of the autoref bids you get the $33 back. If you’re serious about buying a car and won’t take a hassle free test drive the $33 is Autoref’s to keep.

Once the haggling between the dealers is over Autoref gives you a few recommendations of vehicles to buy. The recommendations include everything you need about the car from the car itself, to the features, the discount you’re getting and then your financing options based on credit.

It’s actually pretty easy and very pain relieving try it yourself autoref.com