everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference Announced February 10-12th 2013 In Memphis Tennessee

MEMPHIS TN, & EVERYWHERE ELSE- “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” has been announced for Sunday February 10, 2013 through Tuesday February 12, 2013 and has already attracted an all star line up of speakers, panelists, investors,startups and entrepreneurs. The conference will take place in the heart of beautiful Memphis Tennessee at the Memphis Convention Center.

The three day conference will feature over 30 panels, keynote addresses, roundtable and fireside chats geared towards the challenges that entrepreneurs, startups and even investors face outside Silicon Valley. The conference will also include three signature networking events as well as a three day startup exhibition featuring 100 startups from “everywhere else”. Startups from every stretch of the country, and as far away as Israel and Romania have already committed to exhibit in the Startup Village.

Startup America CEO and founding CTO of Priceline Scott Case will keynote at the event. Best selling author and motivational speaker Tracy Myers,Rohit Bhargava,Bill Harris former CEO of Paypal and Intuit and many more, will also speak at the event. everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference will continue to announce speakers over the next two months.

Startups, startup founders, accelerator heads and investors will round out three fun filled and educational days in Memphis Tennessee on topics ranging from “raising money everywhere else”, “what I learned in an accelerator”, “what investors outside the valley expect”, “startups: life after hip hop, music and sports”, “kick ass female founders from everywhere else” and more.

There will also be three startup pitch contests with finals taking place at the conference; “The Best of Everywhere Else”, “The Startup Village People Awards” and the “Top of Tennessee” startup pitch contests will have their finals take place at the conference in front of a panel of well known angels, VC’s and celebrities. With the three startup contests over $100,000 in cash and prizes will be given away.

The Best Of Everywhere Else contest will begin with video pitches on November 1, 2012.

The Top Of Tennessee pitch contest will be open to startups throughout the state of Tennessee and will begin during Global Entrepreneurship Week.

In the Startup Village People Awards, Startup Village companies will compete for $25,000 in cash and prizes by audience participation vote via the official conference app.

“everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” has made both exhibiting and attending affordable for even the boot-strapping startup from “everywhere else”. Attendee tickets are $60 with an early bird rate of $39 for all three days. Startup Village booths are $480 with a few $295 pre-sale booth spaces still available. An earlybird rate for Startup Village booths of $350 will continue through October 31st.

Linkage:

Check out everywhereelse.co

Attendees get your attendee tickets here at the special early bird rate

Startups, here’s a link for $295 startup village booth space that ends Tuesday at 11:59pm

Atlanta Startup LaunchTable Launches Connect, Communicate, Collaborate

Back in May we got a chance to interview Atlanta based entrepreneur Ian Jones about his exciting new startup called LaunchTable. While there are several startups out there competing in the collaboration space, Jones has created LaunchTable to make it easier to not just collaborate but to communicate and connect as well.

Most of the other collaboration startups out there allow users to collaborate based on teams that they already have in place. Take Facebook Founder Dustin Muskovitz’s startup Asana. Asana is a great tool that allows users to collaborate in a way very similar to Google Wave. Of course with Asana you have the team in place already.

When you sign up for a user account at LaunchTable here, you immediately receive recommendations on other people that you should collaborate with. If the automagical recommendations don’t suit your needs you’re welcome to browse the entire community for the right match without limits.

Once you’ve synced up with a new team LaunchTable makes it easy to keep track of your projects. Everything is saved on your groups “Launch Table” to make it easier to continue working and collaborating. You can also send “LaunchMail” to your teammates ask questions and interact in their forums.

LaunchTable also baked in the collaboration platform that allows you to hold virtual meetings within your LaunchTable. As with everything else in LaunchTable your meetings are saved for later as well.

LaunchTable also wants to be a resource to entrepreneurs and startups around the globe. They’ve opened up their “blog” for any LaunchTable user to contribute their own content to the site.

“Launch Table is for anyone working on any project that could use the help of another individual or a multi-person team. We’ve heard from people seeking startup partnerships, business owners looking to converse on best practices, and even teachers wanting to know what works well in other classrooms. Launch Table tears down geographic and social barriers.” Jones told nibletz.com in an interview.

Whether you’re looking for startup co-founders, someone to do a school project with or a team to launch a community initiative, or really anything else that requires collaboration, check out LaunchTable.

Linkage

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Boston Startup: Toursphere Lets You View MOBA’s Bad Art Anywhere

Back in June we brought you the story about Boston startup Toursphere, the virtual tour guide app. This startup lets tour go-ers take waking tours at their own leisure, and at their own pace by putting the tour on a mobile app.

Toursphere’s CEO and Founder Rob Pyles began with setting up tours of Boston using influential Boston locals and celebrities to actually narrate the tours. Dicky Barrett, the front man for the popular Ska band the Mighty Mighty Bosstones is one of the featured tour voices in the Boston tours.

Toursphere also has a way that other municipalities and museums can utilize the TourSphere platform and create their own tours easily. That system has already been implemented in Chicago, Miami, New Orleans and Washington DC as well as other major cities.

Now, instead of just providing a tour for people that have come to a destination, TourSphere has teamed up with the Museum of Bad Art in Boston to bring a virtual tour of the world’s worst art, out of Boston, virtually across the world by way of mobile app. The museum, which has an enormous following, will now be able to let those loyal fans iew the museum from the palm of their own hand. Built on the mobile DIY app platform TourSphere, the Museum of Bad Art’s app gives art enthusiasts everywhere a glimpse into one of the city’s quirkiest attractions from anywhere in the world.

“One of the best things about TourSphere are the unique, out-of-the-way museums and tourist sites that often build apps on our platform,” says TourSphere CEO Robert Pyles. “Our platform enables some smaller and lesser-known museums to create state-of-the-art mobile tour apps that are entertaining and informative and help to engage a wider audience than they otherwise would be able to reach. We give fans in other states and countries a way to check out artwork from all over the world with narration, history and other features you’d normally get on a live tour.”

The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) has three brick and mortar galleries in the Boston area as well as an online gallery. Its app provides short and humorous narrations of each of the pieces of art. MOBA’s TourSphere app provides a glimpse into the world of bad art to its tens of thousands of fans worldwide, many of whom are unable to visit the galleries in person.“We’ve always made use of technology,” says MOBA’s Permanent Acting Interim Executive Director, Louise Reilly Sacco. “TourSphere’s app for MOBA provides a richer experience for visitors to our galleries as well as access from anywhere in the world.”

Toursphere and MOBA will launch the app on October 17th.

Linkage

Fans can get the virtual tour app here

Find out more about Toursphere and MOBA here

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North Carolina Startup Accelerator: RevTech Labs Graduates Wednesday

When we were in Charlotte North Carolina for the 2012 Democratic National Convention we got to work out of Packard Place, a gigantic incubator for high growth potential startups in beautiful Uptown (read downtown but that’s what the natives call it), Charlotte North Carolina. Packard Place is home to two accelerators, one focusing on social entrepreneurship while the other one, RevTech Labs, is Charlotte’s first traditional co-hort based tech startup accelerator.

RevTech Labs announced the program back in May. The first class of 7 startups were able to move in the entire month of June and the program kicked off officially on July 2nd. The startups took a one week break (at least from the space) during the DNC when hundreds of bloggers moved into a temporary news room set up in the space.

The accelerator took some cues from other already established accelerators in their inaugural session. For starters, they required that every startup have a developer as a founder or a developer as a co-founder and present at the accelerator. Many accelerators in the past have allowed startups without developers to move into their programs. In some cases the startups spent much of their time in the accelerator either outsourcing development or dealing with the headaches of managing outsourced developers.

RevTech Labs also housed mentor startups in the same space. MailVu and DealCloud were two of the startups selected to mentor those in the cohort. They were able to secure space in the accelerator in exchange for helping their fellow startups.

Wednesday the seven startups in the first class will show off what they’ve been working on throughout the summer. Not only that but Packard Place, and RevTech Labs have partnered with the NC region of the Startup America Partnership, Startup NC, to host a startup expo alongside demo day. Another 10-20 local NC startups will get to exhibit during the three hour event Wednesday afternoon from 2-5pm.

Investors, entrepreneurs and potential customers will hear pitches from these 7 startups:

Viddlz

Welcome to the local community marketplace for scrumptious food. Our viddles (food) are prepared and grown by your neighbors, the bakers, farmers and artisans living virtually next door. Charlotte is the first stop and the Viddlrs (local bakers) provide homemade, beautiful baked goods. Viddlz makes it simple and economical for quality food providers to start or grow a great food business.

Dataset/IO

Dataset/IO provides beautiful, simple and powerful data solutions for the Capital Markets. Our solutions offer the ability to manage enterprise data quickly and easily – scaling on demand – while placing the control firmly back in the hands of our data team.

Spatially

Spatially is developing a better interface for product search in today’s touch-driven world. The technology uses [a technique known as] faceted search and displays search results in a highly interactive 2D interface.

DogDashGame

Dog Dash represents a new genre in mobile gaming by introducing a 3D-audio only concept. Users will have to utilize their auditory skills to navigate them through oncoming traffic and away from the pursuing cops. Head phones are required for the true 3D-audio experience and the game is expected to launch on the iPhone this summer.

The Torch

The Torch helps you plan for the unplanned. The Torch is an online and mobile application that makes it easy to organize your “What if?” plan and share it with the people closest to you, so they will know what to do in an emergency.

Flavma Inc.

Flavma Inc. revolutionizes pharmacy software. We’ve built the first Medicare Part D Plan Finder for the iPad. Currently, we are working with Independent Pharmacies to improve their processes and quality of patient care using modern technology.

Autopilot

Autopilot allows you to book a vetted, professional driver on demand when you can’t, shouldn’t, or simply don’t want to drive your own vehicle. You can reserve a driver with the push of a button, track their arrival, and enjoy the benefits of automated, cashless payments all from your mobile device.

The demo day event will be held at Packard Place and if you would like an event you can email them here

Linkage:

Memphis Prepares For 48 Hour Launch October 12th-14th

We’re just a couple of weeks away from Memphis’ next 48 hour launch. We were at the last 48 hour launch hosted by Launch Memphis at Emerge Memphis back in June. That 48 hour launch saw four teams of entrepreneurs present Happy Potty, Screw Pulp, YaDoog and LostPetCast.

Very similar to Startup Weekend, 48 Hour Launch puts a room full of entrepreneurs, designers, developers and coders together for 48 hours of hacking together a business.

Friday evening all of those registered for 48 Hour Launch will eat dinner, get to know each other and then pitch their ideas in 60 seconds or less to the room full of attendees. After all of the ideas are pitched, everyone in the audience will get a chance to vote for their favorite startup ideas. At the end of the voting process, an based on how many people are registered, ideas will be chosen that will be developed over the weekend.

Saturday teams will work on customer validation and building product. They’ll have community mentors around to answer legal questions, marketing questions and anything else they can think of.

Sunday, the teams will make their final pitches to show off the work they did over the previous 47 hours.

That’s typically where the traditional “Startup Weekend” ends. Startup Weekend events end with the judging of the final pitches. That’s not where 48 Hour Launch ends though.

After the weekend the 48 Hour Launch teams are invited to utilize the other resources from Launch 48 and it’s parent company Launch Your City. These resources include office hours from experienced entrepreneurial and startup advisors, free office space in the drop in LaunchPad co-working space and some 48 Hour Launch teams may decide to apply to Seed Hatchery, Memphis’ cohort based accelerator.

While some “Startup Weekend” events are held in incubators and can pull resources, Launch Memphis makes 48 Hour Launch a natural introduction into the Memphis’ Startup Ecosystem.

Memphis’ Startup Ecosystem is spearheaded by the efforts of Eric Matthews, Andre Fowlkes and Elizabeth Lemmonds, the team behind Launch Your City. Matthews has been an integral part of the Memphis entrepreneur and startup scene for nearly a decade. He founded Launch Your City in 2006 and before that was a director at the FedEx Institute of Technology on the campus of the University of Memphis.

Fast forward to 2012, and while many cities are just laying roots in a startup ecosystem, Launch Your City has their Launch Memphis efforts, which often plays quarterback to many of the regions entrepreneurial and startup events. Launch Memphis also organizes meetups, runs a mentor network, a co-working space, and provides countless other resources to young, high growth potential startups.

Launch Your City also runs Seed Hatchery and collaborates with other area resources for C2 and Zeroto510 accelerator programs as well.

These twice yearly 48 Hour Launch events, serve as a great place for new entrepreneurs to get their feet wet and get exposed to all that Memphis has to offer. One of the great things about these particular events is the way that others who have participated in any of the Launch Your City programs come out to support the growing startup community.

48 Hour Launch boasts that for just $40 you can:

Launch brand new tech-supported companies, contributing toward our local innovation economy and creating jobs;
Learn by doing, experiencing firsthand entrepreneurial principles that can be applied to any endeavor or work environment;
Connect with like-minded and talented professionals, developing your network;
Play an active role in Memphis’ entrepreneurial community, volunteering your current skills while learning new ones;
Eat and drink well, including all meals and copious amounts of coffee and Red Bull; and
Be a part of something this collaborative, creative and cool?!

You don’t have to live or work in Memphis to participate in 48 Hour Launch. People from as far away as Alabama and Atlanta have come to Memphis for weekend startup hackathon events.

There’s still space left. Hit the link below

Linkage:

Check out our 48 Hour Launch coverage from June 2012

Check out Launch Your City here

No One covers high growth tech news for the southeast like we do, here’s more

We Need Startup SWAG!!!!!

As many of you know we’re on a nationwide sneaker strapped startup road trip and it’s about to pick up for a long three month run. In the next three months we will be in Cincinnati, Austin Texas, San Diego, Portland, Nashville (again), Milwaukee, Columbus, Boston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and most likely Florida.

We will be at accelerator demo days, startup weekends, 48 hour launch events, Global Entrepreneurship week events, CTIA MobileCon, SXSWEco and many more events.

What startup wouldn’t like to have their t-shirt in front of the thousands of people, startups and investors that we’ll see during this leg of the trip. Heck you may even be lucky enough to have your startup swag featured in one of our many videos that stay on YouTube forever.

So here’s what you gotta do. Send us your SWAG. Send an email to startups@nibletz.com and let us know that you want to send us SWAG. We’re looking for t-shirts (of course), hats, hoodies, shoes, whatever you’ve got. We need at least two if you’re sending shirts and XL and XXL are our preferred sizes. We actually have three co-founders, and our third insists he’s a medium (he’s lying so send a large along for him).

When we get your SWAG in the mail we’ll write a nice story about you, featuring your SWAG and if your SWAG really rocks we’ll do a video, and maybe even have Mr. Voice our voice guy do a little intro to your SWAG wearing video.

The cooler the SWAG the more we’ll wear it. Let me just clue you in a little bit.

I wear my “Why Combinator” shirt from Wahooly at least twice a week, more when we’re on “tour”.
I love the softness of my big green RentStuff t-shirt
We love the Justdecide t-shirts because it’s bad ass that it says “Born in Brooklyn” on the back.
We wear our dog tags from Rawporter and always pack Rawporter Condoms (LOL)
and so much more, but it’s time to re-up the wardrobe so if you’ve got SWAG and you want to be featured just email us. It’s that easy. startups@nibletz.com

Our laptops could probably use some sticker changing too. You probably know we have an enormous social audience (110k +) and get a lot of hits on the site, but on the road real people see us all the time, and now they’ll see your stuff too.

Linkage:

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

Send us an email to send us your swag at startups@nibletz.com

Show your swag off personally HERE

Steve Case Continues To Advocate For Startups Everywhere Else

Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, Revolution, The Case Foundation and the Chairman of the Startup America Partnership, spoke today at the Empact Summit. Empact is an event in Washington DC that promotes youth entrepreneurship and connects innovators of today with future innovators of tomorrow.

Case is currently on a nationwide road trip where he is promoting entrepreneurship and Startups across the country. Case finds different ways to drive home the same mission everywhere he speaks.

This time around though, Upstart, the startup and high growth division of the Business Journals, , reports that Case is concerned. He doesn’t want the US to get too cocky, as their are other countries that have startup and entrepreneurial ecosystems growing nearly as fast as the US.

We’ve seen first hand countries like Israel, Romania, Greece, the UK, and other countries launching startups, and supporting them with accelerators, incubators and of course cash.
“The United States of America was a startup 200 years ago,” said Case, reports upstart., “We didn’t just wake up and become the leading economy in the world. It was entrepreneurs…who drove enormous economic growth.”

Case’s life is filled with startups. Outside of launching the widely used Internet service provider, Case’s Revolution, is a venture capital firm that invests in high growth potential startups like ZipCar, across the country. Case and his wife Jean’s philanthropic foundation, The Case Foundation is a founding partner of the Startup America Partnership.

Just like keynote at Capital Connection/TechBuzz in May, Case was very supportive of startups outside of Silicon Valley. While Case said that the startup activity in Silicon Valley was “awesome” he also said it was “vital to support entrepreneurial centers around the country”.

Linkage:

Source: Upstart

Here’s more Startup America coverage from Nibletz.com

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Insider Louisville To Continue Spirit Of IdeaFestival With Call For Social Pitches

If you’re looking for a great startup ecosystem in the middle of the country to check out, Louisville Kentucky is one of the top cities on our list. Kentucky has one of the most active Startup America partnerships. They have some great acceleration efforts going on state wide, and they’ve brewed some great startups like Impulcity, WhyWait and Beam just to name three that fall off the top of our heads.

That’s why it’s no surprise the folks at Insider Lousiville are gelling off the success of the most recent IdeaFestival. Now that the festival is over they want to continue the forward momentum and spark innovation. To that end Insider Louisville is now calling for social entrepreneurs to pitch their startups for the possibility of investment, incubation, free office space and more.

In this blog post, Insider Louisville writes:

Give us your detailed plan for a self-sustaining, social-impact business based on the concepts of social entrepreneurism.

If we believe your idea has potential, we’ll get you face time with major philanthropists, entrepreneurs and economic development including Ted Smith, director of Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government’s Department of Economic Development and Innovation.

If your business plan is viable, investors and management gurus will help you forge your idea into a working enterprise … a startup with a reasonable amount of time and capital to prove its worth.

Smith went on to say; “Idea Festival was the appetizer – bring on the main course and let’s take a social impact business to the next level.”

Ideafestival just wrapped up last week in Lexington Kentucky. The four day startup and innovation conference featured a wide variety of panels, keynotes and other resources for just about anyone in Kentucky at any level in starting their own business or startup.

As for this call to action by Insider Lousiville, they’re specifically looking for social startups. They are looking for ideas that echo the fundamentals behind startups like Waterstep, a Louisville startup that oversees water purification in third world countries, or the now nationally famous Tom’s shoes that donates a pair of shoes to children in need for every pair of shoes you purchase.

Insider Louisville says that they’re looking for ideas from anywhere and the right idea could result in the startup getting help to move to Louisville Kentucky to build it out.

“This isn’t just empty Chamber of Commerce sloganeering. This is a call to action at the nexus where capitalism meets practical, sustainable social change.” Insider Louisville says.

Ready to submit? Check the link below.

Linkage

Source: Insider Louisville

Got an idea, email it to cheryl@insiderlouisville.com

More Kentucky coverage from Nibletz, the voice of startups “everywhere else”

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DC Entrepreneur: Sarah Ware Makes Her Markerly Over 2800 Miles For 500 Startups

Sarah Ware’s mobile office set up in Littleton CO on the way to 500 startups

Nearly two weeks ago the woman behind Washington DC startup Markerly and her gal pal Megan set out on an epic journey. These two twenty something women set on a cross country road trip only rivaled by Thelma and Louise. Except this was 2012, and Ware managed to work throughout the entire trip.

In between camp sites, horseback riding, boating, hiking, and picture taking, Ware was constantly working to prepare her social highlighting startup for the real journey which begins soon in Mountain View California.

Ware and Markerly join a nice sizable handful of startups from the Washington DC area that have caught the eye of Dave McClure and his 500 startups.

While we’re preparing another epic journey of our own to cover a bunch of accelerator demo days from accelerators that have been working all summer long, McClure and the 500 startups fall 2012 class are just starting to arrive. They’re wiping the last bit of sleep out of their eyes and preparing for five months of intense bootcamp style work on their startups.

It may no even be fair o call what they do at 500 startups “boot camp style” some of the startups that have completed McClure’s rigorous program have likened it more to “startup hazing” with a much bigger pay off.

Ware is no stranger to unusually long work days as the 25 year old has managed to graduate from Georgetown, work at DC’s prominent startup, Living Social, and then battle her way through the mine fields of launching her own startup. She’s even had imitators come out of the woodwork already and those who have accused her of imitating.

We’ve tried a few of the highlighting applications out there and nothing is as easy to use or easy to share as Markerly.

As she gears up for 500 startups it’s easy to see why she and her friend decided to drive it across the country. There’s no more rest for the next five months. We will be checking in with Ware periodically over the next 5 months while she’s in the top secret 500 lair crushing it.

Linkage:

Go start using Markerly here

Check out 500 here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” and we want you here

Philadelphia: First Round Capital Debuts “Dorm Room Fund” For Student Startups

Josh Kopelman is the managing partner at Philadelphia based First Round Capital. While based in Philadelphia, First Round Capital, invests in companies across the country.

Kopelman got his start as an entrepreneur with his company Infonautics which he founded in his dorm room as a junior at Penn. By the time he graduated the company had 20 employees. Kopelman believes that colleges and universities house some of the best ecosystems for innovation.

That’s why he’s started the “Dorm Room Fund”. This new fund is set up to become a fund that is for students, and eventually run by students. While First Round Capital is injecting $500,000 in seed money to the fund, Kopelman is hopeful that the initial first investments will then select the next round, and the next and so on and so forth. Kopelman is looking forward to being an advisor to those companies selected to the fund.

This new student fund will:

1. Be run by a students – not suits. A student investment team would know the entire student and campus ecosystem – allowing them to find, screen and invest in the best ideas

2. Be located on campus, so that it constantly has a feel for the vibe on campus

3. Students are engineers, marketers, financers, writers, doctors, lawyers and researchers… Allow them to focus on investing in companies that disrupt big markets that they (students) have expertise in.

4. Finance students based on their needs. Students are scrappy and often just need that first $10,000 – $20,000 in order to build their product and ship a minimum viable product – let’s call their current stage the dorm room stage…

First Round Capital and Kopelman hope to introduce the Dorm Room Fund in college cities across the country. This first round of investments is concentrated to Philadelphia and students that are either enrolled in, or just recently graduated from Philadelphia area schools like the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel.

Kopelman is currently on the prowl looking for the first 8 students who will serve on the investment committee, which will oversee which student run startups get investments from the fund. If you’re interested in being considered for the investment committee you need to be a student in the Philadelphia area and hit the link below.

Linkage:

Join the committee or submit your startup here

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Pittsburgh Startup Introduces PopChilla A Robot For Autistic Kids

A new Pittsburgh startup called Interbots has announced plans to unveil a new robot called Popchilla, at the Consumer Electronics Show ( CES) in January. While CES is usually riddled with robots that tackle all kinds of tasks, Popchilla is different.

The cute blue robot with bunny like ears is designed to help kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The folks at Interbots have designed Popchilla to be friendly, bright and inviting, all of which will provide a great stimulant to autistic children who sometimes prefer to interact with non humans over humans.

“Some autistic children are more willing to interact with robotic devices than humans. We want to use Popchilla to help those children with their social skills and interacting with real people,” says Interbots Chief Technical Officer Michael Knight.

In addition to bunny ears, Interbots also gave Popchilla a tail like a lion. Popchilla is able to make facial expressions when he’s happy. However, unlike other robots, Popchilla isn’t controlled by sensors, rather a therapist, parent or other care provider can manipulate or program Popchilla with a remote control or computer.

The ability to totally program Popchilla is one of the key elements to the therapeutic part of the robot. Interbots CEO Seema Patel told fastcoexist.com:

“Children with autism don’t react well to things that are unpredictable, and therapists prefer to use tools and technology that they have full control over,”

Interbots is also introducing an iPad game called Popchilla’s world which helps autistic children get over the fear of developing routines. They expect to debut the game and show off the robot at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January in Las Vegas.

Linkage:

Check out Interbots Here

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Charlotte Startup: Rawporter Raises $300,000 Seed Round With Two Inaugural Investments

We are very excited to report that are good friends, and longtime supporters of Nibletz and our previous ventures, have raised a $300,000 seed round.

Rawporter is a socially driven market place where citizen journalists can post their photos and videos of interesting news events. Rawporter has an e-commerce platform built in where users can sell their pics and videos to news sites, bloggers and even tv stations.

The idea was born when co-founders Kevin Davis and Rob Gaige were eating dinner in Uptown Charlotte. They saw a pretty intense auto accident outside of the restaurant. What they noticed was that all of the people passing by ( including themselves) had snapped some pictures and videos. However by the time the news crews arrived the accident had all but cleared.

Both Davis and Gaige thought that there had to be a way, outside of emailing the photos and videos unsolicited to a news director, to get eyewitness news to the media.

That’s the core to Rawporter now they’ve added social features and more.

Rawporter was able to attract funding from two new funds in their home state of North Carolina. This the first investment by the newly formed IMAF (Inception Micro Angel Fund) Cape Fear and the N.C. Fund of Funds.

Gofman Holdings also participated in the round.

“We formed IMAF Cape Fear to invest in emerging technology businesses. Rawporter is an exciting way for us to take advantage of the photo and video-sharing momentum. Additionally, our expertise in Mobile and eCommerce will better prepare Rawporter for success,” said Dallas Romanowski, Fund Director at IMAF Cape Fear.

As mentioned above, Rawporter is also the first investment by the N.C. Fund of Funds program, a component of the N.C. Small Business Credit Initiative, which was created through federal funding under the Small Business Jobs Act.

“We will be investing in early stage North Carolina companies, like Rawporter, with the potential for exceptional job growth. Our financial support will lead to exciting employment opportunities in the ever-growing North Carolina technology sector,” said Timothy Janke, Director of Private Equity Initiatives for North Carolina’s Small Business & Technology Development Center.

“Although we’re pleased with the progress to date, this funding provides the opportunity to expand faster and introduce functionality our community’s been clamoring for,” said Rawporter Co-founder Kevin Davis.

Linkage:

More coverage of our friends at Rawporter

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Pittsburgh Startup: DuoLingo Raises $15 Million In Latest Round

Pittsburgh startup DuoLingo has just completed their latest round of funding to the best of $15 million dollars, rounding out a great week of funding for startups outside the valley.

DuoLingo isworking on a large scale crowd sourcing platform for language and translation. It was founded by Carnegie Mellon University Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Louis Von Ahn.

If Von Ahn’s name sounds familiar its because he is the same man behind Captcha the extra layer of privacy control used when logging into many websites. Captcha was eventually purchased by Google. Google uses the technology to help prevent computerized logins, but perhaps more importantly to verify addresses for Google Maps.

It’s that large scale verification that has been reworked and made into a platform to grow the largest translation database in the world.

Union Square Ventures and New Enterprise Associates led the $15 million dollar series B round. Back in June we reported that celebrity angel investor Ashton Kutcher had invested $3 million dollars into the company.

Linkage:

Find out more about DuoLingo here

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Birmingham Startup: VIPAAR First To Receive Funds From Central Alabama Angel Network

The Central Alabama Angel Network, formed last February, has found it’s first startup to invest in. The company called VIPAAR works out of Birmingham’s Innovation Depot.

The Birmingham startup is led by CEO Drew Deaton and is based on a technology licensed from the University of Alabama At Birmingham (UAB) School of Medicine. VIPAAR is a telemedicine startup which allows surgeons and others in the OR to communicate with other ORs, galleries or consult.

VIPAAR works with cameras that are extremely light weight but provide great pictures, and also two way audio communication that allows the surgeon to explain whats going on in the camera shot, and if appropriate, answer questions. VIPAAR, and telemedicine for that matter, allow surgeons who often lecture by showing and explaining surgery through video, to actually show surgeries in real time, using VIPAAR and transmitted via the internet, keeping those speaking doctors in the OR for more surgeries.

VIPAAR’s VIP system can be applied in other teaching scenarios as well. The system combines two major parts an image processing server and a video conference unit. In the surgery setting a video image of the surgery site is shown and an image of the surgeons hands is super imposed within the image.

VIPAAR has a variety of uses in the operating room. The system could be used to offer close up teaching videos to students in an observation deck. It could also be used to transmit surgeries from an operating room in Baltimore to a class of students in Los Angeles using high speed internet. The VIP system could even be used in a one on one setting such as a consult or if a surgeon wants a second surgeon at a remote location to sit in on the surgery.

Medcitynews reports that VIPAAR has raised more than half of the $1.2 million dollars they are looking for in this round. It has not been disclosed how much the Central Alabama Angel Network contributed.

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