Jacksonville Startup EventHash Is Tracking OneSpark’s Social Graph [video][onespark]

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According to Elton Rivas, co-founder and executive director of OneSpark, since Wednesdawy there have been nearly 80,000 people on the streets of downtown Jacksonville. By our non scientific estimate we dare to say he is probably right on!

So with 80,000 people on the ground and just as many keeping up with The World’s Crowdfunding Festival back home, that’s a lot of social media mentions.

Luckily, Jacksonville startup EventHash, which just launched Tuesday night, is here to help. EventHash co-founder Brett Erpel has a team of five on the ground navigating through the mass of people while the EventHash system tracks the rest.

We’ve seen a ton of social media dashboards here at nibletz.com but none really give such a robust picture as EventHash and none have their platform set up in a native mobile app that functions as well as the web platform.

EventHash shows the latest tweets, the users, topics, and even the hash tags that are trending. The system ranks users by how many times a user is mentioned, not how many times a user tweets.

EventHash also has a media data stream that shows the latest pics from an event. They round the platform out with a graph that shows peaks and valleys as related to the social graph. Finally they can show a geolocation graph that shows how many tweets are coming from where.

All of this information is extremely valuable to an event organizer. Having real time access to these analytics is vital to changing and improving the course of an events social graph during an event. The data available after an event is a great case study for any event organizer.

Check out the video below and for more info visit eventhash.com

We’ve got even more OneSpark coverage here!

Jason Belanger, Founder Of Florida Startup Lokal Muzik Interview [OneSpark][video]

LokalMuzik,Florida startup,OneSpark,statup interviewLast May we featured an interview with Jason Belanger right as he was launching a new proximity based local music aggregator called LokalMuzik. A year later there seems to be a lot of startups that are entering the space in a variety of ways.

Take Aurora for instance, also a Jacksonville startup, their app helps you discover local music based on your geographic location and streams it right down to your device. That was good enough for them to be the biggest mover on Friday afternoon at OneSpark the World’s Crowdfunding festival.

Belanger was early in the local music game and offers something a bit different. Rather than “discovery” per se and streaming local artists’ tracks randomly, LokalMuzik shows the user graphically, the artists from the area they are in. It’s also searchable by genre which makes it easier to locate the freshest new music.

Belanger has been hard at work at this for over a year and has a fully functioning Android app. While he’s got several features in the works he’s taking a brean from Android development to go ahead and push out an iOS app.

Right now they make money off mp3 purchases and hopes in the future to be able to offer some kind of preview streaming so that users can hear the music rather than just read about the artist.

Belanger is very excited about being part of the first OneSpark. Check out the video below.

Check out LokalMuzik here at lokalmuzik.com

Check out more OneSpark creator interviews here at nibletz.com.

 

An Educational MMORPG, We Chat With Lindsey Tropf CEO Of Immersed Games [video][onespark]

Immersed Games,OneSpark,Florida Startup,Gainesville Startup,EdTechEducational video games and online games have been due for a disruption for quite sometime. We’ve seen startups like Memphis’ Seed Hatchery alum, Knoco, innovate by trying to bring back the story line based games like “Where In The World I Carmen San Diego”, while that’s a great idea, the storyline concept wasn’t brand new.

Lindsey Tropf and her co-founders at Immersed Games have taken their gaming experience as teenagers, young adults and now graduating college students and decided to start something, fun, educational and long lasting. Yes, they’re creating the first educational MMORPG.

For those that aren’t gamers, MMORPG stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, think World Of Warcraft, but of course Immersed Games educational MMORPG won’t be the least bit violent.

In the Immersed Games world students will take on an avatar and character profile and go into a world where they need to solve real problems with friends and other players to get to the next phase in the game.  We’re not talking the classic, question and answer problems, real life problems like creating food chains, and using laws of physics and science to get out of situations.

Immersed Games is relying on the addictive nature of MMORPG games to keep students coming back and learning more.

Their first game is going to tackle sixth great science in a virtual world.

Tropf, along with brother Ryan Tropf and Kaz Burgmeister are working on creating their first worlds and quests and are hoping to raise money at OneSpark and then in an investment round. If all goes well they hope to role out their first game next year.

Check out the video interview with Lindsey below:

Find out more about Immersed Games here

We’ve got so much OneSpark coverage here at nibletz.com

 

OneSpark Creator FoggFace’s Startup Will Protect Motorcyclists’ Faces.

FoggFace,Michael Fogg,OneSpark,Florida Startup,startupMichael Fogg is one of those fun loving guys that loves the adrenaline rush of surfing in Costa Rica or Hawaii and riding his motorcycle wide open through the rocky mountains. He’s also a smart guy who loves life, and people.

In 2008 Fogg, a life long motorcycle rider, decided to take his Harley Davidson half helmet and do some customizing too it. Rather than stickers, or engraving, he had a face mask, the kind you would find on a football helmet, mounted to his helmet. It seemed like a natural thing to do for safety.

Millions of people have broken bones, ribs and other injuries riding motorcycles. Without proper training and driving safely people wreck, its a fact of life. Well when you break your leg, foot or arm it’s going to heal and then get covered up with clothing. No one is going to see your scars, unless you want them to. When you hurt your face though, that’s  a different story.

Fogg knows a fellow rider who broke his bottom jaw almost off and now has to wear a veil. If he had one of Fogg’s FoggFace helmets his jaw would still be intact.

Fogg hopes that in ten years people will look back in disbelief knowing that before the FoggFace helmet, motorcycle riders had no facial protection. Sure there are street style helmets with a full plexiglass piece that comes down across the face but those helmets can be distracting, and sometimes dangerous.

Using a football style masking the FoggFace helmets don’t look awkward. In fact whenever Fogg goes to biker events and sits his helmet on a table, people gather around to hear all about it and ask how to order it. One woman who rides a scooter to work everyday said she would love to buy a FoggFace helmet in designer colors like pink. Fogg is hoping that after OneSpark and getting his business plan rolling, he will be able to offer that.

He’s also hopeful that he’ll be able to create helmets for skateboarders, bicyclists and scooter riders.

Sounds like a multimillion dollar idea right? While the money doesn’t hurt, Fogg is doing this so people don’t get hurt. “It’s really all about safety” he told us at his creator booth at OneSpark on Friday.

To get a better idea of what the FoggFace helmets are all about check out the video below.

There’s so much more OneSpark coverage here at nibletz.com

 

Out Of Toilet Paper? There’s A Startup For That: Restroom Alert [onespark][video]

Restroom Alert,Jacksonville startup,Florida startup,startup,startup interview,OneSparkWho’s ever gone to the bathroom at a public place only to sit down and find there’s no toilet paper in the toilet paper dispenser? Or you go through a beautiful looking store or a great restaurant and find paper towels all over the floor and a trashcan that looks like it hasn’t been dumped in days?

Well if you said yes, you’re not alone. These problems happen to millions of people every week at a variety of restrooms across the country. Going into a dirty, filthy or not well stocked bathroom affects businesses in ways you wouldn’t believe. One survey said that 94% of respondents said that a non well kept bathroom would make them leave an establishment.

Some believe that when going to restaurants a dirty restroom is a signal that the kitchen may not be that clean either. While there are people who will speak to a manager or an employee about the cleanliness of the bathroom, others are embarrassed to do so, or sometimes so grossed out they just want to leave.

Well now there’s an app for that. The multi-platform Restroom Alert, is a way for customers to anonymously report to a manager, owner or other employee that their restrooms need some attention.

It’s pretty simple. A business, small, big or gigantic, can sign up for Restroom Alert for $5 per month per room. The establishment will get signs that can easily be affixed to mirrors or walls with a short code to send a text message about the restroom. Does it need toilet paper? Do the sinks need cleaning? Is the trashcan overflowing? Is the toilet stopped up? All of these things and more can be reported anonymously via the text code.

On the business’ side, they get a text message as well saying what needs to be fixed. At that point a timer begins and the platform records how long it takes to go fix the problem.

The system can also alert owners, managers or employees when the restroom hasn’t been cleaned or checked in the allotted time. This wipes out the need for clipboards and paper restroom checklists, which often go unused.

Restroom Alert even supplies analytics detailing the restroom problems, how often they’re stocked and checked and other key factors. A clean restroom is just another way a business owner can provide excellent customer service.

Restroom Alert can be used by small mom and pop shops all the way up to Fortune 500 companies. The owner, or person in charge of such things, can get reports based on their entire network of restrooms. This way they can deal with employees that don’t give a crap about the way the restroom looks (you see what I did there).

While there are plenty of apps that can find you a restroom on the road, this seems to be the first startup to modernize the restroom checklist.

We got a chance to check out Restroom Alert one of the 464 projects found at OneSpark in Jacksonville.

Check out our video interview with Rod Dornsife one of the co-founders of Restroom Alert below.

For more on Restroom Alert visit restroomalert.com or follow them on Twitter @restroomalert

We’ve got a lot more OneSpark stories for you here at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else

 

 

Jax Startup Floppy Entertainment Founder: OneSpark Sparking Startup Community

OneSpark starts this Wednesday and runs through Sunday. It’s the first of it’s kind crowdfunding festival for “creators”. OneSpark is taking the crowdfunding concept made popular by  Kickstarter, Indiegogo and of course every single startup that’s popped up since we’ve been waiting for the JOBSact,and brought it off line.
The festival will be like SXSW interactive meets SXSW music and everything in between as creators from around the world spread out at venues across downtown Jacksonville. For a good summary of OneSpark check out this story.

We’ll be talking with lot’s of creators on-site and some as we lead up to this epic event.

First up we have Michael Le Manna, the founder of Floppy Entertainment. In our interview with Le Manna he credits the OneSpark festival for really sparking startups and the startup community in Jacksonville. Even Shahid Khan, the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, is on board.

Check out the interview below and for more on OneSpark visit beonespark.com

What is your startup, what does it do?

Floppy Entertainment is the first game company in Jacksonville Florida, founded in 2012. It consists of a small group of highly talented programmers and artists. The vision of the company is to create a new and innovative gaming experience for people on a mobile platform to play for brief periods of time throughout the course of a normal day. Our interactive games are fun, easily understood and challenging. Players will be compelled to play again and again.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Michael La Manna creative lead, audio designer. Has been writing music for games and media for over 14 years.

Brian Marshburn programmer. Started programming games at the age of 8.

Thomas Schaffer lead technical artist. Master user of Maya software.

What is the startup culture like in Jacksonville?

Other than One Spark there has never been any support for a start up tech company such as game development.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

The big challenge working in game development is the expensive software licensing fees.

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

We have won multiple indie development contest and secured sponsorship from Microsoft.

What are your next milestones?

Our first mobile game will be released in the next 4 months.

Who are your mentors and role models?

Other independent game company’s such as Trendy Entertainment in Gainesville Florida, they have been very supportive.

What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley. 

One advantage is lack of competition but the big disadvantage is lack or interest of local support.

What’s next for your startup?

Develop and release at a minimum of 3 games a year.

Where can people find out more?

www.floppyent.com Or on twitter as floppyent

Check out more about OneSpark here at nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else

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Huge Crowdfunding Festival: One Spark Kicks Off In Jacksonville Next Week

OneSpark,Florida startup,startup events,crowdfunding,Elton RivasThe first OneSpark festival will kick off next Wednesday night in Jacksonville Florida, and it’s going to be huge. The festivities kick off at 6pm at Hemming Plaza with an opening ceremony.

The kickoff event will feature party band The Sunbears, free food, drinks and plenty of opportunity to network with creators from all over the world.

Once the event kicks off Jacksonville will turn into one huge in person crowdfunding festival from Wednesday (April 17th) through Sunday (April 21st).

What is a “crowdfunding festival”,

Well think SXSW music and SXSW interactive meet in Jacksonville Florida, where the weather looks to be perfect. Then add creators who’ve created something in either the arts, music, science or technology. Now think Kickstarter and taking those project creators and bringing them into the real world.

This is the first festival of it’s kind. Creators will be staged in venues throughout downtown Jacksonville where attendees will be able to see their creations, ask questions, hear pitches and then decide if they want to crowdfund the creator in person. Talk about eliminating the risks of online crowdfunding.

Event organizer Elton Rivas and the OneSpark committee have wrapped the crowdfunding concept up into a huge event that has three main focus areas:

The creator zone: This is where you can go from venue to venue and see all of the creators and their creations, think gallery hop with some ultra cool new ideas and creativity overflowing like a volcano.

Pitch Decks And Stages: You’ll be able to hear live pitches and keynote speakers throughout the five day festival in these areas.

Entertainment District: here OneSpark will showcase all of what Jacksonville has to offer in the entertainment realm. Party with creators, VIPs, A-listers and jam out to some of the best musical offerings in Jacksonville.

Learn more about OneSpark at beonespark.com

Stay up to date with our OneSpark coverage here.

Powerhouse Team Behind Gui.de Raises $1 Million For Max Headroom Like News Startup

Gui.de, Funding, $1 million dollar investment, SXSWA new startup based in Miami, called Guide, promises to bring technology that will turn online news, social streams and blogs into videos guided by 20 different anchors or avatars. Included in the 20 anchors are a dog, a robot, and anime characters.

These characters will read articles, and present photos and videos like your personal guide to the content you’re looking at. The animated characters are the driving force behind the technology.  If you’re thinking this sounds rather silly, well think again, as Guide has already raised $1 million dollars in funding from some credible heavy hitters in the video and entertainment industries.

The Knight Foundation, Sapient Corp, Bob Pittman (MTV founder), and Google’s employee 13, Steve Schimmel.

The Gui.de team is headed by Freddie Laker a former executive at Sapient with who’s been dabbling in startups for some time. Leslie Bradshaw, the company’s Chief Operating Officer, has a rock solid resume including being named one of the top five female executives in the technology industry by Fast Company magazine. Bradshaw was listed alongside Cher Wang of HTC, Marissa Mayer of Google and Mary Meeker of KPCB.

The demo on the gui.de website looks like they paired Siri up with some video animation and use her to read the news. The technology may not quite be there yet, but with the team they have in place they should be able to put something spectacular together.

Gui.de is headed to SXSW to debut their product and strike up some buzz at the conference that’s known as the launch pad for Twitter, FourSquare, Zaarly, Ban.jo and more.

Find out more here.

CES 2013: LivMobile Is Simplifying That Second Screen

A startup in Florida called LivMobile is looking to simplify that second screen for anyone that wants to watch any kind of video from any source. They’re doing this with a web based browser app that turns the browser into the video playback source.

We find out in the interview that the idea for LivMobile was born when their CEO was looking for a second way to view video. He was watching a football game and when they went to time out he wanted a second screen to know when the game was back. Nowadays second screens are common place.

With all the different video apps out there, LivMobile hopes to cut through all the clutter and bring together all video in one easy to use HTML5 browser based product.

Nibletz co-founder and CEO Nick Tippmann got a chance to interview LivMobile at their booth at CES 2013’s Eureka Park. Check out the video below:


You can find out more about LivMobile at livmobile.tv

The startup village at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference has 135 startups in it, is yours?

Ft. Lauderdale Startup: clearCi Makes Finals In Upstart Competition

clearCi,Ft. Lauderdale startup,Florida startup,startup competition, Upstart 2012Last month we covered Ft. Lauderdale startup clearCi by way of our content partners at StarTropica. ClearCi simplifies competitive intelligence, which for any company, can be a big factor in their success.

Back in the 70’s  and 80’s “competitive intelligence” may have been viewed as spying, however it’s common practice in today’s business world, in fact if you’re not doing it you could end up losing customers, and an overall grip on your business. The problem though, is in the fact that there is so much competitive intelligence available. clearCi makes it easy for companies both big and small to streamline their competitive intelligence and find the most important information available, to make decisions.

The young Ft. Lauderdale company is making in impact in South Florida, and now across the country. They’ve been selected as a finalist in not one but four categories in the upcoming 2012 Up-Start Cloud Awards.  The finals for the awards will be held in San Francisco on December 12th where Emmanuel Trenche and clearCi’s founder and CEO, Joe Levy, will be on hand to help garner votes and pitch their startup.

“The first round was entirely based on gaining votes from our customer base and general public,” said Emmanuel Trenche, VP of Marketing Communications at clearCi. “Going up against Microsoft, Dell and SIlicon Valley startups made us think creatively to stand out.”

clearCi was selected as a finalist in the following categories:

Best Cloud Business Intelligence/Analytice
Best Big Data Solution
Best Cloud Service Provider
Best Industry Application

Linkage:

Check out clearCi here

Here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

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Florida Startup: Residency HQ Is your One Stop For All State Residency Requirements

These days there are a whole lot of people living in at least dual residencies. When thinking about dual residencies the most common thought is about snowbirds. This group of people is usually older and migrates south to Florida, for the winter, from their normal homes up north.  We’re even in a dual residency scenario ourselves right now.

People who live in dual residences have a hard time keeping up with the residency requirements, laws and taxes surrounding multiple places. Florida startup, Residency HQ keeps up with that for you.

Residency HQ bills themselves as the premiere resource for all state to state residency requirements. It’s a knowledge base of information for the types of people described above and for those looking to possibly relocate to another state. Residency HQ will also help users determine which state is the most advantageous to claim primary residence in.

We got a chance to talk with Residency HQ co-founder Mat Franken. Check out the interview below.

Read More…

Miami Startup: RentJiffy Simplifies Life For Landlords INTERVIEW

RentJiffy,DC startup,Florida startup,Miami startup,startup,startups,Startup interview,startropicaContinuing with the series of features about each of the impressive Startups Incubate Miami 2012 has been able put together this year Startropica sat down with Jonathan Addison, Founder and CEO, ofRentJiffy, a real estate management platform that makes life easier for landlords and property managers. This is our interview with him:

How the thought of creating RentJiffy came about in the first place?

It came out of my own Real Estate practice. I am from Washington DC, one of the busiest, and one of the most legally complicated real estate cities in the country, the most obvious example of this is the license property owners need to have in order to be able to rent that specific property, that’s for every single property they own, with all the different regulations for each type of building of course. So RentJiffy was conceived in 2010 originally to make life easier for DC Landlords offering to facilitate this type of licensing. Basically they go to RentJiffy and hire us to process the license for them, but we are about to launch a host of additional features as well on a national level, that’s why we came here to Miami.

So Rentjiffy started by offseting a huge need in the DC Real Estate market, I am guessing it grew fast.

Thankfully yes it has been a success. Since January of 2010, we have doubled our revenue every year, that’s 3 years in a row. In 2011 we did $175.000 and to date we are approaching $300k in sales for 2012, enough to keep the team going and to help us put in place the next step which is to make RentJiffy a national platform

Continue reading at Startropica.com

Tampa Startup OBCIDIO Is All About Social Collaboration INTERVIEW

OBCIDIO,Tampa startup,Florida startup,startup,startups,startup interviewA new Tampa startup called OBCIDIO mashes up social networks to make one easy to use collaboration platform. OBCIDIO combines real time social communication with file sharing, content management and networking tools. It’s like Asana meets Facebook and LinkedIn to focus on working together with different people in your social networks.

In addition to your private feed that’s leveraging your personal social networks there is also a public feed where you can share whatever you would like with the entire OBCIDIO community.

When we asked co-founder Ryan Waier how he’d describe OBCIDIO to his grandmother he said:

“OBCIDIO is best described as a mash-up between Facebook and LinkedIn. By creating or plugging into different social communities, members can filter out the noise and focus on the communication, people and content that is relevant to them.

Every member that creates an OBCIDIO account also receives their own personal cloud to manage communication, contacts, files, tasks and schedules with the ability to create or plug into existing social communities.

Social communities on OBCIDIO can range from members creating regional networking groups for sharing referrals, to companies creating their own private social network for coworkers to share content, ask questions and crowdsouce feedback.

Our communities provide social communication, collaboration, and project management tools unlike other forums or groups you would find on sites like LinkedIn. The purpose of these communities is to give members both a voice and a medium to actively engage in solving problems, pooling knowledge and forging new opportunities.”

Check out the rest of our interview with Waier, below:

Read More…

Meet The Founders Of Miami Startup: CloudShopper

Cloudshopper,Miami startup,Florida startup,startup,startups,StarTropica

This story originally appeared on our content partner site StarTropica.com

“We didn’t set out to do a Startup we’re doing a Business”, Ulises Orozco, co-founder ofCloudShopper, a free shopping comparison add-on already popular in the market place told me when our conversation turned a little too much into startup blabber as if wanting to draw the line between the social and fashionable side of “having a startup” and the simple execution of a business plan.

Simple it is, and also lean. So lean it only appears in your browser at the exact time that you need it, nothing more nothing less. Unlike most existing browser add-ons CloudShopper is invisible and it only pops up when you search for a specific product in a shopping portal offering you  price comparisons of the exact same item in other websites, so that you can choose the lower one. One click and you are off to see it, and very probably buy it.

It’s sleek, non-intrusive, efficient, and accurate, no longer it has amassed 17,000 downloads in almost a year with very limited advertising; as big as that number is it’s not even near to what their goal is, they actually need much more than that to really start seeing the kind of return they are expecting, that’s why they are conquering every browser platform in the market. It is already available in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Explorer, and Opera, and they are soon releasing the iPhone app.

What’s so amazing about CloudShopper is how simple it is for the user but how complicated it is to implement on the back-end. The add-on is available in 2,500 e-commerce websites from Amazon and Wal-Mart, to Sears and Target, you name it, and they are there. This implied setting up connections with many of those portals through their APIs, but at the same time making a different piece of software for each of the existing Browsers to then bring it all together under a clean user interface. And they did it all in just under a year of work.

Continue reading at our partner site StarTropica

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