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Boulder Startups TeamUp To Thank FireFighters & Wildlife Relief

(image breakingnews.com)

We already know that Boulder has a thriving startup scene as far as the technology and ideas that are coming out of the Colorado town that’s home to Techstars and the Foundry. Now we’re witnessing what makes the Boulder startup scene an actual community.

When stories come out like this, it’s a great feeling. Startups that compete day in and day out for the same funding y, and the same spotlight can put all that aside and come together for the communities that they are in. Earlier this year a large number of North Carolina startups, including well established startups like ReverbNation came together to speak out against amendment one, which was unfortunately passed when NC went to vote. In that particular case the startups and their founders were worried that passing amendment one would make it harder to attract gay talent.

The story out of Boulder is in regards to the massive forest fires that destroyed thousands of acres in Colorado. While some members of Boulder’s startup community felt the effects of the fires first hand with displaced homes and businesses, others have pitched in with their own efforts just for the good of the community.

Some of the projects that the Boulder startups startups have worked on include fundraising drives, cash donations, wildfire t-shirts and even thank you cards. Card Gnome is behind the colorful thank you cards that have been sent to the firefighters. Startup Shirts has created t-shirts with 100% of the proceeds going to Colorado Firefighting and Rebuilding called “The Heal Colorado” t-shirt.

Linkage:

Source: TNW

HealColorado T-Shirt

CardGnome’s Thank You Cards

CrowdRise Fundraisng

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Cincinnati Startup: Tracour To Call Bull Crap On Tech Rumors

Will the iPhone 5 have 4G? Is there a 7″ iPad in the works? Will the next Samsung Galaxy device support telepathy? Will the next Motorola Droid support teleporting? If you are a regular reader of tech blogs, (and stopping by here is probably a strong indicator that you are), then you’ve heard your share of tech rumor bullcrap.

A lot of sites rely on third parties that can’t give up all the juice for fear that they would lose their jobs. Other tech sites simply produce great looking documents using photoshop, and then some are too lazy to do any fact checking. Outside of that, every once in a while, legitimate “ninjas” or internal sources actually get something mixed up or a leak they have gets shelved.

Well have you ever tried to keep score?

Sites like The Verge, Engadget , Tech Crunch and Business Insider try and keep score on the hottest rumors about the hottest gadgets, all the while keeping people grounded in what they believe is the truth and what they believe is a little fiction.

Now, you guessed it, there’s an app for that.

Cincinnati based Tracour was first reported on by our friends at TNW. The premise is simple. The platform functions as a database of sorts then it collates technology rumors and attributes them to their respective authors. When it’s all said and done and it’s time for the rumor to come out, or the device to be released, Tracour keeps score of how correct the rumors actually were.

Brad Sams, the creator of NeoWin and Tracour has his work cut out for him. There are a lot more bloggers, analysts and journalists than there even were two years ago. Just think 18 months ago everyone at The Verge worked at Engadget, Mike Arrington was still pretending to be happy at AOL and there was no Pando Daily.

Tracour is actually a great tool for other blog authors and of course readers. In our days of publishing Thedroidguy while we produced a ton of fresh content everyday, we often went late on the “rumor dejour” because they hadn’t been vetted properly. Sometime it meant we missed a story and other times it meant we saved face by not publishing some ridiculous nonsense. TNW actually does a great job of not pushing the crap out but with Sams’ tool you’ll be able to visualize an author or websites credibility.

In a day and age when even the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have pulled the trigger on a loose lead, Tracour will be a welcome edition to the blogsphere, and of course for others that rely on their fake informants and photoshopped documents, their antics will now have a scorecard. Bravo Brad and Tracour!

Linkage:

Source: TNW

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NY Startup Moovio Offers A Really Easy Way To Discover Movies, Interview

If you’ve felt like the current movie discovery platforms aren’t quite getting it you my be in luck. A new New York startup called Moovio promises to offer the fastest way to find a movie either in the theaters or for at home. They do this by offering a graphic intensive list of movies that looks reminiscent of the screen on a redbox. They couple that with some quick preferential questions and voila, you’re off to the movies.

If you find a movie you like on moovio than the site takes you right to where you can buy tickets. If you’re looking to watch a movie at home it points you to where you can rent the movie either on or offline.

Moovio says that they’re discovery platform isn’t just simple, they call it “ridiculously easy”. We noticed that after a brief tutorial coming back to the site is pretty easy and extremely fast.

We got a chance to talk with Erik Linde, Co-Founder of Moovio. Check out the interview below:

Contest: There’s A New Kid In Town, The TechSlinger And You Can Win One This Summer

At Chicago TechWeek we got to meet the team from Michigan startup TechSlinger. This is a new wearable accessory designed to easily transport your tablet, your phone, your wallet and other small items. You can even hang your keys from it.

At first glance you may not think it’s for you, but it so is. Especially if you carry multiple gadgets with you and one of them is an iPad or Android tablet. You see, when you go out to a meeting or a networking event, or any event for that matter and you bring your tablet you’re putting a device that costs hundreds of dollars at unnecessary risk.

I’ve witnessed first hand people who’ve had their iPads turned conveniently into coasters. I’ve seen people leave them behind and drop them, shattering the screen, trying to hold a beer or other drink. Oh and of course the countless times I’ve seen beer, soda and other liquids poured onto the iPad.

Granted, you want to take your iPad or tablet with you because you undoubtedly have work to do, or you want to show off the latest app you’ve downloaded or pictures and videos of the kids. Well that’s great except most purses can’t fit iPads, no one wants to bring the bulk of a backpack or briefcase out with them, and holding them is risky.

The TechSlinger looks like an under jacket holster and has one pouch designed to hold an iPad or tablet and then the other side has two compartments. One is a secure compartment for your phone the other is a secure compartment for your wallet, credit cards, money, license, etc. I actually hold a 16,000mah portable battery in my extra pocket insuring that not only are my devices with me but backup power is as well.

The TechSlinger fits under any jacket, blazer or suit coat and keeps your gadgets from interfering with important things, like walking.

At the recent TechCrunch meetup in Atlanta over 40 people asked about the TechSlinger. At the airport, TSA folks were asking about the TechSlinger, and of course on three different trips to three different Apple stores, people asked about the TechSlinger.

Well low and behold we’ve got Techslingers to give away.

Here’s how it works. Starting this week at ComiCon 2012 in San Diego, just tweet

“@nibletztweets & @techslinger I need a #techslinger” and if you’re lucky you’ll be randomly selected to win one. We’ll randomly draw winners in San Diego, Washington DC, Memphis, Cincinnati and other places along our sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip, and you’ll win. It’s that easy. Then your friends will ask, “where’d you get that”.

Linkage:

Find out more about the TechSlinger here

Here’s more coverage from Chicago’s TechWeek

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New York Startup: Hashable Shutting Down

Hashable was destined to become the best way to save and remember where and when you met someone. That’s why they debuted at South By Southwest Interactive in 2011. In fact we saw them at the Androidandme party that year where they pitched before a crowd of die hard Android fans. The technology was actually pretty good.

Hashable wasn’t people discovery, more of a way to do a virtual business card exchange in person and then take it from off-line to online.

The backbone to Hashable was the on-going history that the app kept for everyone you may have met and used Hashable to remember since their launch 18 months or so ago.

Well this evening they sent out their “lights out” email to users, saying that they are shutting down on July 25th.

Dear Hashable Users,

We regret to inform you that the Hashable mobile apps and Hashable.com will be shutting down on July 25th. The service will be unavailable after this date.

While we are still very passionate about making better connections and meeting new people, the time has come for us to focus our energy elsewhere.

Some of you have stored valuable information in Hashable, and we want to give you the opportunity to save that data for your own records. If you’d like to receive a file with your complete history, please log onto Hashable.com, navigate to the “Profile” tab, then to the “Your History” section on that page. You can download the file by clicking “Export full history to .csv” and accepting the dialog that pops up.

We are incredibly grateful for all the people we have met through Hashable. Thank you for all your support, and we hope to connect with you again in the future.

All the best,

The Hashable Team

No word on what the next project is, but if you’re a Hashable user at least you can save your history, which is the best part. It’s too bad, this was a great idea and had a lot of thunder at the 2011 sxsw.

Linkage:

Hashable.com

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Los Angeles Startup: 80sBrickphone Bringing Back Iconic 80’s Motorola Dynatac

A Los Angeles startup founded by designer Brad Helmink, is bringing back one of the 1980’s most iconic pieces of mobile technology.

The Motorola DynaTac was first introduced in 1983 for a price tag around $4000 in 2012 terms it would be closer to $9000. The phone was one of the first mobile phones that didn’t require a bag to be attached to it. The DynaTac had about 30 minutes of talk time and 8 hours of standby.

The phone was spun into popularity by the savvy Wall Street tycoon Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street. Our readers, just a little younger may recall the phone having a prominent place at Bayside High School where saved by the bell’s main character Zack Morris (played by Mark Paul Gosselaar) carried one to school.

If you’re too young to remember either, well just trust us, it’s freaking cool.

The new 2012 model is not an actual phone but rather a bluetooth speaker system that Helmink insists, sounds far more superior than the original during a call.

The Bluetooth version will give you the average bluetooth battery life, about 5 hours of talk time and tons of hours of standby. It also works with any Bluetooth enabled smartphone.

You’ll be the talk of the office, trading floor, party, pool,mall or wherever you go when people see you actually making and receiving calls on the new 80sBrickphone. In this day and age where the “coolest new” Android phone is released every two weeks and hundreds of millions own an iPhone 4s, the 80sBrickphone will be a status symbol of epic proportions.

To get the project off the ground Helmink took to Indiegogo. He’s looking to make $55,000 to cover the costs of an initial production run. He’s collected a little over $4000 just enough to buy an original back in the 80s.

If you want one (and we know you do) there’s a link below.

Linkage:

Want an 80sBrickphone? here’s it’s Indiegogo Page

You can find more info on their website

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NY Startup BarkBox Raises $1.7M Almost By Accident

Matt Meeker has had a successful exit with MeetUp and has also served as the entrepreneur in residence at Polaris Ventures, it’s no wonder that his admitted “side project”, BarkBox has just raised $1.7 million dollars.

While the round itself was intentional, Meeker never really thought this business would create such momentum. Obviously he wasn’t familiar with his $53 billion dollar pet care industry. It was only natural with a subscription box available for everything from purses to shoes, to healthcare and wellness products to, “bro stuff” a subscription box for pet care products was a shoe in for a great business.

“We started thinking this would be a little side project, and a nice little cash flow business, and then we got such tremendous feedback about it we decided there’s a much bigger opportunity here,” he said.”If we want to do it right, we’re going to need some capital in the bank to go build a team and start building real relationships with suppliers and things like that, so we decided to go out and raise that money to do it.” betakit.com reported

This $1.7 million dollar round was led by Mike Hirschland of Resolute.vc, and included Lerer Ventures, RRE, Polaris Ventures, Bertelsmann and Dave McLure’s 500 startups.

Linkage:

Visit BarkBox here

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California Startup: PrefCity Is A Facebook For Sharing Preferences INTERVIEW

Prefcity considers themselves a “Facebook for sharing preferences”, no not preferences in an app, on a smarphone or on a computer, but consumer preferences regarding retail and restaurants. Yes Prefcity is yet another new loyalty and rewards platform. Prefcity has addressed some of the downfalls to other similar platforms though and that’s what makes this startup different.

Prefcity is targeting businesses loyal customer base. They offer a product called PrefPerks to consumers and they offer a highly customizable, pay as you go format for merchants.

“As we experiment with Prefperks our intention is to create a win-win situation for consumers who want to find good deals at places they love and businesses looking to maintain healthy margins, generally diminished by some of the more mainstream daily deal sites,” said Vic Sosikian co-founder of Prefcity.

On the merchant side they are paid directly by the consumer without a mass redeem cycle like Groupon or LivingSocial. This gives the merchant the flexibility to try out different types of deals and as many deals as they want. In the simplest of terms, a PrefPerk is given to a loyal customer of an establishment. It’s more of a “reservation” card for that specific deal.

Take the Groupon model for instance. When a Groupon deal is sent out, the entire group needs to buy into it by paying Groupon directly. Groupon takes their cut and then distributes the money to the merchant. With PrefCity the PrefPerk is sent out and then if the customer wants to use it they just pay the merchant as they normally would with a regular coupon or discount.

The Southern California based startup is testing in Los Angeles and plans to bring New York, San Francisco and Chicago online later this year. We got a chance to interview Prefcity co-founder Vic Sosikian. Check out the interview below.

Washington DC City Council Looking To Price Über Out Of Town?

Back in January what brought you this story about Washington DC’s response to Über moving into town. Über is a mobile app hailing service for affordable limos and town cars.

Although Über is a Silicon Valley based startup, each new market is treated as its own separate company even though they are ultimately all head quartered in San Francisco. The Washington DC unit is by far the one that’s run into the most difficulty.

Über works just about effortlessly in all the markets they are in. You download the app to your smartphone and tell the app where you are. From there an indecent network driver is dispatched to you. You pay via the app so no cash needs to change hands. In DC, New York and San Francisco I’ve never waited more than 15 minutes for an uber ride.

Well as we reported back in January the taxicab drivers in Washington DC have had a major a problem since Über put up roots in Washington DC’s DuPont Circle neighborhood.

DC cabbies (which have even had a movie made about them starring Mr. T) were furious over the business they would possibly lose to Uber who according to the DC Taxicab Association, operates under a loop hole and should have to be licensed the same way limos are.

Now it appears the cabbies have enlisted the help of Washington DC City Councilwoman Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3). Cheh has proposed legislation that would make the minimum fare for an Über ride $15 which is a five times higher than the minimum fare for a normal sanctioned district cab.

NBC’s Luke Russert took to Twitter to express his dismay:
“I’m willing to bet #DC cabbies after 12am will say, ‘cash only, no credit’ or claim that their credit machine ‘is broken.’” Russert tweeted earlier in the day.

He wasn’t alone, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) tweeted about the issue from his official Twitter handle @Jasoninthehouse, “Uber fans unite! D.C. Council wants to keep fares high. This is wrong! #UberDClove political website rollcall.com reported.

After the outcry on Twitter Cheh removed the Über portion of a proposed taxi bill from the legislation.

Rollcall also reported that lifetime DC political figure, former Mayor who was busted smoking crack while in office in January of 1990, wasn’t a fan of Über either. The Washington Post’s Tim Craig tweeted: “Marion Barry said he’s opposed to Uber because its a ‘San Francisco-based company’ and cab drivers ‘don’t need limousines coming in here.’”

Linkage:

Find out more about Über here

Source: rollcall.com

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Interview With Memphis Startup Stiqrd’s Founder Aaron Pranther On Expansion

One thing we all know for sure is that loyalty and rewwards startups are a flourishing space. A lot of the better ideas for loyalty and rewards are starting in small markets. Stiqrd is one of those startups.

The great thing about Stiqrd though is that when we first talked with Aaron Pranther, CEO and co-founder of the company they were already talking about taking their concept and scaling it as quickly, as possible but also honing in on what makes them special as well.

So what makes Stiqrd special? For starters? Pranther has a background in both tech and the restaurant business. He knows the real pain from a restauranteurs perspective as well as from the perspective of someone who likes to eat out. Pranther knows all too well what it’s like to try and keep tabs on multiple reward “punch cards”.

Most people have had the experience of thinking you were at the last punch tab of one card to find out you either forgot the card at home or you were in the wrong establishment.

Stiqrd has made loyalty and rewards easy by having a qr code based system and an app to track your purchases and rewards. A very real problem that many in the “loyalty reward app” business are experiencing is that soon instead of having too many key-tags or punch cards you’re going to have too many apps. Pranther is one of the first founders of a loyalty/rewards startup to acknowledge that.

What’s going to make a loyalty and rewards startup successful is going to be their ability to scale in both users and customers and for that Pranther has introduced the 15 minute loyalty program. Through rigorous testing he has found that the Stiqrd program can be implemented in most businesses in under 15 minutes complete with working dashboard.

But Stiqrd is more than a do it yourself loyalty program. He has real people available to speak anytime of the day to business’ that want to set up the loyalty program.

Pranther plans on implementing the system across the country at a few select retail partners however any business owner can sign up, and it truly is that easy.

We got a chance to interview Pranther about Stiqrd and the 15 minute loyalty program. Check out the interview below:

Utah CleanTech Startup: EcoScraps Announces Product Availability In Southern California

Back in April we reported on an exciting startup in Utah that was founded by former Brigham Young students. They came up with the idea after eating at an all you can eat breakfast buffet and asking themselves where all the wasted food goes. Naturally we can’t really box up that uneaten food off people’s plates and send it to starving kids in third world countries. I’m sure we would if we could. However the team behind EcoScraps found something clean, green and good for the environment to do with that scrap food.

EcoScraps now takes food waste from grocery stores, and farms and has it hauled to their compost facilities for a discounted tipping fee compared to the dump. EcoScraps then takes the food waste and turns it into compost and potting soil. They sell their compost and potting soil in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and now Southern California.

Today the startup announced that their soil and compost products will be available in 40 big box home improvement stores in Southern California.

The company redirects 100 tons of produce waste each day from local grocery stores and restaurants. The waste is diverted away from landfills and turned into compost products, which can now be found in over 40 big box home improvement stores across Southern California.

“Every three days in America, enough food is thrown away to fill the Rose Bowl,” said EcoScraps CEO and co-founder Dan Blake. “By repurposing leftover fruit and vegetables, we are doing our part to take that valuable organic material and return it to good use. Our expansion into Southern California affords us the opportunity to put more food scraps to use, protecting the environment and enhancing gardens in America.”

EcoScraps is a no-chemical, no-poop alternative to typical manure- and chemical-based soil products on the market. The company’s products not only contain twice the amount of essential soil nutrients, but are safe for kids and pets too. By establishing a new infrastructure model for creating organic compost, EcoScraps has been able to quickly expand and reach a wide variety of consumers.

In June 2012, the World Bank released What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management, which reported that 810 million tons of organic waste will be generated this year alone. “America’s food waste accounts for 30 million tons, which is equivalent to 25 percent of all landfill waste in the U.S.,” Blake said. “This number is expected to almost double by 2025. EcoScraps takes the nutrients found in our fruits and vegetables and returns them back to the soil instead of letting them waste away in landfills. This creates healthier plants and a healthier planet.”

Linkage:

Learn more about EcoScraps here at their website

Here’s a story we ran in April about EcoScraps

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Interview With California Startup: At The Pool, Casual People Discovery Platform

People discovery is a hot startup space this year. As you’ve heard time and time again it was the startup space dejour at South By Southwest back in March. Startups like Ban.jo, Glancee, and Highlight ruled the roost on the streets of Austin during the interactive festival.

Now four months later, Glancee has been purchased by Facebook and the others are getting just passive traffic (I know some may disagree). One of the problems with people discovery applications are the in your face constant notifications that occur when you’re logged into one of the services. You get inundated with notifications about people you don’t know and sometimes don’t even want to know. There has to be an easier way.

Enter “At The Pool”

The Los Angeles startup offers you a once a day match based on interests and things you may want to do off line. Are you looking for new rock climbing buddies? Maybe you’re looking for new friends to start some pick up hockey? Maybe you’re looking to talk startups or even build a startup? Well At The Pool says there’s a pool for that.

Just what does that mean? Well we talk with At The Pool’s co-founder Alex Capecelatro to find out about their pool party. Check out the interview below:

Chicago Startup: EcoResume Offers Job Hunters An Easy & Green Way To Hand Out Resumes INTERVIEW

Whether you’re actively searching for a job or you’re just passively looking, chances are you’ve been to a conference, networking event or other meetup and needed your resume close by. Now without bringing a briefcase or worse, a book bag, to every professional outing you take, carrying your resume with you can be cumbersome, often times resulting in a crinkled up, less professional looking representation of yourself.

Well a startup in Chicago, called EcoResume has a solution for you that solves this particular problem and makes things a little greener.

With EcoResume you upload your credentials and resume information to their website. From there the folks at EcoResume create a virtual business card for you, complete with the bullet points from your resume and links to your supporting documents. You can easily send this eco friendly card with resume highlights to anyone that you come across at a meeting, or professional event from your smartphone or when you get back to the office.

Sure there are other ways of doing this, including getting your own blog site, or custom url but EcoResume has it all figured out in a nice looking site that’s both easy to navigate and easy to find.

We got a chance to interview the founder of EcoResume Efrem McGruder. Check out the interview below.

Washington DC’s Startup Kitchen Narrows The Field To Three

The first food industry startup incubator the “Startup Kitchen” is the brainchild of Washington DC restauranteur Kera Carpenter. She opened Domku an East European influenced restaurant in the revitalizing neighborhood of Pentworth in the district in 2005. It was overcoming the difficulties of not only starting here own business, but a restaurant at that, that inspired Carpenter to team up with Think Local First DC to create the “Startup Kitchen”.

Now we’re not talking a show you would see on the food network, we are talking about full on restaurant idea businesses. The food startup founders were narrowed down to three finalists which will pitch on July 18th. The winner selected out of the finalists will have six weeks to work on their concept with the help of mentors, and then Carpenter will donate space for the winner to open up a “Pop up restaurant” once a week in Domku’s space at 821 Upshur Street NW in Pentworth.

Hopefully after the six week period and then the pop up restaurant period that entrepreneur will be able to transition their startup to their own space in the district.

The three finalists, as reported by the Washington Business Journal are:

Worthwhile Meats and Provisions founded by Julien Shapiro. Her business idea is a specialty butcher shop showcasing the whole animal.

Chaya, a restaurant concept focused on cuisines featuring plants, legumes and whole grains. This is the idea of Bettina Stern and Zusanne Simon.

DC Dosa, a restaurant idea that would serve Dosa’s which are south Indian pancake snacks. Their plan is to serve them late night and at lunchtime. Think along the lines of crepe stands.

The three semi-finalists will pitch next Wednesday and the winners will be announced on Friday the 20th. That’s a big week for startups in DC as the 20th is also pitch day for TechStars Patriot Bootcamp.

Linkage:

Here’s the Startup Kitchen blog

Source: Washington Business Journal 1 2

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