Comments Off on EdTech Startup SpeakingPal Pitches At LAUNCHedu Part Of SXSWedu [sxsw]0LikeLike 5,260
Nowadays people don’t have time for long tail language speaking courses like Rosetta Stone. Not only that but most courses, like Rosetta Stone, teach their students in just about the same manner you would learn a foreign language in high school.
SpeakingPal, an Israeli startup, is actually more successful because the platform teaches English in a more natural format.
SpeakingPal is a web based platform and also a mobile app platform that let’s the user engage with video content and actually have a “conversation” with the virtual instructor.
The guys at SpeakingPal actually ended up winning the highered category at LAUNCHedu as part of SXSWedu.
50 years ago, a student challenging a teacher would be cause for a good paddle beating or wrapping on the students fingers with a ruler. Today, not so much.
Argumentation is now at the core of the new Common Core State Standards, and distinguished Chicago educator, Eileen Murphy Buckley, understands that with a passion. As the former Director of Curriculum and Instruction for over 100 Chicago Public Schools, Buckley oversaw the implementation of this kind of curriculum system wide.
Now she’s turned these important fundamentals into ThinkCerca a platform that helps build students critical thinking ability.
With argumentation we’re not talking abut back talking the teacher, Buckley and progressive educators worldwide are teaching students how to create valid arguments about everything built on five principles; claim, evidence, reasoning, counter argument and audience.
“ThinkCERCA is harnessing the unique combination of deep subject area knowledge, hard-earned, pedagogical design skill, and research-based expertise to build a marketplace that will give school districts economic access to the world’s largest selection of high quality literacy lessons. Unlike a the limited selection available in a static textbook, our dynamic marketplace will offer a distribution channel for expert teachers to refresh and deepen the lesson library in ways that both students and teachers find valuable.” Buckley wrote in a guest post to Chicago based Technori.
ThinkCera made it to the final round in the LAUNCHedu startup showdown as part of SXSWedu in the K-12 category.
Comments Off on instaGrok Is A New Way To Learn, And It Works! SXSWedu Video Interview0LikeLike 6,513
When I first sat down with Andrew Bender, President and CEO of instaGrok I was mesmerized at what I saw. I originally though that a “research engine” would be boring, or at best a fancy way to say search engine, and Google has determined we don’t need anymore of those.
Once Bender took me through a demo I wished that instaGrok was around when I was in school. I told Bender that I am a very visual person. I “white board” just about everything, drawing webs, flowcharts and arrows all over the place. Well instaGrok takes whatever your researching and visually shows the user how things are connected.
Bender showed me two examples. The first was gravity. As you can see from the grok above gravity is connected to Einstein, equation, orbit, object, universe, scientists, force, astronaut, and Newton. When you’re on the instaGrok site if you click on any of the circles another web appears showing how the connections are connected to other things.
On the right side bar instaGrok connects the user to key facts, websites, videos, images, quizzes and a glossary. Now the user is connected to mountains worth of research in a very easy to understand and navigate UI. If a user was actually working on a research paper about gravity they could pin anything from the right hand columns directly into the grok.
The other topic we looked at was “Brown v Brown” and a user built grok. This grok features a bunch of links that the creator has added, or pinned, to it with the information they need.
You don’t need to register for instaGrok, but if you do you can save the groks you create for as long as you would like.
We got a chance to interview Bender at the LAUNCHedu showcase as part of SXSWedu. Check out the video interview below:
Comments Off on Flinja The Place To Find Free Lance Ninjas SXSWedu Video Interview0LikeLike 4,961
There are so many reasons we like Flinja. First off, their name is short for Freelance Ninja, and any startup with the word Ninja in it rocks. Secondly they are connecting college students with ways to make money by sharing their service as free-lancers with college alumni.
The startup, founded by Rebecca Bahr and Victor Young, is a market place for current college students to find free-lance employment opportunities from alumni. Bahr says they’ve pivoted several times. When they first set out on the free lance ninja concept the platform was closed to each students actual school. Well Bahr, who went to college in Montreal, found it hard to find people to connect with when she needed a service provider in California.
Now, any college student can be a service provider to any college graduate from any school in their network.
Students are utilizing Flinja to offer videography services, photography services, wedding planning services, tutoring in a variety of subjects and anything else that they could do for others for a little money on the side (legal of course).
The hope is that the alumni or college graduates that hire the students as freelancers may be a gateway to more stable employment.
The Flinja marketplace is self contained. When a college graduate is looking for a service provider they can search through Flinja, see a provider (students) feedback and ratings, set up the service, agree to pay and actually finish the transaction. Flinja takes a small percentage from the person hiring, not from the college student.
UCLA was the first school to adopt the Flinja platform. Students are being hired as videographers, editors and tutors.
Flinja is a finalist in the LAUNCHedu competition at SXSWedu in the higher education category. They will appear in the showdown later this week.
Check out our video interview with Bahr below and for more info visit flinja.com
Comments Off on Cristin Frodella Talks Google Science Fair At SXSWedu0LikeLike 4,796
As part of the programming in the Google Classroom at SXSWedu Google’s Cristin Frodella spent some time talking about the globally known Google Science Fair.
Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google said it best last year when addressing a crowd about the Google Science Fair “We’re all scientists here.” Many of Google’s employees are engineers and scientists and spent many a day developing science fair projects to show off at school with a poster board and a cool experiment.
Through Google’s global reach, widely respected brand and technology Google has taken the science fair online and across the world. The contest, now headed into it’s third year, reaches high school aged students across the globe and brings the top 15 to Google’s campus to show off their world changing science experiments to a group of distinguished scientists and judges.
Of course the students also enjoy the thrill of being not only in Google’s campus but visiting surrounding science related places as well. Last year for instance, the students spent some time at the Tesla world headquarters.
Check out the video below where Frodella gives some background on The Google Science Fair.
Comments Off on Listenup.FM Pitches At Spark Nashville0LikeLike 2,991
Listneup.fm CEO Mykas Degesys pitches at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)
Tennessee startup Listenup.fm just got back from pitching at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Their platform is designed to engage fans with their favorite artists and bands while also returning bands and record labels with valuable analytics.
Their streaming music platform is built on top of the highly successful Spotify platform and rewards fans for sharing the music they’re listening to across their social networks.
CEO Mykas Degesys explains that as the music industry moves from an ownership to an access model, bands need more and more ways to engage with fans and of course generate extra revenue.
Even just a few years ago it was important to own your music collection. Whether it be vinyl, cassette, CD or mp3, most people who loved music owned it in some media format or another. Now with services like Rhapsody,Rdio,Slacker and Spotify, and high speed internet, more and more people are turning to all you can eat access packages with libraries millions of songs deep.
Royalties are baked into services that range from $4.99 a month to $19.99 a month, all supplying some sort of unlimited listening.
Bands can now find ways to get to their exact target market. They can reward fans with prizes and Listenup.fm even allows fans to earn points to purchase prizes like limited edition swag and backstage passes.
Check out Degesys’ pitch from the Spark Nashville event in the video below.
Listenup.fm also pitched at everywhereelse.co 2013, don’t miss everywhereelse.co 2014 with tickets now at 2013 prices through March 27. Click here
Comments Off on Nashville Entrepreneurs Share Their Dumbest Decisions Ever0LikeLike 3,039
Nick Holland (L) and Marcus Whitney (R) talk about the dumbest thing they’ve ever done (photo: NMI 2013)
Failure and dumb decisions are part of every true entrepreneurs life. If an entrepreneur goes through life without any failures, anyone telling them their babies are ugly and any dumb decisions, they’re doing it wrong.
Thursday night at 3rd and Lindsley in Nasvhille as part of Southern Alpha’s Spark Nashville event, seasoned local entrepreneurs Nick Holland (CentreSource/Populr.me) and Marcus Whitney (CTO at MoonToast), shared their dumbest decisions.
Both guests looked surprised when Southern Alpha Editor In Chief Walker Duncan asked them to share their dumbest decisions, but the surprise on their face made everyone quickly realize that they were going to actually share their dumbest decisions.
Holland’s centers around his days growing CentreSource. He had a bunch of developers sitting around on the payroll and needed something to do. Holland wanted it to be something creative and something that could make them some money so he had the developers re-do any Nashville website they wanted. The hope was that the businesses who owned the sites they chose would throw money at CentreSource for the new design. What really happened made for a great story.
Whitney’s dumb decision is one that has been a source of constant debate the last four years I’ve personally attended SXSW (3 as Thedroidguy 1 with nibletz). I can only hope that startups out there heed Whitney’s advice, unfortunately with SXSW two weeks away, there’s going to be quite a few startups in Whitney’s shoes come March 12th.
Check out the video for some entertaining and enlightening stories.
Comments Off on Tennessee Startup GreenPal Pitches At Spark Nashville0LikeLike 3,240
CEO of Greenpal pitches at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)
After pitching at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference earlier this month, Tennessee startup GreenPal headed out to Nashville to pitch as part of Spark Nashville on Thursday night.
Earlier this morning we brought you the story about DC startup TouchdownSpace launching. That startup makes booking professional space just as easy as hailing a car with Uber. Greenpal makes it just as easy to get your yardwork done.
The market for this kind of app is huge. Greenpal’s CEO and cofounder spent 15 years in his own landscaping business and suddenly realized there was an easier way to find customers, collect money and set appointments. The company also realized making it easier on themselves would make it easier on the customers as well.
Now Greenpal is here and it allows you to order lawn care service on the web or on their mobile app by vetted professionals who are ready to do the job. Once the appointment is set and the job is done, Greenpal also has a payment mechanism that makes paying your service providers as easy as clicking a button.
These guys looked sharp at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference and were one of the best pitches at Spark Nasvhille. Watch the video below.
Comments Off on 2 Of Nashville’s Startup Community Leaders Talk About The Yes Mentality0LikeLike 3,231
Southern Alpha’s Editor In Chief Walker Duncan (L), Nick Holland CEO of Populr.me, Marcus Whitney CTO Moontoast (photo: NMI 2013)
Thursday night was a big night for Nashville’s startup community. New online publication Southern Alpha, which covers high growth technology for the south east, held their inaugural Spark Nashville event. The event organized by Southern Alpha Marketing Director, Kelley Boothe and Editor in Chief, Walker Duncan, was a huge success.
Spark Nashville consisted of three main parts, a fire side chat with Duncan, a pitch contest for Tennessee startups and time for networking in a startup exhibition.
For this first event, Duncan had a fireside chat with community leaders Nick Holland and Marcus Whitney. Both men are seasoned entrepreneurs who’ve had measurable success with their own startups to date.
Holland was the founder of what is now one of the biggest agencies in Nashville CentreSource and Whitney began his career with Emma and eventually spun off and cofounded MoonToast, a social agency that has clients as big as Universal Music Group. Whitney was named the CTO of the year this year by the Nashville Technology Council.
Duncan had come up with some great questions for both guests who are now frequent mentors and advisors to budding young startups in the Nashville community. Holland has an open door policy with all entrepreneurs, a recognizable figure that stops and chats with anyone with an idea. Whitney is a managing director at JumpStart Foundry and a regular, accessible face at community events, as well as at the Entrepreneur Center.
While both guests talked about the struggle and how hard it is to start your own business, they also both talked about the importance of peer groups and finding people to say yes. Sure every entrepreneur wants to find the people that say yes, “yes we’ll write you a check”, “yes your idea is great”, “Yes we can sponsor you”. As you’ll see in the video it’s actually an important foundation in a successful startup community.
Both Holland and Whitney acknowledged that once you go out and prove yourself, roll up your sleeves and prove you’re not afraid to work hard, and not afraid to try, the yes’s get easier.
Holland likes to steer clear of negativity and people who resort to no rather than to hear an idea out. When someone pitches Holland on an idea for a project or an event, if he can wrap his head around it he’s looking for ways to say yes and get it moving rather than to say no. “When I get inspired by somebody it’s infectious and I do whatever I can to say yes”.
Early on in the video Whitney talks about his first experience pitching Holland. Nick had already had some success with CenterSource and Whitney was about to embark on the first BarCamp event, he went to Holland for $1,000 to sponsor. Whitney was a scrappy young and hungry entrepreneur with a great idea, and Holland said yes.
The duo have worked together to help bring Startup Weekend to Nashville as well. They also both support just about any cause or event that’s good for the startup community. When startup community leaders are this supportive it is infectious and the community builds.. wait for it.. organically.
Comments Off on Body Boss Is A Fitness Startup For Teams VIDEO INTERVIEW0LikeLike 2,894
Body Boss co-founder Daryl Lu explains his startup at Startup Rally (photo: NMI 2013)
There are a lot of fitness startups out there. At CES 2013 back in January, a panel of media big wigs actually talked about the fact that there may be too many fitness startups these days. There’s a lot of noise in the fitness space and you’ll have to be unique to succeed.
Atlanta startup Body Boss may actually have that uniqueness people are looking for. Body Boss isn’t just a fitness app, but it’s a fitness app for teams. High School, college and even professional sports teams can use the Body Boss platform to track the fitness performance of their players.
Coaches can use Body Boss to track workouts from individuals as well as the entire team. The platform gives coaches the analytics they need to compare each player, how fit they are and where they need improvement.
Body Boss is making it easier for college recruiters to get a better picture of the high school athletes they’re looking at.
“This is a great tool for tracking and recruiting high school athletes. I like the competitive aspect, accessibility on smartphones and tablets and instant updates. There is nothing on the market that is this professional looking” John Sisk, Director of Football Player Development at Georgia Tech said about Body Boss.
The competitive aspect that Sisk mentions is a feature in Body Boss that allows intra-squad competition. Virtual weight room crap-talking can be done through Body Boss, and whether athletes want to admit it or not, that can be a powerful tool.
Real time updates and an easy to understand UI make it a great way to create accountability for players and coaches. It also eliminates paperwork coaches would have to do on athlete’s workouts.
As the platform grows, Body Boss co-founders Daryl Lu and Don Pottinger hope that teams will be able to use Body Boss to not only keep up with their own team but other teams as well. A network for collaborating and sharing is already baked into the platform.
Comments Off on Atlanta Startup Plisten Is Bringing Pinboards For Brands VIDEO INTERVIEW0LikeLike 3,271
While we will stay away from calling Plisten, Pinterest for Brands, that may be a very good description of exactly what Randy Mitchell and Eric Yu are doing with their Atlanta based startup.
Mitchell tells us in this video interview that Plisten came about after he had some trouble with major brands. He gives us just one example, citing a problem he had with a major bank where he had been a customer for years. As his situation got escalated he became more and more frustrated with customer service and the way the bank was treating him. Finally, a customer service “manager” told him to get any further he would need to write a letter to the CEO. Plisten is that letter.
But, Plisten is more about good interactions with brands as opposed to bad ones. Facebook, Google+ and even Twitter have taught us that people will communicate about their favorite brands. People will tweet about great experiences and of course bad experiences with any brand from Best Buy to BMW.
Coca-Cola, MTV, Disney, Red Bull, Converse, Starbucks and McDonalds are just some of the top brands on Facbeook today. Those seven brands alone count for over 250 million likes.
Brands are definitely a big play, Yu and Mitchell are hoping to hit a homerun with Plisten, which is a pinboard specifically for brands.
Consumers will be able to talk about their favorite brands, like their favorite brands and communicate directly with those brands. This is a powerful tool for consumers and for the brands themselves. By cutting away the noise from everything else people like, and honing in just on brands, Plisten will be able to deliver captive audiences and in turn those brands will be able to market directly to their most active customers.
Of course in Mitchell’s case, when someone has a problem with a brand they’ll also be able to communicate that problem. Perhaps they’ll find that the problem is more widespread. They may also find it’s isolated, but either way, with the focus strictly on brands, brand managers will have a better way of finding those problems, and fixing them.
Comments Off on Athens GA Startup Wagglez It All Began With A Honey Bee Dance0LikeLike 5,121
Sure there are plenty of daily deals startups out there. In fact, one of the most popular Atlanta startups is daily deal startup ScoutMob, but, none have as good a name as Wagglez.
Athens Georgia based Wagglez takes it’s name from a dance that honey bees do when they get back to the hive to tell the other bees where the honey is. It’s that same principal Wagglez is hoping to achieve with deal seekers.
By delivering relevant local deals straight to the smartphone ,Wagglez eliminates the need to clip coupons or use a daily deals site like Groupon.
When a user fills out a profile on Wagglez, their data (minus their personal info like their name) is saved and delivered to participating merchants. Merchants can then analyze the data to see which offers and promotions are working with which demographic. They can then use that data to offer more strategic offers that will benefit both the consumer and the merchant.
Wagglez wants to make the daily deals experience as easy as possible for the end user. There’s no need to print coupons, all of the participating merchants create the deals themselves, along with the stipulations to take advantage of the deal. This makes the experience as easy as walking into a participating merchant and redeeming your Wagglez deal.
Wagglez is incubating at the FourAthens incubator in Athens Georgia along with several other up and coming tech startups.
Wagglez wants to be as relevant to visitors as it is to locals. The idea came about when founder Chris Bell and some of his fellow University of Nebraska alums went to a football game in Seattle. They didn’t know where to go or what to do. They were eventually pointed to a bar which some other fellow cornhuskers had taken over. For travelers, Bell is hoping to make Wagglez a platform where out of towners can easily find the best things to do with the best deals as well.
Bell was unable to be at the Startup Rally event in Atlanta Monday as he and his wife are expecting a baby, who will also become a Wagglez user. In his place we got to talk with Matt Downing, who even does the Wagglez dance for us in the video. Check it out below.
What?? You weren’t at everywhereelse.co 2013, well don’t make that mistake again, 2014 tickets are on sale now at the 2013 rate (for a limited time) click here
Comments Off on When You Say Jump Vert Says How High VIDEO INTERVIEW1LikeLike 3,338
One of the coolest startups we found at Eureka Park as part of CES 2013 last month was a startup called MayFonk Athletic and their app called Vert. It’s kind of a fitness app combining a piece of Bluetooth enabled hardware with a smart device app. However, Vert is specific to one thing, and that is jumping.
Vert uses a sensor that easily attaches to a person’s body (as seen in the video below), and is able to measure how high someone jumps. Whether they are jumping in basketball, doing jumping jacks, gymnastics or a workout infused with jumping Vert keeps up.
On the app side it’s able to measure, track and analyze all of the data provided from the device. With the right exposure it’s something that many basketball teams will want to take advantage of.
The Fort Lauderdale based startup is creating their own market, separate from the other fitness based measurement devices and apps.
Check out the video interview below. For more info visit
Comments Off on Footmarks Is Using A Software & Hardware Based Platform For Location Based Engagement0LikeLike 4,989
Seattle startup Footmarks is looking to change the way location based engagement is done for businesses both big and small. They consider themselves a social engagement platform that is based on two patent pending technologies.
The first technology is a piece of hardware called the “Smart Connect Device” this device is a low powered Bluetooth device that works within 400 feet of a smartphone and the battery lasts for two years.
Using this device in your car will enable the end user to receive a stream of localized, real time deals as they approach a business on the road. By combining the device’s technology along with the users social profile, they can receive offers from businesses that are relevant to them. For instance if you were say a golfer and you were passing by Mike’s Super Golf Warehouse, the store could alert you of a deal as you approach.
Another use for the device is through digital billboards. Footmarks hopes to have their technology work in tandem with digital billboards so that the billboard can show an add relevant to a mass of users within 1500 feet. If the demographic profiles of those users approaching the billboard suggested that they were between 35-54 the billboard could show an advertisement for an Elton John concert. Or if the bulk of users passing were 21-35 year old mom’s, you may see an ad on the billboard for Chuckie Cheese.
So of course we had to ask why this technology would trump existing geo-fencing technologies that are currently available on smartphones. According to Footmarks, their technology is scalable up and down whereas geo-fencing technology out there today is to a rather large area.
The company insists that they could set the radius for Footmarks to say 200 feet. That way a department store could have multiple Footmarks set up by department. When the user passes the shoe department they could get one offer, and then turn around and get an entirely different offer in the juniors department.
According to a report on NPR just yesterday, more and more retailers are looking to embrace in-store mobile technologies a growing fad in today’s evolving retail landscape.
Check out the video below to hear about the other things Footmarks has in store for their late Spring 2013 launch.
The biggest startup conference in the US is this weekend, find out more here.
Kyle
Nowadays people don’t have time for long tail language speaking courses like Rosetta Stone. Not only that but most courses, like Rosetta Stone, teach their students in just about the same manner you would learn a foreign language in high school.
