Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Archives for February 2012

Minnov8 Gang 158 – Aloha Smartphones & Tablets

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“Aloha” is an Hawaiian word used both for greeting, or leaving, someone. Aloha is thus a metaphor for both the opportunity and the angst about how to capitalize upon it. That angst many people feel comes when we examine how to publish or develop apps for smartphones and tablets. The Gang discusses the market, tools, and how we all can participate in this mobile digital revolution. (Note: Hawaii as a show theme is brought to you by Steve Borsch, a guy with pent-up desire to be lying on a beach there now).

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off today)
Music: Kaimoku & the song “Honolulu Shuffle” from the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 48:19 — 28.5MB)

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Discussed during the show:

Upcoming Events:

Minnov8 Gang 157 – More Donuts!

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Once again there is SO much going on in technology that we had to do two key things: have on Julio Ojeda-Zapata as our guest host and fortify ourselves with the (possible, but unlikely) Mobile March TC special gimmee for Minnov8 Gang Podcast listeners, donuts!

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson and Julio Ojeda-Zapata
Music: Charlie Crowe & the song “007” from the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:11:34 — 41.8MB)

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Discussed during the show:

Upcoming Events:

Improving Data Integrity for Analysis

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The Minneapolis firm Colectica recently completed a project resulting from their third SBIR grant through the National Institute of Health (NIH). Focused on corralling the endless supply of unstructured data through Open Standards like those standards developed by the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI), they have found their niche with research organizations responsible for securely analyzing data within the social, behavioral, and economic sciences.

Colectica was spun out of Algenta Technologies, a software company that delivered a variety of services that included DNS Hosting, custom development projects, and a series of contracts with the University of Minnesota Computer Science Department. The experience and capital allowed the founders the ability to pursue their interests in data integrity.

Dan Smith

Co-founder Dan Smith describes their platform as “enabling organizations to document the complete life cycle of data. This includes recording why and how the data were created, by whom, for what purposes, where it can be accessed, its representation, and what each piece of data is comparable to. This fine grained description of data, the concepts captured, and the data processes are all recorded using Open Standards from ISO/IEC and research consortiums”.

The data life cycle starts with a study concept, which is tranformed through data collection and other standardized processes, before it is analyzed. This complete data workflow, which is underlying the Colectica platform, serves as a foundation for data analysis. The data that moves through this life cycle is stored in a repository, which is essentially a version control system for metadata and relationships.

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My Experience with the Minnesota R&D Tax Credit

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In 2011, as part of our tax filings for fiscal year 2010, we evaluated the federal and Minnesota R&D Tax Credit. In 2010 the State of Minnesota significantly enhanced the state R&D tax credit, effectively doubling the size of the credit while also providing coverage for more types of businesses, including S corps and LLC’s. We didn’t know what we were in for, but figured we’d give it a try.

Kathy Laney, who serves as the operations director at Arthur Ventures, recommended me to Scott Schmidt at Black Line Group. Black Line specializes in helping companies understand the qualification and procedural process to file for the R&D tax credit program, and calculates and documents the R&D tax credits being claimed. After a few phone calls and emails, we hired Black Line Group as our vendor for the filing.

The Pre-Filing Process
The first thing we accomplished was an internal audit of our research and development processes and resources. We took inventory of our R&D team, the work they had performed in research and development, and the amount of time spent working in areas that qualified under the definitions of R&D. This was in preparation for the 4-part tax credit test. We loaded all of this in a format for evaluation by Black Line Group.

Next, Black Line Group helped us by coordinating our documentation, the necessary filing paperwork, and the filing plan. This came back to us in the form of a well-organized filing book which could be used as a resource for audits. There were man-hours invested in getting prepared, but the offset was that it did help us with internal organization which benefited the company above and beyond the filing.

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Minnov8 Gang 156 – Pathgate, Privacy & Phones

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Imagine what sort of mischief Richard Nixon would have been able to get in to as president, if he’d had the sort of technologies available to him today. The Watergate scandal would have been child’s play compared to the sort of overt and covert tracking that could’ve been done on Nixon’s political opponents with today’s mobile technologies.

Last week a Ruby/iOS developer in Singapore, Arun Thampi, broke the story on his blog that the mobile app Path had been automatically (and without encryption) uploading ones address book en masse to their servers. The Gang discusses what happened and what it means as this one blog post exploded in to what Tim Elliott describes as “Pathgate.”

Who better to talk with us about this entire brouhaha than local mobile developer Justin Grammens of Recursive Awesome, now part of Code42 Software. We talk to him about this “gate” scandal, what else is going on in mobile development, and what you should fear about releasing (or not) with your mobile app.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: AjT & the song “Apple Chunk Guitar” from the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:14:03 — 43.0MB)

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Discussed during the show:

Upcoming Events:

Mobile March Grows to Two Days

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Mobile, mobile, mobile. If you had to give advice to some kid you were mentoring regarding an industry they should focus on with their career, anything mobile would be great advice.

We humans are not going to get less mobile (though our waistlines might state otherwise) and new mobile devices, apps, and ways to connect us all will only continue to become better and more prolific. As such, knowing trends in mobile, how to (and what’s involved in) develop mobile apps, and what you should do next are just a few of the things you need to know if you have any interest in the mobile space.

This is the primary reason that you need to make certain you attend MobileMarchTC (and maybe bring along that young person you’ve given advice to!). The agenda just came out and the press release is after the jump which you can read after clicking “(more…)” below.

MobileMarchTC not only looks like a fabulous event, in my estimation you would need to travel to San Francisco or New York to find a mobile event to rival it. Event registration can be found at http://mobilemarchtc.eventbrite.com/.

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Minnov8 Gang 155 – It’s the Data

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Publisher and tech visionary, Tim O’Reilly, has repeatedly said that “Data is the Intel Inside“. O’Reilly was referring, of course, to Intel’s famous “Intel Inside” ad campaign touting the importance of their chips, mainly since chips are invisible inside a computer or device and it’s easy for competitors to market their chips as being equal and interchangeable with Intel’s. O’Reilly’s recognition that data is the hidden value inside applications, the “Intel Inside” value, meant leveraging data was an imperative in application development.

The Gang talks with a data scientist (and accomplished applications developer) living here in the Twin Cities, Jamie Ostheimer. He is working with a string of startups and is deeply embedded within the world of data. Osterheimer has a PhD in Astronomy, a discipline all about the data (and no, not Commander Data from Star Trek Next Generation). Rather his focus is about the core data sets that power all of our analysis, driving insights and enabling us to gain new meanings from it.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: bluessmyth & the song “Down on My Luck” from the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05:10 — 37.9MB)

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Discussed during the show:

Upcoming Events:

MN Attorney General on Cramming Scamming

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Here is a followup to the post, “Mobile Text Message “Cramming” Scam” since I’ve received a response, embedded below, from an assistant with the State of Minnesota Attorney General’s office.

The AG’s letter below had four key responses:

  1. Yes, I was a “victim” of cramming and it is an old scam, with players in the game like the Gambino crime family in the late 1990s
  2. Our MN AG, Lori Swanson, is very concerned about these practices. What I did not know is that Attorney General Swanson, alongside Senator Amy Klobuchar, is already going after this category, albeit it appears to be only landline cramming and not mobile cramming, the latter an arguably bigger problem (WCCO story from January 7th here)
  3. Minnesota law provides some protection ONLY FOR LANDLINE CRAMMING and NOTHING FOR MOBILE
  4. In addition to the MN AG’s office, the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission take complaints, and I was encouraged to file mine with them.

Visibility is what matters and Congress will only take action if enough consumers scream about this theft to them. That’s why I was so pleased to see a story on WCCO about mobile cramming (aired on February 1st) so they are paying attention.

Hats off to the journalists at WCCO for covering this story. As more and more of us get online with mobile phones — and our kids get them and respond to who-knows-what online — we need to scrutinize our cell phone bills and most people aren’t savvy enough to even know what’s going on with scams like these.

The wireless companies and scammers economic interests are aligned so there is little incentive for AT&T, Verizon, TMobile, Sprint and others to stop this practice of stealing from all of us. Congress needs to take action…now.

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