Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 7

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We were absolutely delighted this week to have three very special guests who joined the Gang for a discussion about ‘net and web innovation in Minnesota:

– Katharine Grayson: Staff Writer for the Twin Cities Business Journal. Katharine covers the internet and web technology beat for the paper, but she’s also expanded into other technologies (e.g., MSP solar array funding, biotech) giving her unique perspectives.

– Julio Ojeda-Zapata: Reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, blogger, and author (his new book, “Twitter Means Business: How Microblogging Can Help or Hurt Your Company” will be on bookshelves soon). Julio can be reached at jojeda@pioneerpress.com. Get more of his perspective on personal tech at twincities.com/techtestdrive and yourtechweblog.com. You can also follow him at twitter.com/jojeda.

– Jon Gordon: Future Tense, a show which you’ve undoubtedly heard broadcast during Minnesota Public Radio’s Morning Edition program. The show is both produced and hosted by Jon Gordon, a Minnesota Public Radio reporter based in Silicon Valley. Follow Jon at twitter.com/jongordon.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04:41 — 37.6MB)

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Show Notes:

+ Julio’s post on Minnesota Public Radio’s new, free iPhone app (get it here) done by Codemorphic

+ Discussion on broadband where Minnesota’s Ultra High Speed Broadband task force came up (latest minutes are here in this PDF) and Jon mentioned a show he’d done (here) and his interview with a cybersecurity firm called Packet Clearing House.

+ As you listen, you may notice at times the audio is a bit “hot” and I apologize for that — there’s a bit more distortion than normal and I couldn’t minimize it enough in post-production. We tried a new, high quality ‘bridge’ recording platform (HiDefConferencing) — instead of using a single Gang-member hosted Skype conference call — and while it allowed our guests to easily call in with a combination of Skype, landlines or mobile phones, it was more challenging to control levels. I’ll have it figured out by next time.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04:41 — 37.6MB)

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Social Media Breakfast at Best Buy

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The Twin Cities Social Media Breakfast group met today at Best Buy Headquarters to connect about social media and to hear from our hosts who’ve created Blueshirtnation, Giftag and something we hadn’t heard about before, Spy (video of Best Buy’s Spy in the lobby of Best Buy HQ is after the jump).

Social Media Breakfast’s Rick Mahn was the emcee and did a great job keeping it moving. While you can read many of the tweets from today here and draw some conclusions, suffice to say that Best Buy is doing one thing in social media and doing it well: they’re on the field and playing the game.

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Best Buy Acquires Napster

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Best Buy and Napster logosBest Buy has entered into a definitive merger agreement to commence a tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of the troubled Napster for $121 million, or $2.65 per share.

According to the joint press release, “The proposed acquisition includes Napster’s approximately 700,000 digital entertainment subscribers, its Web-based customer service platform, and innovative mobile capabilities. In conjunction with the definitive merger agreement, Napster CEO Chris Gorog and key members of senior management of Napster have entered into employment agreements, effective at closing, pursuant to which they have agreed to continue as the Napster leadership post-acquisition.”

With Best Buy’s acquisition last year of Speakeasy, minority investment in, and partnership with, video sharing company Mydeo, along with the $2.1 billion stake in European mobile retail juggernaut Carphone Warehouse, the company is clearly and strategically positioning themselves to be a leader in digital distribution.

The press release is after the jump and the Napster SEC filing is here.

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3M Unveils Handheld Projector

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3M\'s new handheld projectorImagine you are expecting to present to an investor, a customer or a single client, and several people show up? You could have everyone crowd around your laptop and hope to see what you’re presenting, or instead you could pull this tiny 3M projector out of your briefcase or backpack and ensure everyone could see and make a much bigger impact.

I carry a small Panasonic Lumix camera with video capture capability with me at all times. Also in my briefcase is my M-Audio Microtrack recorder and I’ve frequently pulled it out for instant interviewing. Too often I’ve been in situations where a projector like this would’ve come in extremely handy and I’d definitely have one with me if something this small was available.

Popular Science (PopSci), having a pre-release version of this projector, agreed to wait until launch in the US, but 3M’s German subsidiary apparently beat their US counterparts to launch. PopSci does have the ‘official’ 3M press photograph on their site (the one above), and I’d encourage you to read their informative post here.

More intriguing to me, however, is that this projector appears to work in fairly bright ambient light. If you’d like to see a couple of videos of a pre-release prototype from January of this year (and it’s pretty tough to get a true feel for the quality with YouTube videos shot with a camcorder!), take a peek at this PopSci article.

At the stated price-point of $359, I predict this little gadget is going to sell like crazy.

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 6

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We covered a lot of ground this week even though there were only three of us who could make the call.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:53 — 29.4MB)

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Mentioned in this weeks show are:

+ Why Broadband Matters: A MN Senate Full Committee Meeting on September 16th at 10am. “The Committee will receive testimony regarding the consumer benefits of broadband service in areas such as education, job opportunities, telemedicine, and access to government resources.” If you have an opinion or care about broadband in Minnesota, you should be there and/or testify.

+ Apple and the controversy over the rejection of an iPhone application from the app store called “Podcaster” (You can see a video of Podcaster, and/or order the application, here).

+ Graeme’s recap of Techcrunch 50 and Demo 2008. In particular, he brings up Best Buy’s Giftag launch (If you’d like to watch a video of the Best Buy Giftag launch at Demo, click “Continue Reading” below) as well as Grokit.

+ The Minnesota Cup showcased the winners and finalists last Thursday evening.

+ A mention of open source Moodle and the launch of Flowgram.

+ Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal article here

+ More info is here on the Demo site

+ Read/Write Web’s coverage here

+ CNet’s article here.

Accelerating the “Aha” Moment

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Defrag conference logoDefrag is the first conference focused solely on the tools and technologies that are leveraging the “social” aspect of software to accelerate the “aha” moment. Defrag is not a version number. Rather it’s a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, builders and thinkers that are working on the next wave of software innovation.

Minnov8’s own Graeme Thickins has attended Defrag in the past and said to me a few weeks ago as I contemplated attending, “You will LOVE this conference! The attendees are the cream-of-the-crop” and I’ve since learned that people like Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Clay Shirky and others I follow make Defrag one of their must-attend events. 

Eric Norlin, one of the three organizers of the conference, is a former Minnesotan and has extended a $300 discount to Minnov8 readers. Register here and put in the code “m8“.

Minnesota High Tech Association Tekne Awards

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Minnesota High Tech Association logoEach year the Tekne Awards shine a spotlight on Minnesota’s technology industry.  Drawing over 1,000 attendees, including our state’s most influential businesses, political leaders and individuals, the Tekne Awards honor advancement in technology areas including advanced manufacturing, information and medical technologies, and biological sciences.  Join us as we come together as a technology community to celebrate innovation in Minnesota’s tech-based economy by recognizing Tekne Award finalists and recipients!…  [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 5

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Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Garrick Van Buren, Phil Wilson

As we recorded this show, I realized what incredible geeks we are to be inside on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon (and one of the few left this year!), but glad these other guys are willing to carve out an hour to talk tech in Minnesota. Hope you enjoy it!

Mentioned in this weeks show are:

+ Selling ‘cloud’ apps. With our talk last time of Software as a service (SaaS), we continue it with a discussion about selling these applications and the challenges of doing so

+ Social Publishing: With Drupal and WordPress positioning themselves less as ‘content management systems’ and instead more of ‘social publishing systems’ (and even forum software is moving away from purely threaded discussions to more groupware oriented systems), what do we see as the result of this trend?

+ The implications of Google Chrome

+ Screencasting tools like: Camtasia and Adobe Captivate for the PC; iShowU, Screenflow and DVKitchen for the Mac

+ Also, a brief mention of the Cluetrain Manifesto, still an important read for today’s networked world.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:40 — 29.3MB)

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uTead: Social Network for College Admissions

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Today’s high school students are the always-on, always-connected, digital generation and have no time for inefficient or paper-based communications, or especially ones that don’t leverage their peers who are involved in the same things they happen to be.

uTead, a name derived from universal Tool for education advancement, is an online service that facilitates the college admissions process and is a social network specifically for prospective students, enables them to connect with university representatives, high school counselors, and their peers, while also providing completely new ways for colleges and universities to interact with today’s tech-savvy generation.

I talked with co-founder Erik Eliason today, about how the Minnesota Cup Student Entrepreneur award winning uTead was started, what led them to create it, and where they’re headed now that it has launched in beta (as of yesterday, Sept. 2nd)….  [Read More…]

The Uptake: Paying Attention to Important Stories

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The Uptake home page imageIf you’re hanging around this Labor Day weekend anticipating all of the Republican National Convention (RNC) stories of protests and convention intrigue that’ll be covered by the local and national media next week, you need to be aware of the stories unfolding right now, covered by The Uptake using Qik, live streaming mobile phone video.

The UpTake is a media and technology services organization dedicated to advancing democracy through citizen journalism (more here) and I’ve only connected with Chuck Olsen (of Minnesota Stories vlogging fame and blogger at blogumentary), but while at Costco this afternoon I looked at the Twitter client on my iPhone and saw that “@Chuckumentary” (Olsen’s Twitter name) was heading over to 951 Iglehart Ave in St. Paul since the fifth raid was underway and 10 police were on site…and he was going to try and cover it live.

I proceeded to watch him interview the woman you see at the bottom of the screengrab. She talked about the warrant (issued for the wrong side of the duplex) and that police entered that side and broke through the attic to perform a search at the other address….  [Read More…]