Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Emerging Digerati Showcase at U of MN

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Today was the Emerging Digerati Showcase at the University of Minnesota, Weisman Art Museum. The focus was a College of Liberal Arts, new media festival featuring digital technology, art and research.

It was inspiring to see the innovation and boundary pushing being done in this market and the passion people are bringing to digital technologies.

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  • Starting off was artist Lynn Fellman, who merges art and science with her beautiful DNA inspired digital, vector art. Ms. Fellman has been in the interactive space since the early 1990’s.
  • Minnov8’s own Garrick Van Buren showcased his creation, Cullect, a collaborative feed reader with amazing capabilities
  • Brad Hosack and David Ernst from the Academic & Information Technology, College of Education & Human Development department showed Video ANT, an innovative way of moving video beyond just content delivery through a tool they’ve developed to allow easy annotating of video
  • Justin Grammens and Minnov8’s own Phil Wilson showcased Localtone Radio, an innovative site for local bands to showcase their songs and for music lovers to discover (and vote upon favorite) bands and music. Their buzzphrase? Listen, Share, Learn
  • Terry Schubring demonstrated an internal UofMN engine called “MediaMill”, which facilitates transcoding of video and its display on to any web page

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Twin Cities is First with New Comcast ‘Wideband’ Internet

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comcast.jpgWhen given the chance to be among the first couple of companies in the Twin Cities to receive an install of Comcast’s new DOCSIS 3.0-driven high speed service (50 megabits per second download speed and 5 megabits per second upload!), do you think they had to ask twice!?!

If you haven’t heard of DOCSIS 3.0 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) and don’t know why this is important, it’s the next generation of cable standards for delivering data over cable with theoretical speeds between 170mbps and 340mbps download with uploads speeds of 120mbps.

Comcast indicated that the Twin Cities is their first market to deploy DOCSIS 3.0 technology and is a clear demonstration of how the company is evolving from broadband to wideband. It’s also just the beginning of even faster speeds to come, they claim, but my 50/5 internet speed isn’t any demo….it’s real, working and fast.

My experiences thus far have been amazing. When we first started to use it after the install, I broke into a huge grin as pages loaded instantly and I ran a 345MB update which hit my downloads folder and completed in what seemed like two minutes (it actually downloaded so quickly I forgot to watch it and time it). I’ve been achieving ~40mbps down and 3.4 to 4.1 upload speeds on average (which, of course, are dependent upon so many variables like internet traffic, server load and so on).

Our business (and yours too, I’ll wager) now depends on the internet in the same way 20th century business depended on the phone and then the fax machine. Speed is money and with more of our applications in the “cloud” (i.e., hosted Web applications), an accelerating number of us living an always-on and always-connected lifestyle, coupled with the need to move ever bigger digital files to one another over the ‘net, I’m delighted to have access to this kind of speed and am already fully utilizing it.

One thing most small business miss when they begin to use all of these new online services and applications: you run out of bandwidth very, very fast. Now that we’re delivering webinars, are using webcams, Skype, and Vonage in the office, we’ve been noticing that our need for bandwidth to satisfy all users of our connection has increased dramatically in the last six months. I believe that our ability to have sufficient bandwidth for all of these activities simultaneously has become a business imperative.

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Emerging Digerati Week at the UofMN

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emerging.jpgAll this week, the University of Minnesota Institute for New Media Studies is holding Emerging Digerati Week 2008 with multiple venues showcasing everything from digital vision and display technologies to virtual reality to new media.

Though it would’ve been nice to have time to cover the entire week-long event, Minnov8 will be covering the New Media Showcase on Friday, April 4th from 10am-4pm at the Weisman Art Museum and two of our founders, Garrick Van Buren and Phil Wilson, will be involved in showcasing their own startups at this event.

If you are interested in what’s happening right here in Minnesota when it comes to Internet and Web-centric new media innovation, carve out time from your busy schedule and head on over to the Weisman this Friday.

Locating Your Software Development in MN

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With all the accelerated political discussions during this presidential primary season, there has been considerable discussion about outsourcing, protecting the middle class, the economy and jobs. What is little discussed, however, is that the US has already outsourced much of our manufacturing base (thus directly impacting the middle class). What is not as apparent is that we’re also outsourcing more and more of our intellectual work in finance and software engineering.

Of course, this causes me great concern as someone who cares about our country, my children and my someday grandchildren, our State of Minnesota and most of all this premise: if you believe, as I do, that the Internet “platform” is the 21st century conduit for innovation, human connection and collaboration — and is the most “The World is Flat” accelerator of competition in intellectual capital globally — then you’d better be very concerned that we’re essentially shipping our high value, intellectually important work overseas and empowering our future competitors to become the software powerhouses of tomorrow.
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Yugma Accelerates

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yugmalogo.gifAs our world becomes increasingly interconnected and the need for collaboration with others — regardless of geography or time zone — grows as a business imperative at all levels within organizations, just talking with people over the phone or with Skype, instant messaging, sending an SMS or email, or even using some sort of Web-centric tool just won’t be enough.

Most of us are visual learners and communicators and thus have to see what you’re talking about and, of course, doing so is at the core of the idiom, “to be on the same page.” To communicate your vision in the most profound, efficient, synchronous and impactful way means that your virtual communications must include the ability to show others documents, presentations, Web pages, images and more in real-time so you can interact in the most powerful way possible.

In addition (and perhaps more vital) reason to find virtual ways to connect with others and be on the same page is the explosion in personal and company actions globally that are “green” in nature. More of us are trying to discover ways to consume less oil, spew fewer carbons into the atmosphere, and be just as, or more, productive without continuing to move atoms around (either our bodies or physical goods) like we’ve been doing in the past.

Meeting these needs (and more) is at the heart of what a Minnesota firm, Yugma (pro. “Yoog-mah” and not like many do “yugg-mah”) offers to the marketplace. As they say about themselves, “The name Yugma is a word from the Sanskrit language meaning “the state of being in unified collaboration.” Yugma, Inc. is a privately held venture-backed company headquartered in Minnesota , USA and has offices in Minneapolis, Mexico, Argentina and India.”

To me, being in unified collaboration means collaborating with others has to be easy to understand for everyone participating, nearly instantaneous to connect, and as simple to use as a to use as a word processor. Yugma delivers as you’ll see.

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Welcome to Minnov8!

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mbair_canoe.jpgMinnov8 began as an idea in late 2007 when several Minnesota geeks realized that we shared a passion and an understanding that we were living in a time of the greatest shift in communication and connection — affecting both humans and machines — than we were ever going to experience again in our lifetimes.

As we talked about what was going on in Minnesota, we realized there was something missing: although there was a tremendous amount of Internet and Web-centric development, interest, passion and excitement right here in Minnesota, there wasn’t any single, online spot to read about what was happening right here in our State.

A vision emerged of an online venue where we (and, at some point, other trusted contributors) could file reports, podcast and video interviews, screencasts and other high value content that would focus on Minnesota technology innovation and provide a news and information showcase surrounding Internet-as-a-platform, application innovation on the Web, and other technology happenings we think will be worthy of coverage.

So sit back, relax and enjoy the trip as we paddle on and provide you with stories, profiles, news and information about the Internet and Web shifts occurring and how Minnesotans are innovating in this time of accelerating change.