The Gang covers a lot of topics on this show but primarily focuses on money. Who needs it?

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson (Tim Elliott is off this week).
Music:  Scott McLean & his song “Big White Limousine” via the podsafe Music Alley.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 52:51 — 30.8MB)

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Discussed During the Show:

+ Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke just announced the Fed is focused on more stimulus. Confidence is the issue for both businesses and consumers…will this help?
+ MN Venture & Finance Conference (liveblogged by Graeme)
+ Weak venture funding shows ‘capital shortage’
+ Nerdery added 50 new jobs!
+ Daren Klum of CRAM™ Worldwide interview

+ Upcoming Events:

– Magnet 360 Exec Briefing
– MN High Tech Association‘s Tekne Awards
– U of MN Digital Tech Center event, “What Went Wrong? How the Internet Stagnated, or The 30 Years War of the Bellheads and the Bitheads”
– Social Media Breakfast, Social Media Meets Travel & Tourism moderated by Phil Wilson.

Our guest this week is Dan Flies, co-founder (along with visionary and educator Matt Hardy) of Kidblog.org. Kidblog.org is built by teachers, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the blogging process. Kidblog meets the need for a safe and simple blogging platform suitable for elementary and middle school students. Most importantly, Kidblog allows teachers to monitor and control all publishing activity within the classroom blogging community and they’re not kidding around…they have over 20,000 classroom blogs running right now!

Built upon the open source WordPress platform, Kidblog is a highly streamlined, focused and easy to use platform that has been optimized for classroom use and easy management by both students and teachers. To get a glimpse of what Dan and Matt have built in the “back end” that faces teachers, check out the screenshots here and if you have any experience with WordPress’ administrative backend, you’ll certainly be as impressed as the Gang was when we viewed them.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Bob Kirkpatrick & the song “Been Around Too Long” via the podsafe Music Alley.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:02:51 — 36.7MB)

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Discussed During the Show:

• This Past Week:
  • MHTA Social Event held at Best Buy (Look for video to be posted at some point at MHTA’s website) http://www.mhta.org/
  • Internet Broadcasting adopts a new CMS
  • Verizon bringing 4G wireless to Twin Cities
• Kidblog Links:
  • TCB mag blog: “Bloggers, Beware: There’s a New Kid in Town” (9/27/10)
  • Mashable: “The Case For Social Media in Schools” (9/29/10) and “HOW TO: Help Your Child Set Up a Blog” (10/3/10)
  • Screenshots of the “backend” of Kidblog
• Gang Mentality: Will Microsoft’s stores hurt Apple Stores here?
  • Microsoft Mall of America store post by Julio Ojeda Zapata (Julio’s post was also a top trending topic on Techmeme this past week)
• Upcoming Events:
  • Minnesota Venture Conference
  • Magnet 360 Exec Briefing
  • MHTA Tekne Awards
• Additional Links:
  • Google TV vs. Roku and Apple TV: do we really need a web browser on our TV (again)?
  • Apple Wins First Round Of TV War With Google (Business Insider)
  • Give $10 on 10/10/10

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Rebel Soul Band & their song “Where You Going?” via the podsafe Music Alley.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 54:26 — 31.7MB)

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Discussed During the Show:

• Week-in-review:
  • Clear Rolls Out in the Twin Cities; Clear’s press release; Wikipedia backgrounder
  • Andrew Eklund‘s article about why executives don’t attend MIMA Summit
• What’s coming up?
  • Oct 5th: MHTA:  CEO Briefing w/Brad Anderson, Vice Chairman, Best Buy
  • Oct 7th: MHTA:  Social Media: Marketing & Enterprise 2.0
  • Oct 13th:  TEDxTC
  • Oct 14th:  The Collaborative‘s Minnesota Venture & Finance Conference
• Augmented Reality
  • A definition…
  • Overview video of a company w/both Android & iPhone apps, Layar; an overview video of a much more expansive view of augmented reality.

The Gang covers the events of this past week and then launches a call to Albert Maruggi of Provident Partners. Albert was on the panel at the Social Media Club’s “Social Media & Family” event this past week and had some interesting perspectives on its use.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off this week).
Music: Kahuna Kawentzmann & their song “Passage to Papeete” via the podsafe Music Alley.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 35:28 — 20.7MB)

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Discussed During the Show:
+ Mobile Twin Cities
+ Rainmakers Conference
+ Startup Weekend Twin Cities: tech.mn coverage
+ Social Media Club: Social Media + Family event
+ Facebook outage (Facebook’s response; article in the Guardian)
+ One of the many reports from Pew Internet: The Millenials

Our guest on this show’s “Startup Spotlight” is Alex Huff, founder of LoudClick (which we profiled here) and now ClickWrite, the latter a, “…microsite platform creating a coordinated network of websites. The network consists of a corporate (brand) website integrated with local or targeted microsites. ClickWrite creates individual, unique microsites – with unique URLs – all coordinated from a central administration interface. This structure offers amazing flexibility and SEO benefits.“

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is traveling this week).
Music: H-Beam & their song “Tank” via the podsafe Music Alley.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 54:29 — 31.7MB)

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Discussed During the Show:
+ MN Blogger Conference
+ The Collaborative event
+ Graeme’s liveblog archive of his coverage of DEMO
+ Julio Ojeda Zapata’s tumblog with posts about the MN Blogger Conference and this one with a video of his great Skype use to bring in two guests from California for the event
+ UPCOMING: Startup Weekend; Rainmakers Conference, MIMA Summit (Minnov8 will be covering this even extensively).
+ Podcast download link (if the player below doesn’t appear)

Our guest this week is Tim Brunelle, CEO of the agency HelloViking. Tim is a writer, with 17 year’s experience at agencies such as TBWA/Chiat/Day, McKinney, Ogilvy, Mullen, Heater Easdon and Carmichael Lynch–where he was most recently an Executive Creative Director and the Head of Interactive. He is also the President of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association and has been an adjunct professor for the past three years at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He only infrequently appears in crystal balls and does so only in his capacity as MIMA president.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: 2MorroW EvR AfteR & their song “Kamikaze Luv” via the podsafe Music Alley.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:06:30 — 38.9MB)

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Discussed During the Show:

• Google Instant and a perspective on it from Minnesota’s Lee Odden
• The MIMA Summit, the MIMA website and the free MIMA Fall Social
• Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St. Paul (SMBMSP) holding an “unmarketing” event on Sept 23rd with author Scott Stratten. Details here.
• Boxee & HTML5
• UPCOMING: MN Blogger Conference and the meetup the evening prior; Startup Weekend; Rainmakers Conference.

Our Startup Spotlight guest this week is Matthew Foust from Audiofile Engineering in Minneapolis.

Matt is the co-founder & grew up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and began playing music at age 8. Not long after, his family purchased one of the first 10,000 Macintosh computers ever produced and began his journey into technology. While attending Beloit College, he honed his computer skills laying out a book (utilizing both Roman and Greek orthographies) in Aldus PageMaker for his advisor. He and Evan Olcott (his co-founder) established Integral Studio in 2000 and Audiofile Engineering in 2004 to concentrate on Mac-based audio tools for the audio industry as well as awesome iPhone/iPad/iPod-Touch tools like FiRe (Field Recorder).

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off this week).
Music: Wiser Time & their song “Floating Blues” via the podsafe Music Alley.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 44:42 — 26.2MB)

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Discussed during the show:

The Gang starts off talking about the net neutrality town hall meeting from Thursday night (Sen. Al Franken kicked it off with FCC Commissioner’s Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn in attendance to hear from the community. Next we have on our main guest, Steve Nielsen, to discuss his next adventure MacroVentures, an investor in early stage companies in the technology and medical spaces.

Most recently, Steve served as President and CEO of PartnerUp, a wholly owned subsidiary of Deluxe Corporation (NYSE: DLX) and is a veteran internet and technology executive, having started and led a number of technology-focused ventures since 1996.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson (Tim Elliott is off this week).
Music: Rusty Wright & their song “Toppy” via the podsafe Music Alley.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 59:16 — 36.1MB)

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Discussed during the Show:

+ Net neutrality Town Hall recap by Ann Treacy on Blandin on Broadband

+ Steve & Beth Nielsen in StarTribune

+ 32 Tablets are Coming!!

+ Fake iPads

+ SMBMSP at the State Fair

The Gang has on Christopher Lower to talk about Foursquare, the fastest growing social media tool of its kind (and we briefly touch on his upcoming book) and then we dial up Justin Grammens of Recursive Awesome to talk about his new adventure, MobileVidHub.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Mean Gene Kelton & the Diehards & their song “Mean Guitar” via the podsafe Music Alley.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:02:22 — 38.2MB)

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Discussed during the show:

• Deluxe Corporation’s PartnerUp group
• Christopher Lower and his: Site; LinkedIn; Twitter; Facebook
• Justin Grammens and his: RecursiveAwesome site; Mobile Vid Hub site; LinkedIn; Twitter; Facebook
• Shopkick & Best Buy deal
• ShareThis
• BlendTec’s Will it Blend?
• Solstice Film Festival
• Upcoming events:
  • Minne Bar-b-Que, August 22nd
  • 140 RoadTrip Tweet-up, August 26th
  • Social Media Breakfast–Minneapolis/St. Paul (Sometime during the State Fair)
  • Start-up Weekend-Twin Cities, September 17th-19th
  • WordCamp MSP, Saturday, November 13th