Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

BusinessCard2: “The Big Upgrade” Launch is Near

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bizcard2-newSince I’m a user of BusinessCard2 — and been following CEO Lief Larson’s journey to make it the killer app for your web identity — I’ve been staying close to what they’ve been up to as the next version, the “big upgrade”, looms near (disclaimer: they’re also an advertiser on Minnov8).

Though they’ve been playing it pretty close to the vest for months, and I’ve been bugging Lief the entire time, he did agree to a quote and my posting of the graphic above. From Lief, “For the last 24 months our team has been working hard behind closed doors to create something we think has transformative potential.  What we have up our sleeve, nevertheless, is not being released until August.  We want to under promise and over deliver.  The internet is changing rapidly and we intend to launch something leveraging the cutting-edge.  Think web container, meets social, meets cloud.  Best of all, it’s 100% made in Minnesota.”

Go sign up now so you’re in the queue to get “the big upgrade” when they launch.

Extendr: Your Web. One Place.

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extendr

If I googled you – what would I find, how fast would I find it, and what initial impression would I form?

Personal branding is in and the premise is simple: people search for other people online and extendr.com makes it easier to be found online while enabling one to retain control over their own unique digital introduction destiny.

Call it a launch pad, virtual porch, or online hub. It’s all the same if you can take your digital breadcrumbs (social links, contact info, portfolio, CV, favorites, etc.) and aggregate them into one customizable & search engine friendly source.  It’s simple, free, and it works especially well for those too illiterate and/or cheap for a professional personal website and too busy to consistently maintain a functional blog.

The tour feature allows for someone to visit your extendr page and browse the various links/websites that you have included, all within the extendr frame.  This offers two distinct benefits: (1) ensuring that whoever is seeking can find everything (and then some) under one roof, and (2) less time spent back and forth jumping from site to site.

Isn’t it pleasurable when you can efficiently locate and access what it is your looking for online? Consider extendr a great personal marketing tool, as we (as searchers) are forming unforgiving subconscious first impressions and subsequent judgments based on how accessible people are choosing to make themselves online-or rather-not.  For example, if you’ve taken the upfront time to make it easy for me to find you online then it tells me that you respect my time.  This would likely lead to a favorable first impression as opposed to having to sift through pages of SERPs.

Go to extendr.com now and get running in a few minutes.  What’s that? You already have a personal website/blog?  Already profiled in google? Fair enough… but isn’t it better to cast one’s personal branding net as far and wide as possible given the option?

Getting to Know W3i

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w3i_logoAs usual, the schmoozing at Minnedemo yielded a pleasant surprise. My discovery of a Minnesota company that is known better beyond it’s borders than within them and the CEO of said company. The CEO; Andy Johnson. The company; St. Cloud based W3i.

Many in the Minnesota interactive “space” (I love using that term. It’s so Gene Roddenberry) know Andy from his days at Fingerhut. He was instrumental in moving them into the e-commerce world where he grew their business to some $300 million* before Fingerhut sold in 1999, allowing him  to take some time to recharge and be with family. He eventually joined CMS Direct where he was lured away by three brothers–Rob, Ryan, and Aaron Weber (the W3 of W3i. Yep the “i” is for interactive.)

What does W3i do? According to Johnson, whether you are a small developer with a great Windows based application or part of a monster company like Yahoo!, W3i can get your product on computers, build traffic, and make you money. How?…  [Read More…]

Compellent Sure Knows How to Throw a Customer/Partner Event

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I’m impressed. Compellent is hosting one helluva gig this week.  If you don’t know this company — well, you should. It’s one of our state’s best technology-industry success stories in recent years. compellent_c-drive09 Compellent is all about data storage, which is very much still a growth industry, despite the recession. Yes, your company should be so lucky to be in a sector like this.

Specifically, Compellent’s product is a simple SAN, or storage area network. The company, which IPOed in October 2007 (NYSE stock symbol: CML), turned in some pretty impressive numbers a few days ago. It announced record revenue in its first quarter of $28.1 million, up 53% from a year earlier, and $1.0 million in net income. The revenue figure was even up 4% from Q4 2008, and it was the company’s fourteenth consecutive quarterly revenue increase. If an emerging Minnesota tech company in this economic environment could be said to be on a tear, Compellent would be it.

The company’s annual business partner and customer event, called C-Drive, is being held this week at the Bloomington Sheraton, and this is clearly the biggest one yet. The business partner portion of the event is May 4-5 (agenda), followed by a networking reception Tuesday evening May 5 for both partners and customers, while the customer portion of the event runs May 6-7 (agenda).  Existing or potential business partners and existing or potential customers may still register for the event, which starts today.  (Media and analysts may also register at the same page.)  It’s obvious that a lot of planning went into this year’s version of the event, which draws attendees nationally and features speakers from partner firms, from Compellent itself, and from some major technology vendors. In addition, industry analysts are among the attendees, and members of the technology press are moderating two panels.

What’s All This About ‘Moving to the Cloud’? One Minnesota Entrepreneur Can Tell You How

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If you’re in an IT professional or follow developments at all in this field, you’ve undoubtedly been noticing an almost endless amount of media coverage and online discussion lately about “cloud computing”  — one example being a front page story in The Wall Street Journal yesterday.  But, even if you’re just an Internet consumer, you too are hearing your share of the hype.  After all, many consumer Internet applications are also now accessed “in the cloud,” as opposed to being software you install on your own computer — Google’s Gmail probably being the best example.

georgereese-headshot Well, one local entrepreneur, George Reese, is right smack in the middle of all this buzz, and is in a position to help clear up a lot of the confusion about it — especially for enterprises looking to take advantage of the economic benefits of this form of computing.  georgereese-book-200w1 His new book on the subject is scheduled to be released by O’Reilly on April 10.  It’s entitled “Cloud Application Architectures: Building Applications and Infrastructure in the Cloud.” (And here’s the Amazon link.)  George is a Minneapolis-based technologist and startup founder.  I’ve known him since late 2006 and thought it would be interesting to get his thoughts on this very hot topic, and hear the story behind his book.  This is an interview I conducted with George earlier this week, which first appeared on the cloud computing site Cloud Ave. …  [Read More…]

Just Eat It!

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justeatit-articleMinnesota innovation aficionados need look no further than the University of Minnesota campus.  A small group of students, lead by Parag Shah, are balancing curriculum with the hunger pangs to invent, create, and deploy.  The sum of their team is Mxapp LLC, a mobile marketing company that offers targeted, proximity-based advertising to restaurants, gastronomes, and the epicurious.

Their first application, known as LUNCHBOX, is in the process of being rolled off their platform.  LUNCHBOX offers the ability to view, rate and share menu items… all with the tap of a finger (among other features and benefits that are still confidential).  The application is designed to bridge the gap between restaurants and mobile consumers.  LUNCHBOX will inherit mobile ordering capabilities, thus eliminating the need for smartphone users to stand in line at a restaurant.

The Mxapp team visited my offices back several weeks ago and previously I’d worked with Geoff Dutton, one of the Mxapp partners. It comes as no surprise that these guys are poised to take a bite out of consumer migration to smartphones.  Rather than just slap some nifty app together, they have thoughtfully designed their launch for concurrent release on iPhone®, BlackBerry®, and Android®.  In addition, they have been out pounding the pavement — talking with both consumers and restaurateurs– to more intimately understand the needs of users.

Like so many innovators full of conviction but starving for resources, the Mxapp team is seeking to overcome constraints with a daily diet of courage.  Their marketing budget is relegated to word-of-mouth. So, if you want to know what’s good to eat in the neighborhood, open up your LUNCHBOX and find out.  Mxapp is hoping you’ll join their beta program today.

ArcStone: Vision, Values, Products & Services

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arcstoneOver a year ago I became aware of a local Minneapolis firm, ArcStone, when they introduced Wonderfile, a very interesting offering that is sort of a nouveau document management system for today’s always-on and always-connected internet crowd, and I was reacquainted with them when they demonstrated their brand new Association Management Portal (AMP) at MinneDemo a few weeks ago (their demo here).

Completely out of the blue a few days after MinneDemo, I stumbled across something ArcStone had created for a client called the Interactive Roof Designer, a Flash piece for Trimline Building Products (more here) that allows color changes for roofing tiles. Since half my business focuses on trends for the home furnishings industry (The Trend Curve™), I was immediately interested in what they’d created since this is the sort of thing our customers would be interested in. Though there have been many similiar types of Flash-based “changing colors on the fly” web offerings like this, I must admit being pleasantly surprised by how good an implementation they’d done and that it was visually stunning and worked flawlessly.

I immediately thought, “Who are these guys and why haven’t I heard much more about them?” As a consequence, I called CEO David Carnes and went over to chat with him last week to find out more about what this Minnesota firm is creating and what’s at the heart of their innovation.  …  [Read More…]

Sierra Bravo Brings Back Its ‘Website Challenge’ Community Service Project

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It won’t be long before area web developers are losing more sleep helping nonprofits. Rapidly growing Bloomington-based web development firm Sierra Bravo has announced the second coming of its very successful Overnight Website Challenge — 24 hours of pure nerd energy applied to creating or spiffing up the web sites of some deserving Minnesota nonprofits.  The event is the firm’s signature event to give back to the community. For 100 volunteer web developers and 10 lucky Minnesota nonprofits, the 24-hour clock will count down on the weekend of February 28-March 1, 2009.

“Sierra Bravo is committed to this event as long as there are nonprofits whose websites could be better, powered by nerds,” said Luke Bucklin, Sierra Bravo’s president and one of its founders. In the inaugural Overnight Website Challenge in March 2008, volunteer web pros from Sierra Bravo and the broader Twin Cities web development community donated more than 2,000 hours to nonprofits — providing a real-world market value of donated time worth nearly $250,000, according to the firm’s calculations. …  [Read More…]

10 Startups to Present at MinneDemo

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An estimated 300 Twin Cities tech-heads will gather for an evening of networking and to watch demos of ten of Minnesota’s hottest technology products on November 12, 2008.

MinneDemo brings together entrepreneurs, investors, software developers, designers, and other techies for a night of short demos and long conversations. Founded in 2006, this is the fifth MinneDemo event. It will be held at Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Ave. S. in south Minneapolis (map). Pre-networking begins at 6:30 pm, and the demos start at 7:00.

The format of MinneDemo is similar to national conferences like DEMO. The rules are simple: seven minutes for each demo, only real/working software allowed, and NO POWERPOINT! However, MinneDemo is free, both for presenters and attendees. All costs for the event are paid for with sponsorship by local technology and services companies.

At November’s MinneDemo, the following companies will demo their products:

…  [Read More…]

Upcoming Book on Hottest I.T. Trend: ‘Cloud Computing’

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Whether you’re in the computer business or not, chances are you’re hearing a ton about “computing in the cloud.” It’s widely being hailed as the top information technology (I.T.) buzzword of the year, thanks to applications many of us use every day — no matter what business we’re in — such as Google Mail or other online applications we simply access through a browser. Other examples would be customer relationship management software from Salesforce.com, or freely accessible word-processing software from Google, Zoho, and others. But there are many more types of these applications, and cloud computing can actually refer to both the software and the underlying infrastructure.

George Reese, a local software developer and tech company founder, knows a lot about the topic — so much so that he was recently commissioned to write a book on cloud computing by O’Reilly Media, based in Northern California, one of the most prominent names in computer publishing.  Reese is the founder of two Minneapolis-based companies: a new one called enStratus Networks LLC, a maker of high-end cloud infrastructure management tools, and an established business called Valtira LLC, the maker of an online “marketing platform” of the same name. Over the past 15 years, George has authored several technology books — with such names as MySQL Pocket Reference, Database Programming with JDBC and Java, and Java Database Best Practices. But his upcoming title, Web Architecture and Programming in the Cloud: Transactional Systems for EC2 and Beyond, may become his most popular yet.

…  [Read More…]