Most plugged in technologists in Minnesota know Robert Metcalf and many of us have been observing his adventure building Flyspy. Today he officially launches it in beta, with a new interface, a rock-solid integration with the leading provider of data to the airline industry, and at a perfect time when we’re all looking for bargains where ever we can find them! His positioning of the value proposition is, “Flyspy isn’t just about finding cheap airline tickets, which you can easily do, it’s about understanding the “marketplace for airfares” so you can make an informed decision.”
Metcalf tells the story on his “about” page on the site:
Years ago I flew from Minneapolis to Williamsport, PA to visit my brother. It took me 8+ hours to search for flights and figure out various travel dates and airport combinations. I thought…
“Why are travel sites so difficult to use (and understand), when I can find anything on Amazon or Google in a few seconds?”
I wanted to see the big picture, I wanted to know all of my options at once. My frustration with the whole process of understanding flights and airfares led me on a seven-year journey to create Flyspy.
If you would like to know why this took so long and why it’s so difficult, read the blog.
Check it out and put some intelligence on your side before you buy that next airline ticket.
Listening to 
Attention all Minnesota startups and would-be startups: only a short time remains to enter the statewide business-plan competition known as 
The only “clouds” in sight were the proponents and would-be adopters of the latest, new hotness in enterprise computing. Two events, on Wednesday and Saturday, attracted a wide array of these IT professionals, some 350 all told, who were hungry to learn more about… well, “the orange that’s the new pink,” as Larry Ellison would say. It was beyond impressive that so many people would give up being outdoors last week after the winter we’ve had in these parts! Goes to show how deep our IT roots run in this state. Geeks are everywhere here and, doggone it, we’re proud of it! We still have many old-school enterprise IT folks who remember the days of time-sharing on mainframes, and way more than our per-capita share of Fortune 500 headquarters in this state, all with huge (well, getting leaner) IT departments. But, along with all that, Minnesota has a seemingly endless supply of boot-strapped Internet and software startup developers — folks that are finding they love what cloud computing is doing for them.
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. 
His new book on the subject is scheduled to be released by O’Reilly on April 10. It’s entitled 
Minnesota 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 
On Friday February 6th, nine internet and web innovations were showcased at the 
For Minnesotans interested in starting up or expanding within the internet space in these challenging economic times, solid financial sector analysis is often difficult to obtain. For anyone who has pitched their idea, concept or business plan, it’s clear how important it is to put oneself in the shoes of investors, venture capitalists and banks providing the capital you require, and a great way to do that is to gain a more solid understanding of the data they’re using to make strategic investment decisions.
