Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

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.

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TEL•A•VISION Launches

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Nothing happens without a vision. Nothing gets created, built, or moved forward without a vision of an end-state or an outcome. It’s been said that we create and achieve what we focus on — whether that focus is on the positive or on something negative — and if we invest our conscious hours in focusing on positive visions, we’d be healthier and, most importantly, far more likely to realize our dreams and live a life aligned with our strengths, purpose and passions.

In this time of economic upheaval rippling across the globe, fundamental political and systemic change in the US, and a struggle to find good news or positive information amongst the hundreds of TV stations and tens of thousands of websites and publications available to us all — including our kids — the world needs to see possibility, hope, and visions of the future that accentuate and focus on the positive.

Any leader will tell you that vision is the most important first step to take before anything else happens, whether it’s a startup, a product, project or initiative, or anything else we strive to accomplish. Leaders will also tell you that the next great leaps in creativity and innovation will come from those that see the possibilities instead of downside, risk or failure, and empowering kids to see possibility, feel hope, and create, communicate and absorb a vision for their lives, for humanity and the world, promises to be incredibly profound, world-changing and an imperative for our future…

…if only there was someone with a vision about what could help our next generation create and live their own vision stories and celebrate their dreams, hopes and goals for themselves and the world.

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2008 Investor Fraud Traps

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Whether you’re an angel investor listening to startup pitches or an innovator considering funding sources, now is a time to be extra careful with anything related to money, credit, lending or capital of any kind — especially if you’re a participant in a social or affinity network or if you’re transparent with your blog and other online participation (which give scammers lots of ammo to use to pitch you).

The Minnesota Department of Commerce just released this 2008 Investor Fraud Traps listing (in alphabetical order) and offer it as a warning:

Deficient Disclosure: The recent investigations by state securities regulators related to auction-rate securities (ARS) have reinforced that investors should remain cautious when pitched complex investment products accompanied by deficient disclosures or when advised to concentrate their investments too heavily in one investment product. It is best to avoid investment pitches that would lead you to put all of your eggs in one basket, especially if it’s a basket you don’t fully understand.

Energy Scams: The substantial increase in energy costs has made scams related to energy more prevalent. State and provincial securities regulators are seeing not only shady oil and gas investments, but also scams that promise the development of new technologies to increase the efficiency of energy consumption or to extract energy from sources previously thought too expensive to develop.

Online Affinity Fraud: In a new twist on affinity and online investment fraud, Tyler said NASAA members are concerned that unscrupulous individuals are trying to use social networking websites to lure people to meetings that may promote fraudulent or unsuitable investment products. “Social networking websites create an environment ripe for affinity fraud,” Tyler said. “Fraudsters can take advantage of the fact people freely share information with both their real and ‘virtual’ friends by posting it to their profile,” Tyler said. “Communication tools provided by some social networking websites make it easy to advertise and promote investment scams to a wide audience for free.” Investors need to do their own research before making an investment and should not simply rely on ‘expert’ advice given at a seminar or meeting.

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Visi: A Minnesota Provider Growing to Meet Demand

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Visi logoVisi, a company many of us are familiar with since their founding in 1994, is Minnesota’s largest locally-owned managed hosting and connectivity provider (11,000 business and residential customers which includes thousands of DSL customers). What most don’t know is that they’re expanding right here in Eden Prairie, with a Tier III data center, in order to meet growing demand.

A Tier III data center has 99.982% uptime, backup power, and other infrastructure that ensure mission-critical serving continues with only minor downtime (To learn more about data center tiers, view this article or this PDF from Minnesota telecom company, ADC).

As the awareness and creation of composite applications (i.e., mashups), Software as a Service (SaaS), web applications, mobile smartphone delivery and other internet-connected accelerates here in Minnesota and anywhere else an internet connection is found, it’s a business imperative to have access to world-class infrastructure as well as the service and support necessary to meet our hosting needs.

Beyond that imperative lies something that few understand, let alone have created strategies to meet and exceed expectations: performance and user experience.

When more and more of us either use or deliver applications that have connections to multiple served applications (e.g., your website also serves a forum, wiki, blog, and applications), performance is always critical. But in a Web 2.0 day when data resides in multiple locations; web applications have functionality delivered by multiple providers in different geographies; and people’s expectations are for immediate access to the cloud with snappy performance; a provider that understands the entire chain from you to the cloud and back is a choice to consider relying on.

Fortunately we have a key provider right here in Minnesota that “gets it” and they’re growing and expanding to meet demand, performance expectations and the increasing online emphasis by Minnesotans.

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Damn the Airfare: Pokeware Takes Global Approach

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At one of last years MinneDemo events I had the chance to see Founder and CEO, Maryse Thomas present Pokeware, a system for integrating “hot spots” in video that allows users to pause and “poke” around the screen. According to the company line, Pokeware is a unique online company that integrates video content and contextual advertising. See a car in the video, click on it, and you’ll instantly find out what it is. See a dress you like, click it and find out where you can buy it and for how much. It was one of the more compelling presentations of the evening and piqued the interest of many. I had a chance to speak with Maryse following her presentation last year, and at that time Pokeware had already launched a beta test with the National Basketball Association. I was anxious to catch up with her and see how Pokeware has progressed since.

Ms. Thomas, a hardcore road warrior and globetrotter, was not the easiest to person to catch up with for an interview. Though Pokeware is based in Edina, we traded emails and phone calls between here and London, a cab in New York and somewhere in LA. Why the constant travel? According to Thomas, all for relationship building.“We found that there were many who were interested in building a similar type of system and felt that we would be better off securing strong, long term relationships with content providers and partners.” says Thomas. The intention was to hold off on showcasing the technology.

To help them do it, Thomas dropped this: “The biggest news is that Tommy Mottola is joining our team,” not hiding her enthusiasm.

If you are not aware of him, Tommy Mottola‘s resume includes a solid and successful career in the music industry. Outside of that community, many will recognize him from the likes of Entertainment Tonight, as head of Sony Music Entertainment, and more glamorously as the former husband of Mariah Carey. Thomas noted that Tommy is “very excited about the prospects of Pokeware” and will focus on helping her shore up those all important relationships.

Who are some of those relationships she’s cultivating? To name a few: the TV, publishing, book, home icon, Martha Stewart; Channel 4 in London (and the reason for her trip to the UK), the firm known best for the Big Brother reality series and Outside Line who will be selling Pokeware in the UK. In addition, Pokeware recently signed an exclusive agreement with the German company St. Elmo’s as a partner in Europe.

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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…]

OnePlace: Manage, Share, Collaborate & Execute

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In a time when energy prices are accelerating, threats from terrorism and epidemics (e.g., avian flu) are driving companies and individuals to better anticipate and manage risk, and the people with whom collaboration is critical might be in the next town or half a world away, the timing for an easy to use, fast and intuitive collaboration suite seems perfect.

A successful entrepreneur and chief technologist (he was formerly CTO of HighJump Software), CEO Steve Kickert‘s Riverock Technologies is soon to launch OnePlace, an online collaboration (and personal organizational) tool that has a good shot at being a hub positioned directly in the sweet spot of what’s needed.  …  [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 3

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

After vacations and business travel this summer, we carve out time on a Saturday morning for another Minnov8 Gang podcast with Episode 3.

In it we talk about several Minnesota startups and companies (including our own, with some admittedly self-serving comments!):

– PartnerUp Being Acquired by Deluxe Check

– Former HighJump CTO, Steve Kickert’s new company Riverock and his first product launch OnePlace

– Watching for new companies in stealth mode like BeWiki

– DoApp, Cullect, ComicTwit, Localtone Radio

– Social Media Breakfast, Twin Cities group

– Julio Ojeda-Zapata of the Pioneer Press (personal blog; TwinCities.com) is writing a book being released shortly, “twitter means business: how microblogging can help or hurt your business” (book jacket here)

– Minnesota Ultra-High_Speed Broadband Task Force (Minnov8 posts about this initiative here and here).

Thanks for listening!

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 58:23 — 34.0MB)

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CommunityEngine: Open Source Social Network Application

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Earlier this summer, Bruno Bornsztein released the code behind his niché social-networking sites Curbly, Uncooped as an open-source project called: CommunityEngine.

CommunityEngine is a complete, white-label social network app wrapped up as a Ruby on Rails plugin making it easy to integrate forums, blogs, and user profiles into an existing web application or a stand-alone application. Like many weblog engines, the look and feel of each CommunityEngine can be completely customized.

“I envision somebody doing a theme that makes [CommunityEngine] act more like a social network, a theme that makes it act more like a blog, a theme that makes it act more like a group blog, or a newspaper. So you can pick and choose.” – Bruno Bornsztein

One of the first community contributions to the CommunityEngine code was l18n internationalization support, promptly encouraging a number of non-US-based CommunityEngine-based sites.

“The biggest benefit [to open-sourcing CommunityEngine] is making the code-base stronger…I can now launch a Curbly site in Spanish. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.” – Bruno Bornsztein

For more about CommunityEngine listen to my podcast conversation with Bruno.