Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

FCC: 68% of Broadband Connections NOT Broadband

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just released an 87 page report entitled, “Internet Access Services: Status as of December 31, 2009” (PDF). What this report reveals—that 68% of so-called “broadband” internet connections don’t meet the FCC’s new minimum standard of 4 megabits per second (mbps) download and 1mbps upload—should be taken in to consideration whether you’re an internet or web-based developer, a company delivering ever-richer and more robust services (i.e., bandwidth intensive ones) or are just curious about the true state of broadband in the United States.

Though many people who have commented here on Minnov8, through Twitter to our account (or our personal ones) seem truly excited when reports in 2007 showed the U.S. exceeded 50% of households had broadband. Then that excitement is tempered with reports like this one stating “U.S. Broadband: Still Expensive; Still Underwhelming” compared to the rest of the world.

But it wasn’t until this FCC comprehensive analysis appeared this week that a clearer picture of the true state of broadband penetration appeared. Take a look at Figure 1(a) from the report (after the jump) and you’ll note that over 92 million of the 133 million U.S. households with broadband have download speeds between 6mbps and 3mbps with 58% of the total having less than 3mbps download speed!

…  [Read More…]

Startup Spotlight: Drivetrain

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Minnesota, developer, entrepreneur, and tech catalyst, Dan Grigsby, has joined forces with Tom Brice and Pete Schwamb to launch a mobile, social and web application development agency. Drivetrain’s kick off event was held at Pizza Luce in Minneapolis. In a unique approach the launch party went beyond the normal “all about us” agenda, that any launch party should be, to include collecting food for Second Harvest. Kudos to Dan and his team who report they received enough food for a thousand meals for local families in need.

Here’s Dan talking Drivetrain and offering a little insight into 2011. Tis the season for making predictions for next year.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DfQXQLIsX8

Waiting for a Better Price Before Purchasing at Best Buy? Now You Don’t Have to – There’s an App for That

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Ever been burned buying a consumer electronics product right before a price reduction and wished you’d have waited?  Or, how many times have you been burned and not even known it?  Now there’s a solution for both these problems: it’s called Gazaro Protect.  Gazaro is a company that’s been developing a cloud-based, realtime retail pricing platform for several years, using artificial intelligence technology, and is focused initially on consumer electronics. Today, it announced its new pricing protection service, including an iPhone app.

Maybe you’re thinking you missed out on the best prices on Black Friday or Cyber Monday? Well, get this: Gazaro’s research shows average pricing on featured products at Best Buy during the 2009 Holiday Season was actually lower in the week before December 25 than it was on Black Friday or Cyber Monday (see chart).  One in three products dropped in price during the holiday season, with an average price drop of about 15%.  Gazaro says its new service helps you take advantage of these price drops.

How does it work?  Using either Gazaro’s web site or its new iPhone app, Gazaro Protect lets consumer electronics shoppers lock in the lowest prices by letting them know when a price drops after they buy, so they can then go get money back. It’s a free web service and mobile app that automatically notifies you of these money-saving price adjustments after you buy. The net advantage, Gazaro says, is you get last-minute holiday prices without having to fight the crowds, or risk a product being sold out if you wait too long. 

…  [Read More…]

MNAMA Event Looks at Digital Marketing Trends

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At a recent Minnesota-American Marketing Association event Rick Mathieson, author of “The On-Demand Brand” talked about the future of digital marketing. The group that had gathered at Vic’s in Minneapolis listened as Rick highlighted his 5 trends to look for in 2011.

While Rick may be a bit aggressive with how far some of the trends may be developed by this time next year, he made some key observations in his presentation including how important new technology and media channels will help “supercharge” traditional media. I had a chance to sit down with Rick after the event to talk at a bit more length on some of his topics.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXgNOQPDjpw&feature=player_embedded

For more on this event and others in the Evening Digital Series be sure and check out the MNAMA website.

Internet Trends at Web 2.0 Summit

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By now you’ve undoubtedly seen much from last week’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. As internet/web/mobile people, it’s always incredibly enlightening to see Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley deliver her Web 2.0 Summit “State of the Internet” talk (slides as PDF here or embedded–simply click “more” under the video).

It’s always great to see her in action (view below) as well as to see all the videos from the Web 2.0 Summit playlist from O’Reilly & Associates.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yL9yrttESI

Take a look at the presentation embedded as a slide show–>…  [Read More…]

A Day At Camp

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While most in the Twin Cities awoke to a snowy November day yesterday a hearty band of bloggers, programmers, designers, and assorted geeks braved the slippery, slushy roads for a day at camp…Word Camp. The first such event in the Twin Cities, the day was a resoundingly successful local presentation of the “everything WordPress” gatherings being staged throughout the country.

The first Wordcamp was put together in 2006 in San Francisco by Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of the open-source blogging software, WordPress. Since then, according to the Wordcamp Central site, over a hundred have taken place. Wordcamps have taken place or will take place from Austin to Jerusalem and Bangkok to Melbourne and by all accounts Minneapolis-St. Paul was a standout…at least to us.

The day began with brief yet sincere opening remarks from event organizers including local WordPress Users Group founder Toby Cryns, and designer Lauren Freeland as well as Matt Barker, Brandon Hedges and Jeff Martin. Special recognition was also given to a cast of interns (free help) for all of their efforts. It was the beginning of day of exceptional sessions and presentations (not to mention some pretty nice swag) that ranged from the the exceptionally technical and coder focused to the beginner and casual user levels, all in a well thought out track based schedule.

While the day was chocked full of great sessions by both local and national, let’s call them “Wordies”, I was particularly taken with presentations by Josh Byers on customizing WordPress (though I could have done without quite so much information about the Lord of the Rings) and a somewhat snow-shocked Vegas resident John Hawkins on building plug-ins. Even Minnov8’s own Steve Borsch and Tim Elliott gave a solid overview of WordPress for small business. And, though some of the sessions were a bit redundant or a tad too self-promotion oriented, the day exemplified the community surrounding “the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.” (WordPress’s words, not mine.)

No where was that community more on display than in the Technical Support room. This dedicated tribe of Wordie geeks spent the day selflessly addressing specific questions and fixing problems with sites for anyone who wanted to ask for their assistance. I didn’t even see a tip jar. The energy in that room was similar to the one experienced at the Overnight Web Challenge, a caffeine fueled 24 hour web development event that has gained serious geek cred in recent years.

Kudos to all who spent months organizing the event and to those who braved the snow, and sometimes questionable skills of Twin Cities drivers, to participate. As one who considers himself a WordPress tinkerer I look forward to next year. I can only imagine that the WordPress pros are already counting the days. Bravo!

Bloomington Firm Expects to Add 300 High-Tech Jobs

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Twin Cities Business (TCB) magazine reported today that Polar Semiconductor Inc. (PSI) is planning to build a new facility, adding to its existing 200,000-square-foot facility in Bloomington, just East of the Mall of America on Old Shakopee Road.  It cited documents recently filed with the City of Bloomington’s planning division.  But the biggest news is it the firm expects the expansion will add 300 jobs eventually when the facility is completed.

Bet you didn’t know that we had a big-time semiconductor fab practically in the shadow of MOA, did you now? And it’s been there for more than 25 years, actually, under previous ownership. (More on that below.)

The current 200,000-square-foot facility at 2800 East Old Shakopee Road includes 62,000 square feet of cleanroom space. where the company performs semiconductor wafer fabrication.  Chips cut from these wafers are used in a variety of electronic devices.

TCB reported that company officials are not yet disclosing information about the expansion. Quoting from the story: “Sources close to the deal said the initial phase of construction will likely result in the addition of about 80 new employees, and when completed, ‘the addition will have generated need for about 300 additional employees’.”  No target date was stated for the expected completion of the new facility.

A report by the City of Bloomington’s planning and economic development division, said TCB, indicates the company hopes to expand on its existing property by adding 98,000 square feet. The building would occupy space north of the existing facility. (Shown above in an aerial photo.)

TCB said the planning division voted unanimously in favor of the expansion, and the City Council will vote Monday to make the final decision. “I have no reason to believe they won’t approve, but of course, can’t know for certain,” a representative of the planning division told TCB.  She said PSI plans to begin construction in early 2011, and once the “shell” of the addition is complete, it will likely finish the interior through additional construction phases….  [Read More…]

Minneapolis ‘Unusually Successful’ and ‘Respected by Tech Insiders’

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Interactive map popup explains Minneapolis view (click for larger view)

New Scientist magazine has an interesting article about Stubborn US cities rated in personality test (interactive map is here). Stating that, “Cities have ingrained characters that are stubbornly hard to change – and they’re not necessarily what you expect them to be. New York, for instance, is really quite average.

The findings come from a new way of ranking cities, based on one of the largest and most detailed sets of data on the world’s metropolitan areas.”

Seems that a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, Luis M.A. Bettencourt and colleagues “…have now recalculated the violent crime, personal income, GDP and patent rankings for more than 350 US metropolitan areas. The new results reveal that some supposedly exceptional cities, such as New York, are in fact quite ordinary. Other less-heralded places, like Minneapolis, emerge as unusually successful.”

Conjecture by the team is that factors like top-flight universities encouraging creative thinking makes these areas special and they ask the question, “So what is the magic ingredient that makes a city successful?” My gut tells me that Minneapolis has an overwhelming number of creatives, artists, graphic designers, and innovators in many disparate fields…

…or like my San Francisco buddy always says, “It’s so damn cold there you guys have to be creative!” What do you think the magic ingredients are?

The Death of the Tether? Verizon Wireless 4G for MSP

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At an event in downtown Minneapolis yesterday, Verizon Wireless announced “the world’s first large-scale 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network” to the Twin Cities, slated to come online “before the end of 2010” and will be “the death of the tether” according to Verizon sources at the venue.

Graeme Thickins and I attended the event for Minnov8, invited by Albert Maruggi of Provident Partners. Albert was coordinating the blogger outreach and we were thus able to connect with key Verizon Wireless technical staff in order to gain a deeper understanding of what they’ll be delivering on this new 4G infrastructure.

With Sprint and T-Mobile already in this market with their 4G implementations and AT&T coming with theirs in 2011, Verizon’s rollout was expected but both Graeme and I were intrigued by how Verizon Wireless was intending to differentiate themselves in this new 4G LTE space (besides just touting more coverage). What wasn’t expected was how strongly they positioned their IP Multimedia Services (IMS) as “enabling smart services” and APIs they’ll be offering and pushing hard.

For anyone not up-to-speed on all the deliverables, standards and technical aspects of the current state of wireless networking IMS—and the applications they were showing built upon these core services and their network—might have come across as something magical and Verizon-only. IMS is, however, an industry standard. Still, the promise of Verizon Wireless’ network speed and low latency should enable Minnov8 readers to capitalize upon this new 4G infrastructure and thus deliver your applications in a much more efficient manner and with great performance.

The good news is that Verizon Wireless is launching in 38 markets in 2011 and Minneapolis/St. Paul is one of the first. The company expects 4G LTE average data rates to be 5 to 12 megabits per second (Mbps) on the downlink and 2 to 5 Mbps on the uplink in real-world, loaded network environments. These speeds are significantly faster than Verizon Wireless’ (and other wireless providers) current 3G network speeds.

Verizon Wireless' 4G Launch for 2010 (click map for larger view)

But the real story for many of the invited I.T. professionals to this event—and to a lesser extent more technical geeks like us—were the IMS “enablers” (and their performance) which Verizon Wireless will be offering on their smart network. With only a cursory understanding of IMS and the sorts of enablers available to application developers, the promises of this new 4G network—coupled with IMS—will offer features and benefits that will surprise and delight any of us who are heavy wireless data users or those of you delivering mobile applications. …  [Read More…]

Entertainment & Sports Law Symposium

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Lommen Abdo is holding its 3rd Annual Entertainment & Sports Law Symposium for attorneys and industry professionals who want to know more about substantive entertainment law and business issues. Featured speakers include Lommen Abdo lawyers and representatives from the GRAMMY Foundation®, MusiCares®, Minnesota Vikings, Digital Media Wire, Chrysalis Music Group, USC Thornton School of Music and Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers. Following the panel presentations, the event continues with an official South by Southwest® Mixer.

If you’re in the media, entertainment, gaming, music, film or other such businesses—or obviously if you have a legal practice in any of these areas—this looks to be a fascinating, informative and world-class event.

Register here (yes, it’s one of them PDF thingys that you can print on to paper and snail-mail) and you can view the schedule and speaker bios here. There is a $125 fee which includes continuing legal education credits (CLEs), lunch and the SXSW mixer. 6.0 Minnesota CLE credits requested, including 1.0 bias credit; 7.0 Wisconsin CLE credits requested.