Category: San Antonio (Page 59 of 62)

TaskRabbit to launch in Austin and San Antonio in March

February 1, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Got some IKEA furniture that needs assembling?
No worries.
In March, TaskRabbit launches in the Austin and San Antonio markets and people will be able to post all kinds of tasks on the site for others to perform for a fee.
The most popular task in San Francisco is assembling IKEA furniture, said Johnny Brackett, TaskRabbit spokesman.
TaskRabbit, which launched in 2008 in Boston, is now available in Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, New York City and Los Angeles.
“Austin makes sense as the next step,” Brackett said. “We look for urban cities and tech-savvy cities.”
TaskRabbit saw a lot of demand from people in the Austin and San Antonio area requesting the service, Brackett said.
Nationwide, TaskRabbit has more than 3,000 people who work as TaskRabbit runners. Anyone over the age of 21 can apply to run errands.
“It’s sort of like a college application,” Brackett said. The site does federal, county and other background checks to license its errand runners. The whole process takes around five to seven days but it can also take up to four weeks. TaskRabbit is accepting applications now for the Austin and San Antonio market.
“Some of our most active Taskrabbits are running two to three tasks a day and cashing out $5,000 a month,” Brackett said.
In addition to furniture assembly, other popular tasks include cleaning, grocery delivery and lunch delivery. The site provides a platform for micro-entrepreneurship, Brackett said.
“We even get some unique ones like paint a mural on my wall or help me prank my colleague by wrapping everything in cellophane,” Brackett said. “We’re saving people time. It’s all about living more efficiently.”
Trust and security are really important to TaskRabbit, Brackett said. It has built in a reputation engine into its system so that errand runners are reviewed on a task by task basis. They’ve also built some game features into the site to reward so-called Taskrabbits for completing tasks.
“We’re all about transparency and ratings and reviews,” Brackett said.

TechStars Cloud companies are “like little soft baby chicks”

January 29, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The first TechStars Cloud program kicked off in San Antonio on Jan. 19 with 11 companies that all moved to the city from outside the state.
Jason Seats and Nicole Glaros, managing directors, run the TechStars Cloud program at the Geekdom, a collaborative workplace in downtown San Antonio on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre. The three-month incubator and mentoring program ends with a demo day in April. TechStars are’t revealing the names of the companies involved in the program until Demo Day.
Meanwhile, the folks at Rackspace Hosting did this hilarious video with Seats and Glaros recently.
The video starts off serious, but you have to hang with it until the end.
Glaros has some great comments.
“We do a lot of hazing here at TechStars cloud,” says Glaros. “You have to be top of mind and of body.”
“Somewhere between 90 and 100 percent of these companies are just elaborate money laundering schemes,” Glaros said.
She gives the companies “diapers and wipes” when they walk in the door because they are so young.
Meanwhile, Seats says the companies are like “little soft baby chicks” and that they just want to cuddle them.

SOPA and PIPA protests

January 18, 2012 / / 0 Comments

By now you’ve probably heard of SOPA, the Stop Online Privacy Act introduced by San Antonio Congressman Lamar Smith.
The jist of it is that media and entertainment companies want to protect the copyright on their content from pirates. Not too many people would take issue with that.
But the legislation would effectively give content producers the ability to censor the web.
On Wednesday, dozens of websites including Wikipedia, Reddit, WordPress, Craigslist and others blacked out their content in protest over the legislation. Google, which also opposes SOPA, blacked out its logo.
PIPA, the Protect IP ACT, introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont is already losing support.
But when Congress reconvenes work will begin on SOPA again, according to this article from Engadget.
San Antonio-based Rackspace Hosting has been working with lawmakers to fix the bills to effectively fight online piracy and avoid Internet disruption or “imposing unreasonable costs on Internet users and service providers,” Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier wrote in a blog post.
He said the existing bills, SOPA and PIPA, are “well-intentioned, but would do more harm than good. Their enforcement provisions could be easily evaded, and they would undermine the security and stability of the Internet.
Meanwhile, Congressman Smith contends that SOPA is vastly misunderstood. He also blasted Wikipedia for what he called a publicity stunt.
“It is ironic that a website dedicated to providing information is spreading misinformation about the Stop Online Piracy Act. The bill will not harm Wikipedia, domestic blogs or social networking sites,” according to Lamar. “This publicity stunt does a disservice to its users by promoting fear instead of facts. Perhaps during the blackout, Internet users can look elsewhere for an accurate definition of online piracy.”
Smith says the “Stop Online Piracy Act only targets foreign websites that are primarily dedicated to illegal activity. It does not grant the Justice Department the authority to seek a court order to shut down any website operated in the U.S.”

Sopa and PIPA Protest Sites

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San Antonio lands a major solar project

January 11, 2012 / / 0 Comments

San Antonio saw the light today.
CPS Energy and the city’s leaders announced plans to bring a solar plant to San Antonio that could create 800 jobs, generate 400 megawatts of solar energy and create a construction boom.
The city and CPS Energy are partnering with OCI Solar Power. It’s moving its U.S. corporate headquarters from Atlanta, Georgia to San Antonio. CPS Energy has agreed to buy 400 megawatts of solar energy from OCI Solar Power during the next 25 years.

CPS Energy CEO Doyle Beneby announces a major solar plant project with OCI Solar Power. (PRNewsFoto/CPS Energy)

But CPS Energy and city officials report that the project could result in multiple solar manufacturing businesses in the area. In fact, Nexolon, which makes components used in solar panels, plans to build a manufacturing facility and locate its North American headquarters in San Antonio.
The OCI Solar Power project does not yet have a launch date but CPS Energy officials expect it to be up and running in phases by 2017.
San Antonio and CPS Energy have a goal of attaining 20 percent of its energy from renewable resources by the 2020 and this move puts it well on the way to achieving that goal.
CPS Energy already buys power from the 14 megawatt Blue Wing solar farm owned by Duke Energy and another 30 megawatts from Sun Edison. It also has 1059 megawatts of wind energy under contract.

San Antonio’s Sigma Solutions expands in the Midwest

January 9, 2012 / / 0 Comments

San Antonio-based Sigma Solutions announced that it has bought a division of Laurus Technologies, based in Chicago.
The division is Laurus’ server, storage and virtualization business with 80 customers. Earlier, Sigma bought the Midwest assets of Artemis Technology, also in the Midwest. Now Sigma, which provides computing software and services to large companies, has a bigger presence there.
“We have been making acquisitions to help accelerate Sigma’s growth while executing our strategies in the broader geographic, enterprise IT market,” stated Dave Miller, CEO of Sigma Solutions.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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