Ready to leave your wallet or purse at home?
Soon smartphone customers in Austin and Salt Lake City, Utah will get that opportunity when the Isis Mobile Wallet launches in a test market trail on Monday, Oct. 22. It is currently available in the Google Play marketplace.
The Isis Mobile Wallet puts everything that people carry around with them in their wallets on their mobile phone. The program is available right now by invitation with general availability beginning Oct. 22 in Austin and Salt Lake City.
Isis is a joint venture between AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless. The app will be available on a variety of NFC-enabled smartphone mobile devices by HTC< Motorola, RIM, Samsung Mobile and Sony Ericsson. Wired Magazine reports that it can’t find a phone that the Isis Mobile Wallet works on yet.
The Isis app allows consumers to “securely make payments, store and present loyalty cards and redeem offers at participating merchants with the tap of their phones,” according to Isis. It will store your existing credit cards including American Express, Chase and Capital One on the phone. Or consumers can use free Isis Cash card.
“Seamlessly transmit your payment info, loyalty and offers at checkout with just one tap at Isis Ready SmartTap merchants,” according to Isis. “No more fumbling through your wallet or purse.”
The Isis Mobile Wallet is PIN protected and has the same protections against fraud that physical credit cards have and can be frozen with one call to T-Mobile if it’s lost or stolen.

Cinegif has struck a partnership with PulseConnect to bring high-quality animated GIFs to their client’s email marketing campaigns.
Under the partnership, Cinegif will license its patented technology to convert and compress video clips and still images into professionally looking animated GIFs. Austin-based Cinegif’s video conversion software reduces file size and makes sharing short videos easy. The company has three patents on its technology and one more pending. The animated GIFs play on any browser.
PulseConnect plans to offer Cinegif’s animated GIF technology to its customers as a way to create unique and visually appealing e-mail campaigns.
“The animated GIF is experiencing a “rebirth” as teens and artists are breathing new life into this twenty-five year old standard image format,” according to Graham McFarland, Cinegraf’s CEO. “The GIF trend is beginning to go main stream as big name brands such as Coca-Cola, Calvin Klein, Adidas, MTV, and Burberry are using animated GIFs as part of their digital advertising and social media strategies.”
“Cinegif’s unique technology fits nicely with our client platform and helps deliver more visually appealing content for our clients,” Damian Borichevsky, VP of Professional Services PulseConnect, said in a statement.
Silicon Hills News did this story on Cinegraf this summer.

Calxeda, which uses cellular technology to power datacenter servers, recently landed $55 million in investment.
And Wednesday, the Austin-based startup announced that Penguin Computing is now selling servers equipped with Calxeda chips. Boston Limited and Hewlett-Packard already offer servers with Calxeda’s technology.
The Calxeda has shipped thousands of its EnergyCore ECX-1000 to customers, and it is also providing free access to the technology on the OpenStack Trystack.org cloud.
Calxeda plans to market its products for public and private cloud operators and large datacenters.
“We are very excited about the market’s response to our pioneering first generation product,” Barry Evans, Calxeda’s founder and CEO, said in a news release. “Now we are taking it two steps further to reinvent the server, first into a rack-based cloud appliance, and then extending into an integrated fleet of computing resources, spanning many thousands of efficient servers.”

The OpenStack Summit kicks off today and San Antonio-based Rackspace is there in force.
Its OpenStack experts are giving all kinds of presentations today through Thursday at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego.
About 1,000 people are expected to attend the event.
Garrett Heath, a Racker and his team, created the following video to explain the impact of the cloud.

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Larry Chiang, investor and teacher at Stanford University, is famous for his after-parties—not in a Hugh Hefner, bad boy kind

of way (no alcohol is served). But because his after-parties help young tech entrepreneurs grasp the importance and the finesse of hosting an event.
“When you throw a party you’re building something and wondering if anyone going to show up,” Chiang said. “You have to put your own name on it. You’re inviting people and you have to promote it. That’s a skill set they don’t teach you inside of engineering business school. Throwing a party is the same as running an election is the same as getting 150 users.”
Which is why his latest party at the end of the Startup Crawl of Austin Startup Week was hosted by the students of a workshop he taught: Engineering 145 Preview. It was a 90-minute version of the class he teaches at Stanford that teaches all the social and sales skills engineering schools don’t teach. Chiang has written a book on that topic “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School.” The class concluded with students throwing the after-party featuring lemonade and a special Larry Chiang guacamole recipe whipped up by the staff at the Four Seasons. The guac had a couple dozen extra ingredients like roasted garlic and roasted peppers. An iterative guac.
“Lemonade and guacamole are the execution of all the knowledge from the class. Lemonade is a baby business, not a startup. It’s a mini company concept. And guacamole is a recipe, like any other recipe. There are 35 steps to follow, its pattern replicating and pattern iterating.”
After Chiang’s class, attended by half a dozen budding entrepreneurs including some from University of Texas’ One Semester Startup, participants had to secure sponsors for the party.
“There were little hacks on how to execute and be entrepreneur, how to do cold calls” said co-host Johnny Van, a One Semester Startup graduate. Students who sold sponsorships were allowed to keep the proceeds.
Irene Nguyen, a computer science undergrad at UT signed up for the class because she’s drawn to the startup culture, though not sure if she plans to be entrepreneur. “He talked about how to get a legendary signature. It was very inspirational to me.”
About 60 people showed up for the party Thursday night. Much guacamole was consumed.

This weekend, Louis Pacilli will lead a test run of Geekdom’s SparkEd program with 40 at risk Junior High School kids.
The program officially starts next weekend at Geekdom, on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre in downtown San Antonio.
“It’s completely booked,” Pacilli said.
Kids from North East ISD, San Antonio ISD, Harlandale ISD, New Braunfels ISD and homeschool programs will participate.
“The idea is to spark their interest in math and science through technology,” Pacilli said. “We make learning fun and engaging so students build critical thinking skills. And then we help them make connections across school subjects. We want to help kids create their future and take ownership of the work to come.”
The program involves teaching kids programming, robotics, entrepreneurship and website design. During a weekend, they work in groups of 10 to design and build a Lego Mindstorms robot, create an online game, launch a website and create a business plan to sell the robot. Mentors from the technology and business community volunteer to help and give presentations to the kids. The students listen to six 30 minute presentations.
“SparkEd adopts a blacksmith apprentice approach where kids watch, learn and do,” Pacilli said. “We rely upon our awesome community member experts who practice this method daily at Geekdom. We add an additional layer of company and university student mentors to span the perspective.”
SparkEd leads students through a scaffolding learning process where key concepts and vocabulary unique to website design or entrepreneurship are developed and applied, Pacilli said.
“Through multiple pathways we encourage teenagers to embrace consideration for in demand future careers in science, technology, entrepreneurship, art and math, called STEAM,” he said.
In one weekend, the 7th and 8th graders learn everything they need to know to start a company.
“If we get kids to enter 9th grade more engaged, they are more likely to graduate and hopefully enter careers in technology or business,” Pacilli said. “We know six out of ten jobs in the future are going to be in technology related fields. We want to save children because they are our future. We want to inspire and spark them to purposefully craft their future.”
In addition to the school year programs, SparkEd plans to host week-long summer camps for the same kids so they can make mobile phone apps.
“We’re going to create ways that kids can build businesses,” Pacilli said. “SparkEd is about challenge based learning, solving a problem, finding a customer and making a sale – all the while being innovative.”
“We don’t live in a manufacturing economy where people can go to work at Ford for 40 years,” he said. “We need kids to think innovatively and to become problem solves and work collaboratively.”

Disclosure: Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

Fourteen early-stage startups pitched to a full house of angel investors at the Capital Factory Thursday for Demo Day, a ticketed event of Austin Startup Week.
When the presentations were through, investors said there were definitely companies they would be looking into and possibly writing checks for.
“I completed my first round of funding before leaving the room,” quipped Bryan Menell, CEO of SubtleData which integrates apps with point of sale data streams. He’s also head of AustinStartups.com and in charge of Austin High Tech Happy Hour. He’d made a dinner date with one investor who showed great interest in his company.
“I’ve seen a lot of those companies before. I’ve been following them,” said Rudy Garza, founder and managing general partner of G51. “Some of them are getting closer. We expect to write a check by the end of this year or early next year.”
Rick Timmins, Chairman of the Central Texas Angel Network said Josh Baer did a good job bringing in companies “that have what we’re looking for, in short, product and customers.”
“These companies have traction in their markets, they’re at very good stages of development,” Timmins said. “They have what we look for which is not how big the market opportunity ‘should be.’ I want you to show me how you’re going to acquire customers one, two and three….I have a company I invested in recently, approximately $750,000 because they had acquired two customers. Their revenue from the two customers was less than $200,000. But what they were selling was disruptive enough to get people to stop what they were already doing and switch.”
Timmins said he would investigate a couple of the companies more deeply and probably write a check because of the event. But he planned to discuss the presentations with his fellow investors first.
“I will share my thoughts and ideas with several folks,” he said. “I’ll make up own mind but I’ll consult with the other investors here. I’m not competitive at all with other angel investors.”
The only investors present were those invited by Capital Factory because they’d recently written checks, according to demo presenter Bart Bohn. Bohn is founder of AuManil which provides analytics for game studios on the most lucrative online and digital game players.
Because of the theme of the event, no startups were seeking more than $1 million. The theme was startups that could reach $1 million in revenue with less than $1 million in funding. As Joshua Baer, founder of the event pointed out, too many companies don’t bother with small funding amounts they have an 80 percent chance of getting because they’re hoping for a giant investments they have 10 percent chance of getting. But if a company can build itself to profitability on smaller investments, sell for $20 million—a tiny amount by Silicon Valley standards–and reap $10 million out of the deal, they still have $10 million. That’s the sweet spot for Austin.
It’s a strategy Silicon Valley could learn from, according to investor Larry Chiang who lives in Palo Alto, teaches tech entrepreneurship at Stanford and loves Austin for its ecosystem of music, entrepreneurship and community.
Garza called it “fishing where the fish are.” Both the numbers of intriguing startups and the numbers of investors are building in Austin, with each piece of the ecosystem spurring growth in the other areas. Austin’s ecosystem, he pointed out, has players at every level. There are companies like his, Capital Factory, Austin Tech Incubator and Tech Ranch that can offer seed money. Then there are the venture capitalists like Austin Ventures and Silverton Partners. Then there are the heavy hitter investors. Austin’s growth in the startup world is building as each of these players gains substance.
Frankly, Garza said, the seed capital is “the funnest part.”
“Everybody’s hair’s on fire. Checks are coming in to the bank…building a company from zero to $5 million is the best part.”
Besides AuManil and SubtleData, Other presenters included Compare Metrics, Engine, Kin Valley, Rockify, Smart Picture Technologies, Stormpulse, Taskbox, Visible Health, Vivogig, Whoosh Traffic, Zing Checkout and One Spot.

Geekdom, the collaborative coworking space in downtown San Antonio, has expanded its kingdom to San Francisco.
And eventually Geekdom hopes to have a global presence with sites in China, South America and other parts of the world and in other cities in the United States, said Nick Longo, its director.
“We’ve got a lot of requests whether it’s different states or different countries,” Longo said. “We’ll go where it makes sense. We’re not in the franchising business.”
The 15,000 square foot downtown San Francisco Geekdom location officially opens in May, Longo said. He spent the last three days in San Francisco at the site. It will feature teleconferencing so members of the San Antonio and San Francisco Geekdom locations can collaborate, he said.
“It’s a live social network,” Longo said.
San Francisco has a real need for office space for its growing technology workforce, Longo said. The site will feature dedicated desks, but only a few dedicated offices, he said. While it’s uncertain whether the site will have a Geekdom Fund, which provides $25,000 investments in startups, investors in the Bay Area will have an active role in the site and its companies, Longo said.
Geekdom members can work out of either San Antonio or San Francisco. And activities at either site will be live streamed for both offices.
“One of the key elements is bringing the workshops and speakers in San Francisco into the San Antonio Geedkom,” Longo said.
Geekdom seeks to become part of the startup ecosystem in San Francisco, Longo said.
“They have a need for space and we have a need for collaboration,” Longo said. “It works out perfectly.”
Geekdom also plans to launch educational programs and weekend bootcamps for kids at the San Francisco site.
“For us, it was the opportunity to be closer to a technology center,” Longo said.
Not even a year old, Geekdom has quickly grown into the technology hub for startups in downtown San Antonio. The site, headed up by Longo, a technology entrepreneur and backed by Rackspace Founders Graham Weston and Pat Condon, has grown quickly. It now has more than 450 members, who pay a monthly fee to either rent an office or work at a desk in the commons area.
Geekdom is also expanding from the 11th floor to the 10th floor of the Weston Centre. The site also hosts the popular TechStars Cloud program, run by Jason Seats, its managing director and cofounder of Slicehost. The program is currently accepting applications with its second program set to kick off in January.
The Geekdom San Francisco site will most likely host some companies from Y Combinator and 500 Startups, Longo said. And Keen.io, a alumni of the first TechStars Cloud class, is based in the San Francisco area too.
The San Antonio Geekdom hosts dozens of technology companies including TrueAbility, Zippykid, Facekey, Cabstr, Embarkly and Grapevine.
Aside from providing office space to digital nomads, Geekdom fosters the technology community by hosting all kinds of meetups and providing nightly classes on everything from programming to marketing and legal seminars. And it doesn’t shut down after dark. The site operates around the clock and has hosted 3 Day Startup Weekends and other events geared at technology and entrepreneurship. Next weekend, the SparkEd program, designed to foster learning in the fields of Science, Technology, Education, Art and Math to at risk junior high school students, starts.

Disclosure: Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Angel investor Gary Forni Wednesday called Austin Startup Week “Austin’s preeminent event for early-stage startups… I wouldn’t miss it,” he added. Forni, with the Central Texas Angel Network and the Austin Technology Incubator was among roughly 400 people to attend the Startup Bazaar, hosted by Tech Ranch and RISE Austin at The Stage on Sixth Street.
Nineteen companies had demo tables, including Divert-X, wireless monitoring of prescription drug dosage; Springcreek Systems, a Salesforce.com partner which developed a standalone cloud applications to automate and prioritize Customer Relationship Manager data deduplication; Alpha Cares, an online software suite for child care center management; Isthislost, which provides anonymous email and SMS communication between someone who loses something and someone who finds it, and Axelo, a patented 3D motion sensing technology.
Throughout the day, 11 companies also pitched to investors including Needto.com, a site to connect people with work and services that includes a rating service and earnable tags, Whit.li, a provider of social media intelligence for enterprises, Itography, which lets advertisers market products with a mobile scavenger hunt and Engine, which lets users retrieve texts, documents and social content from their Gmail accounts.
Alex Cox-Cuzzi, engagement manager for Tech Ranch who planned the event, said the companies who pitched were all interviewed and auditioned prior to the event and chosen for their readiness to pitch.
“We were looking for the companies that are up and running, they’re out there in the market but haven’t gathered the attention they deserve,” Cox-Cuzzi said. Companies who applied were all early-stage companies so there was a fairly level playing field.
Ben Bazzrea, vice president of business development at Balderdash, which produces mobile apps, websites and design, said the one big problem with the event was that each demo table only had one representative who could actually speak to visitors about the company or produce they represented. If that person was busy, he pointed out, “Other people aren’t going to wait. They just walk away.”
Part of the problem was that, instead of booths, each demo company only had a tiny standing bar table—big enough for a couple of pints, a couple of elbows and a basket of chips. The bazaar theme was chosen to introduce a more casual feel to the event. Frequently, Cox-Cuzzi pointed out, pitch events are formal and stressful. Having it at a bar on 6th Street lightened the atmosphere.