Tag: Austin (Page 24 of 37)

Austin Startup White Whale Games Creates God of Blades

June 22, 2012 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 2 Comments

George Royer and Jo Lammert, two of the founders of White Whale Games

Just like in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the creators of White Whale Games are looking for that elusive big fish.
But unlike the classic novel from which the founders chose their name, they’re likely to land their whale.
And their “whale” is a fantasy sword fighting game for IOS, Mac and PC platforms that they spent the last year creating called God of Blades.
In the game, players go on quests in an apocalyptic world and encounter sword fights as they defend their kingdom from all kinds of onslaughts. Throughout the game, players can earn better swords and other rewards. They also get special swords for visiting libraries in real life.
The creators say they took their inspiration from “pulp novel covers, classic Dungeons and Dragons modules, and 1970s rock.”
The game should be out next month. It’s in beta testing right now, said George Royer, co-founder and lead game designer.
“We don’t want to put it out before we’re totally happy with it,” Royer said. “It’s got a lot of stuff in it.”
Jason Rosenstock, creative director, and Jo Lammert, studio director, are the other founders. The three met at the University of Texas campus. Rosenstock was just finishing up work on BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic. Lammert and Royer met at UT’s School of Information. Lammert earned her master’s degree from the school in 2011 and Royer is a doctoral student focused on digital media, archives, online communities and interaction design.
I recently met up with Lammert and Royer at Austin Java on Barton Springs Road to talk about their startup adventures as an independent game studio.
The game draws from all kinds of resources in Austin’s creative community. For example, White Whale hired a local composer to create a soundtrack for the game.
“Pretty much all of our resources for the game have been local,” Lammert said. “The valuable, wonderful brilliant people in this town have helped us every step of the way.”
To get the company started, Lammert attended every single mixer, meetup and event that could even remotely be valuable for the company.
“Through that we’ve gotten to meet a lot of awesome people here,” Lammert said. People have volunteered their time and expertise to help the new company, she said.
“This is one of the best towns in the country for independent game development,” Royer said.
In particular, Juegos Rancheros, a monthly meeting of independent game developers and fans created by Adam Saltsman, Brandon Boyer and Wiley Wiggins has been one of the best resources, Royer said.
White Whale Games is completely bootstrapped, Lammert said. They raised $4,851 from 112 backers during a successful Kickstarter campaign last year. They run a very lean operation. They work out of a rented garage space in Hyde Park. Altogether, they’ve spent $12,000. Lammert says they joke that they built the game and company for what a modest family sedan would cost.
The game, when it’s released should cost about $2.99 and be available for download from Apple’s App Store. They hope to recoup their expenses and earn enough money to launch their next game. The tough life of running a startup company has all been worth it, Lammert said.
“This has been one of the best experiences of my life,” she said.

Gazzang Releases New Security Management Software

June 20, 2012 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Gazzang released its latest security software product: Gazzang zTrustee, a security management system.
The Austin-based startup says the software as a service offering provides companies with a “universal key manager that stores and manages all cryptographic keys, certificates, configuration files, tokens and any other “opaque objects” an enterprise maintains to secure its most sensitive data.”
Gazzang designed the product after receiving feedback from customers “who wanted to extend the reach of the Gazzang zNcrypt™ Key Storage System to manage other important IT objects alongside their Gazzang keys.”
With the increased popular of cloud, software as a service products and big data sites, companies are seeking ways to secure their data online and that’s what Gazzang’s products do.
Gazzang zTrustee helps companies restrict access to sensitive data and gives companies, not cloud or software providers, keys to access their information online in a secure way.
“The growing number of virtual images, cloud instances, servers, mobile devices and other connected systems in the enterprise has created an explosion of keys, certificates and other information objects,” Scott Crawford, managing research director at Enterprise Management Associates, said in a news statement. “Getting this ‘key sprawl’ under control requires organizations to take a more holistic approach to the storage, management, tracking and access policies associated with those objects.”
Silicon Hills News Reporter Yasmin Ghahremani recently did this profile of Gazzang.

Valence Technology Appeals Delisting from Nasdaq

June 20, 2012 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Valence Technology reports it has received notice from the Nasdaq Stock Market that the company may be delisted for not complying with the $1 minimum balance for its stock price.
The Austin-based company, which makes energy storage systems, initially received notification from the Nasdaq on Dec. 13, 2011 that the bid price for its stock had closed at less than $1 a share during the previous 30 business days. That means that Valence Technology was not in compliance with Nasdaq’s listing rule. The stock exchange gave the company 180 days to meet its minimum bid requirement. Valence was not able to do that. The company also has negative stockholders’ equity and so it doesn’t meet other listing standards for the Nasdaq market.
Valence is appealing the ruling and that will stay the suspension of the company’s stock pending the appeal panel’s decision.

Sprint Prepares to Launch its 4G LTE Network in San Antonio

June 19, 2012 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 13 Comments

A lot of consumers want smartphones to access data on the go.
But smartphones only work well if they are connected to a smart network that can handle the bandwidth demand from consumers downloading videos, photos and music onto their mobile devices.
Sprint Nextel Corp. has created a smart network, known as Network Vision, that will provide advanced 3G and 4G LTE service in San Antonio, Dallas, Houston and Atlanta by the end of the month. Service in Austin should be available by the end of the year. Sprint expects to roll out the 4G LTE service to 173 million users by the end of the year.

Deborah Neal, director of sales for Sprint Nextel in Irving, TX

Sprint’s network will provide its customers with speeds up to 10 times faster than 3G or third generation cellular service, said Deborah Neal with Sprint. It will also provide improved voice and data quality and stronger signal penetration when people are inside buildings, she said.
In the U.S., people own 327.5 million mobile devices, that translates to 104 percent market penetration, Neal said.
Right now, Sprint operates three completely separate cellular networks, Neal said. The Network Vision ties all of those networks together and lets a device operate on any of them. The Vision Network is an entirely new nationwide network.
“It allows a device to take advantage of all the spectrum Sprint owns,” Neal said.
Sprint offered an overview of its new network during a media luncheon Monday at Acenar Restaurant in downtown San Antonio. When asked why Texas cities are among the first to get the service, Neal said “Sprint has always done really well in Texas and in San Antonio specifically.”
Sprint first launched its 4G service in 2008. It also introduced the first 4G smartphone two years ago and now offers more than 25 4G-enabled smartphones, USB connection cards, notebook and netbook products, mobile hotspots and routers.

In 2009, Sprint and Time Warner both offered Clearwire’s 4G network in a partnership “to help fund the national build out of the company’s WiMax-based system, which Clearwire choose as its 4G network technology instead of LTE. Clearwire, which is majority owned by Sprint, also partnered with Comcast, Bright House Networks, Intel and Google as part of the deal,” according to the San Antonio Express-News.
But the Wi-Max network isn’t as popular as the 4G LTE standard which both Verizon and AT&T rolled out last year, according to this WSJ story.
But the growth in wireless devices is not just coming from phones but from everything from e-readers to blood glucose monitors to Mi-Fi devices and smart picture frames. And the wireless tablet market is projected to grow between 50 percent to 80 percent annually.
Data traffic growth doubled last year and is expected to grow ten to twelve times between 2010 and 2015, according to Roberto Padovani, executive vice president at Qualcomm, who spoke at the Texas Wireless Summit late last year.
In fact, Sprint sees the largest increase for cellular use coming from companies using it for machine to machine devices, said Amy Strobietto, Sprint sales manager in San Antonio. Companies that use video surveillance systems and wireless tracking need cellular service, she said. Also, the explosion in smart meters for the home is also increasing the demand for cellular service, she said.

Startups Design the Future of Business

June 15, 2012 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 3 Comments

By SUSAN LAHEY
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News

Nancy Giordano and Jeff Sharpe

Area startups will be glad to know they already look like the future, according to a day-long seminar entitled “Designing the Future of Your Business” put on by Turnstone and Co-Space.
The seminar covered topics from social media to strategy to designing the space you work in to include cooperative-brainstorming areas, play areas and areas for quiet reflection—similar to the space Capital Factory recently unveiled.
Nancy Giordano, CEO of Brand Futurist and Play Big Inc., started the day with a rapid fire summary of trends, saying we’re currently in a kind of trough between the way work used to be done, and the way it will be done in the future which includes massive cooperation, involving everyone in the process whether that’s collaborating on a project or social media—the epitome of inclusivity.
Also touched on:

• Collaborative work stations are replacing work in offices or cubicles.
• Entrepreneurialism and intrapreneurialism–empowering employees at all levels to bring independent thought and perspective into the process–is growing.
• The millennials are introducing a culture of relevance, purpose, passion and positivity—a combining of philanthropy and capitalism with a focus on fostering possibility.
• The millennial perspective on collaboration is “Yes…and” as in “Yes, that’s a good idea and we could also do this” rather than “Yeah…but” which kills creativity.

The focus sounds positive: Inviting everyone to join the conversation, embracing the idea of failing faster and failing forward, opening organizations up to ideas from all stakeholders: employees at every level, customers and vendors. But that requires an ongoing conversation that puts new demands on businesses.
“I’ll stay up until midnight doing emails and I fricking get responses back!” Giordano said. “I have clients who email me back in the middle of the night. And that’s the U.S., not global clients.”
Research shows that the constant disruptions from this ongoing dialogue leaves workers with 12 percent of the day for thought, “even though knowledge workers paid to think for a living.” Use of antidepressants is up 400 percent—though she didn’t say from when. And sleep deprivation is a huge contributor to fatal disease.
Between the explosive growth of technology, new ways to communicate and collaborate and rapid pace of change, humans are struggling to keep up. “We’re in an area of exponential growth,” Giordano said. “As humans, we’re able to adjust to linear growth. We’re not at all prepared for exponential growth.”
Giordano said the business world is demanding more quality, innovation, transparency, personalization and speed, for less time, money, complexity and energy. “That puts anybody who is a provider in a quandary.” Some brands aren’t making it across. And Baby Boomers, entrenched in old ways of doing business, are considered the biggest obstacle to moving forward. They are reluctant to embrace collaborative work, social media and failing forward.
During one session, a participant asked how failing forward could be implemented in highly regulated arenas such as the medical field or in banking. In those situations, said Jeff Sharpe, Director and Designer at JS WorkShop, the focus of experimentation could be on areas such as customer experience.
During an afternoon session, Aaron Strout, Group Director of communications company WCG, Ray Wolf, CEO of PeopleBrite and Lekan Bashua, Manager of Turnstone, talked about issues from strategy to keeping up with social media and news, to the proliferation of tools for everything from collaboration and communication to scheduling. The bottom line seemed to be that everything must line up with business’s core objectives.
Strategy, Strout said, must be flexible and adaptable over time. It must rest on frameworks and processes rather than tools and technologies. It must be informed by key stakeholders, especially those with daily customer contact. He makes sure he’s staying on top of industry change by regularly shifting what he reads to ensure he’s not getting stuck in one perspective.
Wolf, who has had a vast and varied career and a number of tech startups, said he visualizes what he wants: In his case, a business where he can work from a beach and drink good wine. But it’s important to recognize that you don’t reach your goal in a bound but in strategic stages. If you have a new app, don’t aim to be Facebook, aim for a reasonable goal such as gaining 1,000 users.
Each participant had some way of evaluating tools. Bashua suggested using a “maven.” His is his wife. If he mentions a tool 10 times, she points it out to him and he knows it’s probably a good one that’s serving a purpose.
The last session of the day was Peter Kim, Chief Strategy Officer of the Dachis Group and author of Social Business by Design speaking on social media.
Kim listed several key elements to a strong social campaign including:

• Everyone can participate
• It’s responsive: He told the story of the You Tube video showing how Mentos candy can make a geyser in Diet Coke spawning zillions more videos of Mentos geysers. The Mentos company embraced the craze and Coke responded coldly. By the time Coke figured out the benefit of the attention, it was too late.
• There are three “buckets” of messages that work: Making people laugh, entertaining; making people famous; tugging at their heartstrings.

A mature social media campaign, he said, will be enterprise-wide; will be scalable and will be able to identify ROI from social business solutions.
Bashua of Turnstone gave one takeaway most participants will remember and which summarized the future of business: So.lo.mo.big.fat which translated to:
Social, local, mobile, big data, fat pipes (large communication network). The future of business in a nutshell.

Napkin Venture Launches in Austin to Help Entrepreneurs

June 15, 2012 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

A new startup resource, Napkin Venture launched in Austin this month and aims to help entrepreneurs find services and solve problems.
The startup will help all types of entrepreneurs.
Napkin Venture will offer business classes on a variety of topics including business models, marketing, funding and how to pitch. The project sounds similar to what Startup America is doing on a national level.
Former city council candidate Tina Cannon, founder of PetsMd.com, is leading the venture along with a team of experienced entrepreneurs, designers, attorneys and others. They include Raúl Calvoz, a lawyer turned business executive, Chuck Miller, an entrepreneur, inventor, graphic designer, photographer, marketing guru, and musician and Eve Richter, who founded the Emerging Technologies Program in the Economic Development Division at the City of Austin.
“I’ve been there, done that, have the t-shirt,” Cannon said in a news statement. “I’ve struggled out there and learned my lessons, and want to help other startups to avoid some of the mistakes I made, and get on the fast track to success. I’m excited to finally realize my goal of helping entrepreneur dreams become reality.”

Top People to Talk to About the Thriving Startup Scene in Silicon Hills

June 13, 2012 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

If you were wanting to get the pulse of the Austin startup community, who are in the top 5 you would talk to? Thanks!

— Damon Clinkscales (@damon) June 10, 2012

Damon Clinkscales recently complied this list when he tweeted out a question to the Austin high-tech community asking for recommendations of the top people to talk to about the Austin startup scene.
I agree with all the recommendations. My list in Austin is as follows:

Josh Baer, founder of multiple companies including OtherInBox, Capital Factory and author of Austinpreneur.
Jason Cohen, founder Smart Bear Software, founder of Capital Factory and founder of WP Engine.
Damon Clinkscales, software engineer and founder of AustinOnRails.
Bill Boebel, founder of Webmail.us, angel investor and manager at Capital Factory.
Julie Huls, president of the Austin Technology Council.
Bryan Menell, director of the Collaboratory at Dachis Group, founder of AustinStartup.com and the monthly High Tech Happy Hour.
Josh Dilworth, founder and CEO of Jones-Dilworth, Inc., an early-stage technology marketing firm.
Kevin Koym, entrepreneur and founder of Tech Ranch Austin.
Eve Richter, emerging technologies coordinator at City of Austin/Economic Development
Robert Reeves, founder at Datical, cofounder of Phurnace Software and formerly director of IT and Wireless at the Austin Technology Incubator.
Jeff Harbach, executive director of Central Texas Angel Network
Rudy Garza, angel investor and founder and managing general partner of G-51, also known as TexasSuperAngel on Twitter.
Andrew Busey, successful serial entrepreneur, now venture partners with Austin Ventures.
Jacqueline Hughes, founder of Austin Startup Week
Laura Beck, owner of StripedShirt and seasoned technology PR professional who knows everyone.
Lori Hawkins, veteran technology reporter at the Austin American Statesman. She pens the Starting Blog.
Bob Metcalfe, co-founder of Ethernet, 3Com, professor of innovation at UT and cofounder of 1SemesterStartup.

Austin has a thriving high-tech startup scene. So many people contribute to the collaborate environment in the city and that makes it tough to name just a few.
In fact, I was just interviewed for an article in Fast Company Magazine on the startup scene in both Austin and San Antonio and I listed many of the people on Clinkscales list. But I also told the reporter that it was tough to make up a list because so many people in Austin help startup entrepreneurs.
I also listed the top people for the San Antonio area. They are as follows (and again I know I will leave off important people so please list them in the comments sections to add to this list.)

Graham Weston, chairman of Rackspace, founder of Geekdom and investor in lots of startup companies.
Pat Condon, founder of Rackspace, supporter of Geekdom and angel investor in startup companies.
Dirk Elemendorf, founder of Rackspace, supporter of Geekdom and angel investor in startup companies.
Jason Seats, founder of Slicehost, managing director of TechStars Cloud and angel investor.
Alan Weinkrantz, high-tech public relations professional who runs his own firm and splits his time between the startup scene in San Antonio and Israel.
Dr. Luz Cristal Glangchai, assistant professor and associate director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Trinity University and manager of 3DayStartup San Antonio.
Nick Longo, founder of CoffeeCup Software and director of Geekdom, a collaborative coworking space for high-tech entrepreneurs in downtown San Antonio.
Vid Luther, founder of ZippyKid, a WordPress hosting site.

Megabus to Provide Service Between Austin and San Antonio

June 7, 2012 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

It’s not high-speed rail, but any kind of effort to connect San Antonio and Austin and provide the free-flow of the workforce in the region is a welcome one.
Megabus.com will begin service in Texas on June 19th.
The express bus company is offering fares from $1 to travel to Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin.
Texas residents can also travel to Norman, Okla, Memphis, Tenn., Little Rock, Ark. and New Orleans for as low as $1.
In addition to affordable fares, megabus.com offers customers free Wi-Fi, power outlets and restrooms.

Civitas Learning Launches and Lands $4.1 million in funding

June 1, 2012 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Civitas Learning has raised $4.1 million in funding to launch a new data analysis service to help college students succeed.
The Austin-based startup launched in late May and is working with community colleges, four-year universities and other schools.
Civitas Learning combines student demographic, behavioral, and academic information with the latest analysis and recommendation technologies, and sophisticated data modeling approaches to help students make academic decisions.
Austin Ventures led its investment round along with First Round Capital, and Floodgate.
Charles Thornburgh, a former senior executive at Kaplan, Inc. founded Civitas Learning.
Civitas Learning is working with more than a dozen institutions, including Austin Community College and University of Maryland University College.

MapMyFitness aims to fight the obesity epidemic

May 30, 2012 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

By SUSAN LAHEY
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News

Richard Jalichandra, Chief Executive Officer of MapMyFitness.com

When Richard Jalichandra, formerly CEO of Technorati, moved from Northern California to Austin to become CEO of MapMyFitness, he was surprised to find that Austin is the fittest city he’s ever seen. “We’ve got purple haired pierced hippies with six-pack abs” he observed. Which makes the city an ideal home for a fitness app that’s growing ridiculously—nine million registered users and counting with about 25,000 people signing up every day. It was listed as one of Time’s top 50 apps of 2012.
MapMyFitness has stuff other fitness apps have: You can count your calories and log your workouts, for example. And it has a stellar map function integrated with Google Maps API v3.9 (the latest version). So users can not only plan, track, and share their routes with friends, they get real time info on traffic and weather.
But MapMyFitness is working to be a premier, deluxe site that integrates your social network so you can share what you ate and ran or biked or lifted—and plan workouts with others. Using the mobile app, you can see if a friend is jogging close by, and meet up. There are analytics for tracking your progress. Last week, MapMyFitness introduced gamification functions such as a leader board. You can use the app for free, or get a bronze, silver or gold membership for between $6 and $20 per month. And there’s a retail section for apparel and fitness accessories. It’s a gold standard fitness site.

Registering for a site and app like MapMyFitness is a no brainer for athletes. But the company is positioning itself as a solution to the nation’s obesity epidemic. Jalichandra said more than 50 percent of its users fall under the “overweight” category. (The app asks about your height, weight, age and gender when you build your profile.)
For people trying to get in shape, he said, even adding 30 minutes of activity a day can dramatically improve health. The tracking and social sharing rev up your motivation to get out there and move.
“After you log your activity for a couple of weeks it becomes addictive,” said Jalichandra who said he lost 17 pounds since he joined the company a year ago. And he was fit to begin with.
David Middaugh, a doctor of physical therapy with Austin Manual Therapy, said he started using the app with MapMyRide when he commuted to work on his bicycle.
“I think it’s a great tool to use to track your fitness progress,” he said. “It gives you objective measures to see if you’re working out longer, going farther, burning more calories. You can see your progress over time. I think for a patient interested in weight loss it would really help them reach their goals.”
Dixie Stanforth, a personal trainer and lecturer in physical education, kinesiology and health education at the University of Texas acknowledged the motivation potential of the site.
“The goal setting aspect of the application could be helpful,” she said. “In the research world it’s called ‘setting intentions.’ When somebody actually makes a concrete intention and publicly commits to it, it can affect their behavior…. It’s a very simple thing but it has quite a bit of power.” She also thought the anonymity of being able to track your fitness and be—in a sense—part of a community without having to go to the gym or a class while you’re just starting out would be helpful.
For new exercisers who like processes and the idea of community support, MapMyFitness works as a solution. But there are barriers. The site, she said, obviously attracts fitness buffs who want to connect with other fitness buffs. They recognize and can connect with other members of their “tribe.” But for someone new to fitness, it might be overwhelming with myriad features and very little education. “I haven’t seen anything on the site yet that would draw that beginning person in and help them become a part of that tribe,” she said.
The app, however, is intuitive, according to Middaugh. “You just push a couple buttons and you’re good to go.” The app uses your phone’s GPS system to track and record your runs or rides.
MapMyFitness recently introduced a beta site that’s significantly more user friendly than its previous version which gave no explanation how to use it and only people who already connect exercise with data and track their workouts could follow. Jalichandra said he’s using the free version of the beta site, rather than the gold. He wants to share the interactive experience with the bulk of his customers so he can keep in touch with how it’s working.
MapMyFITNESS did start out as the collaboration of two fitness buffs: Kevin Callahan’s company MapMyRUN and Robin Thurston’s MapMyRIDE, both started in 2005. Callahan created his app to keep track of his progress while training for a marathon. Thurston conceived his idea while abroad on a cycling vacation. Callahan, Jeff Kalikstein, and Thurston joined forces in 2006 to form MapMyFITNESS. In 2010, the company received $5 million in venture funding from Austin Ventures.
The app’s new functionality benefits hard core exercisers and newbies alike. But MapMyFitness isn’t just aiming for individual registrants. Jalichandra believes they’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. With obesity costing the business world so much in medical costs and insurance premiums, he sees the app becoming a tool for whole corporations to make their businesses healthier by starting company leaderboards and other initiatives. He envisions insurance customers using it to lobby their companies to lower insurance rates.
He sees MapMyFitness being used by schools, corporations, enterprises with a vested interest in inspiring healthy lifestyles.
Each of the meeting rooms at MapMyFitness offices are named for sites where people practice fitness: Parks and trails. Jalichandra’s is called “Redbud.”
“I named it that because it’s a particularly steep, hard hill to bike up,” he explains. So far, with more than 9 million visitors, he seems pretty good with hills.