Daily Archives: September 10, 2007

Cheaper Nanotech Building Blocks

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Nanotailor
Central Texas’ strong concentration of companies focused on nanotechnologies should be excited about the recent news regarding Nanotailor Inc.  The Austin-based company, focused on creating lower costs for nanomaterials, has licensed a NASA process for producing single-walled carbon nanotubes.  Even more exciting is that he company plans on producing commercial quantities by the end of 2007. And, given that by 2014 the amount of products expected to be produced with nanotechnology is expected to be approximately $3 trillion, providing the supplies and materials to other nontechnology companies could be a very lucrative field, especially since, according to Reginald Parker, Nanotailor’s chief technology officer, "all industries currently using multiwalled tubes will be able to benefit from this technology."

Itzbig Hires New CEO

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Itzbig200
Itzbig is getting even bigger with the addition of a new CEO. Jim McGovern has taken the position of CEO, while co-founder Jim Hammock will move from CEO to chair the board. McGovern most recently spent six years at Marketwire (previously known as InternetWire) in Los Angeles, but is now calling Texas home. He was with TicketMaster/CitySearch for a number of years, moving from GM to Executive VP of Operations and finally to CTO in 1999.

Interesting factoid: In 2000 Jim was the President of Business.com, which became famous for spending $7.5M on it’s domain name. Jim appears to have joined the company after that famous purchase, and left the company after 10 months. We hope Jim still has some stock, because RR Donelly just borrowed $320M from JP Morgan to buy all the assets of Business.com (including the famous domain name) last month.

Jim has been in the position for several weeks now, and a formal announcement is expected tomorrow. He makes a great addition to an outstanding management team, and continues a lot of positive momentum for Itzbig. One of his first tasks will be to grow the company’s offerings in the Silicon Valley.

No word on whether Jim profiled himself on the Itzbig network to find this job. ;-)

Austin Tech Happy Hour This Thursday

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It became clear after the last happy hour that we’ve grown too big to share a venue with anybody. So we’ve rented out Gruv just for the happy hour this month. If you’re not a clubber, Gruv is a cool new club on Fifth Street downtown, just a few doors East of Kenichi. From Congress it’s just a few doors West. For more information and a parking map, check out the Current Events section of the website.

Stop reading about the tech news and come meet some of the people who are making it! Your first drink is free courtesy of Compass Learning.

Compasslearning
CompassLearning is one of the nation’s leading providers of K-12
education software that helps educators teach and students learn more
effectively. With more than 35 years of experience in the field of
research-based education software, CompassLearning delivers
standards-aligned curriculum, assessment and comprehensive data
reporting products that reduce what CompassLearning calls “edu-stress,”
the stress associated with succeeding in today’s complex education
environment. CompassLearning serves more than 11 million students in
more than 20,000 schools nationwide.