Monthly Archives: July 2008

Summer is the Time for Camp

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iPhone Dev CampiPhone DevCamp Austin (part 2) starts on Friday and goes through Sunday. In the “unconference” spirit of BarCamp, this event will focus on iPhone development in conjunction with the main iPhone DevCamp in San Francisco. There’s an event on Upcoming if you’d like to let the community know that you’re going. The kickoff party will be at Conjunctured.

 

Startup Camp AustinStartupCamp Austin will be Saturday August 2nd on the UT Campus. The event will focus on topics relevant to startup companies such as funding, scaling, and lessons learned. The after party will be at Conjunctured (isn’t that two nights in a row?).

Beta Summit Nominations Deadline

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If you’d like to demonstrate or launch your new technology at the Beta Summit at Innotech, the deadline for submitting your application is this Friday August 1st. It’s a great platform for demonstrating and launching your new technology, as there will be many people and press at the event. You’ll get an incredible amount of exposure at Innotech. With any luck you’ll be half as successful at Phurnace, who showed off their tools for J2EE at the Beta Summit last year (and recently raised a $5M round of financing).

If you’d like a Beta Summit application, just email the editor here at AustinStartup.

SummerMash is Tonight!

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If you’ve been waiting to decide if you’re going to attend SummerMash Austin, you need to purchase your tickets now. The event is tonight! The folks from Mashable including Pete Cashmore, Karen Hartline, and Mark Hopkins have made it to Austin for what Pete is calling SXSW Part 2!

If you’re cooking a tech startup, have some ideas, are involved with social media, and want to meet and network with like-minded people this will be a great event for you. This is one of those unique events where Austin will receive national coverage, as Mashable is the top website for social media news.

SummerMash Austin is brought to you in conjunction with Austin Tech Happy Hour.

Heatwave Pulls Down $7.5M Series A

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HeatwaveAustin-based gaming company Heatwave Interactive announced that they’ve raised $7.5M from Syncom Venture Partners. Syncom is taking a unique approach to creating a studio that will develop video game IP that can be used across other forms of media. The company is comprised of gaming industry veterans that have been responsible for titles such as Wing Commander, Tabula Rasa, Star Wars, and Ultima Online.

“Heatwave’s Central Studio has assembled veteran talent from the interactive games, film, television and music industries to create a production studio with a unique business approach,” said Anthony Castoro, Heatwave’s President and Chief Creative Officer. “Games are a powerful platform for creating mainstream brands and IP, however the game industry is notorious for missed deadlines, excessive ‘crunch,’ and formulaic licensed games. Heatwave has taken lessons from game industry veterans as well as seasoned professionals from other media sectors to create a new model that is more disciplined and provides a more productive creative environment. The result is an entity that will generate successful new game IP that will easily crossover to other media formats.”

Heatwave’s innovative business model is designed to minimize the risks traditionally associated with developing new entertainment properties. “We internally fund the development of new concepts and screen them through an exhaustive evaluation process,” explained Donn Clendenon, CEO of Heatwave. “Once a concept makes it through this process, Heatwave raises development funds, partners with talented developers and leverages strategic relationships to bring our products to market. This model enables designers and artists to be creative and innovative while at the same time reducing the risk for investors, publishers and strategic partners.”

Heatwave(TM) Interactive will be announcing several new projects in the coming months. “It’s only been a short period of time since SYNCOM welcomed Heatwave into our portfolio, but we are thrilled with the early progress the company has made in developing its initial slate of projects,” said Stan Smith of SYNCOM. “We are highly confident that Heatwave will be at the forefront of a paradigmatic shift in how interactive entertainment intellectual property is developed and exploited. Equally exciting, Heatwave’s model will provide a new vehicle for investors to better assess and mitigate risk and ultimately participate in the lucrative interactive entertainment industry.” As part of the transaction, Heatwave appointed SYNCOM’s Tony Thomas and Stan Smith to its board of directors.

CrunchBase Information
Syncom Venture Partners
Information provided by CrunchBase

Monday Links

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Here’s some of the interesting items we’re following:

Spiceworks brings collaboration to IT management

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Spiceworks, the ad supported, Austin-based IT management company, has announced a pretty cool feature for their 400,000 IT managers -crowdsourcing.  The new features, called SpiceLists, enable users to collaboratively develop, share, and rank IT best practices, products and services, and reports – making it even easier for them to manage their networks. The SpiceLists address one of the biggest problems facing IT pros in small businesses today – how to quickly and easily connect with people like themselves in order to find the products, services and information they need to solve their unique IT issues.

“Crowdsourcing has brought tremendous benefits to the consumer world and it’s now doing the same for the average small business IT manager like me,” said Martin Peverley, IT Manager, Bihler of America, Inc. “By assembling the collective experience, knowledge and ratings from thousands of IT professionals around the world and letting the best rise to the top, Spiceworks is making it easier for me to get my job done.”

Spiceworks, one of the Austin Emerging 100, seems to be on to something here.  The ability to see what others in the industry are using for online storage or remote management packages, knowing what to buy and how much they should pay for them, adds a lot of collective knowledge to what had been a fragmented market.  Austin Startup readers, any experiences with this?  Let us know in the comments…

National Spotlight on Austin

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SummerMash Austin Logo


Next Wednesday July 30th the people behind Mashable.com, the top social networking and social media blog, will be in Austin. They’re here for the Austin stop of the Mashable Summer Tour in conjunction with Austin Tech Happy Hour.

Pete Cashmore, Mark Rizzin, and Karen Hartline will be in town to see what Austin’s got goin’ on in the world of technology and social media. Let’s show them what sort of innovative and creative things we’ve got up our sleeve! Let’s give them some great things to write about, as their website gets over a million pageviews per month!

You must purchase a ticket, and there will be drink tickets and bar food. SXSW is a prize sponsor, so perhaps you’ll win a free badge, or some co-working time from Conjunctured. The famous game room will also be open at Buffalo Billiards, in case you’re feeling a little competitive.

When: Wednesday July 30th from 7pm – 10pm
Where: Buffalo Billiards
How: Purchase tickets at EventBrite
Social Links: Facebook, MySpace, MeetUp and Upcoming

 

Site Controls Acquires Excel Energy Technologies

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Site Controls, the leading provider of enterprise energy management, facilities intelligence and grid efficiency solutions, today announced the asset acquisition of Excel Energy Technologies, including its Ikanosphere™ energy management solution for retail chains.

Site Controls currently operates at thousands of client locations, monitoring nearly 300,000 endpoints for leading retailers. Through its September 2007 joint venture with Ecolab, Site Controls is expanding its presence in the restaurant, fitness and hospitality markets. The acquisition of Excel Energy Technologies will bring additional well-known companies into Site Controls’ customer base, including Hastings Entertainment and The Sports Authority.

With the purchase, Site Controls will acquire intellectual property and technology from Excel Energy that will further enhance the capabilities of Site-Command™, a proven energy management solution designed specifically for chain retailers, drug stores and branch banking. Site-Command lowers energy and maintenance expenses without sacrificing the customer experience by enabling centralized monitoring and management of lighting, air conditioning and other equipment across hundreds or thousands of locations.

Site Controls also provides Intelligent Load Management™ (ILM) technology that allows companies to generate cash payments through utility-sponsored Demand Response programs to temporarily reduce electricity usage, alleviating stress on the power grid.

“Excel Energy Technologies brings valuable technology and industry experience that will enable us to further enhance our capabilities,” said Dan Sharplin, CEO, Site Controls. “Their retail focus aligns well with Site Controls’ and will expand our market share and presence in the industry.”

“We are happy to join the Site Controls team and align our shared goal of helping retailers realize significant cost savings while reducing their carbon footprint,” said Brad Karp, CEO, Excel Energy Technologies. “Site Controls is a recognized leader in facilities management and energy efficiency solutions, and we are confident that the work we’ve done will contribute significantly in making their solution even more valuable to its customers and competitive in the market.”

HelioVolt Wins Award for Thin Film Process

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HelioVolt Corporation, a producer of highly-efficient thin film solar energy products, today announced that it has garnered an R&D 100 Award from Research & Development (R&D) Magazine for work performed in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Known as the “Oscars of Invention,” the R&D 100 Awards celebrate the year’s most significant commercial innovations from around the world. HelioVolt and NREL received the award for demonstrating a simpler, faster end-to-end process for printing high quality thin film photovoltaic (PV) systems.

“This award-winning technology could have a significant impact on the penetration of solar energy in the marketplace,” NREL Director Dan Arvizu said. “Thin film technologies aim to lower costs by using significantly less material to produce electricity from the sun. We are proud to be working with innovators in the private sector to deliver the technologies and products that will make clean, renewable power a significant portion of our nation’s energy mix.”

The R&D 100 Award honored a hybrid process for producing large grain, high quality Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS) thin film solar devices. While CIGS has long been used to make the highest performing solar thin film devices, the material’s unique nanostructure required to deliver this performance potential has generally made low-cost, large-scale manufacture an ongoing challenge. The award-winning collaboration employed a non-vacuum technique developed at NREL and licensed by HelioVolt to precisely apply liquid precursors under standard atmospheric conditions onto a printing plate and substrate which can be made from various building materials including glass, metals, roofing materials, and plastics. HelioVolt’s patented FASST process was then used to reactively bond the inks together into high-performance CIGS crystals, all in less than six minutes with a low thermal budget.

“HelioVolt’s unique process expands the performance envelope of thin-film PV. This award marks an important milestone on the road from pilot line to wide-scale deployment,” said Dr. Arno Penzias, Nobel Laureate and advisory board member. Dr. B.J. Stanbery, founder and CEO of HelioVolt added, “This NREL collaboration establishes FASST’s unique ability to combine both vacuum and standard atmospheric deposition techniques, giving us unprecedented flexibility for further improving the end-to-end process performance and cost in future full-scale production lines which will be required to fulfill the goals of our global expansion strategy.”

The FASST reactive transfer printing process drives cost advantages by manufacturing high-quality CIGS thin film products ten to one hundred times more rapidly than competitive methods. FASST can be combined with vacuum evaporation, ink-jet printing, or ultrasonic spray deposition processes, allowing for industry-leading flexibility to achieve the lowest cost process. Confirmed through independent testing at Colorado State University, FASST has been proven to deliver solar cells exceeding 12 percent conversion efficiency in a record setting six minutes. These efficiencies place HelioVolt’s CIGS devices among the highest performing solar thin film products on the market today. HelioVolt is using FASST to develop both conventional module and next-generation building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) products for the global solar energy market.