Monthly Archives: March 2009

Gendai Games Launches Beta of GameSalad Creator

Posted on by
11

Game startup Gendai Games is announcing today the launch of the open beta program for GameSalad Creator, an intuitive and easy to understand application that allows non-programmers to create and publish games to the web and iPhone.

Since the quiet launch of their open alpha in February of 2009, Gendai Games has logged over a thousand unique alpha testers into their developer program. With the announcement of the open beta, Gendai Games is also releasing additional information regarding the ability to preview and publish games to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

With the free GameSalad Creator, designers can develop and test their games on their intel based Mac. Utilizing the forthcoming GameSalad iPhone Preview app, the game creator is able to prototype and test their game directly on an iPhone that is paired with their computer in a matter of seconds. Once ready for distribution, the game creator can purchase an exported build that is ready to submit to Apple for inclusion in the App Store. The pricing structure has yet to be announced but will be made available before the official launch of GameSalad.

With GameSalad, Gendai Games promises the easiest way to develop and publish interactive media for the iPhone, eliminating the requirement to channel software through Xcode and other programming environments. “Our goal has been to make it possible for the 99% of the population who do not program the ability to design, develop, and sell their own games,” says Michael Agustin, CEO of Gendai Games. “Our tools have evolved to the point that we can now make that a possibility.”

Turn2Live Launches at SXSW

Posted on by
1

Ever wondered where you can catch live music, right now, within a couple miles of your location? Or maybe you’re in a strange city and don’t know the scene, but would like to know where you can listen to some hip-hop? Turn2Live is the website for you. The website launched at SXSW this week.

turn2live-screen

At first glance, it’s a little rough, but it’s got promise. You can profile yourself and the types of music you like. This feature didn’t work too well for me, as only about every other music style that I tried to add showed up on my list.  At any time you can search by date and location, or even by mood. I searched for intense, sunny, and energentic live music, and the system had some solid recommendations for me.  Clicking on “view all 307 events” took me a little bit of time, but eventually brought up a big list!

I think these guys could probably syndicate their data feed to all sorts of mobile companies that want to recommend location-based activities. I have no idea how they collect all this information because there are so many live music events in the U.S. but maybe that’s their secret sauce!

It’s good to see more B2C companies launching in Austin, and this service can only improve over time. If they come out with an iPhone app, I will be the first to download it. It would make a great companion to apps like OpenTable. Dinner and live music always makes for a good night.

BuzzStream Launches Beta

Posted on by
1

buzzstreamIt seems like I’ve been waiting forever for the beta launch of BuzzStream. Even worse, I see CEO Paul May and Chairman Jeremy Bencken talking about it at social events all the time. At the TechCrunch event in the Fall, Jeremy had a demo on his Dell Mini 9 that was just awesome. Thankfully, BuzzStream has finally arrived! The beta was launched last week at PubCon, and the company held a happy hour at Molotov to celebrate the first real users into the system.

If you spend a lot of your day link building, this is the tool for you. But even better than that, it tracks and manages your inbound links and creates a kind of mini-CRM for you. The bloggers over at internet marketing company Bruce Clay had a great writeup with lots of details and screen shots.

It’s fantastic to see some more people creating web companies in the B2C space. Our city has such a great legacy in enterprise computing (IBM, Tivoli, Trilogy, Vignette) but it’s great to have diversity in our little town.

Thanks for reading this far, and as a reward we’ve got some beta invites for you. Not a ton, but you get lucky and get one let us know!

CrunchBase Information
BuzzStream
Information provided by CrunchBase

Accelerator Review from TechDrawl

Posted on by
2

Our friends over at TechDrawl sent a special correspondent to Accelerator, who just happens to be the daughter of the publishers and a UT student, Audrey Dyer. Since most of the web applications these days are aimed a young people, it was great to see the perspective of someone who is part of the target audience. Audrey did an extensive review of each company, and she made her predictions of the winners.

For spring break this year, I am vacationing for a day at the Hilton twenty blocks from my sorority house and swimming in a sea of iPhones, APIs, and Tweets.  This is the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator, the newest addition to the interactive schedule of activities at the 2009 South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) in Austin, TX.

No, I do not actually know what an API is, but I will Wikipedia it later.  I also had to text my dad to ask what “the cloud” was.

Absolutely everyone is constantly on Twitter.  I strongly believe that I am the only one taking notes, as I am writing in a spiral notebook and can see the Twitter and Facebook pages on the surrounding laptop screens.  Before each session, King promotes following the event on Twitter.  Kawasaki’s constant smile indicates that he definitely logged in.

Each presentation is basically a thesis defense, and the judges seem to find the ideas acceptable but generally in need of revision or polishing.  The judges often repeat their questions when they do not get the answer they were looking for. Nearly all of the presenters here are “fast-talkers,” some in the persuasive sense and some who are just plain nervous.

The emcees and judges are aware of the special population of people in attendance.  Whenever they ask for a show of hands, they recognize that this is a room full of tech-savvy folks who might not represent the target market.

Nonetheless, I picked my top 4 beforehand and was 3 for 4 with the judges!

Continue reading →

Accelerator, and the Winners (If You Can Call it That)

Posted on by
4

Monday was the first ever SXSW Accelerator, and the roster was packed with 40% Texas companies, which I thought was pretty cool. I didn’t know that the rotating panel of judges was scoring the companies, but it’s a good idea to have the SXSW version of the DEMO God award. Despite the shortness of the 2-minute pitches, the judges had some really quality Q&A after the pitch with each company. After all the interactions, each judge would fill out their scoring form.

If there are four awards then my simplistic math says that 40% from Texas equals for sure one, possibly two awards for Texas companies. Somehow in a miraculous moment of clarity the west coast heavy panel chose all California companies as winners.  Huh? Seriously?

I don’t want to take anything away from the companies themselves that won, but I’m not sure the playing field is even. Let’s take Ribbit for instance.  Ribbit was founded in February of 2005 (is that still a startup?) and was sold to British Telecom for $105M in July of last year. So, of course Ribbit has a well rehearsed 2-minute pitch and a solid business model.  Lack of feces, Mr. Holmes.

So what does Ribbit have in common with companies like Hourville, or OtherInBox, or Piryx that are being bootstrapped by their founders and are starting to get some incredible traction? It makes me wonder what the judging criteria is.

Weardrobe was another winner, and a great idea. I thought it was cool two years ago when Ian Clarke’s fiance did the same thing. For the record, the other two winners were Tubemogul, and Popcuts. Congratulations to all the winners, I’m just not sure exactly what “winning” means.

Friday SXSW Notes

Posted on by
Reply

mrspamThe annual SXSW conference kicked off in grand style, as usual. Porter Novelli and the City of Austin teamed up to throw an event highlighting some of Austin’s top emerging technology companies, including BuzzStream, OtherInBox, Socialware, Bazaarvoice, OneSpot, and many more. Some lucky people were able to catch Mr. Spam, who is helping to protect your inbox from nasty unwanted messages.

Based upon conversations that were overheard at this event, we should have some great news to report in the coming days and weeks.

socialware-teamLater in the evening the Microsoft LiveSearch folks and Brian Solis’ TechSet had a very popular bash over at The Belmont. It seems that people are just as excited about the parties as they are the sessions. The most frequent comment that I heard during the day was that everyone was excited to meet people in person that they had previously met only through the interwebs.

The rest of the conference should prove to be very interesting. Robert Scoble will be on tomorrow’s panel “Ditch the valley, head for the hills” and perhaps he will be talking about what he will be doing next.

Let The Games Begin!

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve got the WordPress app on my iPhone, so I hope to create some posts during SXSW with it. This is the point at which I wish the iPhone had a replaceable battery. I went through half my battery waiting in line for an hour to get my badge. So I missed Peter Kim’s session, which is really sad.

So I took my sadness over to the former Club Paradox to help setup for BarCamp4, which is going to be highly entertaining. Perhaps even more entertaining than The Woz on Dancing with The Stars. Did I mention certain portions of the event will require 3D glasses?

More to come….

You Don’t Need To Be An Extrovert To Network At SXSW (Or At Any Conference)

Posted on by
1

Thom Singer

Today’s guest blogger is Thom Singer, the director of business development for vcfo. He is also the author of several books on the power of business relationships and networking.

One of the most popular reasons that people site for attending an industry conference is for the “networking opportunities”. However, once they arrive at these multi-day events they often fail to make any important or lasting connections. This is unfortunate, as the other people who are present are also hoping to find cool people with whom they can meet, mingle, and possibly establish longer term personal and professional friendships.

As SXSW Interactive invades Austin this weekend the topic of networking is on the top of mind for many. Both those who are attending the entire conference and those who are only planning on hitting a few of the ancillary parties, anticipate the opportunity to connect with other people.

With a little planning anyone, extrovert or introvert, can have a meaningful networking experience. Here are five tips help you:

  • Have a plan. Decide in advance which sessions you want to attend. This will allow you time to arrive early so that you can find a good seat and talk with other people in the audience. If you come in late and hang in the doorway or lean against the back wall you will have no opportunity to chat with anyone. Saying “hello” and asking the other people around you where they are from is a great ice breaker. If you live in Austin, remember that you are an unofficial host/ambassador for our city, so it is your job to welcome those who are visiting.
  • Bring lots of business cards. If you do have a great conversation with someone it may be appropriate to exchange cards. If you forgot or have run out of cards you will appear unprepared, and they will not have any means of remembering you in the mix of the dozens of others with whom they will have conversations.
  • Ask people questions. Be curious about the people you meet. Where do they work? Why did they choose to attend SXSW? What were the best panels they have seen so far? If you get other people talking, they will become more comfortable with you. Plus, if you are more introverted and are shy to talk about yourself, this will put you at ease if they are doing most of the talking.
  • Put your electronics away. Do not spend every break or meal-time on your blackberry, iPhone, or laptop. When you are buried in your email or writing your blog you will appear busy and others will not feel they can approach you. Hang out with people you have already met during the breaks and look for new people who seem shy and invite them into your conversation.
  • Follow up. If you meet someone whom you would like to keep in touch with after the conference it is up to you to “own the follow up”. They may not have read this blog post, and thus may not think of sending you an email or handwritten note stating how much they enjoyed talking with your at the event. But you have read this, so you know that for a friendship to grow there must be strategic follow up.

If you will be at SXSW, or any conference, remember to have fun. Networking is not easy, for introverts or extraverts. Notice the word “WORK” is right in the middle of it. But if you follow these steps you can improve your ability to make better connections.

Thom Singer is the director of business development for vcfo. He is also a professional speaker and the author of three books on the power of business relationships and networking.

Do512's SXSW Guides

Posted on by
1

d0512If you haven’t checked out Do512.com you’re missing out on the best inside information on local Austin music. As you can imagine, when SXSW starts up these guys kick into high gear. If you register, you can get their Top 10 parties of the day email each day during SXSW. You can also build your own schedule if you’d like. You can share it with friends, or access it on your mobile phone.

For an events company, these guys are creating some pretty interesting widget, mobile, and web technology. If you want the inside scoop all the time, you can follow @Do512, @Do512_Kristin, and @Do512_Jimmy. Those Twitter accounts are a must during SXSW.

Q&A Wednesday :: Phurnace Software

Posted on by
2

Today’s Q&A Wednesday is with the Larry Warnock, the Chief Executive Officer of Phurnace Software, Inc., an Austin-based provider of Java EE™ management tools .  Phurnace is a member of the AustinEmerging100 and has previously been covered here on Austin startup.  Phurnace is an interesting company here in Austin, having ties to both The McCombs School of Business, where the company won the Texas Moot Corp. competition, as well as the Austin Technology Incubator, where it recently graduated from being a member company.

Larry, welcome to AustinStartup.  Can you tell our readers a bit about what Phurnace does? Phurnace provides software automation tools that reduce errors and save time and money during the process of deploying web applications. Currently, IT departments in large companies struggle with moving applications into production on web application servers. The process is error prone and time consuming, and more often than not, relies on a collection of hand-crafted custom-written scripts.  Companies have realized that this is not sustainable. Phurnace helps companies scale operations, reduce labor costs and improve the time to value of customer-facing applications.

Sounds great – so, who is your target audience? Phurnace targets large organizations across all industries that have two things in common: 1) an agile development methodology that supports highly iterative web applications such as online banking and airline ticketing; and 2) large production environments with hundreds or thousands of servers supporting their web applications.

Tell us a bit about how current “buzz words” like cloud computing and virtualization come into play? The same application deployment problems that exist in a data center also exist in a virtual or cloud computing environment. In fact they are exacerbated. There are more people, more changes and more dependencies in these environments, meaning more opportunity for errors, risk and failure. Our customers are using Phurnace like an “install shield” for web applications that need to be installed, configured, set up and deployed correctly in remote environments.

What impact, if any, has the current economic climate had on your business? In a strange way, the current economic climate is actually working in our favor. Companies are totally focused on cost reductions and savings.  By automating application deployment processes, we can help customers focus IT resources on more strategic, revenue-generating projects – and transition IT from a cost center to a value center. Also, because of our unique Implementation model, we can deliver tangible savings and ROI in a matter of weeks. This has been a critical success factor in our ability to secure deals with customers such as a Fortune 50 bank and one of the largest US based airlines.

Impressive!  Ok – How are you funded? Phurnace started out with a small amount of angel investment.  After establishing initial traction, we secured venture funding from DFJ Mercury (Houston) and S3 Ventures (Austin).  The company has raised a total of $5 million to-date.

Alright, what’s next for the company? We see 2009 as the year of customer growth.  We have a strong product that is well engineered.  Now we’re focusing on building our sales and marketing infrastructure to reach more customers in more markets.  Our goal is to double our sales numbers every six months.

One final question – I know I’m curious and our readers probably are as well – where does the name Phurnace come from? The name Phurnace has interesting roots that are very Austin-inspired — a blend of high tech software and the music industry.  One of our founders left the tech industry after the Internet bubble burst in 2001 and was a road manager for the punk band festival “The Warped Tour”.  In the middle of the tour he was hired as the merchandising manager for the band “Flogging Molly”.  He traveled the world with them.  With this experience, he decided to return to Austin and start his own record label – but he needed a name.  Being a software guy, he wrote a small program to go through the dictionary and change the spelling of words by changing letters and phonetics.  That’s how Phurnace was created.  He thought this was a great name for a punk rock record label.  It was going to be HOT!  Well the label never really got off the ground, but he purchased the web domain www.phurnace.com anyway.  Several years later, when he and his partner decided to turn a UT Moot Corp project into a software company, the name was a no-brainer.  What started as a hot record label, ended up as the name of one of Austin’s coolest software companies.