Click Forensics, a leading provider of online advertising verification solutions, today opened the beta testing program for a new platform that will enable online display advertisers to make audience impression filtering and ad serving decisions in real-time. The technology, designed to complement existing brand safety solutions, also features analytics to measure the effectiveness of display ad campaigns at reaching their desired audiences. Online advertisers, agencies and ad networks using the platform will benefit by reducing [...]

It’s been said: “Imitation is the sincerest forms of flattery.” But, what if the imitation involves completely copying whole sections or the entire works of others? Or, what if the imitation turns out to be a complete fake, but nonetheless is passed off as the real thing? On the eve of SXSW, these question about “who owns ideas?” and “what is original?” are, in my opinion, more important than ever to our city and, frankly, [...]

Earlier this year, Derek Williams and Paul Terry Walhus combined their efforts to launch Texas Coworking, an addition to the already growing trend of co-shared workspaces for entrepreneurs, business people and creative folk. After the continued success of Conjunctured, it’s quite clear that co-working is not only a viable solution for many, but a great means to bring everyone together under one roof and connect.

Gov. Rick Perry today announced on the Governor’s Office Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/TexasGovernor) that the state will invest $1.4 million through the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) for Facebook to create a sales and operations office in Austin. This investment will create 200 jobs and more than $3.1 million in capital investment. The TEF funding is conditioned upon the finalization of a local incentive agreement with the City of Austin. “The TEF continues to be a critical, deal [...]

Socialware is emerging from stealth mode, and being increasingly public about its products and services. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m an advisor to Socialware along with Jeff Dachis (Dachis Group), Paul Rogers (Google), and Kenny Van Zant (Solarwinds). The company has been funded to date by some incredible investors, including G-51 Capital, Silverton Partners, and Maples Investments.

The annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival has been known as the launchpad for web-based technology companies. The most famous is probably Twitter, but other companies such as Smule and Gowalla have launched during the festival. Austin-based Localiter is hoping to make a similar splash at the festival with their daily specials made possible by group buying. Localiter will launch in March offering daily deals from Austin businesses. Customers sign up on the Localiter website [...]

MyEdu, the definitive online source to increase success and save money in college, today announced $5.5 million in series B funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of Bain Capital, one of the largest and most respected private investment firms in the world. Bain Capital has a long history of funding successful companies such as DoubleClick, LinkedIn, Princeton Review, SurveyMonkey, and The Learning Company.  MyEdu plans to use the funding to expand [...]

This morning we launched a redesign of AustinStartup.com incorporating a lot of the feedback we have received from the community since overhauling it last year. With SXSW 2010 just around the corner we felt it was the ideal time to push out the new design. Please let us know if you run into any bugs, and expect more changes over the next few weeks as we tighten up the design and add a few of [...]

The local entrepreneur/tech community is in store for more exciting prospects this Spring, with the first ever Startup Weekend-Austin from April 30-May 2. After what already seems to be a great year with TedX, Ignite and a slue of other events, Startup Weekend is yet another great asset and addition to the Austin community. Startup Weekend, organized and created by Andrew Hyde, who hails in from Boulder, Colorado, was first started over 3 years ago [...]

When we heard that Sprint was rolling out 4G service in Austin, we knew it was something that we wanted to check out. For years people have been talking about how great WiMax was going to be, and now it’s finally here. We’ve all had or tried out 3G network data services that generally saw download speeds of 600kbps. The other day we ran a network speed test at our happy hour location, Buffalo Billiards, [...]