When your software is used by over a million IT professionals daily, there is an incredible opportunity to tap into their knowledge to identify needs, trends, and budgets. Spiceworks just completed their semi-annual report on technology usage, staffing, spending trends. The IT industry continues to show strong signs of growth as technology budgets, cloud services usage, virtualization adoption, and IT staffing plans among small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) all showed their strongest gains in more than 18 months, according to latest new report by Spiceworks™, Inc., the largest social business network for IT with more than 1.4 million SMB IT professionals.

Coro Health, LLC, a provider of technology-based wellness therapies designed to improve the quality of life for seniors and caregivers, today announced it has been recognized as Program to Watch by the Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA) 2011 Best of the Best Awards program. Back in November the company raised $2M in financing, and is continuing to make incredible progress. The award recognizes products, services or programs that make significant contributions to advancing operational excellence in senior living. Coro Health was the only consumer-based solution provider to be recognized among the winners.

mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich Dug out from Southby 2011 yet? After a week, I’m finally feeling a little recovered and in a position to look ahead. And, for me, what lies ahead falls into the spirit of the infamous Monty Python catchphrase: “…and now, for something completely different!” Because as awesome as it was to experience the 10-day carnival that was SxSW 2011 and see local buds like Hurricane Party get such great national [...]

If you had the opportunity to attend the Austin Tech Happy Hour the day before SXSW started, you were able to get an up close and personal demonstration of SpeedMenu as they launched the application in the iTunes App Store, and as a Windows Mobile 7 application.

The application deadline for Austin-based Capital Factory’s 2011 program is Sunday, and momentum for tech startups and entrepreneurship in general are riding high as the SXSW Interactive festival wraps up. Signs of the frenzy include an increase in Startup Buses from one to six this year, a busload of MBA students from Michigan who are out to networks with startups, and recent tech investor Ashton Kutcher making an appearance at the Foursquare party. With the number of technology accelerators on the rise, the most frequent question I get asked is how Capital Factory is different from other programs. I posed this question to FamigoGames co-founder Q Beck. “One difference we found very important is the fact that the program mentors are also the investors in the fund, and they’re active practitioners themselves,” Q told us. “With only 5 companies in the program, and 20 mentors you get some very hands-on advice and a lot of attention compared to other programs we looked at.”

You couldn’t walk a block at SXSW without seeing a T-shirt, mobile billboard, twirling sign with the Grouped{in} logo on it. If last year was the battle of the location-based services at SXSW, then this year was the battle of the group messaging apps. If you attended the March Austin Tech Happy Hour, you got to see Grouped{in} up close and personal at their demo table.

PetsMD, an Austin-based company that was part of the 2009 class of Capital Factory, announced today their acquisition by Pet360, a leading Pet ecommerce, community and information company. The acquisition of this pet health information and care resource site reinforces Pet360’s position as a leading provider of comprehensive, all-inclusive online information for pet owners and pet services providers.

Here’s a brief 1-minute video I made at Kenichi, where Hurricane Party was holding a fundraiser for victim’s of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. The team at Hurricane Party pulled this even together in less than 24 hours, and raised a significant amount of money for relief efforts. Many thanks to Kenichi for donating food, drinks, and space. There were many silent auction items that were donated, but the only one I remember was Tito’s Vodka. [...]

mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich My apologies for the tardiness of our post this week. But, to paraphrase a line from one of the more memorable #SXSW tweets I saw this past week, “am covered in sweat after 3 hours of scheduling and have only gotten through Sunday!” Yes, no doubt that the depth and breadth of SXSW is so great that the question will be debated again this year whether or not the conference [...]

You may have been to the Austin Ignite events before, but now Ignite has amped it up for SXSW. Ignite SXSW 2011 is an official event, and will feature 20 super interesting 5-minute presentations, each with slides that auto-forward every 30 seconds no matter what. I understand that one of the presentations will be from Bob Metcalfe who invented this little thing called the Ethernet, and is a recipient of the US National Medal of [...]