This is a blog post I wrote for the Dachis Group blog today. In the almost two years I’ve been with Dachis Group there is one question that I’ve been asked over and over again. “What is social business?” I’m sure my colleagues have had the same experience. The challenge I have is that social business is comprehensive in nature, and therefore defies trite explanations. My dilemma would be made simpler if “social business” were [...]
To be totally honest, I hate email. Mostly because it’s a “To Do” list than anybody on earth can add to. And I don’t like other people telling me what to do. Considering that there are around 4 billion email boxes in the world today, there are too few tools that help you manage your inbox. One of them, OtherInBox, just reached a major milestone by hitting a million users. To celebrate, they’re giving away [...]
mobileTech Tuesday by Steve Guengerich As the supremacy of the freemium app and appcommerce business models over the fee-based, paid apps becomes more evident every month, deals have become among the most hotly contested mobile app categories. Given the heat of competition and that one of the hotter Austin-headquartered ventures WhaleShark Media is a deals-oriented consolidation of a fragmented market (not unlike Homeaway is, in the travel sector), I thought deals apps were worth a [...]
Austin Tech Happy Hour is coming up on June 23rd, and we’ve hatched a little plan with our sponsor, Google Places, to give away some awesome free stuff. Here’s what you have to do. Make sure you are signed up at Google Places with an account. Click on your name to find your Places profile link (the URL has a long UID in it). Email that profile link to austintechhappyhour@gmail.com and start reviewing! The person [...]
It’s been a big week for WhaleShark, announcing some new executive talent and confirming additional capital of around $10M. Yesterday the company announced that Paul Rogers has been appointed Chief Technology Officer. Paul led the engineering team at Bazaarvoice in the early days and left to anchor Google’s Austin office when it opened in 2008. “I am honored to be part of the WhaleShark Media team,” said Rogers. “I look forward to working with a [...]
A guest piece by Jay Willingham, Account Manager at Mutual Mobile. Once upon a time, a phone was just a phone. Then it became our camera, radio, and even TV. Yesterday, with the announcement of its Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile commerce program, Google made it our wallet. But that’s only the start of how NFC will affect our lives. Google Wallet makes paying for everything from a T-shirt to a soda as easy as [...]
Austin-based gaming bad ass and space enthusiast Richard Garriott’s company Portalarium announced that is has raised $2.4M in additional financing from m8 and the Founder’s Fund. The company is planning to release a game named CenterPort in 2012, which is a visually rich social networking game that will “be the virtual world social hub for the OpenLife ecosystem, a broad yet fully integrated meta-community” according to the studio’s website. “We are delighted to join Richard [...]
mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich It’s Wednesday, not Tuesday (the holiday through me off) and this is a bit more of a pure editorial piece than my normal contribution, but bear with me. There was as good article in a recent edition of the Sunday Statesman by Brian Gaar on the greater Austin mobile scene. What I really liked about the article, besides the picture of Whurley with Grover, were some of the comments from the [...]
