Author Archives: Kevin LaHaise

Get Your Tickets Now for Rice Alliance’s “New World of Gaming” Event – November 9th

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The Rice Alliance’s Austin Chapter will be hosting another great event on Tuesday November 9th. This time the topic is “The New World of Gaming,” and they’ve lined up some killer speakers for the panel discussion. Tickets are going fast so go get yours right now.

The New York Times’ Susanna Hamner will be moderating the discussion, which is headlined by Austin’s own gaming legend Richard Garriott, along with Rodney Gibbs, CEO of Ricochet labs (the makers of the oh-so-addictive Qrank).

There’s no doubt that Austin has long been one of the hubs in the gaming industry, but as the industry evolves with mobile devices, everywhere access, touch technology and tablet form-factors, Austin’s gaming community is evolving as well.

The Rice Alliance put it best: “Does Austin have the right combination of creative genius, technical talent, entrepreneurial know-how, and access to smart capital to be the epicenter of an explosion of new ventures bringing entertainment and connection to the computer, smart-phone, and iPad enabled community?”

If you’re at all interested, invested or passionate about the gaming industry in Austin, this is a can’t-miss event.

Tickets are available now at http://www.alliance.rice.edu/assnfe/ev.asp?ID=131

Book ‘em soon if you’d like to attend – the last Rice Alliance event sold out quickly! The event is November 9th at 6pm at the AT&T Conference Center.

If you’d like a sneak peek of what you can expect to see at the event, check out the early interviews with the headliner panelists below. Thanks to AMS Pictures here in Austin for producing these great videos with the panelists.


Austin-Based Riptano Can Haz Valley Monies

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We last reported on Riptano’s launch in April – and just a few months later the company has announced they already raised a tidy $2.7MM in a Series A.

Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, while Sequoia Capital and Jason Calacanis also got in on the action.  John Vrionis of Lightspeed Venture Partners will join Riptano’s board.  The company said they will use the cash to hire developers and further build out their business team to better serve their customers.

In a blog post announcing the news, founder Matt Pfeil stated: “Our goal is to build the highest performing distributed database the world has ever seen.” It’s an ambitious goal, but one that seems to align with the momentum Riptano has already built up in under a year.

Either way, 2.7 million bad boys will certainly help them git ‘er done.

If you’re not familiar with Cassandra, check out the Riptano blog, where they share lots of content about Cassandra and Matt has laid out the rest of the details on their Series A.

You’re Enterprise – And You Don’t Have to Apologize Anymore

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How many times have you been at a technology conference, you meet a nice guy or gal, and chat for a bit.  When it gets to the point that you’re explaining what y’all do for a living, the other person says: “well, I just do the boring enterprise stuff…”

I’m happy to report that I didn’t hear this line even once at DEMO this last week in Santa Clara.  On-stage there was an entire enterprise session that didn’t once apologize for being “boring enterprise technology.” In fact, it was quite the opposite.  There was a great deal of pride in the enterprise segment.

To tell you the truth – it was more refreshing than an Enya album.  (Not that I have ever listened to Enya…)

What’s more interesting is that the enterprise and small business technologies on stage were probably more exciting than many of the consumer companies that were launching.  The enterprise had a good showing this year – and I think it should remind the community in Austin (which is admittedly enterprise-heavy) that we should never develop an inferiority complex just because a CRM vendor’s marketing manager can’t use the buzzwords of our consumer counterparts.

Your ERP does NOT need Foursquare integration for your company to be “sexy.”  For the love of all that is good and holy – how did being the “mayor” of a dive bar get to be sexier than landing a MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR DEAL?

But DEMO’s enterprise demonstrators didn’t cave to the tendency to make fun of their work.  They were proud of what they had built and they had no intentions to apologize for building something that actually had a business model.

A few of my favorites were Profitably, eM Client, PublicStuff and meeting-Expert (which was a unique AlphaPitch company).  There was a heavy focus on efficiency and productivity across these demonstrators – and that was particularly nice to see. I think it hits home with end-users in the business. And it’s a reminder that emerging enterprise vendors are well aware of the fact that real, living, breathing human beings use their products every day.

If the strength of the enterprise segment at DEMO is any indication, and if the recent burst of enthusiasm in the space is any indication, then Austin is holding a very nice hand of cards.

Though we already knew that…

Last Call: Give Your Spare Computer to Linux Against Poverty Tomorrow

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Linux Against Poverty is hosting their 2nd annual Install Fest tomorrow at Union Park, which will conclude their drive to put computers in the hands of Austin area children who currently don’t have a computer or internet access at home.

Last year’s computer drive and Install Fest gathered 40+ volunteers from Austin’s technology and open source communities to help refurbish more than $35,000 worth of computers for Central Texas children.

The goal for this year’s drive is to deliver $50,000 in computers to Austin and the surrounding communities. To help out all you have to do is mosey on down to Union Park sometime tomorrow and fork over your lightly-used computer. It only takes a minute or two and volunteers will wipe the hard drive – so nobody will ever know exactly what type of movies you’ve been downloading lately.

It really only takes a few minutes to donate your spare/used computers – and it’s for a great cause. The Austin area is, after all, home to Dell Inc., so it’s a good bet that there are thousands of residents in the city that have laptops they don’t want anymore. Linux Against Poverty is making this a no-brainer – so get to Union Park in the morning and give them your spare computers.

Think you live too far away to get to Union Park tomorrow? No problem – there are 3 alternative drop-off locations listed at the end of this post. No excuses!

All donated computers are eligible for a tax receipt. You can find details on the donation process, types of computers and parts that Linux Against Poverty is collecting at: http://linuxagainstpoverty.org/donate-computers

Install Fest Details:

Linux Against Poverty 2nd Annual Install Fest

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Union Park

612 W. 6th Street Austin, TX 78701
Other Drop Off Locations:

North Austin Linux Against Poverty Dropoff
ITech Electronics
8312 Burnet Road, Suite 109
Austin, Texas
(512) 374-0846

South Austin Linux Against Poverty Dropoff
ITech Service Center
Live Oak Court Center
2900 South Congress Ave, Suite 205
Austin Texas, 78704
(512) 440-5700

Lakeway Linux Against Poverty Dropoff
360 Technologies
15401 Debba Drive (intersects with hwy 620)
Austin, TX 78734
(512) 266-7360

Austin-based, Rackspace-funded “Riptano” Launches

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Plots for world domination typically fail because the plots themselves just aren’t scalable. But with the launch of Facebook’s Open Graph this week, there’s no doubt that they have some killer talent helping them scale the platform to own the rest of the web.

What you may not know, is that part of Facebook’s scaling effort has involved their use of the Apache Cassandra open source database. Other large sites including Twitter and Digg have made use of the open source technology, and the list keeps growing.

On the heels of the Facebook news, and the release of Apache Cassandra version 0.6, a new Austin-based startup has been launched and intends to capitalize on Cassandra’s popularity and success.

Riptano was launched yesterday by Jonathan Ellis and Matt Pfeil, who believe that there’s a viable services market to be built around the Cassandra ecosystem. According to company representatives, Riptano is the first company to formally offer support and professional services for Cassandra.

Rackspace, the sole outside investor, has made an undisclosed investment in the company.

Riptano’s site indicates they will provide 3 core offerings: support, training, and dedicated professional services to customers.

Considering Rackspace’s reputation for top-notch customer service, you can probably expect Riptano to be one of the new-school services companies that will aim to surprise and delight their customers. According to their site, they offer three support plans that are impressively transparent about the levels of service you can expect to receive from each plan. The bronze, silver, and gold support plans range from $1,000 to $4,000 per node, per year.

The bronze plan boasts 48 hour response times, 4 hours of consultation, as well as web and email communication. On the other end, the gold plan gets customers a four hour response time, 24 hours of consultation, as well as web, email, and phone support.

Even at the bronze level, a 48 hour response time from a professional services firm is an attractive proposition. Knowing what you can expect for your money is even better.

Nonetheless, add Riptano to the list of interesting new firms emerging in Austin this year. One would imagine that the Apache Foundation is also pleased to see Riptano on the scene.

Microventures Offers P2P Investment Platform

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Entrepreneurs in the central Texas region have good reason to be excited this week. Not only has Austin been recognized repeatedly for the relative strength of its local economy in recent weeks, but on Monday, Austin-based Microventures launched its new site for peer-to-peer venture funding.

The site takes the form of a marketplace where startups can submit their companies for funding, and investors can choose to invest anywhere between $250 and $5,000. If the deal doesn’t reach 100% of the offering, then the money is returned to the investors.

The concept behind Microventures is not entirely unlike other notable efforts across the country, and the concept of micro-investments itself has been around for a while. But Microventures differentiates in several meaningful ways. They will focus on getting many investors to fund startups with small sums that ideally add up to a more sizeable deal.

We should also point out that the platform, at least initially, is not an incubator or accelerator program like Y Combinator or Austin’s own Capital Factory. Furthermore, the company says it will not be raising its own fund or investing in the startups in its marketplace.

The company is aiming its efforts at deals between $50,000 and $250,000, but intends to facilitate larger deals in the near future. That is to say, Microventures.com hopes to differentiate on the size of the deals – and move significantly further up the deal-size food chain than other comparable sites and many of the existing incubator programs.

They will also help to facilitate the regulatory challenges of the deal-making process and perform due-diligence on companies for the investors.

There’s no doubt that microinvestments are a big trend, but what’s particularly promising is the increasing amount of choice and support that entrepreneurs in Central Texas now have available to them when they need to kick-start their businesses.

Aside from the traditional VC firms, Capital Factory is now embarking on its second year. Last year the tech startup accelerator received over 300 applications, indicating that there’s a big appetite for non-traditional venture funding and incubation in the area.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise considering recent reports on the central Texas economy. Today, the Huffington Post compiled a good slide show on major US cities with local economies that are growing faster than their pre-recession pace. The full Brookings report upon which they based their article can be found here.

And if you haven’t heard about it already, TIME magazine had a few good things to say about Austin’s job market recently, too.

There’s no shortage of opinions on the various venture capital models that are budding across the country. Most entrepreneurs have their own opinions and preferences based on the particulars of their startups, or their past experiences in deals. But one thing is for sure: choice, variety and growth are all very nice things to see.

Ent. 404: Tablets, Tablets, Tablets: A Talk With Motion Computing

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There’s a lot of talk about tablets floating around these days, so much so that Techmeme should change its name Tabletmeme. So Austin Startup set out on a mission to find out more about this remarkable, mythical Apple invention – a fancifully flat, game-changing take on the traditional personal computer.

Surprisingly enough, on our journey we discovered that a local, Austin-based company called Motion Computing has been making tablet computers since 2001. You heard us right. It turns out that the yet-to-be-released Apple tablet is not the first one ever, meaning that the supposedly self-declared “most important thing” that Steve Jobs has ever done has, in fact, already been done. So we asked Mike Stinson, Motion’s VP of Marketing, a few questions about their business, Apple’s rumored tablet, and how they felt about Steve Jobs crashing the party.

Most of the discussion about the Apple tablet is centered on consumer use cases; however, Motion has been providing slate tablets to “mobile professionals” for many years. Do you believe that an Apple tablet would have a noticeable impact on the business/professional market too?

You’re right, from what we can tell the Apple tablet seems to be consumer-focused with emphasis on content consumption with features for e-reader capabilities, gaming, music and video. Motion Tablets are purpose-built for point of service computing – markets where users need powerful, mobile and rugged devices at the point where they do their jobs. We see a lot of opportunity in markets like construction, field service, point of service and healthcare where users are required to stand, walk and compute. We expect Apple’s market entrance to help further communicate the value of the slate tablet PC form factor, but it’s hard to tell at this point how big of an impact it will have. We don’t expect to see a noticeable impact on Motion’s target users.

Many vendors are turning their attention towards tablets, including HP and Lenovo most recently at CES. What impact do you think this flurry of entries will have on Motion’s business?

The marketing activities of these leading hardware providers will provide a lot of visibility into the benefits of the tablet form factor. However, as with the Apple tablet, these devices are commercial-grade and heavily targeted at the consumer. Motion tablets have features that are tailored to vertical market users that compute in harsh, highly mobile environments. Rugged tablets with outdoor viewable displays, highly accurate pen navigation to run almost any windows based program or electronic form and powerful processors are all required for this set of users. So, while we see the increased visibility as a positive thing, we don’t expect to see a lot of impact on the “point of service” worker.

What challenges would Apple and other vendors face if they tried to introduce a tablet to the professional/business markets where companies like Motion have been focused for several years?

In addition to the product requirements listed above, there are unique integration and product requirements that are associated with point of service computing. Motion engages with customers on workflow planning, go-live and post-deployment support and other areas such as wireless validation. Our users also require product specialization – like the integrated RFID reader, barcode scanner and documentation camera, as well as solutions that support mobile workflows such as vehicle mounts, custom battery chargers, cases and docking solutions. It has taken us time and a lot of customer feedback to identify the most important requirements of our customers – and any manufacturer that targeted these markets would need the same level of specialization.

Tablets have long been associated with the medical vertical. How much of that association is true, and do you feel that Apple or other vendors entering the tablet market have what it takes (in terms of the products and expertise) to meaningfully penetrate that market?

Yes, tablets have been very successful in healthcare. The Motion C5 mobile clinical assistant (MCA) is the first purpose-built device from Motion. Fully sealed for easy disinfection with an integrated handle for mobility ease and integrated features– the C5 is highly tailored to healthcare. We have certified with the industry’s largest electronic medical record providers – which is critical in successful clinical deployments. There is a lot of room for growth in healthcare with the current emphasis on electronic patient records – but any provider that wants to be successful in these markets will tailor solutions to the unique needs of healthcare.

Some people believe that Apple is a “market maker”… that Apple can lift up other vendors merely by entering a niche market. Do you think Apple’s presence in your market would be beneficial or detrimental to existing vendors such as yourselves?

In Motion’s case we believe it will be beneficial because Apple will provide increased awareness of the slate tablet form factor, without competing directly.

If Apple introduces a tablet for consumers and also goes after the business/professional market, can we expect to see Motion specifically target the consumer market with a new device?

Motion has seen a lot of success delivering purpose-built devices for point of service computing in vertical markets. We never comment on unannounced products but, at this time we’re not focused on consumer devices.

With rumors about Apple’s potential launch of a tablet later this month reaching fever pitch, few people have taken the time to investigate what exactly is going on in the existing tablet market. What have been some of the key issues and recent trends in the tablet landscape that people might not be aware of?

We have seen increased recognition of the tablet as a strong productivity tool. People are automating a variety of processes in the field and reducing the time and costs associated with completing critical tasks by as much as 50 percent. We’re also seeing a lot of interest in in-store applications for point of sale, because the ability to take a fully-powered, Windows-based computing tool to the point of activity or point of sale reduces redundant tasks and enables faster collaboration. Additionally we’ve seen increased demand for ruggedized options, include a significant increase in solid state drive (SSD) deployments and durable, outdoor displays. There is a noticeable increased demand on the combination of durability and mobility.

What can industry watchers expect to see from Motion in the coming year?

We will continue to enhance our existing product line, develop even more partnerships with software providers that tablet-optimize their solutions, as well as deliver a number of peripherals that make it easier to deploy or use tablet PCs in the field. While we aren’t going to comment on unannounced products, we’re continually looking at new solutions to support mobile workflows and as technology evolves so will our products.

Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you would like to bring up?

Motion has had a really great year. We’ve introduced new solutions such as the Motion Clinical Workstation (MCW) and made several enhancements to our products and associated peripherals. We’re confident that the focus on rugged, highly mobile solutions designed for vertical market users that need to compute at the point of service is the right fit for Motion at this time. Additionally, we’re thrilled about the heightened level of awareness around tablet PCs and believe it will be beneficial for us going forward.

FeedMagnet Launches Into Public Beta

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Austin-based FeedMagnet launched into public beta late last week. The service pulls together feeds from your social media sites and presents them in a single stream. FeedMagnet also allows you to embed those streams directly onto your website. The public beta includes the basic, free service which limits the number of authors and search topics you can use, as well as how many updates they will pull per hour. The company is working on a premium offering with a monthly fee which will not have any of the limitations of the free product.

FeedMagnet is source-agnostic, so it is capable of pulling data from any social media site that the company incorporates into the service. According to their site, the sources that are fully “hooked” into include Twitter, Flickr and Delicious. The company states that they will be adding more sources on an ongoing basis. Another neat feature is the customizable filter, which allows you to choose what content enters your feed depending on keywords and other basic criteria. Finally, pictures and videos are displayed inline in your stream which is a nice touch and certainly a meaningful feature for businesses that want to increase the time that visitors spend on their site.

FeedMagnet is trying to solve a problem that many companies face with their social media content – they want to tie it into their main site, but it’s just not always feasible to build this type of functionality in-house. The frenzy to create widgets such as the embeddable columns that Hootsuite offers have proven that there is plenty of demand for tools that quickly make a company’s site more human-centric and engaging. FeedMagnet takes this trend a step further by trying to be inclusive of the content from multiple source sites.

The product not only allows companies to embed the widgets with ease, but as FeedMagnet hooks into more sites they eliminate the need to deal with a different widget for each service that you are embedding. Ultimately, the task of incorporating social media into your site is meant to become a matter of curation rather than an endeavor into writing code.

Ent. 404: An Austin Tech Christmas List

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When I was growing up, my grandmother would get the JC Penney Christmas Book in the mail and have us circle the things we wanted for Christmas. I always got excited for November when the book appeared on her coffee table, and I would spend hours circling the stuff I wanted.

The JC Penney tradition naturally faded away when I got old enough, although it probably carried on until I was way too old to be circling toys in a catalog. Since I can’t mark up the JC Penney book anymore, I’m starting my own Christmas list tradition with a new twist.

If you were to make your list based only on products emerging from Austin’s companies, what would it be? At first, I thought this would be a difficult list to assemble because I’m focusing mostly on tech and startups. I thought that there simply weren’t enough companies making “real” products in town. But the exercise of compiling the list was enlightening. You can make a pretty darn good Christmas list with the stuff coming out of our fine little city. Here goes!

Dell Adamo XPS – there’s just no way this couldn’t make it on the list. Even the regular Adamo would be sweet. And both are quite an upgrade over my current P.O.S.

A HomeAway vacation. Who doesn’t like getting a plane ticket and a brochure in their stocking?

A LifeSize video conferencing unit for the office. It’s a weird one for this list. But come on, everybody LOVES videoconferencing! Videoconferencing pretty much eliminates any chance of those “I thought I hit the mute button” blunders, too.

A CheapTweet shopping spree. Just get me one of everything that they tweet about for an hour.

A uControl-based security set-up for the house. Mostly just because a live video feed would solve the year-long mystery of which dog goes nosing through the trash every day. But security is cool, too.

A gift basket of stuff (read: fatty foods, beer and wine) from Whole Foods. Ok, so it’s not really tech-related, but a Christmas without good food and alcohol is not anything I ever want to know.

The SpawnLabs HD-720. Nothing would be more fun than dragon-punching Chun-Li remotely while sitting in your cube at the office.

A PocketPack for your iPhone. This is particularly helpful for people like me who have Costanza-like habits of keeping every receipt, coupon or random shred of paper in their wallets. In fact, it could probably be marketed as a medical device that relieves back pain.

A platinum pass to SXSW. I don’t think anyone can argue with this one.

That’s my list. What about you? Am I missing anything important?

Ent. 404: The Valley's Shining Beacon of Altruism

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It’s that time of year again – time to look back at 2009, figure out what the heck happened, and then look forward to 2010. Trend posts, 2010 predictions and 2009 wrap-up reports are starting to come out. More importantly, the congratulatory back-patting has already commenced in Silicon Valley. TechCrunch ran a nice guest post in late October describing just how the Valley beat out Boston’s 128 loop to become the preeminent technology hub. The author, Vivek Wadhwa, does a nice job of summing up the Valley’s awesomeness. (Spoiler: it’s not only awesome, but it keeps getting awesomer!)

The article reminds us that even in the days of HD-video conferencing, Al Gore’s internets, and cellular telephones, we are at a major disadvantage if we’re not physically located in the Valley. As Wadhwa said: “It is the Valley’s dynamism and networks which have given it an unassailable advantage.” That might explain why so precious little has ever come out of Austin’s startup community – there’s no dynamism, there are no networks here.

Fortunately, the Valley does offer some help to us simple folks stuck in the rest of the world. The ninth-annual Tech Awards honoring technology innovations with a humanitarian twist took place last week and as SFGate duly noted: “While the monetary award was nothing to sniff at, the bigger prize was the ability to absorb the winning ways of Silicon Valley and its culture of innovation, said organizers.”

This might be the real source of the Valley’s power. The altruism that is at the core of everything they do. Yes, they are successful, but they’re also willing to let entrepreneurs from other parts of the globe enter their world for a night and soak up their winning ways. After all, even if you’re inventing a substance aimed at improving health and quality of life in underprivileged parts of the world, your core focus should still be to win big and make the big bucks. Like YouTube.

So, let’s be grateful this Thanksgiving. Not for our jobs, or our family – but thankful for the Valley’s continued altruism – imparting their winning ways upon us so that we might, some day, turn Austin into a meaningful technology hub, and remember to pat ourselves on the back in the process.