The New York Times published an article yesterday titled "Accountability 101: State Colleges Prepare to Measure Their Own Performance" by David Wessel. The New York Times requires a subscription, but there is a link to that story here on Yahoo Finance. The story validates the market for Austin-based software startup TK20. The company provides software tools to these state colleges that allow them to do assessment and reporting. TK20 is one of very few software [...]
Following in the footsteps of Google, Paypal and HP, Apple is now said to be extending its expansion efforts down south, where it plans to erect a 80,000-square-foot building at its campus in Austin, Texas. According to the Austin American Statesman, ground-breaking on the two-story building, at 12565 Riata Vista Circle, probably will take place this summer, pending a city permit. Apple now uses about 40,000 square feet for support service personnel in nearby Riata [...]
The IC2 Institute at the University of Texas recently released a 20-page report titled "Opportunity on the Horizon: Photovoltaics in Texas" which you can read on the website of the Austin Technology Incubator here. Despite it’s oil roots, Texas is uniquely positioned for this industry because of the deep understanding of the energy business, and the abundance of sunlight. (There is certainly plenty of wind in West Texas too, but that will be a different [...]
Imagine if Virginia Tech had a mobile alert system, and could have sent a text message to all the students, professors, or even parents cell phones that tragic day. Or if a high school could alert every parent via text message on their cell phone that there is some sort of emergency at the school that requires their attention or action. I had this conversation with Matt Silk at Waterfall Mobile (creators of msgme.com and [...]
I can’t find an Austin tie-in with this piece, but I have a personal interest in clean technologies. Over at the Oak Ridge National Labs they have developed this cool product for hybrid solar lighting. They place a solar dish on the roof, concentrate the sun’s light into fiber optics, and then the fiber optics carry the light where it needs to be. In the video, proponents say just 2 strands of the fiber is [...]
There is a lot of buzz about Enterprise 2.0 these days. In short, businesses are trying to figure out how to apply Web 2.0 technologies to their business. Does that mean everyone in the company should now spend their day uploading digital pictures from their weekend to Facebook? Without any sort of context, good examples, or pre-packaged software to buy nobody really has a good idea of exactly what Enterprise 2.0 looks like or feels [...]
Slacker Slacker is a startup company with big aspirations to take personal music players by storm. Today you can listen to the streaming music service over the internet via their website. I’m kind of partial to the 80′s hits, but I’m showing my age. For those of you who would like some great music when you’re not sitting in front of your computer, never fear. Soon we will have the Slacker Portable Player (pictured here). [...]
Clean Energy Pt. 2 It wasn’t until I met (thanks Mary Ann) and heard from a few people at Austin Energy (Roger Duncan) that I realized how forward thinking our own Austin Energy is. The list of innovations is long, and experts around the country have recognized that innovation. It’s one of the few businesses I know of that is trying to put themselves out of business by getting their customers to rely upon them [...]
