SOMEWHAT FRANK

I just became part of the Twitter Retweet beta (as shown here)....

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:38:00 PST

I just became part of the Twitter Retweet beta (as shown here). It appears that “RT” will be replaced by a trusty Retweet icon. It doesn’t appear users will be able to annotate the message before Retweeting it if you click the Retweet button directly (but that doesn’t mean it won’t be added to the mix at some point).

It also appears you can turn Retweets on/off per user.

Happy 40th Anniversary to Sesame Street! Google honors them with...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:38:00 PST

Happy 40th Anniversary to Sesame Street! Google honors them with the logo above.

Elf Yourself is back again in 2009! It’s been going strong...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:10:22 PST

Elf Yourself is back again in 2009! It’s been going strong since I covered it back in 2006. The site is powered by Jib Jab.

TECH cocktail DC 7 on 12/3 - RSVP

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:43:00 PST

TECH cocktail DC 7 on 12/3 - RSVP:

What: TECH cocktail DC 7
When: Thursday, December 3, 2009 from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST
Where: LeftBank DC in Adams Morgan (map)
Cost: $10 (entry + 2 drinks)
RSVP HERE (you must be 21+ to attend)

If you are interested in being a sponsor the following options are available and can be secured here. If you would like to demo your start-up or would like to nominate a start-up to demo at the event please fill out this form and we will contact you. Start-up demo spots at TECH cocktail are based on availability.

"Face-to-face is still the best way to communicate. Technology is not designed to replace these kinds..."

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:08:06 PST

“Face-to-face is still the best way to communicate. Technology is not designed to replace these kinds of interaction. It enhances it.”

- Frank Gruber, a product developer for AOL who attends and speaks at dozens of interactive and technology conferences a year. (via Creativity flows at Geekend 2009 | savannahnow.com)

"When your life begins to resemble the make-up of a country western song, it might be best to just..."

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:00:00 PST

“When your life begins to resemble the make-up of a country western song, it might be best to just sing along.”

- @frankgruber advice on rolling with the waves of life

"$490 Million was dropped into casual gaming last year in the United States."

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:31:11 PST

“$490 Million was dropped into casual gaming last year in the United States.”

- Sloane Kelley (@sloanekelley) at #Geekend2009

Kevin Lawver talks about Whuffie and reputation systems at...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:09:00 PST

Kevin Lawver talks about Whuffie and reputation systems at #Geekend2009.

"Kids are fearless about creativity."

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:37:03 PST

“Kids are fearless about creativity.”

- Joey Hasty from Disney at #geekend2009

"Whuffie is about rewarding people that do great things in the community but don’t get the..."

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:03:40 PST

“Whuffie is about rewarding people that do great things in the community but don’t get the recognition.”

- Kevin Lawver (@kplawver) at #geekend2009

"Rising awesome lifts all boats!"

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:49:19 PST

“Rising awesome lifts all boats!”

- Kevin Lawver (@kplawver) at #geekend2009

"Encourage people, don’t discourage them."

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:47:23 PST

“Encourage people, don’t discourage them.”

- Kevin Lawver (@kplawver) on Whuffie #Geekend2009

My first sign of @Geekend2009 as I arrived in Savannah

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:41:38 PST

My first sign of @Geekend2009 as I arrived in Savannah

Bond Opens Up PayPal X Conference

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:29:43 PST

Bond Opens Up PayPal X Conference

Naveed Anwar (@nanwar) closes out day of PayPalX

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:18:34 PST

Naveed Anwar (@nanwar) closes out day of PayPalX

"The wallet has changed."

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:15:00 PST

“The wallet has changed.”

- Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) at #ppxi09

Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) wants to see cooperation...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:06:15 PST

Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) wants to see cooperation between services (i.e. service mashups) for ordering pizza

"Cloud + Mobile = Augmented Reality"

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:55:53 PST

“Cloud + Mobile = Augmented Reality”

- Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) at PayPal X #ppxi09

Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) talking about the cloud at...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:44:03 PST

Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) talking about the cloud at PayPal X

Watching Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) speaking at PayPal X...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:42:08 PST

Watching Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) speaking at PayPal X Conference

The DC Nationals' Social Media Opportunity

Frank Gruber — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:07:00 PDT

With baseball in it's final series of 2009 I wanted to share some of my thoughts on baseball, branding and social media, thoughts that have been brewing for a while. I currently live in Washington, D.C., a plane ride away from my favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, and within driving distance of the two teams with the worst records in baseball this past season, the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Nationals respectively. They both lost a lot of games this year (98 and 103) which only makes me miss my hometown Cubbies even more but let's not forget they have been nothing less than disappointing for over a century. Even in 2003, where I was five outs away from doing Wrigley Field victory dance by heading to the World Series they found a way to break my heart. But every season, I still come back with even more resilience that it could be the Cubs year.

That said, due to my social technology and media background (my baseball skills probably didn't hurt either), I was invited to meet with the Washington Nationals executives last month at Nationals Park. I was honored to do so and in meeting with Stan Kasten, Bob Wolfe and others I realized that they are just a three year old start-up that spun out of what was the Montreal Expos organization. Call me an optimist but I think they have an almost clean slate, branding-wise, that offers them a huge opportunity to create a strong following both online and off.

The social technologies and tools are available for anyone with a passion to create a fan base and follow and engage with those fans real-time. How does a baseball team do such a thing? Well they need to engage and listen to every person who buys a ticket or comes out to the ballpark or watches or listens to a game. Does that sound like a pretty huge task at hand? Or does it sound like common sense? If you think it sounds like common sense then you probably know a little something about the tools that are out there today. If you are left shaking your head at the huge task at hand then I will be the first to admit you are right. It is a huge task! But if you want to win in this day and age then you need to show people that you care by listening to your fans, followers and customers.

Another point I was sure to bring up to the Nationals was their overall branding. As a Cubs, fan it took me a good three years to finally decide I could let a second baseball team into my life. After making that commitment I decided it was time to purchase a baseball cap to show my support for my new favorite local team. So I did a little research and found that most of the Washington Nationals hats sported a big old "W" that reminded me of the Walgreens logo. That said, I was not interested in sporting one, so I kept looking and finally found a DC hat that worked for me - a simple Navy blue cap with the "DC" logo on it. This makes a lot sense. It shares that I am from DC, which is how people generally communicate they live in Washington, D.C. even if they live in Virginia or some of the surrounding areas. So my point here is that when you want to brand a team or logo or anything, be sure that the image or logo sells itself. In this case the DC version of the hat doubles as a great Washington, DC souvenir and could act as a great walking billboard for the Nationals baseball team.

Obviously, it helps if the team plays well on the field but even if they are not there are teams that have made themselves very successful by creating an experience that is worth spending time with regardless of the outcome of the game. So I definitely think that the Washington Nationals could capitalize by looking at every detail related to the Nats experience in the Capitol City (and online) and making it one that fans want to repeat all summer long - win, lose or rain out. Go Nats!

Wanna Free Ticket to PayPal's 1st Dev Conference?

Frank Gruber — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:58:31 PDT

PayPal is hosting it's first ever developer conference PayPal Innovate 2009 on November 3rd and 4th in San Francisco and I am excited to be heading out to take part in it.

The two day event includes a keynote by Tim O'Reilly keynote on Day 1 and GigaOm's Om Malik is doing a VC panel on Day 2. The event is sure to be well attended by developers, startups and entrepreneurs and more.

Today I joined Sudha Jamthe from the PayPalX team on BlogTalkRadio as she talked to Khurram Khan, Product Owner of Adaptive Payments from PayPalX TwitPay founder Michael Ivey to discuss the upcoming PayPalX Innovate 2009 conference. You can listen to the discussion here.

I have a 8 free PayPal X conference passes to give out. To get one of these free tickets you can do one of two things:

Log into Thankfulfor.com connect your Twitter account and share why you would be "thankful for" a free ticket mentioning @frankgruber and @paypalx in the message (so I can track it down).
Download the new AIM, hook up your Twitter account via your lifestream settings and post a status message why you would like this ticket mentioning @frankgruber and @paypalx in the message (again, so I can track it down).

I will be checking for @replies on Twitter and where the messages were posted from either AIM or Thankfulfor to determine the 8 lucky winners. Good luck!

Vote me the next Panasonic Living in HD Insider

Frank Gruber — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:59:00 PDT

I am excited to be a finalist in the Panasonic Living in HD Insider program. What this means is that I am only one step away from being the next Panasonic Living in HD Insider! But I am going to need the help of my readers and community to help make this possible. Check out my video entry I submitted for the contest (below).

Here are a few ways you can help:

Vote for me here!
Help spread the word by copying the message below and set it on your status on Twitter and Facebook: I just voted for @FrankGruber for #LiHDInsider and you should too here: http://bit.ly/3TnfUB
Grab this code (below) and put it one you blog or other sites to help spread the word:

Oh and if I do become a Panasonic Living in HD Insider I get to give away one Lumix G1 SLR camera. So help me make it any you can get a chance to win too. Thanks so much for your help!

Demo Day For Alpha Labs Pittsburgh Start-ups

Frank Gruber — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:00:00 PDT

This past year I have attended several demo days and covered Launched Box Digital in DC and Dream It Ventures in Philly among others. Yesterday was the demo day for another local incubator, this time it's in Pittsburgh. Yes the "Steel City" has more than just steel these days, as six new start-up companies showed off their stuff as part of the Alpha Lab extensive six-month start-up business incubator program. AlphaLab provides funding, free office space, expert business advisors and services during its biannual program in Pittsburgh. Alpha Lab was created by Innovation Works a seed stage investment firm.

The start-up class of companies included:

CloudFab is an online platform that provides distributed manufacturing resources for businesses who are creating mass customized goods across various product categories. This market is called “fabrication-as-a-service”. The CloudFab system also contains tools to facilitate and enhance the quoting, ordering and manufacturing processes.
Fooala has created an open online ordering platform that enables restaurants to expand online presence and grow sales by accepting orders through various web-based and mobile channels. Fooala’s platform includes an ordering engine that can be easily embedded in a restaurant’s website, as part of an online food portal or as a widget on content sites or mobile devices.
LeftRight Studios is developing a branded gaming network consisting of entertaining mobile games and a tools platform that helps create branded games with unique marketing and promotional capabilities.
NavPrescience is a Carnegie Mellon University spin off developing next-generation GPS applications that incorporate greater prediction and personalization capabilities. The technologies automatically learn drivers’ routing preferences and predicts future destinations by observing their driving patterns.
Vivo has developed an integrated live video marketing platform for businesses and organizations that want to use live video to enhance their online sales and marketing efforts. The platform includes a suite of integrated set of tools for broadcasting, marketing, and sales and allows businesses to control its branding and integrate e-commerce, advertising and other monetization tools.
Zipano is a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff that has developed a privacy layer that enables users of information sharing services (including social networking, location-based applications) to better control and manage with whom they share their personal information.

Congrats to Alpha Lab and the start-up that launched yesterday. I look forward to hearing more about these companies as they go out on their own in the business world.

Crush It Music Video For Charity (I Have A Cameo)

Frank Gruber — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:36:43 PDT

Today is the big day for my friend Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV, or GaryVee as many of you know him on Twitter, as he published his first business book Crush It: Why NOW Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion. This is Gary's second book overall, as his first book was about wine. I look forward to reading it. While Gary was writing it I sent him examples to use for various sections and feedback so I am interested to see how it turned out. Congrats and best of luck to Gary, I hope he sells lots of books! I bought it today.

It's great to see Gary come so far so quickly. I first met Gary via email when he wanted to send wine and sponsor our first TECH cocktail DC event, which we are very thankful for. Then we spoke together on a panel discussing social media at the New New Internet Conference in DC. We shared good times and joy by pulling together a flash mob wine party at SXSW in a matter of minutes. I even had Gary visit my hometown to speak in Woodstock, Illinois at the historic Opera House last year. There are many additional memories over the last few years but I don't want to bore you. All I can say is, It's been fun.

To coincide with the release of the book there my DC-based friend Mark Fitzpatrick created and released a music video theme song for the new book called Crush It by Clabo. The music video features Gary and lots of his video footage. I even made a cameo with Mark Bebawy which was filmed at the last TECH cocktail DC event. Congrats to Mark Fitzpatrick on pulling this video together. You can buy the music and proceeds go to charity to feed the hungry. That's right, buying the music will feed 6 mouths. Here are the music downloads: Crush It on iTunes and Crush It on Amazon. I just bought both versions, feeding 12 mouths. Feels good. :)

Watermark Your iPhone Photos With Photomarkr

Frank Gruber — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:01:00 PDT

via youtube.com

I recently had brunch with Natalia Luckyanova and Keith Shepherd the co-founders of Washington, D.C. based iPhone development startup Imangi Studios. If you are new to Imangi Studios has also created the popular iPhone apps Harbor Master, Little Red Sled and Word Squares.

At this particular brunch they shared their photography application called Photomarkr. The Photomarkr application offers users the ability to put a custom watermark on any photo on the iPhone. The video above shares a quick demo that I shot with my iPhone (so bear with the less than perfect audio and video quality). The application is available for $2.99 in the apps store. Happy watermarking.

Purdue Fast Track News: Social Media Interview

Frank Gruber — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:31:23 PDT

via youtube.com

During my Purdue University a few weeks ago that I previously mentioned, I was interviewed by Purdue's student run news network Fast Track News. Check out the well done video interview by Bram Wahl where I share social media insight and explain the new AIM product. This is just the minute and a half story that will air soon.

New Focus on Entrepreneurship at Purdue

Frank Gruber — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:31:43 PDT

I just spent three and half days last week at my undergrad alma mater, Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. It was my first trip back to Purdue since October of 2005 and I was pleasantly surprised at the positive updates on campus since my last visit.

The most prominent updates were as follows:

The addition of The Discovery Park which includes the Morgan D. Burke Center for Entrepreneurship. I spoke to a Capstone entrepreneurship class and shared my social media voyage. They did not have a program like this when I was at Purdue so I am extremely happy to see a class that fosters starting and running your own business.
The Envision Center for Data Perceptualization which is focusing on virtual technology and sensory technologies. I got to put on a pair of 3D glasses and fly around campus virtually making sure to stop on the 50 yard line at Ross-Ade Stadium. It was very much like a life-sized Second Life and was pretty impressive.
The Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering which has a part of a NASA space craft inside and a moon rock. The building itself looks like something sent from space.
The Purdue Arch which adds a little more campus flare and a great photo opp.
The Purdue eStadium Project which puts the power of instant video replays and stats in the hands of any Purdue football fan with a mobile device. They do real-time video editing and encoding to stream video replays to mobile devices only moments after the play happens on the field.
The Purdue Research Parks offer office space and assistance to entrepreneurs looking to get their businesses going. It also encourages established businesses to tie into the campus resources to cultivate business.
Purdue's innovation and school spirit in their Purdue waffles as shown here.
The Purdue skybox at Ross-Ade Stadium is a state of the art media and entertainment facility, of which I was able to get a full tour and even snuck a peak from the top of the skybox (shown in the video below). With homecoming in full swing I also saw old Purdue football greats Leroy Keyes and Curtis Painter.

The biggest thing I noticed at Purdue was it's new focus on entrepreneurship. The Discovery Park's focus is to help foster entrepreneurship and the Research Parks help them stay in the area to live out their dreams. These options did not exist when I attended Purdue so I am happy to see them. Though they do lend campus resources to help guide entrepreneurs, I was a little disappointed to hear that Purdue does not have a small venture fund similar to that of University of Illinois's Illinois Ventures. But I am sure they have been looking into it and trying to determine the best way to operate such an initiative. The program seems to already be having a positive impact as just last week the Purdue entrepreneurship program helped get a student on the ABC television series Shark Tank for the development of Soy-Yer Dough, a gluten-free modeling compound. So this is a great start - leaps and bounds ahead of what it was like when I was attending Purdue.

Additionally, I think there is still a huge opportunity for Purdue to further embrace social media to spread the great things going on at the school. I hope to be involved with Purdue more in the future on both efforts, lending industry perspective, social capital and advice as they work to make things happen.

Special thanks to Howard Sypher for setting up the visit. He did a remarkable job setting up two days of solid events and campus talks for myself as well as fellow AOL'er & Purdue alum, David Liu. He introduced me to such great people and I even got a chance to meet Purdue President Dr. France A. Córdova as well as many others. Thank you all for making my Purdue homecoming such a memorable one. Check out the photo set I took while at Purdue and GO BOILERS!

New AIM with Lifestream Launches

Frank Gruber — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:54:38 PDT

Since joining AOL in 2006, I have worked on the product direction and strategy of two AOL products. The first of these was the myAOL personalized start page, which I covered previously when it launched in 2007 and was rolled out to 78 countries. The other product I have worked on is AIM.

AIM has been around a very long time - launched in the 1990’s it assembled the first viable social graph with the AOL buddy list. So I was excited to jump on board with a team of internal AOL thought-leaders in January 2008 to map out the future of myAOL and determine how it could interact with AIM to offer users a streamlined social utility. During this process we identified that real-time data or the “lifestream”, is a necessity to any social experience on the Web. AIM had a similar "lifestream" concept since 2005 called AIM Buddy Updates which I covered previously, as we relaunched it on the Web in the summer 2008. We concluded our work and learnings from the project and proposed a direction and then went on to acquire SocialThing, which I connected with AOL via TECH cocktail Boulder 1 to join the AIM team and contributed to the effort. Being involved from its original ideation till now, I am pleased to see the new AIM with lifestream come to fruition.

Last week the AIM product team shared their story by demoing the new AIM at TechCrunch50. The team did a super job demoing in a front an early adopter crowd. Check out the AIM team of Jeremy Rephlo, Christina Wick and Jean-Paul Cozzatti sharing the new AIM at TC50 (below):

Later in the week through my involvement as a local DC host for the Geeks On a Plane event, we had AIM's Greg Cypes presents the new AIM to the White House and State Department.

Rafe Needleman of CNET had this to say:

"I tried the iPhone app. It's a decent combo client, although I found it much better for instant messaging than for Twitter or Facebook."

Dana Oshire of Read Write Web was very complimentary:

"While this may appear to be a basic life streaming client for Twitter and Facebook, one of the great features of this service is the fact that it allows users to drag and drop images, URLs and text directly from the browser."

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch referred to the new AIM as:

"AIM is now faster, better and more streamy."

Yesterday, I got a chance to a little pre-launch walk-thru of the new AIM to AOL CEO, Tim Armstrong and today AIM has officially launched and as a leading instant messaging service in the United States, it has the potential to quickly turn into the largest Twitter and Facebook client. It only makes sense, as AIM was one of the first places you saw the status message, which in the area of social media has turned into a powerful 140-character communication currency. I am excited to see the new AIM with lifestream launch on the Mac, PC, iPhone and Windows Mobile, making it easy to communicate with all your friends across multiple social networks, at the same time.

So you are probably wondering, what are some the features to check out? Here are some of my favorites:

AIM Lifestream – you can visit http://lifestream.aim.com/settings to configure all you social accounts (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, Delicious, Flickr, etc). You can also set your privacy to enable others to comment on your lifestream. I set mine to ‘open to the public’ to get the conversation flowing.
Sync Twitter and/or Facebook Status – Set-up your AIM Status message to sync with Twitter and/or Facebook. This allows you to set your status once and have it quickly pushed to your Facebook and Twitter accounts,saving you time.
Photos – Add photos to the lifestream via your computer or iPhone with ease - to offer your buddies a more interesting status photo filled message.
Interact via the Lifestream – Comment on a Tweet or Facebook message and it will post the comment back to Twitter or Facebook, once again saving you from having to go in and do so.
AIM TXT – that’s right, you set your startup and follow your friends’ lifestream activities via SMS TXT message. Just text AIMAIM or 246246 visit AIM TXT for more information.

So those are just a few of my favorite features, but there are lots more that I will leave it up to you to find. Oh and I should mention, that this is just the beginning so stay tuned as AIM will continue to bring new things to your phone, computer and the Web. Congrats to the AIM team and AOL for launching the new AIM.

26 Startups In 30 Days Demo at TECH cocktail

Frank Gruber — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 05:15:03 PDT

It has been a busy last 30 days as we hosted three TECH cocktail events in Chicago, DC and Boston respectively. Starting in Chicago in early August we drew a humongous crowd and showed off 9 new Chicago area start-ups as I previously explained. We did not stop with just Chicago, we continued to plan and host TECH cocktail events the past two weeks in DC and Boston. Both events were very well attended and showcased 17 more start-ups. The events attracted over 1400 guests and showcased 26 startups in 30 days. Not bad as we roll into our fourth year, with the same mission as when we started of "amplifying the local technology signal in local tech communities" while "having fun doing it."

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for coming out to support the last three events in Chicago, DC and Boston. We couldn’t do the events without the support of the local technology community and our fabulous sponsors which included AOL’s AIM & Going.com, BOALT, Saper Law, Jess3, Shiny Heart Ventures, TransFS, SproutBox, Total Attorneys, Chicago Micro, OVAL Vodka and iStrategyLabs. We also had 26 great start-ups demoing at the events.

In DC, I reached out to my friends at TechCrunch to share the news of the local DC start-ups demoing and they posted my article. In case you missed it, here are the TECH cocktail DC 6 photos. The following start-ups showed off their stuff at the event:

	AddyMate A smart address book & communication hub that gives users the power to control how to be contacted.
	Cost2Drive makes it easy to compare the cost of driving with the cost of flying anywhere in the US.
	CYNCZ provides worry free, up-to-date contact information on any device, any time.
	Grasshopr is a Web-based grassroots platform for groups and members to build advocacy communities and campaigns.
	Keen Guides creates the platform for tour content providers. Be your own tour guide!!
	LegalRiver helps businesses find the right lawyer through a free, anonymous and non-binding system.
	Seizure Tracker is dedicated to providing people living with epilepsy and their doctors with free comprehensive tools to help understand relationships between seizure activity and anti-epileptic medications.
	TapMetrics an all-in-one business & analytics solution for iPhone app publishers. No more iTunes Connect.
	Thankfulfor.com is a microblogging site focused on gratitude. In 140 characters users post what they are thankful for privately or publicly. What are you thankful for? ThankfulFor is the first product created by Shiny Heart Ventures of which I am a co-founder.

In Boston, we had another great showing and you can check out the TECH cocktail Boston 3 photos. We also had eight fresh start-ups showoff which included:

	BandsInTown connects music fans to local live music through personalized recommendations and notifications.
	SCVNGR developed the world's first platform to enable anyone, anwhere to develop, manage and deploy sophisticated interactive location-based mobile games, tours and experiences.
	OneForty.com gave the public it's first preview ever at TECH cocktail Boston 3 as a directory for all the apps that make Twitter better.
	PermissionTV provides a flexible online video platform for brand marketers and advertisers, media companies and publishers, as well as their.
	BuySellAds.com is a super easy way to buy and sell ads online.
	Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity.
	Shareaholic is the must-have browser tool for sharing links via twitter, facebook, etc better, faster, and easier!!
	HaveMyShift gives hourly workers options to choose their schedule. 4500 people have traded 26,000 hours of shifts and $16,000 in bonuses!

Thank you again to all that helped support the events in the last 30 days. I look forward to working on another round of TECH cocktail events which will take place in October/November time frame. We also are looking for local community members in other cities that would like to help us bring TECH cocktail to their community. If you are interested in sponsoring, demoing or helping to bring TECH cocktail to your city please reach out to us at: cofounders@techcocktail.com or via my contact form on this site.

You can find out more about TECH cocktail on our main site, our community site, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

DreamIt Ventures' Ten New Start-ups In Philly

Frank Gruber — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:46:46 PDT

Philadelphia is known for it's fine dining, cheese steaks and the Liberty Bell but recently has been developing start-ups through the support of DreamIt Ventures, a local summer incubator program. DreamIt Ventures had their second demo day on August 14th and ten new start-ups were unveiled. Like many incubators the second year's class of startups seems to be slightly improved than the previous year.

The following ten start-ups launched:

Notehall is an online marketplace that allows college students to buy and sell lecture notes and study guide materials to fellow classmates helping them get an edge in their specific classes and best prepare for exams.

OurShelf is a social cataloging site that generates personalization information, enabling users to lend, manage their belongings and find the items they need faster and cheaper.

Parse.ly is a tool that understands users unique interests to filter and prioritize content from thousands of news and blog sources across the web.

Postling is a tool that helps small businesses face the daunting task of social media marketing. Postling lets users publish content simultaneously to the major social media platforms, including blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.

SeatGeek is a web application that forecasts sports and concert ticket prices on the secondary market, analogous to what Farecast (now Bing Travel) does for the airline ticket market.

Straight Up English is an innovative English language learning software-as-a-service company. Straight Up English solves the most persistent speech challenges for non-native speakers of English, helping them improve comprehension and production in areas such as word stress, intonation and pronunciation.

FanGamb is a new online game for sports fans that creates a competition between friends to see who the best sports bettor is. FanGamb was created by Three Screen Games a company looking to create games that converge on the PC, Mobile and TV.

Trendsta is a marketing platform that puts products in the hands of the most influential teens on the web.

Jobaphiles.com is an online marketplace where employers can auction their part-time jobs and one-time gigs. .

Kidzillions is an online allowance and chore management system that lets kids spend and save online.

Check out the DreamIt Ventures 2009 class in the video (below) and let me know your favorite DreamIt start-up.

DreamIt 2009 from WizeHive on Vimeo.

Nine Startups Demo at TECH cocktail Chicago 11

Frank Gruber — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 07:37:39 PDT

On Thursday night, Eric Olson and I hosted our 11th TECH cocktail in Chicago. Since we started in Chicago we have seen the event grow from the simple idea of hosting an event to bring together the community and showcase the local start-ups into a premiere event where we can't even find a big enough venue anymore. TECH cocktail 11 had close to 700 paid attendees. We were rather surprised as this is the first event we charged attendees $10 to attend so we thought the event numbers might see a slight dip in attendance. But, this doesn't seem to be the case at all, in fact the stellar attendance further validates what we are doing.

Check out this quick video that gives a (12 second) look at what it was like at the event.

TECH cocktail Chicago 11 on 12seconds.tv

Nine new startups from the local Chicagoland area showed off their latest technological creations.

The startups demoing included:

BringIt is a platform that allows you to play your favorite video games against others for real money. BringIt makes it easy to compete against others on the Nintendo Wii and more virtually for cash prizes.

iLime is an easy-to-implement solution that allows iPhone developers a way to integrate the Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) and In App Purchase features into iPhone applications.

ProOnGo is an mobile application that helps you keep track of all your receipts while on the road. I couldn't think a product that could help me more right now as I have been traveling like a mad man lately. ProOnGo was founded by a couple of former Purdue classmates in my same School of Technology graduating class. Pretty cool to see them out doing their thing and doing it well. Go Boilers! (Ok, I had to throw that Alma Mater spirit in there).

Are you a Hot Tweeter? Hot Tweeters turns your Twitter profile photo into a measurement of your hotness as users compete in a "hot or not" style competition to find the hottest Twitter users.

indieCollision a platform that empowers music fans to discover new music from independent & unsigned artists. Music is a tough space to jump into but it is great to see a start-up out there looking to help indie artists create an online following.

Thinklinkr a real-time, collaborative outlining tool looks to make it easy to collaborate in real-time.

TweetVisor a Web-based Twitter dashboard offers another great way to keep track of all your Twitter activity online.

Northwestern University’s InfoLab has also produced a trio of new products which included, StatsMonkey a system that automatically generates baseball stories off of numerical data. Manatee Comics a system that automatically generates web comics. News at Seven a system that automatically generates a broadcast news show and I first covered at the Wired Next Fest in Chicago.

Special thanks to the TECH cocktail sponsors which included:

Going.com is doing some great stuff online and via mobile in the events and venues space and soon will be rolling out an iPhone app.

Start-up incubator, Sproutbox came all the way from Indianapolis in search of entrepreneurs, start-ups and big dreamers as they help fund early stage start-ups.

Zookie (formerly Zook Binders) rolled out it's new name and logo at the event as they search for some new employees.

TransFS is Chicago-based startup that Eric is co-founder of and is looking to help companies get the best rate on online credit card processing. They just created an iPhone that we used at the event to take in credit card payments for TECH cocktail event tickets at the door - pretty technologically advanced if you ask me. So now I can collect credit card transactions anywhere I go via my iPhone!

OVAL vodka leverages technology to create the purest vodka around. Just so you know distilling vodka can take as little as 4 hours but OVAL gets it right with it's patented 11 day distillation process which creates structured vodka. OVAL was serving special "tech" cocktails at the event.
Shiny Heart Ventures is a new venture I have been working on mornings, nights and weekends as we look to create some "good" experiences that remind us of the joys of life. We should be launching our first experience soon. So stay tuned by following @shinyheart and by subscribing to email updates.

Saper Law which is lead by Daliah Saper, a longtime TECH cocktailer and just an overall great person to know in the legal space these days. Saper Law works with creative entrepreneurs and innovative business organizations on all of their legal needs. Saper Law gives focused an very personal service to their clients and has helped TECH cocktail as well.

ChicagoMicro another longtime TECH cocktail support. If you have IT purchasing needs you might want to check them out.

Total Attorneys helps thousands of small law firms and solo practitioners with the business of practicing law.

TECH cocktail Chicago 11 was another great event, but we might need a "bigger boat" next time. Thanks to everyone that made it a special night and don't forget to sign up for TECH cocktail email updates and follow @techcocktail on Twitter.

LaunchBox09 Demo Day Shares 8 New Start-ups

Frank Gruber — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:10:18 PDT

Today I attended the Washington, D.C. start-up incubator Launch Box Digital, where I saw eight new start-ups show off their stuff to a crowd of local investors and media outlets. I attended the event last year and shared my thoughts. No disrespect to last year's class but this year the pitches seemed to be more polished and offered better business models overall.

Here is the full list of the start-ups that launched:

Social Collective - a browser-based service targeted at event marketing and the enhancement of the event experience for both attendees and sponsors.

KeepFu - a simple note-taking and organization tool to help manage consumer-defined “projects” like trip planning, event planning, and important purchases.

SECWatch - offers investors, bloggers, journalists a platform and tool set for digging deeper into SEC filings.

unblab - attack the email overload problem by answering the question “What emails should I be reading”?

Keen Guides - platform for delivering download-able audio short-format, video and audio tours.

BandsInTown - automatically plugs into music players such as iTunes, last.fm, Pandora and other sites to learn your artist preferences, and then lets you track your favorite artists (and related ones) and receive alerts when events of interest are coming to your area. Also looking to sweeten the relationship between ticket buyers and sellers.

TapMetrics - a tool that brings together sales data, user feedback, software metrics, and other information into a consolidated dashboard for mobile apps to allow developers to manage a portfolio of applications quickly and easily.

LegalRiver - offers a free platform to help connect lawyers with clients and clients with lawyers.

Here is a quick video about the LaunchBox09 startups.

Who was my favorite? I don't have one but I do have a little to say about each of them. I like Social Collective since it made SXSW a breeze last year and should help again this year. I also have been using BandsInTown since meeting them a few years ago in Boston at a TECH cocktail event. They have helped me to not miss my favorite bands when they come to town. I think SECWatch and LegalRiver are going to do great since they both seem to be fixing a problem that has not seen a lot of love from consumer facing apps in the past, so they have a pretty open field to grab online real-estate and mindshare. TapMetrics is going to help LOTS of iPhone app developers better understand the metrics side of the game, which will prove to be very important. KeepFu could be interesting if it helps to organize the apps I already use but I will have to test it out further to better understand the power of it. unblab is looking to help fix your email inbox and could be very popular especially if they are able to break into the enterprise space. I am looking forward to testing out the unblab iTriage iPhone application. Keen Guides has a very intriguing business around distributing audio and video tour guides which taps into the travel category and has a very passionate vision focused on helping those with disabilities.

For another take check out what TechCrunch had to say. Finally, it takes a lot courage, determination and drive to start and run your own business so congrats to all the startups and LaunchBox Digital on another great year!

Amazon To Acquire Zappos For $807 Million

Frank Gruber — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:53:19 PDT

I just got word that Amazon has acquired Zappos for over $800 Million. Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos just released a video sharing the Amazon story and mentions Zappos (above). Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the good news from his perspective too.

Zappos has been setting an example for companies to follow by putting customers first and embracing social media religiously to do so. CEO Tony Hsieh is a big Twitter user and you can follow him at @Zappos. This past year Zappos has also been on a mainstream media tear, sharing its culture and views on happiness along with selling LOTS of shoes and gear along the way.

Over the past year, I have worked with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh on a few occasions, co-hosting a CES Kickoff party in Vegas and I even got a suitcase from Zappos at SXSW. Not to mention, seeing him speak at SXSW and Startup2Startup among other industry events.

Showing our phones at CES Kickoff event. Photo by BrianSolis.com

Tony Hsieh and I at CES Kickoff event. Photo by BrianSolis.com

I am a big fan of Zappos and what CEO Tony Hsieh has been cultivating in Las Vegas sun. I am happy to see them going to Amazon as they have been on a collision course, taking on each other head-to-head. Zappos was turning into the new Amazon so it only makes sense for Amazon to take some action.

Congrats to Zappos and Tony Hsieh and to Amazon on getting such a solid company!