The TechStars Network

Brightkite Featured on Andy Jordan’s Tech Diary (WSJ)

Brady Becker — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:12:28 GMT

We’re featured in the newest episode of Andy Jordan’s Tech Diary (Wall Street Journal)! The Brightkite coverage starts at about 2:00 and you can watch the video here. Special thanks to NYC Brightkite users @doctorklein, @OthatJo and @Santiaggo for taking part.

When is a Cow a Ham?

susie — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:04:58 GMT

When it’s Phoebe, one of the Brown Swiss cows that has the pleasure of calling Oakvale Farm home. According to Dena, part of the human family members who has called the area home since 1853, Phoebe is always hamming it up for the camera. We were excited to discover Oakvale Farm, where they make gouda by [...]

Webinar Series: Getting the most out of Filtrbox G2

ari — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:00:02 GMT

We are pleased to announce a new webinar series - “Getting the most out of Filtrbox G2″. Join us for our first webinar this Thursday at 11:00 AM MDT. Patrick Cameron of Filtrbox will run you through best practices, tips and tricks for fine-tuning your account and dialing in your Filtrs for maximum performance. [...]

Huge news! Limbo is joining forces with Brightkite

Brady Becker — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:04:27 GMT

Today we have some big news: we’re extremely pleased to announce that Limbo is joining forces with Brightkite! This is a big day for both companies and we couldn’t be more excited about what this means for the future of Brightkite. We know one of the biggest questions on your mind is “So what does this [...]

This Week on The Highway Girl: Rob Giles, Fred VonLohmann, Jeff Finlin & Industry Buzz!

cowbelltv — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:28:39 GMT

THG Musical Guest: Rob Giles I first heard about Rob Giles from my friend Noelle. She told me Rob’s voice pretty much kicked major ass–Noelle was right! Rob is one of those people who knows he’s good, but with a voice like that, he’d be a liar if he didn’t. It’s one of those deep down [...]

Calendar Subscriptions

Stephen — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:51:18 GMT

Your Calendar allows you to see a high-level overview of your tracking behavior, and it also allows you to schedule your Workouts and Meals if you are a PRO user. This PRO functionality has been greatly improved in a couple of ways. Calendar Subscriptions The new “Subscribe To My Calendar” feature allows you to subscribe to an ical [...]

Easter Butter Crunch Duckies and Eggs

susie — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:28:51 GMT

As if we weren’t addicted enough to p.o.p. candy’s nut butter crunch, we just learned about their Easter eggs and duckies, dipped in dark chocolate and sprinkled with colorful Easter flair. Buttery, sugary, chocolatey, nutty. What else could one want? Make sure to order today if you want it for Easter! (I almost avoided [...]

Super Cool

emily — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:51:09 GMT

What a cool feeling to pull up your RSS reading for the day, dive into one of your favorite blogs, and there’s an article about your business. And a great write-up at that! I’ve always been a fan of Cool Hunting and all the interesting products, people, businesses, you name it…that they dig up. Today they [...]

Enjoy My Husband’s Nuts

susie — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:03:59 GMT

I’ll start by saying I’m not married. It’s not MY husband’s nuts that I’m referring to (or inviting you to try). It’s someone else’s. And I do have permission to offer her husband’s nuts to you for snacking. In fact, they are available here on Foodzie. My Husband’s Nuts come to you courtesy of Jennifer Rogers Etcheverry, [...]

Daily Candy Baby!

emily — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:38:44 GMT

A big congrats to Nina from BonBonBar for the mention today in The Daily Candy Everywhere Weekend Edition! The marshmallow slab idea was totally out of the blue and not a usual seller for Nina. We love working closely with our producers to help make them superstars! Here’s how the idea came to be, with [...]

Mentions Are Now Replies

Lesley Yarbrough — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:07:09 GMT

Taking a cue from Twitter, we’re updating the Mentions feature and referring to it instead as Replies. When you click the Mentions Replies tab, you’ll see a list of all posts referencing your account with the @username convention only at the beginning of the post. What happens if someone mentions you anywhere else in the [...]

New Seasonal Products for Easter

emily — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:27:28 GMT

It’s fun to see what new products pop up around the seasons and holidays from our producers. One of the benefits of making food in small batches is the flexibility to experiment with new flavors. How about Bunny Bark with Pistachios & Figs or Almond Butter Cocoa Egg Truffles? Oh yum. You’re lucky we didn’t [...]

Twestival 2009: Sharing Music & Building Wells One Tweet at a Time

cowbelltv — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:35:43 GMT

charity: water, founded by Scott Harrison, is a non-profit organization founded in 2006 and focused on bringing clean, safe drinking water to developing nations. As of December of 2008, charity: water has 1,030 projects in 13 countries that included hand-dug wells, spring protections and rainwater harvesting schemes. When we heard about Twestival, a global online music [...]

Support Indie Music!

cowbelltv — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:12:58 GMT

Christopher Dallman, an artist who I’ve featured on my podcast, has a special offer that I thought members of The Highway Girl community would be interested in knowing about. In an effort to raise money for his new album, for one week only, you can purchase Christopher’s first album, Race the Light, for only $5! Christopher’s [...]

TouchTerm - The most useful iPhone app in my arsenal

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:07:48 GMT

A couple of months ago, I watched an ex-driver of the President mention that as the President’s driver, he had to keep track of all the outlets to the safe houses and hospitals while he was driving the Commander-In-Chief. I thought to myself, that’s what I do too, except, I have to keep track of all the [...]

7 Questions with Happy Girl Kitchen

emily — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:02:09 GMT

I never understood how high fructose corn syrup ever made its way into a bottle of ketchup (read Heinz). Thankfully there are food artisans out there that believe that the key to good ketchup is really good tomatoes not all the extra fillers. Happy Girl Kitchen is one of them, and their ketchup is killer. [...]

Marshmallow Chicks for the Artisan Food Lover

susie — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:30:29 GMT

When Allstar Organics joined Foodzie, it didn’t take long for us to wonder what would happen if we dunked BonBonBar’s Vanilla Marshmallows into Allstar Organics’ herbal sugars, in Lavender, Spearmint, and Rose (from their own garden’s flowers). And that’s how we came to ask Nina, owner of BonBonBar, to offer a big slab of vanilla [...]

Frequent Flyer Sues Continental

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:23:00 GMT

We’ve heard a lot of grumbling in response to the changes airlines are inflicting on their frequent flyer programs to make it more costly to redeem miles for award seats. But one guy took his frustrations to a whole new level by deciding to SUE Continental Airlines for failing to honor it’s OnePass frequent flyer program guidelines.

Apparently it all started when David Simon tried to book a flight between Cleveland and Los Angeles for 25,000 miles. The airline required him to either spend 50,000 miles to get the ticket or pay $75 for booking within three weeks of travel with a partner airline.

David filed a class-action lawsuit seeking compensatory and punitive damages for those who were charged more miles or fees for using Continental’s OnePass program.

I commend this guy for trying to stand up to the airlines, but I don’t think he’s got a case. Continental clearly states that it’s awards may be subject to capacity controls and are limited in availability - so just because some routes may be available for 25,000 miles, it doesn’t guarantee anything. Moreover, it lists the additional charges on it’s site for members who book award travel within 21 days of the departure date. All of the information was there if David had dug a little deeper.

I think the bigger issue here is how hard it continues to be for airlines to effectively communicate complex program guidelines to their members. I don’t think Continental was trying to deceive David, but perhaps if there had been a better way to share this information with him then he wouldn’t have ended up feeling so mistreated.

Until there is a better way (which we’re working on), it’s up to you to keep up with the news surrounding your loyalty programs. Here are a few tips to follow so you don’t end up frustrated and in court like David!

Set up news alerts with Google Alerts or (even better) Filtrbox, so information from your program is sent to your inbox each day. You can enter keywords such as the program or airline name, and you will be able to quickly scan updates about your program each day. This is also a great way to learn about bonus deals.
Engage in FlyerTalk, the largest frequent flyer online community in the world, with over 11 million posts! You can learn a lot from these fanatic elite travelers, as they post detailed information on everything you could ever want to know about programs, rules, deals, etc.
Visit your program’s sites. It’s all there and if you make an effort to stay informed about recent announcements, you will know when new fees are added or mile requirements change. Make sure you update your email and sign up to receive newsletters and other program information.

It will be interesting to see how the courts rule on this case. Good luck, David!

Lessons learned from our hiring process

Ben — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:41:07 GMT

We’re very happy to announce that we’ve had a great developer accept our offer to join our team. We’ll have more details on our newest team member soon. This was our first attempt at hiring and we certainly learned a lot. While our process has improved since we started, it’s still a work in progress. The first [...]

Lessons learned from our hiring process

Ben — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:41:07 GMT

Fresh Features

Stephen — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:08:24 GMT

1) New Challenges Challenges have become one of the most popular features on Gyminee, and they have really done a great job at helping people stay motivated and see results - users have recorded over 48,800 pounds lost in Weight Loss challenges to date. To help continue this trend, we have added some new styles of [...]

Weekend Food Shenanigans

emily — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:59:54 GMT

Lets see…what’s the easiest way to cram way too many calories into one afternoon? Chocolate Salon and Bacon Camp. This past Saturday, Susie and I hung out at the Chocolate Salon in San Francisco, an event where chocolate producers from across the country convene to show off their confections. I was surprised that by 10am there [...]

The death of the Rocky Mountain News, the rise of Filtrbox

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:38:10 GMT

Several weeks ago, while purchasing a commemorative copy of the Rocky Mountain News, I came to the realization that two distinct stories, symbolic of the shift in media landscape, were playing themselves out on both ends of US-36. In Denver, The Rocky Mountain News, a symbol of traditional mainstream media, was closing down after almost [...]

Watch Out TripAdvisor...Here Comes TravelPost!

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 12:17:00 GMT

TripAdvisor recently announced the launch of a flight metasearch engine, which effectively positions it directly in competition with Kayak. And from what we can tell, TripAdvisor is prepared to give Kayak a run for it’s money. Although the flight search product is still in beta, it flaunts several features that Kayak doesn’t already have, including a fee estimator that helps users determine the true costs of a particular fare. It calcualates the hidden costs of a fare after asking a few simple questions, such as how many bags you’ll be checking, if you’re a member of the frequent flyer program, or even if you’re going to splurge for an alcoholic bev on the plane (a rule of thumb I always follow). TripAdvisor also has the advantage of being MASSIVE, with over 8 million U.S. visitors a month.

As soon as TripAdvisor dropped it’s bombshell, rumors started flying that Kayak had a “competitive comparable” up it’s sleeve, which would be announced fairly quickly. Sure enough, last week Kayak detailed plans to relaunch TravelPost, a hotel review site that was part of the acquisition of Sidestep back in 2007.

We were excited to hear the news that Kayak is going head-to-head with TripAdvisor using the revamped TravelPost product. Why? Because our very own VP of Engineering, Jim Donohoe, was the lead developer on the site and worked closely with our friend Sam Shank, the founder and CEO of TravelPost, until it got acquired by Sidestep in 2006. Sam and Jim obviously did a lot of things right because they were able to top over 700K unique visitors, reach profitability, and build the second largest hotel reviews site on the web (behind TripAdvisor, obviously).

Kayak is applying the same metasearch model it uses to aggregate fare results from all over the web to expand the reach of TravelPost’s reviews. The site will relaunch this Tuesday, March 24th as a hotel search engine that will pull 1.4 million guest reviews from over 200 websites and room rates from five to ten websites. It will also allow users to search by demographic data so you get reviews back from people who are your age, share your same interests, etc. IMHO, this will be a huge advantage because it’s absolutely mind-numbing to sift through the hundreds of thousands of reviews on TripAdvisor without having a way to filter them out.

It will be interesting to see if Kayak can influence a shift in behavior, as most people habitually check TripAdvisor for reviews. However, we’ve seen the aggregator model work in fare searches, and Uptake’s strong executive team has already taken an solid stab at lodging and activities. Kayak entering the fray intensifies the battle for market share in an exciting space.

Check out Sam’s article for his two cents on the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead for Kayak in their quest to bring down the behemoth!

Opening Up the Debate with Facebook Connect!

mkoenig514 — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:50:42 GMT

That’s right, Facebook Connect is here! We’ve begun a limited roll-out of Facebook Connect. Leave a comment if you’re interested in getting in on the early action, and we’ll email you with some instructions. Don’t worry if you don’t hear from us immediately, we’ll get you in on the Facebook Connect goodness as soon as we [...]

Find the Foodzie SXSW Treats

susie — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:45:27 GMT

Austin may be miles away but the party in your mouth can live on. Here’s a quick reference to the sweet snacks you may have enjoyed at SXSW courtesy of Foodzie producers: Urban Smores: BonBonBar Marshmallows and Kika’s Treats Chocolate Grahams Perhaps one day people will wonder if the urban smore was an urban legend. But for [...]

Native iPhone App - Sneak Peek 2

Stephen — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 09:22:16 GMT

Here’s the second sneak peek at our upcoming native iPhone application. In this installment we’ll look at the BodyTracker, which allows you to keep track of things like your Body Weight, Body Fat %, Waist Size, etc. Important Info. at a Glance When you first pull up the BodyTracker, the most important information is immediately available. This [...]

Most popular places in Austin during SXSW

Brady Becker — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:10:21 GMT

Hello everyone. After a fun and sleep deprived week at SXSW Interactive we are back in the office and back to the grind stone. During the interactive festival it was great to finally put real faces to online avatars and meet a host of new friends (in this case, Foursquare founders Dennis and [...]

Attn CEO's: Jet Blue To The Rescue!

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:58:00 GMT

Jet Blue released a series of funny videos poking fun at CEOs for falling on hard times and having to trade in their cushy, private jets for travel with ‘regular people’ on commercial airlines. The videos are aimed directly at the CEO’s and are a mix of self-promotion (free snacks, leather seats, private entertainment system) and sattire (checking in is easier than writing off a toxic asset!)

I think this campaign is a pretty brilliant way to make light of an otherwise depressing economy right now and I hope people will appreciate their humor. I know I did.

Fish Is Good; Mercury Is Bad

Susan — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:10:29 GMT

There has been lots of great discussion on the Gyminee message boards recently about the importance of fish consumption and sources of inexpensive, quality protein. No big surprise that canned tuna, a long-time staple in the American diet, comes to mind in both instances. At first glance, canned tuna appears to be an ideal source of [...]

Learn About Moderation and Blacklisting

mkoenig514 — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:34:38 GMT

We’re kicking off a new series of blog posts that will reveiw some of our features that you might not know about. The first post in this series will review our moderation and blacklisting settings. Our moderation page is going through a redesign right now, but this will get you off the ground and familiar [...]

Filtrbox fan mail

ari — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:35:39 GMT

Today we received a special treat from one of our younger fans! It was too good not to share…

Going to SXSW? Join us at Colorado Interactive!

ari — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:35:46 GMT

Looking for a good time on Sunday night? Come join Filtrbox and other great Colorado companies at SXSW! What: Colorado Interactive party When: Sunday, March 15th 8:00 PM - 4:00 AM Where: Pure Volume Lounge - 229 East 2nd Street Why: Meet some good people, some cool companies and have a good time, on us! If you [...]

Use Brightkite in a creative way during SXSW and win!

Lesley Yarbrough — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:22:20 GMT

With SXSW finally upon us it’s time for the 10-day celebration to begin! From parties, to sessions, to shows, and more parties. Brightkite is the tool for locating your friends, meeting new people around you, and sharing your experiences with friends and followers around the world. The question now becomes how are YOU going to [...]

Filtrbox vs. RSS readers/aggregators

tom — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 02:45:35 GMT

We often get asked how Filtrbox is different from traditional RSS readers and aggregators. Here is a quick review of the major differences: Content Discovery When using traditional RSS aggregators, the user supplies the list of RSS feeds. This means that the domain of information gathered by a traditional RSS reader/aggregator is limited to the RSS feeds [...]

Downtime

mkoenig514 — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:09:21 GMT

IntenseDebate experienced some unplanned downtime earlier this evening. We have identified and corrected the issue and we’re back up. We’re happy to be back on schedule to deliver our next latest and greatest. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

Going or not going to SXSW, we’ve got you covered!

Lesley Yarbrough — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:11:54 GMT

We are thrilled to see that the Brightkite/DandyID Party at SXSW has received over 2300 RSVPs so far! Martin and Brady are definitely going to have their hands full while they’re down there, but it’s going to be a blast. Of course, this got us thinking, why should the people going to Austin have all the [...]

Delta & Midwest Link Frequent Flyer Programs, Pose Risk to AirTran?

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:55:00 GMT

Delta announced yesterday a new partnership with Midwest Airlines that will permit frequent flyers to earn or redeem miles through Delta SkyMiles, Midwest Miles and Northwest WorldPerks, due to the acquisition of NWA by Delta last October.

The partnership will benefit Midwest frequent flyers by giving them access to the largest flight network in the world. It will also expand the existing Midwest-Northwest airport club membership agreement to include Delta Sky Clubs.

It will be interesting to see what kind of competitive advantage this will give Midwest over AirTran, the other regional carrier that has been biting at Midwest’s heels since their hostile takeover bid in 2006. AirTran aggressively fought for ownership of Midwest’s Milwukee hub, increasing their bid several times from $78 million to $445 million - only to be rejected each time. Midwest ultimately managed to fend them off by selling to TPG Capital, a private equity fund, for $450 million in August 2007.

It’s been a rocky ride for Midwest since the sale, judging from announcements in September that it would shed most of it’s fleet and cut routes. AirTran has scrambled to fill the void by announcing the expansion of flights into Milwaukee by 40% and new service to Denver, Minneapolis, St. Louis and Branson, Mo. AirTran predicts their entrance will result in a fare drop by as much as 60% on some of the new routes. This will only add to the pain Midwest is already feeling.

However, this new partnership with Delta helps Midwest’s value propostion and may help them rebuild the small airline and secure Milwaukee once and for all. A Midwest spokesperson explained that Delta had a choice as to whether or not they wanted to partner with Midwest. “What makes this unique is that as Delta was acquiring Northwest they had to make new, separate decisions as to whether they wanted to be a partner with Midwest.” He says the carrier’s Milwaukee hub was part of the attraction. “We have a larger customer base here, so, in a way they are expressing optimism about the future success of the airline.”

Perhaps, but not if AirTran has anything to do with it!

New Stuff (And a PRO Coupon!)

Stephen — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:17:26 GMT

There were a few changes added over the weekend. In case you haven’t noticed them yet, here’s a brief overview of the highlights. Daily Actions When you visit your Locker Room you will now see three bright buttons. The purpose of adding these buttons is to make it very clear to users (especially new users) what the [...]

Introducing IntenseDebate Plugins: add the features you want!

mkoenig514 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:02:24 GMT

We’re extremely excited to introduce you to the future of commenting - today we launch IntenseDebate Plugins! We’re opening our doors and making our code available so you can build your own plugins! We’re kicking it off in style by launching a few plugins of our own to demonstrate the possibilities: PollDaddy: We love our fellow Automattic [...]

Managing Amazon EC2 with your iPhone

Dan — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:03:55 GMT

I wanted a quick way when out and about to easily manage our AWS EC2 instances while out and about. It hasn’t happened often, but occasionally I am away from the computer and I need to reboot the instances. Perhaps I remember our developer cluster isn’t being used and want to shut it down to [...]

Managing Amazon EC2 with your iPhone

Dan — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:03:55 GMT

Tour: Samantha Murphy & Dave Lowensohn

cowbelltv — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:37:58 GMT

Our very own Samantha Murphy is teaming up with Dave Lowensohn of Speechwriters LLC for a spring tour. The dynamic duo will be touring up and down the East Coast through all of April. If you’re interested in booking a house concert, let us know! Stay tuned for the complete list of tour date locations and [...]

VCIR Winter FiltrFeeds - grab them and watch the buzz

ari — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:38:46 GMT

I (Ari) am up at the VCIR Winter conference today along with a ton of great VCs and early-stage startups. We have set up two FiltrFeeds (those are the custom RSS feeds you can create in Filtrbox) to track the buzz from the conference. Grab these feeds and add them to your favorite reader or [...]

Travel in 2009: It's Not All Bad

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:12:00 GMT

The recession has certainly affected travel. But just what kind of influence are we talking about? Every day media reports that airlines continue to reduce routes and lay off employees, hotels clamber with dropping occupancy rates, and cruises continue to slash cabin prices to fill their ships. It’s easy to assume, given these facts, that people aren’t traveling anymore. But after taking a closer look, we’ve found that people just aren’t traveling THE SAME WAY anymore.

Let me explain.

Google and Compete just came out with a study that had some interesting findings for travel in 2009. They surveyed a sample of Compete consumers who had completed leisure travel in the past 6 months or planned to do so within the next 6 months.

One of the questions in the survey asked how much they planned on traveling for leisure in 2009. Surprisingly (to some), only 15% of the travelers surveyed said they were planning on cutting back on travel, and a much greater portion (85%) said they were planning on traveling the same or more this year.

So maybe it’s not a case of people not traveling period, but rather a behavioral shift that comes with a poor economy.

According to a recent report by the Associated Press, people are seeking out smaller, less expensive cities for destination travel and going back to the basics. So for instance, instead of taking a two week vacation to Europe or a 10 day ski trip to Aspen, families are seeking out National Parks and other more affordable, closer-to-home vacation spots.

Second tier cities like Tucson, AZ, Fort Myers, FL, and Charleston, SC are experiencing major growth as travelers take advantage of affordable domestic airfare and schedule shorter weekend trips. Many amusement parks are offering affordable family package deals that include accommodations, admission into park, and a free night’s stay.

In fact, travelers today are much more receptive to add ons, extras, or the use of awards/points/miles for travel. Value-adds will do a much better job of converting lookers into buyers when money is tight and travelers are looking for deals. In the Google survey, freebies, add-ons, and other non-rate incentives had wide appeal across the board.

In closing, it is clear that people will continue to travel - even in a bad economy. However, travel businesses that can adapt to their changing travel patterns in 2009 will emerge as leaders. There is still plenty of travel business to be had, it’s just becoming more important to understand your consumer and deliver deals that are in line with their new-found priorities and interests.

On The Bus: Martha Wainwright, Inara George & Michael Spiegelman (Yahoo! Music)

cowbelltv — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:37:02 GMT

Musical Guest: Martha Wainwright Martha is without a doubt the coolest artist I’ve had the pleasure of working with. She is real and honest and so incredibly talented. She’s got a powerhouse of a voice and she’s not afraid to tell the truth. Thanks to Jamie Jackson for making this interview happen. If you haven’t heard her new [...]

New Public Profiles & Comment Search!

mkoenig514 — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:40:34 GMT

We know we’ve been a little quiet lately - we’ve been hard at work in the lab. We’ve given the IntenseDebate back-end a huge overhaul, making IntenseDebate more scalable and stable than ever. Now we’ve set our sights on optimizing your commenting experience - exciting improvements are on the way! We’re kicking it off with swanky [...]

The future of pedestrian navigation

jeff — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:56:51 GMT

Today’s pedestrian navigation relies heavily on top-down maps, and hasn’t yet made the leap to 3D point-of-view navigation like many in-car systems have. A major reason for this is that GPS+compass navigation lacks the precision needed to create a compelling experience on a handheld device. Several meters and several degrees of error creates an unpleasant [...]

Link Delta/NWA...Get 500 Bonus Miles

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:56:00 GMT

As we near the end of February, I wanted to remind all of the Delta/Northwest frequent flyers that you need to link your accounts by March 15th to receive 500 bonus miles. You must be online to link your accounts and you need to have BOTH account numbers and BOTH pins to complete the process. NWA members should go here; Delta SkyMiles members can access their accounts here.

SkyMiles will be the program of record after the merger is complete. If you do nothing now, your WorldPerks miles will be converted to SkyMiles automatically by the end of 2009, although no firm date has been announced by either airline. In the meantime, you can use miles from each program and will continue to receive complimentary upgrades and other perks from both airlines.

Twitter posts now supported in the Brightkite Wall

Brady Becker — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:42:30 GMT

The Brightkite Wall just became a more flexible tool for exposing the entire backchannel of chatter that takes place at conferences, events and venues - We’ve added support for displaying Twitter tweets in the Wall. Twitter hashtags plus Brightkite location posts aggregated in to one “text-to-screen-like” display, perfect for your next event! For example, to [...]

360|iDev Conference

Lesley Yarbrough — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:34:56 GMT

We’re excited to announce Brightkite as an official media partner for the 360|iDev Conference. From 360 Conferences comes 360|iDev - the iPhone, iPod Touch developer conference that brings together the industry’s best speakers and sponsors under one roof! 360|iDev has lined up 40+ awesome sessions and assembled a variety of industry professionals with the goal of building [...]

More for less - we take the wraps off Filtrbox G2

pcameron — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:56:26 GMT

We also heard from dozens of businesses and individuals that the service was paying for itself by delivering crucial nuggets of information. We call this Proactive Market Intelligence and believe it is a significant departure from the traditional way of absorbing information. Instead of reading the same sources and hoping that you'll come across that must-know nugget of info, Filtrbox covers ALL sources (well, almost) and delivers the crucial information to you.

SXSW People Choice Award: Vote Early, Vote Often, Vote Brightkite!

Brady Becker — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 02:54:11 GMT

As we previously mentioned, Brightkite is a finalist in the South By Southwest Web Awards “Mobile” category, but with your help we also have a shot at the winning People’s Choice Award. Voting is easy and only takes 10 seconds. Visit the People’s Choice Awards website, enter your email and they send you a “pass [...]

Southwest No Longer a Family Airline

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:09:00 GMT

Our friends at Southwest went a little over the top last week (depending on who you ask), by plastering a full body shot of the Sports Illustrated cover model Bar Rafeli smack in the center of a Boeing 737 airplane.

All the guys are cheering and lining up to buy their next Southwest round-trip ticket, right? Hey, I don’t blame you. In all honesty, I think this is a compelling viral marketing tactic and applaud Southwest for their creativity…except for the fact that I distinctly remember covering another newsworthy Southwest decision on the TripDoor blog last year. For those of you who remember, the airline removed a 23-year old Hooter’s waitress from her seat and off the plane because they felt her clothing was too provocative for the traditionally ‘family airline.’ Huh. I wonder which one of Southwest’s perverted uncles thought up this little ploy.

You tell me: which situation would you prefer for your seven-year old to encounter as he boards the plane?

Native iPhone App - Sneak Peek 1

Stephen — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:15:40 GMT

We’re very excited to finally have something to show on our upcoming native iPhone application. In this sneak peek I’ll give an overview of the Nutrition section - which gives you the ability to track the foods you eat using Gyminee’s database of nearly 100,000 food items. Without further ado, here is a quick showcase [...]

Ask Adam: How Often Should I Stretch?

Adam — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:01:33 GMT

I have found that stretching is one of the most underrated forms of exercise there is. Even I used to scoff at the time put into lengthy stretching that I have seen people do. Only when I began to realize that my muscles were becoming too big, and I had a difficult time scratching my [...]

Boulder CTO January Lunch with Jud Valeski

Dan — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:40:04 GMT

The Boulder CTO Lunch meets once a month with a guest speaker and covers topics and questions that startup CTOs should find interesting. This month, the group had Jud Valeski, who is currently the CTO at Gnip. Prior to Gnip, Jud started his professional career in technology at IBM as a software developer. In the [...]

Boulder CTO January Lunch with Jud Valeski

Dan — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:40:04 GMT

Say what words can’t express - We’ve added Emoji support

Brady Becker — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 04:51:27 GMT

Sometimes its hard to find the right words to say to that special someone. This Valentine’s day we wanted to make it easier for you to openly express your feelings, say what words can’t, and give meaning to those inexpressible situations. We’re excited to announce Emoji support. Keep in mind, you can’t easily create Emojis [...]

Devver.net in closed beta!

Ben — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:19:10 GMT

Today we released the beta version of Devver.net to our initial set of users. This release is a major milestone: while our alpha release showed that the concept could work, it didn’t have the security or scalability for real-world use. This beta is a solid foundation for us to build on in the months ahead. We’re [...]

Devver.net in closed beta!

Ben — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:19:10 GMT

The Bright Side of Valentine's Day

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 13:14:00 GMT

Stumped on what to buy your Valentine for the romantic holiday this weekend? If you’re a frequent flyer, this day of love is also a way to rack up a few extra frequent flyer miles/points (finally, something to celebrate!)

For whatever reason, almost all of the major airline and hotel loyalty programs have partnered with florists to exchange bonus miles for every flower/gift purchase. Most of them award 25 miles for every dollar spent with the retailer!

To get started, go to the supplier site of the airline or hotel you wish to earn miles with and select a florist out of their partner network. Then go to the florist’s site and choose the flowers you’d like to send. Enter the promotional code and (in some cases) your frequent flyer number…and you are on your way to some easy mile accumulation!

Here are some of the current deals for VDay ‘09:

American’s AAdvantage program members can earn 25 miles for every $1 spent at 1-800-FLOWERS.COM through February 15. Use promotion code AAL48.
United’s Mileage Plus program is offering members that purchase flowers at FTD.com the opportunity to earn 25 miles per $1 spent, plus an extra 100 miles per order.
Southwest Rapid Rewards members can earn a half (0.5) credit on each order $34.95-$99.99 and 1 credit on each order $100 or more. Use promotion code: WNJ9CNS.
Frontier EarlyReturns Members can earn 25 miles for every $1 you spend between 1/15/2009-2/15/2009 at 1-800-Flowers.com. Remember to enter your EarlyReturns number and promo code F924 during checkout.
Hilton HHonors members are being offered 1,500 bonus points (triple the normal points) for purchases at either FTD.com or Teleflora.
Continental OnePass members can send flowers from 1-800-FLOWERS.COM and earn 25 OnePass miles for every $1 spent by using Promotion Code CNT9 at checkout. Offer expires Feb. 28, 2009.
A+ Rewards members can earn half a credit on every purchase from $34.95 to $49.99 and 1 credit on every purchase over $50.00 from Teleflora’s Flower Club. Just mention or type your A+ Rewards account number upon purchase.

TIP - you need to keep airline accounts active on average for twelve months, or else your miles/points are at risk of expiring. Buying flowers for miles is a great way to keep your account current and fend off impending mile expirations.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Let there be lots of love in the air (no pun intended) this weekend…. ☺

The Highway Girl Joins Forces with Twestival & Charity:Water

cowbelltv — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:07:32 GMT

Twestival.fm is a global online music project in association with Twestival aiming to raise money for new wells and clean drinking water for charity. On 12 February 2009, 200+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals bringing together local Twitter communities for an evening of fun as well as raising money and awareness for [...]

Samantha Murphy to Perform at 2009 Variety Telethon

cowbelltv — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:04:05 GMT

Samantha Murphy, the popular singer-songwriter and host of The Highway Girl, will join a cavalcade of celebrities that includes Olympic Gold Medalist Shawn Johnson, Emma Samms, Greg Hanna and Miss World Ksenia Sukhinova at the 23nd annual Variety Telethon. Variety the Children’s Charity is dedicated to promoting and protecting the health and well-being of children [...]

Facebook + Challenges = More Fun

Stephen — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:23:40 GMT

A cool new feature was added over this past weekend. Facebook provides some amazing tools that allow other web applications to integrate their site with facebook.com. We have started to take advantage of these tools and believe it will help users better share their fitness activity, and also begin to help solve the problems that [...]

MP3 of the Week: Samantha Murphy

cowbelltv — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 07:33:24 GMT

The Highway Girl Goes Mobile

cowbelltv — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:43:11 GMT

Thanks to the fine folks over at Tatango, we now have a quick and easy way for you to get the latest information about our upcoming tour, new webisodes and first dibs on our free MP3 of the Week–right on your very own mobile phone! How do you get all this good stuff? Simply text “SMTV” to [...]

MP3 of the Week: Evan McHugh

cowbelltv — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:53:53 GMT

This week’s guest on The Highway Girl is Evan McHugh. We are thrilled to share the single “Easy Enough” from his album “From the Second Chair” as our free MP3 of the week! Don’t forget, you can stream Evan’s entire album and see his interview with Samantha over on The Highway Girl.com! So go ahead, download some [...]

Pigeons Aren't a Carry-On

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:38:00 GMT

As many people know, the TravelFli team is spending the week in sunny Sunnyvale meeting with investors, partners, and mentors. There also happens to be a lot of travel news this week, so I’ve elected to provide a quick update on each story in the interest of time.

Better Bag Tags
I watched an interesting CNN report this morning from the hotel room. Today, United Airlines started testing new bag tags with their Mileage Plus frequent flyer program members. They are hoping the tags will reduce wait times and lines during check-in at airports.

Beta testers can check in online or at an airport kiosk and then drop their bags off at a specific destination. The tags, which are equipped with a radio frequency identification chip (RFID), will be scanned to verify the passenger’s identity. United hopes the tags will represent the next generation in how bags are checked in the airport. To participate, sign up at www.united.com.

Delta & NWA Merge Loyalty Programs
As of today, frequent flyer members can link accounts and transfer miles between Delta and NWA. Although the programs won’t completely merge until 2010, customers who link their accounts (on either delta.com or nwa.com) by March 15th will earn 500 bonus miles.

Is That A Pigeon, Or Are You Happy To See Me?
Completely unrelated to frequent flying, yet totally hilarious and worth writing about, an Australian returning from a trip to the Middle East was seized by customs officials for hiding a pigeon in an envelope on each lower leg using a pair of tights. The man violated Australia’s strict quarantine policies; which forbid the inportation of certain agricultural and produce products. He could be sentenced to 10 years in prison for this harebrained scheme. This reminds me of the time I was fined $200 at the New Zealand customs office for carrying an APPLE in my duffel bag from Australia. I can’t imagine what would have happened had I strapped a pair of birds to my legs…

That’s travel this week. Happy flying!

The High Fructose Corn Syrup Controversy

Susan — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:36:14 GMT

I find myself struggling lately with the High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) topic. Don’t get me wrong; I get that sugar is bad for a variety of reasons. I rarely, if ever, exceed more than 40 grams of sugar in a day. What I’ve been struggling with is whether or not HFCS is really any different [...]

Lijit Introduces IntenseDebate Comments In Search Results

mkoenig514 — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:12:30 GMT

We’re happy to report that Lijit has continued to help IntenseDebate with our mission to help bring your comments into the light. Now when you search using the Lijit search widget, you will see the number of comments along with the first couple of comments on the post brought up in the search results! We’re [...]

What do you Filtr?

pcameron — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:57:55 GMT

One of the most exciting things about working at Filtrbox is hearing new ways people are using our persistent search technology to make them more productive in their daily lives. We often hear of people using Filtrbox to track their brand or keep an eye on competitors and sales prospects but we also hear about [...]

Take a Cheap Flight...NOW!

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:23:19 GMT

Southwest Airlines started a massive airfare fire sale last week and most of the other U.S. based airlines scrambled to do the same in order to stay competitive. A weakened economy has reduced demand for travel and made it tougher for airlines to fill their seats. American, Continental, Delta, Jet Blue, Air Tran and U.S. Airways authorized dramatic cuts to their fares to match Southwest’s bargain fares, which start from $49 to $99 each way. United is still considering the fire sale, according to a spokesperson for the company.

For instance, here are a few sample round trip fares I found this morning out of Denver, Colorado:

Denver, CO to San Francisco, CA - $99 (American Airlines)
Denver, CO to Las Vegas, NV - $138 (Multiple Airlines)
Denver, CO to Miami, FL - $148 (Air Tran)

These competitive offers come after most of the airlines reported losses in the fourth quarter of 2008. American Airlines announced a loss of $214 million, or 77 cents a share. United Airlines lost $547 million, or about $4.22 per share. Delta reported a whopping loss of $1.4 billion, or $2.11 per share. Even Southwest reported it’s second consecutive losing quarter after being profitable for 69 of them!

Moral of the story: now is the time to take a weekend getaway!!!! Prices are super cheap and you also benefit from accumulating miles or credits against your elite ‘09 qualification. So go book a trip now! Ask your boss later…

Boulder CTO January Lunch with Sanjiv Bhargava

Dan — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:24:37 GMT

The Boulder CTO Lunch meets once a month with a guest speaker and covers topics and questions that startup CTOs should find interesting. This month, the group had Sanjiv Bhargava from StillSecure come talk with our group. Before becoming VP of product development at StillSecure, Sanjiv was VP of Technology at Symantec Corporation. Sanjiv was [...]

Boulder CTO January Lunch with Sanjiv Bhargava

Dan — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:24:37 GMT

RSS maintenance notification

ari — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:18:28 GMT

FiltrFeeds (custom RSS feeds) are down for maintenance for several hours as of 6 PM Mountain time, January 22nd. We are fixing an issue that was affecting some of the feeds. We’ll update this post as soon as they are back online. Thanks for your patience! The rest of the Filtrbox system is online. Update: FiltrFeeds are [...]

Twitter First To Report On Hudson Plane Crash

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:43:00 GMT

At this point I’m sure we’ve all heard about the US Airways flight that plummeted into the Hudson River last Thursday after it encountered a flock of birds that virtually collided with it’s twin engines. Fortunately nobody was injured on the plane and passengers were quickly boarded on rescue boats and taken to safety.

I think the bigger story behind this event was the role microblogging played in the aftermath. Minutes after the plane went down, the first report came from Jim Hanran (@manolantern) via his Twitter account. He tweeted, “I just watched a plane crash into the hudson riv in manhattan.” He followed the initial tweet up with a variety of updates, including, “There are people standing on the wings as the plane sits half submerged in the Hudson.”

Meanwhile Janis Krums posted one of the first pictures of the incident on Twitter via TwitPic with the tweet, “There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.”

Crazy, indeed. Particularly because mainstream media didn’t report the crash until fifteen minutes after Twitter users broke the news. The same instance occurred a couple of weeks ago when a Continental plane ran off the runway at DIA and @2drinksbehind provided the first report via Twitter: “Holy f**king shit I was just in a plane crash!” He continued to provide the attentive Twitterdom with a play-by-play account of his experience, even commenting on how unfair it was that he couldn’t get a drink in the Continental President’s club after the wreck. “You have your wits scared out of you, drag your butt out of a flaming ball of wreckage and you can’t even get a vodka-tonic. Boo.”

These two incidents demonstrate the growing importance of Twitter, and microblogging in general. It’s much easier to blast out a short blurb (140 characters or less) then to write a press release or prepare a newscast.

Twitter is also making it easy for travelers to get up-to-date information about travel conditions, weather, or anything they need to know. For instance @VegasCom allows you to tweet any question about Vegas and within an hour or so (even in the middle of the night) you’ll have an answer. They also feature a “Twitter Tuesday Trivia” where they ask the Twitterdom a question about Vegas and one in-state and one out-of-state winner receives a gift bag.

The airlines have gotten on board (no pun intended) the Twitter machine as well. @JetBlue encourages Twitter users to tweet questions and has an employee on duty at all times to answer them (Morgan is currently manning Twitter). @VirginAmerica tweets updates, sales promotions, and even announces it’s own bday to Twitter followers!

Twitter and other microblogging services are poised to have a huge impact on travel. If there’s one thing travelers need, it’s poignant, direct information on their travel happenings. The ability for Twitter to connect travelers with suppliers as well as with other fellow travelers could result in a more informed traveler and less stressful travel.

Follow me at @KristaPaul or @TravelFli.

Using Ruby to Send Update Emails to Our Mentors

Ben — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:46:30 GMT

At Devver.net, we send out weekly email updates to an awesome set of mentors. We do this for a number of reasons. First and foremost, we get valuable feedback and advice from our mentors on a variety of issues. But it’s also an easy and effective way to keep us on track and even maximize [...]

Using Ruby to Send Update Emails to Our Mentors

Ben — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:46:30 GMT

Coming To A Supermarket Near You

Susan — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:44:09 GMT

Over the next year you will start to see a new “number” in your grocery stores - the Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI). This new index is being marketed under the NuVal Nutritional Scoring System and was to have launched in three major US supermarket chains this past September, although I have not been able [...]

Techstars 2009 - Applications Open Today!

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 04:39:00 GMT

A year goes by quickly, especially if it happens to be ‘the year’ you get into the Techstars program. TravelFli was one of ten companies out of almost 400 applicants to be invited to come to Boulder (ok, ok, we were already here) to participate in the 2008 Techstars incubator program last summer.

The Techstars program is actually a seed stage fund that provides a modest amount of money (up to 18K in 2009) for the founders of the companies that get accepted – in exchange for a 6% equity stake. Some of the companies (like us) got caught up on these minor details because 15K for 5% (last year’s numbers) just didn’t seem make sense. If you are the founder of a company applying in 2009, DO NOT let this concern you. You will find, as did the class of 2008, that Techstars will be the best decision you ever made for your business… (other than to sell it, of course) ☺

Moving on…Techstars is 100% driven by the mentorships it helps cultivate over the summer. The whole program is built around the idea that if you surround yourself with people who have been there, done that — they can help you avoid making the same mistakes they did. And believe me, it works. The program is only two years old and already David Cohen, Brad Feld, and the others have assembled an amazing group of active mentors who are there to help you succeed. It’s freaking amazing. They are also happy to make introductions to venture capitalists, industry heavyweights, and other important people that would take a ‘normal entrepreneur’ years to meet – if ever.

Techstars 2009 applications open today! If you are considering applying, do it now. It may be the best decision you ever make. Apply early because the more face time you can get with David and the others, the better your chances of getting selected. The deadline for Summer 2009 is March 21st.

Here are a few other tips to keep in mind:

They focus heavily on the team when screening applicants. If your idea isn’t so hot but you have a passionate, diverse group of founders, there’s a good chance you’ll get in. If you’re riding solo, find a co-founder. Like yesterday.
Go attend a Techstars meetup. They’re being hosted in a bunch of different cities and you’ll get to meet David, Brad or Andrew and learn what it’s all about.
Follow everybody you can on Twitter and get acclimated with the Techstars community. Start with @Techstars, @bradfeld, @dgcohen23 and @andrewhyde and go from there. My user name is @kristapaul.
DO NOT MISS TECHSTARS FOR A DAY ON MARCH 3RD. Unless you are having triple bypass surgery or a baby, get to Boulder for this all-day meeting. You being there will demonstrate to David that you are serious about Techstars and ready to drop everything to commit three months of your life to the program…and the rest of your waking hours to your business! (P.S.You must apply by March 1st to get invited).
Introduce yourself to past Techstars co-founders. You can learn a lot from them/us and I don’t think my team utilized these connections as well as we could have.
They are not limiting the number of companies to 10 this year! They may take more…or less…depending on the strength of the applicants. This is even more of a reason to apply now if you’re serious about getting your business off the ground.

Get excited!!! Techstars changes lives and launches businesses. I can’t wait to see what this next year brings.

Here’s a little slideshow I put together of our experiences in 2008. Thanks to Andrew Hyde, Samantha Murphy, and all the other folks I nabbed pics from on Flickr.

What’s with the banner ads?

ari — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:37:22 GMT

You may have noticed banner ads in the header of your Daily Briefing emails from Filtrbox lately. We introduced these about a month ago and are now on our 3rd sponsor. We had a few reasons for doing this… Filtrbox Daily Briefing emails go out to thousands of professionals every day. These customized emails are widely [...]

Ruby people on Twitter

Dan — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:08:34 GMT

The Ruby community is always quickly moving, changing, and adopting new things. It is good to keep your ear to the ground so you can learn and adopt things that the community is finding really useful. There are a number of ways to do this, like watching the most popular Ruby projects on GitHub, most [...]

Ruby people on Twitter

Dan — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:08:34 GMT

The Future of Travel Meta Search

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:28:09 GMT

Online travel agencies (Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, etc.) have long had a stranglehold on travel distribution over the Web. Many airlines signed multi-year contracts with the large OTA’s mandating hefty commission fees for fares booked through OTA partner sites. These fees are in addition to the commissions airlines also must pay the Global Distribution Systems (i.e., Sabre, Amadeus, etc.) for providing the content and booking facilities.

As a result, the airlines have a love/hate relationship with the OTA’s. They appreciate the additional revenue these partnerships generate but also recognize that it is an expensive distribution option.

Enter Kayak. In the last year and a half this unassuming start up has become a force to be reckoned with after gobbling up its largest competitor, Sidestep- the company initially responsible for spearheading the meta-search concept.

Meta search does two things better than OTA’s:

It provides a greater scope in fare availability by not only aggregating the competing airline fares (OTA model), but also including fares from competing OTA’s.
Instead of fulfilling the actual booking on their site like an OTA does (with the help of a GDS), meta-search companies deep link directly with the supplier site (i.e., United Airlines, Expedia, etc.) to complete the transaction. This effectively cuts the GDS out of the sale.

Travel meta-search engines introduce a cost effective form of distribution for the airlines because they cut out the middleman and drive business directly to the airline site, where it can, in turn, push ancillary products and services, thus increasing the bottom line.

Dan Vorlage, our airline guru, predicted the rise of meta-search and the fall of traditional online travel agencies when we started researching our business model. Recent data seems to support his predictions. According to a December 2008 PhoCusWright study, 61% of online travel sales are now made directly at supplier sites, compared to 39% for online travel agencies. A portion of these sales are brought to the supplier sites by meta-search sites like Kayak, Sidestep, etc. This balance is expected to stay this way through 2010.

Travel meta-search sites are finding that they can more than make up for the reduced commissions from the airlines in advertising revenue. In fact, although the growth in non-travel advertising shrunk in 2008 from 21% CAGR to 10% CAGR, travel ecommerce remained steady and only slipped one percentage point (from 12% to 11%) in the first three quarters of 2008.

TravelFli is excited about the emergence of meta-search in the online travel industry and we think there is a lot of opportunity for new entrants, especially if they have a niche. ;)

I'll Take a Side of DIRECTV, Please

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:55:00 GMT

I’m reading a lot of blogs in 2009 about how fed up people are with the airlines. Let’s face it - the holidays were a nightmare for most of us. Although weather played a substantial role in all the hassles and delays, the airlines didn’t exactly help the situation. I was delayed on average three hours per segment before and after the holidays flying from Colorado to Fort Myers. Agents were brusque, unsympathetic, and sometimes downright mean. In fact, we showed up at the airport on January 2nd to drop off my brother’s girlfriend, only to find that her Delta flight had been canceled for ‘mechanical problems’ (gotta love that one). The agent at curbside check-in took a look at her ticket and sneered, “Flight’s canceled. You’re not getting out today. Try again tomorrow.” When we tried to inquire as to what the different options were to fly out that same day, he retorted, “You think you’ve got it bad—-I’m losing out on a bunch of tips.” Not exactly the poster child for stellar customer service, but what do I know?

Anyhow, rather than moaning and groaning about airline customer service follies, I’m going to talk about a change the airlines are starting to make to their pricing structures that could be a win-win for travelers and airlines alike.

Frontier recently announced a new flexible pricing structure called “AirFairs.” So next time you search for a flight on Frontier, you will be presented with three different options for booking your flight:

Economy: We’ll get you from point A to B, but don’t expect much else. Water? Cha ching. Seat Assignment? Pff…only 24 hours ahead. Checked bags? $15 for the first and $25 for the second. DIRECTV? Only in exchange for your credit card.
Classic: This is the best value, folks. Two complimentary checked bags! You get to choose your seat when you book (exit pleeease!!) You only have to pay $50 instead of $100 to change your ticket. Oh, and DIRECTV is free again. Phew.
Classic Plus: Fly like a king! Get all the classic benefits plus a fully refundable ticket, no change fees, complimentary snacks and premium beverages, good seats, and the kitchen sink.

Frontier also threw in a couple of bonuses for EarlyReturns members. First and foremost, you still get 100% of your mileage credit for choosing Economy, (i.e., being a miser). However, if you go up to Classic, your mileage credit increases to 150%, and if you GO BIG at the Classic Plus level, you get a whopping 200% credit! And if you’re an Ascent or Summit flyer, you’ll still get the advance seat assignment, priority boarding, bonus EarlyReturns mileage credit and free DIRECTV, regardless of your menu level.

I predict that all the other carriers in the U.S. will eventually go a la carte. Air Canada did it first and it’s been a success. American Airlines is saying they’ll introduce menu pricing this year. It’s now up to us to appreciate the transparency and enjoy the freedom to pay for what we want and leave out what we can live without.

Gone are the days where you get a thick blanket, a warm meal with real silverware, and a movie on every flight. Shed a tear and then get over it. ☺

All I want for the new year is HTML 5

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:27:57 GMT

While there have been many wishes and predictions for 2009, mine is simple, it’s HTML 5. The adoption of HTML 5 specs by browsers, rendering engines and content publishers in this coming year will make 2009 a good year for me. As I have written in the past (here and here), content extraction is an [...]

What A Year!

mkoenig514 — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:45:35 GMT

Heading into the New Year we can’t help but look back on this past year. To say it’s been an exciting year for IntenseDebate is an understatement! Our comment system has developed into a robust and sophisticated tool for building a community, increasing engagement, and giving sites a nice boost in page views. [...]

What Does 2009 Mean For The Airlines?

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:45:00 GMT

As we approach the end of 2008, I want to take a moment to reflect back on the year as it pertains to the airline industry and share some predictions for what 2009 has in store for them.

2008 was a rough year for the airlines. Eight of them went into bankruptcy protection and/or shut their doors. Fuel prices reached a record high of $145.85/barrel this summer. Since July, fuel has fallen 74%. Some airlines are now losing money on hedges because fuel prices have dropped more than expected. Like I said, it’s been a tough year.

But what does it all mean for 2009? Surprisingly, U.S. airlines might actually realize a tiny profit in 2009, assuming fuel prices remain relatively low (which they should, since a recession suppresses demand for oil). The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is predicting that North American airlines will turn a small profit in 2009 of about $300 million. This is obviously chump change for the cumulative U.S. airline industry, but compared to their prediction of a $2.5 billion loss for carriers worldwide—this is a cause for celebration!

Airlines will partially experience a negative impact from the recession, particularly those that specialize in leisure destinations or drive substantial business from the banking segments in New York City and London. On the flip side, airlines have had the uncanny knack for raising money amidst all the doom and gloom of this year. As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, Delta will receive $2 billion through 2010 in cash from it’s co-branded credit card partner, American Express, as part of their partnership (probably pre-purchasing a boat load of miles). Ditto for United and Chase Bank. American Airlines raised nearly $2 billion from stock sales and selling off a money-management unit. Southwest unloaded (either by selling or leasing back) 10 of its planes to the tune of $2 billion cash. Airlines are clearly trying to reinforce their cash reserves in case the recession has a big impact on sales or if the cost of fuel climbs back to mid-2008 levels.

The Journal pins low fuel costs as the reason “both investors and airline partners are betting the carriers will be able to generate positive cash flow even as travel demand falls in the recession. Some analysts expect U.S. carriers to be profitable next year, thanks to the cheaper fuel, shrinking route networks, and an influx of new revenue, such as fees for checked bags.”

The upside for travelers? The crappy economy may result in the airlines reducing fares on some routes. And we should see some bargains for International travel, particularly due to the new found strength of the U.S. dollar.

One thing is for sure: 2009 is gonna be interesting. :)

Have a Happy New Year!

RokIntenseDebate Comments On Joomla!

mkoenig514 — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 15:21:55 GMT

We’re excited to announce that you can now use IntenseDebate on Joomla powered sites! The credit goes to the team at RocketWerx who developed the RokIntenseDebate Comments plugin to easily allow integration of IntenseDebate comments in Joomla articles. Using the plugin: To use this plugin you must insert the {rokintensedebate} plugin text in the bottom of [...]

Composing 2D Similarity Transforms

jeff — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:15:06 GMT

Similarity transforms come up often in computer vision and gestural interfaces. The results below are a straightforward application of definitions, but didn’t come up in a quick web search, so I though they may be useful to document here on the blog. In 3×3 matrix form, a similarity transform parameterized by a scale, rotation, and translation [...]

WordPress Plugin v2.0.17

jonefox — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:37:48 GMT

Yet another revision of the IntenseDebate WordPress plugin is here. So what’s different? Quite a bit… The most notable change is in the initial registration. We’ve completely rebuilt the interface for initial registration of your blog with IntenseDebate to help make the process even easier and better explain what is happening during this one-time registration to [...]

186% Increase in Baggage Fees from Last Year

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:26:00 GMT

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported this week that the airline industry collected $349.8 million in excess baggage fees throughout the third quarter of 2008, up from $178.2 million in the second quarter and $122.4 million in third quarter last year. This is an increase of about $186%!

American, Delta and US Airways led the pack with fees reaching $164M, $116.5M and $93.3M, respectively. I have no idea why American has such a ridiculous lead on all the other airlines, but it many have something to do with the fact that they are still the largest airline in terms of passenger traffic, and were also the first to institute a fee of $15 for a first checked bag.

Other highlights of the report (or perhaps I should refer to them as lows) include the reported operating loss margin of 5.8% for six largest network airlines, which represents the fourth consecutive quarterly loss. Delta was the only airline to report an operating profit of 125M.

It appears that even given the dropping price of oil, airlines are still spending a large share of their operating expenses on fuel. On average, they spent 6.2 cents per available seat mile on fuel this quarter compared to 1.47 cents five years ago. The lowest unit costs were reported by Southwes t, Jet Blue and ExpressJet.

TravelFli Announces New Investment Center!

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:52:39 GMT

Over the last few months following TravelFli’s graduation from Techstars, we’ve had the opportunity to meet with some of the top venture capitalists from all over the United States, as well as many of the angel organizations and other ‘important’ people. :)

We’ve realized through this experience that it’s a challenge to keep all of these people as up-to-date as we would like because things happen so quickly.

Today we introduced a TravelFli Investment Center to all of our mentors and current /potential investors. It provides a cumulative assortment of all kinds of information related to our company including internal materials, recent announcements, industry opinions, a photo gallery (Krista’s idea) and third party due diligence.

We sent out invitations to all of the folks in our list, but if you didn’t receive one and would like to get access to the center, please comment in this blog or send Austin{at}travelfli.com an email.

New Twitter features

ari — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:30:20 GMT

In the past few weeks we’ve added two features to enhance our support of Twitter monitoring within Filtrbox. Tweet This - From within the dashboard, you can now tweet any article in your account. Just mouse over an article and you’ll see the new “tweet this” link on the action bar. This is a super-easy way [...]

Get Dead Sexy Hotel Deals on DealBase

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 09:53:00 GMT

The current economic downturn has provided another incentive for travelers to seek out the best deals to travel efficiently and save money. At the same time, there seems to be a new travel site launching every day of the week, and it’s tough to separate the wheat from the chafe. I feel strongly the sites that solve real-world problems will be the ones to survive this market and come out the real winners. That’s why I’d like to introduce the beta launch of Dealbase, a site that aggregates hotel deals from all over the web, including email newsletters. hotel offers, rewards programs, and online travel agencies. As of today, they are aggregating 12,176 deals from places all over the world! I was checking out the site for snowboard trips this winter and found some fantastic deals for places like Jackson Hole Wyoming, Beaver Creek Colorado, or Lake Tahoe California.

One of the best parts about the site is how easy it is to see how much money you’re actually saving on each deal. The Deal Analyzer gives you a snapshot of the regular room rates plus the value of any extra perks (such as meals, activities, etc.) and how it compares with your deal price. Savings are usually pretty impressive (oftentimes in the $250/night range) and you can book directly from the site.

Sam Shank is the CEO of DealBase, and he also founded TravelPost, which is the second largest hotel site on the web aside from the behemoth, TripAdvisor. TravelPost was acquired by Sidestep and is now part of Kayak. Sam clearly understands the hotel space and I’m glad he’s using his expertise to build us a tool for getting great hotel deals on DealBase. Check it out next time you’re in need of a vacation. Like now, right?

Boulder CTO December Lunch with Tim Wolters

Dan — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:50:30 GMT

The Boulder CTO Lunch meets once a month with a guest speaker and covers topics and questions that startup CTOs should find interesting. This month, the group had Tim Wolters from Collective Intellect come lead the discussion. Tim is a serial entrepreneur currently working on using artificial intelligence and semantic analysis to extract knowledge from [...]

Boulder CTO December Lunch with Tim Wolters

Dan — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:50:30 GMT

Installing and running git-svn on Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger

Dan — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:16:39 GMT

I am shocked at how much time it took me to get git-svn working on my mac. I use MacPorts, which works well most of the time. Sometimes it has problems which makes me really wish for apt-get on OS X. apt-get normally has worked much nicer for me, but can have its issues too. [...]

Installing and running git-svn on Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger

Dan — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:16:39 GMT

New Feature: Featured Artists

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:46:05 GMT

Several bands have asked how us how they can use their Facebook applications to promote their friends’ bands or other bands they really like. In response, we’ve added a section to the bottom of each Band’s Facebook application where a Band can pick upto 10 bands that they want to promote. If you have a friend who has a band, but doesn’t have an ArtistExploder Facebook application, send me an email: johann [at] artistexploder [dot] com.

IntenseDebate & Brightcove: Bringing Comment-Mojo to Video

mkoenig514 — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:37:12 GMT

With the launch of the Brightcove Alliance, IntenseDebate comments can now be added to any Brightcove video player. That’s right, we’re bringing the debate to video content across the Web. Brightcove is an online video platform that is used by media companies, businesses and organizations worldwide to publish and distribute video on the [...]

Revisiting additional Ruby Tools

Dan — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:01:51 GMT

I have heard about new Ruby tools since I did my Ruby Tools Roundup. I am always interested in tools that can help improve our code, so I had to check some of them out. Similar to my last tools post, I will be trying out a tool and writing my general impressions along with [...]

Revisiting additional Ruby Tools

Dan — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:01:51 GMT

A TechStars Summer

vikas — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:50:02 GMT

We had a great time this summer as one of the 10 companies that participated in TechStars. I took a lot of photos, and I finally got around to uploading them to the internets. However, these photos are a skewed view of TechStars because I mostly took photos when we weren’t working. So consider the [...]

George Clooney stars in "Up in the Air"

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:27:50 GMT

I very rarely have an excuse to talk about Hollywood in a blog that is reserved predominately for frequent flyer and airline news - but today is an exception. According to my sources in Hollywood (I cannot divulge their identities so don’t ask), George Clooney and Vera Farmiga are co-starring in “Up in the Air,” a screenplay adapted from Walter Kirn’s novel about an HR executive whose life falls apart as he flies obsessively to collect more miles in order reach the millionth mile mark. Farmiga plays a woman falling in love with Clooney as she runs into him in various airports and hotels across the country.

The film got picked up by Paramount Pictures and will start shooting in late February in St. Louis, Miami and Las Vegas.

We are excited that Paramount will be bringing frequent flyer miles to the forefront of the film industry. It will be interesting to see if this movie will help reinvigorate frequent flyers’ passion for their miles. And if there’s anybody who can incite passion, it’s George Clooney. Oooh la la!

TravelFli's Big Move

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:29:01 GMT

Travelfli’s blogs have been sporadic as of late because we have been busy MOVING into our new digs on The Hill in Boulder, Colorado. For those of you who are not familiar with Boulder, The Hill is a neighborhood across the street from C.U. campus that quite possibly has the largest concentration of pizza parlors, sandwich places, and drunken college students in the entire state of Colorado. Travelfli is proud to call The Hill our new home!!!

Our company is currently co-habiting in a building with several other businesses, some of which are owned by Austin Veith, a Travelfli co-founder. Other notable places of interest in our building include Sol Tanning Salon and Al’s Barber Shop, an upscale man-salon that always has a constant stream of patrons searching for a good haircut. As a matter of fact, Travelfli’s current offices were once-upon-a-time the launch pad for American Crew hair products, which eventually sold to Revlon for some ungodly amount of money (we assume) and went on to become a household name. This is just the kind of karma Travelfli is looking to submerse ourselves in!

We’ve turned the new office into a bit of a war room as of late, lined with butcher paper, sticky notes, circle stickers, and a number of other miscellaneous material we use to methodically lay out the future of Travelfli. It’s the perfect location to collaborate with the team or enjoy a nice iced Latte from Buchannan’s up the street (Sydney’s, this doesn’t mean we don’t miss you each and every day.)

Dan and Elliot in the “war room”

In any event, we are alive and well, and enjoying our new digs on The Hill. If you’re a Boulderite, please stop in (12th and Penn.) and we’ll treat you to a beer at The Sink. If you’re super important (like David Cohen), Austin will even come PICK YOU UP on his motorcycle and personally chauffer you to our humble abode.

Match made in Heaven?

Happy Turkey Day!

Time for an update…

Matt — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 11:52:08 GMT

It’s been a long time since we’ve posted on this blog. It’s been a long time since we’ve surfaced at all to let the world know what we’re doing. Our last post, “What the Heck Are We Up To?” explained some things, but some of that has changed in the last few months. One [...]

Android G1 hardware DOES support multi-touch

jeff — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:54:02 GMT

There has been a lot of uneducated speculation about whether the Android G1 could support multi-touch. I just came across this post by a smart guy who recompiled the synaptics touchscreen driver and got it to track two fingers. Bravo! No stupid YouTube video like previous attempts at proving this, just some clean console output [...]

Making the iPhone go faster

jeff — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:41:29 GMT

We need things to go fast. Really fast. So when came across Ryan Block’s old post about the iPhone’s vector floating-point coprocessor, I was encouraged. But how to access this new coprocessor? I was excited to find some examples on Matthias Grundmann and Wolfgang Engel’s Google code project, vfpmathlibrary. They’re just getting started and only have [...]

New Things On The Way

Jesse Tevelow — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:47:31 GMT

This is just a quick post to let everyone know that J-Squared has some new and exciting things on the way. We’ve been in development for several months on a very exciting new project. We’re excited to get it out to the public. It will likely be launching in early 2009. Happy holidays [...]

Mono: now with SIMD

jeff — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:20:11 GMT

I just came across Miguel de Icaza’s post about recent Mono performance enhancements. I’m very happy to see all of the innovation in the C# language by Microsoft (see C# 4.0), but the .NET runtime isn’t getting any faster, unless you’re a dynamic language guy. However, the Mono runtime is getting faster. They’ve got static compilation, [...]

Android performance 3: iPhone comparison

jeff — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:13:06 GMT

The internet is just incredible. Within 30 minutes of logging onto the #iphonedev IRC channel on freenode, I got timing results for the iPhone on the simple loop benchmark from my last post. Thanks to ‘august’ for the help. Here’s the benchmark converted into objective-C: NSDate *start = [NSDate date]; int arr[8*320*480]; for(int i = 0; i [...]

Android performance 2: Loop speed and the Dalvik VM

jeff — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:14:07 GMT

Let’s run a simple benchmark on the G1. I had noticed that Android was running on some Java virtual machine called Dalvik, but hadn’t given it much attention otherwise. It turns out to be pretty important, after all. As far as I can tell, Google decided it would be a good idea to favor a small [...]

Android performance 1: The G1

jeff — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:55:39 GMT

We are starting to develop on Android. The first Android device, of course, is the HTC/T-Mobile G1. We got one of the units this week, and I am just starting to look into exactly how fast the G1 runs. Performance is a hard thing to measure, but I wanted to start blogging [...]

Android spam: Faster than UPS

jeff — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:43:16 GMT

We decided to get an Android G1 phone for work, and it arrived today. I was excited that we had already received two text messages! But not so happy when we looked closer. One was a message from T-mobile, sent yesterday, telling us what the phone’s number was. Useful — timely. The [...]

Facebook applications move to PHP

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Over the next couple of days, we’ll be migrating all of our band’s Facebook applications from FLEX to PHP. This will greatly increase reliability and performance. We’ve also added a few features to keep in compliance with Facebook’s new rules like users have to opt in to receive notifications or to put a widget on their profile.

Let us know what you think of the new applications.

Yahoo! BOSS - the answer for web semantic analysis-based applications??

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:57:24 GMT

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Yahoo Open Hack Day at the Yahoo Campus in Sunnyvale, CA. At Open Hack Day, Yahoo opened up all their technologies for a few chosen hackers to play with and evaluate for a weekend. The technology that I was most interested in was BOSS (Build your Own [...]

Filtrbox vs. RSS readers/aggregators

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:28:55 GMT

(NOTE: This article was originally published at my old blog) One of the questions that I am often asked is how Filtrbox is different from traditional RSS readers and aggregators. The following are the major differences: Closed Search Domain vs. Open Search Domain When using traditional RSS aggregators, the user supplies the list of RSS feeds. This means [...]

Now on EC2

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Due to scaling concerns we’ve decided to switch our hosting to Amazon’s EC2. As we continue to grow, this will not only save us a lot of headache dealing with adding new web servers, but we expect this will also save us a lot of time.

What the heck are we up to?

Matt — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:02:07 GMT

So it’s been a little while since we announced the acquisition…and most likely, you might be wondering to yourself what is going on with SocialThing. Well, first off you might have noticed that I didn’t type a “!” there after “SocialThing” but I’ll get to that in a bit… Since the acquisition we’ve been busy, [...]

Ok, so yeah…it’s true! We got acquired…

Matt — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:31:18 GMT

You my have seen the rumors, the leaks, etc. and while we just had to sit here and watch it all go down, we wanted nothing more than to tell the entire world how excited we are. This post has been a long time coming and we’re very excited to say that we’re in the last [...]

Filtrbox releases the most granular Olympics content filtering widget yet

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:11:27 GMT

One of our favorite past times at Filtrbox is figuring out fun but useful things to do with our technology. So in an effort to showcase our robust content filtering technology, we decided to put together FREE widgets that can be used to track news on each member of Team USA as well as the [...]

Ping.fm, color coding and contact management oh my!

Matt — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:31:22 GMT

As we continue to crank along on some back end changes to make the Socialthing! experience even better, we decided to drop a few features that everyone out there can actually play with. So without further ado: Ping.fm We added Ping.fm support so that you can post to your Ping.fm account (and all the accounts you [...]

Some down time…

Matt — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:55:41 GMT

Hey everyone…we’re currently down for just a bit longer while we prep our feature release. We’re hoping to be back up sometime shortly…

Filtrbox is hiring

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:20:46 GMT

Java + LAMP Developer Join a dynamic, growing software company in Boulder, Colorado Basic requirements are: * Solid experience with Java and LAMP * System administration skills (a plus) * Working knowledge of Information Retrieval and/or NLP (a plus) * Must be energetic, motivated and creative Please send your resume to TOM AT FILTRBOX DOT COM NOTE: Prima Donna, high maintenance Rockstar developers, [...]

The Socialthing! Blog Introduces…

brianlburns — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:45:42 GMT

Me. My name is Brian Burns. I’m here as the newest (albeit minor member) of the Socialthing! team… helping them out with their blog. The idea is that, well, they’re busy. They’re busy pumping out new updates, and busy doing all the crazy things startups have to do at the tail end of private beta. [...]

This is the video that our good friends at Generation Think Tank...

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:49:01 GMT

http://blip.tv/file/get/Artistexploder-ArtistExploder368.flv

This is the video that our good friends at Generation Think Tank created for Artist Exploder. Its fantastic - we couldn’t be happier with their work!

New (old) feature! Twitter @replies and Directs

Matt — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:57:27 GMT

Hey everyone…just wanted to let you know that we’ve put @replies and Directs back into Socialthing! Head over to the “Settings” page, then navigate to your Twitter account and click “Settings”. The options should be right there… We’re for sure excited to have this functionality back in, as it was one of our favorite [...]

Just added Brightkite, Plurk, Seesmic, Guitar Hero and more!

Matt — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:59:10 GMT

Hey everyone…we just put up a new update that includes a few new services and a few new features… New services: Brightkite - A really awesome service where you share your location with your friends. Our integration means that you’ll be able to see what your friends are posting, where they’re checking in, and the notes [...]

Happy 4th of July!

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:00:00 GMT

The Artist Exploder team has some exciting things planned for the 4th of July! In addition to grilling some dogs and lighting some fireworks, we’re going to be launching a redesign of the site today!

Poke around, and let us know what you think - we’d love to hear your thoughts!

New feature: Keyboard Shortcuts

Matt — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 18:17:44 GMT

Hey everyone. We spent this entire week doing a whole bunch of optimizations and tweaks on our back end so that the platform is more stable and works quicker. We’ll be continuing to do optimizations in the coming weeks to be able to deliver updates faster, etc. But since we’re committed to bringing you [...]

ST! 2.0 Update - Fluid.app support and stability

Matt — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:56:25 GMT

Hey everyone, we just updated 2.0 with a few more features this afternoon, along with a few fixes for some stability. The centerpiece of our update today is expanded support for making Socialthing! into a Fluid App. Making ST! more compatible with some of the advanced features of Fluid means that we’re able to make [...]

Boulder city services Radiohead-style

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:55:31 GMT

This is a pic of the new “Hop 2 Chautauqua” route map that I took this morning at the bus stop on Pearl and 23rd.

Addicted to Facebook, music, or technology? Come join our team!

Wed, 14 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

So, we’re looking for a few good men (and women)!

Artist Exploder, located in Boulder, Colorado, and Los Angeles, California is looking to add to our team of creative and dedicated entrepreneurs. We are looking to hire people seeking a fun, close-knit, fast paced, competitive work environment. We offer competitive salaries, stock options, flexible work hours, and full health benefits.

To apply, please email your resume and cover letter to jobs [at] ArtistExploder.com

The following full-time positions are available both in Boulder, Colorado, and Los Angeles, California:

Lead Developer
Web Developer
Web Designer
Account Manager
Sales Representative

2008 Web Search is still in 1979

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:51:49 GMT

On Thursday (04/24/2008 ) last week, I had the privilege of talking to Dr. Jim Martin’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) graduate class, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, about the work that we are doing at Filtrbox and the role that current NLP students will play in the future of information technology. This blog [...]

Gospel Music Awards, here we come!

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:00:00 GMT

We’re really excited to announce that we’ll be promoting our new service for musical artists at the 2008 Gospel Music Awards’ “Music Week” in Nashville, Tennessee.

Its our first trip out to Nashville, so we’re really excited! Line dancing, country music, and bbq - who could ask for more!

During “Music Week”, Artist Exploder will be highlighting the success that “The Wrecking and their label, Chosen Records, have achieved by working with Artist Exploder.

The Wrecking is a really awesome band, with a quickly-growing fan base. In their own words:

“The Wrecking is defined by an unparalleled drive for what is deeper. Musically, emotionally, and spiritually this band communicates on a level that us undeniable. Commonly referred to as perfectionists in the obsessive pursuit of sonic excellence and explosive execution, The Wrecking has cultivated a truly unique sound that is readily accessible. Bi interlocking hook-driven rock with urban grooves and futuristic adventurism, The Wrecking has emerged from the East Coast music scene as a critically acclaimed powerhouse.”

We’ll let you all know how the GMAs are, and what we discover in Nashville!

Filtrbox is hiring

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:16:27 GMT

At Filtrbox we are looking for a Flex developer to join our team. If you meet the requirements below, send a resume to: TOM AT FILTRBOX DOT COM. *Working knowledge of Flex *Solid experience creating Web 2.0 UIs *Actionscript 2 or 3 (must be recent) *Flash 8 or 9 (must be recent) *RoR/PHP/CSS/javascript/java skills a plus *Must be energetic, motivated and [...]

1865

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:00:00 GMT

So, over here at Artist Exploder, we’re lucky enough to listen to a lot of great new artists. An artist we’re particularly excited about is the newest addition to the Artist Exploder roster, 1865.

In 1865’s own words:

“1865, the combination of melodically aggressive production and thought provoking lyrical content. 1865 is a dynamic act who appeals to those who find the likes of Wu-Tang Clan, Del the Funky Homosapien, Ras Kass, Outkast, The Sex Pistols, and Cutis Mayfield. 1865’s musical awareness began to bloom at the early age of eight through the medium of alto saxophone. Throughout the years he has accumulated the ability to create music from just about any tangible instrument. With his humble approach and hyper concentration, these accumulations were displayed when 1865 released his first studio album, Dark Matter, in July of 2007.”

Artist Exploder is coming...

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Artist Exploder is excited to announce that we’re launching a new service that will allow musical artists to virally promote their music and gain new fans on Facebook.

Our super cool, totally-proprietary technology allows artists’ biggest fans become their best promoters by giving them tools to easily recommend the artists’ music to their friends. Artist Exploder incentivizes artists’ fans to promote their music throughout Facebook.

Artist Exploder will be free for artists until they gain at least 20 fans. After that, its going to be $49.95 per month.

TechStars 2008

Jesse Tevelow — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:11:21 GMT

TechStars is open for business! Applications are now being accepted for the 2008 summer session. J-Squared got its start through the TechStars program and we highly recommend it to anyone interested in starting their own company. You’ll meet some very influential people, experience the beauty of Boulder Colorado, and give yourself a [...]

Hey, We’re Hiring. Work Here.

Jesse Tevelow — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:50:13 GMT

Here is our craigslist post. If you’re interested in social applications - this is the place to be. If not, maybe you know someone else who may be interested. We’re looking for Ruby Rockstars. Come talk to us.

Facebook “Advertising”

Jesse Tevelow — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 11:08:36 GMT

Tuesday, Facebook unveiled their new advertising program, Social Ads. We’ve placed ‘advertising’ in quotes because the term is changing. What is an ‘Ad’ exactly? Facebook is continuing to push the envelope in letting users decide what they want to consume through social interactions and trends versus strictly business-to-consumer solicitation. This is [...]

Open For Business

Jesse Tevelow — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:44:59 GMT

It’s now easy for us to answer the question: “How will you expand outside of Facebook?” From day one, J-Squared was confident that the market would be forced to follow Facebook in opening up their platforms. Google’s Open Social has validated our predictions. As part of Google’s initial beta-testing group for the Open Social API, [...]

BusinessWeek Profiles J-Squared

Jesse Tevelow — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 12:53:55 GMT

Today, J-Squared is the featured story in the Small Business section of BusinessWeek Online. You can read the story here. We’re happy to be featured in such a high-profile publication. The article mentions some exciting developments including some early investment information as well as our latest revenue projections. We also recently launched [...]

Widgets Abound

Jesse Tevelow — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:35:07 GMT

With the recent success of the Facebook platform and the surge of ‘third party developers’ into the market, the world of widgets is opening up. Everyone is excited about it, even Google apparently. This bodes well for J-Squared as we expand our products to other places on the web. We see [...]

Facebook’s New Metrics - Activity

Jesse Tevelow — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 02:51:53 GMT

Facebook has changed their rating system to rank applications based on their active users. However, many people don’t know what ‘active’ means according to Facebook. Here is an excerpt from their developer blog: “With a change this foundational to Facebook Platform’s measurement, we want to make sure that you completely understand how we will [...]

Investors, Presentations, and Products

Jesse Tevelow — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 15:35:53 GMT

We haven’t written a post in several days and we wanted to bring everyone back up to speed. About 2 weeks ago, J-Squared gave a presentation at the TechStars investor day event in Boulder, Colorado. Ten companies participated and about 150 investors, reporters, and tech enthusiasts attended. It was an all [...]

Lawsuit Fun

Jesse Tevelow — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:58:14 GMT

Recently, Facebook has faced two lawsuits, one from their old friends at ConnectU, and now another from Cross Atlantic Capital Partners. As the company’s profile has been continually raised by the media over the past few months, everyone seems to want a piece of the pie. What does this mean for Facebook developers? [...]

CenterNetworks Interview

A couple weeks ago Allen Stern from CenterNetworks came by Ignighter HQ to talk to Dan and me. Check out the conversation below:

RSVP for Ignighter’s NYC Valentine’s Day event Thursday 2/12

This Thursday we're hosting our Second Annual Valentine's Day Party. Last year's party was a blast and this year is on track to be even better. We have a professional photographer, a videographer, and most importantly a Free Open Bar! Everybody is invited to attend, but you MUST RSVP in order to get into the event. Go to http://ignighter.com/vday to RSVP.

Sex and the City Press Release

Ignighter.com Guys Dive into Sex and the City to Learn the Other Side NEW YORK, NY – (February 5, 2009) – Ignighter.com pioneered online group dating with its worldwide launch in August of 2008, setting the stage for a new paradigm in Internet matchmaking. The free service, aimed at 20-somethings and university students, allows groups of friends to collaborate on a profile page and then search their city for other groups that want to plan an offline date. Ignighter.com already has more than 25,000 members and continues to see rapid growth. As membership in New York City grows larger and larger, the founders, three men in their mid-twenties have decided that they need a way to connect on a deeper level to their female userbase. They see no better way than to sit down with all six seasons in the Sex and the City catalogue, the go-to text for young single women in New York. “My female roommate is always telling me that Carrie said this, or Charlotte did that,” said Adam Sachs, Ignighter co-founder. “And after I realize she’s not talking about a former classmate of ours, I’m stuck feeling completely left out.” Sick of being left out of every conversation with their female friends and feeling occasional disconnects from their female userbase, the founding team and their employees have decided to dedicate a weekend to watching the entire series of Sex and the City on DVD. “We want to do this right. Drinking cosmos is certainly not out of the question,” said Dan Osit, another co-founder. “It may sound funny, but this Sex and the City weekend is really about connecting with our female counterparts. And we think it’s going to work!” About Ignighter.com New York-based Ignighter.com (http://www.ignighter.com) is the worldwide leader in online group dating. The company launched its innovative online, group dating website in August 2008 and currently has over 25,000 registered users in more than 30 countries. Ignighter.com users create a group profile with their friends and then search their geographic area for another group with whom they plan an offline date that is safer, less awkward, and more fun. For more information about Ignighter.com contact: Adam Sachs (adam@ignighter.com)

Letterman’s Top 10 George W. Bush Moments

No matter your political affiliation, you have to find this pretty damn funny:

Applying to TechStars

TechStars applications are officially open and we encourage anyone with a young Startup looking to reach the next level to apply. I recently gave some advice on applying to Alex Lindahl at CollegeMogul.com. The bullet points were: 1. Have a working prototype 2. Have a strong team 3. Show passion 4. Demonstrate speed and work ethic 5. Have a story behind your idea Click here to read the full entry and see the details behind each point.

Some other dudes talk about Ignighter

Our friend Bambi Francisco of Vator.tv sat down with Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati, and Ezra Roizen to talk about Ignighter. They show a clip from our San Francisco TechStars presentation (we're forever grateful to Jason Mendelson, our friend and mentor, for being such a good sport) and then have a discussion about Ignighter that includes the question "Will group dating appeal to those over 30?". What are your thoughts on the topic? See this video on Vator.tv »

A Sex and the City Book Club on NBC!

At first we thought it was an alarming trend; many female profiles on Ignighter describe the group of friends as "The Sex and the City Girls". The profile anoints each member of the group as either a "Carrie", "Charlotte", "Miranda", or "Samantha". Seeing this commonality play out across female Ignighter groups from all corners of the U.S., we realized that if we didn't understand this crucial feminine text, we would never have a good grasp on the female perspective of sex and relationships. In an effort to fill this void in our relationship awareness, we started a Sex and the City Book (DVD) Club and invited a few of our buddies to join us. NBC heard about it and stopped by Dan's Upper West Side apartment to talk to us.

A/S/L Check - An Ignighter Interview Series - Hard Questions, Soft Bodies. #5

She's already been here for a couple weeks, but her employment really wasn't official until her A/S/L Check went up on the Ignighter blog. It is our pleasure to introduce the lovely and talented Ayca Aksu, Ignighter's newest Developer and Interaction Designer. Although we're still a young company, one aspect of company culture that we take very seriously is the nickname. We have a strict hiring policy at Ignighter: We only hire geniuses. And as a result, all of our nicknames include a reference to our genius...um...osity. When we first hired Nicky the combination of his youth and brilliance was so rare that he was quickly labeled Boy Genius . We called him B.G. for short until two syllables became one too many and he evolved into "Beege". As Beege's life-mentor, I naturally became "Meege" (Man Genius). Dan, being no slouch in the genius department, became "No Sleege" while Kevin became "Keege" (Kevin Genius) and Molly, in a gesture to her heritage, became "Heege" (Hebrew Genius). It must be noted that Kevin wasn't always Keege. Originally his nickname was based on the fact that he was a Real Genius, however it didn't take long until we started to feel alarmingly similar to Kelly Ripa every time we wanted to acknowledge him. Thus he became simply Keege. It may be hard to believe, but anyone who has spent a little time at Ignighter HQ knows that this is really the way it is. We actually call each other by these nicknames at all times. It's not to be funny, but rather it's a celebration of our genius...um...ness. We're a lot like Apple's Genius bar, just without the male ponytails. Ignighter: So with that overlong introduction in mind, Ayca (pronounced eye-cha), what would you like your Ignighter genius nickname to be? Ayca: Umm... How about Aych (eye-ch)? Ignighter: So Aycheege? Ayca: No, just Aych works for me. Ignighter: After all that? Just Aych? Ayca: After all what? I'm sorry, I haven't been paying attention. The truth is, you're kinda boring. Ignighter: So I've heard. Well Aych, let's get down to business. Ayca: 'Bout time. Ignighter: Hmmph. Where are you from Aycheege? Ayca: I was born in Rize. It is a small town by the Black Sea, in northeast Turkey. Ignighter: Do you have siblings? Ayca: I have a 27-year-old sister and a 20-year-old brother. My sister has the most awesome job. She is the third officer on a commercial ship, soon to be the second. My brother goes to college. His major is mining engineering. Ignighter: Your brother is a major minor? You don't hear that too often. Ayca: Are you doing more of your comedy? Ignighter: Sort of. Pressing on. What do you like to do in your free time? Ayca: I used to do scuba diving when I was in Turkey. I have more than 50 dives up to 150 feet. I am planning to go to Mexico for scuba diving next summer. I also love sculptures. I have been taking sculpture classes where we learn about formalizing our ideas. One of my favorite places in NYC is the Moma, I love going there once in a while. I also love reading science fiction, fantasy, and comic books. Ignighter: We're really excited to have you on the Ignighter team. What is your primary goal at Ignighter? Ayca: As a part of the Ignighter team, I very much look forward to seeing Ignighter become a successful product not just in terms of page views or revenue but also in terms of the whole user experience. Ignighter: OK if you're feling up to it, we'll get to the closing questions now. Ayca: Yeah, just hurry it up Sachs. Ignighter: Alright. What is your favorite word? Ayca: Penultimate. Ignighter: Least favorite word? Ayca: Abysmal. It reminds me of the GRE. Ignighter: And the penulatime question, favorite smell? Ayca: Lavender. I also like the smell of rain, especially on a dry summer night (but maybe that's too romantic. I am totally not romantic). Plus I have a soft spot for Gio, men's perfume, it smells soooo good. Ignighter: And now the final question to this abysmal interview, what historical figure would you most like to go on a date with? Ayca: I would like to go on a date with Picasso because he is a wonderful artist. Ignighter: Aych it's really been a pleasure. You've been an awesome addition to our genius team here and we know you're going to make an awesome contribution to the success of the company. Ayca: Are you still talking? I'm busy reading Jezebel.

An Open Letter To The Ladies On Valentine’s Day…From Some Dudes

Here's a piece I wrote that was featured on the Huffington Post today. You can see the original here: Ladies, we want you to know that Valentine's Day is the most confusing and frightening day of the year for men. We love you and our only intention is making this day special for you, or at the very least, not disappointing you. The problem is that the harder we try to make this day perfect, the wronger our instincts ultimately prove to be. If we were smart, we'd pull a George Costanza and recognize that "if every instinct we've ever had is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right." But instead of ditching the proverbial tuna on toast for "chicken salad, on rye, untoasted...and a cup of tea," we let our instincts guide us. This inevitably leads to disappointment and miscommunication in the triumvirate of Valentine's Day events: Dining, Gifting, and Romping. Dining For weeks leading up toe the big day we're scanning the Internet, looking for the most romantic restaurant in town. Worried that you'll think we copped out by discovering that we chose the number four restaurant in Zagat's list of Top 10 Romantic, we remember a special meal that we had in October that we paid a fortune for. You loved that meal (at least you said you did) and the vegetarianna that you are even ate red meat for the first time in seven years. We think, wow you really enjoyed that meal so much that you even made a dietary exception to get their namesake dish. This is going to be perfect. So we make the reservation, preparing to shell out another $300 for dinner and wine, make you close your eyes in the cab and when we get there, you're pissed. "Why are we at Peter Luger's on Valentine's Day?? Did you forget I'm a vegetarian?" FAIL. Gifting Giving VDay gifts to us is super easy. We like cool stuff. The Chumby you got us for our desk at work is the perfect Valentine's Day prezzie. For us, if a gift is romantic, in our heads that means it's not something we can use after tonight. If you want to give us something romantic, give us something cool. Because we like cool, practical gifts, we can't seem to shake the fact that you simply do not. For us, the gift giving is a source of extreme stress. They say that from great constraint comes great creativity. That couldn't not be more true in this case. Somebody once told us that being romantic means being a really good listener. With that in mind, we think back to different items you've recently mentioned wanting. High-waisted shorts? Yeah you've been dying for those. This is going to knock her socks off. We picture you talking to your friends on the fifteenth: Friend: He got you SHORTS?? You: Yes, but he overheard me say that I was browsing for high-waisted shorts online at work and he REMEMBERED! It's so romantic. Friend: OMG is he single?! Oh wait, he's your boyfriend. But that's not what happens. Instead, it goes like this: Friend: He got you SHORTS?? You: Yeah, he's a shmuck. Friend: Glad he's not my boyfriend. Romping If we've done even a passable job in the Dining and Gifting categories and we didn't get in a huge argument after dinner, this tends to be the time in the night where you Ladies start to feel the immense pressure that we've been feeling leading up to this day. You want to reward us, and in your heads, that means you have to use your memory and come up with something creative that we might like. So, you think back to that hungover brunch where we mentioned that we wanted to make love to the omelette we were eating and the next thing we know there are egg whites and feta joining us in the VDay sack and Philippe, the line cook, is standing in the corner over a griddle cooking up some hash browns. The truth is, we're simple creatures and really just enjoy the normal stuff that we do all the time. Sure, we'll occasionally make a "joke" about how we'd like to try a threesome and chuckle insincerely while we attempt to judge your reaction. But in reality we don't really need to stray to far from the routine to enjoy ourselves, so don't fret. ... With that, ladies, our hope is that on this Valentine's Day, you will try to believe that all of our actions leading up to now have been driven solely by love and the desire to please you. We want to create a flawless day for you because that is what you deserve. All we ask for in return is that you cut us some slack and enjoy your porterhouse.

Dutch Lovin’

There are two reasons why we love when international publications/blogs talk about Ignighter. 1. It gives us an excuse to Photoshop ourselves into other countries/cultures. 2. We get to use Babelfish or our bilingual friends to see what kinds of crazy translations come out of it. So far we've been featured in everything from Russian (here) to Chinese pieces (here and here). Here's a photo from our Shanghai Press Conference back in June: Well today we're covered by a Netherlands blogger who apparently thinks we're Canadian. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Here's a Dutch to English Babelfish translation of the post: Canada stands confessed as a social country. A good health care and a government who pieces less Right is oriented himself than those of neighbouring country the US. Logically that groepsdaten do it well in Canada. A group forty-five friends goes on step with another group willing bachelors. Of course was possible this already earlier, but the phenomenon has rapidly grown since the launching of groepsdatingsite Ignighter.com. While two groups of 45 friends on a date may make for a scheduling nightmare, the point remains the same: groepsdating is more fun! Here's a photo of the Ignighter team from our last trip to Holland (check out our clogs!):