Startups Archive

  • BASIS Files BBX Complaint Against RIM; Announces FoxPro Alternative

    Posted on October 26, 2011 | No Comments
    var AdBrite_Title_Color = '0000FF'; var AdBrite_Text_Color = '000000'; var AdBrite_Background_Color = 'FFFFFF'; var AdBrite_Border_Color = 'CCCCCC'; var AdBrite_URL_Color = '008000'; try{var AdBrite_Iframe=window.top!=window.self?2:1;var AdBrite_Referrer=document.referrer==''?document.location:document.referrer;AdBrite_Referrer=encodeURIComponent(AdBrite_Referrer);}catch(e){var AdBrite_Iframe='';var AdBrite_Referrer='';} document.write(String.fromCharCode(60,83,67,82,73,80,84));document.write(' src="http://ads.adbrite.com/mb/text_group.php?sid=2053203&zs=3436385f3630&ifr='+AdBrite_Iframe+'&ref='+AdBrite_Referrer+'" type="text/javascript">');document.write(String.fromCharCode(60,47,83,67,82,73,80,84,62)); ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–BASIS International Ltd. ...

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  • Pirq Meets Challenge from Bill Gates, Partnering with United Way of King County to Offer ‘Deals for Meals’

    Pirq Meets Challenge from Bill Gates, Partnering with United Way of King County to Offer ‘Deals for Meals’

    Posted on August 23, 2011 | No Comments
    var AdBrite_Title_Color = '0000FF'; var AdBrite_Text_Color = '000000'; var AdBrite_Background_Color = 'FFFFFF'; var AdBrite_Border_Color = 'CCCCCC'; var AdBrite_URL_Color = '008000'; try{var AdBrite_Iframe=window.top!=window.self?2:1;var AdBrite_Referrer=document.referrer==''?document.location:document.referrer;AdBrite_Referrer=encodeURIComponent(AdBrite_Referrer);}catch(e){var AdBrite_Iframe='';var AdBrite_Referrer='';} document.write(String.fromCharCode(60,83,67,82,73,80,84));document.write(' src="http://ads.adbrite.com/mb/text_group.php?sid=2053203&zs=3436385f3630&ifr='+AdBrite_Iframe+'&ref='+AdBrite_Referrer+'" type="text/javascript">');document.write(String.fromCharCode(60,47,83,67,82,73,80,84,62)); SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–PIRQ, a new 100% smart phone deal app and service, and the United ...

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  • iOS 4 Is Going To Up The Ante For Location-Based Startups

    iOS 4 Is Going To Up The Ante For Location-Based Startups

    Posted on June 14, 2010 | No Comments
    Yesterday, Robert Scoble wrote a post about "Foursquare's Yelp problem." It's an interesting read, with some good thoughts about how Foursquare can withstand feature-copying from a much larger rival. He asked for my thoughts, so I figured I'd jot some down here. Most importantly, his post got me thinking about the next phase of location, which I think we're just about to enter. First, Scoble's thought that Foursquare might be in trouble because Yelp copied its check-in badge idea seems a bit premature to me. It was a much bigger deal when they added the whole check-in concept back in January, but the fact that Foursquare has started growing faster than ever since that point shows they have an advantage over Yelp in the realm. That advantage is that they have a social graph built for location, Yelp does not (yet).

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  • Tech Tour: Cambridge Innovation Center

    Tech Tour: Cambridge Innovation Center

    Posted on March 6, 2010 | No Comments
    Located at the MIT-owned One Broadway Street building in Kendall Square, Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) houses more than 175 companies in over 100,000 square feet of office space and prices everything per person, so smaller companies can add more space as they grow. There are no long-term leases, either--it’s all month to month. I had a chance to take a tour with Cambridge Innovation Center CEO Tim Rowe.

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  • Microsoft: Too big for its own good?

    Microsoft: Too big for its own good?

    Posted on February 10, 2010 | No Comments
    There's an interesting and thought provoking essay at BetaNews by Joe Wilcox entitled "Why former employees say Microsoft can't innovate". It's a rather myopic examination of the middle-management woes and culture of job protectionism that is harming Microsoft's ability to truly create. Microsoft has grown a lot in the last couple years, and they're up to almost 100,000 employees now. Any company that size is going to face specific challenges, and they simply can't be as nimble as a three man startup in someone's garage. Also, the software they create is used and relied upon every day by some very important clients, so there's a natural amount of aversion to risk that should be prevalent in their culture. But has it gone too far?

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  • Real-Time Mobile Savings: Scoutmob Brings Local Deals to Your iPhone

    Real-Time Mobile Savings: Scoutmob Brings Local Deals to Your iPhone

    Posted on January 13, 2010 | No Comments
    Some mobile startups do something that can’t be done online. Others copy an online business and bring it to mobile. And then there are companies like Scoutmob [iTunes link]. They take a great online business and make it ten times better by allowing you to take advantage of the service on-the-go. Scoutmob is Woot on mobile, [...]

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  • From the 3G Industry Summit in Kunshan, China: 16 demos from Chinese mobile startups

    From the 3G Industry Summit in Kunshan, China: 16 demos from Chinese mobile startups

    Posted on October 24, 2009 | No Comments
    Earlier this week, I was in Kunshan, China, to attend the 3G Industry Summit [CN], a four-day event that has attracted a few dozen speakers and an audience of over 200 people, making it one of the biggest of its kind in this country. The annual event is organized by the Kunshan government and Mobile 2.0 Forum, a communication platform with more than 1,500 members, almost single-handedly run by industry veteran Leo Wang. The summit reassured me of one thing: The Chinese market for mobile hardware, software and contents is big already and it's bound to become huge in the very near future. Information and stats on China's mobile web sector and profiles of 16 Chinese mobile startups after the jump.

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  • A guide to Japan’s 32 best iPhone apps (all available in English)

    A guide to Japan’s 32 best iPhone apps (all available in English)

    Posted on September 6, 2009 | No Comments
    It's not really a secret that Japan is absolutely crazy about cell phones. And even though domestic makers churn out more than 100 different handsets every year (some of which are simply amazing), the iPhone is selling over here. SoftBank Mobile, the country's exclusive iPhone provider, doesn't release official data, but estimates put sales in Japan at well over one million units so far - not bad at all in this hopelessly over-saturated market. In other words, Japan doesn't hate the iPhone, as some blogs suggested in the past. It never did. The local developer community has noticed and produced a slew of apps aimed at a global audience. What follows is my subjective selection of the "best" of these made-in-Japan apps, all of which are at least available in English. (I left out iPhone games released by big companies such as Capcom, Konami, Sega or Namco to focus on apps created by startups or individuals based in Japan instead.) My personal favorite is a free (and fantastic) GPS-based photo sharing app called Memory Tree (just like all the apps in the following list, it works worldwide). But here's a round-up of all the 32 apps I chose, grouped in six categories (games, productivity, tools, photography and art, music, and everything else).

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  • Call without a SIM card with Cherry

    Call without a SIM card with Cherry

    Posted on July 5, 2009 | No Comments
    The chances of me being genuinely amazed at something I see a Belgian tech company achieve are rather slim. But occasionally, it happens. Last week I went to local entrepreneur meetup BetaGroup and saw five startups pitch their stuff to the 200-person audience. The last one to get its five minutes of fame was Cherry, a new mobile operator that promised to "revolutionize the telecom world". Needless to say, I was as curious as I was skeptical. Then the company's CEO got up on stage, introduced himself, took out his Nokia smartphone, called some random guy in the audience and had him call him back on his phone afterwards. Projecting his mobile phone screen on a bigger screen for everyone to see, he demonstrated how he didn't need to launch an application and just browsed his contact list to call the other person. Standard functionality, sure, but the cool part of it was the fact that the phone was lacking the presence of a SIM card, which is supposed to identify you as a subscriber of a telephony service.

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  • Meet Cherry, the unified Wi-Fi / GSM network operator that introduces automatic handover

    Meet Cherry, the unified Wi-Fi / GSM network operator that introduces automatic handover

    Posted on July 5, 2009 | No Comments
    The chances of me being genuinely amazed at something I see a Belgian tech company achieve are rather slim. But occasionally, it happens. Last week I went to local entrepreneur meetup BetaGroup and saw five startups pitch their stuff to the 200-headed audience. The last one to get its five minutes of fame was Cherry, a new mobile operator that promised to "revolutionize the telecom world". Needless to say, I was as curious as I was skeptical. Then the company's CEO got up on stage, introduced himself, took out his Nokia smartphone, called some random guy in the audience and had him call him back on his phone afterwards. Projecting his mobile phone screen on a bigger screen for everyone to see, he demonstrated how he didn't need to launch an application and just browsed his contact list to call the other person. Standard functionality, sure, but the cool part of it was the fact that the phone was lacking the presence of a SIM card, which is supposed to identify you as a subscriber of a telephony service.

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