Facebook recently introduced the Timeline format for personal accounts, which organized users’ activity according to the time it took place. A similar format was then rolled out for business pages. The new Timeline can have a big impact on the way businesses manage their Facebook account. On March 30th, 2012, Timeline will be rolled out to all business pages…
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Looking for a new way to communicate with your friends, family, and customers? The just-launched DC-based startup RantRally is a social site that lets you record messages and quickly and easily share those messages with others. Your listeners will immediately know it’s you, providing an emotional connection and human element that text lacks. It’s super…
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What if understanding and analyzing your Wi-Fi network were as easy as pie? With MetaGeek’s latest innovation, it can be as easy as a pie chart. At next week’s Tech Cocktail Boise event, the MetaGeek team will be displaying their latest software development. Eye P.A. is an 802.11 packet capture visualization software designed for Wi-Fi professionals. Before…
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With Facebook having more than two and half times as many active users as there are people in the United States, there’s little reason for user anonymity these days, especially when it involves face-to-face interaction. Earlier this year we covered Uniiverse, an online marketplace for unique skills and services, which was built off of the similar premise:…
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Every startup pivots at least once during alpha or private beta to improve their concept and/or open up new markets or applications. This has certainly been the case for DC-based Restin Chairs, which was called Restin Digital when I first met co-founders Barry Womack and Frank Taylor last month. Their story is almost a perfect…
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You’ve built out a series of highly mood-dependent and situational music playlists. You have one for the gym, and you have separate ones for when you’re happy, sad, angry, drunk, and reflective. You’ve got one for when it’s raining. There’s another for Spring Break 2003 (“two trailer park girls go ’round the outside, ’round the…”). But…
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Babette Pepaj is an ex-reality show producer and now an organizer of all things food: Cupcake Camp in Los Angeles, food blogger conferences called TECHmunch, and food and recipe community BakeSpace. Still, Pepaj has seen a fair share of skepticism about the fairer sex: “I have found that a lot of people have strong assumptions…
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Fresh off their official launch at SXSW, where they were a showcased startup at our #StartupLife Celebration and competed in the SXSW Accelerator as 1 of 48 startups, Votifi is poised to have a very busy year. Launching during a roller coaster of a campaign season that is preceding a presidential election in the fall,…
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There’s a fine line between using someone’s personal data for good or evil, for their benefit or your bottom line. It’s a line that LoanTek founder, Adam Stein, is familiar with, and he continues to craft his service to stay on the right side of this line, so to speak. Stein’s service, which provides qualified…
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The ubiquitous online event planning tool Eventbrite has launched an At The Door Credit Card Reader for iPad, which basically turns an iPad into a mobile box office. It lets event organizers sell tickets and merchandise and track attendees; the goal is to better compete with Ticketmaster by providing a better, cheaper, and more flexible…
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As I discussed in one of my previous posts, social gaming is the current trend in video games. It is very interesting how more games are beginning to incorporate social gaming as part of their main mechanics (successful games such as Zynga’s Farmville or Lolapps’ Ravenwood Fair are the leaders in this space). For example,…
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Oftentimes we don’t find the business ideas, they find us. At least that was the case for Russ Whitney, Sawtooth Ideas founder and CEO. “I wasn’t looking for a business idea in woodworking, I just happened upon it.” After leaving his job at Microsoft in 2010, Whitney was looking for a business idea to pursue, but was…
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Trading portal 8 Securities launched in Hong Kong this Tuesday, backed by $8 million in funding. The TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing finalist has built a web app that makes trading social: you can read news and research right within the platform, trade stocks on Hong Kong and US exchanges (with a slightly high fee of $8.88…
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“What are you doing?” This was the simple question posed by Twitter back in its early days. Now with a roughly $8 billion valuation, turns out that was a very valuable question. There stands reason to believe that there is gold buried in the question of “what are you doing later?” - but as of…
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After 2 years of private beta with only an invite wall for a website, Venmo, a mobile payment app that I covered last August, went public yesterday. Thanks to a sometimes over-reliance on the lean startup model and its emphasis on launching an MVP no matter what, waiting 2 years to launch is very unusual…
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Venga spent 8 months “gold plating” their first product: an app for browsing nearby restaurant specials and events. It had the catchy feature names (like A List and Rutbuster), the exclusive deals, even a prize involving a Top Chef – and was available on iPhone, Android, and Blackberry all at once. But as Venga worked…
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Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
We are excited to announce the participating startups for Tech Cocktail's South by Southwest (SXSW) event: #Startuplife Celebration presented by .CO. It was one of... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More