Categorized: startups-apps
Just last week we covered Fantasy Politics, a game that takes fantasy football to a whole new level. Now we have Fanitics, a Facebook application that tracks presidential candidates, governors and Congressional members on metrics like media mentions, facts, fundraising, polling, bill tracking, Twitter followers, etc. It’s free to play and the rules are the…
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Categorized: startups-apps
It’s not uncommon for great product ideas to come from the university. The following story falls under this category. What makes this story interesting, however, is that the innovators aren’t the ones sitting in the lecture hall’s seats – they’re standing behind the podium. Arqball‘s co-founders, Jason Lawrence and Abhi Shelat, are both professors at the University of Virginia….
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Categorized: business
Startups use free advertising channels like social media to get the word out about their company, and their employees tend to be active and avid Twitter users. So do the standard intellectual property rules apply to Twitter? After all, how much trouble can you get into with 140 characters? Answer: A lot. You can even…
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Categorized: startups-apps
Pinterest has millions of users, and some of them are looking to make a profit. Sellers routinely use it to showcase their own items: they set up an Etsy shop, for example, then “pin” their products. But a new service called Pin2Sell makes selling on Pinterest even quicker. Pin2Sell users just upload a photo of…
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Categorized: business
If you are like me, you almost never have cash to pay the bill at a restaurant or elsewhere, but you ALWAYS have your mobile phone with you. So why is it that more people don’t use mobile phones to pay for transactions? Some answers were provided at the CTIA Wireless conference in New Orleans…
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Categorized: startups-apps
Following President Obama’s signing of the JOBS Act, startups are now waiting for the SEC to finalize crowdfunding regulations. But what if crowdfunding – of a sort – were already possible? The JOBS Act’s equity-based crowdfunding goes beyond the crowdfunding available on sites like Kickstarter, because investors can actually make a profit – not just…
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Categorized: interviews
After spending much of his career on the road while living in Chicago, serial entrepreneur Marc Kiven was excited to finally create a company, BrightTag, based in the Windy City. Leveraging his fifteen years of online marketing and advertising experience, BrightTag aims to help publishers of all kinds by creating a product that leads to real-time control over…
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Categorized: business
Today, Skype announced the launch of Skype in the Workspace, a new site to help startups, small businesses, and freelancers build their companies. According to Skype’s blog post, Skype in the Workspace will help businesses connect with customers, suppliers, and partners – as well as useful professional contacts – through messages, talk, and Skype. The…
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Categorized: entrepreneur
Last week we polled you, the Tech Cocktail reader, to find out who is Boston’s Hottest Startup. The tribe has spoken. And the winner is… Apptopia We last covered Apptopia, the marketplace for mobile app ownership, as a participating in the #Startuplife celebration at SXSW. At the time, they were three weeks shy of…
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Categorized: entrepreneur
A new Small Business Mobile Survey from Web.com found that 69% of small businesses say mobile marketing will be crucial to their growth in the next five years, while 64% plan to increase their investment in mobile marketing this year. Another survey by the Pew Internet Research found that 74% of smartphone owners use their…
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Categorized: interviews
Do you like to go to mall and shop for clothing so you look good? If you are like most men, you probably do not enjoy shopping and might think it is kind of a drag. That said, looking good can help you feel good, which should ultimately help you perform better in any line…
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Categorized: startups-apps
Each time you download a free app, 25 cents is donated to your favorite charity. A lot of startups try to do social good, but few are as simple as Apps for Action, an Android app that recommends apps to you. CEO and cofounder Cuy Sheffield sees it as a step up from the “slactivism”…
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Categorized: business
I know what you’re thinking. You are thinking there has been a lot of talk about women in venture capital, or rather, the lack of women in venture capital. You can read about it, here, here, here, and here. You can read the outrage about how there are only 5 women on Forbes’s Midas 100…
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Categorized: startups-apps
Two of the startups that were showcased at our SXSW #StartupLife Celebration this year; one launched a new app, and the other … launched. Personal released its iPhone app earlier this week, which joins their Android, web and mobile web apps to keep your private information private. If you have yet to try out Personal,…
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Categorized: startups-apps
I used to suffer from severe fantasy football addiction. I still do, I just used to, too. As someone who knows the compulsive qualities of fantasy sports first hand, there is a tendency to start seeing the world through the lens of occupational statistics. Watching Dancing with the Stars, listening to my favorite indie bands,…
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