Xconomy
If you’re like me, the biggest question about the iPhone 5 is how far you can dropkick it. Ditto the Nokia/Microsoft Lumia 820, the Motorola/Google Droid Razr M, the Kindle Fire HD…and pretty much every new device du jour. (I’m an equal-opportunity hater of screens—especially screens advertised...
With the new school year under way, I thought it’d be a good time to get to know one of the area’s newer educational organizations: Boston Startup School. As its name suggests, Boston Startup School offers classes to people from all walks of life who are interested in working at a startup...
We at Xconomy were extremely sad to learn that Dan Weinreb, well-known in Boston’s innovation scene as a computer geek, entrepreneur, prolific commentator on technology, and all around great guy, passed away earlier today after a long battle with cancer. Dan was also an angel investor in Xconomy...
Last summer, when Lexington, MA-based Wikets revealed via an SEC filing that it had raised $1.5 million in funding, its website said it was building technology for users to share ideas with people they trust. Late last week the startup announced an update to its now-live mobile social...
Which Boston startup provides you one stop (rental) shopping for Disney-princess-themed bouncy castles, boats for booze cruises, and even a Zoltar fortune-telling machine just like the one from the Tom Hanks movie Big? Rentabilities, the same guys who created all the Twitter fuss last fall with a pirate-themed...
If you’re worried about the decline of personal interactions, here’s a scary fact: 71 percent of teens prefer texting to phone calls. That’s what the founders of Boston-based Pingup tell me, citing the social media market research firm Lab 42. And that’s good news for them...
When Sravish Sridhar was graduating from UT Austin, he got an offer letter from a hot, mid-size software company. The firm even sent him a silver-plated pen from Tiffany & Co. to sign the letter. It was a nice touch, but Sridhar declined. Instead of taking the sure thing, he joined United Devices...
Mobile advertising is one of those tech areas that the average guy on the street might find boring. But it is quietly crucial to the way most of us interact with digital information and content—now, and (especially) in the future. Think of it this way: If mobile advertising fails to take off as an industry...
Big science and big technology work hand in hand. Without the World Wide Web, an idea conceived by scientists at CERN (the European Center for Nuclear Research), we wouldn’t have technologies people use every day, like social media, e-commerce, or Internet cat videos...
Any company that plays at the intersection of “big data” and “killing off Facebook” gets my attention. OK, the latter part isn’t really what Shareaholic is about, but the startup is trying to create a new kind of social graph that will rival Facebook in its reach and relevance for consumers, publishers, and...
Just past the midway point of 2012, let’s take stock of the Boston-area technology scene. Not just because we care about what’s happening in the local community (which we do), but because what’s happening in the local community could have a big impact on some of the most important sectors....
“Most of mobile right now is focused on trying to figure out where the whales are—the big dollar advertising,” says Jeffrey Peden. Seems to be an accurate statement, considering the big deal activity Boston has seen lately with major mobile advertising startups. Not the case with his Cambridge, MA-based...
A trio of Dartmouth MBAs are setting their sights on Boston as the starting point for their young Internet company. CoupFlip, whose Web service is open to the masses as of today, is creating a marketplace for consumers to buy and sell daily deals quickly and efficiently. Before you say...
Plexxi sounds like it might be a materials company. It’s not. But its name evokes the notions of flexibility and transparency.
Until today, Plexxi wasn’t saying anything about what it is or isn’t. The Nashua, NH-based startup, which also has an office in Cambridge, MA, took $28.5 million in funding from...
Don’t fret if you weren’t one of the 500 or so people registered for our XSITE conference yesterday. We’ve pulled together the top 10 quotes and takeaways from the program, and for those who learn by seeing, we’ve got a photo gallery too. Our theme for the day at Babson...
Whatever happened to Brightcove? You know, the Jeremy Allaire company known for developing a Web video-hosting platform and raising lots of money in the mid-to-late 2000s? Well, for starters, it went public in February with a $55 million IPO. That didn’t begin to match the $103 million it had...
Who will own the emerging tech-business field of “big data”? Answer: probably no one entity or geographical region. But the state of Massachusetts is putting its best foot forward this week, with an assist from Intel, MIT, and some local big-data leaders. Wednesday afternoon, at 2 pm...
TripAdvisor has been thinking about social technologies for a while now. Back in 2006, the Newton, MA-based Web company (NASDAQ: TRIP) rolled out a new social network, called Traveler Network, to help its users connect and share travel reviews with each other. The firm’s CEO and co-founder...
It’s been an eventful 24 hours for MIT. The university held the finale of its $100K Entrepreneurship Competition last night, naming CloudTop the grand prize winner. The company comes from the Web/IT track of the competition and is developing an application allowing users to access of all their online...
Lately there has been a lot of talk about education technology in these parts. For example, MIT and Harvard are about to put more classes online with their new, $60 million edX partnership. But are universities really taking advantage of the latest tech trends? Though they were early adopters of the Web...
Hospitals typically check patients in with one system, track their healthcare with another, and process insurance claims with yet another. Boston-based Kyruus is looking to pull together all these different data points and many more to help healthcare providers tackle patient care more efficiently...
There’s a matchmaking startup in town that’s in the midst of raising its Series A round. I’m not talking about an online dating service, though. “We’re like an eHarmony for study abroad programs,” says Mike Stone, co-founder and president of said startup, Abroad101. The Boston-based...
It’s amazing who you can run into just crossing the street around MIT. Yesterday morning, it was Silicon Valley legend Reid Hoffman (see photo below), the co-founder, executive chairman, and former CEO of LinkedIn, and now a partner at venture firm Greylock Partners...
It’s rare that chips and salsa lead to a startup funding deal. But this isn’t your average startup, and I’m not talking about the usual kind of chips and salsa. CoolChip Technologies, a Boston-area tech startup looking to make data centers more energy-efficient, raised $500,000 in seed funding...
It’s not often that you hear an entrepreneur say his business grew through the real estate crash and economic downturn. But that’s indeed the case with Buildium, a Boston-based, maker of online software enabling landlords and small property managers to track rent payments, receive maintenance...
If the Internet needs a plumber, Jeremy Hitchcock is your man. It’s not sexy, it’s not glamorous, but as they say, someone’s got to do it. And if that someone does it right, well, he can build a very profitable, 150-person company right here in the great Northeast. That company would...
Daily deals are dead. Long live daily deals. But out of the ashes of all the Groupon clones—and a few niche deals sites notwithstanding—who will rise up and actually solve the online marketing problem for small businesses? “That’s our goal,” says Ben Jabbawy, the founder and CEO of Boston-based Privy...
Please, Lord, not another social-networking app that helps you connect with 500 more people you don’t actually want to talk to. Or that adds yet more information overload to your life. OK, since it’s Matt Cutler and Dave Greenstein, the former NetGenesis guys, let’s take a closer look. Their free mobile app
Local startup Visual IQ‘s story begins with co-founder Manu Mathew’s frustrations as a marketer trying to understand how to best spend an advertising budget. He left his job managing the Boston office of the ad firm Carat to take “that marketer’s problem and turn it into a technology, data-driven...
What’s Facebook’s mobile strategy going to be? How are brands going to take advantage of the mobile medium? These are some of the biggest outstanding questions in the tech-business arena. We’re getting a glimpse of some of the answers this week—and a Boston startup is directly involved in...