TECHdotMN: News about Minnesota Startups

By Steve Borsch, Minnov8

“It’s not often one meets an entrepreneur who embodies all the elements for a successful venture: a great idea backed up by patents; surrounded himself with a team who will ensure that the idea gets executed; persuaded key players who understand and have contacts and a strategic view of the industries (and how to align incentives within it) to join his board of directors; and exquisite timing by entering at the moment the TV, movies and music businesses are in such huge flux that no one can predict who will win the hearts and minds of the consumer. CRAM™ Worldwide is the company and Daren Klum that entrepreneur.”

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By Steve Borsch, Minnov8

“If you collaborate with others on contracts, agreements, leases, press releases, copy for your website, or any other activity where multiple people have to touch an electronic document, you know all too well the incredible frustration that results from trying to track changes to any of it! Redliner is a new offering, still in beta, that not only eliminates that frustration but does so with enough unique aspects that you’ll likely stop using Google Docs, emailed Word .docs or other means to collaborate with clients or colleagues.”

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By Steve Borsch, Minnov8

“One of the most challenging things to do as a startup, entrepreneur, or any leader looking to manifest a vision or outcome in software, is finding a trusted partner with whom to turn that vision in to reality. MentorMate, a mobile, application & web software development company in Minneapolis, does this sort of work all the time and might be a firm you’ve never heard of before!”

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By Steve Borsch, Minnov8

“Last night’s turnout at the James J. Hill Library for the Minnesota Cup Semifinalist kickoff was impressive and quite large for an event of its kind. In attendance were 125-140 entrepreneurs, investors, sponsors, MN Cup judges and those of us covering the event (Minnov8 and tech.mn) as well as the people who were the entire reason for the kickoff itself: the semifinalists.”

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By Steve Borsch, Minnov8

“The team at Rochester, MN-based DoApp just announced their new iKenex real estate platform built in collaboration with California MLS software firm Concentric Mobile. iKenex brings all the real estate data a realtor or buyer would ever need to their preferred mobile smartphone device, whether it is an iPhone, iPad, Android or Blackberry. Taking advantage of the mobile device’s built-in Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology, the iKenex app pinpoints where you are and delivers a home’s complete listing details in seconds.”

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By Steve Borsch, Minnov8

“While running strategic alliances at Lawson Software back in 2005, I met a woman named Catherine Settanni who was actively involved in digital literacy and a true advocate for ensuring that as many people as possible had access to the internet. Her leadership in the AmeriCorps Community Techology Empowerment Project  (C-CAN) and its focused community outreach effort (the Digital Access Project) led her to a deep involvement in the Wireless Minneapolis effort to saturate the city with Wifi, bringing about one aspect to the internet access the other programs were intent on delivering.”

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By Steve Borsch, Minnov8

“ReliaCloud, our own local (but national) cloud computing infrastructure company, has launched a full fledged channel program centered on their enterprise-class infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud computing offering.

According to Reliacloud, the five year growth outlook for IT cloud services revenue from 2009 to 2013 remains strong, with an annual growth rate of 26% – over six times the rate of traditional IT offerings (IDC, September 2009).”

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By Steve Borsch, Minnov8

“Local developers of apps for mobile devices, especially those designed for Apple’s platform, are quietly amassing large numbers of users for their creations, I’ve been learning.

This past week, I thought it would be an interesting little project for me to do a survey of sorts as the basis for this blog post. What I did (totally unscientific, I admit) was ask all the Twin Cities-area mobile developers I happened to know just how many apps they have on the two major platforms, Apple and Android, and how many users have downloaded their apps to date.  It turned into a bigger project than I thought!  It required a lot of back-and-forth emails to clarify all their current offerings.  But I’ve sorted it all out as best I can, and you’ll see the results of that survey in the second half of this post.”

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By Steve Borsch, Minnov8

“DoApp Inc., the Rochester-based mobile development company behind such apps as WCCO for iPhone, Mobile Local News, iKenex for Real Estate, Adagogo mobile advertising, and mRemedy, a partnership between The Mayo Clinic and DoApp, just nnounced their Mobile Local News publishing platform has signed the Los Angeles Newspaper Group (LANG). LANG properties include: Los Angeles Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Los Angeles City Guide (LA.com) and seven more properties.”

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By Steve Borsch, Minnov8

“People in Twin Cities social media circles got a sneak peek at WCCO’s The Wire last October and its promise looked intriguing. We here at Minnov8 were particularly pleased to see John Daenzer and crew be so bold and embracing risk as it pertains to delivering news in an increasingly changing (and fragmented) media landscape. From what we can see, it looks like the experiment is off to a very strong start.”

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