emerging technology : Buzz

Tech.mn reports that Minnesota won both the Internet and software categories at a Midwest startup competition last weekend.

The companies, Adaptiveportal and Gimigo, won five minutes of pitch time at the the TiEcon 2010 Midwest event in Detroit. Adaptiveportal is a web-application platform and Gimigo is a service for managing personal information.

TECH.mn's Lauren Melcher spoke with the Minnesota High Tech Association's incoming president and CEO, Margaret Anderson Kelliher. The onetime candidate for governor will finish her term as Speaker of the House in December and officially begin her job with the association in January.

"We have a great history of innovation in this state, as well as the ability to sell that creative environment," Kelliher tells Tech.mn. "We also have quite strong link to the beginning of the computer industry, and we have the opportunity to both build off of that and go farther than we have in the past."

Other topics covered in the Q&A interview: startups, the digital divide, STEM education, and the gender imbalance in those career fields.

City Pages has the story of how the proprietors of a local music studio saw the writing on the wall and decided to embrace new technology rather than hope it went away.

Or in their words:

"We just put our big-boy pants on and moved on to something else, instead of sitting in the corner muttering under our breaths about these youngsters with their flying machines."

Matthew Foust and Evan Olcott co-founded Integral Studio in 2000. Soon after that they started developing recording and other music-related software and founded Audiofile Engineering.

Those development skills have since become in demand, as City Pages explains.

The Twin Cities earned only a middling rank in a recent survey of the most active metros on Twitter. But there is a growing community of businesses reaching out to customers via social media, as highlighted by About.com:

"A recent report from NetProspex ranks Minneapolis/St. Paul as the country's 21th most active city for Twitter for professionals, and 23th for businesses.

"With free messages delivered instantly to customers, it's natural that independent businesses in Minneapolis have got behind Twitter in a big way.  And there's advantages to following your favorite businesses--be first to know of events, enter competitions, and get special offers and freebies, just for Twitter followers. ...

"Wondering what time to show up for the show? First Avenue tweets set times, and just before the show starts, win a free upgrade to a VIP table--if you are in the building and following their Twitter feed. The Varsity Theater announces shows and gives away tickets, and when Lady Gaga dropped into the Turf Club after her show here last month, the only way you'd have known about it was from Twitter."

Read the entire article here.

"Spiritual leader of 25,000 geeks." "Marketing genius." Now add CTO to those titles.

Tech blogger/consultant Graeme Thickens met up with Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens to talk about his new role as Best Buy's chief technology officer.

There wasn't any press release about the promotion. Stephens said he's rather have recognition when he has some results to talk about.

Find the 21-minute audio recording over at Thickens' blog.

Tech.mn has a round-up of Minnesota technology companies that made this year's Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing U.S. privately held companies. They count 20 product-based companies and another 15 in the "IT Services/Consulting" category.

Jobs2Web tops the list at No. 226. The Minnetonka company makes an online tool to help companies recruit employees. Others include Quantum Retail of Minneapolis, Lakeville-based ImageTrend, and EAC Product Development Solutions in Burnsville.

MedCityNews' Thomas Lee concludes that Minnesota's angel investor tax credit is performing "exceedingly well" through its first month. The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development awarded $573,000 in the past month. That puts the state on pace to award about $6 million over 12 months--less than the $11 million allocated for the credit this year but encouraging considering the climate.

Minneapolis-based DoApp is included in a Mashable list of startups by former Google employees. Joe Sriver was Google's first user interface designer before he founded DoApp, which, as the blog notes, is the creator of the Whoopie Cushion App, among others. The company has also developed a product to help news organizations create custom mobile apps.

A Minneapolis startup was spotlighted this week as one of the most promising solar-biofuels projects.

BioCee, a University of Minnesota spin-off we reported on earlier this month, was included this week on a list of the Top Ten Solar Biofuels Projects by Biofuels Digest, a website and newsletter.

The company is developing a method for converting sunlight, water and CO  into liquid transportation fuels. Its technology is a thin latex coating that contains living microorganisms that serve as biocatalysts.

"It is a fascinating technology, which immobilizes living, biologically active microorganisms in thin latex coatings, represent[ing] a paradigm shift in how living microorganisms are used as biocatalyst," local cleantech attorney Todd Taylor tells the publication.

Biofuels Digest says the use of solar to create biofuels is one of the most overlooked stories of the year.

Jeff Pesek at Tech.mn checked in with Shane Reiser, who is organizing Startup Weekend in the Twin Cities Sept. 17-19. The event challenges up to 100 participants to build a startup in 54 hours.

Speakers confirmed so far include Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens, Jon Dahl, co-founder of Zencoder, and MixMobi co-founder Lisa Foote (whom we checked in with a few weeks ago.)

Reiser tells Tech.mn that he's seeing more early interest in Startup Weekend in the Twin Cities than any other city where he's organized the events, including New York City.

More details over at Tech.mn.

On the third anniversary of the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, CNN takes a look at its high-tech replacement:

"The new bridge, completed in September 2008, is expected to stand for 100 years.

"Three-hundred-twenty-three high-technology sensors dot the structure, spitting out a constant stream of data regularly analyzed by engineers at nearby University of Minnesota.

"At a total cost of about $1 million including wire connections and power sources, the sensors don't eliminate the need for visual inspections, but they do provide an extra layer of maintenance security.

"The sensors monitor corrosion, stress and the movement of the bridge from the constant traffic.

"'The fiber-optic strain gauge technology is fairly cutting edge,' said Phipps. 'A tiny beam of light is used to measure very small differences in the movement of the bridge when vehicles pass over.'"

Read the full article here.

The University of Minnesota's solar car team, which recently placed second in the American Solar Challenge race, got a mention on a White House blog last week.

The Office of Science & Tech Policy Blog notes a recent President Obama speech about the importance of getting students excited about education, particularly in science and mathematics:

"Well, there is no better example of how to generate that kind of enthusiasm--all the while helping to make renewable-energy vehicles more practical--than the recently completed American Solar Challenge," it continues. The post includes a photo of the Minnesota team's vehicle.

Read the entire White House blog post here.

Tech.mn has an announcement about an event called Startup Weekend, which is coming to the Twin Cities on Sept. 17-19.

The event will be held at CoCo and is open to 100 participants. The goal is to "vet, pitch, build, and demo new products over a single weekend."

Read the entire announcement at Tech.mn.

Minnesota companies attracted $45.4 million in venture capital investments in the second quarter, more than double the previous quarter's amount, the Star Tribune reports.

However, that amount still leaves the state on pace for the lowest annual total of venture capital investments since PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association started tracking the figures.

"If we finish out the year at this pace, we're well below the lows of 1995 when the survey started," Jay Hare, a partner at the Minneapolis office of PricewaterhouseCoopers, told the newspaper. "We are still so heavily concentrated in one industry [medical devices] that it's hurting us when we're seeing the national [venture capital numbers] rebound."

Read the entire Star Tribune article here.

An unusually candid debate has been playing out on the pages of MedCityNews in recent days about the future of technology transfer at the University of Minnesota. Technology transfer refers to the process of turning basic university research into commercial products.

Rep. Tim Mahoney, D-St. Paul, started the skirmish by telling MedCityNews that if the university doesn't reform its technology transfer office, he'll introduce a bill at the Legislature that will force reform, including possibly privatizing the tech transfer office.

The University of Minnesota's top research official, Tim Mulcahy, then fired back, characterizing Mahoney's criticisms as naive and reckless.

MedCityNews journalist Thomas Lee writes that the feud is actually a sign of progress:

"Yet, believe it or not, the dispute itself reflects real progress. That two fairly important guys would openly argue about something as arcane as technology transfer shows how far we've come... Mahoney has been in the legislature a long time, so why call out the university now? You don't complain about something unless you think someone actually cares about it."

Read the entire MedCityNews summary here.