AustinStartup

The first round of voting for panels for the 2011 SXSW festival ends tomorrow (Friday) at Noon central time. Here’s my panel idea. If you’re Austin-based, please use the comments to tell us about your panel idea.

I’ve been tracking the progress of CallVine very closely since meeting company CEO Rudy Prince several months ago. It has always seemed to me that the capacity for my iPhone to manage group communications has always been lacking. When I saw Rudy at the most recent Austin Tech Happy Hour, I was excited to hear that the app had been submitted to the app store for review. Today, the company is officially announcing the general availability (I just downloaded 1.0.1 today), and pricing details.

Today, Karmaback, the only online engagement and sweepstakes platform that rewards the community’s engagement and evangelism, announced Social Coupons, a new feature targeted at enabling companies to grow their online community while in turn [...]

My next door neighbor is Dave Thomas. (No, not related to the famous Wendy’s founder.) Dave, Karen, and their family have been great neighbors over the years and, while we may go weeks sometimes not seeing much of each other, due to being involved in our separate professional and personal pursuits, we always know they [...]

Austin-based uShip has been on a solid growth trend lately, typified by today’s announcement that they’re moving downtown. The startup is currently fitting 65 people into it’s 4,500 square foot office space on S. Congress. Their new digs in the McGarragh Jessee building on 2nd and Brazos are going to seem spacious by comparison, measuring [...]

Home video security can be kind of expensive. There’s lots of wires, cameras, mounting, VCR’s, changing tapes, and other hassles. The people from Austin-based cam.ly hope to change all that by bringing simplicity to the video camera experience.
Cam.ly will sell you a web-enabled camera for $129. It will do 24 frames/second at 640 x 480 [...]

Austin-based Gendai Games added $1M in funding from a variety of sources, including DFJ Mercury. The company makes an interesting cross-platform game development tool named Game Salad, and the iTunes app store contains many games built with their tool. Gendai has been around for a while, launching their beta back in March of 2009. In August of that year they were selected to be part of the Austin Technology Incubator. I chose them to be presenters at the Innotech Beta Summit in October of 2009, and they made a great impression on the crowd. This summer, the company is participating in another incubator program in Los Angeles, California.

37signals’ dustup with GetSatisfaction almost 2 years ago now for bullying marketing tactics is still cited as an example of how, especially when it comes to customer care, the question of who “owns” your interactions with your users (and they with you) is a sensitive subject.

I had the opportunity to be a guest on the Austin Tech Scene #7 Podcast with Michael Coté and Brandon Whichard.

During the podcast we talk about the Austin technology scene, Dachis Group, Capital Factory, and a few startups as well.

Austin-based aDealio.com announced that they’re expanding service from their Austin roots to the Dallas market. The flash buying meme is definitely hot, with several companies in this market being based in Austin and over 100 nationwide. What remains to be seen is who can scale, innovate, and survive a crowded market.
Regional expansion is certainly the [...]