Roundup, deals, VC Rebecca Zacks wrote: The theme for the week was definitely video, with four different deals cut around different aspects of the technology (five, if you count all the video-playing gizmos that cycle through Second Rotation’s reselling system). Those, and the rest of the week’s Boston-area tech and life sciences deals news, below. —Second Rotation circled $6 million in second round of funding led by RockPort Capital Partners of Boston and joined by Venrock Associates and angle investors Austin Ligon and Henry Vogel. The Waltham, MA-based startup runs Gazelle, an online service that gives consumers cash for their old electronics and resells or recycles the goods. —Cambridge, MA-based online video firm Brightcove inked a deal with publishing juggernaut Conde Nast Publications to launch new advertising-supported video channels for a host of publications’ websites, including Wired.com, Portfolio.com, Glamour.com, Parade.com, and Self.com. —LoJack technology developer MicroLogic of Lowell, MA, will be acquired by the StarTrak Systems division of Scottsdale, AZ-based Alanco Technologies (NASDAQ: ALAN) for an undisclosed sum. StarTrak makes cellular- and satellite-based tools for tracking refrigerated trucks, trailers, and shipping containers. —Molecular Biometrics, a Chester, NJ-based startup developing diagnostic tools for in vitro fertilization (and planning …Next Page » Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

startups, Entrepreneurship, Lessons Gregory T. Huang wrote: On Friday, there was a really good talk by the noted tech entrepreneur and investor T.A. McCann at a Northwest Entrepreneur Network breakfast in Bellevue, WA. The topic was how to get a startup off the ground: he called it “0-25 mph.” What with the economy these days, advice from someone like McCann seems more valuable than ever. For those who may have missed the talk, here are a few highlights and a link to McCann’s slides. McCann is a former Microsoftie who has experience at Polaris Venture Partners and Vulcan Capital. He has been involved with a number of tech startups, most recently Evri and Gist, the latter of which he currently leads as founder and CEO. I thought McCann’s comments in his blog about the talk were particularly telling about his approach to entrepreneurship. “I always learn something when I do these kinds of events, both about what I have done right/wrong in the past and how I can be better in the future,” he writes. At the bottom of his talk slides—which covered everything from strategy and operations to fundraising and hiring—McCann listed “lessons learned.” A few points stood out to me: —Know your own space, pick customers you want to embrace, and make sure they pay. —Strategy should not be complicated. —A team’s value is 5 parts passion, 2 parts brains, and 1 part experience. —Outsource routine tasks, hire for thought leadership. —Deliver status updates every two weeks to your investors/board/advisors. McCann closed with the following five-point summary for entrepreneurs. Points #2 and #5 are really key, I think: —If it were easy, everyone would do it. —Love your customers more than your idea. —Use the right tools, timing, and discipline. —Know where to spend and save. —If you were rich, would you still be doing it? Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS Less

Software, innovation, management Brent Frei wrote: I’m attracted to the market opportunity within large, established markets. These markets already have huge spend, they have established dominant players with an inertia resistant to major change, most of the innovative talent and money is off in new market spaces, and innovation within these spaces tends to be evolutionary in nature and follow predictable paths. Identifying a large market that can serve as an appropriate target is often as simple as listening for the drumbeat of consistent comments like: — “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” — “I wish there was a…” — “Why doesn’t somebody invent a…” The revolutionary innovation that occurs in many of these markets is often serendipitous. That means someone isn’t looking to solve the end problem, but something they did is applicable to it. See, for example, Viagra or Post-Its. More often than not, however, the real revolutionary innovation is in line with the evolutionary. Therefore, pick a really big market and do something revolutionary within the natural evolution of the space. So the key question becomes: what is it that successful inventors do to be revolutionarily successful within an evolution? The current modern wonder of revolution within evolution is the Apple iPhone. Apple’s formula for innovation in mature markets is the gold standard. How do they do this? My assessment is that they follow two simple principles: —Design for how people work. —Consolidate and reduce core concepts to a ridiculous minimum; a core concept is anything the customer has to learn or understand in order to successfully use your product. Mobile phones, e-mail on Blackberries and Treos, MP3 music players—all of these existed separately and with ever-expanding feature sets. The race toward consolidation had been going on for some time; but it carried with it the complex, rich feature sets of each independent device. Apple, with its special magic, stuck with the less-is-more approach and let’s make the …Next Page » Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

deals, acquisitions, Software Gregory T. Huang wrote: Bellevue, WA-based Talisma announced today its customer relationship management business has been acquired by Boca Raton, FL-based Campus Management, which makes a software platform for e-learning. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Talisma, which was founded in 1999, was bought by Austin, TX-based nGenera last May. Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

deals, Software, SPOs Bruce V. Bigelow wrote: San Diego’s Solera Holdings (NYSE: SLH) plans to issue 4.5 million shares of its common stock in an underwritten public offering at a price of $20 a share. The company, which is a leading provider of software used to process automobile insurance claims, announced the deal Friday and expects it to close by Wednesday, Nov. 19. Solera’s share price rebounded almost 3 percent in early trading today, to $18.98 shortly after noon, after than tumbling more than 22 percent Friday following the announcement Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

cloud computing, Software, startups Gregory T. Huang wrote: EMC, the software and data-storage giant based in Hopkinton, MA, is announcing today it has formed a new company called Decho. The new organization is composed of two formerly separate EMC businesses—American Fork, UT-based Mozy and Seattle-based Pi. The merged operation will focus on cloud computing services having to do with managing people’s digital information, including the online backup and storage of personal data. Xconomy is very familiar with EMC (NYSE: EMC) and Mozy. Back in October 2007, we wrote about the story behind EMC’s acquisition of Berkeley Data Systems, which developed Mozy, the online backup service. The Mozy desktop application automatically uploads copies of key files and folders to Mozy’s servers, and is best known for its popularity among consumers rather than companies. As for Pi, the software startup was acquired by EMC last February, and has always been pretty stealthy about what it’s doing. (Its name stands for “personal information,” not the transcendental number we know from geometry class.) The firm was originally founded by ex-Microsoft exec Paul Maritz, who became CEO of VMware (also part of EMC) in July. Maritz will remain at VMware, and is on the board of Decho. The new company has more than 100 employees based in four cities: Seattle; American Fork, Utah; Montreal, Canada; and Bangalore, India. Charles Fitzgerald, Decho’s vice president of product management (also an ex-Microsoftie), sat down with Xconomy last week to tell us more about the direction of the company. First of all, its name stands for “digital echo,” referring to the data bouncing around between a user’s devices—phone, laptop, desktop—and the Internet cloud. “If you look at the new Decho entity, we are a cloud-based service provider focused on personal information. We’re beyond the startup stage,” says Fitzgerald. “We have eight figures of revenue now and are growing nicely…The revenue is all coming from Mozy.” Why focus on personal information management? Fitzgerald cited four catalysts: the sheer volume of data out there (70 percent is from individuals—things like photos and documents); redundant information scattered across many devices; the desire of customers to save data for decades; and the need to categorize and tag our information in an automated way. “Today’s world is very device-centric,” Fitzgerald says. “Instead of a device-centric world. we’d like to have an information-centric world where the core information is something I can act on and protect and manage and enrich very explicitly.” To that end, Decho will be combining Mozy’s technology—cheap disk storage with advanced software algorithms—with Pi’s “metadata” platform. “Pi provides some very sophisticated metadata management—finding, tagging, and indexing stuff and having a more semantic understanding of the data in these clouds,” says Fitzgerald. “We have a bunch of data centers like other people, but the magic is at the software layer…Mozy will continue to be the brand for online backup going forward, but you will see us also provide some additional applications to take advantage of that back end.” Fitzgerald isn’t saying much about what those applications will be just yet. “You can think of multiple propositions,” he says. “We certainly will go back to somebody who has done backup and say, ‘Hey, would you like to do more with your backup? You have a critical mass of data in the cloud, and there are other things you can do with it.’” Fitzgerald adds that the main challenges going forward are on the business side rather than technical, and they include “getting customers comfortable with the platform.” So, will Decho be primarily a consumer brand, and how will EMC run it? Fitzgerald hinted that the new venture will be a fairly autonomous entity. “We are a cloud service provider who sells all the way up to GE—but part of the reason for making it a new company is that it is a very different space from the traditional EMC space,” he says. “Catering to consumers among other customers is very different from anything EMC has done traditionally. In recent years, they’ve been pretty good at making things more or less loosely coupled depending on what they need to do from a business perspective. VMware and RSA are more or less autonomous.” We’ll have to wait and see what new products Decho has in store for its users, and what its impact will be on EMC’s business. But all signs point to it being a formidable competitor in the race to cash in on people’s need to organize their stockpiles of personal data online. Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

This week we look at Bento 2, Mail Act-on, RunKeeper, Flick Fishing plus much more. I want to thank you for downloading and listening to the podcast. We have the best in Mac hardware, software and websites reviews. We have a lot of great folks on today’s episode with their reviews and comments on software, hardware and websites that make using the Mac special. Plus I’ll have the top freeware Mac apps of the week and much more. You can email me at surfbits at Gmail dot Com. I love to hear from you. Receive 25% off of all Devon-Technologies software by going to http://www.devon-technologies.com/podcasts Here is the freeware and shareware I look at during the podcast: Skim: http://skim-app.sourceforge.net TinkerTool: http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html LiveStation: http://www.livestation.com Camouflage: http://www.briksoftware.com VLC Media Player: http://www.videolan.org Onyx: http://www.titanium.free.fr Lola Wong joins us with her review of: Bento 2 http://www.filemaker.com David Sparks from MacSparky joins us this week and reviews: Mail Act-on 2: http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn.html Gazmaz Joins us again this week with Darren Rolfe from MacWingNut.com and talks about. Flick Fishing: http://www.freeverse.com Tom Piraino from MacinTomBlog.com looks at: RunKeeper: http://www.runkeeper.com Chris Marshall from ChrisMarshall.ws joins us this week. We talk about iPhone and iPod cases, his favorite for the iPhone? This one… Try the new ENHANCED version of the MacReviewCast: And now we have the Podcast in Bit-Torrent Feeds! … You can either click on the podcast link on the left and listen to it via QT from the browser, or you can right click on the podcast link and choose to “download linked file”. That will download the mp3 and you can play it from you hard drive with iTunes.The right link below is the URL for the podcast RSS feed. Just right click it and choose to copy the address and then paste it in your podcast reader, or ipodder, or newsreader that will download enclosures automatically. Please Click Here to vote for us on the PodcastAlley Website. Thank you! techpodcasts.com Technorati Tags: software, review, mac, apple, iTunes, Mac mini, podcast, Macreviewcast, podcasting, maccompanion, OSX, iPhoto, Exposure 2 Less

This week we look at Bento 2, Mail Act-on, RunKeeper, Flick Fishing plus much more. I want to thank you for downloading and listening to the podcast. We have the best in Mac hardware, software and websites reviews. We have a lot of great folks on today’s episode with their reviews and comments on software, hardware and websites that make using the Mac special. Plus I’ll have the top freeware Mac apps of the week and much more. You can email me at surfbits at Gmail dot Com. I love to hear from you. Receive 25% off of all Devon-Technologies software by going to http://www.devon-technologies.com/podcasts Here is the freeware and shareware I look at during the podcast: Skim: http://skim-app.sourceforge.net TinkerTool: http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html LiveStation: http://www.livestation.com Camouflage: http://www.briksoftware.com VLC Media Player: http://www.videolan.org Onyx: http://www.titanium.free.fr Lola Wong joins us with her review of: Bento 2 http://www.filemaker.com David Sparks from MacSparky joins us this week and reviews: Mail Act-on 2: http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn.html Gazmaz Joins us again this week with Darren Rolfe from MacWingNut.com and talks about. Flick Fishing: http://www.freeverse.com Tom Piraino from MacinTomBlog.com looks at: RunKeeper: http://www.runkeeper.com Chris Marshall from ChrisMarshall.ws joins us this week. We talk about iPhone and iPod cases, his favorite for the iPhone? This one… Try the new ENHANCED version of the MacReviewCast: And now we have the Podcast in Bit-Torrent Feeds! … You can either click on the podcast link on the left and listen to it via QT from the browser, or you can right click on the podcast link and choose to “download linked file”. That will download the mp3 and you can play it from you hard drive with iTunes.The right link below is the URL for the podcast RSS feed. Just right click it and choose to copy the address and then paste it in your podcast reader, or ipodder, or newsreader that will download enclosures automatically. Please Click Here to vote for us on the PodcastAlley Website. Thank you! techpodcasts.com Technorati Tags: software, review, mac, apple, iTunes, Mac mini, podcast, Macreviewcast, podcasting, maccompanion, OSX, iPhoto, Exposure 2 Less

http://geeks.pirillo.com - http://live.pirillo.com - Creating and editing video can be a lot of fun. Pinnacle sent me a handful of their hardware so that I could share it with you, and pass along coupons for you to use. Let's take a look at some of what's available. http://chris.pirillo.com Distributed by Tubemogul. Less

Life Sciences, philanthropy, The Scripps Research Institute Bruce V. Bigelow wrote: Software tycoon and San Diego Padres owner John Moores has contributed $2.1 million to kick off a $50 million fund-raising initiative for The Scripps Research Institute. The San Diego facility says the campaign is intended to expand current research programs and recruit elite scientists to the institute’s laboratories in San Diego and Jupiter, FL. Moores, who co-founded Houston’s BMC Software, started San Diego software investment specialist JMI Equity in 1992 and bought the Padres baseball team in 1994. He has served as a member of the Scripps Research Board of Trustees since 1997 and as chairman since 2006. Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS Less

innovation, networking, Coffee Gregory T. Huang wrote: Want to know where your favorite VC gets his or her morning latte? How about where tech and life sciences entrepreneurs gather to network and discuss ideas? If you’re looking to rub shoulders with the technological elite—or if you’re just looking for a quiet cafe to have a meeting or get some work done—you’ve come to the right place. Here at Xconomy Seattle, we’ve been keeping track of the coffee hotspots around town favored by the tech-business leaders we talk to and write about every day. We thought it would be fun to share what we’ve found, both as a list and as an interactive map you can click around on (see below). In many cases, we’ve met the innovators or investors in their favorite haunts and sampled the local beverages. In other cases, we’ve gone by what they told us. But this is in no way a comprehensive list. We’d love to hear from you about where you like to go, where plans get hatched, and where tomorrow’s deals are being discussed. We’ll update the list as we go. It may be cliché to say the Seattle innovation scene runs on coffee, but it seems to be true. One of the amazing things about the region is the sheer number of great cafes and places to gather, talk, refuel, and recharge. There’s something for everyone, from the quiet elegance of Caffe Fiore on Queen Anne Hill to the casual charm of Louisa’s on Eastlake to the hustle and bustle of Espresso Vivace near downtown. Not to mention the old reliables, Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, and Tully’s (especially on the Eastside—what’s with the lack of independent cafes over there?). View Larger Map And behind every great cafe is a great story. Take Trabant Coffee & Chai, known for its strong espresso, tasty drip coffee, and spicy teas. The Pioneer Square branch is a personal favorite of Dan Shapiro, the co-founder and CEO of Ontela—and there’s an interesting reason why. In early 2006, Shapiro says, he was one of several entrepreneurs pitching their companies at a Keiretsu Forum angel investor meeting downtown. “We were singing for our supper,” he says. The guy in front of him was pitching a $12,000 drip-coffee maker, and he had coffee samples for everyone (Shapiro was too wired to try any). The panel asked the coffee guy questions like, Aren’t you just going to compete with Starbucks? Why wouldn’t Starbucks just do this? He replied that Starbucks’ leaders were too set in their ways, and the only way they’d do it is if they saw it in action. The guy was Zander Nosler of the Ballard-based Coffee Equipment Company. His machine was called the Clover, and sure enough, he was right. His 11-person startup was bought last March by Starbucks, which now has Clover machines in several-dozen stores in the Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Boston metro areas. So what does this have to do with Trabant? The local coffee shop was a key early customer of the Clover, buying the machine in the spring of 2007. “Every time I go there, I feel like I’m supporting the local startup scene,” says Shapiro. There are many more stories, but we won’t get to them today. Instead, we present our first pass of the Greater Seattle Coffee Cluster: an alphabetical list of cafes, and some of the notable people you might run into there. If you’ve got a favorite spot, or a story to pass along, please do comment below or drop us a note at editors@xconomy.com. Then again, you might want to keep your local treasures to yourself… Belle Epicurean 1206 4th Ave, Seattle, WA Recommended by Megan Muir of DLA Piper for its pastries, good coffee, and confidentiality. Caffe Fiore 224 W. Galer St, Seattle, WA Martin Tobias of Kashless is known to arrive for meetings here on his Segway. Caffe Ladro 600 Queen Anne Ave North, Seattle, WA Favored by Paul Thelen of Big Fish Games. …Next Page » Comments (2) | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

innovation, networking, Coffee Gregory T. Huang wrote: Want to know where your favorite VC gets his or her morning latte? How about where tech and life sciences entrepreneurs gather to network and discuss ideas? If you’re looking to rub shoulders with the technological elite—or if you’re just looking for a quiet cafe to have a meeting or get some work done—you’ve come to the right place. Here at Xconomy Seattle, we’ve been keeping track of the coffee hotspots around town favored by the tech-business leaders we talk to and write about every day. We thought it would be fun to share what we’ve found, both as a list and as an interactive map you can click around on (see below). In many cases, we’ve met the innovators or investors in their favorite haunts and sampled the local beverages. In other cases, we’ve gone by what they told us. But this is in no way a comprehensive list. We’d love to hear from you about where you like to go, where plans get hatched, and where tomorrow’s deals are being discussed. We’ll update the list as we go. It may be cliché to say the Seattle innovation scene runs on coffee, but it seems to be true. One of the amazing things about the region is the sheer number of great cafes and places to gather, talk, refuel, and recharge. There’s something for everyone, from the quiet elegance of Caffe Fiore on Queen Anne Hill to the casual charm of Louisa’s on Eastlake to the hustle and bustle of Espresso Vivace near downtown. Not to mention the old reliables, Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, and Tully’s (especially on the Eastside—what’s with the lack of independent cafes over there?). View Larger Map And behind every great cafe is a great story. Take Trabant Coffee & Chai, known for its strong espresso, tasty drip coffee, and spicy teas. The Pioneer Square branch is a personal favorite of Dan Shapiro, the co-founder and CEO of Ontela—and there’s an interesting reason why. In early 2006, Shapiro says, he was one of several entrepreneurs pitching their companies at a Keiretsu Forum angel investor meeting downtown. “We were singing for our supper,” he says. The guy in front of him was pitching a $12,000 drip-coffee maker, and he had coffee samples for everyone (Shapiro was too wired to try any). The panel asked the coffee guy questions like, Aren’t you just going to compete with Starbucks? Why wouldn’t Starbucks just do this? He replied that Starbucks’ leaders were too set in their ways, and the only way they’d do it is if they saw it in action. The guy was Zander Nosler of the Ballard-based Coffee Equipment Company. His machine was called the Clover, and sure enough, he was right. His 11-person startup was bought last March by Starbucks, which now has Clover machines in several-dozen stores in the Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Boston metro areas. So what does this have to do with Trabant? The local coffee shop was a key early customer of the Clover, buying the machine in the spring of 2007. “Every time I go there, I feel like I’m supporting the local startup scene,” says Shapiro. There are many more stories, but we won’t get to them today. Instead, we present our first pass of the Greater Seattle Coffee Cluster: an alphabetical list of cafes, and some of the notable people you might run into there. If you’ve got a favorite spot, or a story to pass along, please do comment below or drop us a note at editors@xconomy.com. Then again, you might want to keep your local treasures to yourself… Belle Epicurean 1206 4th Ave, Seattle, WA Recommended by Megan Muir of DLA Piper for its pastries, good coffee, and confidentiality. Caffe Fiore 224 W. Galer St, Seattle, WA Martin Tobias of Kashless is known to arrive for meetings here on his Segway. Also the favorite of Paul Thelen of Big Fish Games. Caffe Ladro 600 Queen Anne Ave North, Seattle, WA Paul Thelen of Big Fish Games also lists this institution as one of his likes. …Next Page » Comments (6) | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

Word of mouth marketing has become more important than ever before, thanks to the Internet and the Web 2.0 in particular. Companies that know how to tell authentic stories are best poised to maximize the use of this medium to market their products and services. Marketing expert and veteran business blogger Toby Bloomberg (www.bloombergmarketing.com)talks with John and Paul about how business can learn to tell their story in an authentic, engaging way using blogs and other tools of social media. toby bloomberg | bizzuka | word of mouth marketing | social media | business blogging Less

Biotech, Software, Life Sciences Luke Timmerman wrote: Nobody ever accused Bruce Montgomery of being a mealy-mouthed, politically-correct businessman. On Microsoft’s own turf, he offered some free advice last night about what to do with an extremely messed-up healthcare IT industry. “If Microsoft really wants to own the world, create a standardized electronic medical records system and give it away for free the first five years. Then start charging,” said Montgomery, a senior vice president at Gilead Sciences, the world’s largest maker of AIDS medicines, in an event hosted by the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association last night at the Microsoft campus in Redmond. The problem is that every hospital is using different programs that don’t talk well to each other. Some of these, including one called SAS that’s been favored by the FDA (and universally loathed by pharma companies, from what I gather), deserve to be put out of their misery, Montgomery said. “Put SAS out of business,” Montgomery said. Get some “code monkeys” to work on a modern user interface, he added, and, “You could put them out of business in a week.” This naturally generated a few laughs, and probably a few nervous ones, at the software company with a troubled history of anti-competitive behavior. Microsoft didn’t make any bellicose statements about world domination last night, but the company clearly has its sights on a big opportunity to make hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and drug regulators drop their old habits of using paper records and clunky old proprietary programs, in favor of something easier to use and more efficient that captures a patient’s medical records in the doctor’s office, or in clinical trials of experimental drugs. Zachary Hector, Microsoft’s worldwide pharma industry solutions manager, laid out the broad vision with a slick TV commercial at the beginning. It depicted a young woman who’s pre-diabetic, going for a run, carrying around a PDA-type device that monitored her blood sugar in real-time. The information would be relayed to her doctor, and automatically channeled into a database along with records from other patients in a clinical trial. Later, while going about her everyday chores, the woman would carry a credit card with a fingerprint scanner, which she could stick into an ATM like device to order a diabetes medication. “Patients are taking more control over their health because of the Internet,” Hector said. Patients want this kind of predictive information, he said. Market research shows patients care about wellness, prevention, fitness, early detection, disease avoidance, and preventive medicine, Hector says. The age of one-size-fits-all blockbuster drugs like Pfizer’s atorvastatin (Lipitor), which generated more than $12 billion in sales last year, is coming to a close as its patent protection will be dead in 2011. In a world where entire human genomes can be sequenced for as little as $5,000 next spring, a deluge of information is coming about tiny variations in the 6-billion letter string of DNA. Enormous research is being done on how those variations might affect the way certain individuals respond to certain drugs. …Next Page » Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

Software, management, startups Gregory T. Huang wrote: Collaborative work management—it’s not the sexiest topic, but it’s a big business. Seattle-area entrepreneur Brent Frei estimates that his newest startup, Smartsheet, is the “301st company in the space.” The basic idea is to make software that companies can use to manage team-based projects and keep track of things like workflow, file storage, discussion threads, alerts, and to-do lists. Most companies still use Excel spreadsheets, e-mail folders, and other similar programs to do task-tracking, which can be tedious and inflexible. Today, Bellevue, WA-based Smartsheet is launching a new tool for small businesses—brokers, consultants, recruiters, and the like—to manage their own teams and services online. But the deeper story of the company goes back a ways, and it holds lessons for other companies in this economic climate in which streamlining management could be the key to survival. “Nobody has created the Google for team-task management,” Frei says. “Someone will figure this out, and when they do…that will really pull a lot of the power away from big corporations and put it in the hands of the productive people in the world.” In 2005, Frei co-founded Smartsheet with exactly this aim. And he knew a little something about business software and team management. The former Dartmouth College defensive lineman was the founder of Onyx Software, a customer relationship management firm that was bought by M2M Holdings for $92 million in 2006. He did a two-year stint in policy and licensing at Bellevue-based Intellectual Ventures before turning his full attention to Smartsheet last year. The startup has raised more than $4 million from Madrona Venture Group and other investors. Frei sees the landscape of team management shifting—and that’s where the opportunity lies. “In the work environment, we’ve had outsourcing. The big typical things like research, call centers, or legal language,” he says. “But it’ll happen more and more when two things come to fruition. One, the ability to market your services, like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. And two, the management once it’s done.” Managing outsourced projects with far-flung teams, he explains, is the “holy grail…People haven’t been able to do it.” That would include Smartsheet. In 2006, the company launched its first product, but it didn’t catch on. “We collected a ton of data, did lots of user testing,” Frei says. “We learned a bunch of our core concepts were absolutely right, but our product was too hard to use. So we threw it all out the door and spent last year rebuilding the product entirely. Now it’s available with one-third as many features.” Smartsheet relaunched its software last month, and it targets everyone from marketing managers in Fortune 500 companies to product managers and recruiting managers, to CEOs of 10-person startups. Frei says his company paid particular attention to the structure of people’s work, the order in which teams perform their tasks, and who communicates with whom. Also crucial is that customers who use Smartsheet’s software can work with clients and partners who haven’t adopted it. “We turn what used to be a spreadsheet into a super-collaborative tool,” says Frei. Frei says Smartsheet has several patents pending around its technology. The company, which has 11 employees, is not profitable yet. Frei’s official title is executive chairman, “which means I work for free here every day,” he says. Looking ahead, word of mouth among small business consultants and gurus in particular areas like virtual assistants and trade-show management will go a long way towards making Smartsheet profitable, he says. Lastly, I asked Frei about the broader advantages of outsourcing in the current climate—and how that could help Smartsheet. “For businesses, it turns out to be better because they get a better product faster, with no overhead of management,” he says, adding that that’s where Smartsheet’s software comes in. “It’s a good opportunity for small businesses to start out. Companies that are downsizing are going to need specialty services, and will end up outsourcing. There’s high probability that capital investment will contract, so a lot of businesses will look to lessen their fixed costs over the next 12 months. That means primarily people. The potential silver lining is that a lot of those companies will still need specialty services, so super-productive people will have an opportunity to start a business and make more money as a specialty service.” Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

Internet, video, Military Gregory T. Huang wrote: Seattle-based Delve Networks, a video management and media platform company, has launched a video-sharing site called TroopTube for U.S. military personnel and their families. Delve partnered with Texas-based Marion, Montgomery to deliver the service as part of Military OneSource, which is run by the Department of Defense. Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

Software, Web, personal information management Wade Roush wrote: Boston’s Spring Partners, a venture-backed Web software startup founded by five former executives from mobile marketing firm Third Screen Media, announced today that it’s opening beta testing of its first product, Springpad, to the general public. Springpad is a Web-based personal information management system that helps users create annotated lists or “notebooks” around dozens of themes such as pet care, prescriptions, holiday gift planning, receipts, and recipes. Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

crime, Software, Security Wade Roush wrote: Woe to the hoodie-wearing miscreant who steals a Mac laptop equipped with MacTrak. He’s likely to find his photo plastered all over the Internet—and the police at his door. MacTrak is a beta application for Macs introduced today by Portland, OR-based GadgetTrak. It’s similar in conception to Absolute Software’s LoJack for Laptops and to Adeona, a free open-source tracking system released this summer by computer-science researchers at the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego. But it has a couple of interesting twists that may increase your chances of getting back your stolen laptop—or that, at the very least, will cause greater embarrassment for the thief. First, once you activate the $59.95 program by logging into your GadgetTrak account, the software uses the laptop’s built-in iSight camera to snap a photo of whoever is using the machine every 30 minutes. If the laptop is connected to the Internet, the software will automatically e-mail these photos to you and post them to your account at the Flickr photo-sharing website (see image below). You can set these images to be private or public—depending on how much help you want catching the thief. Second, MacTrak uses Wi-Fi-based location-finding technology provided by Boston-based Skyhook Wireless to determine the laptop’s latitude and longitude, usually to within about 20 meters. This information is uploaded to Flickr along with the iSight photos. You can then get help recovering your device by forwarding the information to GadgetTrak or directly to law-enforcement authorities. Unlike the LoJack for Laptops system, GadgetTrak’s software doesn’t rely on a monitoring center, doesn’t send location information to the company, and doesn’t have backdoor access to the laptop’s operating system—measures the company, on its website, calls “an invasion of privacy.” The Adeona system is also designed to preserve laptop owners’ privacy, and has the added attraction of being free. But the GadgetTrak’s positioning systems gives it a leg up: Adeona can only tell you which Internet routers communicated with your stolen laptop, whereas MacTrak can tell you the device’s actual location. The integration of Skyhook’s Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) into GadgetTrak’s product is the latest in a long line of software deals engineered by the Boston company; the most recent before this, was an arrangement to put WPS into the Symbian operating system used by millions of cell phones worldwide. “GadgetTrak is an excellent example of location-awareness enhancing the security of our valuable mobile devices,” Kate Imbach, Skyhook’s director of marketing, said in a statement. For Windows laptops, GadgetTrak makes an application that, like Adeona, tracks stolen laptops to the nearest Internet router. The company also makes “search and destroy” software that can remotely erase sensitive data stored on missing laptops or smartphones. Comments (2) | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

Life Sciences, deals, VC Ryan McBride wrote: Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX), a Natick, MA-based medical devices firm, has led an equity round expected to total $11 milion to $13.5 million in Intelect Medical, a developer of an implantable neuromodulation system headquartered in Cleveland, Intelect reports in a statement. Intelect says, as part of the deal, it has granted Boston Scientific co-exclusive rights to its software under development to provide graphical information on electrical changes made by electrodes in the brain. Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

deals, Software, Web Services Bruce V. Bigelow wrote: Atlanta-based Ebix announced yesterday that it signed a deal to buy San Diego’s ConfirmNet, the latest in a series of acquisitions in the certificate of insurance tracking industry.   Ebix, which develops software and e-commerce capabilities for the insurance industry, said it signed a deal to purchase ConfirmNet on Nov. 1.   In a later filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ebix says it completed its purchase of Jenquest of Hemet, CA, a year ago for $11.25 million in cash. ConfirmNet, founded in 1999, provides software-as-a service for issuing and tracking certificates of insurance. Jenquest also specializes in the certificate of insurance tracking industry. Ebix, which acquired Michigan’s Periculum Services Group in April, says its BPO division already has the largest market share in the U.S. certificate tracking industry. The purchase of ConfirmNet, which ranks second, only strengthens its hand. Ebix counts AON, Marsh and Wachovia Insurance Services among its customers. If shareholders approve the deal, Ebix says it expects to pay between $10 million and $11 million in cash for ConfirmNet, based on ConfirmNet’s fourth-quarter revenue performance. The acquisition is expected to close by Nov. 22.   Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less