Utah Tech Spotlight

Utah Tech Spotlight Events

Livepitch and Networking event

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Apr 24

You all know that I am a huge fan of the Speed Pitching events put on by Funding Universe.  Well, next week is a great opportunity for all of you to do more than just read about how cool these events are.  Funding Universe is putting on their first ever Livepitch and Networking event.  What is this?  Well, for starters it is a great place to come meet local investors and entrepreneurs in a social setting.  Each person attending will get a certain amount of “funny money.”  Like an entrepreneur’s pitch?  Vote with your dollars (or funny dollar int his case.)  Additionally, a panel of investors will be judging all of the pitches.  At the end, the two winners will be chosen: one by the investor judges, and one by you, the audience based on your contributions of “funny money.”

This is an amazing chance to see what is going on in Utah, and meet the people who are making it happen!  Don’t miss it!!!

When:  Friday May 2, 2008
Venue: Miller Business Innovation Center
Building: Karen Gale Conference Center
Rooms: Wasatch and Cottonwood
Time:  9 am - 10:30 am
Cost:  FREE! ($10 to apply to present)
Go to http://www.fundinguniverse.com/services/339/420/utah-livepitch-and-networking.html for more information or to register.

Untangle: An easy to use Solution for protecting your Kids

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Apr 17

(Warning… Passionate rant and possible arm-waving begins now)

Last night I was fooling around with my DansGuardian server at home… again.  I have it running on a crappy little server that always seems to have problems.  Not only that, but I really haven’t been all that pleased with the lag from the squid caching, or the painful fine-tuning of Dans Guardian from time to time.  Plus, I did not have it inline with my network, so any intelligent kid could easily bypass it.  But I didn’t want to go to the trouble of inserting another NIC and setting up by Linux install for bridging… just a pain.

Enter Untagle.   Let me just say “HOLY CRAP!”  I went to the website (very professionally done BTW), pulled down an ISO (for free), and burned a disk.  I inserted the disk into a computer and booted from it.  The install was the easiest install I have ever done.  No hard questions… no troubleshooting.  It just worked.  My mother in law could have installed this!  I did have to throw in a $17 network card to ensure complete protection by putting it so it can’t be bypassed.

Done.  Within 10 minutes of EXTREMELY easy configuring I had virus protection, spam protection, spyware, adult content filtering, and a bunch of other stuff all running.  The UI is super easy to understand and use.  Once installed everything can be done remotely.  Performance seems great.  All of this at absolutely no cost.  These guys are amazing.  Seriously, I cannot recommend a product any higher than I can this one.  If you are, or know someone who is looking to protect their kids from porn, this is your solution.  I have shied away from pointing anyone at DansGuardian in the past, as I knew they would bug me for tech support questions forever on it.  It is just too difficult for a non-tech person.

Untangled.  Don’t have it?  Get it!  Curious?  Watch the video.

CTO Breakfasts… food for the soul (or mind at least)

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Apr 17

It’s been a few month’s since I made it out to one of the CTO breakfasts put on by Phil Windley.  I am pleased however, that I made it out to one this morning.  The caliber of people and discussions at these is just amazing.  Phil really does manage to bring the best of the best into these breakfasts (and a few of the rest of us managed to sneak in as well :) )

Topics today were all about the App Engine by Google, and EC3 by Amazon.  Odd to see these two be the players going head to head in this space, but I think we’ll all be the winners in the end.  They are really doing with hardware infrastructure what has been done with pipe and power in the past by the Datacenters.  The ability to have hardware not only managed and provisioned by someone else, but allocated near real-time when needed.  Additionally, the distribution is reported by some to be near as performant as they have seen from some Content Delivery networks… yet another problem solved as part of the outsourcing strategy presented here.  I think the key question is not if, but when will these solutions reach a price model that makes more sense for more mature, more stable platforms?  And do they intend to? (I personally think the answer to that is yes.)

Thanks to Phil for putting these together!  If you are reading this now, wondering if any local events are really worth carving time out of your calendar, and wondering if you will really meet anyone worth meeting, let me just shout a resounding YES for this event.  I never walk away hungry.

Utah Entrepreneurial Challenge

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Apr 14

One of the programs that I really love here in Utah is the Utah Entrepreneurial challenge.  I was really pleased and blessed this year to have been given the opportunity to be a mentor to one of the teams.  The team I was working with is called Qgia.  Qgia’s product is pretty slick.  It’s a very inexpensive solution for companies (and even individuals in the case of yahoo or ebay stores) to be able to either upload video they have produced, or even point at video hosted somewhere else, and then have it played on their site/online store.  What makes it cooler though, is that you can upload images to be used as “buttons”, and tell how many seconds into the video there popup, where, and what url they should direct to.  So imagine a Convention/visitor’s bureau video that hi-lights Utah destinations, and then as each one is show there is a button right on the video for a call to action for that section of the video.  Further, this can be directly integrated into a shopping cart… so if the image is someone boarding at Brighton, the “buy now” button might jump right to a cart with a pass in it already.  I know their website is still under construction, but if you want to talk to these guys sooner, just let me know and I’ll help.  I know that Mark and his team are headed for grea things (Heck, I’m ready to star using it!)

Another company that I have written about several times is Klymit.  These guys have got a really neat product that uses Argo, among other gasses inside of a jacket liner.  Combine this with a small pressurized canister (the size of a  CO2 can that might be used ina  BB gun), a adjuster dial, andSHAZAM!  What you have is an unbelievably lightjacket (so they tell me… I am still waiting in line to buy one) that let’s you literally “dial-in” the appropriate level of insulation.  Dial it up while riding the lift up, dial it down when you’re carving moguls.  Cool stuff. (as a note: Nick Sorenson’s presentation was very polished.  Nice job.)

The winner this year was Amwell (not sure if they have a website… anyone know of one?)  Amwell is one of those companies that really makes you feel good to be a human bieng.  They have developed a product with innovative technology for vaginal application of medecines.  They use case they are headed into trials for is supposed to prevent pregnancy, HIV, and other STD’s.  I apologize that I don’t know more about it… but I’ll see what I can find out as far as web resources to point you to.

The winner this year walked away with $50,000.  Second and Third took $10,000 each, and the rest of the top ten walked with $2,000 each.  Not a bad jump to your business.  Good job to everyone involved, and a shout out to Qgia, good job for making the top ten!!