Emerging Technology : Buzz

The $1.65 million "city automation project" (which includes $150,000 from the city) would "cut across several areas of municipal responsibility, including transportation, public safety, and planning for public events," writes Alexander.

An example is the possibility of people using smartphone apps to interact with city departments, or centralizing the city's monitoring of parking lot, security, and traffic video cameras to save money.

IBM has worked on "smarter cities" projects with about 2,000 municipalities around the world, according to the article.

The Minnesota Cup has added $35,000 to its 2011 pool of prize money, reports Wendy Lee in a May 9 StarTribune article. That's 42 percent higher than last year's total prize money, she writes.

The increase is the result of the competition adding sponsors, a Cup spokesperson tells Lee. Carlson Companies was already a new sponsor at the time of the competition's launch last month, and General Mills is the most recent addition as a new General Division Lead Sponsor, according to a press release from General Mills.

On May 6, Best Buy CTO and Geek Squad Founder Robert Stephens posted to his blog an article titled A Few Key People in Minneapolis/St. Paul Can Make a Huge Difference.

The long post is a call to entrepreneurs that includes a ten-point "recipe" for the Twin Cities startup community.

It was an interesting rhetorical move, as the text is a repost of an almost identical post by Mark Suster on TechCrunch � about Seattle.

Inspired, Stephens asked permission to post the copy, swapping out the names of the cities, universities, companies, and startups for local Twin Cities ones.

"His thoughts really apply to most cities in the US, if not the world," writes Stephens of Suster's post in his  introduction.

Local duo The Ultramods brought a new claim to fame to the Twin Cities by becoming the first artist to record an album on the iPad, reports Brian X, Chen in Wired.

The iPad 2 offers a GarageBand app, which Max "Bunny" Sparber and Coco Mault used to record every instrument and track for their album Underwear Party.

The album is available for $10 on the Ultramods' website, and a free MP3 track is available through the Wired article. (Note: judging by the song titles and description, the "pervy collection of two-chord songs" is not for tender ears or the very young.)

Whether it's through Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, Minneapolitans know how to build a buzz.

Minneapolis is the country's fourth most socially-networked city, according to a recent study from Men's Health magazine, which ranked 100 metropolises. At the top of the list is Washington, D.C., followed by Atlanta and Denver. Seattle follows fourth-place Minneapolis. At the bottom: El Paso, Texas.

Men's Health studied the number of Facebook and LinkedIn users per capita, plus overall Twitter usage, it states. What kind of traffic came from various social media sites also factored into the results, as did an estimate of chat room conversationalists and blog readership.  

Dana Severson talks with Aaron Street of StartupLawyers.mn in his Feb. 22 Start Me Up blog for Twin Cities Business.

Street and Sam Glover are the attorneys behind the St. Anthony Main-based practice--self-dubbed "business lawyers for geeks."

The firm offers to entrepreneurs legal services packages ranging from $199 to $1,999 per month, rather than at an hourly rate, Street points out in the Q&A.

They also publish the law practice blog Lawyerist.com through their company Lawyerist Media.

Plymouth-based Kips Bay Medical Inc. raised $16.5 million in its initial public offering on Feb. 18, according to an Associated Press report in Bloomberg.

That amount is lower than the $21.2 million originally expected--and far lower than expectations of $57.5 million announced in April 2010, writes Dan Haugen in a Feb. 4 MedCity News article.

The company's product, eSVS Mesh, is used to reinforce leg veins during coronary artery bypass surgery.

The Business Journal's Katharine Grayson, who has been tracking venture capital investments in Minnesota, reports on the latest MoneyTree Report.

It's not good news: Venture capital investments in 2010 were the lowest on record since MoneyTree started compiling the report 15 years ago.

Nationally, venture capital investments were up 19 percent in 2010 compared to 2009. However, they were down 9 percent for medical devices, and Minnesota's concentration in that sector may help explain the drop here.

More at Grayson's In Private blog.

Did you miss last week's MinneDemo event? TECHdotMN has it covered, complete with video of all ten entrepreneurs/tinkerers who showed off their projects, which ranged from mobile games to a potentially disruptive web healthcare start-up.

As for the event itself, TECHdotMN's Jeff Pesek emphasizes that "Minnedemo is now on a whole new level," growing from a below-the-radar coffee shop meet-up a few years ago to a "top-notch" venue in the University of St. Thomas business school auditorium.

"If the raw energy, massive attendance (300+) and multitude of new faces means anything, then Minnedemo's awareness has alone has reached a new level, but I think there's more to it than that�"

More at TECHdotMN.

MOJO/Minnesota agitator Ernest Grumbles III has compiled a look back at the year in startup/innovation news in Minnesota. They include the debut of the state's angel investor tax credit, the creation of the Minnesota Science and Technology Authority, as well as the launch/growth of new media sources covering the state's startup/innovation scene (including us!). Read Ernest's full rundown and summaries on his Star Tribune YourVoices blog.

A couple of products from Twin Cities companies showed up on Advertising Age's lost of 2010's top 10 "Best Marketing Apps."

Alvenda, a social e-commerce company that we wrote about in August, earned an inclusion for its Delta Air Lines ticket window app for Facebook. It allows users to search and book flights without ever leaving Facebook.

Best Buy is mentioned for a mobile app meant to be used in theaters during the movie "Despicable Me." The app dims and silences the phone during the movie, until the credits at the end, when it translates the cartoon characters' language.

See the rest of the list over at AdAge.com.

While plenty of U.S. cities have touted plans for citywide wi-fi, Minneapolis may be one of the only ones to deliver, according to CivSource.

Minneapolis's 59-square-mile network, which is offered to residents for as low as $15 monthly, it states, is making money. In contrast, in many other cities, similar efforts have flopped.

US Internet has a $12.5 million, 10-year contract with Minneapolis "which helps ensure network profitability," the article states.  

Only six percent of its network capacity will be reached this year, but that figure is likely to rise in 2011, while US Internet is poised to reach its goal for 2012 of 30,000 citizen subscribers.

Minneapolis builds a good case for the model, says CitySource, adding that "despite the cost, it doesn't appear that the contract will be on the chopping block any time soon."

An Edina startup's throwable robot technology landed in last Sunday's New York Times.

Recon Robotics, founded in 2006, is commercializing robotics technology that was originally developed at the University of Minnesota's Distributed Robotics Laboratory.

The company's "throwbot" technology appeared in an infographic alongside a New York Times article on the military's use of robotics. The Recon Scout is a crawling, video-surveillance robot that can be thrown into an area and controlled by remote.

The Wall Street Journal gave the company's technology more than a passing mention in October, spotlighting how Swat teams are using Recon Robotics' throwbots.

Recon Robotics is among a couple dozen early-stage companies that are part of the University of St. Thomas' William C. Norris Institute investment fund.

Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reporter Katharine Grayson writes that no Minnesota technology startup raised venture capital in the third quarter. That sounds very bad, but Grayson notes that it's not surprising and, depending on who you ask, not all that important. The cost of building tech startups has fallen so much in recent years that some argue venture firms aren't needed in the equation any more.

But Michael Gorman, a partner at of Split Rock Partners, argued at a recent venture finance conference that tech startups still need venture funding in order to scale. He pointed to Chicago-based Groupon as an example. The privately held company has thousands of employees and projected revenue that could top $500 million this year. Is that type of success do-able without venture capital? Discuss over at Grayson's In Private blog.

Medical devices and diagnostics companies have historically been "the Rodney Dangerfields" of the life science industry, never getting the same respect and buzz as their biotech and pharmaceutical cousins, niche pub Life Science Leader writes in its November issue.

New innovations in software and nanotechnology may be changing that perception, though, according to Medtronic's senior vice president for medicine and technology, Stephen Oesterle. In a Q&A with the magazine, Oesterle explains the shift in thinking he's observing:

"I believe many people previously viewed medical devices as appliances, not innovative medical products. I think the notion that devices are not innovative is beginning to change. This is because devices offer a unique opportunity to incorporate nanotechnology, information technology, biotechnology, or the controlled delivery of drugs and biologics into a single product. People are beginning to realize this, and that is why interest in devices has exploded in recent years. Good examples of innovation taking place in the devices industry include targeted, controlled delivery of monoclonal antibodies and stem cells, MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) implants, and drug-coated stents."

Read the full Q&A over at Life Science Leader.