BUToday notes the arrival of BigBelly Solar’s fancy garbage can today, with an animated feature explaining how they work. The school is adding 20 of the solar-powered trash compactors to the three already on its campus.
As many as 400 tech-minded students, bankers, lawyers, investors and entrepreneurs took to Boston’s streets in the drizzle last Friday afternoon in the Quest for Innovation.
The fundraiser and community-building exercise sent just over 100 teams scrambling through the city on a technology-themed scavenger hunt powered by Boston-based Scvngr Inc.
The event’s beneficiaries include four youth-focused entrepreneurial non-profits: NECINA Youth Entrepreneurship Service, TiE Young Entrepreneurs, the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s New England chapter, and Youth CITIES. A fifth beneficiary will be chosen by the winning team, which hailed from the DartBoston young entrepreneurs’ group.
“You had entrepreneurs, VCs and lawyers competing against each other — and then you had entrepreneurs, VCs and lawyers on the same team,” said Seth Priebatsch, the founder and CEO of Scvngr. “On a rainy afternoon, you might have expected a low turnout from a different group.”
Priebatsch said Scvngr’s metrics showed an unusually high rate of participation in the activity. The company develops mobile-phone-powered scavenger hunts for events. All the teams did well on the questions, and the top 10 were all within 10 points of one another — a metric that shows all the teams got involved, he said. “Numerically speaking, everyone had a great time.”
Highland Capital Partners’ Michael Gaiss initiated the planning for the sold-out event. Sponsors included Deloitte, Foley Hoag LLP, Mass High Tech, Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center, the Museum of Science, Polachi Access Executive Search, Silicon Valley Bank, the UMass Venture Development Center, Wilmer Hale and Xconomy.
In August, Bao sold his first startup, Avecora, and launched a new company called AtomPlan, which makes a business contact management application. He has also co-founded Ramamia, a photo-sharing service for families.
Bao told MHT about his goals in May: A personal net worth of more than $5 billion, to help people who can’t help him, to enjoy life without boundaries and to change the world. For more proof he’s not messing around, check out his enjoyably profane Twitter stream. From the Startup Bootcamp @ MIT:
Chatting with a speaker afterwards? Keep your f______ chat to < 3 min and < 3 questions. G__ damn. #sb
On the Daily Show, William Kamkwamba talked about building an electricity-generating windmill for his family’s farm in Malawi, using a library book as a guide, at the age of 14. He’s since presented at TEDGlobal 2007 in Tanzania, and wrote a book, “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.”
Toward the end of the interview, Kamkwamba explains how he found out about Google, at the TED conference: “I was like, ‘Where was this Google all this time?’”
Tonight is Game 1 of the Red Sox’ five-game divisional series against the Angels, which creates two near-certainties: Another Sox/Yankees ALCS; and “worker productivity” becoming an oxymoron at offices throughout New England tomorrow. This thing doesn’t start till 9:37 p.m., for Hendu’s sake, and postseason baseball tends to go well with alcohol.
But what baseball taketh away, it can also giveth, or whatever. The sport has inspired some nifty innovations in analytics, robotics and … let’s call it life sciences.
MIT News Office photo
• In spring training, the Sox, who even give their IT guy World Series rings, supplemented hitting coach Dave Magadan with the MIT Media Lab, naturally. For the last few years, researchers from the Media Lab’s Responsive Environments Group, has been strapping sensors to minor leagers while they’re batting at the Sox camp at Fort Myers. The info from accelerometers and gyroscopes could provide insight on differences in swing mechanics during a hot streak or a slump.
• Using an arm developed at MIT, University of Tokyo researchers have developed baseball-playing robots that could make the Fall Classic either more interesting, or entirely pointless, to watch. Think of all the time and money the Sox would save on scouting, not to mention free agency. And J.D. Drew would presumably be injured far less often if he were a robot. (more…)
Charles River Ventures passed on the recent $100 million round of funding in Twitter, after participating in the company’s earlier rounds.
According to VentureBeat, CRV says it sat out as a function of its strategy. It funds early stage startups, and that kind of deal would eat up too much of its $325 million fund. VentureBeat also notes CRV’s investment in Twitter would produce a 40X return based on the microblogging company’s valuation.
PEHub’s Dan Primack notes CRV’s absence from Twitter’s Series C and D rounds, and offers another possible reason the venture firm skipped the latest round: “CRV made a giant mistake and is now trying to justify it.”
For helpful, $1 billion context, you can turn to Twitter itself, to see the VentureBeat headline and link retweeted into oblivion.
The Globe takes a look at some recent developments in the 50-year old field of personal rapid transit — which is like the T, except you get your own, automated trolley, on-demand. So I guess it’s like the T only in that they both run on tracks.
The Globe story neglects to mention Belmont-based startup Rail-Pod Inc., which is looking to deploy the technology in tourist areas. I checked in with Rail-Pod co-founder Brendan English via e-mail, and he said the startup is developing its vehicle, and will be at the Rail-Volution conference at the Westin Boston Waterfront at the end of the month.
A list like this is probably biased against the tech community, and almost certainly biased against the non-Silicon Valley tech – only one New England startup made it into Inc. magazine’s “30 under 30: America’s Coolest Young Entrepreneurs.”
IdeaPaint — the only cool kid amongst you slovenly nerds — is the brainchild of three Babson alumni: John Goscha, Jeff Avallon and Morgan Newman. The startup, founded in 2002, makes paint that turns any wall surface into a whiteboard. The three started working on the company in Babson’s entrepreneurship program.
Among the other winners are a handmade belt company whose key innovation seems to be cheap, Vietnamese labor; and an email newsletter that tells guys what stuff to buy. That last one is preparing to launch “brief restaurant video tours aimed at helping guys familiarize themselves with a restaurant so they can act like they’ve been there before, and, in turn, impress a date.”
So for those of you trying to build robots or revolutionize transportation or cure diseases, it’s possible you’re working too hard.
A recent Wired magazine piece outlined the increasing effectiveness of the placebo effect. Biotechs are finding their drugs, new and old, are failing tests because they’re no more effective than a placebo.
In August, for example, Javelin Pharmacauticals reported in August that tests of its pain reliever, Ereska, returned a pain intensity difference between Ereska and placebos that fell short of clinical standards.
Taking a problem and turning it into an opportunity, Stephen Colbert, D.F.A.’s Prescott Pharmaceuticals is rolling out Vaxebo, a bag of sugar from which to make those increasingly effective sugar-pill placebos.
BUToday notes the arrival of BigBelly Solar’s fancy garbage can today, with an animated feature explaining how they work. The school is adding 20 of the solar-powered trash compactors to the three already on its campus. 
As many as 400 tech-minded students, bankers, lawyers, investors and entrepreneurs took to Boston’s streets in the drizzle last Friday afternoon in the 
The Globe story neglects to mention Belmont-based startup 
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