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MHT's Galen Moore: New 'hyperlocal' web trend
Part-time plotters brought their cherished, outlandish ideas to Betahouse last Thursday for a party — the first of many — hosted by the Awesome Foundation. The foundation’s 12 trustees each contribute about $100 a month to pay for $1,000 monthly grants to do something “awesome.”
The trustees who were on hand for last Thursday’s meeting at the Cambridge technology co-working facility are mostly technology employees from the Boston area. But most of the ideas represented were far from technologically advanced.
Mitch Zeisler wants to see city kids slurping lobster and bivalves at Faneuil Hall’s Union Oyster House.
Zeisler, whose public-space athletics company Knuckle Bones hosts croquet on the Rose Kennedy Greenway every Friday this summer through a public grant, wants to start a nonprofit to introduce kids to Boston’s attractions, history and prominent citizens. He needs $900 to incorporate the nonprofit with the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
“Have any kids ever been there (to the Union Oyster House)?” he asked. “No, but we’re more than happy to send every tourist to these restaurants.”
The stealthy urban playground group Banditos Misteriosos has organized public pillow fights and Revolutionary War battle reenactments with squirt guns on Boston’s Esplanade. Two representatives of the shadowy group were on hand last week but refused to give their names or say specificially what they might do with the $1,000 grant.
“If we had a grant, we could think on a different scale than we’re used to thinking about,” said a woman who identified herself as ‘Bandito B.’
Grant winners will have to come out into the spotlight, however, at a party to be hosted by the organization once it picks its August winner, later this month. At the party, that winner will make a five-minute presentation to the crowd, he said.
Ajay Kapoor had one of the few tech-related ideas vying for awesome cred and funds at last week’s party. He’s hoping to create an online social community of medical students to advocate for health-care initiatives and share information.
For grant writers, the monthly grant application pages at awesomefoundation.org will be shockingly simple. The grant program has no parameters or limitations other than 500 words and “awesome.”
One thing founder Tim Hwang said he can promise: “There will be more parties.”
Sensobi’s Beta blows up
Sensobi wants to make your mobile e-mail work better. The Boston Techstars company has an application for the Blackberry that works like a behind-the-scenes customer relationship management package, prioritizing e-mails based on who is sending them, rather than the time they hit your inbox. On each incoming message, Sensobi appends a note informing you of your last contact with the person — and the app will prod you to reach out to priority contacts you may be falling out of touch with.
The chance to be the first on your cubicle row with a cool Blackberry app came and went last week, however, as a mention on the blog Boy Genius Report overwhelmed the startup with geeks clamoring for downloads. Stay tuned. The company plans a second beta release soon, after ironing out a few bugs.
Get that paper
New Haven-based PaperG Inc., the hyperlocal interactive ad network that uses a display applet based on a university bulletin board, has posted $180,000 in debt funding from existing investors, regulatory filings show.
The funding came because the company hit its milestones, said co-founder Victor Wong, including a deal to run ads on websites in the Hearst Newspapers chain.
The company believes it can improve newspapers’ monetization of their online ad space. Investors include Stephen Taylor, the former Boston Globe executive who in the 1990s co-led with Lincoln Millstein — now with Hearst — the launch of the paper’s website, Boston.com.
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