It turns out there’s a lot going on in the ‘Internet of Things’ space in our state. There’s also a ton of excitement and anticipation about where all this new technology is headed. Must be time for a conference! A group of technologists and early adopters in the Twin Cities decided to do just that, and are off to the races with plans for “IoT Fuse” in March — aptly described as “A Conference to Spark the Internet of Things.” Here’s the latest news from the team about the event:
Category: Minnesota (Page 6 of 6)
[Note: This post first appeared earlier today at Minnov8.com, where I am a contributor. Image credit: Telegraph UK.]
Basically, app discovery is a bitch, and the App Store is no longer the answer. That is the gist of a report on “2015 App Store Competition” published a couple days ago by an analytics firm in Berlin called Adjust. (PDF of the full report here.)
Minnesota developers are of course not strangers to this problem. It’s especially painful for startups looking to get traction in today’s “mobile first” startup environment — and moreso if they don’t have Silicon Valley sized funding rounds. I asked a couple of experienced mobile industry players here in Minnesota for their reaction to this news. But first, more on the report.
[Note: This post first appeared earlier today at Minnov8.com, where I am a contributor.]
Minnesota mobile technology firm DoApp Inc. announced today it has sold its mobile real estate platform to publicly traded CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX), a global property information, analytics, and data-enabled services provider based in Irvine, California. Seven DoApp employees, 40% of its workforce (which is based in both Rochester MN and the Twin Cities area), are now CoreLogic employees — including Dave Borrillo, previously DoApp’s COO, now a VP of mobile technology at CoreLogic. None of the employees has to relocate. Other terms of the deal were not announced.
The DoApp-developed mobile real-estate platform has been the technology foundation for the CoreLogic “GoMLS” app. GoMLS gives real estate agents and consumers access to in-depth listing and property data using their mobile devices. DoApp said the GoMLS app has been downloaded by homebuyers and sellers over 400,000 times to date.
In a post today in the Wall Street Journal “Speakeasy” blog (which covers media, entertainment, celebrity, and the arts), the latest music video from Weird Al Yankovic was featured. It’s hilarious!! Take a look there on that post (length is 4:34)… I'll wait.
What’s cool is that the video has a Minnesota connection. It turns out Yankovic and his longtime coproducer 
tapped TruScribe to make it — starting some ten months ago. TruScribe is headquartered in Madison WI, but also has an office in downtown St. Paul. (In addition, it maintains international operations through many key European partnerships.) Andrew Herkert, who’s VP of sales and a cofounder, heads the St. Paul office and helped launch the company while a student at the University of St. Thomas about five years ago. TruScribe has grown significantly since then.
An excerpt from the WSJ post:
The song, from Yankovic’s new album “Mandatory Fun,” is in the style of Crosby, Stills & Nash… (it) features Yankovic harmonizing with himself on lyrics constructed of corporate jargon, like “operationalize our strategies” and “leverage our core competencies,” while the animated whiteboard video depicts a live-action hand that is drawing illustrations to go with the words.
“I wanted to do a song about all the ridiculous double-speak and meaningless buzzwords that I’ve been hearing in office environments my entire life,” Yankovic says by email. “I just thought it would be ironic to juxtapose that with the song stylings of CSN, whose music pretty much symbolizes the antithesis of corporate America.”
I laughed out loud at one comment on the post (from a guy named David): “Weird Al hits all the right points. Anyone who has written a press release should hang their heads in shame.”
TruScribe is getting a ton of praise today (including from Al himself), as you can see on its Twitter account.
And here’s a great blog post TruScribe published today, Weird Al is making fun of you! And us, too.
TruScribe’s technology is called “Scribology,” and the company has built an impressive client list. 
I had the pleasure of meeting cofounder Andrew Herkert at the most recent University of St. Thomas “Fowler Business Concept Challenge” (a student competition), where we were judges on the same team. Here’s what he had to say about the news today:
“Weird Al is a creative powerhouse, with a decades-long influence on pop culture, and that makes it an honor that we were selected as vendor for his whiteboard-animation project. The TruScribe team is optimistic this is just the beginning of a deeper relationship with the media industry. … I have high praise for Jay Levey of Imaginary Productions for catalyzing the vision for this video. Jay is Al’s business partner and manager/agent/fellow visionary — they’ve worked together for many, many years. In fact, Jay discovered Al some 30 years ago.”
TruScribe is another great example of Minnesota creativity and technology innovation! Okay, Wisconsin claims them as well. We hate to admit it — but, yes, occasionally, cheeseheads can be creative, too… 🙂
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