#bostinnovation

Never ones to shy away from a good party, the team over at BostInnovation held a pre-summer kickoff last week for Cinco de Mayo at Tia's. With well over 700 RSVPs, the event attracted area sponsors Where.com, fresh off their ebay acquisition, and award winning marketing & design agency Antler. Magners Hard Cider rounded off the beverage sponsorship for a thirsty crowd.

Team Grinnit decided this would be another great experiment using our alpha iPhone app and an easy email submission process for photos. BostInno gave us an early shout out before the event, and helped to round up the crew to drive in photos in real time - check out the events photos here on BostInno's site. A great deal of value for the organizers was the ability to drive content to their page during the event in real time.

Many thanks go to our local supporters including Ben Dolgoff (Byte Ventures / Peekaboo Mobile), Aaron White (Boundless Learning / Proxlet), Liza Adams (decktOut), Nic Warren (formerly SCVNGR / now Perfect Fuel), Jake Cacciapaglia (Runkeeper), Jeremy Levin (StarStreet), Alex Patriquin (Performable), too many others to list and, of course, the BostInno crew.

BostInnovation CEO Chase Garbarino had this to say after the fact: 

Grinnit's an awesome way for us to engage our community and allow them to contribute back with photos. If you're at an event, chances are you want to see pictures of yourself, taken by your friends or maybe someone you haven't even met yet. Grinnit allows BostInno to do that, both internally for our team and externally from our community.

Article written by Cece Santos from Bostoninnovation. Thank you everyone for coming out!

When I first arrived at the Venture Café last night for the inaugural Ed Tech meetup (organized by BostInnovator Marissa Lowman), I thought I had come to a networking party. Everybody – beer, wine or soda in hand – was either having a conversation or  starting one, this time related to the intersection of education, technology and entrepreneurship.

Every Thursday the Venture Café team hosts  different gathering events bringing together a diverse community: entrepreneurs, small business owners, venture capitalists, etc. to meet one another. “We encourage people to come over and start building community,” CarrieStalder, organizer of the Venture Café shared.

I had the opportunity to find out about two startups targeting the education industry: Swellr andBUILD.

Swellr is creating a fantastic win-win platform for small businesses and educators by combining local e-commerce with micro-fundraising.

“It gives the chance for educators to raise  money for their classroom and projects needs, by getting people in their network to shop at local businesses that run promotions on the Swellr website,” co-founder Nathan Rothstein explained.

So how will this soon-to-launch product actually work? First, a teacher writes a short description of the classroom need – e.g. craft materials – and posts a picture of the class. Then, to get the project funded, the teacher notifies their network via email asking them to shop on Swellr. Once the project goal is met, Swellr will ship the craft materials to the teacher’s school.

With increasing numbers in high school drop-outs, BUILD brings hope for students in need of an extra motivational push by embracing entrepreneurship.

The program engages low-income students through high school and into college success. By using entrepreneurship and providing kids with the tools to develop their own startup ideas, write business plans and pitch to VCs and Angel investors, BUILD helps turn ideas into reality.

With the first program being a success in East Palo Alto and Oakland, California, BUILD’s Boston program will launch in September with four Boston high schools and 100 students. “We are looking for mentors interested in getting involved – people who care about urban education. It’s all about helping each other,” Regional Executive Director Ayele Shakur shared.  

The Future of Trademark Searches: Easy, Free, Actual Use-In-Commerce Searches

Although it is still standard practice in the Trademark industry to search at the USPTO to get at trademark registrations, Cambridge-based United Domains is now providing a use-in-commerce search through its service, Namecheck.com.

According to Bostinnovation.com:

Namecheck looks up your brand availability across twelve different social media outlets including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and LinkedIn. Aside from these prominent social media services, Namecheck also searches WordPress, Blogger, Del.icio.us, MySpace, Digg, Wikipedia, Last.fm, and even eBay.

This means businesses can get insight into whether there has been use in commerce, or even intent to use—at least across a few Internet-based metrics.  Without use or intent to use, there can be no trademark protection.

Thanks @SZinsmeister for the great article about StorageByMail.com on BostInnovation.com!

      Storage by Mail: The Netflix for Storing Your Stuff

  It was exactly 11 years ago when Daniel Hughes, CEO of Storage by Mail, conceptualized the idea.  He had just finished is undergraduate work and moved to a small apartment on the upper east side of New York City.  “My apartment was 400 square feet and they advertised it as a one bedroom…it was the tiniest apartment you could imagine.  I actually think 400 square feet was being generous.  It didn’t have a single closet, so I had to get creative like hanging my bicycle from the ceiling,” Hughes describes.  Knowing that he needed to find some extra space Hughes did what most people do, which is jump online and find the nearest storage facility.