Startup Spotlight: High school whiz kids create Q&A website Junglr

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For most teenagers, balancing homework and a social life is plenty of work. But for three Mercer Island High Schoolers, that wasn’t enough. Zack Elliott, Isaac Diamond, and Robert Sun have been working for over two years to develop the question-and-answer site Junglr. “Our goals were not lofty,” said 18-year-old CEO Elliott, who interned at Microsoft… Read More…

Amazon patents ‘gravity’ links for web and devices

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Amazon has been granted a patent on a “gravity-based link assist” system — a method of pulling a user’s on-screen pointer toward a link or clickable object when it travels within a “gravitational field” on the page. The idea is to make pages easier to navigate, but as Wired News points out, the technique also makes… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Gatherball looks to take the stress out of planning events and getaways

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We’ve all had to spearhead the planning of an event.  Whether it be your weekly trip to the movies with your friends, a bachelor party, or even that Ruby meetup, it’s always a pain in the rear. Seattle’s Gatherball is working to make planning events “less like herding cats and more like herding awesome.” Started by three… Read More…

Evri spins out SportStream with $3.5M from Paul Allen

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Seattle startup Evri was founded in 2007, designed to help people make better sense of news and information. A lot has changed since then, especially given the rise of tablets and mobile computers. Now, the company is evolving, announcing today that it has spun off a new social sports startup called SportStream with $3.5 million from… Read More…

BigDoor closes $5M, touts new ‘gamified rewards program’

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There’s so much content clutter on the Web these days that it can be tough for online publishers to keep their readers or viewers engaged, coming back each day for more. BigDoor, the Seattle upstart led by Keith Smith, Matt Shobe and Jeff Malek, believes it has the solution to that problem. And the 29-person… Read More…

How technology should be used to spur open government

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The Washington Coalition for Open Government organized a conference this weekend to commemorate the 40th anniversary of our state’s landmark Initiative 276 and the Open Public Meetings Act (and to discuss the past, present and future of open government). I was one of the speakers at the conference and spoke about using technology to promote open… Read More…

Will you rent your ride to a stranger? Peer-to-peer ‘carsharing’ arrives

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We’ve already told you about the ability to use the Internet to find nearby lodging (Airbnb); pet sitters (DogVacay and Rover.com) and sports tickets and other goods (Zaarly). Now, residents in Washington state — due in part to changes in insurance laws instituted by the legislature earlier this month — will be able to easily… Read More…

Spotify’s secret to adding 8,000 paying subscribers a day

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Ever since its U.S. debut last year, the popular music listening service Spotify has been adding 8,000 subscribers a day. And I’m not just talking about free subscribers. That’s paid subscribers. What’s their secret? It’s all in the marketing. I’ll show you what those strategies are and how to use them to promote your own product,… Read More…

Venuelabs raises cash to help brick-and-mortar retailers track storefront performance

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In this digital era, there’s certainly no shortage of customer feedback when it comes to the interactions at brick-and-mortar retail stores. Venuelabs, a Seattle area startup led by former Microsoft and Jobster employee Neil Crist, is looking to help everyone from pizza parlors to gas stations make sense of all of the chatter. Formerly known… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: TinyPass looks to line publishers’ pockets with new way to charge for content

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In an opinion piece for Bloomberg this week, former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold lamented the demise of the physical newspaper and wondered if the solution might be in a payment system for news content. That message certainly will resonate with TinyPass, a 12-month-old startup that’s created a new way for news organizations to… Read More…