information technology : Innovation + Job News

Businesses looking for information or project partners now have an easier way to connect with industry experts, federal labs, universities, Ohio's Edison and Wright centers and even other for-profit companies.

OMNI, managed as a joint venture between the Ohio Department of Development and the Board of Regents and spearheaded by Cincinnati-based TechSolve -- the Ohio Edison Center responsible for assisting manufacturers primarily in the aerospace and defense industries -- was rolled out in a "soft launch" to limited users late last month. When fully populated, the portal will serve as a clearinghouse for a vast array of information and resources as well as a space for collaborative work.

TechSolve President Gary Conley says the key to the service is an advanced search function and collaborative capabilities built by Ohio Third Frontier recipient Zakta, of Cincinnati.

OMNI will make it possible for a user to find help he or she may need more quickly by tapping a data base of Ohio experts and resource links. A company with a particular problem can post a "challenge," which will automatically be sent to OMNI participants who have expertise in that area, Conley says.

"Or, if I have a particular technology, I can search the challenges and send an e-mail and say 'I can help,'" he adds.

The parties can then connect privately outside of OMNI -- or work together real-time using shared space on OMNI � to tackle the challenge. Each OMNI participant also has the option to keep his or her space private, organizing into folders information found on the web or passed along by others, or to open up those articles, images or videos to share with everyone.

Conley says OMNI solves a problem that has existed for a long time -- how businesses can find resources to help with technological obstacles or other issues. Hard copy directories were static and stayed on shelves, Conley says. OMNI will be flexible and agile, with an ability to add resources constantly.

At last count, OMNI had 1,200 individuals and nearly 500 companies in the data base. The portal currently is populated with aerospace and advanced materials resources, with biotech to come soon.

Source: Gary Conley, TechSolve
Writer: Gene Monteith

Access Mobility, Inc., has its roots in healthcare IT consulting. But today, the Cleveland-based firm is a strong player in mHealth (mobile health), having spun off from Exential.com in 2008 to focus its energy on mHealth software.

"We basically combined our healthcare technology experience with the mobile environment and came up with CellepathicRx," explains CEO Greg Muffler.

CellepathicRX software is a flexible, customizable platform designed to serve the mobile healthcare market. The company credits 10 years of technology, knowledge, and regulatory-compliance experience for its ability to enhance most healthcare-related mobile tasks.

"We focus on using mobile communication to get healthy and stay healthy. We start with mobilizing patient resources . . . We work with a lot of retail pharmacy chains for the mobilization of their brands and to provide more ubiquitous patient access, not only online but in the gap between online and in-store, which is important to a retail environment," says Muffler.

"Another focus is medication adherence, sometimes called medication compliance, using a mobile platform, for what we call 'improved patient outcomes.' To make sure people are taking their medications as prescribed," he explains.

"Lastly, we follow up with mobile health and wellness applications for continued, direct, and very intimate communication with patients via our secure, HIPAA-compliant mobile platform."

Muffler, a Cleveland native, declined to disclose figures but he is optimistic about the company's future. AMI has 11 full-time employees and four to six part-time or contract resources, and Muffler thinks a doubling of staff within the next 12 months is not out of the question. Initial funding was raised internally, with help from some angel investors. Now, the company is considering a second round, to include venture capital.

The startup reached what Muffler describes as "light revenue" in 2009, while 2010 was much more significant. "We will continue to report projections that are very aggressive over the next several years. The market opportunities are in line with the fast-growth software firms," says the ebullient CEO.

Source: Greg Muffler; CEO, Access Mobility Inc.
Writer: Patrick G. Mahoney

TechTol Imaging is building a business based on a faster, less expensive way to create 360-degree rotational and 3D imaging.

TechTol claims a patent-pending system which it calls "the first -- and only -- in the world that instantly captures and then creates 3D rotational images for use with any computer-based system."

TechTol's imaging studio and software can turn out 360-degree or 3D images in a matter of minutes or seconds, says Phil Cox, managing member and founder. More typical industry methods can take hours at best and weeks at worst because of time needed to edit, he says.

Rather than taking a series of photos as an object spins on a turntable -- the industry's standard aproach -- TechTol captures simultaneous images of a stationary object from multiple angles. Because all the photos are from the same moment in time, changes in expression or movement of limbs do not affect the quality of the final image -- thus vastly reducing the need for editing.

The company, which is headquartered on the Owens Community College's Toledo campus, recently rolled out 3DTOAD.com, an online image database designed to provide educational institutions with a vast number of 3D images when schools don't have the real thing on hand.

"Think of an example like a skull rotating that the instructor has control over in the classroom and can turn the skull around and point to different attributes and can teach from that," Cox says. "It also can be viewed by the student at home, so there's a variety of applications there that can be employed, and you can generate CDs that can be compatible with the course syllabus."

While education is the company's main focus -- it has been providing Owens with images and says it is nearing an agreement with Bowling Green State University -- it also provides 360-degree rotational and 3D web imaging for consumer products.

The company was formed in 2008 and was assisted early on by a $50,000 Ignite Grant from the Regional Growth Partnership's Rocket Ventures . The company, an LLC, has 13 partners who all contribute to the operations in some way, Cox says.

Sources: Phil Cox, managing member and Zak Ward, VP of visual operations, TechTol
Writer: Gene Monteith

The Ohio Ambassador Program is getting a facelift and a new home as the initiative expands to better tell Ohio's story.

Initiated about a year and a half ago by the Ohio Department of Development, the Ambassador Program signed some 1,600 volunteer ambassadors to carry the message about what it's like to live and work in Ohio.

Now, the effort is moving under the auspices of the Ohio Business Development Coalition to take advantage of new communication channels.

"We are going to be implementing social media into the Ambassador Program, which I think is going to make a huge difference in terms of engaging people and in the potential impact of the program," says Ed Burghard, OBDC's executive director.

OBDC is a nonprofit organization funded with public and private sources that designs and implements marketing efforts for the State of Ohio. Burghard says the Ambassador Program is an important way to highlight what OBDC likes to call "the state of perfect balance" -- an environment in which residents have time to pursue both professional and personal aspirations. He believes that by creating a dialog across social media channels, that message will build over time and extend to wider audiences.

"We want to create a community where the folks who want to tell the story can come and be given the tools to make it easy to tell that story," he says. Ambassadors will be kept up to date on relevant developments within the state, information they can pass along to others, and easy-to-execute assignments, Burghard says.

"We have no expectations that somebody is going to decide to drop $20 million to build a facility in our state because they read somebody's Tweet," he says.

But, as more people search online for information about states and communities, "you would hope some of the (information) we are most interested in having people read would come to the forefront."

Source: Ed Burghard, Ohio Business Development Coalition
Writer: Gene Monteith

Every hour of every day more information than one company could ever process zooms across the world at the speed of light. That's why Balanced Insight Corp., in Cincinnati, has developed new software that aims to more quickly make sense out of the information most important to businesses.

Balanced Insight's Consensus is designed to help IT departments do more with less. The software more quickly and efficiently allows IT professionals to pull out needed data, arrange it and distribute it, using fewer resources reducing costs in the process.

"The world is becoming a big hunk of data," says Tom Hammergren, founder and CEO of Balanced Insight. "Users want to get better access to this data, and inside of IT departments there are people tapped for repurposing this data. But there are not enough people to fulfill the demand of what users want. Our whole focus is to take that process and really do it better, faster and cheaper."

The product also speeds the data delivery process by speeding collaboration and automating IT data gathering processes.

"When you get into business intelligence there are 10 tech platforms that have to be brought together, and you have to have 10 humans that understand each platform. We move that demand on understanding those technologies out of humans and into the software. We take manual, laborious processes and automate them." Hammergren said.

Consensus is used in a wide variety of industries including financial services, transportation, healthcare, manufacturing and utilities. Clients have included Subway, Nike and Fifth Third bank.

Balanced Insight introduced Consensus in 2008, and is a CincyTech portfolio company. CincyTech has invested $350,000 in it.

Source: Tom Hammergren, founder and CEO of Balanced Insight
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

You can follow Feoshia on Twitter @feoshiawrites

When sign-ups started out slowly for BioOhio's 2011 Service Provider's Expo, the organization decided to get creative. The result: an online version of the expo, which began March 1, runs through April 28 and which at last count had nearly 60 virtual exhibitors.

Matt Schutte, director of communications for Columbus-based BioOhio -- the Ohio Edison Center charged with accelerating biosciences discovery, innovation and commercialization -- says the expo is a chance for shoppers and browsers in the biosciences to connect with product and service providers from within the state of Ohio.

"This is an outgrowth of a live expo that we held last year in March," Schutte says. "That event went well as a first year. This year, it was not hitting critical mass at the time that we needed to sign some facility agreements."

So, BioOhio partnered with online conferencing expert JuJaMa to build a virtual exhibition site. All exhibitors must be biosciences-based and have an Ohio presence, Schutte says. BioOhio members pay $50 and non-members $80 for the privilege of showcasing their companies.

As exhibitors, companies are able to send meeting requests to other expo participants, can send system generated messages and see the entire content of the site, Schutte says.

Shoppers can only see the exhibitors, but can register at no cost. The online aspects of the event have one big advantage over the live event, Shutte notes -- customers can come from all over the world. Earlier this week, nearly 170 shoppers or browsers were signed in to view online exhibits.

If the online expo goes well, BioOhio may extend the format to other focus areas, Schutte says.

"Maybe we'll extend this to some summits or some geographic or foreign partner sites -- who knows where that goes."

Participants can still register for the expo by going here.

Source: Matt Schutte, BioOhio
Writer: Gene Monteith

CincyTech's $250,000 investment in a Chicago start-up has drawn the company to Ohio, the second such announced move in the last month.

Samplesaint, which has developed a system that allows consumers to redeem coupons online using their mobile phones, will move to Cincinnati this spring, according to a release from CincyTech. The company's Cincinnati operations will include a research and development lab as well as data analysis operation.

CincyTech says Samplesaint's technology allows coupons to be scanned through a checkout system using any mobile device. The company also has developed a data base that connects with a retailer's point of service system, thus allowing coupons to be identified, redeemed and their expiration dates confirmed.

Samplesaint could not be reached immediately to elaborate on plans, but CEO Lawrence Griffith says in a statement March 14 that Cincinnati was attractive as a consumer marketing center.

"With companies such as Procter, Kroger, Macy's and dunnhumby, it is a hub of expertise about the consumer mindset. Samplesait looks forward to finding its place in that ecosystem."

CincyTech's president, Bob Coy notes in the release that the market for mobile couponing is predicted to rise to more than $6 billion within the next three years and says the rise in mobile phone use positions Samplesaint for growth.

CincyTech is a public-private venture development organization that invests in high-tech startups in the Cincinnati area. Earlier this month it announced that a similar $250,000 investment will bring Chicago-based turboBOTZ to the Cincinnati, also this spring. turboBOTZ and Samplesaint represent CincyTech's 20th and 21st portfolio companies, respectively.

Source: CincyTech

Neflix subscribers now have a faster way to add movies to their online queues.

CueThat, the latest creation of Columbus-based Big Kitty Labs, allows someone who comes across a movie title while reading online content to right click over it and instantly add the movie his or her Netflix lineup.

Dan Rockwell, Big Kitty's CEO, says the service was launched three weeks ago and "took off like crazy," accumulating 1,000 users and tracking 3,000 movie adds within the first two weeks.

CueThat will work with almost any browser, Big Kitty says. A plug-in has been developed for Firefox and Chrome and CueThat offers a bookmarklet that can be dragged from CueThat's website to Safari and Internet Explorer browsers.

Rockwell explains the advantage of CueThat is "immediacy."

"It's like a remote control for the TV," Rockwell says. "What that did for the TV is it let the person sit on the couch and change channels."

At present, there is no revenue model for CueThat, Rockwell says. Netflix does not pay Big Kitty for the additional traffic to its site, and no advertising is being sold. But Rockwell says CueThat, like some of Big Kitty's other projects, is foregoing profits now for potential pay-off later.

"It's kind of technology play, people play, in the sense of 'here's some folks that are thinking in this space and where does it go next?," Rockwell explains. "We're working on two other queuing type (projects). And we also have the analytics of what's being queued so we're gathering data. I feel like any time you're gathering data and analyzing people patterns you're sitting on something that could be interesting to a third party."

Next up?

"It's a hard one to do but I think we're going to try to do it -- library books. Where you can right click a book and automatically reserve it at the library."

Source: Dan Rockwell, Big Kitty Labs
Writer: Gene Monteith

Vincent Chou is a rabid video gamer, and it irks him that there's no easy way to find used video games at a reasonable cost. Or to sell a used game for a fair price after the fun has worn off.

So Chou and fellow grad student Pratap Shergill have formed turboBOTZ -- an Internet marketplace that will bring buyers and sellers together to set their own prices.

The company was formed in Chicago but will move to Cincinnati this spring after a recent $250,000 investment by CincyTech, a public-private venture development organization serving southwest Ohio.

Both Chou and Shergill participated in a program offered last fall by The Brandery, a seed-stage consumer marketing startup accelerator in Cincinnati. Chou says the business partners were referred to The Brandery after getting high marks in the business plan competition at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, but failing to meet the criteria for a similar accelerator program in Chicago.

The Brandery, formed last year, helped the pair think about retail strategy and strategic partnerships, according to a CincyTech news release. CincyTech provided $20,000 to support The Brandery's first class of startups and now has made turboBOTZ its 20th portfolio company.

Chou says the $250,000 investment will allow it to operate in its first year. A formal launch of the service is planned within three to four months and the company is currently hiring staff, which Chou expects to total four to five initially.

"We already have one hire from the Cincinnati area," Chou says. "Once we raise a little bit more money, ideally I can see us being a 20- to 30-person shop."

Chou doesn't graduate from Booth until around New Years, he says, meaning some long commutes between now and then. Shergill, however, graduates this summer.

"So he'll be able to spend a little more time in Cincinnati," Chou says.

Source: Vincent Chou, turboBOTZ
Writer: Gene Monteith

A pizza-fueled team of 20-somethings has propelled a small Cleveland technology company to swift success in the competitive world of online restaurant takeout ordering.

Onosys was established in 2005 by three Case Western Reserve University students -- Stan Garber, Oleg Fridman and Alex Yakubovich -- when Rascal House Pizza, a local campus restaurant, asked them to develop an online ordering solution for the eatery.

Researching the restaurant industry, they found it woefully lacking in high-tech online ordering systems. Believing they had found an under-served niche, they developed their own system. Their goal, according to their website, was that it must be "user-friendly, flexible in its functionality, scalable, have a great user interface and be backed by committed and friendly customer support."

With the explosion of online ordering for everything from books to snow tires, their timing couldn't have been better. They networked and established a board, which lead to important guidance, as well as funding from a local angel investor. The company name, ONOSYS, stands for Online Ordering Systems.

Today, with more than 75 national chains as clients, Onosys is a major player in the restaurant online and mobile ordering industry. Clients include Panera Bread, Honeybaked Ham, Papa John's, Houlihan's, Beef O'Brady's and Frisch's Big Boy. "We're really big on pizza restaurants," Garber notes. "We have more pizza chains than any of the competition, and pizza is a regular part of our staff's diet."
 
He attributes the company's successful growth to three things. "We have an easy pricing model, charging a flat monthly rate per restaurant location rather than a percentage of each individual transaction," he explains. "Second, we're constantly investing in refining our technology. We also have youth. We're all in our 20s, and our age demographic does the most online restaurant ordering. That means we're our customers' clients, which gives us important insights."

Garber believes Onosys also has a competitive edge in data aggregation and social media.

"Restaurants don't collect a lot of data on their customers," he explains. "We capture a host of data, which our clients can access through our customer relations management tool. Our new big thing this year," he adds, "is being able to give our restaurants live ROI data on social media promotions they run."

Onosys currently has 12 employees and plans to hire more by year's end.

Source: Stan Garber, Onosys
Writer: Lynne Meyer

Cincinnati creative companies are ready for Austin's South by Southwest Interactive conference tomorrow through March 15, aiming to connect with thousands of participants and fellow professionals. Considered highly influential, the conference is loaded with events on marketing, Web and all things digital. It saw more than 14,000 participants, and the SXSW Music and Film festivals recorded similar numbers.

Cincinnati companies know this year's Interactive will draw big audiences - perhaps bigger than last year's fest.

"We're going to be doing a lot of grassroots marketing strategies - installations, street teams, spreading the word virally," says Josh Heuser, founder of Ionic Collective, which partners with nightlife venues in the Midwest. (Seen the Hoist energy drink? They handle that.) "I went down in January and made a lot of contacts with local resources."

"It's a really important time for Cincinnati to make an impact down there this year," Heuser adds.

Of the companies, Ionic Collective hosts a March 14 showcase featuring local indie-pop band Bad Veins and national bands. The showcase also features Cincinnati company Wearcast, making its debut at SXSW. As co-founder Jaydev Karande explains: "We let people take any thought, statement, expression and turn it into a cool T-shirt � without needing any design skills. It's as easy as updating your Facebook status or sending out a Tweet."

Wearcast started in June 2010. The company was enticed by SXSW's exposure opportunities, Karande says. "The real feedback we're going to get is going to down there. Good or bad -- it doesn't matter. You get it there."

Connecting with local companies bound for SXSW, Karande and Heuser organized a SXSW pre-party at Mainstay Rock Bar downtown Feb. 25 that included reps from Wearcast, Ionic and companies such as Empower MediaMarketing and Crush Republic.

Sources: Kevin Dugan, Empower MediaMarketing, Josh Heuser, Ionic Collective and Jaydev Karande, Wearcast
Writer: Rich Shivener

This story originally appeared in Soapbox.

The enterprising use of social media by two of its students helped serve as a catalyst for Cleveland's Virginia Marti College of Art & Design to become a major player in the social media education scene in Northeast Ohio.

Valerie Mayen attended fashion design classes at the College in 2008. She subsequently created a line of clothing and accessories that she named Yellowcake and began promoting her work on the Internet and with social media. The buzz helped bring her to the attention of the producers of Lifetime TV's "Project Runway," and she was a contestant on the eighth season of the hit show in 2010.

Mike Kubinski received a graphic design degree from VMCAD in 2007. He also started his business -- C.L.E. Clothing Company, promoting positive messages about Cleveland -- online, and used social media to build it.

Both Mayen and Kubinski won Arts Entrepreneur and Innovation Awards from the Council of Smaller Enterprises in 2010.

In October, Michael DeAloia, Cleveland's unofficial "Tech Czar" and one of the founders of the city's Social Media Lab (SML), contacted Geof Pelaia, VMCAD's director of marketing. DeAloia was looking for a new home for the Lab, which had originally been hosted at Cuyahoga Community College.

"Michael wanted to collaborate with us to develop educational social media programming," recalls Pelaia. Aware of the positive results that two of VMCAD's students had achieved through social media, Pelaia felt that partnering with the Lab would be a good fit for the College.

VMCAD began offering weekday evening classes and Saturday seminars as part of its continuing education curriculum. They're taught by DeAloia and an array of social media and marketing professionals in the region.

"We adjust course content to respond to emerging trends, so we're staying on the cutting edge of social media," Pelaia explains. "We're accommodating our students, working professionals and budding entrepreneurs by equipping them with social media knowledge. We feel that the social media education we're doing is actually economic development."

Source: Geof Pelaia, Virginia Marti College of Art & Design and Valerie Mayen, Yellowcake
Writer: Lynne Meyer

From an office at a business incubator in southeastern Ohio, Alan Schaaf's barely two-year-old tech company is involved in the people-vs.-president drama unfolding in Egypt -- albeit passively.

Schaaf is founder and the only fulltime employee of Imgur (pronounced like "imager"), a site to share pictures across social networks, blogs, and online communities for free. The recent OU graduate and a part-timer work from the Ohio University Innovation Center in Athens.

Every day over 100,000 people use Imgur to upload innocuous things like snapshots of dogs, clever cartoons and graphics of all sorts. They make their visuals accessible via Imgur's gallery as well as Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo and Google.

But sometimes, as has happened lately, there's a reminder why there's a "world" in www.

Schaaf says Imgur usually has about 3,000 visits per week from people in Egypt. Recently, despite riots and interruption of Internet and related network services, that number dipped to 500.

Uploads related to the unrest have included things like screen captures of Al Jazeera's coverage of damage at the Egyptian National Museum, pictures of Egyptians holding tear gas canisters, posters that say "Mubarak Must Go" and related sentiments, and a typewritten letter, purportedly from inside Egypt, protesting the communications blackouts and urging freedom of speech.

Even before this, Time magazine's "Newsfeed" service spotlighted Imgur's top 10 images of 2010 in a story, and called Imgur "repository of all things meme-y and click-y."

Schaaf declined to discuss his company's revenue, but said "it's profitable enough to hire a full time employee or two in the coming months. The plan is to grow the company and expand its online reach as a social entertainment site."

Source: Alan Schaaf, Imgur
Writer: Gabriella Jacobs

When former ESPN anchor Betsy Ross and partner Jackie Reau co-founded PR firm Game Day Communications in 2002, social media sites like Facebook and YouTube weren't even invented.

Now these networking sites have become a must-have communications tool for businesses. It's also a growing part of Game Day Communications multi-media arsenal in promoting sports and entertainment events for clients across Greater Cincinnati.

That's why Game Day has just launched its latest offering, a Mobile Media Center that provides full-service, on-site traditional and social media management for large sporting and entertainment events. Game Day has done similar work for events like the Flying Pig Marathon in downtown Cincinnati and the Western & Southern Open tennis tournament in Mason.

"Sports fans want to know everything they can about an event, and social media allows us to give them to give them that," said Reau, Game Day co-founder and CEO.

For last year's tennis tournament Game Day dispatched two teams of three that offered real-time media relations services from 9 a.m. to midnight for two weeks. They did everything from responding to Tweets to posting news articles and YouTube videos online. The efforts gave the event social media reach across the world, Reau said.

"We shared 2,000 tweets that were retweeted 29,000 times. A Facebook post was translated into 19 different languages, and videos that we shared over those two weeks had 100,000 views," Reau said.

Game Day Communications has four full-time employees, but works with more than 100 talented communications experts the company taps to work on a wide range of PR projects. Reau previously worked in PR at the Cincinnati Art Museum and Cincinnati's Christ Hospital. Ross worked at ESPN where she anchored ESPN News and Sports Center, and has more than 20 years of experience as a sports and news anchor.

Source: Jackie Reau, Game Day Communications
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

You can follow Feoshia on twitter @feoshiawrites.

TOA Technologies ended the year as the fastest growing company in northeast Ohio.

Tonight, it celebrates the opening of a larger headquarters building in Beachwood.

The company has developed a system it says can schedule mobile service personnel -- think of the cable guy or refrigerator repair technician -- in a one-hour slot with nearly 100 percent accuracy.

Growth in both employment -- 220 today, compared with two in 2004 -- and revenues have spurred outside recognition and the need for larger quarters.

In December, TOA was recognized by the Weatherhead 100 as the fastest-growing company in northeast Ohio. The annual listing, named after the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and compiled and managed by the Council of Smaller Enterprises (COSE), measures sales revenues over a five-year period.

TOA's growth was cited at 1,144.12 percent in the most recent rankings.

Tonight, TOA is celebrating the grand opening of its new headquarters, an 11,000-sq.-foot building with four times the former space. The larger headquarters will allow the company to double its Cleveland-area staff to 50 this year, according to company officials.

President and CEO Yuval Brisker said in October that the company expected revenues to grow 75 percent to 80 percent in 2010 from 2009 figures. TOA now reports it did even better, with contracted annual revenue growing by more than 120 percent in 2010.

Sources: Jennifer Friedman, VP of Marketing, TOA; and Megan E. Kim, director, education & programs, COSE
Writer: Gene Monteith