information technology : Innovation + Job News

Formed on the heels of a Facebook group that grew to almost 20,000 members in less than two weeks, the Secret Cincinnati web portal is nearing official launch, chock full of submissions by "secret agents" about the best aspects of the city.

"The way this came about was kind of a . . . challenge that my business had constantly undergone," says Chris Ostoich, founder of Blackbook, a Cincinnati-based company that connects employees who are relocating to Cincinnati with the resources to make them feel at home. "As an example . . . we had a female Procter & Gamble brand manager that had made a very specific request through our platform, which was she was seeking an African-American OBGYN. That's just tough information to find."

Enter Joe Pantruso, a serial entrepreneur involved in Internet security businesses who gave Ostoich an article describing the explosive growth of a London-based Facebook page focused on the best-kept secrets of that city.

"That morning, probably 15 minutes after Joe gave me that article, I started the Facebook page Secret Cincinnati," Ostoich says.

That was in late February. In the coming days, when membership ballooned, it became evident that the Facebook group would be inadequate as an interactive medium. Ostoich, Pantruso and web developer Sean Biehle put out a call for those who were interested in "building a business over a weekend." More than 100 people applied; 25 were selected. The Secret Cincinnati web site was born.

Currently in beta testing with a tentative launch date of late May or early June, the site already has attracted interest from other cities "and we're trying to work out a licensing strategy right now for that," Biehle says.

Sources: Chris Ostoich, Joe Pantuso and Sean Biehle, Secret Cincinnati
Writer: Gene Monteith

Schools strapped for space and cash, but which have a growing need to provide science students with adequate, up-to-date laboratory equipment, can succeed if they have access to a specialized system that enables resource sharing. That's the theory behind MeasureNet Technology Ltd.'s patented networks.

The key to Measurenet's innovation is the belief that lab hardware and instrumentation don't have to be physically duplicated at each student's work station. The work stations can be networked to a single, centralized, system that allows users to monitor, collect, store, and disseminate laboratory data, as well as share specified laboratory instruments. The energy saving and environmentally friendly design MeasureNet created earned it an Ohio Governor's Award for Excellence in Energy Efficiency in 2002.

The network "makes it possible for students to do a lot of different operations they couldn't do before," says Measurenet's Estel Sprague. Plus, students can access what they need from the network when they are back in their dorms, the library, or elsewhere.

The Cincinnati-based company had its roots in the late 1990s, when Sprague and Robert Voorhees, working at the University of Cincinnati, became part of a team that devised a way to help undergraduate students in chemistry labs use electronic data collection and analysis. With early support coming from UC, the National Science Foundation, and Proctor & Gamble, the project was eventually spun off to become a private company and incubated at the Hamilton County Development Co. in Norwood.

Today, Voorhees and Sprague are Measurenet's president and vice president, respectively.

Customers include vocational and secondary schools throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico, and even in Saudi Arabia. The company has one fulltime employee, several representatives, and uses co-op students as it continues to grow.

Source: Estel D. Sprague, MeasureNet Technology Ltd.
Writer: Gabriella Jacobs

If you've got a complex system -- a jet engine, for example -- the last thing you can afford is for it to fail at a crucial time. Frontier Technology says it has a way to predict those failures well before they can happen.

Frontier, whose top executives are based in Dayton, is commercializing a pattern recognition system called NormNet, which can analyze any system that uses sensors and predict when a component will fail, says Frontier senior scientist Sam Boykin.

Boykin says the technology began as a project with the Air Force Research Lab at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Along the way, the company has benefited from several Ohio Third Frontier grants and is nearing the end of a two-year, $350,000 commercialization grant.

Boykin says the technology has been successfully demonstrated to a number of companies, including Caterpillar, Parker Hannifin and General Electric Aviation. NormNet has also been tested at wind farm companies in Texas and on jet engines for the British Air Force.

"It's a software solution," Boykin says, and works "as long as there are some kind of sensors on the system. So when the system is operating healthy, the system creates relationships between each sensor and all the others. That's really how (NormNet) is able then to predict -- when it sees the degradation, it sees one of these relationships start to change."

He adds that "in all cases, we've been able to predict these failures -- sometimes days and weeks ahead of where they actually occurred."

Frontier's Dayton operations employ 20, including the addition of two to three new jobs over the past two years.

Source: Sam Boykin, Frontier Technology
Writer: Gene Monteith

Most wide-eyed college freshmen, venturing from dorm to classroom to lab to library, think their campus � whatever its location � is a huge, immersive environment.

But at Miami University in Oxford, the Huge Immersive Virtual Environment is, truly, boundless.

The HIVE is a facility where high-tech hardware and software enable researchers to work in a simulated space ("virtual environment"). The computer science and psychology departments collaborate on it.

The National Science Foundation recently gave HIVE's creators, David Waller, associate professor of psychology, and Eric Bachmann, associate professor of computer science and software engineering, $312,672 to upgrade the facility to support multiple users.

For the computer science side, the upgraded HIVE will let researchers develop, evaluate and compare 3D user interfaces, develop algorithms for collision detection and multi-user redirected walking, explore the use of inertial sensors for position tracking in portable virtual environments; and develop tools for collaborative computing environments.

For the behavioral research side, HIVE will help researchers improve understanding of how humans learn and remember large spaces and of the social dynamics of users who cohabit a computer simulation.

Why is a virtual environment better than the real one for such work? Well, as Waller, Bachmann and colleague Andrew C. Beall of the University of California write in a technical paper about HIVE, virtual environments "are not bound by the constraints of the real world, such as three-dimensionality, Euclidean geometry, and adherence to the law of gravity."

Besides the NSF and the university, previous support has come from the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program at the Army Research Office.

Sources: Miami University, National Science Foundation
Writer: Gabriella Jacobs

The neon signs and posters at the bar? Those kitschy grocery store displays that highlight your favorite brew? They're often paid for by the beverage distributors.

Though all part of the cost of doing business, they can be pricey. So, it was only a matter of time before an entrepreneur found a way for businesses to recoup some of their expenses.

SignTrak, a Cincinnati software development company funded in part by CincyTech and Ohio Third Frontier money, has put the web to work to that end. The point-of-sale promotional items are often ordered by the same sales people who meet with bar owners, restaurateurs and grocery store buyers to take their beverage orders; they then relay sign orders to largely in-house print shops.

Before SignTrak, that sometimes left a long and error-prone paper trail.

"Without our software, it's a very manual process. Everything's on paper, which the salesperson has to take back and stuff into a slot, the print shop prints it and sends it out. 'Oops, there's an error.' And back it goes to the print shop," says SignTrak Executive Vice President Denis Clark.

Using SignTrak's web-based service, the customer can proof the point-of-sale promotional items online, cutting down on errors, and print shops can manage their workload better, boosting production by up to 20 percent, Clark adds.

The company's founder, Mark Fullerton, designed the first system in 2004 for Walton, Ky.-based Chas. Seligman Distributing Co. The distributorship's president, Jennifer Doering, was so impressed with the results, Clark says, she took it to an industry conference to show it to others.

SignTrak launched in 2007 and now counts seven of the 25-largest beer distributorships in the nation among its clients. It employs ten.

Source: Denis Clark, SignTrak
Writer: Dave Malaska

Austin Allison began selling real estate in high school, and by 24, anticipated a technological need in his business that soon could pay big dividends.

Allison, CEO and co-founder of DotLoop, launched a software product that takes the real estate transaction process online. The Blue Ash-based company's namesake software was developed by Allison and tech expert Matt Vorst, another Cincinnati area entrepreneur and another company co-founder.

DotLoop is an online, collaborative transaction environment for brokers, realtors, buyers and sellers. Among its features is utilizing electronic signatures and storing and making easily available documents in a secure space. It's designed to eliminate mounds of paperwork, be user friendly and simple for everyone to use.

"Why hasn't anyone done this yet? I don't know. I'm glad they haven't. My guess is nobody has yet been able to do it right. You can't say the money isn't there," said Allison about the product.

The company was launched in 2008 with four people; today the company employs 20. After a short time in Beta, the company launched the software at the National Association of Realtors Convention in San Diego. Back then, Allison projected $500,000 in revenues for 2010. But this spring he revised those revenues slightly upward -- from $2 million to $5 million.

"We are the iPhone of real estate. The differentiator with DotLoop is our collaborative environment, merging three web commerce disciplines into one service: online forms, transaction management and electronic signatures," Vorst said.

DotLoop has 500 registered agents and contracts with more than 30 brokerage firms.

Source: Austin Allison, CEO and co-founder of DotLoop.com
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

Born-and-bred Ohioans need no explanation of what cornhole is. Canadian censors, on the other hand, have apparently never heard of the bean bag game.

The founders of Columbus-based JUFTi learned that the hard way last August when they launched Cornhole All-Stars, "the first and only true 3D cornhole game for your iPhone or iPod touch."

While the app was published on Apple's App Store worldwide, the Canadian App Store would only list it as "C******e All-Stars."

"We sent a formal letter of inquiry to the Canadian government demanding to know why our title was censored. And we sent one to Apple," says JUFTi co-founder Jon Myers, who says he believes his is "the first app to be censored by a government."

Myers also contact the Wall Street Journal (which wrote wrote about snafu) and staged a high-profile meet-up in Toronto. The censorship was mysteriously lifted.

While Canadian downloads remain "a blip," Myers says the game is catching on among others, with about 60,000 downloads to date.

"We do get downloads from all over, and the other thing too, is we have about a thousand Facebook fans."

Formed a year and a half ago, the 10-employee company recently entered into a licensing agreement for a Garfield the Cat game for iPhone, iPod and Facebook, which Myers hopes to launch this summer.

While the company so far has been self-financed, Myers says efforts continue to find new ways to raise revenues.

"One of them is a marketplace for brand integration into apps � for example, we have the bean bags inside our (cornhole) game. If Donato's wanted to put their graphic on our bag, they would be able to access our platform and find in the marketplace that advertising opportunity and buy it."

Source: Jon Myers, JUFTi
Writer: Gene Monteith

Got a crusty customer who doesn't think he should have to pay a late fee? PAKRA, using game technology, will help you train your call center people how to deal with Mr. Congeniality.

Trouble closing phone-based sales? PAKRA says it can simulate the situations your new hires � or current employees � might encounter, through virtual interactions with virtual customers.

The Columbus-based start-up can then provide reports describing the game player's tendencies in reacting to various situations � data that an employer can use to improve training.

Begun in 2008 by Rini Das � she serves as chief executive officer and chief information officer -- and Anne-Claire France and Pamela Schmidt-Cavaliero, both of whom are on PAKRA's board of directors � the company's inspiration was not in IT, but aerospace.

"If you think about flight simulators that pilots use, by immersing themselves and learning by doing -- it was kind of like of an ah-ha moment, like 'why aren't we doing this in the business space, why aren't we improving hiring and training by immersing people in simulations that really let them learn by doing?'" says Michelle Stewart, PAKRA's chief production and marketing officer.

"And not only do that, but let's turn out some data on the back end to give hiring managers, recruiters and trainers information about who they've got coming in, who they've just hired who they've got in their classroom and who they have sitting on the floor taking their phone calls to really give them some information about these simulations."

Stewart says company has benefited from networking and mentoring services from TechColumbus and has six employees, plus a number of Columbus-based contractors. Major clients include Huntington National Bank.

Source: Michelle Stewart, PAKRA
Writer: Gene Monteith

A new generation of animators has a new tool to learn the craft -- one nurtured on the banks of the Ohio River and seemingly straight out of "Avatar."

On Feb. 19, Shawnee State University in Portsmouth dedicated and officially opened its new Motion Capture Lab, a state-of-the-art facility that is one of only two such programs in the state (the other is at Ohio State University).

The lab is designed specifically for those pursuing a bachelor of science in digital simulation and gaming arts, or a bachelor of fine arts with a concentration in gaming and simulation arts, says Carl Hilgarth, professor and department chair, Engineering Technologies.

To turn motion into an animated character, students wear a special suit covered in light-emitting diodes (LEDs), Hilgarth says. The movements, when fed through a software program, allow students to create a three-dimensional model of that character, eliminating the need to draw separate frames to create animated sequences.

Hilgarth sees applications not just for movies, but for physical therapy (to compare a patient's movement against a standard), athletic training (is my golf swing up to par?), and medical training (how do you get a patient into a wheelchair?)

"We would also be able to capture the strength or force by which you grip parts -- and so we can do training videos and very precisely as far as how you put parts together, how you have to grip parts . . . it has unlimited possibilities."

Use of the lab will begin in earnest in the fall, when it is completely fitted with new computers and software, Hilgarth says. Meanwhile, Shawnee State continues to carve out a niche for itself in digital interactive media: some 80 freshmen enroll in the engineering component alone every year, Hilgarth says.

Source: Carl Hilgarth, Shawnee State University
Writer: Gene Monteith

ACME Express wants to take $35 million a year out of Ohio healthcare costs. So far, it's received a lot of help to pave the way.

The Cleveland-based software developer, founded in 1980, has caught the attention both of the federal government and the State of Ohio, which have helped fund research and development as well as commercialization of software that makes scheduling of medical personnel more efficient.

ACME Express was founded in 1980, and since then has developed products and services aimed at everything from logistics, to education, to medicine. These days, however, "we're focusing on healthcare," says President and Founder Don Scipione.

Grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Ohio Third Frontier have made it possible.

First came a $100,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the NIH in the late 1990s for Phase I "proof of concept" work. The successful completion of early work led to a Phase II grant for $250,000, Scipione says.

The company's successful DOCS scheduling software is now being used by 80 healthcare customers representing 5,000 doctors, Scipione says.

In 2009, ACME received a two-year, $350,000 grant from the Third Frontier's Ohio Research Commercialization Program to extend the product's reach into hospitals and clinics, where Scipione says the real healthcare savings will be. Meanwhile, the company is awaiting word on a pending Small Business Innovation Research Grant to extend the capabilities of the product to maximize savings.

Scipione, whose company went from 4.5 employees last year to a current seven, counts among his staff three interns attracted through the Ohio Third Frontier Internship Program.

Source: Don Scipione, ACME Express
Writer: Gene Monteith

Search engine optimization is big business these days and one that Idea Engine Inc. of Rocky River has tapped into with great success.

The company's proprietary software, SyncShow, has helped propel growth at Idea Engine by enabling its clients to automatically optimize their web site content as they update the site, says Dan Carbone, technology director, creator of SyncShow and co-owner.

"We tap into Google's data base and use our marketing expertise to tell you what you need to do to optimize your business specifically," says Carbone. "This allows you to update your web site quickly and to put the correct things in so you rank higher."

Idea Engine also helps businesses generate leads that turn into sales. One recent client reported nearly doubling its lead generation through SyncShow after it had suffered a significant loss of business due to the auto industry slump, he says.

Founded in 2002 by Christopher Peer and first operated out of his attic, the company's roots are based in brand strategy and graphic design. In 2005 the company won an NEO Success Award recognizing it as one of Northeast Ohio's fastest growing companies. In 2006 Idea Engine merged with SyncShow Interactive and became a technology and marketing firm.

Typical clients for the company include manufacturing and software companies with revenues between $20 and $200 million that market business to business services, says Carbone.

Growth has been steady at Idea Engine, which added two employees last year and now stands at 10. The company expects to duplicate its 25 percent growth again this year, but it may not add new employees.

Source: Dan Carbone, Idea Engine
Writer: Val Prevish

Platform Lab may be flying under the average person's radar, but within Ohio's information technology world, the "the nation's only state-funded IT test and training facility" seems to have come of age.

Formed in 2001 as a partnership between the Ohio Supercomputer Center and the Columbus-based Business Technology Center (now known as TechColumbus), the center's client list has grown to more than 240 companies ranging in size from startups to established giants like Victoria's Secret Catalog.

The non-profit organization, located with parent TechColumbus, was launched with a $250,000 state grant to give companies an economical place to test IT solutions, says lab Director Steve Gruetter.

"They put together a focus group with 43 consulting companies, and what they decided to do was to create a facility where companies could go to test solutions to get to market quicker," he says.

Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the dot-com implosion. Platform Lab needed to remake itself quickly. The answer: disaster recovery plan validation, a decision that led to a number of big clients like Wendy's and BMW Financial.

A $1.164-million Ohio Third Frontier grant in 2005 allowed the lab to create a statewide network that interconnected with the Third Frontier network and offered clients a way to use the system on a test-test-only basis to validate high-bandwidth applications.

First came load and stress testing, then the Expertise Partner Program, an initiative that links clients with Ohio-based IT consultants and which has resulted in 71 sales opportunities for consultant partners.

Most recently, Platform Lab built a "private cloud" that allows clients to connect into its resources to do testing using "virtual machines" that mimic what a client would see if he or she were physically present in the lab.

Source: Steve Gruetter, Platform Lab
Writer: Gene Monteith

Melody Management is helping music artists to get seen, get heard and get paid. Sound like a pitch from a giant record label? Not so fast.

The Columbus-based company is part of a drastically changing landscape for the music industry � and it hopes to be at the forefront of that movement when the company officially launches Feb. 1.

Melody is filling a niche with the widespread mobility of technology and music. The company distributes, markets and offers copyright protection in the way a traditional record label would � but it offers those services online in a way it claims is cheaper and more profitable for the artist.

The company offers something else that labels do not: A buy button. "You never know when someone is ready to buy," says CEO Glen Johnson.

Johnson says artists using Melody earn 90 percent of the profits � instant profit. "We take what labels and net-labels do and try to simplify them through technology," he says.

The company has an internal central management system that allows the artists more time to focus on other things � like music.
The music industry has been turned on its head in the last decade. CD sales are down as file-sharing becomes more popular � even as record labels flex their muscles with lawsuits.

"The college kids are smarter than us," Johnson says. "They'll just write the next music sharing program. (The labels) said 'Geez, we'd better start figuring out the next business model.' I think Melody Management is on the cusp of that next business model."

There are 28 artists currently working with Melody, but Johnson says the company's success is limitless.

"We're just getting started," he says. "We're hoping to rock the world."

Source: Glen Johnson, Melody Management
Writer: Colin McEwen

Born out of tragedy, Dayton-based STAN Solutions believes the work it's doing will lessen the chances of similar incidents in the future.

"Stan Harriman was a friend of my brother's," explains J. Tony Manuel, president of the Dayton company that now bears Harriman's name. "He was on patrol in Afghanistan with my brother. There was an insurgency in the area, and an air strike was called in to provide assistance. They saw my brother, but they didn't see Stan."

Manuel said the loss spurred Chris Manuel to ask Tony if something could be done to prevent friendly-fire casualties in the future.

Manuel, a former engineering instructor at Sinclair Community College, launched STAN Solutions in 2002 to do just that, starting with three questions that have dogged militaries for centuries: Where am I? Where are my buddies? And where is the enemy?

Today, the answers are coming for the first time using a real-time network using video, data and text -- a system that now allows military personnel in places like Afghanistan and Iraq lessen friendly-fire casualties and civilian deaths.

Meanwhile, the company has continued to branch out into new network capabilities and sensor technologies that show promise in both military and civilian applications. STAN currently has the sole licensing rights to a super-camera developed by Israel-based Adaptive Imaging Technologies. STAN is making refinements to the instrument's capabilities to provide 360-degree giga-pixel resolution from 6.5 miles away, Manuel says. The camera has potential not just for the military uses, he says, but for such things as spotting the cause of smoke in a forest or allowing a rural doctor to transmit crucial medical images to a specialist.

The company currently employs about 50, Manuel says, but continues to grow.

Source: J. Tony Manuel, STAN Solutions
Writer: Gene Monteith

Ninety-five percent of American businesses have nine or fewer employees. But until recently it was almost impossible to find a single source of information about them.

Today, that's changing, thanks in large part to Manta, which bills itself as the "largest free source of information on small companies."

The Columbus-based website, which launched in September 2005 as the offspring of ECNext, has sometimes been described as "the fastest-growing business site you've never heard of." But these days, plenty of people are hearing about Manta.

Launched with a data base encompassing 24 million companies, the online resource now covers 64 million -- 20 million of which are U.S. companies -- and was cited in September as the fifth-largest business/finance/news site according to ComScore, recognized within the industry as the Nielsens of the digital world.

Manta's Internet audience penetration of 5.8 million outranked even Forbes Property, CNBC.COM, Reuters, CNN Money and BusinessWeek.com. And its October visitor count topped 14 million, up 34 percent from the year before.

Pamela Springer, president and CEO, says Manta's appeal is simple: give information away for free and let listed companies update and add to the information that's there. Revenue comes from advertising, she says.

"We have democratized this information and leveled the playing field," she says. "It's not just the big guys anymore."

She says Manta's primary target audiences are small-business owners, account executives and business development professionals, senior executives, researchers and analysts who are looking not just for information, but to connect.

Boosted by a $1.2-million Ohio Third Frontier Innovation Loan in 2006, Manta continues to report breakneck growth, both in audience and employment. When ECNext launched in 2003, the company employed 12; Manta now employs 45, with plans for an additional 10 this year.

Source: Pamela Springer, Manta
Writer: Gene Monteith