Tag Archives: technology

Local startup makes it into Y Combinator

mongo hq logoWe’ve learned that Jason McCay and Ben Wyrosdick of MongoHQ have made it into this summer’s Y Combinator group out in California.

For those not familiar with Y Combinator, it’s a start-up funding firm based out of Mountain View. They do two rounds of seed funding each year as well as valuable coaching and resources – much more information is available on their about page. The guys will be participating in the summer funding cycle beginning next month (going through August).

Several companies have successfully completed the program and received venture capital funding, including popular projects like DropBox, Reddit, and Scribd.

The Terminal had the pleasure of sharing office space with McCay and Wyrosdick last year while located at Shift Workspace downtown. Here’s hoping for nothing but good things to happen for both of them during this experience.

GiveCamp comes to Birmingham

GiveCamp Birmingham logoGiveCamp Birmingham is coming to the Magic City January 14-16.

It’s an event where area technology professionals from developers to web strategists and everyone in between donate their time and resources to provide solutions for non-profit organizations over the course of a weekend.

It will be the state’s first GiveCamp. The program was founded in 2007 by Chris Koenig (who gives this great overview of the project via video). It’s provided tech benefits to more than than $1 million in services to more than 150 charities in that short period of time. It’ll also be one of at least fifteen events like it taking place that weekend across the country.

Registration is still open if you’re interested in giving your time and talents to this cause.

Logo: Courtesy of official website.

Taylor Hide hopes Birmingham sees more Kickstarter success

Lumi front. Courtesy of Kickstarter projectAccording to his Kickstarter bio, Taylor Hide wants to help folks get better sleep.

The result of his work is the LUMI Mask, “The Sleep Mask that Wakes You Up.” Hide developed the it as a way to provide folks with the benefits of  sleep masks and sunrise clocks using only one product.

He’s attempting to use the popular crowdsourcing site Kickstarter to raise the funds necessary to continue developing his idea and to start producing them. He’s already raised $2,946 from 53 backers with 27 days to go.

This would not be the first successful Kickstarter project in Birmingham, AL. The most visible one so far in our digital world was the one undertaken by the Desert Island Supply Company earlier this year.

Photo: Front of LUMI Mask. Courtesy of Kickstarter project.

No texting while driving in Vestavia Hills

Texting while driving. mrJasonWeaver/FlickrWhile you shouldn’t be texting while driving anyway (especially during that commute to and from work), last night Vestavia Hills became the first city in metro Birmingham to pass an ordinance banning texting (and other forms of electronic messaging) while driving. Now, you have up to 100 reasons for not doing it ($100 is the maximum fine allowed by the new law). Those other forms of messaging include typing on laptops and typing information into a global positioning system.

According to The Birmingham News‘ report, it should take approximately one week for the new law to take effect. Vestavia Hills Council President Mary Lee Rice expressed her disappointment in comments to ABC 33/40 and WBRC in state lawmakers not passing a statewide ban during the most recent legislative session.

CBS 42 reminded us in their piece that there are already two other cities in Alabama currently enforcing a texting ban, Jacksonville and Roanoke.

Photo: Texting while driving. mrJasonWeaver/Flickr

On the agenda: One laptop per councilor

In case you missed it yesterday morning, Mayor Langford presented each of the members of the Birmingham City Council with an HP Mini notebook, comple with capability to connect to the Internet using WiFi and an AirCard courtesy of Verizon Wireless. They also received an 8 GB jump drive containing several city reports, including the budget that they are currently working on and a bag to carry it all in; Birmingham Weekly tweeted a description of the embroidered message. A series of classes will be offered for those councilors and city employees that are interested.

The Birmingham News pointed out the total cost of the expenditure in today’s paper, as well as the status of the budget that seems to have encouraged their distribution.

Party at Shift WorkSpace tonight!

shift_work_space_logo1The paint’s dry, the furniture’s assembled and the front door is ready to be open to visitors at Shift WorkSpace this evening. One of Alabama’s first coworking space (and our new offline home) will host a grand opening event tonight (May 28) beginning at 5 p.m. The space and its founder, Drew Jones, has garnered a great deal of press recently, including a follow up brief about tonight’s opening in the BBJ and a story in today’s edition of The Birmingham News (it’s in the business section). There’s still time to RSVP, though at this point, you may just want to come on over and see what the excitement’s about.

Thanks for stopping by at TechMixer tonight

How about checking out our uStream?

We’ll be here until 8 p.m. tonight, giving away a few Terminal Ts and launching a new contest (sort of). We’ll hopefully see you here (or on camera at least).

UPDATE: Thanks for stopping by… For those that came by the booth at TechMixer, we’ll be announcing why we handed out those orange signs at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow.