By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Clay Selby and Brandon Ashton of SocialREST, photo by Andrew Moore
SocialREST is a five member start-up born in Geekdom’s Three Day Startup Weekend last November. Its business idea – make it easy for mobile application developers to incorporate social media.
“We address the concerns of mobile developers who want to integrate social media into their apps…but run into a barrier with all the code.” says co-founder Brandon Ashton.
Ashton says it’s difficult for mobile developers to integrate their products with social networks like Facebook because it requires a lot of coding in languages the developer may not be familiar with. SocialREST acts as an intermediary between developers and social networks and essentially provides code shortcuts that greatly reduce the workload of the developer. This allows developers to both integrate with social media easily and to quickly add social functionality – such as having their app interact with Facebook posts. SocialREST will also keep their clients’ application code current with any tweaks or changes that Facebook might make – saving clients the headache of having to go back and re-write code for all their apps.
In addition to their integration services, SocialREST will also provide analytic services that track the use and popularity of a developer’s applications. By looking at likes, mentions, and other social activity directed at a developer’s application, SocialREST will be able to discover how many times that social activity with an app results in a conversion – or inspires someone to download the developer’s app off a mobile marketplace. As a result, SocialRest will be able to tell developers how much cash they are making by being connected to social media or, if their app is free, how much money their app is potentially worth.
SocialREST is about to release their alpha version and has 10 developers ready to start testing it out. The alpha version will be solely focused on SocialREST’s social integration services. The analytics portion of the company will come later – after the bugs have been worked out and the product is more marketable. SocialRest was founded by Clay Selby.
“It’s hard for developers to code to social media, we make it easy,” says Selby. “Second of all, we tell developers how much money they get by coding to social media.
Airstrip Technologies
Founded in 2004, AirStrip Technologies has created a way for doctors to get real time hospital patient information on their iPhone or other mobile device. They are now piloting their AirStrip Patient Monitoring product, which gives doctors mobile access to both the vital signs of hospital patients as well as patient medical history data. The mobile device displays patent vitals exactly as they appear on the patents bedside monitor, allowing doctors to check in on a patent without having to enter their room.
Doctors can also rewind a patient’s waveform data to review what was happening with that patent in a certain time period. AirStrip Patient Monitoring additionally includes access to medication lists, allergy lists, lab results, EMR data, patent histories and more – a feature not available with their previous products.
AirStrip product manager Bryan Crane says the product can monitor vital information on an intensive care patient with only a 15 second delay – giving doctors life saving information before they ever arrive in patient’s room. In some cases, the product can be incorporated into emergency medical vehicles – allowing doctors to access information on a patient in critical condition before they get to a hospital.
This allows the doctors, nurses, and all parties involved to easily share life saving information and provide much faster care to patients.
Displaying waveform data isn’t new for AirStrip Technologies. The company started with AirStrip OB– OB meaning obstetrics – that monitored women in labor. That technology monitored waveforms of fetal heartbeats and uterine contractions in childbirth. As of the beginning of this year, AirStrip OB has monitored more than 1.4 million births and is used in hundreds of hospitals across the nation.
Founded by entrepreneur Jose Alejandro Flores, Vos Flips is a sandal producing company focused on humanitarian work in Guatemala. The sandals — or Flips — are primarily sold online, but are also available from partnering retailers in the U.S. The sandals are made from natural rubber harvested in Guatemala and are manufactured there as well. Proceeds from the sales are used to increase the quality of life for the plantation workers making them.
“For each pair that we sell we provide from our bottom line basic healthcare education to the people and families that work in our supply chain in Central America,” says Flores.
Vos provides this care through partnerships with Gremial de Huleros and AgroSalud in Guatemala. Clinics at the rubber plantations provide healthcare education services to more than 500 plantation workers. Services offered include providing clean drinking water, keeping children healthy in their formative years, providing vaccinations and essential medication, and providing hygiene education.
Vos also gives away Flips to underprivileged communities in Guatemala. For every pair of sandals Vos sales, a free pair is given away through a partnership with Soles4Souls – a charity organization that has given away around 7 million shoes in more than 125 counties.
In addition to giving away free sandals and providing health services, Vos also has an environmental aspect to their business. The rubber in Vos’s Flips are 100% biodegradable and recyclable, and Vos provides drop locations for worn out Flips on its website for recycling purposes.
Vos’s Flips can be bought online for $19.99. They can also be purchased at Whole Foods Market, as well as a few other U.S. retailers, for $24.99. No matter where the shoes are purchased, a free pair will be given away in Guatemala. So far, the company has sold more than 45,000 Flips. Flores says Vos is committed to keeping its operation in the Americans and he hopes to expand his operations to Colombia or Brazil in the future.
For its humanitarian work, Vos has been recognized by the Rockefeller Foundation in New York.
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