Tag: Biovideo

Biovideo and 9W Search Selected as Finalists in IBM’s Watson Mobile Developer Challenge

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Watson display at the Computer History Museum, photo by Laura Lorek

Watson display at the Computer History Museum, photo by Laura Lorek

IBM wants to make us all smarter through our smart phones by tapping into its Watson super computer database.

To do that, IBM issued a challenge back in February to app developers worldwide encouraging them to submit apps for its IBM Watson Mobile Developer Challenge. The apps needed to use “Watson’s cognitive computing capabilities to analyze, discover insights and learn from Big Data.” IBM developed Watson as a cognitive technology that processes information more like a human and understands natural language.

Some might consider IBM’s mobile Watson, the sage grandfather of Siri, Apple’s personal assistant available on its iPhones.

Last week, the IBM Watson team announced it has picked 25 finalists in its competition including San Antonio-based Biovideo and Austin-based 9WSearch.

Several hundred companies submitted apps in the IBM Watson Mobile Developer Challenge. The apps that made the cut span several categories including finance, healthcare services, news, business, fashion, education, cities and nutrition.

In the finance category, 9W Search, founded by Susan Strausberg, one of the founders of Edgar Online, submitted its app, which mines financial information online combined with Watson’s cognitive capabilities to answer complex financial questions. Its first application is in the energy industry.

IMG_2570“The ability to incorporate vast amounts of structured and unstructured primary source materials into the 9W/Watson cloud lets users ask and answer billions of complex questions through a simple, familiar interface,” according to 9W Search’s submission.
Biovideo, founded by Carlos Villasenor, made the finalists in the Health Services category. The company submitted an app that provides “the best help for new and expectant mothers at their fingertips.”

Biovideo, which operates out of San Antonio’s Geekdom, works with hospitals in Texas and Mexico to create a movie capturing the birth of a child for free for parents.

“The Biovideo App incorporates the Baby 101 searchable database for the first time and becomes the ultimate parenting tool,” according to the company. “It also eliminates geographic limitation, as the app and the Baby 101 program are available to anyone, anywhere. Providing the power of Watson to the Baby 101 program provides unlimited information, insight and reach to new parents.”

The finalists must submit prototypes to IBM, which will select five teams to present their proposals. And then IBM will choose three winners. “The three winners are awarded 90 days of access to the Watson APIs and consulting from IBM Interactive design services.”

Codeup Wins the 2014 San Antonio InnoTech Beta Summit

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Michael Girdley with Codeup, Bill Mock, senior vice president of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, Brandon Ashton with SocialRest and Marcus Robertson with TrueAbility.

Michael Girdley with Codeup, Bill Mock, senior vice president of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, Brandon Ashton with SocialRest and Marcus Robertson with TrueAbility.

Codeup, a 12-week boot camp to teach technical skills to people, won the 2014 InnoTech Beta Summit on Wednesday afternoon.

Michael Girdley launched Codeup last year and the first class of 28 men and women is about to graduate.

Michael Girdley, founder of Codeup

Michael Girdley, founder of Codeup

The startup, based at Geekdom, charges $9,850 per student, which ensures that the students are committed and motivated to completing the coursework, Girdley said. The company also guarantees its graduates will find a job or it will refund 50 percent of their tuition.

The runners up were TrueAbility and SocialRest.

The other companies pitching included InnerAlly, Picture It Settled, Remote Garage and Biovideo. Each company gave a five-minute pitch followed by a few minutes of questions from the judges.

The judges were Pat Matthews, co-founder of Webmail.us, Rackspace executive and investor, Sharon O’Malley Burg, a technology consultant and Erach Songodwala, an angel investor.

Marcus Robertson, co-founder and chief technology officer of TrueAbility, presented the startup, which lets technical job candidates demonstrate their skills to potential employers through its AbilityScreen. TrueAbility also has a jobs board and charges companies to post a job and screen candidates through its platform.

SocialRest has created software that measures how effective a company’s content is by measuring how it is shared on social media and how many sales result.

The San Antonio Chamber of Commerce sponsored the InnoTech Beta Summit and gave the winner a plaque and a one-year membership in its organization. The winners and runners up also received trophies.

Full disclosure: Silicon Hills News also helped to organize and host the InnoTech Beta Summit and InnoTech is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News.

Seven San Antonio Startups to Pitch at the InnoTech Beta Summit

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Seven startups will pitch at the eighth annual InnoTech Beta Summit on Wednesday.
The event, which takes place at 3 p.m. at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, will showcase some of the best and brightest new technology startups in San Antonio.
Each team will have five minutes to pitch their venture before a panel of judges. The winner will get a plaque from the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and a one-year membership in the organization.
The winner will also receive a trophy from Silicon Hills News and second and third place winners will also receive a prize.
Soloshot, a startup that makes a tripod system that automatically keeps a camera trained on a subject, won the InnoTech Beta Summit last year. And in 2012, CallGrader, a company that makes software to track sales calls, won.
Silicon Hills News readers can attend InnoTech, the day long technology conference at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center for free by using the discount code BETA99 to register.
The judges for this year’s event include Pat Matthews, co-founder of Webmail.us, investor, Sharon O’Malley Burg, a technology consultant and Erach Songodwala, an angel investor.
The startups pitching include:

2013-10-10_codeup_mark_horizontal_150Codeup – is an intensive, 12-week live bootcamp that turns non-techies into computer programmers. “We all know education is broken,” according to the company. “Our solution is unique, aggressive and it works in providing our students a real future. We have 47 partner employers ready to look at our graduates.”

Picture-it-settled-4C_150Picture It Settled – which bills itself as “Moneyball for negotiation.” “The behavioral software has learned negotiating patterns from parties to thousands of litigated cases in a wide variety of jurisdictions and claim types,” according to the company. “It uses that intelligence to make accurate predictions of where a negotiating round is headed in time for parties to act on it using the program’s planning tools.”

Remote-Garage-Logo_150Remote Garage – a storage service backed by the Rackspace founders’ Geekdom Fund. The company picks up customers’ belongings, stores them, and delivers them back on demand. The inventory is available to view online.

imgres-3TrueAbility – a community for technical professionals to learn, grow and (im)prove their skills. Its assessment platform, AbillityScreen, is a job simulator allowing tech pros to practice in a live environment. “Its job board helps companies validate the skills of job seekers, simplify the hiring process with stacked rankings, and enables tech pros to prove their skills by taking a technical interview in a real environment–from anywhere,” according to the company. TrueAbility graduated from the Techstars Cloud accelerator and has landed venture funding.

InnerAllyTurtlePhelps_150InnerAlly – is a platform that lets people perform simple actions to stabilize their mental health. “Every year billions of dollars are forfeited to lost productivity of employees suffering from depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues,” according to the company. “By empowering workers to maintain their mental health we can dramatically reduce those losses.”

SocialRest-Logo_150SocialRest– A software tool that helps businesses measure their return on investment for social media. The software tracks how “content is being shared across Facebook and Twitter; but even more valuable is the fact that SocialRest is also able to identify revenue generated because of this shared content,” according to the company.

Logo-bv-usa_150Biovideo– “provides new parents a priceless gift – a breathtaking movie, set to music, of their baby’s first day of life,” according to the company. “It films and creates more than 3,000 such personalized movies each month – delivered before the new family leaves the hospital.”

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