Tabillo promises a single interface for all small-business web app needs

April 18, 2012 4:01 PM Dylan Tweney
Dylan Tweney

Ontario-based Tabillo wants to make it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to create customized, database-driven applications on a budget.

“With Tabillo anyone can turn their static Excel spreadsheets into dynamic and collaborative business apps in minutes without programming skills,” …

Bluega takes web-based HTML5 touchscreen interface across platforms

April 18, 2012 3:48 PM Dean Takahashi
Dean Takahashi

Touchscreen user interfaces look pretty cool, but why does every device have to come with a different one? With Bluega’s pieOS, you can get a well-designed touchscreen interface that’s usable on every one of your mobile devices.

The secret to …

Fusion-io’s new software development kit gives programmers native access to its flash memory

April 18, 2012 3:40 PM Ben Popper
Ben Popper

Fusion-io has been mostly known as an enterprise company helping big names like Apple and Facebook to save money on their data center costs.

But today, the company is announcing its first software development kit (SDK) to provide software developers …

Now this is targeting you’ll like: Dynamics launches its disruptive ePlate payment system

April 18, 2012 3:30 PM Dean Takahashi
Dean Takahashi

Dynamics has been shaking up the credit card and payment industries since it debuted and won a top $1 million prize at DEMO Fall 2010. Now it’s being disruptive again as it launches a way for developers to get direct …

Georama reimagines travel with interactive maps

April 18, 2012 3:12 PM Dean Takahashi
Dean Takahashi

Lots of travel sites are vying for your attention. Georama hopes to grab you by simplifying the process of planning, booking, and sharing your travel plans.

The site uses a map of the world as its user interface, and users …

FriendsLearn teaches you through social and mobile games

April 18, 2012 3:06 PM Dean Takahashi
Dean Takahashi

Edutainment, or the melding of education and entertainment, has been around for a long time, but it has never really worked that well. Hoping to change that, startup FriendsLearn is working on what it calls a “learnification” platform, where it …

Forget T-Mobile’s ad gal, the HTC One S is its real sex symbol (review)

April 18, 2012 2:00 PM Devindra Hardawar
Devindra Hardawar

T-Mobile’s iconic ad girl, Carly, has been in the news quite a bit lately, after ditching her pink dresses for black leather and a Ducati in the carrier’s new ad campaign (Lisbeth Salander says hello, by the way). But in …

Netflix gets it: Arrested Development’s 10 new episodes to premiere at the same time

April 18, 2012 1:32 PM Tom Cheredar
Tom Cheredar

Arrested Development fans have another reason to love Netflix. Actually, they have about 10 reasons, to be exact.

Netflix first won fans over back in November when it announced it was producing 10 new Arrested Development episodes for its streaming …

New app for wait staff & diners takes restaurants into the future

April 18, 2012 12:48 PM Jolie O'Dell
Jolie O'Dell

Imagine a soup-to-nuts app that would let you find a good restaurant nearby, make a reservation, order, and pay all in a few clicks and swipes — and imagine the restauranteurs in your area have the same level of sophistication …

Click here if you think conference calls suck (hint: we have a solution)

April 18, 2012 12:25 PM Jolie O'Dell
Jolie O'Dell

Conference calls tend to suck the life and soul out of an otherwise productive workday, and it’s not just the content. In fact, sometimes, we all have struggled to simply hear the content over a constant hiss of snaps, crackles, …

Agiliron’s cloud-connected e-commerce tools will help you ‘catch ‘em all’

April 18, 2012 12:20 PM Sean Ludwig
Sean Ludwig

Agiliron could easily be the name of some crazy Pokemon, and funny enough, the cloud-connected e-commerce startup’s mission, like Pokemon, is to help you catch ‘em all — customers, that is.

Agiliron’s goal to provide an “integrated SaaS platform for …

Chicago Tribune talks to Groupon chairman Lefkofsky; asks the wrong questions

April 18, 2012 12:14 PM Rakesh Agrawal
Rakesh Agrawal

In the midst of all the turmoil of Groupon, which is now trading at a market cap below $8 billion and broke below the $12 mark in trading today, the company's hometown newspaper had a sitdown with Groupon chairman Eric Lefkofsky. As a former journalist who once aspired to work at the Tribune, I'm embarrassed for them.

NetSuite chief spells out the opportunity in the social, mobile and cloud-based enterprise

April 18, 2012 12:10 PM Dean Takahashi
Dean Takahashi

NetSuite was founded as a cloud-based enterprise company way back in 1998. But Zach Nelson (pictured left), chief executive of the company, has plenty of advice for startups in the enterprise market, where social, mobile, and cloud technologies are all …

Paperhater wrangles paper clutter with the snap of a smartphone camera

April 18, 2012 12:06 PM Sarah Mitroff
Sarah Mitroff

Startup Paperhater is hoping to cut down on the amount of paper and business cards you’ve got piled on your desk. Using an iPhone camera, the company’s app takes pictures of paper and deciphers the text from the image.

Any …

HD Trade Services puts the brakes on trade fraud

April 18, 2012 12:00 PM Devindra Hardawar
Devindra Hardawar

Most consumers are likely oblivious to the issues of international trade fraud, but for businesses that rely on overseas suppliers, it’s becoming an increasingly large problem. The issue stems from the lack of communication between businesses, which makes it easy …

ApplyApp.ly wants to find you a job, with science!

April 18, 2012 11:51 AM Sarah Mitroff
Sarah Mitroff

Finding a job is hard. You grabbed a sales job after college, but you’re terrified of phone calls and your eyes glaze over while looking at sales figures. It’s all because you’re truly an introvert, an abstract thinker, and better …

BizSlate offers cloud-based supply-chain management tool for small companies

April 18, 2012 11:42 AM Dylan Tweney
Dylan Tweney

BizSlate unveiled a supply-chain management tool for small medium-sized businesses today.

Until recently, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software has been an expensive, complicated proposition, offered by the likes of SAP, Oracle, and Sage to large companies that can afford multi-hundred-thousand-dollar …

Ford’s first all-electric car, the Focus Electric, gives a taste of the future (video)

April 18, 2012 11:39 AM Sean Ludwig
Sean Ludwig

Ford is in the process of making big changes to its overall strategy, and its first all-electric car, the Focus Electric, helps show how the company is evolving.

The company’s new direction offers “the power of choice” to consumers by …

How to stop mobile malware before it happens to you

April 18, 2012 11:37 AM Jolie O'Dell
Jolie O'Dell

As consumers venture out of walled-garden app stores, mobile malware is bound to pop up, and as it does, consumers (and businesses) frequently begin to ask how they should be protecting themselves and their devices. Is a mobile antivirus the …