All Posts Tagged ‘Boston Startups’

Matt Fellows

Harvard Professor Starts ArtScience Labs, Invents Breathable Chocolate

Matt Fellows | April 2nd, 2010

Le Whif looks kind of like a shotgun shell and it's packed with micro-chocolate buckshot

I thought I had heard of some pretty crazy inventions while writing for BostInnovation, but this next one really caught me off guard. A new product, invented by Harvard Professor David Edwards, allows you to ingest chocolate, or coffee by inhalation.

That’s not a typo. Consisting of a small plastic tube, Le Whif lets you breathe chocolate, and now coffee, to get your caffeine or sugar fix. Even more impressive – it’s less than one calorie per puff. When you use Le Whif, a fine mist of either chocolate or coffee covers your tongue, but is not actually inhaled into your lungs, giving you all of the flavor, and none of the calories.

You’d think inventing something like Le Whif was enough, but not for Professor Edwards. Le Whif is only one innovation that has sprung from a network of innovation centers called the ArtScience Labs, envisioned by Edwards in 2007, then founded and structured in 2008. (more…)

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Matt Fellows

YouCastr Monetizes Online Video

Matt Fellows | March 29th, 2010

YouCastr lets you turn video uploads into cold hard cash

Have you ever uploaded a professional looking video to YouTube? Think people would pay to watch it? With YouCastr, producers can upload videos and set prices for viewing. YouCastr not only lets you market your uploaded videos, they let you do it for free. They make money by taking a 30% cut of anything you make. That way, you can upload as many videos as you want, and YouCastr only gets paid when you get paid.

Started three years ago, YouCastr actually began as a virtual sports bar, not a video marketplace. Founder Ariel Diaz had a vision of a social media outlet focused on sports, which included the option of uploading video and adding audio commentary.

The concept evolved, however, when people started to use the site as a means to broadcast sporting events that were not televised, such as college and high school sporting events. (more…)

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Matt Fellows

Viximo Deals in Virtual Goods

Matt Fellows | March 26th, 2010
Viximo Logo and Gift

Viximo monetizes the social net with virtual goods

As the social media scene continues to grow, more and more of real life starts to be emulated in the digital world as experiences and goods are ported over to virtual landscapes. We have virtual friends, virtual hobbies, pets, books, and lives.

It’s no wonder that the business of virtual goods has exploded from a North American market of $20 million to around $2 billion in just the last three years, according to Viximo co-founder, Brian Balfour (27).

Viximo is a company that has been riding the swelling tidal wave of virtual goods since May of 2007 by providing a platform that allows any social media site to quickly implement virtual goods. Virtual goods are the “new way to monetize the social web” says Balfour. With a background in the social media realm, Balfour watched the social media market explode in Asia, and with co-founder Sean Lindsay, created a company that would facilitate the rise of virtual goods in the U.S.

So what exactly are virtual goods? (more…)

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Matt Fellows

SCVNGR for Exercise: Why Texts Don’t Belong in my Workout

Matt Fellows | March 17th, 2010
Man running from cell phone

SCVNGR gave me the run-around, so in the future I'm leaving my phone behind

For those of you who haven’t heard of SCVNGR, it’s a Boston-based startup that allows users to create and deploy interactive scavenger hunt games hosted on mobile devices. These so-called SCVNGRs aren’t like the ones from your middle school birthday party, and can take you anywhere from a tour of the MFA, to an exploration of the whole city and beyond.

There are a lot of applications and themes for these interactive mobile adventures, one being fitness.

Since the sun was out and the thermometer was pushing 50 degrees, (unlike the last few days during which I seriously considered building an ark) I decided to sign up for a SCVNGR workout along the Charles River yesterday. All you have to do it sign up on SCVNGR by entering your cell number and some other info, then you can make your own SCVNGRs or find one someone else made. I didn’t see much fun in working out to a route I made, so I signed up for SCVNGR’s own, called Exercise Endeavor: Boston.

Unfortunately, I would soon find out that when it comes to a workout, SVNGR is a lot more like a needy girlfriend than a personal trainer. (more…)

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Matt Fellows

HomeField: Where Coaches and Players Watch Film Online

Matt Fellows | March 10th, 2010
HomeField Screenshot

With HomeField, players no longer need to cram into ill-equipped screening rooms to watch game film

As web startups continue to reshape the way we live our lives, I’m always wondering what the next application is going to revolutionize. If you are or were ever an athlete in college or high school, then this one’s for you: Meet HomeField, the new web application that changes the way coaches, players, and fans access and interact with team sport video footage.

HomeField mixes YouTube-style video uploading with social networking features, resulting in an interactive platform where sports teams can watch game footage, tag specific parts of the game, and discuss the videos in a private forum.

It used to be that a musty locker room and a TV-DVD combo was the only way for coach to give you pointers on the last game, or to size up the competition for the game coming up. Reece Pacheco, HomeField’s CEO, played lacrosse at Brown and later for the Boston Cannons, so he knows all too well the inconvenience of having to pile the whole team into a room for film study (more…)

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