DirectPointe Provides Expert Remote Computer Support to Home Users

DirectPointe, an award-winning managed service provider (MSP), has added a new home computer care service with its DirectPointe Home offering. Until now, computer service meant disassembly and transporting your computer into retail location where a “geek” would add your machine to a 10-day-wait queue. But DirectPoint Home changes the game with its remote expert support where users can get help 24×7x365, all without the hassle of disconnecting cords and cables.

DirectPointe Home provides three levels of service: PC Care, On-Demand and Total PC. PC Care is a preventative service that solves 80% of the most common computer problems by doing routine maintenance. On Demand provides fast support so that you can get your problem fixed now! Total PC is an unlimited package that provides everything a home computer user needs to have peace of mind when it comes to their computer, including virus protection, online security, data back-up and unlimited support.

Seth Bailey, VP of the Consumer Division at DirectPointe, talks to Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices about the offering and the benefits for retiring baby boomers or parents hoping to find relief from their mal-ware downloading youngsters.

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Bourquin Brothers on The Transition to New Media

Tim Bourquin and Emile Bourquin are the founders and producers of the New Media Expo, the most popular convention for podcasters, online video creators and bloggers. The expo and 2,000+ attendees are heading to Las Vegas August 14-16, 2008. Registration is still open, but the special “early” rate ends June 30th.

Brad Baldwin connects with Tim and Emile at a Podcast Tuneup party where they were talk about adding more video and live streaming sessions at this year’s expo. They also discuss the transition of traditional media outlets that are adopting and incorporating new media into their content offerings.

Special thanks to the Podcast Tuneup team for use of their new recording studio for this podcast.

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Student Creates Multi-Touch Software and Table for Science Project

Here’s one student that takes the “Science Fair” to the next level. Bridger Maxwell, a high school student at Utah County Academy of Sciences (UCAS) decided to create a multi-touch table for his Science Fair entry–kinda like an iPhone screen, and Microsoft Surface on a budget.

The multi-touch experience allows for object movement, rotation, growing and shrinking, and even multi-hand, multi-person use. Inspired by movies like Minority Report, Maxwell leverages Apple OS X, code developed during Google Summer of Code called Open Touch, and his own code–which he has submitted back to the community at http://code.google.com/p/corkboard/. The table, made from plexiglass and a dissembled Acer monitor, uses infrared light emitting diodes and an IR camera to detect and transmit fingertip motions as inputs.

Maxwell also expects to experience a future where multi-touch technology becomes a standard way to interact with applications, particularly for graphic manipulation and even gaming. While Maxwell didn’t get a summer internship on the iPhone team “this” year, he has received coverage on Ars Technica and the local NBC news station. Not bad for a high school student.

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MailShadow Syncs Outlook to Gmail and Google Apps

Cemaphore Systems’ MailShadow for Google Apps keeps your Microsoft Outlook environment in sync with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Gmail Contacts. Make a change in one, and the other is instantly updated to reflect the change. MailShadow for Google Apps is receiving a lot of attention since organizations can eliminate the expensive infrastructure, hardware, and co-location facilities required by Exchange, but still allow users to leverage the client-side productivity features in Outlook.

Tracy Scott, the VP of Marketing at Cemaphore, shows the beta version of MailShadow for Google Apps to Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices. And if you’re interested in giving it a try, the beta sign-up is still open.

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What’s New: IdeaBlade Agile Development in the Real World

Hear how IdeaBlade, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is using Agile Software Development to improve the quality of their product. In this session, William Leong, ISV Architect Evangelist, talks with Ward Bell, VP of Product Management at IdeaBlade, on how they have implemented Agile methods in their product development lifecycle. Since there are many ways to implement Agile development, it’s enlightening to see what has worked for this early pioneer of .NET application development tools.

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Infopia’s SaaS eCommerce Platform for Growing eTailers


Applying the right technology solutions to enhance business growth is something Bjorn Espenes, CEO at Infopia, is passionate about. As a growth company itself, Infopia delivers a SaaS (software as a service) eCommerce platform for businesses who need to manage the common operational challenges that growth creates. Things like inventory management and merchandising, order management, and shipping and fulfillment all work together in a seamless online system.

Infopia is the “next step” for many of the savviest online sellers looking to grow their business. Titanium and Platinum PowerSellers on eBay not to mention multi-million dollar merchants have dramatically improved revenues with Infopia.

Espenes sits down with Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices and shares the Infopia story and highlights the business problems Infopia solves. Espense shows why he was recognized as one of Utah’s “Top 40 Executives Under 40” and a member of vSpring Capital’s v100 Entrepreneurs.

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ConnectCast: Scoble Talks About Cemaphore, Solera Raises $5M, Innovation Awards Finalists

Good PR gets Robert Scoble to break news for Cemaphore product. 22 Finalists named for the Utah Innovation Awards. Solera raises $5m from Canopy Group and the MWCN entrepreneur of the year for 2008 award goes to Amy Rees Anderson of Mediconnect Global, Inc.

What’s New: Workflow discussion with Configuresoft

Jared Youtsey a senior developer from Configuresoft and Warren Wilbee, a Microsoft Architect Evangelist sit down and discuss how to utilize Microsoft’s WorkFlow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation for building workflow enabled service oriented solutions. Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is the programming model, engine and tools for quickly building workflow enabled applications. WF enhances a developer’s ability to model and support business processes. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft’s unified programming model for building service-oriented applications. It enables developers to build secure, reliable, transacted solutions that integrate across platforms and interoperate with existing investments.

Microsoft: Vertafore and SmartClient Deployment

How should SmartClient technology integrate with web solutions? VP Development at Vertafore Chris Kinsman talks with Microsoft Architect Evangelist Bruce Kyle about how and why SmartClient deployment of Windows Forms deliver the most value to its financial services customers in the AMS 360 product. And he describes how the Software + Services (S+S) company uses Internet Information Services (IIS) 7 in Windows Server 2008 to the update the data center.

Sendside Networks, the FedEx of Electronic Delivery

William Borghetti, founder and CEO of Sendside Networks, is no stranger to big ideas–he sold his last startup, Campus Pipeline, to Sungard after automating inefficient “stand-in-line” processes at Universities. Now, in the same way FedEx® revolutionized traditional mail with overnight delivery, Sendside Networks aims to provide an entirely new way for individuals and organizations to interact and transact electronically. Borghetti and team see a future where businesses replace paper, postage, and delivery time. Instead Borghetti expects businesses to offer an exchange of rich, interactive messages, documents, even full-blown web applications in a trusted messaging environment free of spam, fraud, and phishing scams.

Borghetti’s shares the story with Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices and explains why Sendside created an entirely new technology offering for sensitive and confidential communication. Sendside believes SMTP and “bolt-on” solutions (like encryption) just can’t extend SMTP’s life. To protect its vision, Sendside created an IP arsenal filing 16 patents.

Want to send or receive secure messages with complete tracking and guaranteed retraction–even after someone opens it? Sendside Networks opens for public sign-up on April 3, 2008.

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DAZ 3D’s Digital Figures and Social Marketplace

DAZ Productions is a market leader in 3D graphics software and content creation. DAZ may be most well known for its “Victoria” line of articulated 3D figures and their popular and active Artzone.com community, a social marketplace for sharing art and exchanging ideas.

The DAZ Studio software –available as a free download, allows anyone to create their own 3D digital figures and content. The figures can be loaded into 3D posing and rendering applications to be posed or animated and then rendered. In addition, a wide variety of clothing, hair and other accessories are available for purchase which can be applied to the figures to achieve different looks.A variety of other support content is available from DAZ as well including such categories as vehicles, buildings, trees and plants, furniture, weapons, etc.

Christopher Creek, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President, describes the business model to Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices, and then persuades Baldwin to pose inside a laser scanner that creates a 3D wire-frame model of his own body in 17 seconds.

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Social Media at the Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Footnote.com is adding social media tools to The Vietnam Memorial, one of the most recognized memorials in Washington, D.C. For those who have visited the wall, you know finding names is not easy. Nor does a visit to the wall allow you to learn more about the many people and heros who served.

Footnote.com’s new social media version of The Vietnam Memorial brings The Vietnam Memorial inside the comfort of your own home. By creating a searchable image of The Wall, now it’s easy to find friends, family or names. Once found, Footnote.com allows you to search the details about soldiers, post stories about fallen comrades and even upload pictures of service men and women. By adding social media to The Vietnam Memorial, the conversation about the individuals listed can continue and honor can be extended to those who fell while rendering service.

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ConnectCast: Top 100 Venture Entrepreneurs and U of Utah 2nd Behind MIT

Cydni Tetro and Colin Kelly talk about key events this week. Including the release of the Top 100 Venture Entrepreneurs from vSpring Capital. It is a peer nominated and peer selected group of individuals that the community predicts will be a CTO or CEO of a high tech company in the next 5 years. This is the 5th year of the program. In addition, the University of Utah was rated 2nd behind only MIT in the number of technology spin-offs based on university research. MIT had 23 and the University of Utah had 20.

Miss America Goes Digital

As CMO of StoryRock Electronic Publishing, Sharlene Hawkes wants every service man and woman to have a Remember My Service digital yearbook that highlights their military experience. And this former Miss America and one of the first female, on-air, ESPN sportscasters certainly has the energy and passion to make it happen.

As Hawkes points out, the military is capturing hours of video content that isn’t being used. In addition, the tools available today to bring stories to life makes it easy to create a digital publication that is interactive, engaging and far more memorable. The popularity of social networks like Facebook and MySpace are driving awareness and creating the expectation for more than a static picture book. Paying tribute to a fallen friend through a story captured on video is more personal and helpful to the soldiers, the family and to the military.

Hawkes talks with Brad Baldwin about her efforts to share the Remember My Service to military leaders, business executives and even local communities who want to gives something back to those who have served.

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ConnectCast - Venture Debt, Facebook Applications and Reflecting on James Levoy Sorenson

Some quick highlights in this weeks Connectcast include reflections about James Levoy Sorenson’s legacy includes inventing disposal surgical masks and an entire legacy of medical innovations. A quick discussion around Venture Debt options and when they should be considered - Innoventures a new company, UVEF tackles social media for young entrepreneurs and Paul Allen’s World Vital Records We’re Related Facebook app takes off.

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