Austin News & Blogs

Overview of how to use Twitter effectively during your job search. Expand your network and do research to potentially find hidden jobs.

Austin-based Zilliant, a developer of software used for optimizing product pricing, reported this week that it has signd United Rentals as a customer. United Rentals is a nationwide provider of equipment rentals. Financial terms of the win were not disclosed. Zilliant said United Rentals is using its Zilliant Margin Maximizer and Margin Insight solutions across its over 550 branch rental locations in the US and Canada, and is also piloting its Margin Manager software.... (more)

Dallas-based Big In Japan, the firm behind the ShopSavvy bar code reader software, said today that it has released standalone software for the iPhone, which allows users to read QR codes. According to Big In Japan, the release came on request of ShopSavvy users interested in only reading QR codes, and not UPC/EAN codes. The software is available for free.... (more)

Round Rock-based Dell said this morning that it has withdrawn its efforts to acquire data storage firm 3PAR, after Hewlett Packard increased its offer for 3PAR to $33 per share. According to Dell, it will not increase its most recent proposal. Dell said it is entitled to receive $72M in a break-up fee. The withdrawal comes after a bidding war between Dell and HP for 3PAR, which drove Dell's initial price for 3PAR from $18.00 per share on August 16th to $33.00 per share today.

The Network Engineer III is primarily responsible for managing and executing basic to complex IT projects in network, circuits and firewall equipment, designing basic to complex network systems, serving as an escalation point for resolving difficult issues and working independently to maintain systems and proactively implementing tools to prevent network issues. The Network Engineer is expected to have extensive knowledge of all core networking, circuit and firewall technologies and play a key role in mentoring others in the department as needed.

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Who qualifies for unemployment benefits, and how do I sign up?

Our number-one Best City for the Next Decade is a hotbed for small business -- and music.

San Antonio-based GlobalSCAPE, a developer of file transfer software, said Wednesday that it has added a new distributor. The firm said it has linked with Lifeboat Distribution, to expand its reseller network in North America and Latin America. Lifeboat says it provides virtualization, security, application and network infrastructure, business continuity/disaster recovery, database infrastructure, and other software tools.

San Antonio-based nonprofit research and development organization Southwest Research Institute reported Wednesday that it has been selected to receive a $1.2M contract, from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The firm said the award will go towards developing Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to receive an award of $1.2 million to develop advanced anode materials for lithium-ion batteries. SwRI said the battery technology is part of a research program sponsored by the U.S.... (more)

Austin Community College in 2010 finds itself in good financial shape. And it's looking to expand – big time.

Austin-based Crossroads Systems, a developer of Fibre Channel bridges, routers, and other related products, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against seven storage firms. Crossroads filed suit in the Texas Western District Court on Wednesday, saying that 3PAR, American Megatrends, Rorke Data, D-Link Systems, Chelsio Communications, DataCore Software Corporation, and iStor Networks all infringe on its router and data storage patents.... (more)

Round Rock-based Dell said Wednesday that it has expanded a relationship it has with security software maker Trend Micro, and will start offering a new security service targetd at small and medium businesses. According to Dell, it will bring Trend Micro's Worry-Free Business Security Services to its customers, and has worked with Trend Micro to develop a customized user interface for the service. Other business terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Each year Texchange hosts one big blockbuster event with a fantastic speaker that is open to the public (other events are for members only). This year on Sept 15th, we’re bringing Gary Vaynerchuk to Austin to speak at the AT&T Conference Center at UT. Gary first came to internet stardom with his video blog Wine Library TV. Gary’s informal and enthusiastic approach to wine tasting and collecting led to numerous appearances on national television. Gary has grown his retail wine website business from $4M to $60M in the past 10 years, largely by using social media marketing.

Now Gary has launched his second blog named garyvaynerchuk.com where he dispenses business advice and comments on emerging technologies and cultural trends. As his following grew online, Gary became one of the first to reach Facebook’s friend limit and accumulated more than 800,000 followers on Twitter. Gary’s first business book, Crush It!, was released in the Fall of 2009 and debuted as a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.

As Gary’s career as a speaker and writer continued to soar, companies of varying sizes approached him for consulting advice. The consulting role agreed with him, and in 2009 Gary and his brother AJ co-founded Vayner Media, a boutique agency that works with personal brands, consumer brands, and startups. Gary is now also an angel investor in various startups, offering sweat equity to the projects he supports in addition to financial investments. Gary’s ultimate goal is to one day own the New York Jets. Although his various businesses obviously play an enormous role in his life, he always puts his family first.

It’s not often that a speaker of Gary’s caliber comes to Austin, so you should take advantage of this opportunity to spend a highly entertaining evening with Gary (and sometimes colorful language). It’s just $35 for entrepreneur members to attend (including dinner).

If you are a member of Texchange, login and complete your registration.

If you are not a Texchange member, please email ashleyarkin@texchange.org to register.

The organizers of the Austin WordPress Meetup are excited to announce a custom WordPress training series.

Beginning September 18th, and running through the next three Saturdays, those who have just started to use WordPress or who are curious about using it to power their websites are invited to attend this training. The aim is to make it easier to use the software to its fullest potential, whether you're curious about using the software, looking to run a small-business website with it or your own individual site.

After completing the training, attendees will be much more comfortable using WordPress. They will have a much greater depth of knowledge of the software – making it easier to communicate with designers & developers and they will be more comfortable extending its capabilities through the use of plugins, themes and multimedia.

The custom-tailored WordPress course costs $200 for 20 hours of training. The leaders of the WordPress meetup (myself, Nick & Sandra Batik and Lindsey Allen will be leading the training).

More information can be found at http://wpclasses.slash25.com

Class dates & times: Sept 18th, Sept. 25th, Oct. 2, Oct 9th, from 12pm to 5pm.

Courses meet at Cospace – 911 W Anderson Lane #203, Austin TX, 78757.

Questions: contact-wpclasses@slash25.com

Venture capital firm Austin Ventures has saw an exit in its portfolio today in WAY Systems, a Boston-based developer of mobile, point-of-sale (POS) software for merchants, as VeriFone said today that it has acquired WAY. However, it looks to be a loss for Austin Ventures, as VeriFone said it was only paying $6M dollars upfront plus an additional $3M in earn-out payments for the assets of WAY Systems.... (more)

Austin-based Uplogix, a developer of remote management products for administering computer networks, has raised $5.0M in a funding, according to a regulatory filing by the firm. According to the filing, the firm has raised $5.0M, out of an ongoing $5.2M funding round. Source of the funding was not disclosed, and the firm has not yet announced the funding. $1.0M of that funding was received back in November of last year.... (more)

Houston-based INX, a provider of IP communications and data center services, said today that it has completed a data center virtualization upgrade for Associa. The firm said the project was worth $375,000 in combined product and professional services revenue. INX said the project provided more cloud compute capacity, using VMware and Cisco Systems data center virtualization technology, and increased its capacity by nearly 45 percent.

Dallas-based RadioTime, a developer of software applications for finding Internet radio stations, said this morning that it has acquired the TuneIn internet radio iPhone app, and hired the developer behind the software. According to RadioTime, it has hired Ben Alexander, the developer of TuneIn, to oversee development of the firm's iPhone and future iPad applications. Financial terms of the acquisition wer enot disclosed. TuneIn is a $1.... (more)

Our client's Interface Engineers work with both the custom services and platform sides of our product. On any given day you might convert a PSD template to a static HTML structure to hand-off to developers for back-end coding. The next day you might implement a new feature-set in the settings experience for Facebook applications. Opportunities to work within multiple environments and on vastly differing projects keeps this role dynamic & educational.

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Rockwall, Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace, a developer of experimental space vehicles, is the recipient of part of $475,000 being awarded to two firms by NASA to test their vehicles in near-space. According to NASA, it is awarding both Armadillo Aerospace and California-based Masten Space Systems with funding, to allow the two companies to perform test flights of their experimental vehicles near the edge of space.... (more)