Nerd Stalker

Ever say "I wish I knew you were coming to this concert, I would have..." or "I didn't know you were going to that conference in Atlanta, we could have..."? These are the issues that NY startup, Ribbon , is trying to solve - synchronicity with your network. With a simple map interface and a boatload of your Facebook friends in tow, you can now find out who is where and when. We talk with Tony Alfaro about Ribbon and his entrepreneurial experiences in this segment. Find out why Tony hasn't worked for anyone since the age of 9.

  Pictures tell a thousand words. We were invited by Brian Zisk and SF Music Tech Summit to cover their event at Hotel Kabuki in Japantown and were not disappointed. We shot some great footage which we will release in a little bit featuring some startups and highlights from a Music and Health discussion featuring the great Mickey Hart from the Grateful Dead. To capture some of the nuance that has become SF MusicTech Summit, we wanted to collate the twitterverse pics to show you how exciting this event was. If you haven't been, this should convince you. See you at the next SFMusicTech Summit!

How do you provide value in education? Give them options. And that's what Sameer Bhatia and his team at ProProfs have done. Starting out with a simple quiz tool, ProProfs have pivoted onto what is an educational and training goldmine. Sameer discusses how tapping into a global market helps learners succeed and how a customer's voice shaped their product offerings you see today.

BERKELEY BOARD – MIDI CONTROLLER CONCEPTS, Nerd Stalker interview at O'reilly Maker Faire. Check out this interesting exercise in UI concepts. From the Berkeley Board site, "the object of building the board is to explore areas of musical instrument design. Isomorphic keyboard : not the key feature, but it takes the notion of ergonomic design in consideration Button (key) position sensors: after looking at piezo and keyboard switches have decided to use CNY70 infrared sensors Balls as keys: allows glissando, a different feel with a full 5/16″ travel Channels : additive logic that allows the left and and right hand to work together. This enables features like modal fabric."

This week Adolfo Foronda and Greg Viloria discusses their tech picks of the week. Adolfo talks Maker Faire, XBox One, Foc.us, crazy monks and more. Greg aka SocialGreg talks about Maker Faire, Augmented Illusions, Yahoo!, Ethics of 3D Printers and more.

We are happy to again be talking to Taffy Williams this month about startups, leadership and business creation. We get some in-depth thoughts from Taffy about topics in his blog  -- Startup Blog . This month we discuss two articles Taffy wrote recently for the examiner.com called  “ 5 Ideas That May Facilitate Creating a Startup Business ” and " 3 Levels of Influence Can Change the World " which provide ways you can change the world and environment around you.

photos by Arduino Team and  tomasz przechlewski "Arduino is the Gutenberg Press of today." That's what Steve of the Homebrew Robotics Club says. I think he is right. What Steve and many others who has created DIY projects in the past have acknowledged that making electronics is now out the hands of the rich, and elite and into the hands of the average. In our Nerd's eye view of the 2013 Maker Faire, we summarize how Arduino has changed people and business across the board.

At the 2013 Bay Area Maker Faire , we found another great year of interactive specifically in Augmented Reality (AR). Attention gamers out there: One company Technical Illusions is coming out with low cost AR glasses and development solution and guess what? It's open source, well not totally as Rick says " the API's will be open but the behind the scenes will be closed because of various licenses we have ." Check out this video of a couple of these AR hackers disrupting the entry barrier.

On the New Tech Tour, we had a stop in Salt Lake City. We came across an interesting web service in the health space - Pricing Healthcare . The name speaks for itself. Pricing Healthcare allows you to compare prices for local health services at the procedure level so manage your health bills effectively. Our Greg Viloria aka SocialGreg interviews Pricing Healthcare's Founder and CEO - Randy Cox live at the New Tech Tour - Salt Lake City at The State Room.

Nerd Stalker interviews Michael Oxley, Founder of Foc.us , Foc.us is a headset that passes a small electric current through the prefrontal cortex of the wearer and claims increased performance. We've seen a great deal of interest from biohackers however Michael insists that although there may be other use cases for Foc.us they are squarely targeting gamers. I got to try the foc.us out at the O'reilly Bay Area Maker Faire and was very impressed with the actual sensation I felt across my brain note my odd serious stare is due to the sensation being in effect. I can't speak to increased focus as it was a quick test and not a full use case however we do plan on getting a review unit and giving our readers our thoughts when that happens in July. What we really love about the unit is the price ($249), Michael did say that the unit is aggressively priced on purpose and the fact that they are not seeking additional funding gives the founders the flexibility to make this smart b...

Nerd Stalker interviews High Schooler Violet Replicon at the Oreilly Bay Area Maker Faire to talk about the her freshman transportation project, a levitating train!

One of the interesting startups we found during the New Tech tour was WeatherYouWear. WeatherYouWear matches clothes to weather or climate in your current location. Our Greg Viloria aka SocialGreg interviews Founder and CEO, Michael Bhanos on their app.

You get home after a long day, get the tablet out and plunk down on the couch. You realize you need to eat. No motivation to cook so you search some restaurants on Yelp trying to figure out what to order, where to order and how to order. Enter Eat24 . Eat24 has been famous for food delivery from your couch through the web. Now you can do it via the iPad - Eat24 App . Our Greg Viloria aka SocialGreg talks with the Eat24 team on the newly released iPad and some insights into their San Bruno, CA based company.

listen to ‘Recap of tonight's #sfnt startup demos. ’ on Audioboo

This year the Nerd Stalker gang is excited to again cover the 2013 Bay Area Maker Faire. If you missed last year,  here is the Nerd Stalkers Maker posts from 2012. Better yet, order your tickets to the "Greatest Show & Tell On Earth" here .

Liberty Madison sat down with our Greg Viloria (aka SocialGreg) and Myles Weissleder to get some comments and thoughts on the New Tech Tour which started in San Diego, peaked in Salt Lake City and concluded in the city of sin - Las Vegas.

We tagged along with the New Tech Tour last week through San Diego, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. Our Greg Viloria aka SocialGreg gives his impressions of each of the cities tech scenes.

Looks like the team at Cue accidentally released an accidental non opt in feature read the email to users below, "Hi - In case you're not quite sure who this email is from, here's the one-liner: Cue is a service you're signed up for that helps you get the most out of your day by giving you the information you'll need (phone number, location, email, file) throughout your day. We were formerly called "Greplin". We're experimenting with a feature that would allow you to experience Cue inside Google Calendar, so that you'd always have the information you need at your fingertips, no matter what service you're using. During testing, we accidentally activated this feature on your calendar. The only repercussion of this is that you may have seen an additional calendar called "Cue: event notes" in Google Calendar. This calendar has since been removed. We fully intend to make this feature opt-in, and we're very sorry we mistaken...

Our Greg Viloria (aka "SocialGreg") and Liberty Madison (aka "That Tech Girl") chooses the their favorites from SF New Tech's Event in April. Join them as they talk live from the Mighty nightclub for SF New Tech.