Say Hey at Rae

A bunch of us got together on Thursday night at Rae. In attendance, David, Steve W. and Brooke as well as representatives from Vuzit, TapInko, SnackFeed, DropCard, Anthillz and Trendient.

It was great to see everyone and hear the latest news. Special thanks to Chris Cera who put together the first event.

Expanded Verticals for the Beanstockd Game

Sandra Ekong just posted an article describing expanded plans for the Beanstockd Game on PBS's MediaShift Idea Lab. She shares that conversations with fellow entrepreneurs and advisors led to the decision to expand their target demographic beyond university students (the original focus). "We're excited to test the Beanstockd game in these three very different verticals (universities, schools, and businesses)... We're interested to see how each population reacts to the game. Who will adopt the game most quickly? Who will stay engaged longest? Where will the most tangible change take place?"

We're excited, too, Sandra and Angela.

Diamond Dashing Success

Wondering what the rush was yesterday in Philadelphia? Hundreds of teams following clues and answering trivia questions in search of a $20k Hearts on Fire diamond ring as part of the Robbins Diamond Dash, a Philadelphia area promotion using SCVNGR's technology. To enter, participants submitted short essays or participated in contests on WMMR's Steve & Preston show. The event was also picked up by National Jeweler Network, JCK Online, idoyoudowedo (a wedding site), Geekadelphia and others.

In addition to the Diamond Dash, local film students and area video professionals were invited to participate in the SCVNGR & Robbins Diamond Dash New Media Contest, a contest looking for the best 2-3 minute video capturing the energy of the day.

The hunt went smoothly thanks to the intelligent routing system developed by SCVNGR. Wanna see? pictures video

CN8 Stars

Don't miss Steve Welch (DreamIt Ventures) and Michael Hagan (SCVNGR) on CN8 later this month. Both will be on Art Fennell Reports.

Look Out Adobe, It's Nodobe

David Speers of Phillypreneurs covered the launch of Nodobe, Vuzit's latest offering. Nodobe is a free FireFox add-on that allows users to view 38 different document and image file types including Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), Microsoft Word (DOC), Microsoft Powerpoint (PPT), Microsoft Excel (XLS), JPEG Images (JPG), TIFF Images (TIF), and many more.

To view the article or his video interview, click here.

Boston's Getting to Know DreamIt Ventures

Xconomy, a national business and technology publication, featured stories on SCVNGR and DreamIt Ventures over the last week.

In the first article, Wade Roush's interview focused on SCVNGR and Seth Priebatsch. Discussing future plans and their summer at DreamIt Ventures, Seth offered "coordinating mobile games is just one of many potential uses for the SmartRoute algorithms... right now we’re pretty heavily focused on this gaming market because we think there’s a lot of potential there, and the market seems to want something that will make a location-based game easy and fun."

The second article, a follow on to the first, featured Wade's interview with Michael Levinson. Familiar with fellow startup seed organizations (like YCombinator and TechStars), Wade explored what makes us different. Perhaps Seth said it best, DreamIt "offered more support—monetary, administrative, and advisory—than [Seth] would have gotten from the other incubators he considered applying to. "