Tuesday Dec 01, 2009

PayPal has launched a new set of APIs that allow developers to embed payment technology into applications. This is a whole new way of making money from your apps. Learn more at x.com, PayPal’s developer hub where you can grab code, product offerings, documentation, sample apps and more.

 

To make things more exciting, PayPal is offering the chance to win up to $150,000 in their first PayPal X Developer Challenge!!  Submit an app that uses the new APIs, and you could win big.  The deadline to register is looming – Dec. 16 – so don’t miss out! 

 

PayPal is looking for the most innovative live applications that open payment capabilities for businesses, especially in the areas of Social Media, Gaming/Entertainment, E-commerce, and Mobile/Consumer Electronics. 

The grand prize winner gets $50,000 cash plus up to $50,000 in waived transaction fees. Second place winner gets $25,000 plus up to $25,000 in waived transaction fees. Entrants will also get exposure for their apps to the PayPal developer community through the voting process.

The contest is worldwide except for France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland and Czechoslovakia and where prohibited. Full contest details can be found at http://paypalx.brightidea.com/challengeinfo. Make sure you register for the contest by Dec. 16.  Registration is easy; you just need to provide one or two sentences about your concept.   Final live apps and a demo video are due Feb. 7, 2010.


For great brainstorming ideas, check out the 
sample apps on x.com, and you can follow the contest on Twitter at #xcontest.

We're making available a number of servers at prices you may like -- while supplies last. These server lines were discontinued at the end of September and are now available through the SVASE network to qualified startups*.  Take your pick from this great line-up: 

Sun Fire X2100 M2 Server  Part Number:  RS-A84GWZ1-DS-SU          $350 USD
AMD Opteron Model 1210 DC CPU (1.8GHz/1MB), 2x 1GB ECC DDR2-667 memory, Serial ATA drive equal or better than standard configuration, DVD, 1x PSU,  Service Processor, 4x 10/100/1000  Ethernet ports, 6x USB 2.0 ports, 1x I/O riser card with 2x PCI-Express x8 slots, no power cords, order Geo-specific x-option. RoHS-5. 

Sun Fire X2100 M2 Server   Part Number:  RS-A84GGZ1-DS-SU          $375 USD
AMD Opteron Model 2218 DC  CPU (2.6GHz/1MB), 2x 1GB ECC DDR2-667 memory, Serial ATA drive equal or better than standard configuration, DVD, 1x PSU, Service Processor,  4x 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports,  6x USB 2.0 ports, 1x I/O riser card with  2x PCI-Express x8 slots, no power cords, order Geo-specific x-opt. RoHS-5. 

Sun Fire X2200 M2 Server   Part Number:  RS-A85JGZ2H-DS-SU         $500 USD
2x AMD Opteron Model 2218 DC  CPU (2.6GHz/1MB), 4x 2GB ECC DDR2-667 memory, Serial ATA drive equal or better than standard configuration,  DVD, 1x PSU, Service Processor, 4x 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, 6x USB 2.0 ports, 1x I/O riser card with 2x PCI-Express x8 slots, no power cord, order Geo-specific x-option. RoHS-5. 

Sun Fire X4150 Server  Part Number:   RS-B13US2-KD6-SU                 $1400 USD 
2x Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5345 CPUs (2x4MB L2, 2.33 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB, 80W), 4GB mem. (2x2GB PC2 5300 FB-DIMM), 4x146GB 10K RPM 2.5 SAS drives, internal SAS RAID PCI Exp. HBA, DVD+/-RW drive, 2x PSU, embedded LOM, 4x Ethernet ports, 5x USB 2.0 ports, 2x 8-lane PCI slots, no power cord, order Geo-specific x-option. RoHS-5. 

Sun Fire X4150 Server    Part Number:  RS-B13UQ2-KD6-SU                $1600 USD 
2x Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5450 CPUs (2x6MB L2, 3.0 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB, 80W), 4GB memory (2x2GB PC2 5300 FB-DIMM), 4x 146GB 10K RPM 2.5 SAS drives, internal SAS RAID PCI Exp. HBA, DVD+/-RW drive, 2x PSU, embedded LOM, 4x Ethernet ports, 5x USB 2.0 ports, 3x 8-lane PCI slots, no power cord, order Geo-specific x-option. RoHS-5.

* This offer is available to startups less than 6 years old, with fewer than 150 employees. Qualified startups need to apply to the fee-free Sun Startup Essentials program. Contact Jagat Bhuyan via email or phone (951-544-4220), for additional information about this program and/or offer.

Tuesday Nov 24, 2009

Join the Sun Startup Essentials team us as we host the 5th Digital Living Room Summit and Venture Forum on Tuesday, December 15 at our Santa Clara auditorium, produced in association with iHollywood Forum. Sun Startup Essentials members: Get 20% off until December 4th. Contact: startupteam@sun.com to get the discount code. 

As we head into 2010, many of the promises of previous years are becoming reality: Internet-enabled television; HD, iTV and soon 3D TV, networked game consoles and subscripion VOD, to name just a few. But many critical questions remain: which technologies will succeed? What will the adoption curve and price points look like?

That's why the fifth annual Digital Living Room, Dec. 15 in Santa Clara, CA, should be on your calendar.  One of the oldest conferences about the future of home entertainment, this year's Digital Living Room focuses on 2010 and the technologies most likely to transform consumer experience next year. Why wait for CES when you can get a jump on networking and intelligence-gathering now?

Here's some of what you'll learn about:

• The arrival of 3D television
• Social TV.
• Networked games
• The connected home
• Cloud computing and the living room
• New paradigms for VOD
 Analyst projections for 2010

Hear from visionaries like Bill Binenstock, Vice President and Manager, CBS.com; Brad McManus, Director of Investments, Panasonic; Tushar Saxena, Director of Home Networking Technologies, Verizon Communications; plus top executives from Playstation, EpixHD, Sun, Intel and many more. Plus, you'll get to network and make deals with these people in an intimate environment you'll never find at CES.

For just 48 hours, take advantage of a special rate available of as low as $150 for a basic ticket. Buy a Deluxe ticket for $195 and get a free ticket to our kickoff party in San Francisco on Dec.14 at Blumberg Capital. Register at www.digitallivingroom.eventbrite.com.

Are you an entrepreneur or venture capitalist? Consider joining us for the DLR Venture Forum, a unique platform to pitch for funds and demo your product. To apply, please send an email to zahava@ihollywoodforum.com.  For information, call 310.736.4133 or email host Michael Stroud at michael@ihollywoodforum.com

Wednesday Nov 18, 2009

Congrats Joyent team for the fantastic announcement today!! 

Joyent, both a long-time Sun Startup Essentials member and hosting partner - has been profitable for years, and boasts some really impressive customers (e.g. ABC.com, LinkedIn, and more).

[Read More]

Thursday Nov 12, 2009

Have you ever had a great idea for a startup but needed the motivation and encouragement to actually make it a reality? Join theStartup Weekend community and find out how easy it is to go from idea to launch in only 54 hours! [Read More]

Wednesday Nov 11, 2009

Looking for rock-solid web hosting at discounted rates? Talk to someone that understand startups ;)

Joyent has a deal for Sun Startup Essentials program members with hosting services 25% off list price. Starting price is $16.59/month. No joke! 
[Read More]

Friday Oct 30, 2009


    A balance between processor performance, memory bandwidth, and IO performance all contribute to system performance. Applications like business intelligence and data warehousing (BIDW), and Rich Media are particularly sensitive to overall performance. 

    The Sun Fire X4275 is designed for the ground up for powering both rich media streaming applications, and business intelligence and data warehousing applications.

    In this webinar, you'll find out:

    • The design principles of the Sun Fire X4275 (Intel Xeon 5500 series processors, 64 GB of memory, 12 TB of storage, 8xSSD or 12x15K drives for IOPS performance all in the same 2U chassis, and up to 24 GB of network bandwidth)
    • How flash technology can multiply IO performance offering significant savings in cost/stream, cost/IOPS and cost/GB as well as savings in energy and space
    • How the Sun Fire X4275 is the building block of the powerful Oracle Exadata V2 server recently announced by Oracle.
Date: November 4, 2009
Time: 8:00 am PDT / 11:00 am EDT / 4:00 pm UK / 5:00 pm Central Europe / 8:30 pm India (New Delhi) (check timezone)
Speakers: Tushar Katarki, Product Manager, Angelo Rajadurai, Sr. Technical Evangelist, Sun Startup Essentials

Register Now

Archived Webinars

Tuesday Oct 27, 2009

Mark your calendars! There are a couple of super cool events in November you don't want to miss: SVASE & GABA BIGs Digital Media, and Startup Weekend.

SVASE & GABA Present the BIGs Digital Media, November 19


Social Financing - Using the Web to Mine Money for Your Venture

Raising money from VCs is increasingly difficult for early stage companies--even ones with a good product.  Social networks have been great for generating awareness but how do you turn social equity into funds for your business?  Social financing is working well for entrepreneurs in developing countries and those improving the well-being of society and the environment.  Could that same model work here?  New models are rapidly emerging that are changing the landscape for how businesses raise money. 


Join this dynamic panel of experts as they discuss this timely topic!

  • What is social financing?
  • What is microfinancing?
  • What new tools are available today?
  • How companies facilitate sources of social funding
  • How social networks can become social financing engines

The Panel: Marc Dangeard, Founder, Entrepreneur Commons; Joshua Sams, Co-Founder & CEO, Sprowtt Marketplace; 2 additional panelists TBD

Moderator: Sumaya Kazi, Sr. Social Media Manager, Sun Microsystems


WHEN: Thursday, November 19

6:00 – 7:00 pm: Networking and hors d’oeuvres

7:00 – 8:15 pm: Panel Discussion and Q&A

8:15 – 8:30 pm: Additional Networking


LOCATION: Sun Microsystems, 12 Network Circle, Building 12 (make a left at the main entrance), Menlo Park, CA 94025. Map

Register now!


BAY AREA STARTUP WEEKEND


WHEN: November 20-22nd

WHERE: The Hacker Dojo


Register Before 10/30 for 20% off – Use code “swearlybird”


There are 10 Startup Weekend events going on for Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) this November! Last year they had over 25,000 events, 3 million participants, and over 1 billion media impressions. 


Additional Locations:

November 13th-15th: Tulsa, OK – Boise, ID – London, UK

November 20th-22nd: New York – Bay Area (Silicon Valley) – Cleveland, OH – Dallas, TX – Los Angeles, CA – Lexington, KY – Atlanta, GA

December 4th-6th: (just a little later) Paris, France – Corvallis, OR – Boston, MA


What’s new:

  • Global visibility for your startup – GEW will have amazing exposure and follow-up with national coverage for Startup Weekend and startups in likes of The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, NYTimes, Forbes, and USA Today.
  • Meet more investors, vc’s, ceo’s, cto’s, lawyers, and successful entrepreneurs working one-on-one with teams.
  • Sunday night voting among your peers will allow one startup to win a grand prize.
  • Top teams will be invited to Startup Weekend exclusive spots at the top tech events.
  • Spotlight your startup via Startup Weekends global partners.
  • Coaching and mentoring for startups after the weekend.
  • Free web hosting for startups at the event
  • Free business plan guidance
  • Other Free software and discounts

Student Tickets are limited – Remember to bring your Student ID!

Startup Weekend is a now a non-profit out of Seattle, WA. 

Tuesday Oct 20, 2009

Congratulations to the 4 winners of the North of England "stimulus package". Visuvi, LinkedNow, Chyngles, and Hear Planet will receive free airline tickets to the UK, marketing help, free office space for one year, and introduction to investors in Northern England. Way to go!!

Visuvi is an visual-based search engine with patent pending technology in content-based image recognition. Visuvi's search engine examines the content and patterns within an image, categorizes that information via mathematical indexing and delivers search results of images with similar characteristics. Visuvi's analysis is entirely machine generated examining the content of the image itself and does not rely on text. More


LinkedNow is a social networking platform for working professionals and has two main goals. First to help find, review and talk about what's great - and not so great - about current and past employers. Secondly, LinkedNow wants to enable best ways of looking for a new job online. Very handy! More


Chyngle is a B2B mobile application platform which enables any venue to create a branded, custom mobile application to enhance the customer experience during events, increase venue and vendor revenue and communicate directly to attendees through their own interactive in-pocket marketing channel. Chyngle works with stadiums, malls, airports, theme parks, schools, resorts, hotels, cruise ships, casinos, conferences, etc. More


HearPlanet is a mobile audio discovery guide - it's like having a professional tour guide providing coverage for hundreds of locations, with additional enhanced content added daily. It also offers a geolocation device to discover instant info on things that are nearby. More

 

Friday Oct 16, 2009

Join our rock star, Angelo Rajadurai, in this free webinar that will focus on ZFS. ZFS is a new kind of file storage subsystem that provides simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity, and immense scalability. ZFS is not an incremental improvement to existing technology; it is a fundamentally new approach to data management. ZFS also combines, Disks, DRAM and Flash into one storage subsystem easily providing the best overall price performance for storage. Come learn about ZFS and its benefits. See a demo of how easy it is to use and administrate. Hear from a startup on their experience with ZFS.

Date: Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Time: 8:00 am PDT / 11:00 am EDT / 4:00 pm UK / 5:00 pm CEST / 8:30 pm India (New Delhi) (check timezone)
Speaker: Angelo Rajadurai, Sr. Technical Evangelist, Sun Startup Essentials

Register Now

Instead of having the "startup of the day" spotlighting one startup, we'll have the "startups" (plural) of the day as a lot of startups shined yesterday at our Menlo Park campus when they pitched their products to North England. The 3-4 winners of the "stimulus package" to set up shop in Northern England will be announced soon. In the meanwhile, here's a synopsis of all the cool companies. 


[Read More]

Tuesday Oct 13, 2009

This event is going to rock the Sun campus in Menlo Park tomorrow. A number of startups will be pitching to investors for a chance to win a "boost package" from North England (funding, PR, free office space, etc.) to launch their business in the UK. Both the pitching startups and presenters are top notch - with most companies having very nice products already in the market.

Program Schedule
12:00PM Lunch
12:30PM Gareth Lewis, Opening Remarks & Geeks Going Global Program
12:40PM Juan Carlos Soto, Sun Microsystems, Global Reach of Sun Startup Essentials
12:50PM Steve Smith, Financing Globally
1:00PM Startup Pitches & Demos
1:55PM Success in Global Entrepreneurship - Richard Irving (Partner: Pond Ventures - The Transitive Story)
2:05PM Startup Pitches & Demos
3:00PM Success in Global Entrepreneurship – Chris Wade (CEO Shozu – The Shozu Story)
3:15PM Success in Global Entrepreneurship – Suranga Chandratillake (CEO Blinkx– The Blinkx Story)
3:30PM Networking

Tuesday Oct 06, 2009

Looking for a boost to expand to the European and/or Asian markets?

Pitch your startup company on October 14th to global VCs, and the North of England Investment Agency will pay for your trip to the UK to help you connect with partners, vendors and VCs based in the UK. This package is worth over $30k!  

The package will be available to 3-4 companies that prove to be successful through The North of England program. This event is hosted by North of England.

Not ready to pitch yet? There's room for a few observers that want to learn and network. 

Date: Wednesday, October 14
Time: 12 noon - 3:00 pm
Venue:
Sun Microsystems Menlo Park campus, Building 15 / Executive Briefing Center

Please RSVP via email by Friday, October 9th.

Agenda 
12:00PM Lunch 

12:30PM Opening Remarks

12:40PM Juan Carlos Soto, Sun Microsystems, Global Reach of Sun Startup Essentials

12:50PM Steve Smith, Finacing Globally in Hard Times

1:00PM Startup Pitches & Demos

1:30PM Success in Global Entrepreneurship, Speaking Company & Questions (CEO Blinkx)

1:45PM Startup Pitches & Demos 

2:15PM Success in Global Entrepreneurship, Speaking Company & Questions (speaker TBC)

2:30PM Networking (3:00PM Close)

Monday Oct 05, 2009

We've known SVASE for a long time and recently met with the SVASE team to learn more about their organization and all the great resources they offer entrepreneurs. 

Founded in 1995 by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs, SVASE, the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs, is the largest and fastest growing nonprofit association in Northern California dedicated exclusively to empowering early stage entrepreneurs across all technology and life science sectors to build successful companies. As one measure of success, SVASE members raised over $76MM last year by leveraging SVASE events and contacts.

SVASE hosts 10-12 events each month, featuring VCs, Angels and veteran Entrepreneurs as guest speakers, and attended annually by over 6,000 entrepreneurs, VCs, bloggers and press, and our events newsletter is requested by over 10,000 entrepreneurs and executives each week (sign up).  With our web-based services, including 24 Hour Networking, the online SVASE Yellow Pages, the keyword searchable VC Database and Jobs in Funded Startups database, and our links to VC Experts, plus blogs from AlwaysOn and Guy Kawasaki, SVASE is able to help entrepreneurs around the clock and around the world. For further information on how SVASE can empower your startups, go to www.svase.org.


Tuesday Sep 29, 2009

Congratulations Micello team for your launch at DEMOfall 09 last week!

At DEMOfall 09 in San Diego, CA, Sun Startup Essentials member Micello showcased how to navigate "inside" places with an iPhone. Watch the video.

Micello has built a database of maps of places people go to shopping malls, college campuses, convention centers etc, and allows users to access, navigate and explore those places using their mobile phones. Unlike, its competitors, Micello keeps its own database of place of interest rather than relying on satellite-based map systems. In addition, by integrating social networking services into the application, Micello brings together all the activity happening inside a building where people gather.

The Micello application is free for end users and can be downloaded from Apple’s AppStore. The application will be available on Blackberry OS, Android, WebOS in the coming months. Micello’s Facebook application is also coming soon.

Micello received glowing reports from the press. Below is only a sample.

This blog copyright 2009 by Sun Microsystems