High Technology : Buzz

Maryland has opened a call center that answers residents' questions on health care reform, writes the AP in a story that ran in the Washington Post.

From now until Sept. 30, the call center will help prepare individuals and small businesses for open enrollment. It will employ 125 on Oct. 1 when consumers can begin selecting a health insurance through the state-run online health exchange, the Post writes.

You can read the entire story here. 

Maryland, Colorado and Virginia support innovation and their high-tech workforce, according to the fourth annual Enterprising States report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

Entrepreneur magazine features the list of states, which also included Utah and Massachusetts in the top five. The U.S. Chamber took a look at the number of high-tech businesses, STEM job concentration and programs that support entrepreneurs. The report credited the Free State for its Activate program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the Maryland Entrepreneurs Resource List. 

Read the entire story here. 

Forbes recently interviewed the owner of a company that redesigned WellDoc's mobile app. Based in Baltimore, WellDoc has created the first FDA-approved app to manage diabetes.

In an article titled "6 Things You Should Do When Designing for Mobile," Forbes chats with Moment Design Inc. Principal John Payne about redesigning the WellDoc app so it can be commercialized.

Holding a design charette, or a collaborative approach to design, and gathering insights about the user experience, were among Payne's recommendations. Read the entire story here. 

Mobile TV service Dyle is expanding into Baltimore, USA Today reports. 

Launched in August, Dyle is growing rapidly and will be in 116 stations in 39 markets by the end of the year. It is currently in 91 stations in 36 markets.

"In using Dyle and MyDTV, TV stations send broadcast signals over the air to a smartphone or tablet (currently, limited to Apple devices)," USA Today writes. "Users must pay about $80 to $100 for an antenna dongle, inserted into their device, which receives the broadcast signals."

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Fortune magazine recently interviewed money manager Henry Ellenbogen, who manages the $9.6 billion T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund, which invests in small-cap tech, finance and health care stocks. 

"He's constantly prowling for promising tech startups, spending about 100 days a year on the road, about half of them out in the [Silicon] Valley," Fortune writes. Ellenbogen has large stakes in private companies Twitter and LivingSocial, Fortune writes.

The fund has had annual returns of 21 percent, topping the small-cap index Russell 2000.

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Forget Silicon Valley. There are loads of other cities throughout the U.S. that have a promising tech scene. 

That's according to Fast Company, which says Baltimore is of "15 Tech Scenes in Places You'd Never Think to Look."

Phoenix, Charleston, S.C., Salt Lake City and Cleveland are some of the other towns on its list. 

"Baltimore has a startup market pumped full of youthful energy," Fast Company writes. "These burgeoning entrepreneurs can tap into a slew of resources, such as Accelerate Baltimore, a business accelerator, and Innovate Maryland, which forges partnerships between schools and tech companies."

You can read more about Baltimore's tech scene here. 

The photo includes a picture of Baltimore Sun Tech Reporter Gus Sentementes, who was featured last month in Fast Company for creating a home renovation app. 

Forbes says Baltimore is the nation's 5th best city for tech jobs, citing growth in federal spending and STEM.

The magazine didn't even lump the city in with Washington/Maryland/Virginia, which was ranked No. 2 for job growth. No. 1 was Seattle and No. 3 was San Diego.

Forbes took a look at employment growth across a variety of sectors associated with the high-tech economy, including software, Internet publishing, engineering and math-related fields.

You can see the complete list here.

Baltimore Sun tech reporter Gus Sentementes is used to writing profiles of emerging tech companies. 

But this time, Sentementes is the subject of a profile himself in Fast Company after creating an iPhone app called NestPix. The app allows homeowners to track how much money they are spending on renovations. 

"'People are looking for ways to protect the value of their home,'" Sentementes tells Fast Company. "'This can give them some kind of comfort.'"

You can read the rest of the story here. 

US President Barack Obama? Check. That British crooner who swept the Grammy awards this year. Check.

Not surprising finds on Time's list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. 

There's one that Baltimoreans can be proud of. Freeman A Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, made the list that even Mark Zuckerberg was left out of. 

"But perhaps the most envied science program in the country is at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County," Time writes. "That's where Freeman A. Hrabowski III, 61, has spent 20 years as president turning a humble commuter school into one of the nation's leading sources of African Americans who get Ph.D.s in science and engineering." 

You can read more about him here.  

Embarrassed over the Facebook pics your friends posted of you swilling beer at a pool party last summer? 

Well your employer won't see them if you work in Maryland. The state is the first to pass a law that prohibits employers from asking staff for their passwords to social media sites. The law's passage got coverage in newspapers and tech sites around the country. 

"According to Maryland’s ACLU, states like California, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan and Massachusetts have already developed legislation that would ban the practice," Government Technology writes. 

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Millennial Media's stock market debut is the biggest tech IPO since last year's LinkedIn offering, writes the New York Times.

The Baltimore mobile advertising firm went public March 29 and its ad network reached more than 300 million unique users in February, the Times writes.

"The exuberance for Millennial Media underscores the rising profile of mobile technology companies, particularly those that help serve advertising to consumers," the article says. 

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Johns Hopkins Hospital has unveiled its $1.1 billion twin towers. The new hospital will open April 29, reports the Baltimore Sun. 

"There will be X-boxes and a basketball court for kids, single rooms for all patients, sleeper-sofas for family, an improved dining menu and extensive sound proofing," the Sun writes. 

You can read more about the new hospital here. 

And you can read Bmore Media's story on the hospital here. 

It was 2012's first snowfall, but that didn't stop 200 people from trekking to the University of Baltimore for the second annual Create Baltimore. 

"Ideas were spit-balled, the collaborators of tomorrow (perhaps) met each other and an assortment of topics were covered," writes the Baltimore Brew. "People discussed mapping and visualizing, journalism and various ways to shine a light on government data, creating an advocacy organization for city bicyclists, improving food access in urban neighborhoods and a host of other ripe topics."

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Scott Ferber is rebranding his new company TidalTV and is now calling it Videology, the Baltimore Business Journal writes.

Videology is building a network of advertisers for video content and has signed up AOL Video as a client, the newspaper reports.

Ferber is the Baltimore entrepreneur who co-founded Advertising.com with his brother John Ferber. In 2004, the entrepreneurs sold Advertising.com to AOL for $435 million. You can read the rest of the story here.

Baltimore will soon be among the first nine markets to see the debut of a new live streaming TV service from EW Scripps.

From the source:

The E.W. Scripps Co. said Thursday that it will become the first TV station group in the nation to deliver live video programming to mobile devices.

The launch will occur in nine markets: Detroit, Phoenix, Tampa, Fla., Cleveland, Baltimore, Kansas City, Cincinnati, West Palm Beach, Fla., and Tulsa, Okla.

Users who download the mobile application for their local Scripps station will be prompted at certain times — such as during breaking news events or occurrences of severe weather — to view streaming content. Clicking on the prompt will open a media player that will show either a simulcast of the station's on-air content or special coverage tailored to small screens.

Read the full story here.