internet : Innovation + Job News

Blue Infusion Technologies has introduced its first product this month — a glove outfitted with Bluetooth technology that lets  the wearer operate a smart phone while keeping his hands warm. The Columbia startup is selling its BEARTek Gloves online before placing them in retail stores by fall/winter of 2013.

Blue Infusion Technologies' second product, a motorsports glove with Bluetooth technology, is being launched at the same time, also online first and later in retail stores.

“This is the first time the products are available for purchase,” says CEO Willie Blount, who founded the company two years ago. Blount is referring to the launches on Kickstarter.com, a competitive process that required sending a proposal, product descriptions and video demonstrating that it has a viable product.
 
BEARTek Gloves are priced at $150/pair and is outfitted with Bluetooth technology. A Bluetooth module contains a battery and custom hardware that enable a connection to a smart phone. Touching the thumb activates touchpoints on the fingertips, says Blount.
 
“You touch the thumb to a designated fingertip to make calls,” says Blount. “Skiers can call for emergency help if they aren’t carrying a phone or without reaching for a phone inside a jacket.” The motorsports glove is in the same price range and uses the same technology.
 
Blue Infusion Technologies is a virtual company that collaborates with the Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship, part of the Howard County Economic Development Authority. It is a Maryland-certified minority-owned business.
 
Last spring, the company received help on glove technology and product development from the Space Alliance Technology Outreach Program, which is funded by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration. In August, it received a $148,500 award from the Maryland Industrial Partnership to collaborate with Dr. Marc Cohen, a research scientist at the University of Maryland College Park, on the technology.
 
Blount says the idea for BEARTek and motorsports gloves came from his experiences and those of his business partner and COO Tarik Rodgers’ experiences. Blount is a former US Marine who has also worked for the US government as a specialist in electronics and aviation. Rodges, an engineer, is an experienced skier.
 
The company has arranged manufacturing of the gloves in a US factory, says Blount, who, with Rodgers, are the company’s two employees.  The company is a state-certified minority-owned business.
 
Source: Willie Blount, Blue Infusion Technologies
Writer: Barbara Pash
 

Baltimore startup HD Scores has launched its first round of financing this month in hopes of raising $1.5 million to support its main product, a website that it bills as the most comprehensive health department inspection data from jurisdictions in the US and Canada. HD Scores launched the site in May and plans put the data on the website in early 2013 and sell the data to clients.
 
Operating out of a virtual office, the company is currently hiring two key personnel, a chief technology officer and national vice president of business development.
 
The idea for HD Scores came to Matthew Eierman, a trained chef, when he sought health inspection information about a restaurant in Annapolis that friends were considering opening. It took Eierman, founder and CEO of HD Scores, almost three hours to track down the data, “and I knew where to look,” he says. “I thought, there’s an issue here."
 
HD Scores is collecting data from 3,200 counties around the US and Canada. The publicly available health department inspection data comes from local and state governments.
 
HD Scores will publish the data in its raw form, directly from the database, which will be available for viewing free. The company will also standardize it, meaning that, based on proprietary algorithms, the raw data will be put into an easy-to-read format searchable by multiple platforms.
 
Eierman says HD Scores expects the standardized data to be used for marketing and/or research. Potential clients include advertising applications and web platforms; government and media groups; academics; and commercial entities and restaurants. He declined to provide pricing information.
 
In January, HD Scores will launch a consumer feedback column on its website in which 30-second videos taken on smart phones will be posted. It also is putting together a panel of experts in food service and health inspection to devise its own independent rating system for restaurants, school and hospital cafeterias, and any commercial kitchen.
 
Source: Matthew Eierman, HD Scores
Writer: Barbara Pash
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Mitt Romney lost the presidential election but the Canton company that created the Romney shop on the Republican Party candidate’s website says it emerged a winner.

Digital agency Groove Commerce implemented and ran Romney’s e-commerce site, which they say attracted thousands of orders per day and is still operational.The campaign job has given the company a boost in the e-commerce world. "It's helped our visibility and reputation," says Groove Commerce CEO Ethan Giffin.

The company has 22 employees and is currently hiring four to six additional staffers, in particular skilled PHP developers, front-end developers, online marketers and an executive assistant.

Giffin emphasizes that Groove Commerce is not a politically focused organization. Rather, the company saw the offer to build a scalable website for a presidential candidate, a first for them, as a challenge.The Romney campaign set the prices for items in the store, from T-shirts for $30 to bumper stickers for $5. Also for sale are hats, posters, lawn signs, iPhone cases, water bottles and lapel pins.
 
Giffin does not know when the campaign website will be shut down. He can’t disclose sales information, which were donations to the campaign. He can say that at certain points in the campaign – such as when Congressman Paul Ryan was announced as the vice presidential candidate and during the Republican National Convention – the shop got thousands of orders per day.

The Romney campaign approached the Emerging Technology Center company because of its partnership with Magento, an e-commerce software firm headquartered in California. The campaign was interested in using Magento, an open source platform that has lots of services and add-ons that can be integrated and is highly scalable.

"It's very popular in e-commerce circles," he says of Magento. "It was a perfect fit in scale"  for the campaign shop. “It was a very cool project,” he says.
 
Groove Commerce began working on the website shop last spring. It officially launched a few days before July 4^th weekend with an offer on Facebook for a discounted Romney T-shirt. More than 20,000 T-shirts were sold.
 
Giffin says the company brought a new approach to the campaign online store. “Most political online stores are very basic and bland. Their focus is the political space but they don’t know the tactics the average retailer uses to sell more products,” he says. “We wanted it to be more of a retailer-shopping experience.”
 
The privately funded Groove Commerce was founded in 2007. It moved to a 2,000-square foot space in the Emerging Technology Center in 2010; it now occupies 4,500 square feet.
 
The company focuses on web design and development and on inbound marketing. Giffin describes the latter as using aspects of search engine optimization, content creation and blogging, email marketing and paperclick advertising – “getting people to take action once they come to the website,” he says.
 
Groove Commerce has 50 clients, ranging from Lax World, lacrosse retailers, to Corsair Memory, a builder of computer memory, and the state’s Habitat for Humanity chapter.
 
 
Source: Ethan Giffin, Groove Commerce
Writer: Barbara Pash

Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Torrey Smith makes his debut this month as a spokesman for PointClickSwitch.com, a website that offers one-stop comparison shopping for residential and commercial electricity consumers.  

The Baltimore startup, a division of state licensed electricity broker Maryland Energy Advisors, is using the football player to promote its Nov. 13 launch in Maryland and four other states.
 
Phil Croskey, founder and CEO of PointClickSwitch.com, says the company approached the National Football League winning-team member because it was looking for someone with name recognition in the Maryland market.
 
“He’s a class act, a high-character individual and we appreciate that,” Croskey says.
 
PointClickSwitch.com operates in two states, Maryland and Illinois. It is currently going through the licensing process in three additional jurisdictions – New York State, Ohio and Washington, D.C. Croskey expects it to be operational in all three jurisdictions by mid-2013.
 
PointClickSwitch.com provides a listing of energy suppliers and their current rates per kilowatt hour, the standard measure of electricity. There is no fee for consumers to use the website or to change suppliers. The suppliers pay the company a marketing fee per customer but the rate to consumers is the same whether through PointClickSwitch.com or directly from them.
 
Suppliers on the website include familiar names like Constellation Energy, Con Edison, Castle Bridge Energy and Pepco, along with a lesser known company like Cool Currents, which offers electricity from renewable energy sources. Maryland residents can sign up for any supplier on the list, depending on the supplier’s regional arrangements.
 
“We serve everything from studio apartments to heavy industrial users, although large commercial projects need a more customized approach, which we also do,” says Croskey, who notes that customers can save up to 20 percent on their electricity bill by comparison shopping.

“We have suppliers charging 9.1 cents versus 7.69 cents per kilowatt hour,” he says.

Croskey, former director of economic development for the Baltimore Development Corp., founded PointClickSwitch.com in 2010. It is a portfolio company of Wasabi Ventures Accelerator at Loyola University of Maryland, and operates out of an office in downtown Baltimore.

As the company expands into new markets, Croskey expects to hire three to five employees to add to its current staff of three. He is looking for employees to focus on the new markets, although they can work from Baltimore to do so. He is also looking for an IT person to manage the company’s social media.
 
The company is privately funded although Croskey does not rule out a financing round as it expands.
 
Source: Phil Croskey, PointClickSwitch.com
Writer: Barbara Pash

EasyWebContent wants to make life easy for its customers by taking the complexity out of putting interactive content like presentations and infographics on websites and mobile devices.

The Presenter, its newest service, is a one-stop shop to do all that. Now in the testing stage, the web developer expects to launch it in early 2013.

President Payman Taei founded EasyWebContent in 2008, a spinoff of his Frederick web development and marketing firm HindSite Interactive. EasyWebContent has offices in both Frederick and at the Emerging Technology Center in Canton. Taei says EasyWebContent will still offer its basic product but the Presenter allows clients to do multiple applications with one tool. Applications include presentations, infographics, banners and product demonstrations, all in a downloadable format.

"The Presenter completes our service as a whole. It allows everyone to create everything online," says Taei, who expects the product to be popular with current clients and to attract other clients.

EasyWebContent is a web content creator and manager whose clients are mostly small businesses and nonprofits like churches but also individuals like writers and audio developers. Often, they have little technical knowledge and the company tries to make the process as simple and easy as possible. Taei says more than 1,000 clients have used its service to create new websites or improve existing ones. It has about 100 clients whose websites it actively manages.

"There really isn't one tool that allows you to do all these things effectively," says Taei. "Traditionally, people have used Adobe Flash to create animation and so on, but it is not mobile-friendly. Our service is an evolution" of that.

EasyWebContent has a free trial period, followed by a monthly or yearly fee to edit, manage and create a brand for the website. Fees range from $8 to $22 per month, depending on services. The Presenter will also begin with a free trial period, with fees of $8 per month to under $100 per year to create and manage. 

The company is privately funded but Taei says he is likely to launch his first round of funding in 2013 as the new service hits the marketplace. It employs four, including Taei, who says he is currently looking to add two people to the staff, a marketing/communications manager and a web developer.
 
Source: Payman Taei, EasyWebContent
Writer: Barbara Pash
 

Sales and marketing firm DoublePositive is hiring as many as 20 within the next six to nine months to work in its Baltimore and Tempe, Ariz., offices.

It seeks expertise in business and marketing analysis, senior network engineering and software development to add to its 60-person staff.

The Canton online marketing firm opened a new sales leads division in August, helping online colleges and universities find new students. The division helps the institutions find students for their certificates and bachelor’s and master’s degree programs and it adheres to recently-enacted federal regulations with regard to new student recruitment. The regulations are aimed at keeping the recruitment process transparent and assuring that the programs are legitimate, according to Jodi Swartz, DoublePositive's director of corporate marketing.
 
The leads division follows on the heels of another new division DoublePositive opened in December. The mobile division focuses on mobile pay per call that links consumers to companies via apps. Swartz says the division has grown by more than 1,000 percent in the first three quarters of 2012, its first revenue producing year.
 
Founded in 2004, DoublePositive moved to its present Canton office in 2008. In January, the company relocated to a larger office in the same Canton building. The new office totals 14,000 square feet, double the size of its previous office.  The company maintains an office in Tempe, Ariz., which also recently doubled in size, to a total 7,000 square feet.
 
Besides the two new divisions, DoublePositive specializes in online display and telephone transfers. Its 125 clients include Comcast, The Home Depot, Rosetta Stone, 21^st Century Auto, Kaplan, Sylvan and Education Management Corp. (EDMC).  The company’s mobile division is located in Tempe, home to EDMC.
 
Last month, DoublePositive started an internship program for college students and recent graduates who want experience in online marketing. Interns are paired with senior-level managers for real-world experience. It's accepting up to 10 interns per semester and the program is offered for college credit or for pay.
 
Source: Jodi Swartz, DoublePositive
Writer: Barbara Pash

SpotCrime has created a new mobile app and says it is negotiating deals with billion-dollar companies to expand into new markets.

Hatched in Baltimore's Emerging Technology Center, the downtown Baltimore company is currently negotiating partnerships with national TV and data distribution companies. SpotCrime President Colin Drane could not name them but says they are “billion-dollar companies that reach millions of people.”

The Baltimore crime mapping company is an online source of crime information. It features news, statistics and real-time maps for arson, assault, burglary, robbery, shooting, theft and vandalism localized for sites around the country.
 
Launched last month, the new product came out two weeks ago, says Drane. It is a website app, a mobile page for its website, that Drane calls “fairly simple technology" but a great way to represent its data.

Within the past two months, SpotCrime has also expanded its market via its partnerships with two broadcast companies that carry its crime data on their websites.
 
At Gannett Co., SpotCrime went from three stations to 20; at Sinclair Broadcasting Group, from two stations to four. The additional Sinclair stations are located in Austin, Tx., and West Palm Beach, Fl. SpotCrime also has a presence on Baltimore’s WBFF-TV Fox 45's website.
 
The website app works like an application for an iPhone or iPad but does not have to be downloaded. “Before the iPhone had an app store, we had the first app, which was a web page on the iPhone. We are returning to our roots and creating a website app,” says Drane.
 
Founded in 2007, SpotCrime has three full-time employees and a technical team of four staffers.
 
People can sign up for free e-mail crime alerts via the company’s website. SpotCrime sends out nearly five million personalized crime alerts per month around the country. 
 
 
Source: Colin Drane, SpotCrime
Writer: Barbara Pash

Adventure Web Productions has expanded its client base with the acquisition earlier this year of 18 Visions Design in Frederick for an undisclosed sum in cash.

The Catonsville web development and internet marketing company is taking over 18 Visions' 60 clients, says Adventure Vice President Charlie Strouse, who mentions the Maryland Symphony Orchestra as the largest of its clients. 

Strouse says Adventure had more than 1,000 clients before buying 18 Visions Designs, a web design firm whose work was similar to that of Adventure’s. Among Adventure's clients are BGE Home; Japanese firm Capcom; and Hunt Valley's Dunbar Armored.

Adventure is maintaining 18 Visions' name, adding "An Adventure Web Company" to the title, and keeping 18 Visions' office in Frederick. It hired a separate, five-person sales staff that is located in the Frederick office. 
 
18 Visions Design was Adventure’s first acquisition but not its last. Strouse says the company is interested in buying other small web development companies, and they don’t have to be Maryland-based. He says acquisitions allow Adventure to offer its services via multiple companies and to create value for them.
 
Founded in 1997, Adventure is privately-owned. It has a staff of 25, and is looking to hire a PHP web developer. 

The City of Baltimore this year hired Adventure to design Star Spangled 200, the official website of the 200^th anniversary of the War of 1812. Several events were held at the Inner Harbor and around the state from June 13 to 19. The website launched in May and remains active because of the ongoing sale of commemorative coins and to announce upcoming events. It links to several civic and nonprofit organizations.  
 
Strouse says Adventure has recently begun offering two new services to clients. One service is developing applications and mobile websites for clients with, for example, personal notifications of upcoming events, special deals and/or personalized information.
 
Another service is managing social media campaigns for clients. This involves writing and aggregating blogs and posting to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media. 
 
Source: Charles Strouse, Adventure Web Productions
Writer: Barbara Pash
 
 
 

Software firm 6th Street Commerce has moved into a larger office in the Emerging Technology Center at Canton. The move, to a space twice the size of its previous quarters, was made to accommodate current expansion and future growth. The e-commerce company is in the process of hiring up to six key staffers "as quickly as possible," says 6th Street Vice President of Marketing David Anderson.

Anderson says the company is looking for a Chief Technology Officer, web designer-developer and staffers in sales and marketing and in accounting. "We want to grow out sales and marketing team," he says.

The company has been housed at the Canton ETC since its founding in 2008. Anderson says the location has offered flexibility in accommodating its relocation into larger quarters and for its business support. He calls the ETC a "great place for a young company."

6th Street Commerce is introducing a new version of its e-commerce software this month, Saleswarp, intended for mid- to large-size retailers to manage their online and backend operations. The new version of Saleswarp has expanded customer management features and a redesigned user interface, says Anderson.

Saleswarp was launched last year and is the company's sole product. The enterprise product helps companies increase sales and decrease operating costs. Anderson says it helps retailers manage orders, product and suppliers across one to multiple stores. 
 
Anderson says the company recently acquired two new clients in the national and international fashion industry whose names he was not at liberty to announce yet. Among clients listed on its website are First Book Marketplace, a non-profit book buying group for students and teachers; Crafts2u, an online craft store; and Forest Hill Lacross, a new league.

He also says that Saleswarp is now being marketed to web design firms and system integrators to help retailers develop a web presence.
  
6^th Street Commerce won the 2012 Maryland Incubator Award in the information technology category.
 
Source: David Anderson, 6^th Street Commerce
Writer: Barbara Pash
 

Baltimore software company Bizelo is coming out this fall with two new applications designed to help retailers and other small business owners manage their inventory, sales, exchanges and returns.
 
CEO Ronald Schmelzer says the goal is to help small business-owners manage their companies better and at a lower cost than other available products. Schmelzer founded the privately-owned company in 2010 and released its first product last year. The two new applications will be out by October, and the company is on track to have a total of 34 software applications for various business operations by the end of this year. Each product costs less than $30 per month.
 
“These are not custom apps but they fit general situations,” says Schmelzer, who identifies industries that have a small-business focus, like physicians’ and dentists’ offices, retail stores and restaurants and develops software for them.
 
Bizelo’s electronic retail supply management application, one of the two new products, is intended to help small business owners buy products online from their vendors. Its return management system, the other new product, helps small businesses with the return/exchange process by generating return labels, keeping track of returns/exchanges and which items are most often sent back. 
 
Bizelo is located in a commercial building in Roland Park. Schmelzer is looking to hire two to three software developers within the next six months to add to the existing staff of six. 
 
Last June, he closed out a crowd-funding round that raised about $100,000. He is in the process of launching another financing round, aiming to raise $750,000 from angel and seed investors.
 
“There’s no reason we can’t develop hundreds of apps,” says Schmelzer.
 
Source: Ronald Schmelzer, Bizelo
Writer: Barbara Pash
 
 

The Rare Genomics Institute says it has discovered a new gene variant in a four-year-old patient that may indicate a brand new disease.

RGI is an affiliate of the Baltimore City Emerging Technology Center incubator and a nonprofit devoted to helping patients with rare genetic diseases. It uses crowdfunding to finance genomic sequencing pilot projects and is run by 23 volunteers.
 
Researchers at a medical institution made the discovery in partnership with RGI, President Dr. Jimmy Lin says.  It marks the first time that a patient-initiated, crowdfunded genome initiative project has uncovered the genetic basis of a rare disease, he says. 

In this case, the child had undergone multiple operations and suffered from developmental delays. Despite visiting numeorus physicians, her condition had remained unexplained until genomic sequencing identified a gene active in fetal development and early childhood as the culprit.

"By looking at the sequence and comparing it with public databases, we were able to find the genetic change in her genome that was not present in either of her parents," Lin says.

He says that while there is no "cure"  for her rare disease, the discovery will help the child's physicians better understand her condition and someday may point to better treatment for her and other children like her.
 
Lin founded RGI last year while still a MD/PhD student at Johns Hopkins University. Now a professor at the Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Lin says RGI will remain in Baltimore.
 
Lin says RGI was created to help patients with rare diseases through genomic sequencing, which enables researchers to identify genetic defects that might not show up in standard medical testing.
 
“We help patients with diseases that are so rare that no organization is helping them, no funding is available to them and no research is being done,” Lin says of diseases that, because of these factors, are often not named..
 
There are about 7,000 rare diseases, legally defined as affecting from 200,000 people to one person. According to RGI, 80 percent of rare diseases have indentifiable genetic origins; 75 percent or rare diseases affect children; 30 percent of rare disease patients die before the age of 5.   
 
RGI has 18 medical institution partners, including Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland Medical System, which have agreed to do genomic sequencing.
 
RGI raises the money through a funding model called crowdfunding, in which projects are chosen, highlighted on a website and donations can be made directly to the project via the web site.
 
Since founding, RGI has highlighted 20 projects and raised more than $50,000. In the project involving the four-year-old child, it raised $3,500 over six hours to pay for her genome sequencing,
 
As far as Lin knows, RGI is the only nonprofit undertaking this effort. “There are companies that do sequencing and there are companies that do crowdfunding but we are the only ones who’ve connected all the dots,” he says.
 
Source: Dr. Jimmy Lin, Rare Genomics Institute
Writer: Barbara Pash

The Emerging Technology Centers at Canton and Johns Hopkins/Eastern enrolled three new companies in July. They are ADASHI, Canterbury Road Partners and Diagnostic Biochips. ADASHI offers a software platform to network emergency management systems. Canterbury Road Partners is a public/private partnership to help research institutions with technology transfer. Diagnostis Biochips is a life sciences company.
 
The ETCs have enrolled 18 companies in total since the beginning of the year and are on track to enroll 30 new tenants, its annual average, by the end of the year. That is according to Fulya Gursel, marketing manager for the Baltimore Development Corp.-led incubators. 
 
There are currently 27 tenants at the Canton incubator and 34 tenants at the Eastern incubator. In addition, the ETCs have 29 affiliates, which don’t occupy a physical space in the facilities but use their services.
 
Gursel says that as a technology incubator, the ETCs attract a variety of entrepreneurs, including software, hardware, mobile apps, life science and medical devices. Lately, the majority have been mobile apps and web solutions, she says. However, the incubators have programs that attract medical device/life science entrepreneurs as well.
 
 “We’re getting a lot of new, young start-ups by talented entrepreneurs who are passionate about their ideas," Gursel says. "It shows the strength of the Baltimore tech scene.”
 
Since 2012, the following new companies have joined the ETCs:
Right Source Marketing
Juxtopia/JUICE Lab
Mobile Tennis Training Tech LLC
Ark Science
Foodem.com
Rowdy Orbit
Graphtrack, Inc
Tame Social Mahem
Hoopla.com
NoBadGift.com
Bolster Labs
Linkletter
Pluck
Cruse Technologies LLC
Unbound Concepts LLC
Solar Systems Express
FUNR Gaming
Amplofi
Canterbury Road Partners
Adashi
Diagnostic Biochips
 

Source: Fulya Gursel, Emerging  Technology Centers Writer: Barbara Pash

Baltimore Heritage, a historic preservation nonprofit, says several hundred people have downloaded its new app for touring historic neighborhoods of Baltimore.

Eli Pousson, Baltimore Heritages' field officer, says that he hopes the growth continues as it adds more neighborhoods and features. These include the neighborhoods of Mount Vernon and Franklin Square, neighborhood churches and other sacred landmarks. 

“The idea is to explore historic neighborhoods in a fun and informative way,” Pousson says.

The free app, which can be used on Android devices and iPhones, is available on its newly redesigned webiste or from the app store. 

The app is built on an open source platform developed by Cleveland State University that has already been used to create similar apps in Cleveland, St. Paul, New Orleans and Miami. Baltimore Heritage is using material it already had researched along with new material that was created for the app by students at University of Maryland Baltimore County.
 
“We don’t intend to commercialize it. That’s not our mission,” Pousson says. Baltimore Heritage works in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
 
The app has historical photographs, short essays and oral histories about different Baltimore City places. Users can select from different options for self-guided tours of neighborhoods like Station North Arts and Entertainment District or Bolton Hill, or for thematic tours, such as a War of 1812 tour.
 
 
Source: Eli Pousson, Baltimore Heritage
Writer: Barbara Pash

Digital marketing firm WebMechanix  is moving from its current headquarters to a larger office next month, and expects to hire additional staff. 

The three-year-old company is leaving a 1,200-square foot townhouse in Ellicott City and moving to a 2,500-square-foot office in Howard County's Columbia, Partner Josh Mechanic says. He runs the company with his brother Chris Mechanic and cousin Arsham Mirshah, who founded the company in 2009; Josh joined a year later.

"We started out at a kitchen table," Mechanic says. Mirshah's father owned the townhouse and Chris and Arsham lived in it until the company began hiring employees and it was turned into the company headquarters in 2010.

 "We've been growing steadily and we have the financial stability to move to larger quarters," Mechanic says. "Our initial focus was on small businesses. But as we got more referrals, we started selling to bigger companies."

Mechanic says he had been looking for awhile for a suitable new home and found a "great deal" on a "great space." The company has a sublease until October 2014 on its new office. In fact, the relatively short sublease was one of its appeals. "We are not locked into a space for three to five years. We're not sure where we will be when the lease is up so this gives us flexibilty to move in the future," he says of a relocation that will cost WebMechanix $35,000 to $40,000.

Mechanic says the company’s sales have doubled every year since its founding, and projects more than $2 million in revenue this year. It has 40 clients for whom it does mobile, web, search, conversion and analytics as well as design development for new websites.
 
The company is also rolling out a new product, a digital marketing package that improves a company's website performance. It is priced so it's affordable to small businesses, from $800 to $2,250 per month, depending on the amount of work required. He says it usually takes three months to optimize the website, which is typically followed by ongoing marketing.

The company currently has 14 full-time employees plus four to five interns. It is moving into an office that accommodates about 25 full-time employees and within the next few months, is looking to fill a sales position, web developer and search engine optimization specialist and add five more interns.
 
He says the company constantly gets inquiries from college graduates about jobs. In response, it has a policy of taking on unpaid interns for 90 days, after which time they may be hired if the work is satisfactory.  
 
Source: Josh Mechanic, WebMechanix
Writer: Barbara Pash
 

IT firm SITEC Consulting relocated from the cybersecurity incubator at bwtech@UMBC Research & Technology Park to an office in Anne Arundel County last month.

The minority-owned company moved to Annapolis Junction, a business park, because of its proximity to customers at Fort Meade.
 
SITEC Consulting was founded in 2007 and was acquired in February of 2012 by Kevin Coby, who is president. Since then, he has made changes in management and location "to better serve our customers,” according to Lubna Sher, SITEC’s chief of staff.
 
SITEC Consulting is a business process automation consulting and IT firm for both federal and commercial markets.
 
Since its founding, SITEC Consulting has had a corporate office in Cambridge, a federally Historically Underutilized Business Zone, aka HUBZone, an incentive for federal contractors. Last year, it joined the UMBC incubator and has since grown its staff from 26 to 31, Sher says.
 
Sher says the company is maintaining its Cambridge office, and the two offices will share the staff. She says the company is in a “growth mode” and is looking to increase the number of employees as work progresses. Sher says additional staff would be in IT-related fields like software engineering, visualization, engineering services, and business analytics and support, its core competencies.
 
Source: Lubna Sher, SITEC Consulting
Writer: Barbara Pash