innovation : Buzz

Next time you pull off to the side of the road for a fire truck, you may just see an advertisement rolling by your window as well.
 
The idea to paint corporate logos on Baltimore City fire engines was proposed to help increase income at a time of dwindling tax revenue. And the move has caught the eye of several national news outlets, including the New York Times.

"Baltimore is joining dozens of other financially struggling cities, transit systems and school districts around the country that are trying to weather the economic downturn by selling advertisements, naming rights and sponsorships to raise money," the New York Times writes.

Three Baltimore fire companies are set to close later this summer and selling ads on fire trucks could help more companies avoid the same fate.
 
It is unclear whether the legislation will pass any time soon as Baltimore City officials “have expressed doubts about whether the proposal would generate enough money to keep even one fire company open," the Times writes. 
 
Read more about the proposed advertising scheme here. 

Open Walls, the innovative mural art project in Station North, is getting more love. 

This time it's from the Huffington Post, which recently featured several photos of the murals and interviews with organizers, including street artist Gaia.

"From March to May the neighborhoods of Station North and Greenmount West have played host to internationally known Street Art names of the moment like Vhils, Sten and Lex, Swoon, Jaz, MOMO, and Interesni Kazki getting up on walls alongside a list of local and regional talents," the Huffington Post writes. 

Baltimore independent filmmaker Matt Porterfield has had another honor bestowed upon him. 

The Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University has selected the Putty Hill director for its 2012-2013 Artist Residency Awards.

"The Artist Residency Award program offers significant resources for innovators across all creative disciplines, selected each year by the center’s curators and director," Broadway World writes. "These unique residencies include considerable financial resources, along with the technical, intellectual, and staff support, along with (mental and physical) space in which to develop new work and engage with Ohio State classes and the Columbus community."

Porterfield and the three other selected artists/organizations will receive $200,000.

He plans to use the resources to work on another film, Broadway World writes. 

Porterfield has also won the Sonheim Prize and was included in the Whitney Biennial. 

Baltimore is catching onto the fact that the Station North Arts and Entertainment District is enjoying a renaissance of sorts. We at Bmore Media documented a number of favorable developments in this article by Cassie Paton.

Now the Washington Post has even caught onto the charms of the neighborhood that features the Charles Theatre and the Windup Space. The paper even went as far as dubbing Station North an "it" neighborhood.

It cites Open Walls Baltimore, a mural project led by artist Gaia, as the element that is making the neighborhood a real scene for emerging artists and hipsters.

"Charm City is an especially fertile ground for street art, considering its multitude of abandoned buildings, its quirky character, and its generally permissive attitude toward street art, which some cities treat as destruction of property," the Post writes.

You can read the story and the accompanying slideshow here.

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. 

Baltimore startup Parking Panda is shifting into high gear. 

The company, which rents out parking spaces in private garages and driveways and was highlighted in a Bmore Media feature in November, got some good ink in the Wall Street Journal.

"While some high-tech companies got their start in garages, a new crop of business founders, including Nick Miller of Baltimore, is giving fresh meaning to the term 'garage entrepreneur,'" the Wall Street Journal writes. Parking Panda is expanding to San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia after having closed $250,000 in funding from angel investors. 

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.  

Baltimore's reputation as a beer town has spread across the pond. The BBC has a big feature on the renaissance in Baltimore's beer industry. 

"Beer is flowing back into the city, thanks to a combination of young beer enthusiasts, cheap real estate and the persistence of local brewers," the BBC writes.

Max's Taphouse, Pratt Street Ale House, Clipper City Brewing Co. and the Brewer's Art all get a mention in the story. 

Still, we can't help but be flattered that the BBC followed Bmore Media's lead. We wrote this story on the growing number of Baltimore brewers. 

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. 

A recent study says that Baltimore has the potential to become an offshore wind power hub, given its port and a steel mill at Sparrows Point, writes the Huffington Post. 

"However, study author Nick Abstoss says attracting companies would require private investment in port facilities and other infrastructure," Huffington Post writes. "The studies released Wednesday come as legislators are considering bills supported by the governor and the MEA to require offshore wind power production in Maryland."

Baltimore nonprofit Humanim has redeveloped the former American Brewing Co. headquarters into a job training center in East Baltimore.

Fast Company highlighted the $24 million transformation in a slideshow and story on the magazine's website. The piece is featured in Co.Exist, a section devoted to innovative ideas and groundbreaking use of resources. 

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. 

Local startup 410Labs made big news last week by announcing a round of funding for Shortmail, a new too designed to alleviate the burden of overwhelming email conversations.

From the source:

But it's not just Twitter for email. There are other interesting elements of the service too. For example, you can set any Shortmail conversation to be private or public. The latter feature I tested out yesterday with 410 Labs (the company behind Shortmail) co-founder Dave Troy. Below, find my Q&A back and forth with him. (They don't currently have embeds, so I took screen shots of it to include in this post. But you can find the thread live on the web here.)

As Troy notes below, 410 Labs has secured a $750,000 Series A round of funding. True Ventures, 500 Startups, Fortify Ventures, and The Maryland Venture Fund drove the round. Individuals including Tim O'Shaughnessy (co-founder of LivingSocial), Jeff Ganek (founder of Neustar), Abdur Chowdhury (chief scientist at Twitter), among others, participated as well.

Read the full story at TechCrunch.

Health workers from Wichita, Kansas recently learned the value of simulated training from Betsy Hunt at Johns Hopkins.

From the source:

"Six Wichita doctors, nurses and medical students flew a Hawker Beechcraft business jet to spend five hours at Hunt's simulation training center on Thursday.

Hunt put them through three scary simulations: resuscitating two high-tech mannequin guys and a mannequin baby, all in cardiac arrest.

All six Wichitans are highly trained and motivated, yet Hunt saw them make minor mistake after mistake after mistake that might have prolonged patient suffering.

In medicine, Hunt said, no one trains together enough. From medical school on, doctors train separately from nurses, nurses train separately from pharmacists and anesthesiologists, and so on."

Read the full story here.