Emerging Technology : Buzz

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. 

Maryland is home to a thriving startup community, says Fast Company. The magazine ranks the Free State No. 3 on its list of the most innovative states.

Florida, Texas, Arizona and Alaska rounded out the top five. Mississippi, Oklahoma and Virginia were at the bottom three of the list, which ranked the 50 states and the District of Columbia. 

Maryland also ranked No. 4 on Fast Company's breakdown of the number of startups per million residents.

The magazine culled data from a variety of sources to come up with the ranking: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity and others. 

Ever wish you could know how likely it is that you'll get a ticket if you skip paying the meter while you grab a cup of coffee?

Now you can, thanks to a Baltimore developer. Hampden resident Shea Frederick has developed an app called SpotAgent that can assess the likelihood of getting a parking ticket at certain times and locations, writes Atlantic Cities.

"The city’s data includes the date, time and a rough address (as well as license plate info) for every parking ticket handed out in the city in the past year," writes Atlantic Cities. "And new tickets typically appear in the database within just a few hours of landing on a windshield.
SpotAgent is available for the iPhone and Android devices. 

The South Baltimore Recreation Center has officially reopened as a neigborhood technology center, thanks to the efforts of the Riverside community and Digital Harbor High School supporters.

Forbes takes a look at the new venue, where Balitmore City school students can learn about web design, mobile app development and digital media production. 

"The center’s grand opening was a packed house, where excited participants got to show equally excited visitors the fruits of some of their early work, providing a taste of what’s to come from the space," the magazine writes. "Shelly Blake-Plock, the executive co-director of the Digital Harbor Foundation, delivered such an impassioned welcome speech that you could almost see where all this excitement was coming from."

You can read the rest of the story here. 

America's new hotbeds of technology innovation are not in the major cities like New York, Los Angeles or Chicago, but smaller ones, according to Forbes. And ranking No. 4 on Forbes' list is the Greater Baltimore region, where jobs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) grew nearly 18 percent between 2001 and 2012.

The Washington, D.C., metropolitan area got the top spot, followed by Riverside-San Bernadino, Calif., and San Antonio-New Braunfels, Texas. 

New York, L.A. and Chicago, in contrast, all lost tech jobs in the past decade, according to the data crunched by Praxis Strategy Group. 

"As the social media industry matures and consolidates, employment is likely to continue shifting to less expensive, business-friendly areas," Forbes writes.

You can read the rest of the story 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.

Facebook took its investor pitch on the road and made a pit stop in Baltimore, according to the New York Times. 

It also hit Boston, San Francisco and Chicago prior to its prepares to go public May 17 or 18. It's on track to raise nearly $11 billion with a market valuation of $86 billion, the Times 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. 

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.