Friday, April 26, 2013

Are you sure you're test ready?

Apr 26, 2013
Startups & Venture Capital

Testive tests SAT prep market

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal 

Miro Kazakoff, CEO and co-founder of Testive in Cambridge, aims to increase educational opportunities for students who use the company’s software.
W. Marc Bernsau

Only about 1 percent of all the 1.6 million students who take the SAT every year receive the much-coveted perfect score of 2,400. As with any test, there’s room for improvement — and the goal of Cambridge-based Testive, which launched its test prep software SAT Habit last summer, is to help each student achieve their best score.
“The overriding goal of the company is to help students increase their educational opportunities in life,” said CEO Miro Kazakoff, who founded Testive with Tom Rose in 2011.
SAT Habit is based around testing software developed by Rose at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As students work through the program and answer questions in various sub categories — today’s SAT test has three sections, in math, reading, and writing, for a potential of 800 points each — algorithms help pinpoint their weaknesses and knowledge gaps. Students are then given personalized content to help them improve. They can also get tips and feedback from other users, watch videos that walk them through the solutions to questions they answered, set goals, and monitor their progress.
“They’re always training not only in the right category, but at the right ability level,” Kazakoff said.
Boston Latin student Daniel Qiu has seen results. After using the software, the high school junior saw an improvement of nearly 400 points on his SAT, with a score of 2110, over his PSAT. “(SAT Habit) was the only thing I used to prep — no other websites, classes or books,” Qiu said.
So far, more than 7,000 students have used the software, which has three tiers of use: free (allowing students to answer 10 questions a day), unlimited for $49 a month, or personalized tutoring for $499 a month. Testive also has a series of test projection products that been licensed by companies including Kaplan Test Prep.
The software can ultimately work for any standardized test, but Testive chose to initially home in on the SAT because it’s the “biggest, most visible test in the country,” Kazakoff said.
“This governs what sort of opportunities people have for education in their life,” he said. “(And) education governs how we provide access to wealth and opportunity.”
The company’s six employees aren’t just developing the product — they’re using it, too. The whole team is signed up to take the SAT in June, prepping with SAT Habit and tutoring each other in the interim. Kazakoff, who’s taken the SAT several years in a row — most recently scoring 780 in reading, 790 in writing, and under 700 in math — said he hopes to make it a company tradition.
“One of the challenges of education technology companies, is it’s really hard to be your own customer,” he said.
Although initially funded by the co-founders, Testive announced a $500,000 seed round in December from several angel investors, including Jean Hammond, Eileen Rudden, Dharmesh Shah and Bill Warner.
Looking ahead, Kazakoff said, “there’s a lot more work to do to make the product even more robust.”

Original story link.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Regaining control of your inbox

Apr 19, 2013
Startups & Venture Capital

Startup helps users gain control of email

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal

Cloze — whose co-founders are Dan Foody, left, and Alex Cote — offers an app that automatically prioritizes the most important emails and social posts for users.
Courtesy

With email and social networking sites, information is constantly bombarding you — some of it important, but much of it noise.
Cambridge startup Cloze, however, aims to help users cut through the clutter. Cloze offers a free app that sorts and prioritizes email and social networking posts and updates.
“It’s helping people regain control of their lives,” said co-founder Dan Foody, who, while spending extensive time on the road, said he had to sift through as many as 150 emails a day, and 10 times that in social posts.
Users, he said, “can get through all of the communication, catch up much more easily.”
Using algorithms, the app interacts with various email platforms as well as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and analyzes the history of their online communication.
The app then is able to figure out who matters most to its users. Incoming mail and messages are sorted into lists scored from zero to 100; colleagues and friends who have the most or best interactions receive the highest scores, and are moved to the top. All of the email platforms and social sites are also merged into a single view, so users don’t have to individually sign into each one.
The goal, according to Foody, is to “organize it around people,” and “leave all the stuff that doesn’t matter for when you’ve got time for it.”
Founded in February 2012 by Foody and Alex Cote, Cloze is backed by $1.2 million from Greylock Partners, Kepha Partners and NextView Ventures.
The startup initially launched its product as a Web version in June 2012 and as an Apple iOS app this past February. The app will soon be released to Android and other platforms, the company said. And while the basic capabilities will largely remain free, Cloze plans to generate revenue by adding premium capabilities for its heaviest users, Foody said, and also potentially add some specific features for sales and marketing. But the company won’t sell any user information; everything is encrypted, Foody said, and “your data is your own.”
Though the number of users for the app aren’t being disclosed, Foody said the user base is growing by more than 50 percent month over month. Cloze has less than 10 employees but is actively hiring, he said.
Eric Hjerpe of Kepha Partners, a board member at Cloze, said there are a wealth of options for expanding the startup’s product.
For instance, Hjerpe said Cloze has seen heavy demand from companies that are interested in deploying it to salespeople. And upcoming features include the ability to search the entire content of emails and attachments (as opposed to just by name or company, as is the current capability), he noted.
Hjerpe said he uses Cloze at least 20 times a day himself, having uploaded 10 to 15 years of email to it. Now he has the ability to see and find the more than 30,000 people he’s interacted with over the years.
“I’m one of its biggest fans, I think,” Hjerpe said. “I love this thing.”

Original story link.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Not just for farmers

Grange continues to attract a faithful flock

More love to give

As racing dwindles, Greyhound Friends shifts focus

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent

April 18, 2013

Adelia LeBlanc's dog Theo. Rosefire Photography

Theo is a 5½-year-old boxer mix with an unruffled attitude and a light brown coat faintly striped with black. Boasting the tag “free hugs” on his collar, he is a certified therapy dog and a “canine good citizen” as defined by the American Kennel Club, and spends time every other week accepting pats, belly rubs, and ear tugs at Lowell Health Care Center.
But he almost didn’t get his chance: At 8 weeks old, he was dropped off at a shelter in Kentucky, then transferred to another in Ohio, and finally rescued by Hopkinton-based Greyhound Friends Inc.
“I’m an advocate of the philosophy ‘don’t breed or buy when shelter pets die,’ ” said his human companion, Adelia LeBlanc of Littleton. Theo and LeBlanc’s other dogs might not win any best-in-show prizes, she said, “but so what? That’s not what I’m into.”
With greyhound racing now banned in most states — including throughout New England — Greyhound Friends has recently begun to shift its purpose: While the 30-year-old nonprofit still brings in a steady rotation of greyhounds in jeopardy after being retired from racing, it’s also broadening its reach to include other breeds from the South and Midwest, including mixes such as Theo. 
“Greyhound racing is dwindling in this country,” said director Louise Coleman. “We’re always going to be a greyhound group. But it made sense to expand our base.”
According to the nonprofit Grey2K USA, commercial dog racing is illegal in 38 states — including, most recently, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, both as of 2010 — with tracks closed in another five without prohibitive laws. That leaves seven states that still have racing: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Texas, and West Virginia. Racing also continues in Mexico, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, and Macau, in China, according to the organization.
Florida still operates 13 tracks, and Greyhound Friends gets at least six dogs a week from the state, according to Coleman. Others come from Ireland and Spain.
Since Mother’s Day 1983, when Coleman got her first greyhound, Boston Boy, her organization has helped more than 9,000 dogs, placing an average of 300 a year.
Its kennel, which has a capacity for 20, is always full, Coleman said, with new dogs replacing others as soon as they leave.
In addition, Greyhound Friends has helped another roughly 350 hounds and other breeds, either finding homes or sending them along to other shelters, since last year.
The shelter hasn’t been without controversy: Earlier this month, it was criticized on social media sites after it announced that it had euthanized two dogs, Yogi and Roller. The decision came, according to a post on its Facebook page, “after years of work, numerous consultations with our vets, and countless hours of soul-searching.”
Both dogs had been adopted and returned to the shelter. They were aggressive and had attacked people, had been through behavior assessment and training numerous times, and had limited adoption options, according to the post.
“We did the best we could,” the post reads, and it goes on to say that the shelter continues to have a “no kill” policy, except when medically necessary and “in very rare cases when aggressive behavior makes adoption impossible.” In its 30 years, Greyhound Friends has put down only a “handful.”
LeBlanc adopted Theo in 2009, and Rosie, a 12-year-old collie mix with a broken tail and a scratched cornea, in 2011. Rosie looks “ferocious,” but is really quite sweet, LeBlanc said, and she keeps Theo and her other dog, a boxer mix named Genghis, in line.
Theo, on the other hand, is “very calm, cool, and collected,” and happy to either run 10 to 12 miles at a stretch with her husband, or hang out on the couch. “He’s got a great disposition,” she said. “I never have to worry about him in any situation.”
Coleman, a dedicated greyhound lover, described the breed as good-natured, accommodating, intelligent, mischievous, “champion nappers,” and possessing a “good dog version of a sense of humor.”
And, while there is still strong demand to adopt greyhounds — which can start racing at about 18 months old and usually live to be 12 or 13, after a racing career that typically ends before age 5 — it “takes more of an effort” to get them these days, she said.
Although she sees the demise of greyhound racing over the past decade as a positive, she and others wonder about the future of the breed, which was beloved by ancient Egyptians and Romans, used for hare coursing in Europe, then enlisted for commercial racing in the 1920s with the advent of the electric lure.
“Their current purpose, as defined, seems to not be anywhere near as pertinent as it used to be,” Coleman said on a recent sunny afternoon as she sat in an office at the shelter. “They can see something moving a half-mile away, and they have the attributes to get there.”
As she spoke, Gun Shy, a hefty beagle and basset hound mix, and a chubby pit bull cross named Penny circuitously patrolled the area, and greyhound mix Elvis — sleek black with a white snout — sniffed around, slurped out of a water bowl, then curled his long legs into a cushioned chair.
Out back, separated from the kennel area, different breeds were separated: Eckle, a brindle boxer mix with a propensity for climbing, stared out from a large cage in one room; Hope, Sampson, Riley, and Bolt (all beagles or beagle mixes) lay about or accepted treats from Coleman in another.
Meanwhile, in an area with 20 kennels, Duke, a stout and sturdy mix hound, and Cojack, a curious, floppy-eared American English redtick coonhound, vied for attention and food. All around, greyhounds of all ages chewed on toys, sat head-to-paw, kept watch on passing humans, or sat back in their cages with soulful eyes.
Every once in a while, one started to bark, starting a cascade throughout the kennels until Coleman silenced it with an “Eh!”
Still, she cooed at them as she passed each kennel, doling out treats as they sniffed and gave her the manipulative eye.
“They all have me trained so well,” she joked.
Greyhound Friends will celebrate its 30th anniversary with an event on May 11, and its spring open house on May 18 and 19. Visit www.greyhound.org for details. 

Facts on greyhound rescue

April 18, 2013

49
greyhound tracks in 15 states in 2001

22
greyhound tracks in 7 states in 2013

300
average number of dogs the Hopkinton shelter places in a year

65%
of those are greyhounds

35%
are other breeds
 
SourceS: Grey2K USA and Greyhound Friends Inc.


Gallery by Suzanne Kreiter here.

Original story link.


© 2013 The New York Times Company

Friday, April 12, 2013

Got game? Ubersense can help

Apr 12, 2013
Startups & Venture Capital

Boston startup helps you hone your game

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal

Krishna Ramchandran is CEO and co-founder of Ubersense, which provides a mobile video analysis app to help athletes improve.
W. Marc Bernsau

When Krishna Ramchandran started playing golf a few years ago, he admits his game was really bad.
He tried using videotapes to capture his form and solicit feedback from instructors, but found the process to be cumbersome.
Finally, when video capabilities became available on cell phones, he began recording his swings, then immediately sending the files off to a coach. 
That idea eventually morphed into Ubersense, a Boston startup with a mobile video analysis app aiming to help athletes improve their game in 30 different sports. The Ubersense app has now been downloaded more than a million times by both novices and professionals, said Ramchandran, who co-founded Ubersense in January 2011 with Amit Jardosh, and now serves as its CEO.
The app allows users to upload, record and share videos, and then analyze and scrutinize their form.
“The idea is to put feedback in practice right on the field,” Ramchandran said. “It closes the feedback loop between you and the coach.”
A participant in the TechStars Boston startup accelerator’s winter 2012 session, Ubersense is backed by $1.1 million from Google Ventures, Atlas Venture, Boston Seed Capital and angel investors Ty Danco and Joe Caruso.
Its namesake app was launched in November 2011, and is free to download, but is currently only available in iOS format. An Android version should be forthcoming in the summer, Ramchandran said.
More than 150 schools and universities, and a number of high-profile coaches and organizations, have implemented Ubersense for training, he said. It’s been widely adopted by PGA professionals, Ramchandran said, and USA Gymnastics and USA Volleyball used it while preparing for the 2012 Olympic games in London.
The company has also partnered with the USA Bobsled and Skeleton Federation as its athletes train for the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia, and is providing content on its app related to swings, drills and lessons from the top female golfers competing in the 2013 Symetra Tour.
“The best coaches and athletes around the world are using the app,” Ramchandran said.
Ultimately, golf, baseball and tennis players and coaches have been the most prominent users, according to Ramchandran.
But newer disciplines have begun using Ubersense, as well – CrossFit coach Aaron Landes, for instance, uses it to help improve form with Olympic lifts such as cleans and jerks.
“These are very form-based movements, so technique is important,” said Landes, a former pitching coach at Harvard University who now co-owns CrossFit Lando in Woburn. “Modeling, or an athlete seeing themselves or another person doing a movement the right or wrong way, is the best way to learn.”
The portability of the app, he said, ultimately allows him to stress technical points during sessions, and helps athletes make adjustments on the fly.
As it evolves, Landes said he’d like to be able to more easily integrate other people’s videos into his own database.
Although Ubersense does have three or four revenue models available, it’s not focused on making money right now, Ramchandran said, but is instead seeking to foster a community of fitness enthusiasts like Landes.
“We’re setting the foundation for this massive community around video improvement in sports,” Ramchandran said.

Original story link.