Photo by PTorrodellas via Flickr

Back at it

With our inaugural Thinc Iowa in the books, our staff time is freed up for some serious content production. Take this Prairie Moves, for example, it’s two weeks worth of goodness – links to funding news, product announcements, media mentions and more. Each time I open my Google Reader to grab the latest headlines from company blogs, Twitter or Facebook, the newsworthy items continue to increase in volume. We’ll do our best to cover what’s happening and who’s making the moves, and as always, shoot us a note, editor@siliconprairienews.com, with any story ideas (note: we’re a couple weeks behind with replies, but we read them all).

What is Prairie Moves?

Published Tuesdays and Thursdays, Prairie Moves keeps our readers informed about career moves, media coverage, product development and more from the companies and individuals we cover on Silicon Prairie News.

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If you or your company would like to submit one of the items below for our next Prairie Moves post, please email editor@siliconprairienews.com. And if you have suggestions on how we could improve these posts or any of our coverage, please contact danny@siliconprairienews.com.

Fundings

• Zaarly (San Francisco-based, Kansas City office) raised a $14.1M Series A round with lead investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ iFund and Sands Capital Ventures – Press Release, Zaarly, SPN and more on TechMeme

Career Moves

• Clay Wiese, formerly with Anderson Partners Advertising, joined the team at GoodTwin Design (Omaha) as Art Director 
• Dusty Reynolds joined the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce as the Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation – SPN
• Mike Roeder, formerly senior manager of IT systems delivery with Yellow Book USA, joined Syncbak (Marion, Iowa) as an IT architect
• Jack Viers, formerly with Quality Attributes Software, joined T8 Webware (Cedar Falls, Iowa) as a Software Engineer
• Susan Munnik joined Far Reach Technologies (Cedar Falls, Iowa) as Director of Marketing
• Kevin Berry moved from Mobile Solutions to Director of Emerging Technology at Client Resources, Inc. (Omaha)
• Jake Mullins of Hudl (Lincoln, Neb.) moved from the Coach Support team to the Quality Assurance team

New Tech

• Risiti (Des Moines), a digital receipt platform allowing customers to retain and analyze their receipts electronically, released a new version of the site, including a new dashboard – twitter.com/risitiusa
• Randomnade (Omaha), a social way for competitive gamers to strategize together, went live – twitter.com/randomnade
• Locusic (Des Moines) went live in Des Moines – locusic.com, Locusic blog, SPN
• Local Ruckus (Kansas City) launched the public beta of its website – localruckus.com and SPN
• Present.io (Des Moines) is looking for beta testers – twitter.com/presentio
• Proxibid (Omaha) announced Proxibid Tickets, a method for buying tickets online for sporting events, concerts, theater events and more – proxibidtickets.com and Press Release

New Creative

• Grain & Mortar (Omaha) redesigned the Liberty Tavern website – libertytavern.com and necreative.typepade.com
• T8 Webware (Cedar Falls) launched Call Federal Credit Union’s (Richmond, Va.) new website – callfcu.org

Product/Business Development

• Zaarly (San Francisco-based, Kansas City office) added current Hewlett-Packard CEO and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman to its board of directors – Press Release, Zaarly blog post, SPN post and more on TechMeme
• StartupCity Des Moines has begun announcing its inaugural class: Meidh Technologies, Inc. announcement, Tikly announcement, Pikuzone announcement, ShareWhere announcement, Present.io announcement and RealEstateFanPages.com announcement
• Benaissance (Omaha) released support for online COBRA elections within their COBRApoint SaaS platform – benaissance.com
• Dwolla (Des Moines) is now integrated with Active Merchant for use in Shopify – blog.dwolla.com
• Hudl (Lincoln) rolled out ability to save clip data to Excel and previewed fundraising and iPhone app – hudl.com/blog

Mentions

• Weiv (Des Moines) – Mashable: “Weiv Puts Concert Visuals into Audience Hands With Wii Remotes“
• Willis Jackson of ShownHome (Kansas City) [and a Silicon Prairie News contributor] – Business Insider: “How To Launch A Startup While Still Working Your Day Job“
• 21CSi’s Kaimi (Omaha) – National Geographic Channel: Casino Wars (tune in at 7:30)
• Ben Milne of Dwolla – BrianGorbett.com: “Interview with Ben Milne from Dwolla“
• Andy Stoll of Seed Here (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) – Silicon Bayou News: “Iowan Andy Stoll takes Lessons from New Orleans on the road to Startup America Summit“
• Steve Kiene of Nebraska Global (Lincoln) – NET Radio: “Taking a risk to fund Nebraska’s software future“
• Nebraska Angels (Lincoln, Neb.) – Nebrasaka Entrepreneur: “How to catch the eye of a Nebraska Angel“
• Zaarly (San Francisco-based, Kansas City office) – KSTP 5 Minneapolis: “Social Media Minute: Find Someone to do your Errands“, Marquette Journal: “Zaarly puts a spin on things” and VentureBeat: “Zaarly employee tries to poach Craigslist advertiser“
• Fredrick Galoso of Stackd (Iowa City, Iowa) – Uses This – Silicon Prairie Edition: “Fredrick Galoso“
• Amanda Morrow of BitMethod (Des Moines) – Uses This – Silicon Prairie Edition: “Amanda Morrow“
• Albert Tong of OneLouder Apps (Kansas City) – Uses This – Silicon Prairie Edition: “Albert Tong“
• Nebraska Talent and Innovation Initiative – McCook Daily Gazette: Letter from Gov. Dave Heineman, “Growing Nebraska’s innovation economy“

Blogged

• Gabe Kangas of Hollrback (Omaha): “Embarrassment is embarrassing.”
• Matt Wynn of the Omaha World-Herald/DataOmaha.com guest blogged on Poynter: “Let’s take news apps out of the newsroom and create products instead of content“
• Nebraska Angels (Lincoln, Neb.): “Meet the Angels Video: Jay Wilkinson“
• KC Next: “Augie Grasis Interview“
• BitMethod (Des Moines): “October Demo Recap“
• Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (Kansas City): “Kauffman Sketchbook – ‘Magic Sauce’ “
• Shoplr (Ames, Iowa): “The Radar Is On“

Misc.

• LiveOn (Kansas City) was named to the Global Entrepreneurship Week 50, the most promising startups launched around the world over the past year – startupopen.com
• Hatchlings (Des Moines) has been mistakenly blocked by Facebook – facebook.com/hatchlings
• Omaha mentioned – Rueters: “Entrepreneurial hotbeds: A mix of science and luck“
• Ben Milne of Dwolla featured on the Des Moines downtown skywalk as part of a young professionals campaign – Greater Des Moines Partnership on Facebook
• StartupCity Des Moines announced the start of its Industry Insights program – startupcitydsm.com
• Iowa National Guardsmen mentioned in this TechCrunch post: “Predator-Inspired Ammo Backpack Cobbled Together By Soldiers In Afghanistan“
• Corey Vilhauer of Blend Interactive (Sioux Falls) was selected to speak at Confab – confab2012.com
• Flying Hippo Web Technologies (Des Moines) and the Iowa Area Health Education Center (AHEC) Program have earned an Outstanding Website WebAward – flyinghippo.com
• Video of T8 Webware’s (Cedar Falls, Iowa) Grip demo at Finovate has been published – SPN
• Pictures and video of SkyVu Entertainment’s studio build – omahagamedev.com