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.

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.

Mergers & Acquisitions

• Meredith (Des Moines) to acquire Allrecipes.com from Reader’s Digest for $175 Million – Press Release, Techmeme and Des Moines Register
• Adaptive Software (Shawnee, Kan.) acquired a similar company based in Las Vegas, terms of the deal weren’t disclosed – Kansas City Business Journal and Shawnee Dispatch

Fundings

• T8 Webware (Cedar Falls) was awarded $120,000 in direct assistance from the Iowa Department of Economic Development to expand into the Des Moines marketplace – Press Release, Des Moines Register and SPN
• BetaBeat sources: Union Square Ventures (New York) to lead Dwolla’s (Des Moines) Series B round – BetaBeat, SPN and Des Moines Register

Career Moves

• Rachel McClung joined Goodsmiths as Lead Designer – Goodsmiths blog
• Gabe Kangas, currently a Mobile Solutions Engineer at CRi Solutions (Omaha), will be joining CrowdStar (Burlingame, Cal.) in February as a mobile game developer
• Ryan Weber, formerly with the Angel Capital Group, joined KCnext as president – Press Release, SPN and KC Hub
• Clyde Evans and Jo Eckert joined the West Des Moines Business Incubator as Executive Director and Assistant Executive Director, respectively
• Mike Hays, Morgan Hohbein and Dustin McKenna joined the Hudl (Lincoln) support team and Sam Adamson joined the company’s quality assurance department – Hudl blog
• Jerry Stoner joined Bozell as executive creative director – Bozell newsletter
• Nate Allen, formerly of Vicinity Games (Kansas City), is co-founding 4 First Names (Kansas City) with Wes Mikel

New Creative

• Idea Work (Columbia, Mo.) launched a redesigned company website – ideaworks.com
• GoodTwin Design (Omaha) designed and developed the website for EliteForm, a Nebraska Global company – Elite Form and Nebraska Creative
• Reliant Studios (Lincoln) produced a 30-second TV spot for University of Nebraska–Omaha – Reliant Studios blog

Product/Business Development

• Think Big Partners, Five Elms Capital and Legal Sonar (all Kansas City) open KCCowork – Think Big Partners 
• MindMixer (Omaha) launched a site in Piedmont, S.C. and Denton, Texas – Piedmont Voice and Engage Denton, respectively
• QuickCal (Omaha) 3.1 released with improved recognition engine, iCloud reminders and autocomplete feature – MacStories and Apple App Store
• LiveOn (Kansas City) has ended its public beta and has plans to roll out version 2 soon – LiveOn blog and SPN
• KCnext named Ryan Weber as president and announced its 10-person board – Press Release and SPN

Mentions

• 1Weather by OneLouder (Kansas City) – Addictive TIps: “1Weather By OneLouder Apps: The Most Complete Android Weather App Yet?“
• Syncbak (Marion, Iowa) – Huffington Post: “The Writers Workbench: CES 2012“
• Dwolla (Des Moines) – New York Times: “Using Dwolla to Send and Receive Money“
• StartupCity Des Moines – MSN: “Tech Incubator Fosters Innovation in an Unlikely Place”
• Ignite Lincoln – Lincoln Journal Star: “From iPads to creativity: Third Ignite Lincoln is Thursday at Bourbon” and Daily Nebraskan: “Ignite Lincoln sparks interest in local voices“
• Hurrdat (Lincoln) – U.S. Small Business Administration: “Need a status update on the latest player in marketing? Lincoln-based Hurrdat Social Media ready for a breakout“
• Local Ruckus (Kansas City) – Think Big Partners: “Kansas City Entrepreneur Cures Couch Potato Syndrome with Local Ruckus“

Blogged

• Uses This – Silicon Prairie Edition: “Jason Nissen” and “Rachel McClung“
• StartupCity Des Moines: “Meet the Mentor: Don Schoen“
• Think Big Partners (Kansas City): “Photo Recap: The Gigabit Challenge Finale“

Fiber Watch

• Kansas City Business Journal: “Gigabit Challenge shows demand for network, short supply of local winners“
• The Vancouver Sun: “Summit explores growing cities of the future“

Recognition & Milestones

• Ben Milne of Dwolla (Des Moines) was named one of Business Insider’s “11 Rising Tech Stars To Watch In 2012“
• University of Missouri-Kansas City Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Bloch Business School of Management was named the 2012 best National Model Graduate Entrepreneurship Program by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship – Kansas City Business Journal and Kansas City Star
• Moblico Solutions (Kansas City) was named one of Thinking Bigger Business Media’s “25 Under 25” award recipients – Thinking Bigger
• LiveOn (Kansas City) was named one of five finalists for South by Southwest Interactive Awards in the “Technical Achievement” category – South by Southwest Interactive and SPN 
• 1102 Grand (Kansas City) named a “Company to Watch” by Processor Magazine – “Colocation On A Grand Scale“

Misc.

• WIBW: “University Of Kansas Research Leads To New Startup Company“
• Kansas City Business Journal: “Craving Arthur Bryant’s? Google has a deal for you“
• Tickets went on sale for Startup Weekend Des Moines – Startup Weekend registartion
• The Iowa Creativity Summit site went live – iowacreativitysummit.com
• Bo Fishback of Zaarly (San Francisco-based, Kansas City office) will be speaking at Startup Grind in Palo Alto, Cal. in March – Startup Grind