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.

Fundings

• Dwolla (Des Moines) raised $5 million in a Series B round led by Union Square Ventures (New York) - Dwolla blog, Union Square Ventures blog, Business Insider, Des Moines Register, SPN, TechCrunch, GigaOm, Fierce Mobile Content, Betabeat, Venture Beat, Vator News, Des Moines Business Record and Fred Wilson
• Todd Simon and Pete Ricketts (both of Omaha) participated in a $2.5 million Series A round of Artspace (New York) - Press Release, TechCrunch and SPN

Career Moves

• Red Nova Labs (Westwood, Kan.) hired four: Eric Hankins and Tim Banks joined it as developers, Andrew Heuback joined its engineering team as a Quality Assurance Tester and Ashley Burgener joined its operations side as a Local Search Administrator - Press Release
• David Sutter, formerly Vice President of Product Development at Sojern, joined iGroup Creative (Papillion, Neb.) as IT Director - linkedin.com
• Larry Latham, an "auction industry pioneer," joined Proxibid to add focus to the company's business development strategy - Press Release and SPN

New Tech

• Torsion Mobile (Des Moines) released Mojaba, a web-based tool that enables creative agencies to build mobile-optimized websites for clients - mojaba.com, Torsion Mobile blog and Terry Heaton’s PoMo Blog

Product/Business Development

• QQ Solutions (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) and SEMCAT (Lincoln, Neb.) integrated their products to provide insurance agencies with a solution for agency management and quoting - Press Release

Mentions

• AgLocal (Overland Park, Kan.) - Tech Cocktail: "Meat to the Table, brought to you by AgLocal"
• Shoot A Brew (Kansas City) - Fox 4 Kansas City: "Shoot-a-Brew: The Ultimate Couch Potato Gizmo?"
• Barcamp Cedar Vally (Cedar Falls) - The Northern Iowan: "Cedar Valley BarCamp"

Gig Bits

• Kansas City Star: "Google may add WiFi, Bluetooth to Kansas City project"
• Kansas City Business Journal: "Google tests next-generation devices that could end up in Kansas City"
• Google Fiber blog: "Kansas City is Fiber-Ready!"
• TechMeme: "Scott Canon / Kansas City Star: Google to start hanging Internet cables today in KCK"
• SPN: "Gig Bits: Crews laying fiber in Kansas City, Google applies to test Wi-Fi" 
• Kansas City Business Journal: "Schools, public locations eagerly await connection to Google high-speed network"
• Kansas City Star: "Google, Unified Government set fees for pole use in KCK"

Blogged

• Syncbak (Marion, Iowa): "Our 'big Hoss' watching Bonanza and going social with a new app feature!" (Video)
• Hudl (Lincoln): "Signing Day 2012—Hudl Athletes from the Top 100"
• AgLocal (Overland Park, Kan.): "Naithan Jones talks AgLocal" (Video)
• Social Media Club of Kansas City: "2012 SMCKC Vision"
• Josh Fleming: "How To Network In Des Moines"

Misc.

• A new group of investors, "Women Investing in Nebraska," is dedicated to focused, collective giving, with a mission to positively impact the state of Nebraska and its university through philanthropy - womeninvestinginnebraska.org
• The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce announced a series of idea sessions on entrepreneurship - "Big 5 for a Greater Kansas City"
• Chicago Tribune: "Pinterest's crafty, comfy feel helps social media site catch on, spread quickly from Midwestern roots"

Image credit: Photo by Frank McMains