The start of the NCAA Basketball Tournament means a two-day epidemic of anemic workplace productivity. Across the U.S. today and Friday, water cooler conversations will linger longer than normal and browser windows will mysteriously disappear when bosses approach.

But a handful of Silicon Prairie companies are readily embracing the Madness of March, seizing on the start of college basketball's marquee event as an opportunity to roll out new projects and engage customers.

Take OneLouder. The Kansas City, Mo.-based maker of social mobile apps on Wednesday announced significant updates to its SportCaster app for Android and iOS. SportCaster 4.0 adds coverage for the 2012 NCAA Basketball Tournament, as well as coverage of baseball and soccer and a variety of performance enhancements.

"SportCaster is the absolute must have app for any sports fan," OneLouder president Evan Conway said in a release. "It is the best way to track games and sports info, while delivering a unique live commentary engine you won’t find anywhere else."

The Omaha-World Herald's Data Omaha gang — the same crew that brought Curbwise to Omaha and, as we reported earlier this month, will help host Hack Omaha in April — is immersing itself in the madness, too. On the eve of the Creighton University men's basketball team's tournament opener, Data Omaha earlier this week unveiled its deep dive into the data behind Bluejays star Doug McDermott's All-American season.

And down the road in Lincoln, the sports-minded team at Hudl is taking the tournament as an opportunity to engage its users. The vast majority of Hudl users are football teams, but there are enough hoops heads among the bunch that Hudl had 718 of its partners sign up for its bracket challenge. 

Do you know of other efforts on the Silicon Prairie to capitalize on the NCAA Tournament? If so, let us know and we'll add it to our roundup.

Credits: Screenshots from omaha.com, espn.com and sportscasterapp.com.