Iowa City Earlier this week, I saw a tweet that Fundle, a startup building an app to split payments amongst friends for things like hotel rooms or wedding gifts, had applied to PayPal for access to their production API in order to "work w/ real money." Interested to see how they had moved forward since their idea emerged from the latest Startup Weekend Des Moines, I reached out to Fundle CEO Shannon Thomas via email to learn about their progress. …  read more

Omaha It's no longer the "Greatest Show On Dirt," but the NCAA Men's College World Series will make "History Happen Here" when the opening ceremonies kick off tonight. With this being the inaugural year at TD Ameritrade Park, the CWS will be a new experience – perhaps maybe even a new ballgame – for players, coaches and fans as they learn the lay of the land and the surrounding parking lots. read more

Des Moines Ten days ago, the day Dwolla launched GRID, which we called a "Facebook connect" for its payment network, the startup's founder and CEO Ben Milne tweeted about the day's activities: "Today is insane. No idea what else to say." And later, in a screenshot, embedded above, he showed the hockey stick jump in site traffic. While he might have been speechless that day, we've since caught up with Milne to hear more about GRID … read more

Lincoln From the outset, Nebraska Global has touted the potential that exists where "nerds and money" intersect. But to folks outside the Lincoln-based venture fund's Haymarket office, what Nebraska Global has represented since its launch in late 2010 has been mostly that — potential. Well, the tangible realization of that potential is under way, marked most recently by the launch of its first product. ICORA, one of Nebraska Global's forecasted 10 spinoffs, on June 1 released Mako XRM … read more

Omaha After an awesome four months with us in the Silicon Prairie News office as the spring content and event intern, Brittany Mascio is sticking around for three more months as our summer content and event intern. Needless to say, she rocks at what she does – from compiling links and Silicon Prairie startup love in our weekly Prairie Moves to hustling late into the night to make sure all went according … read more

Kansas City The Zaarly infographic below, which was first revealed in yesterday's TechCrunch article covering the startup's milestone of $1 million in jobs posted, contains quite a few references to Silicon Prairie cities or events. Starting from the top, here's the run-down of those references: The inforgraphic itself was created by the team at 9 Clouds, a firm co-founded by one of our Silicon Prairie News contributors, John T. Meyer, Omaha and Kansas … read more

The Silicon Prairie, it appears, has more wannabe DJs than a Full House casting call. And recently, an abundance of those aspiring emcees have found an outlet for their spinning skills on Turntable.fm, the Next Big Thing du jour in social music sites. Turntable users, represented by avatars that resemble what Precious Moments cartoons might look like after a weeklong bender spent in a South London … read more