Kansas City One year after making the leap from part-time to full-time blogger, Shawn Blanc has no regrets. Blanc launched shawnblanc.net, his tech- and design-centric blog, in July of 2007 on the side of his full-time job as director of marketing for the International House of Prayer (IHOP) in Kansas City, Mo. In April 2011 he left IHOP to write and blog full-time. Silicon Prairie News conducted an email interview with Blanc this month, the one-year anniversary of his foray … read more

Austin Nevermind that he was busy participating in one panel and moderating another last month at South By Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas. Jeff Slobotski, SPN's co-founder and chief community officer, still found time to put on his reporter's hat and go to work. In the midst of a whirlwind few days in Austin, he caught up with Scott Case, CEO of the Startup … read more

Airline captain Dan Stratman of Kansas City knows the frustrations of airline travel firsthand. "As a captain for a major airline for 23 years, I encountered many stressed out and frustrated customers on my flights," Stratman (left) said on Tuesday. "My uniform is like a magnet for people who need help and I'm very sympathetic to that and thought 'I'm going to put all my inside knowledge to work into (an app) and include all the features people need.' " … read more

Omaha An idea born out of a small Omaha company looking to get more exposure and return on investment from its own local self-storage facility advertising has grown into one of the nation's leading online self-storage directories. USstoragesearch.com is an Omaha-based online directory for shopping, comparing … read more

Ames Matthew Rizai, CEO and managing director of WebFilings, knows a thing or two about startups. In the 1990s, Rizai led Engineering Animation Inc. (EAI), which went public in 1996 and has since morphed into other entities. Today, his exacting focus is on scaling WebFilings, the company he built in 2008 with trusted key players from his EAI days. "Our management team is one of our competitive advantages … read more

Lincoln Earlier this month, we reported on Red Brain Inc., the University of Nebraska-Lincoln spinout company that recently introduced its first product, CrimeView NEARme. Last week, we sat down with Ian Cottingham, Red Brain’s president and co-founder, Kevin Farrell, Red Brain’s vice president and co-founder, and Alan Tomkins (left), the director of the University of Nebraska's Public Policy Center, to take a closer look at the startup. Silicon Prairie News: How did Red Brain get started? … read more

Lincoln Andrew Norman, editor-in-chief of Hear Nebraska, doesn't want the rest of the state to grow up like he did: knowing nothing about the plethora of music being created all over Nebraska. The small town of Imperial, Neb., had the Internet when he was growing up, "but not at my house," Norman (far left) said. "So I listened to what everyone else listened to. The music from the coasts." But with the help of friends, he got into punk rock, which evolved into discovering less mainstream music, which led to an … read more

Omaha With a history of software consulting and entrepreneurship (think Tripleseat and, oh yes, Silicon Prairie News), Dusty Davidson, 31, is moving on to his next project: Layeredi. Still only four months old, Layeredi, short for Layered Innovations, is a platform for managing mobile marketing campaigns. Currently. "The long-term vision is to provide a suite of tools for marketers to manage their campaigns in one place," Davidson said. "The toolsets out … read more