marketing and PR firms that want to identify the respected journalists in a field. In one recent campaign, the company helped Honda launch its Insight hybrid electric car in the United Kingdom. The self-funded company was founded in 2006; Wade did a profile in March 2008.
—Weels, based in Milton, MA, showed its touch-screen technology, a one-click, drag-and-drop interface that is intended to improve Web browsing. Co-founder and chief software architect William King tells me the startup’s “Web on Weels” consists of hosted software that runs on top of your browser, and allows users to browse the Internet without using a keyboard. Additional details about the privately held company were not immediately available.
—Pinyadda, based in Boston, is a personalized social content aggregator. The early stage company says its private beta release technology enables users to create personalized information networks (PINs) that take the work out of subscribing to RSS feeds by drawing on trusted online friends and associates and websites, from which the system automatically gathers, organizes, and ranks Web content related to the user’s specific interests. The system also can identify people who are local experts in certain segments of the population. Pinyadda, which raised $250,000 from an angel investor and is also the company behind the local Twitter aggregator Bostinnovation, was among the 14 “AlphaPitch” companies making 90-second demonstrations at the conference.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
View all posts by Bruce V. Bigelow