Founded in 2008, the company teaches life skills such as financial literacy and student loan management using digital games, messaging, social media, animations, and video.

EverFi’s adaptive technology adjusts to a user’s pace and learning levels.

The company says more than 2,000 public schools in 47 states will use its software.

CEO Tom Davidson said, “This is an entirely unique model, with major corporations and foundations licensing our programs nationwide for schools.”

Customers include Capital One, Genworth Corp., U.S. Bank, PayPal and BB&T.

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Godin is author of “The Dip,” and “Meatball Sundae,” among other books. His Unleashing the Ideavirus is the most popular ebook ever written. More than 1,000,000 people downloaded the digital version of this book about how ideas spread. Featured in USA Today, The New York Times, The Industry Standard and Wired Online, Ideavirus hit #4 on the Amazon Japan bestseller list, and #5 in the USA.

The insights Shah gathered include such gems as:

Reliance on the tried and true can backfire.

Sell the problem. No business buys a solution for a problem they don’t have.

Being the first helps in the short run. Being a little more right pays off in the long run.

Subscriptions beat one-off sales.

Competition validates you, followed by, there are lots of good reasons to abandon a project. Having a little competition is not one of them.

For the full list see the link to On Startups above.

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But the tomatoes these researchers study, with names like Never Ripe and Green Ripe, are mutants that will never achieve that wonderful red that makes a perfect summer meal for many foodies.

That’s because Gloria K. Muday, Ph.D., a biology professor at Wake Forest, isn’t after a better fruit, at least not yet. She’s after a better root system.”If we can encourage tomato plants to form deeper root systems, those plants will be able to take in more water and pick up food more effectively,” Muday said.

And that could mean a more reliable harvest for farmers and backyard gardeners alike.

Key to ripening

The key, Muday said, is the relationship between the hormones auxin, a root growth stimulator, and ethylene, which is critical for the ripening of tomatoes, but which also influences the growth promoting effects of auxin.

Muday and her colleagues have discovered that ethylene also alters the development of root systems in tomatoes.
In research appearing in The Plant Journal, a peer-reviewed publication, Muday found that, in mutant tomatoes, ethylene limited lateral root growth; lateral roots form horizontally off the primary root to better anchor the plant in the soil. However, ethylene appeared to encourage root growth along stems and branches.

Pinpointing why ethylene has this effect can help plant biologists devise a plan for breeding or engineering tomato plants that grow more extensive root systems that can thrive despite dry conditions or lack of nutrients.
For the next step in this line of research, Muday is looking at other substances, including flavonoids, and how they influence hormones that stimulate root growth in tomatoes.

But for these experiments, she can savor the deeper colors of summer-ripe tomatoes, many of them heirloom varieties.

“There are all sorts of heirloom tomatoes – brown, purple, black – and we’re growing them now,” Muday said. “We’ll see how many of these compounds they make and how that effects the root development.”

The research is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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The company raised $2.86 million in December last year from three investors.

The company disclosed the funding in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It raised $11.6 million in 2008 led by ABS Ventures of Boston, and Valhalla Partners of Virginia, with participation from existing investors.

The company raised a $5.7 million B round in 2005, led by Valhalla. Other investors in the company include Inflexion Partners, Tall Oaks Capital, and Village Ventures.

In an interview with Maddux Media, Persystent’s Chief Marketing Officer, Mary Maloney, said the 25-employee company recently added the U.S. Postal Service as a customer nationally and had the best third quarter in its history.

The company sells its SOLO product for users of 1-25 PCs. Other products are aimed at larger business users.

The company says its products make it much easier for IT departments to recover quickly from disasters and proactively control PC damage on or off a network, even if the PC’s operating system cannot engage.

Persystent’s software automatically repairs and restores an infected or corrupted PC’s operating system and software applications, on or off the network, while also ensuring enforcement of corporate configuration policies.

It says that by simply rebooting the system, either automatically or on demand, Persystent returns the PC to its desired, clean recovery point.

Persystent’s solution captures a high speed image of a company PC’s ideal state, including only company approved settings and applications. It then creates a hidden partition on the target PCs and compresses those files, which no one can access.

The company says its solution relieves IT departments of a majority of their systems support tasks by eliminating “configuration creep” and other hidden issues that impact user and desktop productivity.

Some clients have told the company Persystent’s technology has reduced their support calls from 50 to 85 percent.

Customers have included The Department of Defense, PacCoast Builders, Sarasota Memorial Hospital, the City of Orlando, the U.S. Army and the Pentagon.

To contact TechJournal South Editor & Writer Allan Maurer: Allan at TechJournalSouth dot com.

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Other Investors in the company include Village Ventures, Williamstown, MA; and In-Q-Tel, the U.S. Intelligence venture arm based in Arlington, VA.

We reported that the company had raised a portion of the round in early August.

Founded in 2002, CallMiner sells enterprise speech analytics software.

CallMiner’s President and CEO Terry Leahy said, “CallMiner’s industry leading speech analytics platform – Eureka – continues to gain rapid traction in the marketplace as evidenced by two consecutive years of triple digit marquee customer growth and corresponding revenue growth.”

Its clients include Continental Airline, Daimler Financial Services, and Comcast, among others.

The company raised an C round in an undisclosed amount in March, 2009, a $10 million B round in 2006 and a $2.8 million A round in 2004.

CallMiner presented at Tech Media’s  2010 Southeast Venture Conference.

More and more companies are using call analytics to examine those recorded service calls. Most of the calls we make to companies now let you know you’re being recorded or might be. They often run speech analytics on the recordings.

For TechJournal South’s profile of the company in Feb. 2010 see:

CallMiner digs actionable gold from service calls

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Selling shareholders include majority owner Seaport Capital, a New York-based private equity firm and McCarthy Capital, an Omaha, Neb.-based private equity fund.

Peak 10’s existing management team, led by Co-Founder, President and CEO David Jones will continue to operate the business.

Jones said,  “Our partnership with Welsh Carson enables Peak 10 to continue increasing the scale of our business to meet the high demand for data center infrastructure and related managed services. Our strategic focus remains intact but our resources now position us to more rapidly extend our geographic footprint, strengthen our team and further accelerate our managed services and cloud offerings.”

Peak 10 has managed a path of steady and consistent growth achieved through expansion in the greenfield markets of Jacksonville, FL.; Charlotte, NC.; Tampa, FL. and Raleigh, NC, and through acquisitions of established data center companies in Louisville, KY; Nashville, TN.; Richmond, VA and, most recently, Fort Lauderdale, FL.

In 2007 and early 2008, Peak 10 opened greenfield data centers in Atlanta, Ga. and Cincinnati, Ohio respectively. Over the last two years Peak 10 has completed construction of additional facilities in five of its markets to meet customer growth and demand.

The transaction is expected to close in early October.

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Alexandra Nicholson

By Allan Maurer

If you’re still working on your business social media strategy, you’re not alone. “Everyone is figuring this out,” says Alexandra Nicholson, manager, Social Media Strategist for USA TODAY’s Digital Marketing team. “Don’t be afraid to talk to peers,” she suggests.

USA Today recently announced it was shifting resources to place more emphasis on its digital properties, and while it’s too early to comment much on what that means for the national daily, Nicholson says, “It will be nice to have additional people join the team.

USA Today is far from a stranger to the digital world. It was the first newspaper to allow reader comments on stories online, Nicholson says.

USA Today also allows online readers to connect with each other, “So we have a lot of deep connections,” she says.

Twitter validated as news source

The newspaper also manages a Facebook page and more than 100 Twitter accounts, including various sections of the paper and individual reporter accounts.

The increasing use of Twitter showed during the recent Winter Olympics, where every USA Today reporter covering the events tweeted, compared to the Beijing Olympics, where only one used Twitter, Nicholson says.

Two events helped put Twitter on the leading edge of journalistic reporting, she notes. The first was the “Miracle on the Hudson,” where some of the first images from the downed jet aircraft appeared via Twitter. Then, the “Green Revolution” in Iran further validated the social networking site as a news source.

Journalists still necessary

Nicholson points out that we still need professional reporters to validate and report the whole story beyond Twitter’s 140 character tidbits.

“You need a critical eye pulling the elements together,” she says. Despite the troubles in the traditional news industry, Nicholson says, I don”t think changes in journalism will be “as drastic as people think. The media may change, but journalism is a very powerful thing and it isn’t going away.”

Looking ahead Nicholson says “I don’t know what’s next” in social media, but says, “It’s up to consumers and marketers and media to be nimble. You don’t want to be left behind.”

Nicholson says the current increase in dedicated social media positions is a temporary thing. “Right now a lot of companies need a dedicated person to think about these things and educate the rest of the company. So we’re seeing a lot of people in marketing, editorial and IT taken out of those roles and put into social media roles. But I think we’ll see it integrated naturally back into marketing, IT and communications.”

Her advice to how to use social media for business:

“Do what makes sense for you. It may not be for you. Talk to your peers. You don’t have to do this blindly. Everyone is figuring this out. Experiment a little. If something didn’t work, it didn’t work.”

She says the worst scenario she sees is when a company executes a large, expensive media campaign that doesn’t make sense for the brand, then never goes back.

Finally, she adds, “Mistakes happen. Just make sure they’re not big ones.”

Nicholson is also a longtime food blogger for the BrightestYoungThings.com site, where she is food editor. So we asked her where a good place is to take clients in DC.

“I’m a traditionalist,” she says, “So I’d say Old Ebbitt Grill near the White House, where she recommends the oysters. The place is very reasonable for a metro restaurant in such a prominent location. “You can get a grilled strip steak lunch for $17,” she says.

She also loves East European food and is a big fan of Vietnamese cuisine. She says there is a large Vietnamese population in the DC area, so it’s not too hard to find a Vietnamese restaurant serving her favored avocado shakes. “I know that sounds terrible, but they’re the best ever,” she says.

Nicholson also offers a daily reading list at USA Today’s Social Media Lounge.

Nicholson is one of more than 50 top Internet experts, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and executives participating in the first Digital East event at Tysons Corner, VA, Oct. 18.

She plans to talk about the connection between social media, communications, marketing and branding and how they’re important.

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The council resources are primarily volunteers comprised of executive level technology leaders in the Charlotte region.

Founding Member and elected President Paul Solitario states, “CRTEC’s vision is to be the premier forum for networking and collaboration between technology executives in the Charlotte, North Carolina area.  The organization will provide ongoing candid deliberation on key technology issues facing our executive community, and promote social networking to foster the development of relationships essential to each member’s success.”

CRTEC launched its website this month.  Information about membership, upcoming events, and member and Board of Director profiles can be found at Techexeccouncil.

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And of those dollars, 40 percent went to four Internet sub sectors in the last four months: social, advertising, gaming and discount e-commerce firms.

Anyone reading TechJournal South in recent months has seen these trends in action, particularly the discount e-commerce space, where DC-based LivingSocial has raised $50 million from venture backers and Chicago-based Groupon napped $135 million.

We’ve also seen several new online gaming and advertising related startups emerge.

CB Insights notes that the top 30 VCs put their money in one of every four deals from 2009-2010.

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A net 6 percent of executives surveyed say they expect to hire, up 3 points from the previous quarter.

Even though that’s not as big an increase as the economy needs to climb out of the recessionary job loss the country experienced, we see any upward trend as a good sign. A slow recovery, while not ideal, is better than no recovery. Gains, even small ones, also make the possibility of the much feared “double-dip recession” less likely.

Other findings in the study include:

• Forty-seven percent of those polled said it is challenging to find skilled professionals, up from 42 percent for the third quarter, and 38 percent for the second quarter.
• Business services executives are planning the most hiring next quarter out of any industry, with a net 16 percent expecting to hire, a seven-point jump from last quarter.
• Eighty-six percent of executives polled are confident in their companies’ growth prospects for the fourth quarter, up from 85 percent in the previous quarter.

Full report including charts and graphs.

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