Hacker Lab, located on the border of Curtis Park and Oak Park, is a tech work space founded in March. It facilitates bootstrapped start-ups and tech enthusiasts. Bootstrapping is when start-up businesses fund their own endeavors instead of seeking investment money. (See Wiki.) Tech enthusiasts can be anyone interested in technologies such as programming, web design, mobile and web development, hardware technology and software. Hacker Lab’s focus is to build a community promoting technology, education, job creation and entrepreneurship in the Sacramento region. Inside the facility, aside from other techies, you will find a hardware lab for building out prototypes, gadgets and gizmos. The

Mahil Keval is an entrepreneur. He left his engineering career to pursue his dream, the American dream of owning his own business. Sounds familiar right? Well, Keval’s story is a bit different to me. He was not struggling in a 9-to-5 and barely making ends meet. He was not down on his luck living on his last dime, needing to make “it” happen, which is the stereotypical story of the entrepreneur. Keval is a UC Berkeley graduate (BS ’09) with a degree in mechanical engineering. He had an awesome job working for McCarthy Building Companies as a project engineer building a 200,000-square-foot, $200 million biomedical research facility on the Berkeley campus. Quite impressive, to say the leas

  Chrometa is a Sacramento startup, and its founders’ story is one of the tenacity it takes to make a startup successful. With all the stories such as Facebook and Instragram, one may think that building the next big thing is not that hard, and that you will be instantly rich with a movie deal in the near future. Chrometa is automatic timekeeping software that quietly runs in the background of your PC, monitoring your actions such as working on software, writing docs, checking email and doing any other tasks related to the work flow. It tracks time down to the second and can automatically categorize time to the appropriate clients and projects based on keywords. Chrometa is an awesome

The 2012 Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance (SARTA) Med Tech Showcase on Tuesday, June 5, will feature a keynote address by Siemens Healthcare North America CEO Dr. Gregory Sorensen and presentation of the Claire Pomeroy Award for Innovation in Medical Technology. “This is the largest medical technology gathering in the Sacramento region and we’re excited about this year’s program. Anyone with an interest in our med tech sector should be there,” said Cary Adams, chair of SARTA’s MedStart program. With an anticipated attendance of 300, the full-day program at the Woodlake Hotel will also highlight specific new technologies recently adopted by the Sacramento region’s four major h

The Sacramento Google Technology User Group is holding its next meeting on March 8, 2012 at 06:30 PM. Please note that we have a new meeting location: VSP Vision Care 3333 Quality Dr Rancho Cordova, CA Agenda: Introduction to MongoDB (Thomas) Android Clinic (All) For more information, please visit: http://www.sacgtug.org   We will raffle off: One AnDevCon III Conference pass One Android In Action 3rd Edition (Manning)   Anybody is welcome to attend our meetings, which are free and open to the public. Thomas Amsler Sacramento GTUG Organizer 

SARTA MedStart is now seeking nominations for the third annual Claire Pomeroy Awards for Innovation in Medical Technology. The awards recognize individuals in the Sacramento region whose innovative and high-impact inventions, products or designs have transformed some important aspect of the practice of medicine or the delivery of health-care services by improving efficiency, safety, efficacy or accessibility. “The Sacramento region is establishing itself as a national leader in medical technology innovation and development,” said Meg Arnold, chief executive officer of SARTA. “This awards program recognizes not just individual company achievements but also the invaluable role that Dr. Pome

Local job search engine Sacjobs.com is expanding despite the economy and job sites such as Craigslist and Monster, and it launched Sackjobs.com Jan. 2, with plans to expand nationally. “We’ve got about 1,200 local listings right now, and then our next step is to focus on the Bay Area and Southern California, so we’re going to take our thrust from Sacramento and hopefully by next year take over the West Coast,” said Sackjobs.com owner Ian Coltoff, a 40-year-old Sacramentan. The site launched in 1999 as Sacjobs.com as an homage to Sacramento, and Coulter said he added the K to appeal to a national audience, with the tagline “Your next career choice is in the bag.” And to be clear – typing

I downloaded five Sacramento-specific mobile apps to review to find out if there is truth to the famous slogan "There's an app for that." I had a mixed bag of results, with some useful and some novelty. Midtown Sacramento Price: Free The app encourages its users to explore Midtown, helping them find parking, taxi service, restaurants, boutiques and other needs. It also keeps users up to date with neighborhood events, sales and friends' updates and tweets through an in-app tab for Twitter and Facebook. Upon opening the app, I was pleased by the clean outline showing 12 different icons representing the different options to choose from: events, eats and drinks, entertainment, galleries, h

Sims Recycling Solutions, the global leader in electronics reuse and recycling, is partnering with Sims Metal Management, KCRA-TV and the California Exposition and State Fairgrounds to host a community-wide electronics and appliance recycling event to celebrate “America Recycles Day.” The event will raise money for the Sacramento Habitat for Humanity and will be held on Saturday, Nov.12, from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the California Exposition and State Fairgrounds located at 1600 Exposition Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95815. Items for recycling will be accepted at Parking Lot E off of Ethan way across the street from the Century Stadium 14. “Sims Recycling Solutions is thrilled to participate

A sign of white and red that reads "Surplus Stuff" is the first to catch your eye on Folsom Boulevard. This store that sells computers, electronics, test equipment and office supplies is not your Best Buy or Radio Shack, but a smaller store with affordable electronics. Ali Diaf, 55, owner of Surplus Stuff, has been in business since October 1994. Diaf has a bachelor's degree in computer engineering with an emphasis in hardware. "I love to be around anything technology," Diaf said. Diaf followed his passion and dream and opened his business that has supported his family for 16 years. “When I was young I had to do a project that involved the use of technology,” Diaf said. “It fascinated

Mayor Kevin Johnson joined public utility officials and private business developers at Depot Park Tuesday for a ceremony to dedicate the largest private solar project in the Sacramento region. The 3-megawatt project, located in the Depot Park business complex on Florin-Perkins Road, includes an array of 12,600 solar panels and is designed to meet nearly 40 percent of the annual power needs for the 3 million-square-foot facility, according to information released by the mayor’s office. “I believe this area has the opportunity to be the greenest region in the country and a hub for investment in clean technology,” Johnson said in his prepared statement. “Today’s dedication demonstrates that

Previously I wrote an article mentioning how search no longer sucked. And while that was true, it wasn’t great either. Yesterday’s improvement to search makes it even more usable. The biggest difference is that now our search results are displayed in order of relevance, with significant weight given to more recent content, instead of strict chronological order. Chronological order made sense, since, well, we’re a news site and the more current the content, often the more relevant it is. However, sometimes nothing new has been written about what you are searching for, but you still want to find it at the top of your search result. Now we have a balanced mix of relevance and chronology. We

Robb Moore, President & CEO of Sacramento region tech company ioSafe, is well-known for his flashy Consumer Electronic Show (CES) demos of the company's almost indestructible hard drives. This year, he outdid himself by inviting journalists to fire a 12-gauge shotgun at ioSafe's new product, the Rugged Portable. The demo was held at American Shooters, a gun range close to the Las Vegas Convention Center, and participants included the BBC, Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, PCWorld, MacLife, the Canadian Discovery Channel and more. In addition to blasting the drive with a shotgun, journalists were also able to crush it with a vice, immerse it in water and hit it with a hammer. In each case the dat

Search on our site no longer sucks. We spent the last few weeks digging up our original search system and revamping it entirely. No longer will you see out-of-date Google search results with duplicate entries. Now you will find custom, up-to-the-minute results parsed into three different types: articles, users and comments. You’ll also notice that there are now new icons to represent the different content types, and you will find them to be consistent site-wide, not just in the search results. One other noticeable change is the search box in the navigation bar. Now it is much more visible with a white background and clear in purpose due to the button saying “search” and not just “go.”

Sacramento is home to a flourishing development community and tonight's presentation at the The Sacramento Groovy User's by Ed Gibbs will be discussing the latest Behavior Driven Development tool, Spock.  This is a workshop open to the public and meant for technologists interested in the latest inovations for building quality software. Ed's description: Spock: The Search for an Intelligent Spec Spock (http://code.google.com/p/spock/) is a Groovy based Behavior Driven Development (BDD) library. Never heard of BDD? Still writing unit tests in JUnit 3? Come learn what literate tests are about. This talk includes a number of demos and hands on labs requiring minimal setup. You can even try

KVIE and PBS announced today the release of PBS for iPad and soon to-be-released PBS App for the iPhone and iPod touch. Both apps make PBS video and KVIE scheduling information available anywhere, anytime. These efforts continue KVIE’s transformation into a multi-platform media leader serving Northern California through television, mobile, the Web, and other platforms, including classroom interactive whiteboards. PBS is premiering the first episode of its multi-part series CIRCUS (www.pbs.org/circus) on PBS for iPad. The episode is available for streaming beginning today, in advance of the broadcast premiere on KVIE (ch. 6) on November 3 at 9pm. These new apps build on successful initiat

Congresswoman Doris Matsui is a featured speaker at the 4th Annual Sacramento Clean Tech Showcase on October 26th at Sacramento State. Organized by SARTA (Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance) as part of its CleanStart initiative, over 700 people are expected to attend this all day event. More than 40 speakers are included in the program and many of the region's clean tech companies are among the 80 exhibitors. Congresswoman Matsui will share the federal perspective during the opening session, “Bold Visions For the Sacramento Region.” Matsui represents Sacramento in the U.S. Congress and serves on the Energy & Commerce and Committee. She has crafted and helped pass legislation tha

The Sacramento Groovy Users (SacGRU) is a professional association of software developers.  The group discusses the Groovy programming language and all it's frameworks, libraries and technologies.  Founded in December of 2008, the group meets the 1st Thursday of every month.  Please see the group's website at http://sacgru.com for details such as meeting time and place. Tonight the group will be meeting at The Sacramento Press (yes this Sacramento Press) on the corner of 5th and H Street in downtown Sacramento at 6:30.  The presentation will be "An Introduction to the Grails Framework".  

The Sacramento Google Technology User Group, SacGTUG, is meeting every month. SacGTUG was founded in April of 2010. The group discusses Google related technologies such as Android, App Engine, GWT, and Google APIs.  Anybody is welcome to attend our free meetings. For more information, please visit: http://www.sacgtug.org I hope to see you at our next meeting. Thomas Amsler SacGTUG Organizer 

A new, bookless public school is opening in West Sacramento Sept. 7. Instead of the usual stack of textbooks, each student at the California College, Career & Technical Education Center will receive an Apple iPad. The school will initially serve only ninth- and 10th-grade students, but plans to expand to serve adult-aged students within one year and kindergarten through eighth-grade students within two years. “As a charter school, we have some freedom to try things like this,” Executive Director of CCCTEC Paul Preston said. Preston said he wouldn’t be surprised to see devices like iPads begin replacing books in classrooms across America soon, citing the high price of text books and broad