From Automations Creations, Inc. and Handshake Media, Incorporated. She Chooses(TM), the social network for women, is a joint spin-out of both companies:

She Chooses was co-founded by Anne Giles Clelland, Alex Edelman, Henry Bass, and Laureen Fleming.  The She Chooses team has worked remotely from its beginnings, “meeting” weekly via Skype.  Alex Edelman will fly into the Blacksburg, Virginia area this week and he and Henry Bass and Laureen Fleming will share their first handshake at their She Chooses team meeting on Wednesday, May 11, 2011.  They will gather again on Thursday, May 12 for TechNite. 

Here's an updated version of the press release first issued April 27, 2010:

What do women want?  The four co-founders of She Chooses (TM), the social network for women, think She Chooses is part of the answer.

She Chooses launched to the public on March 22, 2011.  She Chooses members met to celebrate the launch, both actually and virtually, on Tuesday, May 3, 2011.  The She Chooses Launch Partywas held at restaurant 622 North in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.  The first-ever She Chooses Chat – Live! - the online version of the party - was held on the She Chooses site with guest host Janeson Keeley, an early supporter and friend of She Chooses.

The She Chooses network was nominated for the Rising Star Award from the NewVa Corridor Technology Council (NCTC).  Winners will be announced at the TechNite Awards Banquet on Thursday, May 12, 2011 at The Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center in Roanoke, Virginia, USA.  Here's a list of all the TechNite award nominees. When the parent company of She Chooses, Wasabi Enterprises, Incorporated, was formed on September 9, 2010, the founders ranged in age from 19 to 51.  

She Chooses (TM) is the social network for women whose members choose what, how, and with whom they share.  She Chooses features an algorithm-based sharing component that helps women ask themselves what they’re feeling and thinking prior to making a choice - Feel. Think. Choose.  Offering the opportunity to privately consider members’ publicly shared choices ranked appreciatively by other members, She Chooses fosters uniquely meaningful personal reflection and authentic communication in the company of other women.

Handshake 2.0 asked Henry Bass, founder of Automation Creations:

What is MatWeb? 

We see this description from the MatWeb site: "MatWeb's searchable database of material properties includes data sheets of thermoplastic and thermoset polymers such as ABS, nylon, polycarbonate, polyester, polyethylene and polypropylene; metals such as aluminum, cobalt, copper, lead, magnesium, nickel, steel, superalloys, titanium and zinc alloys; ceramics; plus semiconductors, fibers, and other engineering materials."

Glad to hear that data sheets exist.  What are they for?  Why would someone need them?  Who uses them?  Is anyone local a user of MatWeb?
 
"Data sheets for over 79,000 metals, plastics, ceramics, and composites."
 
79,000 is an impressive number in any business realm, especially with a founding in 1997.  What can invite someone in Blacksburg, Virginia, home of Handshake 2.0, to care that MatWeb is here and was created by ACI?  What's its cool factor?

Henry Bass replied:

Funny you should ask! We're actually proud that non-engineers ask us about this, because we can highlight this to our engineering-related advertisers: we've got an exclusive audience of engineers. Non-engineers write us and say they don't get it...so that's one way we can assure that products and services will be seen by the right audience.
 
Our datasheets provide a reference of the material properties for 79,000+ metals, plastics, ceramics and composites.  This means that when an engineer wants to use 6061-T6 Aluminum in his or her next product design, MatWeb.com serves as a handy reference for that metal's density, strength, elasticity and other properties.
 
Furthermore, if the engineer asks the question, "What other materials could I use that have the strength of this, but would be lighter?", he or she can use MatWeb to quantitatively search and find that Nylon 66 with glass fiber reinforcement can provide about the same strength but is 40% lighter.  If the application doesn't require the product to be exposed to high temperatures, this might be a lighter, cheaper alternative.

We went live with MatWeb in 1997, boasting properties of almost 500 materials.  Every year, we add to or update about 12,000 data sheets through the diligent efforts of Virginia Tech engineering students and our expert staff.  The result is that MatWeb.com is cited as the reference source for material properties more often than any other reference, printed or online. 
 
Local users of MatWeb would include the audience of just about all engineers at Virginia Tech (electrical, civil, mechanical, chemical, materials science, aerospace, etc), and engineering-related product development companies such as Moog, Federal Mogul, Safety Performance Solutions and TORC.

The cool factor is that over 180,000 engineers worldwide have registered with us because we're the largest free material property database on the web. Right here in li'l ol' Blacksburg.

Thanks,
Henry

***

This edition of the Tech Showcase on Handshake 2.0 is sponsored by Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS (R), a full service real estate agency specializing in Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Roanoke, and Salem, Virginia real estate and homes.  You're invited to download the Coldwell Banker Townside App, check out the CBT blog, Keepin' It Real Estate, visit Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS (R) on Facebook, and see more of Coldwell Banker Townside on Handshake 2.0. 

Automation Creations, Incorporated and Coldwell Banker Townside REALTORS are clients of Handshake Media, Incorporated, parent company of Handshake 2.0.

In Premier Transfer and Storage Starts the Connections, we traced the amazing series of "It's still who you know" connections that make great business happen.  We imagined this scenario:

They [visitors to Blacksburg, Virginia] book their hotel in the home of the Hokies through BlacksburgLodging, love the entire pre-game, game, and post-game experience, "find their fun" through NextThreeDays, and just know they have to move back to Blacksburg.  They call Nancy Phillips of Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS to help them find and buy a house, and use Premier Transfer and Storage to move their furniture into their new home.  Wanting to connect their companies with other companies to create "it's who you know" ASAP, they buy Handshake Apps of their own to showcase their companies' members.  Then they want to join all the cool companies with site designs by ACI!

For great business to happen, no imagination is necessary, however.  Jaime Clark of Premier Transfer and Storage noted in her comment on the post which featured Automation Creations's redesign of the Premier site:

We have had great success with the new website to date, including:

• An increase of over 250% in customer-submitted online inquires compared to the same period last year with our old website.
• Booked appointments for in-home estimates generated from Premier’s new website have increased over 330% compared to the same period last year.
• We have booked appointments for in-home estimates directly through Premier’s new online support chat feature.

The connections get even better.

Fantasy football software pcDrafter, a product of Automation Creations, was featured on the WDBJ7 television channel's news show.  We quickly captured this image from the video interview of Henry Bass, founder of Automation Creations, who displayed some of his company's projects.  Check out the screen on the left!

 
It's the Blacksburg Lodging site, designed by Automation Creations!

***

Automation Creations, Inc., Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS(R), and BlacksburgLodging are clients of Handshake Media, Incorporated.

National Football League fantasy football players started their seasons on September 9, 2010.  Many are using fantasy football league software pcDrafter.

When we wrote about pcDrafter in Handshake 2.0's Tech Showcase, we quoted Henry Bass, a member of the pcDrafter development team:  "Selecting a fantasy football team is a math, science and art all to itself."

Apparently Bob Grebe of WDBJ7 agreed.  Grebe featured Henry Bass and pcDrafter on the WDBJ7 morning news show.

 

You're invited to read more about Automation Creations on Handshake 2.0.

Automation Creations, Incorporated, developer of pcDrafter, is a client of Handshake Media, Incorporated, parent company of Handshake 2.0.

Perusing the client list of Automation Creations, Inc. (ACI), I had a series of wonderful "It's still who you know" moments when I read Automation Creations's description of the redesign of the Premier web site. 

I first met John Phillips, President of  Premier Transfer and Storage, when I began helping to organize the New River Valley Triathlon.  When I mentioned the triathlon to others, they urged, "Ask John Phillips!  He'll do it!"  I asked.  John answered.  When the triathlon is a go, I'll let him know when I see him at The Weight Club where I discovered we both train with Don Belote.

Nancy Phillips, John's wife, is a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS where my sister, Margaret Galecki, is the general manager.

The BlacksburgLodging site, also designed by Automation Creations, features Sponsored Links, the first three of which are "Find a Home | Plan your Move  | Connect with Businesses."  "Find a Home" leads to Coldwell Banker Townside, "Plan Your Move" leads to Premier Transfer and Storage, and "Connect with Businesses" leads to, yep, our Handshake App!  BlacksburgLodging also features the events calendar NextThreeDays by Automation Creations.

Talk about connectedness!

And how about this scenario:

A married couple who met at Virginia Tech, determined to join fellow Hokie football fans after Virginia Tech's close game with Boise State, use their "It's who you know connections" to get tickets to the next home game in Blacksburg, Virginia.

They book their hotel in the home of the Hokies through BlacksburgLodging, love the entire pre-game, game, and post-game experience, "find their fun" through NextThreeDays, and just know they have to move back to Blacksburg.  They call Nancy Phillips of Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS to help them find and buy a house, and use Premier Transfer and Storage to move their furniture into their new home.  Wanting to connect their companies with other companies to create "it's who you know" ASAP, they buy Handshake Apps of their own to showcase their companies' members.

Then they want to join all the cool companies with site designs by ACI!

It could happen!

We're all shaking hands together, and we are just one subset of the handshakes that make business happen.

Automation Creations, Inc., Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS(R), and BlacksburgLodging are clients of Handshake Media, Incorporated's social media services.  Premier Transfer and Storage is not a client of Handshake's social media services because Jaime Clark is on the job for Premier!  If Premier wants a corporate mobile app, however, we would certainly welcome them as a client!

National Football League fantasy football players - an estimated 27 million of them - are counting down to September 9, 2010, the start of the NFL season.

Fantasy football is big business.  The Fantasy Sports Trade Association, cited in The Acorn, reports that fantasy sports have a $3 billion to $4 billion annual impact across the sports industry.

To its devoted players, fantasy football is about way more than fun or fancy.

According to Henry Bass, "Selecting a fantasy football team is a math, science and art all to itself."

That's why Bass and his colleagues developed fantasy football league draft software pcDrafter.

From the pcDrafter site:

pcDrafter is software that you install on your PC to take the guesswork out of your fantasy football draft. During a draft, it needs no Internet connection, but before the draft, with optional registration and Internet access, it can automatically download the latest player projections directly to its powerful optimization engine. pcDrafter does a zillion calculations and sees patterns not humanly possible to find in 2 seconds. Your savvy FF mind plus pcDrafter equals an unbeatable draft. pcDrafter features automatic player updates from 4for4.com.

The "zillion calculations" through pcDrafter's algorithm made possible by today's computing power lay the foundation for the software founders' claim:  "pcDrafter software gives you a highly effective platform to both prepare for your draft and to crush your competition during the drafting itself."

Greg Alan Pisch, writes about pcDrafter for 4for4.com, "I've poured over pcDrafter with the GOLD algorithm and am convinced it's the best PC drafting software available on the market today."

Added 9/27/10: pcDrafter was featured on the WDBJ7 news.

***

This edition of the Tech Showcase on Handshake 2.0 is sponsored by Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS (R), a full service real estate agency specializing in Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Roanoke, and Salem, Virginia real estate and homes.  You're invited to check out the CBT blog, Keepin' It Real Estate, visit Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS (R) on Facebook, and see more of Coldwell Banker Townside on Handshake 2.0. 

Automation Creations, Incorporated, developers of pcDrafter, and Coldwell Banker Townside REALTORS are clients of Handshake Media, Incorporated, parent company of Handshake 2.0.

Question #1:  In an age of information overload, when everyone can find everything that's possible to do all at once, wouldn’t it be nice to know what’s happening just in the next three days?

Question #2:  Wouldn't it be nice to be able to find out what's happening - everywhere?

We asked the first question when we featured NextThreeDays in our Handshake 2.0 Tech Showcase.  We're asking the second question now.  The answer to both is "Yes!", thanks to the NextThreeDays widget.

According to Jami Ryan, Senior Developer at Automation Creations, Inc., creators of NextThreeDays, the technologies used to create the new widget were Flash, ColdFusion and XML.  Users can generate code for the widget on the fly by creating their own customized NextThreeDays events widget like the one shown for Handshake 2.0.

Since Jami Ryan was open to answering more questions, we asked:

H20: What's the mission or purpose of NextThreeDays and how does a widget help further that mission?
 
N3D: NextThreeDays is the resource to help you get off your couch and find something to do in the New River Valley. There’s a lot going on in this area, but not everyone knows about all the events. NextThreeDays solves that problem. The mission of NextThreeDays is to be the online resource to find fun events. Our new event widget helps with our mission by freely sharing our event listings with other websites and online resources.

H20: What's the coolest thing about N3D?
 
N3D: From my perspective, the coolest things about NextThreeDays have been the overwhelming positive reactions we’ve received when we’ve shown the website at various festivals and expos, and now knowing about so many more events that are happening in the area. I’ve personally gone to a lot more local events since we’ve launched and I would not have known about these events and specials without this resource that we’ve created.

What's a geek to love about NextThreeDays?
 
NextThreeDays is not your typical calendar app. It’s structured and designed differently in that it only focuses on three days at a time and moves completely away from the standard calendar layout. Our goal was to create a website that allows you to do as little or as much as you want. You can sit and watch all the events scroll by and do nothing, or you can get right down to the heart of what your interests are very quickly.

***

You're invited to sit and watch the events of things to do in the New River Valley of Virginia scroll by, or connect up with NextThreeDays on Twitter at @Next3Days and on Facebook.

***

This edition of the Tech Showcase on Handshake 2.0 is sponsored by Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS (R), a full service real estate agency specializing in Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Roanoke, and Salem, Virginia real estate and homes.  A client of Handshake 2.0, Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS (R) strives to be the best online source for real estate listings in Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Roanoke, Salem and all of the  Roanoke Valley and New River Valley.  Experienced agents are available to provide expert real estate advice and quality customer service. 

You're invited to view this week's featured properties, learn the latest on CBT's blog, Keepin' It Real Estate, visit Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS (R) on Facebook, and see more Coldwell Banker Townside on Handshake 2.0.

"Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges."
- Mexican bandit, Blazing Saddles

"GIS? We don’t need no stinking GIS."
- Companies without GIS

When I was a child, my father, Robert Giles, spoke of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with reverence.  In the 1960s, he was one of the pioneers of GIS, using a light board with his team of graduate students to painstakingly digitize a map by hand with an attribute, then another map of the same place by hand with another attribute, so that layers of data resulted about one particular area.  He and his students then wrote lines of code and used punch cards and the mainframe computer to analyze all those layers of attributes and prescribe optimum locations for power lines in Virginia.

Today, personal mobile devices with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are ubiquitous, using GIS to analyze only a few attributes - a location map, satellite date, and time - to tell a person where he or she is.

When my father was using GIS, computers were still tools, essentially large calculators, so their limited power limited the number of layers of attributes that could be analyzed to a couple dozen.  Computers are now so powerful they can take into account and analyze hundreds of layers of attributes almost instantaneously and in relation to each other. 

What if my mobile device had its own personal GIS, not just GPS?  What if my mobile device would answer not just, “Where am I?” but “What is best for me to I do?”

I don't think it's an original question or idea but it came to me from discussing GIS with David Bradshaw and Jeremy Rasor of InteractiveGIS, serving as project manager for my father’s new venture, a rural land management system, Rural System - a component of which uses GIS - and the site designed for Rural System by Automation Creations.

This post features a screenshot of the cool animation made by Automation Creations that can be clicked on to show how the attribute layers accumulate. 

What if the layers weren’t about roads, ponds, and trees, but all about me?! 

What if I were standing on a street corner with my own personal GIS on my mobile device and it “knew me" enough to analyze what I value in attribute layers - houses with cats asleep on the porch, tea shops serving scones if it’s 3:00 PM, restaurants serving grits if it’s 8:00 AM, jewelry stores with sales?  And what if, based on what it had "learned" about me from data I had entered and from queries it had tracked and weights I had assigned, or it had assigned, it recommended the next step, perhaps not just to physically put my right foot in, but philosophically?

As a person and a consumer, GIS might show me my own personal power line.

As a company owner, what we offer and what our potential clients value might show up in their personal power lines.

Where do we sign up?!  I gotta have GIS.

***

InteractiveGIS was featured in another edition of the Tech Showcase on Handshake 2.0.  Interactive GIS, Rural System, and Automation Creations are clients of Handshake Media, Incorporated, of which Handshake 2.0 is an enterprise.

***

This edition of the Tech Showcase on Handshake 2.0 is sponsored by Venture Counsel, a law firm for entrepreneurs located at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, Virginia. Ken Maready, head of Venture Counsel, reviewed Handshake 2.0's Social Media Authenticity Policy - Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials, helping to create a document about which Mark Schaefer - author of the blog {grow} and the post The World's First "Authenticity Policy"? - stated, "As far as I know, this is the first published, legally-validated 'authenticity policy.'"

Ken Maready's "Legal Concerns for the Web 2.0 Business" was accepted for inclusion in volume one of the new series, Enterprise 2.0: How Technology, E-Commerce, and Web 2.0 Are Transforming Business Virtually, by Tracy Tuten, Ph.D.  The Enterprise 2.0 series is scheduled for publication by Praeger Publishers, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Company.

In an age of information overload, when everyone can find everything that's possible to do all at once, wouldn’t it be nice to know what’s happening just in the next three days?

NextThreeDays.com is the brainchild of Jami Ryan, Senior Developer at Automation Creations, Inc. He and the Automation Creations team, located in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, Virginia,  created the site under the leadership of Laureen Fleming, Operations Manager at ACI, who is heading up the web development division of Automation Creations, Inc. while the company’s president and founder, Henry Bass, is on a tour of duty in Iraq.

“Henry asked me and Dale Kipp, head of our MatWeb division of ACI, to hold down the fort while he was in Iraq,” said Fleming.  “To honor his sacrifice, we wanted to do more than that.”

NextThreeDays.com is a multi-function web resource featuring restaurant meal and drink specials, music, sports, and other special events in the Blacksburg, Virginia and New River Valley of Virginia areas, all in a scrolling format for today, tomorrow, and the next day.  Information from the site can be viewed, emailed, and sent to a mobile device.  "That's cool!" and "How'd you do that?" and "I didn't know they served that!" are frequent responses to the site.

Known for its innovative development of web user interfaces paired with complex backend databases, Automation Creations built NextThreeDays.com on SQL Server, ColdFusion, Flash Remoting, Web Services, Javascript and Adobe Flash.  Like the best entrepreneurial technology enterprises, it, of course, can be automated and scaled.  While still considered in beta, launching in other locales is in the plan.

“We’re working on lots of other features including a mobile version, full event searching, and the ability to limit the event display to a specific area in the New River Valley," said Jami Ryan.

“We created NextThreeDays because we knew there were things to do in the New River Valley, but we had trouble finding them," Ryan added.  "We talked to our family and friends and discovered they were having the same problem. Once we heard, 'There’s nothing to do in Blacksburg' repeatedly, we knew we had to create NextThreeDays and solve this problem.”

Connecting with things to do in the NRV through NextThreeDays.com can happen on Twitter at @Next3Days and on Facebook.

Pictured are Henry Bass, President, "Flat Henry," stand-in presence during Henry's absence, and Laureen Fleming.

All who know Henry Bass look forward to the time they can say, "We'll see Henry in the next three days!"  Welcome home, Henry, to a masterpiece of an enterprise created by your team while you were away.

***

Automation Creations, Inc. is a client of Handshake 2.0 and is featured in the Company Index.

***

The Rackspace Tech Showcase is sponsored by Rackspace (R) Hosting.  Rackspace Email and Apps is a division of Rackspace located in Blacksburg, Virginia. 

About Rackspace
As the leader and specialist in hosting services, Rackspace(R) Hosting is changing the way businesses worldwide buy IT. Rackspace delivers computing-as-a-service, integrating the industry's best technologies into a flexible service offering, making computing more reliable and affordable. A trusted partner to companies of all sizes, Rackspace enables IT departments to be more effective. Rackspace is distinguished by its award-winning Fanatical Support(R), furthering the company's mission to be one of the world's greatest service companies. Rackspace is recognized as one of FORTUNE Magazine's 100 Best companies to work for in the US, ranking number 43 on the list. Rackspace's portfolio of hosted IT services includes managed hosting (www.rackspace.com), email hosting (www.rackspace.com/apps) and cloud hosting (www.mosso.com). For more information on Rackspace Hosting, please visit www.rackspace.com.

Henry Bass, President of Automation Creations, Inc., was deployed on Sunday, October 5, 2008 for a 13-month tour in Iraq.  Lisa Bass is his wife.  The Roanoke Times reported on his story on 10/3/08. 

Henry Bass writes Henry's Blog.

Automation Creations is on Twitter at @aciwebs.