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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

BCR Property Management very kindly responded to our questions about what it has been like to specialize in rental apartments, houses and townhouses in Blacksburg and Radford, Virginia - near the Virginia Tech and Radford University campuses - for nearly three decades.

Since your founding, what story do you find yourself telling others over again that represents who you are, what you do, and why you do it?  

We have residents come into our office to make a payment who've never before written a check.  We had one young man who was surprised his apartment didn't come with bed linens.  At one time or another, we have helped residents learn skills they will use throughout their lives.

Since many of our residents are university students, this is the first time they may have lived on their own.  We guide them in setting up utility accounts, paying bills on time, and reporting maintenance concerns.  We feel very gratified when residents move on, seeing what they have learned  and how they have grown while renting from us.

When you look back five years from now, what change will you embrace this year that you think will generate the greatest benefits for your company and clients? 

The biggest change we have embraced this year is in the way we advertise.  In the past, we use the mail, newspaper ads, and the phonebook.  Recently we have shifted most of our advertising to the Internet, our web site, Facebook, and other online venues.

By doing so, we are able to reach the residents who might most need our services.  And, by being more efficient with our advertising dollars, we are able to use the money that in the past would have been spent on advertising and move ahead with more projects and improvements that will directly benefit our residents.

We noticed on your BCR Property Management Facebook - Blacksburg page that you have 231 fans, and on your BCR Property Management Facebook - Radford page you have177 fans.  That's a lot of fans!  How has using Facebook affected the way you do business?

The only cost for creating a Facebook page is time, and, for that investment, we see a lot of return. 

Facebook is a great way for BCR to keep our residents (and their parents) up to date on important information in our communities.  We have found that by communicating through a tool our customers are already comfortable using, we are much more likely to have our message heard.  It often feels now as if we are all speaking the same language when we weren’t before.  It is also a great place to showcase how important residents are to BCR.  We post photos of our Resident-of-the-Month and of our residents enjoying themselves and having fun. 

Whether we offer a jelly bean-counting contest or put up a Facebook page, we will do what we can to give our residents the most courteous attention, the most skilled and timely maintenance response the most personal service, and a first-rate residential experience.

***

BCR Property Management specializes in residential living near the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, and the Radford University Campus in Radford, Virginia.  The BCR Property Managment site offers detailed property listings, comprehensive information for residents, and multiple payment options, including convenient online payment.

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Automation Creations, Inc. is proud to showcase BCR Property Management, one of the dynamic companies for which it provides results-oriented, custom web site design and custom web site development.  To help each of its clients achieve optimum business outcomes, Automation Creations, Inc. creates a distinctive, strategic online presence using state-of-the-art web site development tools, search engine optimization (SEO), and digital media publicity.  You're invited to read more about Handshake 2.0's client, Automation Creations, Inc. and to follow ACI on Twitter.

Type physical education into Google and you’ll see PE Central rising above all others as the #1 listing.  Since its founding in 1996, PE Central has established itself as the number one go-to site for physical education resources.
 
“That’s why we founded PE Central,” said Mark Manross, Executive Director of PE Central.   “We saw a need for a centralized source of information, so we created it.”

PE Central now sees a new need for information to address a troubling development:  the crisis in childhood obesity.
 
“Parents want to help their children to be active and healthy to prevent obesity and that means finding physical activities for their children.  They just don’t know where to go or what to do," Mark Manross said.  "Our plan is to be that 'where' and 'what' for parents with infants to early elementary-aged children.”
 
With a staff of over 200 qualified physical activity experts, PE Central is well-suited and well-positioned to be of assistance to parents concerned about childhood obesity.
 
“What we know about childhood obesity and physical activity is this,” said Manross.  “Our experts work with children every day in physical education and activity settings. Combined, they have over 2000 years of experience motivating kids to become physically active in their classes. We currently have over 1700 activity-based lessons on our site and we feel confident we can develop and optimize these to work with parents and their children.”
 
Given PE Central's history of activity on behalf of physical activity, expect concerned parents to find just what they're looking for to rise above the rest at PE Central.

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The mission of PE Central is to provide access to a large variety of resources and programs designed to promote physically active and healthy lifestyles in youngsters and future adults.

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Automation Creations, Inc. is proud to showcase PE Central, one of the dynamic companies for which it provides results-oriented, custom web site design and custom web site development.  Automation Creations, Inc. creates a distinctive, strategic online presence for each of its clients using state-of-the-art web site development tools, search engine optimization (SEO), and digital media publicity to help its clients achieve optimum business outcomes.  You're invited to read more about Handshake 2.0's client, Automation Creations, Inc. and to follow ACI on Twitter.

The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, a technology, research, and science park on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, is home to high-tech start-ups and established technology businesses. 

One of them is Automation Creations, Inc.

Handshake 2.0 asked companies about the business benefits of locating at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center--known locally as "the CRC."

Henry Bass, President of Automation Creations, Inc., answered.

Top Three Ways the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center has Fostered Our Business

• Since originally locating here in 1996, the CRC remains the best Internet infrastructure location in the New River Valley. ACI hosts over 200 websites, from simple business overview web pages, to entire line-of-business applications over the web.  Having the sites on our servers allows us greater control over the software development process and gives our customers a single point of contact for any web-related issues.
• The business network of 130 enterprises located in one park has provided countless opportunities for us to work with neighboring high-tech firms in all manner of roles: supplier, customer, and partner, as well as opportunities for employees to move from one firm to another and keep smart, talented people in this region.
• The CRC offers an extremely flexible lease that allows us to grow or shrink as the need arises. 

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

Henry Bass writes Henry's Blog.  In his 10/11/08 blog entry, Henry Bass posted this video taken of his accommodations in Fort McCrady, South Carolina.

Automation Creations, Inc. provides guaranteed custom software development and web site design for dynamic companies like its neighbors in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, Virginia.  Automation Creations, Inc. runs MatWeb.com, a searchable database of material properties.

Automation Creations, Inc. is located in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, a technology park, a research park, and a science park on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia.  The research park provides high-technology companies access to university faculty, university facilities, university equipment, and business-related support services.  The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center fosters commercialization and technology transfer of university research for both high-tech start-up companies and established technology businesses.

Handshake 2.0, specializing in online handshakes via business blog, invited companies to submit a photograph of a real-time handshake - a Handshake 1.0.

Vitech Corporation delivers industry leading systems engineering and architecture solutions providing the insight to perform and manage systems development.

Automation Creations, Inc. provides guaranteed custom software development and web site design for dynamic companies like its neighbors in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Pictured are Doug Johnston, CFO, Vitech Corporation, and Henry Bass, President, Automation Creations, Inc.

Henry Bass, President of Automation Creations, Inc. writes Henry's Blog.

Vitech Corporation and Automation Creations, Inc. are located in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, a technology, research, and science park located on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia.  The research park provides high-technology companies access to university faculty, facilities, and equipment and business-related support services.  The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center fosters commercialization and technology transfer of university research for both high-tech start-up companies and established technology businesses.

Some of the information used in this business blog post for Handshake 2.0 was gathered using competitive intelligence software AttaainCI.

Handshake 2.0--specializing in online handshakes via business blog--invited companies to submit a photograph of a real-time handshake - a Handshake 1.0.

Automation Creations, Inc. provides guaranteed custom software development and web site design for dynamic companies like its neighbors in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, Virginia.  Automation Creations, Inc. runs MatWeb.com, a searchable database of material properties.

Pictured are Henry Bass, deploying President, Laureen Fleming, Operations Manager, with a guest appearance by flat-henry, the stand-in president in Henry's absence.

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

Henry Bass writes Henry's Blog.

Automation Creations, Inc. is located in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, a technology, research, and science park on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia.  The research park provides high-technology companies access to university faculty, facilities, and equipment and business-related support services.  The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center fosters commercialization and technology transfer of university research for both high-tech start-up companies and established technology businesses.

Some of the information used in this business blog post for Handshake 2.0 was gathered using competitive intelligence software AttaainCI.