Posts by jbafaro

A school emergency plan, in the palm of a hand

Posted by on Jul 17, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

Jim Spicuzza wasn’t necessarily looking to create a smarter way for schools to manage emergency situations. With more than fifteen years of experience in providing education related-software solutions for school districts, Spicuzza had become an established and successful provider of products such as online student registration systems, teacher evaluation tools and websites. But a tragedy prompted Spicuzza to redirect his energy. Hear Jim Spicuzza’s interview on KMOX Radio/St. Louis “In 2013, a school district in the Chicago area contacted us. It was just after Sandy Hook (the late...

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St. Louis entrepreneur offers a dose of comfort to baby

Posted by on Jul 9, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

St. Louis entrepreneur Dr. Agnes Scoville says she’s always had a flair for innovation – a bent for improvisation that was put to the test during a time of war, more than 6,000 miles from the city she now calls home. As a Navy doctor stationed along the border between Iraq and Kuwait, Scoville’s chief role was to administer aid to the U.S. Marines who took part in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and its aftermath.  But she quickly realized there would be much more to her mission than simply helping the men and women of the U.S. armed forces. “We never knew just...

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New app reduces guesswork in painting projects

Posted by on Jun 12, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

Do-it-yourself painters know the drill:  in advance of tackling a home painting project, you go to the paint store or big box retailer with an idea in mind, come back home armed with paint swatches, hold them up against the wall and then try to imagine what that wall would look like in a new color. Hardly a scientific approach. But what if you could take a picture of a wall or surface you want to paint, upload the photo into an app on your smartphone, then apply several different brands and colors of paint to the selected area, letting you see how the room, with your own furniture and...

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St. Louis startup promises an app, in a snap.

Posted by on Jun 5, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

Attention weekend website warriors! If you’re one of those people who — because you possess a bit of technical acumen – has been pressed into service creating or maintaining the website of a small business, your kids’ little league team or girl scout troop, you perhaps have been approached about the idea of taking the bold step of converting that website into a mobile app. After all, as we learned last year in a study released by media analytics company comScore, Americans are now using their smartphone and tablet apps — more than their PCs — to access the Internet. But the...

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Startup brings software to hardhats

Posted by on May 27, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

Time is money. No place better demonstrates that adage than a construction job site, where lost time due to miscommunication over work schedules, weather and a variety of other issues can push a project off schedule and over budget in a big way. Jay Olsen, the founder of startup company Jobsite Unite, saw the lack of effective communication numerous times in more than a decade’s worth of work as a carpenter, a site foreman, a crew manager and construction company general manager. “It was always frustrating to me,’ says Olsen, “seeing all of the inefficiencies and mistakes being made because...

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