http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2010/08/31/scvngr-goes-live-with-rewards-for-boston-businesses-eyes-potential-partners/

startups, Mobile, strategy
SCVNGR Goes Live with Rewards for Boston Businesses, Eyes Potential Partners
Gregory T. Huang 8/31/10

I’m getting the sense that Seth Priebatsch could sell just about anything—and he will. His mobile gaming and rewards startup, Cambridge, MA-based SCVNGR, has been in PR overdrive for the past week, announcing everything from its integration with Facebook Places to new rewards partnerships with AT&T and Zipcar.

Today, the company is showcasing a new software platform for local businesses to build their own rewards programs. The program is launching with 50-plus stores in the Boston area (you can zoom in on the map here to see the initial participants), and will be looking to expand to other cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco in the future.

At Toscanini’s in Cambridge, for example (the program’s only ice cream shop so far), you can log in on SCVNGR and enter the ingredients you’d want to use to create a new flavor, and earn a free scoop of ice cream. At the Middle East restaurant and club, you can snap a photo of the band on stage and work towards earning 20 percent off your meal there.

We first wrote about this program last week, after the announcement of Facebook Places shook the world of location-based games and services. Priebatsch tells me that new user registrations increased by 210 percent after his company’s Facebook integration, and continue to grow. But what’s really interesting about today’s SCVNGR rewards rollout is where it could be heading next.

“Overnight we’re going to take over a city,” Priebatch says.

If this rollout works, he argues, it will “fundamentally change the way businesses think” about using mobile and social technologies to help drive sales. Unlike Foursquare’s check-in service, he says, SCVNGR operates on a “progression dynamic” (where anyone can earn rewards) and not an “exclusion dynamic” (where only one “mayor” earns a reward).

What’s more—and this caught my attention—SCVNGR sees itself as very complementary to the group-buying and daily-deal sites that have exploded in the past year or so. “Groupon can send a thousand new customers to a store,” Priebatsch says. “That’s incredibly powerful, but it doesn’t really build loyalty and engagement.” Which is where SCVNGR could come in, he says. “If you [a local business] are using Groupon, BuyWithMe, or LivingSocial, you want to pair that with getting them to play SCVNGR,” Priebatsch says. “You want to capture that traffic, and then get them to come back.”

He admits that local, small businesses don’t have as much cash to spend as the corporations, universities, and city governments that make up the bulk of SCVNGR’s revenue stream. But, he says, “The hope is to turn this into a really solid top-line revenue driver for us.”

SCVNGR started in 2008, and has received venture financing from Highland Capital Partners, Google Ventures, Bantam Group, and DreamIT Ventures. Its mobile app is available for free on the iPhone or Android phones.

Gregory T. Huang is Xconomy's National IT Editor and the Editor of Xconomy Boston. You can e-mail him at gthuang@xconomy.com, call him at 617-252-7323, or follow him at twitter.com/gthuang.

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People in the coffee business call them campers.  They are the individuals who spend hours working on their computer after purchasing a small cup of coffee.  When a place gets crowded and other people need seats they lower their heads and burrow into those computers like turtles at the shoreline.

The New York Times has published two articles about this threat to civil life, and the LA Times has weighed in with its own report. 

Computer users annoy people more than those disappearing folks who read the newspaper in its entirety with a proofreader’s obsessiveness.  I think in part the computer users prompt anxiety about the internet and the effects it may be having on all of us. 

When we first started selling espresso drinks at our store in Central Square, Cambridge, near MIT, my friends would immediately notice the campers, “That guy is here every day.”  “That person has been here since before lunchtime and I don’t think he even bought a second cup of coffee.”  if their was one piece of advice they all agreed upon it  was that some of our customers were spending too much time in the store. 

At the time I had a different view.  I would describe the campers as “volunteers who have agreed to be extras in the imaginary movie we are all making.”  Most people come in, buy a cup of coffee and leave shortly for work or to catch a bus or subway.  But the campers who were already settled in their seats suggested other daytime possibilities.  I imagined that the industrious and dutiful customers would pause for a moment and think, “wouldn’t it be nice to write my college roommate from Minnesota or finish reading that story in The New Yorker?”  After the briefest of sighs they would leave for the workaday world.  "And besides," I would say, 'Americans aren’t as rude as French people who will spend a day at a cafe after securing their seat with a small purchase.  “When a place gets busy and people needed to sit, Americans would share”.  Now I think that’s less true.  Either computers are truly all-absorbing or people just pretend not to notice others who want to sit for a moment.  Now at Toscanini's we turn off the internet during our busy weekend breakfasts  and at other times I will say to customers that the store is too busy for them to continue their solitary, monkish work. 

I don’t understand why people would work so intensely in a noisy environment.  My mother said you would work best in a quiet place, free of distractions.  One day I spoke to a table of industrious students, “I have to ask you not to use your computers so that others can sit.”  I pointed to a big sign that said the same thing.  “Don’t worry,” I said brightly, “We have talked to people at MIT and they have created something they call a library.”  All the other customers laughed but none of the people who were working. 

Lamont Library at Harvard contains a cafe with what many people think is bad coffee.  The library is very good with books.  I think it was guerrilla theatre when someone brought his desktop computer to a cafe.  Some campers take up three or even four seats, with coats and book bags and piles of documents on every surface. 

Years ago I read that the historian Jonathan Spence wrote much of his book, Gate of Heavenly Peace,  in Naples Pizzeria in New Haven.  I liked the book and the pizzeria and thought that was cool.  At Toscanini’s people have created video games and started companies and completed theses.  I’m happy all those things happened here. 

Toscanini’s is trying to strike a balance for all these customers and friends, one that is probably typical of collegetown cafes.  One idea is that we stay open 24 hours a day during finals.  This summer I visited a small cafe in Farmington, Maine, also a college town.  They had a notice that said “We are not an office.  If you need to recharge your computer you’ve probably been here too long.” 

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French Vanilla
Belgian Chocolate
Chocolate No. 3
Cocoa Pudding
B3
Green Tea
Coconut Lime
Fluffernutter
Coffee
Mango Black Tea
Nutmeg
Bananas Foster
GNR
Butter Chocolate Chip
Strawberry
Cookie Dough
Burnt Caramel
White Chocolate
Mango
Hydrox Cookie
Nocciola
CBC Pumpkinhead Ale
Malted Vanilla
Vienna Finger Cookie
Mint Chocolate Chip
Heath
Peach & Apricot
Salty Caramel
Blueberry

Blueberry Sorbet
Raspberry Sorbet
Coconut Sorbet
Chocolate Sorbet

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703447004575449342532368662.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5

By KATHERINE ROSMAN

These days, we are carrying around a lot of devices—BlackBerrys, Evos, iPhones, iPads, and iPods, as well as Nooks, Kindles, global positioning systems and laptop computers. In the United States, there were 285 million active wireless devices as of the end of 2009, up from 208 million at the end of 2005, according to CTIA-The Wireless Association, an industry trade group.

And those devices need to be recharged, often several times a day. In pursuit of the plug, consumers jockey for outlets—and stores, restaurants and airlines attempt to accommodate them.

It's not always an easy peace. In one of Barnes & Noble's flagship stores in downtown Manhattan, employees now cover most electrical outlets with metal plates. So many customers were plugging in that the company worried about people tripping over cords. "We have covered outlets in high-traffic areas," a spokeswoman says.

When William J. Brown, a 41-year-old iPhone 3GS user, took his son to the emergency room in Miami this summer due to a stomachache, he convinced the receptionist to plug in his phone behind her desk. "I begged," Mr. Brown says.

The growth in GPS social-networking services which let users broadcast their movements—first popularized by Foursquare and now reaching a larger audience with the launch this month of Facebook's "Places"—is draining batteries even faster.

When JetBlue Airways opened its 635,000-square-foot Terminal 5 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York two years ago, it decked it out with plugs galore—there are 806 all told. "It almost looks like a computer lab," says spokeswoman Tamara Bentham.

Peter Shankman, a 38-year-old tech entrepreneur, travels 250,000 miles a year, carrying at all times a BlackBerry, and Evo 4G phone, an iPad, a MacBook Pro, an iPod, a GPS device and two multi-outlet powerstrips.

He recently arrived in Los Angeles a few hours in advance of a business dinner. He needed something to wear. He needed to charge his devices. He went a department store and made the salesman a deal.

"I'm going to buy a whole outfit," he told him, "but I need to plug in my phone." Mr. Shankman left the store with dark blue 7 For All Mankind jeans, a black Hugo Boss blazer and a phone full of life. "Remember 'Glengarry Glen Ross,' 'Always Be Closing?'" asks Mr. Shankman. "The new rule is 'Always Be Charging.'"

Write to Katherine Rosman at katherine.rosman@wsj.com

Posted via email from Toscanini’s Ice Cream

French Vanilla
Belgian Chocolate
Chocolate No. 3
Cocoa Pudding
Sweet Cream
nutmeg
Coconut Lime
Fluffernutter
Coffee
Mango Black Tea
Green Tea
Espresso Hydrox
Grape Nut Raisin
Blackberry
Strawberry
Cookie Dough
Chocolate Chip
White Chocolate
Peach Apricot
Hydrox Cookie
Mango
CBC Pumpkinhead
Malted Vanilla
Vienna Finger Cookie
Nocciola
Burnt Caramel
Heath Bar
Cranberry Lime

Mango Sorbet
Raspberry Sorbet
Coconut Sorbet
Chocolate Sorbet

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Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Toscanini’s Ice Cream

French Vanilla
Belgian Chocolate
Green Tea
Blueberry Pancakes
Cranberry Lime
Cocoa Pudding
Maple Wlanut
Ginger Snap Molasses
Chocolate Chip
Hydrox Cookie
Nocciola
Wort
Nutmeg
Butter Almond
Sweet Cream
Coconut
Chocolate Chip
Heath
Coffee & Donuts
Blackberry
Creamsicle
Chocolate No. 3 (Dark)
Peanut Butter & Honey
Cocoa Mint Chocolate Chip
Bourbon Vienna Finger Cookie
Khulfee
Mexican Chocolate
Grape Nut Raisin
Espresso
Cherries & Chocolate Chip
Mango Sorbet
Chocolate Sorbet

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Posted via email from Toscanini’s Ice Cream

 French bulldog, looking a great deal like Stitch from Lilo & Stitch, executes clever workaround spoon rule.  Five charities benefit.  The event repeats on Sun Au 22, 2010. in the South End at the So Wa Trolley barn.  Toscanini’s will bring more B3:  Brown Sugar, Brown Butter and Brownies.

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Mark Bittman writes well about many things, foer the print version of the NYTIMES, the online version of the times and an amazing line of cookbooks including How to Cook Anything and also anything Jean Georges publishes.  I don't think Jean Georges can write a check without Bittman. 

Anyhow Bittman met Cambridge potter Judy Motzkin who has created a special bread baking pot and then Bittman blogged about it.

"Another thing I seem to have forgotten: how to make bread. Specifically, how to make Jim Lahey's bread, about which I somewhat famously wrote four years ago.

Then, at a benefit for the Truro Center for the Arts a few weeks ago, I met a woman named Judith Motzkin, who makes (among other things) ceramic pots specifically designed for baking Lahey-style bread. This roughly coincided with the arrival of an actual oven at the place I stay in on the Cape (until recently we had a weird kind of oven/microwave hybrid, which was inadequate to every task, from heating coffee to baking bread), and a pledge on my part to resume breadmaking. (The Outer Cape, notorious for bad bread, now boasts a "boulangerie" in Wellfleet which, from my pre-summer experience, seems pretty good, but right now it's more than your life is worth to try to get anywhere near it. You might as well try to get into Mac's Shack at 7pm on a Saturday.)  

There was a time, round about 2006, when I could make this bread without a measuring cup or a timer; I could whip up that dough with any number of ingredients and in a variety of proportions – incorporating whole grains left and right – and I could recognize the right moment to move to the next stage.  

Now I needed a recipe and, try as I might (I really did try, too), I couldn't find any better than the one I'd written after cooking with Jim. (Which is not to say I didn't find helpful hints from the literally thousands of posts on the subject; I just didn't find a good solid recipe.) I measured as carefully as I could, and still, I found it a little off; I had to add more water than it called for, and then I had to add a little more flour, because I'd added too much water. (None of this is surprising; different flours take different amounts of water.) But the timing worked right, though I did bake it ten minutes longer than the recipe called for. (This isn't unusual either.)  

For me to follow a recipe twice in a month is rare, but I did it. (I followed a recipe at the Mini shoot a couple of weeks ago also, for a citrus-almond pound cake you'll be seeing this Fall.) And the results, as you can see, look pretty good. (I haven't cut into it yet; "the bread must rest before being introduced to the knife," as someone once said. [If you know who, tell me; remember this post is about being memory-deprived.]) 

I guess there are worse things than relearning what you already know. This instance appears to have been worth it, anyway"

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