iPhone News Updated

Church gets an iPhone app & iLike is music to MySpace’s ears

Church gets an iPhone app & iLike is music to MySpace’s ears

August 20th, 2009 - NWCN’s Erik Sandoval and KING 5’s Renay San Miguel highlight the new iPhone apps made in the northwest, and how big companies are using little money on marketing.

Northwest App News

Everything is sacred when it comes to the latest applications for your iPhone. The latest, from Seattle’s Mars Hill Church. Their app will let you listen or watch any sermon, prayer, or song. They’re also using it as a way to spread the church’s announcements, and a virtual offering plate.

Do you love Ikea, and hate the golf pencils? A Eugene, Oregon-based developer has come out with SwedeShop. Our friends at Silicon Florist tell us it lets you keep track of your shopping, budget, and where to find the boxes in their warehouse. It’s free for a short time only.

Comic Book Contest

Your comic career could be up up and away! Amazon announced its latest competition - the search for the next comic strip artist.The winner will get a publishing contract, a $5000 advance, and a monthly stipend for 20 comic strips that will be considered for syndication.

Venture Capital News

Even though the economy is making it tough on tech startups, some companies are able to break through the bad-financial-news clutter.

Case in point: Bellevue-based Apptio, which makes decidedly un-sexy enterprise software that helps chief information officers manage their information technology spending.

Yeah i know, it’s not a cute iPhone app or Twitter, but it is a billion dollar market opportunity, and this week Apptio added two new venture capital firms to their existing backers for a second round funding total of $14 million.

CEO and founder Sunny Gupta told me that the money will help Apptio “hit the gas hard and build the next large enterprise software company.” To be more specific, he’ll add sales teams, marketers and also use to develop new products and services.

MySpace Likes iLike

If you like the music selection on MySpace’s iLike, there’s reason to like it even more. MySpace announced this week it has bought the Seattle company “iLike” for $20 million.

And there’s more.

iLike plans to expand its technology a bit more, getting into films and gaming. iLike will stay in Seattle, and the staff isn’t expected to affected.

Eggsprout Hatches To Public

It’s no longer in “test mode.”

Bellevue-based Eggsprout “sprouted” out to the public this week, allowing companies or groups to to better manage their members, events, and communications online.

The groups that already use it, and helped shape it, include Seattle Pacific Univeristy Career Center, Zillow’s Alumni Group, and a long list of others.

Big Company Tweeters

Last week it was social media and non-profits. This week, social media and big companies..

Earlier this week Social Media Club Seattle hosted a panel discussion on how Twitter, Facebook, blogs and forums are enhancing customer service for Starbucks, Alaska Airlines and Comcast.

Those full interviews can be found here.

Comcast sometimes learns about outages and troubles for its customers faster via Twitter than over the phone.

Starbucks is trying to recreate the real world coffee shop feel online. You have your regulars, you get suggestions, deal with complaints if you’re a barista, so why not use that model on Twitter?

Alaska Airlines ays Twitter allows the airline to do real-time updates of delays and cancellations, but in a more personal, one-to-one way and that’s the real value of social media for companies.

All three said their companies are not doing the social media thing as experiments; they are in it for the long haul.

[Thanks: http://www.nwcn.com]

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