InvoTek, an IA client based in Alma, recently received a grant from the Arkansas Science & Technology Authority to support FCC certification of the latest version of its Safe Laser System.

InvoTek is an R&D company that “improves the quality of life for people who find it difficult or impossible to use their hands by giving them new, efficient ways to access computers.” The Safe Laser System is an “easy-to-use, eye-safe laser pointer and specialized keyboard, now with a Bluetooth wireless interface” for people with special needs.

Tom Jakobs and his InvoTek crew open up new worlds, literally, to many people who otherwise would be severely limited in their ability to engage the outside world. Kudos, tips of the hat, standing O’s, [insert cheers of choice here] to them for the great work that they do.

This latest ASTA grant of $15,810 will help InvoTek secure FCC certification necessary to sell the Safe Laser System overseas and at places such as hospital ERs and ICUs.

InvoTek and its Safe Laser System are in the ASTA Spotlight this week:

University of Arkansas startups HomeDx and Picasolar represent “highly scalable, investable deals,” according to IA advisor Jeff Amerine.

(Despite what some Tri-State judges may think.)

Amerine knows something about startup ventures. He provides his take below on the two ventures after HomeDx’s second-place Tri-State finish and Picasolar’s unexpected miss in Las Vegas. Also shut out were Arkansas undergrad representatives Catch-22 from UALR and eScout from Ouachita.

Of course, just qualifying for the 2013 Donald W. Reynolds Tri-State Governor’s Cup represents a win. Literally, a win in the Arkansas Governor’s Cup at which all four startups placed in the top two on the graduate and undergraduate levels.

And Picasolar, in particular, has had a pretty good 2013 run.

UA teams led by faculty advisor Carol Reeves had long since earned the school a reputation as a national force on the business-plan competition circuit. Still, many back home thought an Arkansas sweep in Vegas was possible.

So, Jeff, what did you take away from Tri-State?

Well, one thing is for sure. ALL of Carol’s team’s kicked butt again this year all over the country. They all had big wins (like at MIT) and they had some head-scratching disappointments, but all-in-all it was another unbelievably fantastic year for Carol’s graduate companies.

HomeDX is deserving of all the accolades they get.  It is a great team, with financing in hand and exclusively licensed IP that solves a real problem in a huge and growing retail health-care space.  Their over-the-counter diagnostic solution fills in a really interesting category and their approach can play a significant part in reducing clinic visits and providing valuable medical screening information in a very affordable way. These are the kind of technologies that can reduce health-care costs.

So that said, I wasn’t surprised at HomeDX getting 2^nd Place at the Tri-State.  I will say that I can’t imagine what teams were better in that competition than HomeDX and Picasolar because both companies are highly scalable, investable deals in my judgment.

Regarding what the judges do or don’t think and who wins or doesn’t, every competition is different and the judges all bring the color of their background and biases to the game. Just like the old Iron Curtain judges did in Olympic ice skating back during the Cold War. [Editor's note: Nice...]

I think this year’s varied results from all across the country say only one thing – great companies are launched and nurtured in the Arkansas ecosystem and Carol’s program has been instrumental in blazing that trail.  The legend of Carol grows!

IA client Aaron Stahl hit onto something really very clever with Job Shadow, which provides first-hand accounts and “job shadows” of real people in real jobs.

It’s part education, part revelation, part entertainment.

Aside from being there in person, Stahl’s job shadows offer the best way to learn about a specific job or profession. They go into lots of detail including how much one can expect to make in a particular field. The subjects don’t hold back — they provide the nitty gritty about their jobs, good and bad.

Stahl, whose “day job” is president of P3 Waste Consulting (yes, he interviewed himself), is up to about 400 interviews on the site now, about 30 from Arkansas. He’s interviewed everyone from neurosurgeons to roughnecks. (His profile of an oil derrickman in North Dakota is fascinating.)

It’s a very informative site, and Stahl promises that big things are ahead for it.

We profiled his Fayetteville-based startup for Arkansas Business last summer.

His subjects include some IA clients — we love the client-on-client interaction — and prominent folks in the Arkansas startup scene. We’re gonna start sharing some of them in this space, beginning today.

Check out the Job Shadow profile of Rick West with IA client Field Agent here. In a nutshell, Field Agent provides mobile crowdsourcing. Here’s an excerpt:

How much time off do you get or take?

I am blessed to have a great family to support me.  Net – Family comes before work.  This being said, when you are in a start-up, your family is integrated into your work life as well.

So I take time when I need it, but I am never far away from my iPhone, iPad or Mac Book…

When I take a week of vacation, I manage my time to ensure that I have quality uninterrupted time with my family during the day and then get back into work early morning and late evenings.

What is a common misconception people have about what you or your company do?

They think that we were two guys in a basement who developed an app.  We are the opposite – we are business professionals that created a solution for the Industry and used technology  (iPhone app) to deliver the solution.

What are your goals/dreams for the future?

Picture a day when a business professional is able to get information from any country in the world without ever having to leave their office.

IA client firm StackSearch of Fayetteville has launched Qbox.io, a search feature for developers.

StackSearch provides e-commerce search features, and, you may recall, is not only an ARK Challenge alum but an ARK Challenge winner.

We’ll let the StackSearch crew take it from here:

STACKSEARCH LAUNCHES QBOX SEARCH-AS-A-SERVICE

New Search-as-a-Service for Developers Now Available

Fayetteville, AR – May 20, 2013 – StackSearch, Inc. today announced the availability of Qbox.io search-as-a-service.  Qbox, available via a tiered monthly subscription model, was built “by developers, for developers” and empowers developers to incorporate supported and fully managed ElasticSearch indexes into their apps without having to worry about the hassle of installing, maintaining, and scaling on-premise search infrastructure.

In introducing Qbox, StackSearch CTO and co-founder Sloan Ahrens said that the letter “q” in the Qbox brand stands for the standard html search form syntax.  He continued, “In roughly four years, ElasticSearch has become the standard, leading-edge open standard for fast search applications.  We’ve built a horizontally clustered, auto-scaling, auto-healing instance of ElasticSearch servers on the Rackspace cloud that can handle billions of rows of data before breaking a sweat, and if it did start breaking a sweat, we would just add a few more nodes.”

Mark Brandon, co-founder and CEO of StackSearch, added to Ahrens’ technical explanation and said, “What ObjectRocket is to MongoDB, or Cloudant is to CouchDB, Qbox will be for the ElasticSearch ecosystem.”  Qbox is appropriate for any application that needs to be searchable, filterable, scalable, and fast.  Brandon said that using Qbox enables developers to shave weeks off development time by eliminating the learning curve associated with maintaining an ElasticSearch cluster.

Search has been crucial to data-centric applications since the dawn of computing.  However, in the last few years, the sheer scale of data produced overwhelms traditional relational database (RDBMS) solutions.  “Meanwhile, the class of technologies known as NoSQL attempt to address RDBMS shortcomings.  They are great at storing, persisting, and mapping large data sets but leave something to be desired for search functionality,” Brandon said.  “This is where ElasticSearch comes in.  It is often used in conjunction with, and sometimes in place of, these other transformative technologies to create the fastest and most feature-rich search experience available.”

Leading market research provider Gartner announced in late 2012 that “big data” is driving rapid changes in infrastructure, with $29B in 2013 and $44B in 2016 spent on IT services spending related to search and using big data.  Brandon said we have only seen the tip of the iceberg with the explosion in data.  “Emerging contextual technologies like self-driving cars and wearable computing will make today’s flood of data seem like a trickle in a few years.”

About StackSearch, Inc.:  StackSearch, founded in 2012, is based in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  It provides search-as-a-service via middleware that is always “searchable, scalable, filterable, and brilliantly fast.”  StackSearch’s foundational service is Qbox, and the company also provides a product-search-as-a-service application for e-commerce merchants.