Mindgrub Technologies releases latest mobile game Grouper [Startup Roundup]

This is the Startup Roundup. Every Wednesday morning, Technically Baltimore will put together the smaller pieces that make up our startup ecosystem. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

who’s getting funded?

BandHappy, based in Owings Mills, has raised $160,000 in debt of an offered $330,000, according to SEC filings. The startup is a web-based platform that facilitates music lessons online between professional musicians and students. Technically Baltimore reported on BandHappy in July 2012.
Lotame Solutions, Inc., based in Columbia, received a $5.5 million loan from Connecticut-based Horizon Technology Finance Corp. Lotame, with offices in New York as well, sells a data-management platform to publishers and marketing firms. It plans to use the loan “to strengthen its global initiatives and hire new employees on its sales, technology and executive teams,” according to the Baltimore Sun.

who’s making moves?

Mindgrub Technologies has released Grouper, its latest mobile game. Up to five players compete against each other to position labeled tiles onto corresponding locations on a board (think Battleship meets Tetris), blocking your opponents in the process from getting rid of all their game tiles. As of right now, Grouper is waiting on iOS approval, but is live for Android and the Amazon Kindle. Technically Baltimore first reported about Mindgrub Technologies in September 2012.
Digital Harbor Foundation has rebranded its STEM Core Digital Fabrication Challenge. Now called Fab SLAM, DHF will reveal the “challenge topic” for high school students during a kick-off event on April 5. Teams of Baltimore city high school students will have until May 30 to use a combination of CAD and 3D printing techniques to meet the challenge requirements. Final projects will be judged by a panel during the Fab SLAM closing event May 30. Technically Baltimore first reported about STEM Core in March 2013.
As Technically Baltimore reported yesterday, the Wikiweb app developed by Friends of The Web was a Starbucks App Pick of the Week, but the promotion extended far beyond the reach of a lone Starbucks shop in Salisbury, Md. While FoTW doesn’t know the exact number of stores that ran the promotion, which was live the last week of March, Wikiweb promotional cards were distributed to Starbucks stores nationwide and in Canada. FoTW cofounder Andy Mangold said Starbucks contacted them in early December about running the Wikiweb promotion. “We want to make things that people use and have in their lives and think are cool,” he said of Wikiweb. “We thought it’d be a good time to get [Wikiweb] in the hands of more people.” Technically Baltimore first reported on Wikiweb in July 2012.