Author Archives: Elena Slotosch

USM engineers launch Placetribe, a georeferenced place sharing app for Facebook

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With a pleasant visual environment and intuitive menus, this app enables users to create groups and share georeferenced information quickly and easily via the internet.

Placetribe is the name of the application that was recently released to the web by a team of engineers from the University of Santa Maria. As its name implies, it allows the creation of “tribes” (a term referring to the urban tribes) or microgroups with Facebook friends, with whom you can share all kinds of georeferenced information.

Its creators are Placetribe’s CEO Tomás Arredondo, PhD in Electric Engineering and professor of the Electronic Department of the Universidad Santa María, his brother Matías, Bachelor degree in business administration and the students of Electric Civil Engineering and Telematics Engineering: Gabriel Juri, Carlos Ibáñez, Fabrizio Cavaleiro and Pablo Bustos.

The first two founded Placetribe SPA, a company dedicated to the development of the application, which is now incubated in the USM 3IE Institute, after having received great feedback from family and friends. Continue reading →

Chile Inside supports entrepreneur ecosystem!

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Are you looking for an internship abroad? Do you want to learn Spanish and discover the world? Come to Chile and explore a whole new culture!

The good news: You don’t have to arrange everything yourself, because there is Chile Inside, founded in 2003 by German Marion Ruhland!

Chile Inside is an agency that promotes intercultural, linguistic and educational exchange programs. They arrange and manage personalized programs within Chile for a market of foreigners of all ages, professional backgrounds and from all countries. The most relevant services include Spanish Courses, Internships, Volunteer Work, Working Holiday, Farm Stay and the intermediation of Accommodations for foreign executives.

The cool thing is that whatever you want to experience in Chile will be organized especially for you! You tell the team of Chile Inside what you are looking for and they will do their best to make your dreams come true. Continue reading →

Vendly iPhone app now available!

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Sell and buy quickly and in the most convenient way possible? Check out Vendly!

After having been tested in a private beta test, it is now running as a public beta and is available in the Apple App Store and soon also on Google Play.

Being a simple mobile marketplace, Vendly enables you and your friends to easily sell and buy anything from eachother, but also from everyone else in the marketplace, your trusted community.

Create and share simple one-page stores for your vends in just a few seconds, just using your cell phone at any time.

 

Continue reading →

Corazón de Chileno – Educational robotics as a state policy!

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Last Friday, September 7th, the team of Robótica Educativa FRC “Corazón de Chileno®” met for a talk with the Chilean Minister of Economy, Pablo Longueira Montes who committed himself to implementing the “Robótica Educativa” (Educational Robotics) as a state policy.

This is due to the high value of this methodology for boosting innovation and national entrepreneurship within educational establishments, even more now with the upcoming year of innovation established by the government, as stated by President Piñera. Continue reading →

Mindscore, the composing revolution at Techcrunch Disrupt in SF!

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Are you a composer? A musician?

Even though I am not really a composer, I must admit that I have attempted to write (and actually did write) a piece of music for flute or piano a few times in my life.

But what do you do when you’re for example in the metro, or with some friends and all of a sudden you have that great tune or melody in your head and you are afraid for forgetting it before you get a chance to write it down?

No worries! Since there is Mindscore, you can compose your music whenever and wherever you want – without even having an instrument at hand! Continue reading →

Official launch ceremony of 3IE this Friday in Santiago!

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In order to deliver support to a greater number of entrepreneurs and innovators, one of the oldest incubators is being installed in Santiago de Chile.

And this one is called 3IE!

The International Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship 3IE of the Santa María University promotes and facilitates technological entrepreneurship through a system of innovation.

It grants their network of companies an environment that allows to strengthen entrepreneurs, from behavioral aspects to connecting with the world of business projects.

From the beginning on, 3IE emerged as a pioneering initiative of the Santa María University in the region and the country and during its 12 years of existence it has developed significant experience in the formation of technology based businesses, by now having alliances with major companies such as Microsoft, Intel or Startup Chile. Continue reading →

PlayVox revolutionizes the way call centers work!

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A few weeks ago I had to make a phone call to my bank to find out whether I would be charged extra when using my VISA card abroad, in Chile, to be precise. I ended up waiting for minutes in a line in some kind of call center. I was passed from one annoyed person to another and every time I had to explain my matter again.

Not cool!

The biggest problem is probably really that we don’t feel comfortable as a client in call centers, because we feel like the person at the other end of the line is  not skilled enough, little motivated and bored.

What can we do? Here’s the solution: PlayVox!

PlayVox is a people-centric call center platform developed by Arcaris, which was founded in 2011 by Oscar Giraldo, Systems Engineer from Manizales, Colombia, and Ariel Cordiviola and is so far operating in Chile, Argentina, Peru and Mexico.

From the beginning on, Arcaris was considered a global company, not only because the 7-members team comes from 5 different countries (US, France, Argentina, Chile and Colombia).

Arcaris believes that call centers are not at all about technology, but about people and that is why their platform PlayVox seeks to increase agents performance and happiness, reduce staff turnover and optimize contact center operations, ultimately resulting in more sales for his clients. Continue reading →

Edoome, an educational social network, is nailing it!

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Based in Chile, the startup Edoome aims at connecting teachers with their students to let them communicate, collaborate and share their educational content on an online platform.

Edoome is achieving success at a neck breaking speed after having won TNW’s Startup World competition (Santiago) and Techolab’s Applicate competition. They also celebrated a huge milestone by surpassing 12,000 fans on their Facebook page.

Very soon a huge pilot program with more than 24.000 chilean students will be launched! That is really exciting!

Continue reading →

Jump Chile – the first national university business competition

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With this new youth contest Jump Chile and its motto “Boosting your idea”, EmprendeUC made a huge leap!

After 5 successful versions of this contest, the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Chile, in cooperation with EmprendeUC and SURA Chile and presented by the newspaper El Mercurio, organized the contest “Jump Chile”, which aims at motivating all the young entrepreneurs (pre and post graduates) to apply their business ideas, thesis, researches and projects in categories such as applications and mobile, products and services, health, education and social entrepreneurship.

Last Monday Jump Chile was launched, among others with the presence of the Minister of Economy, Pablo Longueira, who in his speech stressed the necessity of competitions like that for our country and that this step towards innovation is so significant and necessary to achieve development. Continue reading →

VOZ: Chile’s native Mapuche weavers meets Stanford d.school

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Lots of people have beautiful ideas. Sometimes they even know how to implement their ideas.

But how are they going to share them with their friends or even a larger community of people, other countries and eventually the whole world?

 

How do you get started and connected with people?

Jasmine Aarons, product designer of the Institute of Design in Stanford, mastered this challenge and her startup called VOZ, which came to exist in Chile in 2011 is the proof that she succeeded.

In this startup, she started to help female Mapuche weavers in Chile to create a line of unique and competitive products at an international level, supporting them financially, creatively and personally! Continue reading →