Christopher V. Sherman's blog

Capital Factory Invests in Five Startups for 2009 Fund

I'm a mentor and investor in Capital Factory, an early stage technology incubator in Austin, Texas. I thought you might be interested to know about the 5 companies we just invested in and will be working with closely over the summer. At the end of the summer we'll be hosting a Demo Day where the companies will present what they have accomplished to investors, the press, and the world. I hope you'll consider attending!

Investments:
• Cubit Planning - Environmental reports at the click of a button
• FamiGo - Mobile games that bring the family together
• Homstie - Person-to-person marketplace for storage space
• Hourville - A marketplace for services by the hour
• petzMD - Website for Pet Health, from A to Z

Full press release after the jump.

Time Warner Cable “will shelve plans for a tiered pricing system for Internet use.”

Time Warner Cable, which last month announced plans to expand its metered broadband trials to four more cities, today backed away from its controversial efforts to price broadband based on consumption, including in the city of Rochester, N.Y., according to a local television station. Rochester’s ABC affiliate reports that Sen. Charles Schumer of New York spoke with Time Warner Cable and convinced the company to stop using Rochester as a test market. Austin, Beaumont and San Antonio, Texas, as well as Greensboro, N.C. will also be spared metering. more here from Stacey

Time Warner To Meter Broadband in Austin - Meeting Tonight @ City Hall @ 6:30pm

Time Warner Cable expanded its efforts to bring tiered broadband out of the town of Beaumont, Texas and is bringing it Austin, according to BusinessWeek.  This is a bad thing for Austin.

Time Warner will monitor downloads starting in April but the actual metered billing in San Antonio and Austin, Texas, will begin in September, reports Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOm.  Time Warner Cable Says It Singled Out Austin's Geeks.

According to TWC spokesman Jeff Simmermon, in Stacey's article, Austin’s dedication to all things digital was precisely why it was chosen as one of four cities where the company plans to trial consumption-based broadband plans, which range from 5 GB to 40 GB per month (TWC says it has plans for a 100 GB-per-month tier as well). "Austin is a passionate and tech-savvy city, and the spirit that we’re approaching this (metered broadband) test with is that if it’s going to work, it has to work in a tech-savvy market where the use patterns are different," he told Higginbotham.

Chip Rosenthal, one of seven commissioners on the City of Austin's Technology and Telecommunications Commission (a strictly advisory body), hopes that concerned citizens will show up at the meeting it's holding at City Hall today, Wednesday April, 8th at 6:30pm and talk about metered broadband. He wants to get the metered bandwidth issue added to the agenda of the commission’s May meeting as well.

If you are in the neighborhood stop by City Hall and voice your opinion:

Today Wednesday April, 8th at 6:30pm
Technology and Telecommunications Commission
City Hall - 301 W. Second Street - Room 1101 -

Chris