We’ve partnered with trusted third party data providers to give you access to business contact information that can include title, department, company name, direct phone number, company phone number, company address, company industry, and estimated company revenue. When you hit the Person endpoint it will return a response to tell you if more business contact information is available. You then have the option to invoke the Enhanced Contact endpoint and retrieve the data for $0.20 per record.

Our standard plans still include the social media profiles and publicly available information we have always provided; now you also have the ability to add premium business contact information. The ability to purchase the premium business contact information is only available for our business plan users. All user’s API keys will let you know in the response when premium business contact information is available so that you know when you might be missing out.

Turn your partial and incomplete business contacts into full contacts. Try out the Enhanced Contact endpoint today!

UserVoice provides easy, modern, web-based customer service tools, including a feedback forum and help desk. Their goal is to make it easy and even pleasant to do customer service. UserVoice has 90,000 signups in over 40 countries, so they must be doing something right.

UserVoice’s latest feature, “Inspector,” falls right in line with the goal of making customer service easier. Inspector is a sidebar that brings you contextual information about the person you are trying to help. Context is huge in customer service. If you don’t know what your sales team has previously said to a customer, the problems the customer has already reported, or any personal information beyond their name and email address, it is going to be a lot harder to help them.

Inspector pulls in all the information you might want to know about the customer to whom you are speaking: title, company, social networks, recent tweets (including any about your company), CRM data, recent support issues, and more. And, because Inspector is powered by the FullContact API, this content appears within about five seconds. Here’s how UserVoice compares this speed to traditional methods:

“The FullContact API was crucial to this feature,” UserVoice’s CEO, Richard White, told us.  We are glad to have helped, and we are very pleased to see how Inspector uses our API to solve a challenging problem.

If you need some great customer service help desk software, give UserVoice a look, and check out the FullContact API to see how you can integrate our information into your product.  You can try our API for free, and our paid plans start at just $19 per month.  It’s a small price to pay to get a lot more context about your customers and users.

Then SEOMoz goes and does this…  a handful of funny internet memes about their Series B round…

… and totally redeems the concept of a press release!  

Okay, maybe they didn’t save the genre, but it makes you want to keep scrolling down and reading, and it gives you a positive impression of their sense of humor, doesn’t it? We’d like to see more of this.

SEOMoz’s announcement involves a recent $18 million Series B round, spearheaded by Foundry Group in Boulder, CO.  Ignition Partners in Bellevue, Wash, was also involved. Their full writeup in their blog is remarkably transparent and honest. It’s good reading for anyone working at a startup.

Well played, SEOMoz. Well played. Consider yourselves “shouted out.”

One of our exciting customers, KickoffLabs, recently wrote a post touching on several key points about the “magic” of contact data – powered by  FullContact.  To elaborate, here are some key takeaways about why having good contact information is so important for your product:

1.)  Contact data makes your software seem much smarter.  Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote in the third of his three laws that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  So KickoffLabs is correct when they refer to our contact data as “magic” . . . because that’s exactly how it appears to users.  As with any good magic trick, though, the results come from an intricate and well-executed series of non-magical tasks.  There’s nothing spooky going on.  We quickly pull publicly-available information about your contacts, undertake some high level math and statistics to clean up and verify the information, and then push the results back to you.  Plus, like any good magic trick, it happens so quickly that you focus on the beauty of the results, not the underlying mechanics.

2.)  Contact information makes customer signups easier.  KickoffLabs makes the point that, when you have good contact information, you no longer have to ask users for “twenty pieces of data that they are going to lie about anyway.”  How often have we all gone to a website or started to download an app, only to stop due to an overly-complicated signup form?  Nobody wants to spend five minutes inputting their address, age, etc., even if it is useful for the company.  With our API, all you have to do is ask your prospective customers for their name and email (or social handle).  End result: you won’t piss off your users by asking for it, or incite them to lie, so you get more signups and accurate customer information.

3.)  Contact information helps you discover influential users.   If you were responding to a customer service request or routine email, or maybe checking out names for new users, would you want to know that the person on the other end has a ridiculously high Klout score or thousands of Twitter followers?  Of course you would.  Based on our API’s results, you can filter your users to find the most influential ones (or the ones that fit a certain profile) using all the different pieces of information we can pull.  Then you can ensure that these customers get the attention they deserve.

To boot, our API is cheap.  You can signup for a free trial, and paid plans start at just $19 a month.  It’s a very easy way to make your software seem smarter, boost your signups, and improve your customer service.

This past week I traveled to Kansas City, Missouri, to participate in Startup Weekend Kansas City. This is the 5th Startup Weekend to take place here. The event was held at the chamber of commerce offices in Union Station, a historic train station located in the Crown Center section of the city.

Like all Startup Weekends, people pitched their ideas on Friday night, teams were formed, and we worked like mad-men for 54 hours. I decided to work with LinkMinded, an invite only community for entrepreneurs, innovators and idea-havers. We were joined by a super-talented team of Python programmers, which allowed Josh, the creator, to focus on the design, presentation, and overall vision, the developers to work on backend code and architecture, and me to work almost exclusively on front-end code and UI.

The Teams

In addition to LinkMinded, 10 other teams were formed. Here’s a brief overview of  the teams and their ideas.

Link Minded

LinkMinded is an invite-only social network for developers and designers to discover each other, collaborate, and co-create. The site provides a meeting place where like minded people can form a team and bring ideas to life. During Startup Weekend this team designed and built a functioning version of the site using a combination of Python, Django, Heroku, MongoDB, SendGrid, and the FullContact API. Follow them on Twitter at @LinkMinded.

Lunch With Me

Lunch With Me is the simplest way to share what you’re doing for lunch. This super-simple mobile app hopes to socialize the lunch experience by helping people find others to meet for lunch and locations to meet at. During Startup Weekend, the team changed their name to LunchUp, launched their website, and built a functional prototype to showcase their app.

Get Paid

Get Paid started out as a mobile wallet app. This team changed their name and idea to Gruple, a web and mobile app to facilitate group payments. The app is ideal for situations where multiple people are paying for an item or event, but one person is managing the payment. Follow them on Twitter at @GrupleCo.

Kiln

Kiln became DivShot, a tool for rapid web application prototyping. With Divshot, you can quickly design a visual prototype of your web app, then export re-usable, developer-friendly HTML and CSS. Follow them on Twitter at @Divshot.

Keyzio

Keyzio is a location-based iPhone app that helps you buy houses that may not be for sale. The app let’s you pin the location of the house you wish you buy, the homeowner then gets a postcard in the mail, with a request to buy their house. The app will be monetized as a lead-generation source for real estate brokers and agents.

Home Made Food

Home Made Food enhances the cooking experience by using technology to create a companion chef. Most recipe sites have no quality or focus. Home Made Food is focused on providing premium quality, paid content, from top chefs around the world. Follow them on Twitter at @HomeMade_Foods.

Tut Hopper

Tut Hopper teaches kids the fundamentals of programming and systems architecture, through fun, interactive online games. Follow them on Twitter at @tuthopper.

Notifire

Notifier is a broadcast notification service that makes sending phone, text, and social media notifications to large groups of people, easier than ever. Notifier is ideal for time-sensitive information. During Startup Weekend this team used the Twilio API to create a working prototype of their service.

Out Of The Trash

Out Of The Trash is a mobile app that encourages and rewards recycling electronics. The goal of the app is to make it as easy as possible for people to recycle. This team worked on their business plan and presented a detailed prototype of how the app would work.

Change Stations

Change Stations is a location-based mobile app that makes is easier for parents to find baby changing stations, wherever they’re at. The app uses the mobile device location, coupled with a database of change-station locations, to help parents pin-point the nearest changing station.

Pick a peer

Pick a Peer started out as peer support for mental health. This team believes that peer support is the most effective mental health intervention. During Startup Weekend, the team worked on their website, and in the process changed their name to Connect Power.

Summary

Startup Weekend is like a magnet that brings the smartest, highly-motivated entrepreneurs in any given city together, to collaborate and co-create. There’s a creative energy that I’ve felt at every Startup Weekend I’ve attended, and it’s contagious. But don’t take my word for it, visit the official Startup Weekend schedule and find the next event in your city.

We’ve previously written about how Contactually can help you manage your inbox, but, in this case, the task is more about ensuring you have a good list of complete contacts to begin with. Scrubbing your contact list is an invaluable task, but what happens when your marketing contact list is thousands of emails long?  Or even when your personal contact list has several hundred or more contacts and you don’t want to take the time to clean it out?

That’s where we come in.

Scrubbing email contact lists is our wheelhouse. In short time, our API and iOS app do what a team of humans could do in thousands of hours of painstaking research. Plus, our technology does a lot of identity resolution, verification, and high-level math that a human can’t do. The end result is that you will have a complete list of full contacts, including additional public information that you didn’t have in the first place, such as Facebook URLs and Twitter handles. Then you can take HubSpot’s other advice and work your marketing magic, or use your new complete contact list to improve your networking.

Check out our API pricing, starting at just $19 a month. You can also download our iOS app for free.

Companies

Pivotal Labs

Their featured product, Pivotal Tracker, is an agile planning tool for projects. We use it pretty heavily in our development here at FullContact. They also provide consumer web, mobile, and enterprise products. When we first started using Pivotal Tracker, they sent one of their top guys down to train our entire team, tell us about key features, and answer all our questions. It was a great example of effective customer training. Follow them on Twitter at @PivotalLabs.

Brightnest

Brightnest (still in Beta) is a web app that provides users with customized tips, weekly reminders, and instructions on home care. After you sign up, you are asked to answer a few questions that allow Brightnest to create an electronic owner’s manual for your home and send you relevant weekly task suggestions. I’m using it because I need reminders to do simple maintenance like change my HVAC filter. Follow them on Twitter at @Brightnest.

NextGreatPlace

NextGreatPlace operates a private, members-only travel club, along with an exclusive, vetted network of villas and activities in awesome places. NextGreatPlace has some impressive vacation plans for those who want to travel the world in a more exclusive and less annoying way than using Orbitz or Travelocity, or even a traditional travel agent. When Facebook buys my old futon for $30k, I’m signing up for this. Follow them on Twitter at @NextGreatPlace.

Ping Identity

Ping Identity provides cloud identity security solutions to a host of large businesses, including 42 of the Fortune 100. For example, eliminating passwords to private and public apps in favor of a single point of access for employees. Ping has gotten a lot of press in the identity security world, particularly as companies move toward enterprise configurations where employees can log in from personal and mobile devices. Follow them on Twitter at @PingIdentity.

ReadyTalk

ReadyTalk provides easy-to-use audio and web conferencing services for meetings and webinars. Having used their audio services for meetings, I can attest that it is one of the simpler audio interfaces you’ll encounter, unlike your insurance company or bank. They also recently launched an iPad application, Quick Launcher and Outlook integration, and have received some press for being a great place to work. Follow them on Twitter at @ReadyTalk.

Events

Boulder/Denver New Tech Meetup

Tonight, April 19th, 2012 7:00 PM at MapQuest, 1555 Blake St, 3rd Floor, Denver.

HTML 5 Denver User’s Group

April 23, 6:00 PM at Casselman’s, 2620 Walnut St., Denver.

Denver Drupal User’s Group Meetup

April 24, 6:30 PM at Open Media Foundation, 700 Kalamath, Denver.

Denver Founder’s Network

April 25, 5:30 PM at Next Great Place. Networking starts at 5:30; Q&A starts at 6. Located at Uncubed, 2762 Walnut Street, Denver, CO.

Denver Web Technologies Meetup

April 25, 7:00 PM at The Ginn Mill, 2041 Larimer St, Denver.

This is the first post in an ongoing series about local Denver tech companies and events. If there are any companies or events we should know about please email us with your suggestions, and check back soon for the next installment.

Sound familiar?

Like your grandmother’s basement, wouldn’t it be great if someone sorted through your inbox automatically and reminded you of the valuable stuff? Like a digital version of Antiques Roadshow, except you don’t have to dig up the items yourself? That’s similar to what Contactually does for your email.

After you sign up for a free subscription, Contactually processes your email account to identify your important contacts, using cues like how quickly you respond to the person. You can manually organize your contacts into groups, called “buckets,” through a quick and surprisingly engaging bucket game. Contactually then sends you an email every morning and afternoon to remind you to follow up with important contacts. In the emails, you can click a button and type in natural language how you want to respond, such as “follow-up tomorrow.” You can also use the Contactually dashboard to analyze your communication metrics, such as your most frequent correspondents and the days of the week when you email the most. Those metrics are enlightening, to say the least.

Since I started using Contactually, I’ve had several “Wow, I forgot about that guy” moments that helped me improve my networking and relationship management. I’ve also picked up contact with a few close friends who I hadn’t talked to in a while, and I gained some serious insight about my email communication habits and patterns. Basically, my inbox got a lot smarter and transparent.

One of the best parts is that Contactually connects directly to your email account, without the need for browser plug-ins or other software. For business users, Contactually syncs with Salesforce or Highrise CRMs, and is part of the growing family of apps that use the FullContact API to provide rich contact information for users.

Check it out. It may very well remind you to email someone from your past who could help you get your next sale, or your next job.

We’ve partnered with CloudSpokes, the leader in cloud programming challenges, to create our second developer challenge. Check out the official challenge requirements, develop a Ruby Wrapper Library for the FullContact APIs, and submit your entry before April 16th, 2012, for your chance to win.

Challenge Requirements

The purpose of this library is to make working with the FullContact APIs as enjoyable as possible for Ruby developers. A developer should be able to install your library, configure their apiKey, and begin using the FullContact methods easily and quickly, without having to write any boilerplate code to interface with the API.

We have a current version of our Ruby library up at the FullContact Github repo. You can use this as your starting point, or you can start from scratch and design your own library from the ground up. The current version of our Ruby library only implements the Person methods. We’d like your library to provide an interface for every single API method FullContact provides, including the following:

• Person
  • Lookup by Email
  • Lookup by Twitter
  • Lookup by Phone
  • Lookup by Facebook
  • *Webhook method for all lookups (see webhookUrl/webhookId)
• Cloud Address Book
  • User
    • Authenticate
  • Contact List
    • Create
    • Delete
    • List of Lists
    • List of Contacts
    • Queue for Enrichment
    • Clear List
  • Contact
    • Create or Modify
    • Get Contact
    • Delete Contact
    • Has Updates
    • Get Updates
    • Gets Saved or Enriched
    • History
  • Snapshot
    • Create Snapshot
    • List Snapshots
  • Subscription
    • Create Subscription
    • List Subscription
    • Delete Subscription
• Name
  • Name Normalization
  • Name Deducer
  • Name Similarity
  • Name Stats
  • Name Parser
• Icon
• Provisioning
• Batch Process

Because other programmers will be working with your code, and incorporating it into their projects, all functions must be documented in detail in the code. We also require that all of your code is test covered. Remember, we’re judging this competition not just on the code, but also on the quality of the documentation, test coverage, and ease of use.

Submission Details

Upload a zip file containing your local Git repository of all of your source code and documentation. Include a readme.txt file with a basic overview of your Ruby library, usage instructions, and any other pertinent information we should take into consideration during judging. Your submission will be judged by a panel of peers based upon this criteria.

Additional Info

All of the FullContact APIs are documented in detail in the FullContact API Documentation. Sign up for a free API key to start testing your code immediately (*The Person method is a paid endpoint, and is limited to 250 matches per month on our free plan. If you hit your limit, please email robbie@fullcontact.com).

We’ll judge the entries and announce the winner on April 25th. First place will receive a $750 cash prize, second place will get $250.