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Venture capital database CB Insights has published its 2014 Global Tech Exits Report, which documents the number of startups that exited, that is, went public or were acquired, last year. As it did in 2013, New York came in second among U.S. states with 158 exits, behind only perennial leader California, which recorded 523. The Empire State warded off third-place Massachusetts, with 113.

New York's biggest exit was loan financing platform OnDeck, which went public on December 17 and raised $200 million, being valued at approximately $1.3 billion. Other significant deals were the acquisition of mobile and tablet retargeting company TapCommerce by Twitter and the IPO of digital media company Everyday Health, each worth about $100 million.

Prospects are good for the market to stay active in 2015, starting with the IPO of popular crafts e-commerce site Etsy, which is expected to raise about $300 million sometime during the first quarter. Funding has been increasing for established companies and the number of startups that are being valued at or above $1 billion is also on the rise.

"There are a lot more high-value startups now, and with that we could see an increasing number of venture-capital-backed exits, and bigger exits than we've seen before," said CB Insights analyst Michael Dempsey. "Two years ago, [the $1.1 billion sale of ] Tumblr was a big moment for New York. I think you're going to be seeing that a lot more frequently moving forward."

While California will continue to dominate the tech landscape in the near future, states like Massachusetts and New York have developed environments in which software developing companies can thrive and find major financial success.

The Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development has published its latest report on the state's employment data. In December, Massachusetts added nearly 11,000 jobs, making a total of 60,900 new jobs in 2014, the fifth straight year of job growth, and about 200,000 since the end of the Great Recession. Over the course of last year, the unemployment rate fell from 7.1 percent to 5.5 percent, the lowest since August 2008.

As The Boston Globe notes, the tech industry, along with biotechnology and life sciences, helped Massachusetts emerge from the recession before many other states. According to the Office of Labor, the professional, scientific and business services industry added almost 13,000 jobs in 2014, behind only education and health services.

"Today's jobs report shows progress as the Commonwealth continues to reduce unemployment, but there is still much work to be done," said Governor Charlie Baker, who will be looking to build on these strong numbers after taking office this month. "Our Administration is committed to closing our state's deficit and focusing on meaningful steps to improve employment opportunities for everyone everywhere, especially veterans returning home, students entering the workforce, and those living in regions of our state still waiting for economic recovery."

Recent developments show that state officials are relying on the IT sector to provide a further boost to the regional economy. So far in 2015, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh has announced the creation of a startup portal for the city and a bill has been introduced in the General Court to promote collaboration between companies and municipalities. Massachusetts software developing companies should see their prospects improve in the coming months.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based cloud services provider Akamai Technologies has released its latest State of the Internet report for the third quarter of 2014. The report provides valuable data on global and national broadband speeds, and this most recent edition brings very good news for the state of Connecticut.

According to Akamai's study, Connecticut's peak speeds jumped 25 percent in Q3, more than those of any other state, to 71 megabits per second. That puts it in second place in the United States, behind only Delaware at 75.7. The U.S. average is just 48.8 Mbps, dragged down by many rural states. Connecticut's 71 Mbps make it slower than just three countries: Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea.

Rounding out the top five states are Massachusetts (63.7 Mbps), Washington (62.6) and Virginia (61.8), with the District of Columbia at 63.1. Forty-seven states increased their speed in Q3, the exceptions being Kentucky, tied for slowest in the nation, and New Hampshire and Oregon, which are in the middle of the pack. Akamai says that average peak speeds reflect a territory's capacity better than simply average speeds.

"This is yet another measure in which Connecticut doesn't just compete with our fellow states when it comes to internet speed — it blows away the competition," said Connecticut Senate majority leader Bob Duff to The Daily Voice. "This is a home run for Connecticut, and the kind of news that both individuals and small businesses can really get excited about."

A growing number of state and local governments are realizing that fast internet speeds are a necessity for their businesses to thrive. Connecticut FileMaker developer Kyo Logic can help local companies grow through the development of customized databases and business apps.

The Massachusetts Legislative Tech Hub Caucus has finalized plans to introduce a so-called "Innovative Communities" bill to the Massachusetts General Court. The Caucus is co-chaired by State Senator Karen Spilka and Representative Ann-Margaret Ferrante. The bill, which Spilka introduced in the Senate on Friday, aims to connect the state's cities and towns with emerging technologies developed by Massachusetts companies.

Spilka met with members of the tech community following her re-election last November. At the meeting, a panel of judges that included iRobot CEO Colin Angle picked the idea for the bill in a contest modeled after startup pitch competitions. Industry insiders complained that startups often struggle to secure contracts with local councils.

"The process is lengthy and hard for them to understand," agreed Spilka. "We're trying to be innovative and creative. We're sending a message to the startup and tech community that Massachusetts is a welcoming place to do business."

This has turned out to be something of a momentous week for the Massachusetts IT community. During Tuesday's state of the city address, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh announced the creation of StartHub, a startup portal to help entrepreneurs connect with the city and with each other. The city will soon begin the search for its "startup czar," who will be in charge of city-community relations, according to Mayor Walsh's chief of staff.

With the Innovative Communities bill, the Tech Hub Caucus hopes to boost both technological adoption among municipalities and growth opportunities for the state's software developing companies. By bringing private initiatives and public funding together, the Massachusetts tech scene can remain a leader on the national stage.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh delivered his first State of the City address on Tuesday, focusing largely on education and housing. Among his other announcements was one of great interest to the Massachusetts tech sector: the launch of StartHub, a regional platform to encourage entrepreneurship. Mayor Walsh said the project would include the naming of a full-time "startup czar" to guide its policies.

There are still very few details on this initiative, but members of the tech community welcomed the news. Walsh's chief of staff, Dan Koh, told BetaBoston that StartHub is the result of a series of roundtables the mayor has held with tech CEOs, venture capitalists and accelerators. Many complained that companies were not getting enough assistance from city officials.

"I think this is a big move by the city and has the potential to benefit the startup community if done right," said HourlyNerd CEO Patrick Petitti, whose website allows companies to hire MBA candidates and graduates part-time. "Without knowing the job description, I would imagine and hope that he or she will act as a conduit between the community and the city, engaging with entrepreneurs to understand needs and challenges."

As this blog reported at the time, New York City already launched a portal, Digital.NYC, in October, to help entrepreneurs connect with investors and with each other and assist IT professionals in finding work. Los Angeles also has a similar project in place to liaise with its tech community.

While this initiative has barely gotten off the ground, entrepreneurs and city leaders hope that in areas like software development Boston will be able to maintain the standard of its world-class universities.

Early-stage investment fund Connecticut Innovations (CI) has announced that it supported 100 tech startups throughout the state during the 2014 calendar year, providing tens of millions of dollars to companies in various areas. CI was created in 1989 by the Connecticut General Assembly to boost the development of the state's private IT sector. The agency provides capital and loans to businesses that show promise.

In 2014, CI directly invested $20.2 million in 44 bioscience, clean energy, financial tech and IT startups, helping them attract an additional $61.8 million in angel investments and venture capital from other sources. Thirty-two of them had previously received funding from CI and were selected for their potential for future growth. Twenty-two others received $15 million in loans from CI and $37.4 million more from banks.

The agency also provided $32.4 million in tax-exempt funding to nine companies through its Specialty Finance Group, nearly $4 million to bioscience projects, $2.4 million to funding partners and $216,000 to 21 startups through the Entrepreneur Innovation Awards.

"Increased CI investment levels and entrepreneurial community building efforts of the past several years have created incredible momentum, spurring the growth and development of young companies in Connecticut," said CEO Claire Leonardi. "In particular, we look forward to more commercialization and company spinouts from our universities, which has been a focus here at CI."

Initiatives like CI that bring together private and public funding to promote innovation are the best way to ensure that Connecticut is able to hold its own in America's tech scene in the years to come. Biosciences, energy and software developing companies can all benefit from the opportunities that these funds provide.

The Connecticut State Department of Education is taking a hands-on role in the development of the state's technology workforce by promoting IT training in schools. Most recently, the Department announced the second round of a funding program to furnish schools with computers and expand their bandwidth. As part of this second round, $10 million will be distributed throughout the state.

The funding is related to the implementation of the Common Core State Standards Initiative in Connecticut, which features periodical computer-adapted tests to keep close track of students' progress in English and math over the course of their school years. Connecticut is a member of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, whose exams replace the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) for grades 3–8 and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) for grade 10 in the 2014–15 school year.

The program kicked off in July 2013 with $24 million, which was awarded to 128 schools. Interested districts can apply until February 13, and funding will be distributed to qualified applicants according to town wealth.

The Connecticut Technology Council (CTC) has stressed the importance of education in order to ensure that the state can compete on a national and even a global scale. According to a CTC survey, demand for IT workers will exceed supply in 2015, and there is concern that this could drive companies to move to states with more available qualified employees.

Connecticut will need more initiatives like this one to continue developing its tech workforce and become a hub for software developing companies in its own right. Local managed IT services providers can help companies keep pace with the latest technological innovations to drive their business goals forward.

Thank you to everyone who attended our webinar, Design Awesome Applications with FileMaker Themes, presented by John Mathewson, Kyo Logic.

If you missed the webinar, or would like to review it again, the video is posted below.

In this session, John Mathewson, President of Kyo Logic, explained how to use themes and styles to customize your application and take advantage of this new FileMaker architecture. John explained why solutions based on themes and styles will significantly outperform solutions based on free-form customization. The session was filled with practical tips, how-to guidelines, and under-the-hood explanations of why using themes and styles will improve solution performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quC0HbF1DhI

2014 was a big year for New York City's tech sector. As the Gotham Gazette points out, there was a fair degree of uncertainty when Mayor Bill de Blasio took office on New Year's Day, largely due to his own admitted lack of IT knowledge. However, as 2015 comes around, the city's tech companies find themselves with more growth opportunities than ever before.

While de Blasio's predecessor Michael Bloomberg undoubtedly laid a very solid foundation, the new mayor has built on that and successfully expanded the tech industry beyond the borough of Manhattan. The Brooklyn neighborhood of Dumbo, for instance, is now home to 500 IT firms employing over 10,000 people. De Blasio's office also launched Digital.NYC, an online portal that helps entrepreneurs and tech professionals network and find funding from investors.

Moreover, New York City has successfully built its own tech identity completely different from that of Silicon Valley. Most industry giants have New York offices, which is only natural considering the city's status as the world's financial capital, but more notably, startups are not only emerging but remaining in the city.

"In 2006 you had people in New York City that were told they would get funding from Silicon Valley firms, but only if they moved out to San Francisco," said Dan Ciporin of venture capital firm Canaan Partners to U.S. News & World Report. "Those days are long gone."

As more tech businesses are able to grow and thrive in New York, the city is cementing its place atop the industry as it has in so many other areas, from business to entertainment. Local managed IT services software companies can provide startups with technical assistance and guidance to ensure their long-term success.

Since the first film hit the big screen in 1977, the Star Wars universe has expanded through sequels, prequels, books, video games and all manner of additional merchandise, making it likely the most extensive universe in fiction. Among passionate fans, a continuity error between two different episodes can lead to “Han shot first” levels of controversy. In order to avoid such contradictions, since 2000 Lucasfilm has maintained a vast database of characters, languages, planets, races, vehicles and weapons since the turn of the century.

The Holocron, named after a Force-powered repository of Jedi knowledge, is in fact a FileMaker database operated by Lucasfilm employee Leland Chee. Its full contents are strictly private, since it includes information on works that are in development. It goes into astounding levels of detail, such as providing names to characters who were never named and had but a single line in the films.

“A lot of that information, like naming of background characters, especially from the films, came from that Decipher collectible card game,” said Chee to NPR. “Most of their card sets were pre-Episode I, so it was mostly classic trilogy material, and they were naming every single background character. They were also pulling from the Star Wars Holiday Special as well, because they had image reference for that. But yeah, if someone wasn’t named, they would name them.”

Chee points out that the database is “not that complex,” just extremely comprehensive. Indeed, FileMaker development can provide businesses with similarly detailed looks into their operations. Whether the subject is intergalactic warfare or something more mundane, a relational database can help keep track of essential information.