Dogpatch Labs' FanPulse Launches Beta (Delivers Dogpatch Photos As Well)

Dogpatch Labs resident FanPulse launched their closed Beta this past week and delivered some terrific photos of the lab and their celebratory event. If you are interested in being a beta user, email the team here:

FanPulse welcomes you to your world of sports. The FanPulse iPhone app (coming January 2010) is the place to follow the sports, teams and players you care about, and talk about them with your real friends. FanPulse lets you celebrate big plays, trash-talk your friends, tell everyone what game you’re watching, and stay up to date on the teams, games and friends you care about. Finally, a sports-service that simply lets you follow the sports you love and talk about them with your real friends.

These great photos were taken by Art Chang, a lead developer at FanPulse (and a good friend from his Yardbarker and RailsRumble days). He is also a terrific photographer (as you can tell):

Calling All Technology Finance Executives & Controllers!

Attention all controllers and finance executives in the technology space! Dogpatch Labs Cambridge is holding office hours and scheduling 30-minute blocks to meet great folks from the space. If you are interested in meeting, Lindsay Barnett will represent Polaris (director of portfolio recruiting) and you can contact her directly at lbarnett@polarisventures.com. We look forward to hearing from you and meeting you! There will be other events across both Dogpatch Labs locations focused on other fields as well. Stay tuned and be sure to follow Dogpatch Labs on Facebook for the latest updates:

Dogpatch Lab Cambridge Office hours Wednesday,

Starts:Wednesday December 16, 2009, 01:00PM Ends: Wednesday December 16, 2009, 05:00PM

Location: Dogpatch Labs Cambridge 222 3rd St, 4th Floor Cambridge, MA 02141 US

Intended For: Controllers and VP, Finance executives from the technology industry

If you are a Controller or VP, Finance at a technology company based in the Boston area we are interested in meeting you! Email me at lbarnett@polarisventures.com to schedule time to meet on Wednesday, 12/16, between 1-5 pm. I will be scheduling 30 minute blocks in order to fit as many people in as possible. I look forward to meeting you!

LOLapps Releases New Website, Sees Facebook Growth with Yakuza Life & Band of Heroes

Polaris portfolio company LOLapps has launched a new version of their website to conclude an active week where two of their new social games (Yakuza Lords and Band of Heroes) are the 8th and 9th fastest growing on Facebook. If you are unfamiliar with LOLapps, you have probably used one of their applications on Facebook: over 44 million people use LOLapps apps each month:

- Quizzes (hundreds of thoussd of personally created quiz applications) - Gifts (user generated gift creator) - Diva Life - Band of Heroes - Yakuza Lords

Yakuza Lords and Band of Heroes are both new games and are growing very quickly on Facebook. From InsideFacebook's Top Gainers of the Week:

"Two other role-playing games are also growing fast, and although neither lists a developer, both appear to be made by LOLapps. While both have the same underlying interface components (more on that over on ISG), each one has surprisingly striking, unique-looking graphics. One, Asian mafia-themed Yakuza Lords, grew by 155,000 users to reach 930,000 monthly actives. It is on its way to graduating from this list. The other app, World War II RPG Band of Heroes, is smaller but growing relatively more quickly. It gained 161,000 to reach 269,000 monthly actives."

Diva City, Yakuza Lords and Band of Heroes are just the first for LOLapps: "[we] will be launching a new game every few weeks to address the huge demand and niches that our users care about."

If you are interested in partnering with LOLapps, you can contact them and learn more here.

Virtual Tour of Dogpatch Labs San Francisco

Unfortunately, tomorrow's Dogpatch Labs San Francisco office hours are canceled for traveling reasons - but they will be back on November 4th! As a consolation prize, I have included a tour of Dogpatch Labs put together with Sprout Builder and some pictures snapped yesterday morning:

Modelinia's Heidi Klum Halloween Contest on Facebook

Want to spend your Halloween with Heidi Klum at her famous Halloween costume party. According to OMG on Yahoo, "Heidi Klum loves Halloween. That's why she throws a big costume party every year that all the A-listers in Hollywood attend." This year, you and a guest can join Heidi Klum at her Halloween party... thanks to Modelinia's Halloween contest on Facebook. The contest is fun, viral and quick: it ends October 25th - so submit your pictures and vote quickly.

There are three easy steps to: 1. Become a fan of Modelinia on Facebook (facebook.com/modelinia) 2. Upload a photo of your best Halloween costume 3. Share on Facebook and get your friends to vote!

Step 1: Become a fan of Modelinia on Facebook

Step 2: Upload a Photo and Vote

Step 3: Share your Photo on Facebook and Encourage Friends to Vote

JibJab's Monster Mash is an October Hit; Great Example of Facebook Connect & Growth

Congratulations to JibJab who is the 8th gainer this week on InsideFacebook's Top Facebook App Gainers. JibJab's new Monster Mash Sendable has become a Haloween hit. Yesterday, they announced 5,000,000 views - it was announced on October 6th on Facebook. JibJab does a terrific job of using Facebook Connect to help publish stories and, most excitingly, to pull photos from your friends that can be inserted directly into the JibJab cards. Once you create your card, you can then publish it back out to those same friends using Facebook Connect. It's a terrific integration that makes the user experience more efficient and social - and the sharing experience more effective (both for the creators, recipients and JibJab).

Note: You can become a fan of JibJab on Facebook here.

JibJab Enters InsideFacebook's Top Facebook Apps

A screenshot of publishing my Monster Mash card through Facebook Connect and into the Facebook Feed:

My JibJab Monster Mash video - using a collection of sports stars. Can you name them?

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Building Custom Facebook Fan Pages: A Dogpatch Labs Demo

I write a lot about Facebook and the importance of fan pages and engaging with those fans. Just as the content on the Facebook Pages is critical to the interaction, so is the page itself. Facebook allows brands and page-owners to customize the pages with:

- custom layouts - content modules (called 'boxes') - applications - and custom FBML If you put all of those together, you are able to create highly engaging, rich experiences that maintain branding and messaging while on Facebook.

For Dogpatch Labs, we are using the Dogpatch Labs Facebook Page to manage content, events and (of course) fans. We used Sprout (a Polaris portfolio and San Francisco company) to build our custom Facebook page. Sprout has a tool to create and manage pages efficiently and within the FBML environment. The page pulls in dynamic content from Twitter, our blog, the event stream, etc.

You can learn more about Sprout's Facebook solution on their Fan Page. I encourage you to also check out the Dogpatch Labs Facebook page (and become a fan!)

Dogpatch Labs San Francisco Office Hours: Wednesday Mornings

We are excited to announce office hours at Dogpatch Labs San Francisco starting Wednesday, September 23rd. Office hours will be held on Wednesday mornings from 9am-11:30am and include coffee, bagels and good conversation. Come by to meet Polaris, Dogpatch residents, solicit feedback on your latest project, get a tour of the Lab, etc. Office hours are entirely open and drop-ins are welcome (but you can also feel free to let us know ahead of time).

Dogpatch Labs San Francisco is located at Pier 38 on Embarcadero and you can learn more here. For more information on Dogpatch Labs, follow us on:

- DogpatchLabs.com - Dogpatch Labs on Facebook (events, news, etc) - Dogpatch Labs on Twitter (@dogpatchlabs)

Dogpatch Labs Expands to Boston, San Francisco Lab is Growing & More

Whew, we were busy laboring over Labor Day weekend, and so Dogpatch Labs we has news to share:

Dogpatch Labs is expanding to Boston

Dogpatch Labs has expanded and officially opened space in Cambridge, Massachusetts. TechCrunch has covered the announcement and we are thrilled to make the effort truly bi-coastal. If interested in being a Cambridge resident, please email us at dogpatchlabs @ gmail.com (our official announcement is here):

In San Francisco, there’s a nice big space right on the water where startups can go to enjoy a place to work, Dog Patch Labs. Polaris Venture Partners refers to it as their “frat house for geeks,” as it’s a place for entrepreneurs to come and work/hang out while enjoying free space, connectivity, coffee and food. Now Polaris is taking that idea east, closer to their homebase, with Dog Patch Labs Cambridge.

The new lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts will be located at 222 3rd Street in Kendall Square. And it won’t be meant solely for technology startups, Polaris is welcoming startups from all sectors. The idea is the same as the San Francisco wing that was opened in 2008, to help out really early stage startups, that may not be quite ready to look for investments to help out their projects just yet. More on TechCrunch

Dogpatch Labs San Francisco is Expanding

Dogpatch Labs San Francisco is expanding and has a limited number of open desks for new residents. Desks overlooking the Bay at Pier 38, in an open, high-energy environment with 100 other entrepreneurs; wifi; lunch; unlimited coffee; all at an unbeatable per desk per month rate . Alumni of Dogpatch Labs include LOLapps and Thing Labs, and current startup residents include EtherPad, Mr. Tweet, Umamibud and a few other as-yet unnamed projects. Other startups with us down at Pier 38 include Automattic, Threadsy, Social Gold, SuperSecret, Poken, SitePoint/99Designs and CoTweet. Space is limited, so if you are interested in making a home at Dogpatch Labs San Francisco, please email us immediately at:

dogpatchlabs @ gmail.com or rspoon @ gmail.com

Dogpatch Labs Has a Logo & A New Website Coming

That's right - the lab is official. We have a logo and our website (DogpatchLabs.com) is undergoing its own facelift and will be available shortly:

Dogpatch Labs is Now on Facebook & Twitter

You can now find us on Facebook and Twitter (@dogpatchlabs). To stay abreast of the latest news, photos and events, we encourage you to become a fan and follow us.

Dogpatch Labs on Facebook