Green Companies
Assemblymember Jared Huffman presented his April Sustainable North Bay Award to United Markets in recognition of their commitment to conservation, sustainable business practices, and community service. Serving Marin for over 50 years with stores in downtown San Rafael and San Anselmo, United Markets’ achievements include waste diversion, supporting local farmers and food producers, voluntarily ceasing sales of tobacco products as well as plastic bags, carrying environmentally friendly products, and supporting community service projects. United Markets also makes a significant contribution to the community through its shopping club card program that dedicates three percent of cardholder purchases to benefit over 70 Marin schools.
ECOlunchbox Founder Sandra Ann Harris, who is a client at Venture Greenhouse accelerator in San Rafael, has been selected as a City of Lafayette Green Award winner for 2012. Green Award winners were announced at the city’s Earth Day Celebration on April 22 as well as before the City Council on April 23. ECOlunchbox specializes in the manufacture and sale of eco-friendly lunchware, including stainless steel bentos and artisan cotton lunchbags. The Lafayette-based company is a client at Venture Greenhouse accelerator in San Rafael. Venture Greenhouse was started by John Stayton of Dominican University to help start-up green businesses scale.Nonprofits
The Petaluma Community Foundation awarded a total of $125,000 to ten nonprofits during the group’s annual Denny Murray Grant Awards and Community Celebration. Recipients were selected based on “the excellence of their programs in improving the lives of youth, families and seniors,” said Executive Director Marilyn Segal. Awards included $20,000 to the Committee on the Shelterless, the Petaluma People Services Center and the Boys & Girls Clubs; $15,000 to PEP Housing; $10,000 to Mentor Me Petaluma and Petaluma Bounty; $9,000 to Hope Counseling Services, $7,500 to the Petaluma Educational Foundation, $7,000 to the National Alliance on Mental Illness and $6,500 to Giant Steps Therapeutic Equestrian Center. Mobile Technology
San Rafael-based In Ticketing, a leader in online ticketing, has begun to offer the InHand Mobile Box Office, a wireless, box office point-of-sale solution for iPhone and iPod touch. InHand leverages the In Ticketing market-proven online ticketing system and box office ticketing software with the iAPS sled from Daily Systems, which adds credit card swiping and ticket printing to Apple handhelds. Producers use mobile ticketing for their entire box office ticket sales, producing sale-to-receipt transactions as well as processing will call tickets wirelessly from the iPhone or iPod touch, using Wi-Fi, 3G, and 4G MiFi networks to communicate. The InHand Mobile Box Office is powered by the In Ticketing mobile app, available in the ITunes app store at no cost to event organizers registered with InTicketing.com.
Larkspur-based mobile banking developer mFoundry has begun to offer its service to KeyBank, the Cleveland, Ohio-based bank with approximately $89 billion in assets. mFoundry's mobile banking technology is used by nearly 10 million consumers across more than 675 financial institutions nationwide, including one-third of the top 50 banks in the United States. In the first week following the launch of its new mobile banking apps, half of KeyBank's existing Android users upgraded to the new app. The number of new user downloads of the iPhone application has exceeded the bank's expectations by nearly two-fold.
