Silicon Beach: Refresh Miami January Meetup

The year kicked off with a Refresh Miami meetup at the University of Miami’s University Center student lounge. The presenter was Miami techie Peter Martinez (@orical), who is cofounder of Pikchur, a photo-sharing service.  Martinez enlightened the audience about the “cloud,” which is basically geek speak for doing stuff online…

Silicon Beach: Sushi Samba, New Times Tweetups Wrap-Up

Last week was buzzing with two great tweetups. On Wednesday, Sushi Samba held its first nationwide one, which Silicon Beach announced earlier in the month. Tweetup guests in Vegas, Chicago, New York City and of course Miami locations connected over the twittersphere simultaneously with the hashtag #sstwtup. The conversations were…

Silicon Beach: Crisis Camp Helps Haiti With Mobile Translation App

Silicon Beach reported on Crisis Camp in this week’s Wednesday installment. Just two days later, geeks from D.C. launched a mobile phone application called Tradui that facilitates Kreyol to English and English to Kreyol translations. The application is free and available for iPhone and Android.In Tradui, you can translate words…

Silicon Beach: Burger Beast Eats Up Social Media

Miamian Sef Gonzalez, AKA Burger Beast, might not be the burger “king,” but he has definitely turned his love of burgers into a growing social media empire. In a span of 15 months, thanks to his clever use of social media networks, the humble beef patty has become the focus…

Silicon Beach: Tripatini Connects Travelers

Tripatini, founded last year in March by Miamians Jose Balido and Dave Appell, is a unique social networking site for travelers. The website launched in late August and was dubbed “Facebook for travelers” by the New York Post. Silicon Beach spent some time on the phone with Balido discussing the…

Silicon Beach: Twitter Hits Ground Running for Haiti Earthquake Relief

Twitter proved a powerful communication tool when a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the island nation of Haiti yesterday afternoon, followed by a series of additional earthquakes well past midnight. Tweets began immediately after the first quake.Trending topics on Twitter this morning about the earthquake are, thankfully, beating out American…

Silicon Beach: Sushi Samba Serves Up Twitter Roll

Sushi Samba (@sushisamba), the popular restaurant and bar on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Lincoln Road, is throwing its first tweetup on January 20 at 8 p.m. The party takes place simultaneously with other locations in Vegas, Chicago and New York City.The nationwide “meet&TWEET” hopes to gather Sushi Samba…

Silicon Beach: 2010 South Florida Tech Events

Two thousand nine is history, so it’s time to look forward to a busy year of conferences and events. Here are a few to consider:Social Media Conference, a business event for the social media industry, comes to the Miami Beach Convention Center January 27-29.BarCamp Miami, a gathering of geeks to…

Silicon Beach: Social Media Year in Review

Rising up from a rather sleepy 2008, 2009 was a banner year for social media in Miami. Heck, social media became so important, the Miami New Times decided to hire a local freelance writer to dish on the scene! Here’s an overview:1. ClubsSocial Media Club South Florida covered the gamut…

Silicon Beach: Using Twitter to Bitch About Airlines

Yours truly recently dealt with an American Airlines screw up that caused her to miss a trip to Hawaii. So after writing a blog post, starting a thread on a local travel community forum and filling out an official contact form to airline customer relations, all that was left was…

Silicon Beach: Scrapblog Dumps Miami for Silicon Valley

Miami startup Scrapblog is apparently saying bye-bye to Silicon Beach and moving its physical office to the San Francisco area, according to word on the street. Though the company has not yet made an official announcement, everybody and their grandmother is talking about the impending transition.  It’s all over Twitter…

Silicon Beach: Refresh Miami, December Edition

The year came to a close rather quietly with a laid-back cocktail party at the Mutiny Hotel in Coconut Grove on December 16.According to Refresh Miami co-founder Brian Breslin, the group has grown considerably this year — by about fifty percent, with more than 2,000 people subscribed to updates.Topics in…