With the release of Apple’s brand new, beautiful operating system Yosemite (10.10), we’re thrilled to announce a major update to Freedom and Anti-Social.  Our 1.0 clients feature a new scheduler, a countdown timer, and a beautiful new interface.

The new apps work on OS X 10.7-10.10. If you’re on an older version of OS X, our older clients still work like a charm.  If you’d like to try out our new clients, you can download them from the Freedom and Anti-Social websites.

If you’re an existing customer, please join our updates list by by clicking the blue button so we can send you a license for our 1.0 versions!

Update: Due to the O’Hare Airport fire, Linda’s trip to North Carolina has been postponed.  The talk has been cancelled.

Linda Stone, a national expert on technology and behavior change, will be visiting Chapel Hill on Tuesday, September 30.  She will give a talk at UNC’s SILS.  After the talk, 80Pct is hosting an informal reception for Linda.  If you’re interested in technology and behavior change, you’ll find Linda’s work very interesting.

The talk will last from at 3:15PM-4PM at UNC’s SILS, located at 208 Manning Hall.  Map: http://sils.unc.edu/future-students/manning

Essential Self Technologies connect us with our essential nature, our “essence” through the sensing and feeling self.  Once connected to our essence, we are also more connected to each other.  These technologies are often passive, ambient, and non-invasive.  They involve the use of light, vibration, pulse, sound, music, temperature, and weight, to support us in discovering and sustaining flow-like states and to contribute to a sense of embodiment.  While quantified self technologies offer value by contributing to awareness (of steps, pulse ox, HRV, etc), Essential Self Technologies support us in tapping into the wisdom of the body.

This morning, we were honored to pitch our company in the Dream Big America Competition. Sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation, and broadcast nationally via the Doug Stephan Show, the competition features three great companies pitching their idea or product.  At the conclusion, the audience is invited to vote for the winner.  We had a great time – listen to our pitch here!

Here’s our next pitch: We’d love it if you’d vote for us!  Winning this week’s competition will allow us to move to the monthly finals, where we can compete to win the $20,000 grand prize.  You can vote on the Dream Big America website, or by texting “DBA” to 612-223-7326.

A special thanks goes to Laura Baverman and Exit Event for the great coverage of our participation in the competition.  And we thank you for voting and helping us win!

Some very exciting news to share: 80Pct Solutions has been awarded an NC IDEA grant in the Spring 2014 cycle.  We’re proud to win the grant and excited to join the NC IDEA network.

If you’re not familiar with NC IDEA, it is an innovative program that makes semi-annual grants to high-potential North Carolina companies.  To win the grant, we went through multiple stages of application: first a short proposal, then a full proposal, then a high-stakes pitch.  We’re pleased that it turned out successfully.

Moving forward, we’ll be using the grant funds to strategically grow the company and prepare us for new products and services (yes, I’m being intentionally vague).  We’ve got big things planned for the next year, so please keep tuned.

A final, important note.  This grant is the product of a lot of collaboration and assistance from people who support the company.  We want to thank all of you who helped with brainstorming the idea, editing the proposal, analyzing feedback, and shaping the presentation.  A special thanks goes to Dina Mills of Launch Chapel Hill, who was instrumental in the process.  Thank you!

I took the leap and upgraded my backup machine to Yosemite (I know, I know).  Here’s a screenshot of the Freedom 1.0 beta running on 10.10.

As with all bleeding-edge developer releases, I’m going to reserve opinions until we’re at a .2RC.  The flat-ish UI isn’t offensive (I was an early fan of iOS 7, FWIW), and I have a feeling it is going to look really good on properly scaled retina displays.  I’m quite excited about increased interaction between OS X and iOS; Apple is making strong moves to keep people in the family.  I was just left wondering: why did it take so long?