AroundAustin.Com

Oak Tree, Blue, Texas, Easter Sunday

Austin based Spocal launches Spocal March Madness

AroundAustin.com was invited to the sneak preview party for Spocal.com, the sports calendar site during SXSW Interactive Festival--thanks for the beer and muchies guys.  It's a cool new website that lets sports fan add the schedule of their favorite teams to their own calendar--no more peering at the fine print in your local newspaper to figure out when the Longhorns are playing. 

Today they anounced special functionality in conjunction with March Madness.  At www.spocal.com/marchmadness you can see the March Madness game bracket and download the schedule to your calendar by clicking on the iCal link next to each game.  Cool!   

By creating an account at the Spocal website, you can choose to follow any of your favorite sports teams and be notified when their game schedule changes. "The idea for the website came to me when I got tired of entering games into my calendar by hand," said Deep Nasta, Spocal founder. "I thought it would be a huge time saver for me if I received an email message notifying me of playoff schedules and game time changes, and I could download those changes into my calendar as well."

The website is still in the "sneak peek" stage but what a great concept from well known two local entrepreneurs--Deep Nasta and Brian Menell.

CampLIFE! A camp for Gold Star Families

CampLife! is a charity whose mission is to help families that have lost a parent to the Iraq war.  Today we are interviewing John Gillis, Jr..  He is the the founder and president of CampLIFE!

John, How did charity start?

I enjoyed attending summer camp as a child, and believes that these activities contribute to self-confidence, relationship skills and overall health.  I founded CampLIFE! to provide the camping experience to those who would not normally have that opportunity.

More than 10 million children attend camp annually, from recreational opportunities to the more complex theme camps that serve various groups of children with special needs.  Any child can benefit from the summer camp experience, with children who share some profound loss benefiting even more.  Unfortunately, with fees beginning at $200-$400/week, residential camps are unaffordable for many of the children that could benefit the most.