(Not) spam mail

It’s the last Friday in January, and a snowstorm is coming this weekend. The perfect way to mark the final weekend of the first full month of winter.

If you haven’t checked out this year's RealLIST Startups for Baltimore, I highly recommend it — and not just Baltimore, but Philly, Delaware, DC and Pittsburgh. Think of it as market research to see what companies are making waves in other cities. With the increasingly digital nature of the world, place is becoming a nebulous concept. That theme is something the Technical.ly newsroom will be delving into more in the very near future.

Dropping Gems

• Here's a tip on how to find investors on LinkedIn from a thread on how to raise a fund via Baltimore's Mac Conwell.
• And here's a recording of a Twitter Space on how to get started on open source projects, plus some good repositories.

In Other News

• The medical device company Coaptech was awarded a $50,000 grant by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for its PUMA-G device that uses ultrasound and magnets to enable feeding tube placement effectiveness with children.
• Two of the region's most prominent biz advocacy orgs, Greater Baltimore Committee and the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, will merge, they announced this week.
• The SBA announced a pilot program with $3 million for state govs to help small businesses develop their cybersecurity infrastructure.
• Baltimore City's COVID-19 test distribution program is getting an update to focus on reaching communities that are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Part of that strategy means community-based organizations can no longer apply for tests.

Random tech fact of the week:

"Spam mail," aka junk emails, apparently got its name from Spam, the canned meat. The moniker was given after a Monty Python skit made fun of Spam as tasting "horrible and being ubiquitous and inescapable."

 
— Technical.ly reporter Donte Kirby (donte@technical.ly)