As a web publisher, how do you make the most of your affiliate marketing efforts, without spending lots of time developing tools to link into the right products at your partners? Colorado Springs-based Prosperent (www.prosperent.com) is developing tools to help those marketers, by automating much of the work to help tie into brand name, affiliate programs at the product level. We spoke with Brian Lovett, the company's CEO and co-founder, to learn more about the company.

How do you take carbon dioxide, and turn that into something more useful (and less polluting and harmful) to mankind? Boulder-based New Sky Energy (www.newskyenergy.com) thinks it has the solution, using CO2 in the atmosphere to create industrial chemical products. The firm has been recognized for its technology efforts, most recently by Imagine H2O, and the Clean Tech Open, and we thought it would be interesting to hear about the company.

Streaming, internet radio seems to be coming of age, with the recent IPO of streaming music firm Pandora, the popularity of Spotify, along with other services. One company which has seen the benefit of the market is Boulder-based Liquid Compass (www.liquidcompass.com), whose customers--traditional, terrestrial radio stations--are also eager to get online.

How do you take a process which has been essentially unchanged in the last 30 years--hiring--and bring it into the Internet age? Draper, Utah-based HireVue (www.hirevue.com) is trying to do just that, with an Internet-based, video interviewing platform. We spoke with CEO David Bradford, a serial entrepreneur whose last startup, Fusion-io, recently went public with Steve Wozniak on board; Bradford has also been very involved with Omniture.

If you've every been involved in a community or youth sports team, you know how much of a pain it is to track when games and practices are, where you are supposed to play each week, if practices have moved or have been cancelled, who is handling what and bring what to the game or practice, and so on. That's what Boulder-based TeamSnap (www.teamsnap.com) is all about.

Yesterday, Boulder-based Gorilla Logic (www.gorillalogic.com) announced a new version of its popular, open source mobile app testing tool, FoneMonkey, for the Android platform. We had the opportunity recently to chat with Stu Stern, President and CEO of the company, to learn more about how consulting firms like Gorilla Logic have been reshaping the software development world with their open source tools.

Usually, we feature interviews with startup entrepreneurs and investors here in our interview section. However, the use of technology is an interesting aspect of the modern political process, so we've decided to reprint an interview our sister site, socalTECH.com, ran today with former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson (www.garyjohnson2012.com) the Republican Presidential candidate. Our coverage area for techrockies.com includes the business of technology in New Mexico.

Have you ever wondered, as you're adding that new electronics product into your basket at Amazon.com, if you're getting the best deal for your money? Do you wish you had more time to price check and comparison shop for your online purchases? Well, Denver-based Digital Folio (www.digitalfolio.com) thinks it has the thing for you--a browser add-on which automatically pulls up price comparisons and offers while you are shopping, every time you add something to your online shopping basket.

Ogden, Utah-based Tech Media Network announced a huge, venture funding round a few weeks ago worth $33M--probably one of the biggest fundings in the region in the last year. The firm owns a network of content sites, such as Space.com, NewsArama.com, and TechNewsDaily, and has been growing its network both through its own properties and partnerships with others. To understand better what the company is building, we spoke with Jerry Ropelato, the CEO of the company.

In the debate about energy efficiency, energy independence, and the country's energy future, one of the areas that comes into conversations frequently is how a lot of this country's energy goals could be helped by convincing people to save energy and implement energy efficiency measures.

Last month, Signal Peak Ventures (www.signalpeakvc.com), a new venture capital fund located in Salt Lake City, announced it had acquired the assets of Canopy Ventures. The new fund is led by former Canopy Managing Directors Ron Heinz and Brandon Tidwell. We spoke with Ron Heinz about the firm and its investments, to get some of the story behind the new fund, plus what the venture firm is hoping to do next.

Ron, thanks for the time today.

What do prehistoric petroglyphs have to do with modern data storage? If you're looking to make a permanent copy of your data, everything. Earlier this month, Salt Lake City-based Millenniata (www.millenniata.com) announced it has taken technology developed at Brigham Young University--inspired by those petroglyphs--capable of making the storage of data far more permanent than what exists today, to the market. We spoke with CEO Scott Shumway.

Our interview today is with VacationRoost (www.vacationroost.com), a Salt Lake City-based company focused on vacation rentals. VacationRoost plays in an area which has seen lots of interest lately -- one of its big competitors, HomeAway, just went public.

If you had a software firm, what would make you move your headquarters from Silicon Valley to Boulder? Well, Boulder-based Red Earth Software (www.policypatrol.com) did just that about a year ago. We caught up with Deborah Galea, the firm's COO, to hear about the company, what it does, plus its move to Boulder.

For today's interview and profile, we talked with Robert Schaefer, the CEO of Boulder-based AlsoEnergy (www.alsoenergy.com), a provider of solar power monitoring services and software. Bob told us the story behind the business, how he and co-founder Holden Caine took the firm from idea to fruition, as well as where the firm hopes to go to next.

What does AlsoEnergy do?

Bob Schaefer: AlsoEnergy was founded in 2007. What we do, is provide a service that monitors photovoltaic installations.

For today's interview, we talked with Jerry Nettuno, Founder and CEO of Bozeman, Montana-based Schedulicity (www.schedulicity.com), a fast growing provider of online scheduling software.

What is Schedulicity?

Jerry Netuno: It's very simple. Schedulicity has positioned itself as a leader in the online appointment scheduling market. You can think of it as the OpenTable but for the everyday services people book. We're helping small businesses in the U.S.

Most people are familiar with the trend of outsourcing call centers overseas, and the quality issues that often creates for businesses. Denver-based Alpine Access (www.alpineaccess.com) has, over the past few years, turned to a different model, of using home-based workers here in the U.S. to provide customer support and other call center support to companies.

Salt Lake City-based venture accelerator BoomStartup (www.boomstartup.com) is one of a new class of programs aimed at helping get companies out of the idea phase, and off the ground and funded. Like YCombinator and TechStars, BoomStartup is aimed at turning what might have just been good ideas, and applying experience and mentoring to get those companies off the ground much faster.

For our profile today, we talked with Dave Jilk, the CEO of Boulder-based Standing Cloud (www.standingcloud.com) a provider of cloud application management services. Standing Cloud is venture backed by Avalon Ventures and Foundry Group. Jilk is a serial entrepreneur, having co-founded a number of companies in Boulder, and was the co-founder of Feld Technologies with venture capitalist Brad Feld.

Our interview for this morning is with Paul Berberian, the CEO of Boulder-based Orbotix (www.orbotix.com), maker of the Sphero robotic ball. Paul gave us the story about how the firm came about, how he got involved, and the company's latest venture round. Paul, who is an experienced executive--having been CEO of Raindance Communications, co-founded Market Force Information, among others--told us the story about how Orbotix went from TechStars to a funded company.

Last week, Boulder-based Openspace Store (www.developerscoop.org), a new startup headed by Robert Reich, announced the launch of the Developer's Cooperative, a new service aimed at application developers and helping them to get better distribution and control over their applications. Robert is also well known for his work running the Boulder/Denver New Tech Meetup.

Morgan Lynch, is the CEO and Founder of Needle, and is a successful serial entrepreneur, having sold his last company, LogoWorks, to HP back in 2007. Lynch's latest startup is Needle (www.needle.com), which provides online chat services to e-commerce sites and brands from product experts. Lynch told us all about what Needle is up to, how the site grew out of his search for a wetsuit, and how he's applying the same models developed at LogoWorks into a new market.

Last month, Orem, Utah-based SpeakU (www.speaku.com) debuted at the Spring DEMO conference. We caught up with founder Chris Crabtree to hear more about what the firm is up to, plus what the firm learned from their experience at DEMO.

Describe what Speaku is all about?

Chris Crabtree: SpeakU does for blogs and forums what Twitter does for status updates. SpeakU is a topic driven, social network that allows users to publish full content topics to a global audience.

One of the fastest growing industries in recent years has been mobile access, and associated with that, mobile marketing. Today, we talked with Denver-based The MeNetwork (www.themenetwork.net), which has built out a mobile search service built around SMS. We spoke with founder Spike Stevens.

What's the whole idea of MeNetwork?

Spike Stevens: The Me network, in its simplest terms, is a mobile search and marketing platform.

One of the biggest areas of innovation in the web space in the last year has been in real-time search and interaction -- the use of social media, social networking, and other interactive websites. One of the local startups focusing on that market is Kynetx (www.kynetx.com), a developer of a platform used to power web experiences.

Yesterday, Louisville, Colorado-based NexGen Storage (www.nexgenstorage.com) announced a Series A round of funding for its efforts to develop new, solid state-based storage products. We caught up with John Spiers, CEO of the firm, to get some more insight into the firm and its plans.

Congrats on funding! What's the idea behind NexGen Storage?

John Spiers: The company was founded by the former founders of LeftHand Networks.

This morning, Aircell (www.aircell.com), which operates the Gogo in-flight Internet services, announced that it has raised another $35M in a financing round from private equity investors. We spoke with Michael Small, the firm's President and CEO, to hear more about the funding.

Thanks for the time today. Tell us a little bit about the financing round?

Michael Small: We closed a $35 million dollar financing.

A few weeks ago, Boulder-based BlogFrog (www.theblogfrog.com) announced a Series A funding from a who's who of Colorado's angel investors, plus officially launched its services. We caught up with Rustin Banks, BlogFrog's CEO and founder, to hear about how his wife's "mom blogging" spurred the creation of the company.

Last July, healthcare software firm TriZetto Group set up its headquarters in Denver, hiring Trace Devanny as its new CEO. The firm is owned by private equity firm Apax Group. TriZetto plays in the healthcare information technology and electronic health records market, an area that has attracted a fair amount of attention recently. We spoke with Trace to understand the firm better and where it is going.