Who are you? John Wright, vice president of Hudson Solar.

What can you tell us about your business? Our business is currently about 50 percent residential and 50 percent commercial. In Saratoga County, it’s more like 80 percent residential and 20 percent commercial. With solar, the positives are threefold: you have utility rates, energy independence and there’s the environmental component.

Hudson Valley Clean Energy in Dutchess County and Albany, New York, based Adirondack Solar are now called Hudson Solar. Rhinebeck-based Hudson Valley and Adirondack Solar merged in November 2010 but retained separate names. The solar design and installation company grew revenue 25 percent in 2011, and is on target to grow another 25 percent this year, said John Wright, vice president of Hudson Solar.

A maintenance project isn’t complete on any property you service until you’ve attended to every detail. You’ll need trimmers, edgers and backpack blowers to give every property that finishing, professional touch. Trimming is commonly done with a string trimmer, and refers to a vertical trim of the edges using a small, spinning head with plastic twine acting as a cutting head. It’s generally done along sidewalks and driveways, but is also used to trim turf around obstacles where most mowers can’t reach.

Sundance Film Festival co-founder Gary Beer spent 15 years helping to build the annual Park City, Utah, event into a leading showcase for up-and-coming filmmakers. Now he hopes to do the same for actors. Describing his new Web venture, StarCast Auditions, Beer explains, “We’re a filter and vetting service that says to the public at large: ‘If you think you can act, send us your audition tape.”

Most work is accomplished via a series of individual efforts that collectively make up a project that leads to a business outcome. For all the talk of collaboration these days, most projects are made up of a series of asynchronous tasks that usually have to be accomplished in a specific order to achieve a certain goal.

Given that reality, Clarizen CEO Avinoam Nowogrodski says that for all the talk about the social enterprise these days, increasing productivity needs to begin and end with the individual.

Gary Beer wants to help undiscovered performers be recognized just like he did when he had a hand in creating the Sundance Film Festival in 1985, revolutionizing the independent film industry.

The former founding CEO of Robert Redford’s Sundance Group has started a new venture he believes will help young talent land jobs and gain feedback from the industry’s top professionals. In late 2011, Beer joined forces with Showtime and Viacom founder Jules Haimovitz and former Polygram TV COO David Hope to launch StarCast Auditions, an online platform that helps up-and-coming actors show off their talent and network with industry professionals.

SiGNa Chemistry has created a compound that when combined with water can create hydrogen to power iPhones, bikes, and even disaster areas.

In summer 2012, Core Outdoor Power is slated to launch the second product from its suite of environmentally friendly power equipment. At 12 pounds, the Core GasLess hedge trimmer has a run time of up to 90 minutes and a blade length of 22 inches.

Take a look at Mendix and you’ll see some oft-buzzed-about themes. It’s a platform-as-a-service company that’s looking to disrupt the existing world of enterprise IT. Its technology is built around the cloud. And it’s located in Boston’s “Innovation District.”

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — Wifarer is about to make shopping in a mall a little more like shopping online.

The primary function of the app, which is available for free on the iPhone and Android phones, is to provide detailed directions within shopping centers so you don’t have to search frantically for those allusive mall directories. Unlike most apps that offer directions, Wifarer’s location feature isn’t based on the phone’s GPS data. Instead, the app uses Wi-Fi network data from within the mall to pinpoint the user’s location and the location of each of the stores.