SendGrid made its name connecting people with their web apps via  ”transactional emails” —  sales confirmations, invoices, opt-in/opt-out messages. If you use foursquare or Pinterest or Airbnb, you are also using SendGrid, probably without realizing it. Now the Boulder, Colo. company is branching out into email marketing where it will run smack-dab into MailChimp, which sends out tens of billions of emails, typically newsletters or other targeted pitches — on behalf of businesses to their customers.

The new SendGrid Marketing Email service, launching Tuesday, will rely on the same infrastructure it already uses for the 8 billion transactional messages it sends monthly.  But, unlike its transactional email service, this new offering targets non-techie marketing people, not developers.

A company’s marketing staff can opt for one of several newsletter templates, “build” the content using a drag-and-drop interface, and create mailing lists. According to a statement about the new service, once the newsletter is ready to roll:

… marketers can distribute to their entire list in seconds and view campaign performance in real-time via SendGrid’s newsletter analytics dashboard, which provides insight into delivery rates, opens, clicks, click-through rates, unsubscribe requests and more.  Similar to SendGrid’s transactional email service, technical users can leverage an API for the marketing email service and forgo the online interface.

SendGrid’s pitch is that it will all do this for less than competitors like MailChimps or Constant Contact because it will charge based on how much mail is sent and not on the size of the subscriber list.

Given that tech vendors see Chief Marketing Officers and their minions controlling more of the IT budget, it makes sense to build tools tailored for that constituency. That trend is also driving quite a bit of M&A activity as evidenced by Salesforce.com’s recent $2.5 billion buyout of ExactTarget early this month.

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Nothing ruins summer fun like your favorite gadget running out of battery juice, but if you happen to wander into a New York City park, AT&T wants to hook you up with some free, sun-powered energy.

CNET reported Tuesday that AT&T is now installing solar-powered charging stations in 25 different locations across the five boroughs of New York City, and plans even more locations to come throughout the summer.

Each location features both 30-pin and Lightning dock connector cables as well as micro and standard USB for charging pretty much every gadget you can think of. Known as “Street Charge,” the AT&T initiative is currently in a trial phase after the company set up mobile charging stations in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

Street Charge stations are powered exclusively by solar panels, which helped get them installed and running faster, given that no external power source, wires or other infrastructure charges were required.

A single Street Charge station includes enough batteries to offer three to four days of continuous charging when full, and in direct sunlight can get a full charge in as little as four hours. During cloudy or rain-soaked days, Street Charge will even continue to absorb ultraviolet rays for energy.

The first 25 stations have been paid for by AT&T, who plans to move them around in the coming months, even as new ones are added, as the company works with the city of New York to find the best location for each.

Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter

(Image courtesy of CNET)

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Foursquare has settled on charging businesses a $20 fee to register on the check-in service, Mashable has learned.

Foursquare had previously tested a variety of price points for companies to claim their business, but according to a rep, it recently decided to charge $20 across the board because that price point performed best.

Companies may already have their business listed on Foursquare, but by paying the fee, they can take control of that listing and add in relevant information like a description and hours of operation. Nearly 1.4 million businesses have registered on Foursquare to date, paying varying amounts to do so. Read more…

More about Foursquare, Business, and Startups

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The source code of New York City’s Checkbook NYC platform is now available for other governments to download, modify and reuse, New York City Comptroller John Liu announced during Thursday’s Personal Democracy Forum.

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