Wonderland Hill Development Co. offers Sustainable/Green Built Communities from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 10, at Washington School, 1215 Cedar Ave. in Boulder. Launch of Washington Village, at the Washington Elementary School in Boulder. Jim Leach, president of Wonderland Hill Development Co., will speak about the sustainable features built into homes and explore new housing options at Washington Village. The event is free. For more information, contact Susan Kolinski at 303-449-3232 or susank@whdc.com.

The Latino Chamber of Commerce of Boulder County offers Horas Sociales from 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday, July 11, at Casa Alvarez, 502 S. Public Road in Lafayette. Business after hours networking. Open to members, their employees and potential new members. The event is free. For more information, call 303-604-4396.

BOULDER - Six Boulderites and six local dance instructors will team up for the first Dancing With Boulder's Stars based on ABC's popular Dancing With the Stars television show.

Alice Swanson is organizing the fundraiser to be held Wednesday, Oct. 3, at the Boulder Theater to benefit the YWCA of Boulder County.

The dancers are Richard Foy of Communication Arts; Stephen Schaller, ERA Tradewinds Real Estate; Dan Powers, Boulder Chamber of Commerce; Wendy Reynolds, Vectra Bank; and Teresa Szczurek, author and president of Boulder-based Technology and Management Solutions.

Instructors will be Pat Connelly, director of the Blue Moon Dance Company in Boulder, and Julius Reinante also of Blue Moon; Suzanne Gerleit and Carl Gerleit, Casa Blanca Dance Studio, Boulder; Amanda Chestnutt, One Boulder Fitness; and Tom Masterson, Danceophile Studio, Boulder.

Swanson said the contestants will perform one dance, and the audience will view video clips of various stages of the rehearsal process.

 "I'm a big fan of the show (Dancing With the Stars), and I thought this would be a good fundraising event," Swanson said.

Swanson stepped down as executive vice president of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce in January to become an independent consultant offering individual coaching and group workshops for graduating seniors on the job-search process, plus work on special projects including the chamber's annual Esprit Entrepreneur event.

BOULDER - Green Endeavors, the Boulder-based nonprofit founded to encourage reusable grocery bags, will kick off its reusable bag campaign at the Denver Earthworks Expo, Friday, July 27, at the Denver Merchandise Mart.

Fourteen million trees are cut down annually to supply a year's worth of paper grocery bags, according to the American Forest and Paper Association. It takes thousands of years for a plastic bag to decompose.

Begun by Doreen Molk and Carly Gralak, Green Endeavors is dedicated to the replacement of plastic and paper bags with sustainable, reusable sacks. In order to transition grocers from paper and plastic, Green Endeavors sells reusable bags for $2.50 each.

The first annual Earthworks Expo will host more than 100 green companies and organizations from around the country. Green Endeavors will showcase its reusable grocery bags in an effort to reduce the millions of paper and plastic bags that end up in landfills.

LONGMONT - A Niwot-based real estate investment firm has purchased the 23,333- square-foot OfficeMax building at 1120 Ken Pratt Blvd. in Longmont for $2.85 million.

RLET Properties LLC purchased the building at the Diagonal Marketplace in southwest Longmont from Longmont-based Barrett Family Properties LLC, according to Boulder County public records.

RLET, headed by manager Cotton Burden, already owns several other retail buildings in the area, including 980, 1020 and 1100 Ken Pratt Blvd. Those buildings, totaling 36,131 square feet, were purchased by RLET in 2005 for about $9.25 million.

"We purchased the building because it fit in with our portfolio in that area," Burden said.  The new owner added that he hopes to keep OfficeMax as a long-term tenant.

BOULDER - Like crowds of people, microscopic particles can act in concert under the right conditions. By exposing crowd behavior at the atomic scale, scientists have discovered new states and properties of matter that may have practical applications in optics.

Using ultrafast lasers, scientists at JILA, a joint venture of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado at Boulder, have revealed a previously unseen type of collective electronic behavior, which may help in the design of optoelectronic devices.

In the JILA experiments, thin layers of gallium arsenide were hit with a continuous series of three near-infrared laser pulses lasting just 100 femtoseconds each. A femtosecond is one-billionth of one-millionth of a second; a femtosecond is to a second what a second is to about 32 million years.

Trillions of electronic structures called excitons - large, "fluffy" particles - were formed, and researchers identified subtle group behavior among them.

The work may help researchers better predict optoelectronic device characteristics, not only the magnitude of the emissions signals but also the phase, which is especially significant in optics.

BOULDER - VoSnap - a new "virtual" company created in a 48-hour marathon - is the outcome of Startup Weekend, where some 68 people gathered in Boulder to pool their ideas and launch a business.

VoSnap is an interactive voting Web site used to help friends make decisions by offering a list of options to vote on via e-mail or cell phone.

Andrew Hyde, owner of Boulder-based Endoze Design, hosted the event at the space above University Bikes at 9th and Pearl streets in Boulder. He said the idea for VoSnap came to fruition after the group weeded through 50 ideas on Friday night.

"On Friday night we got together at 6, and we went from 50 ideas down to 10. We discussed the 10 on Friday night, and we got down to three," Hyde said. "We really got into those three ideas, and this was the one that everyone kept talking about."

From here, 12 entrepreneurs will work for "15 hours this week" to finalize the details that couldn't be worked out over the weekend. Fifty-six people will receive founder's stock in the company.

The site is set to launch either today or "Thursday or Friday," according to Hyde.

VoSnap hopes to generate revenue by a pay-per-click fee and a "sponsored fourth option" on the decision-making list. For instance, if the question is, "What bar should we go to tonight?" a local bar could pay for a spot as the fourth option under the three chosen by the user.

The company has a logo design and a Web site, vosnap.com, which were put together by one of the six groups brainstorming at the entrepreneurial gathering.