Microsoft may be a key partner in NBC's web video coverage of but Google has the coolest snowmobile going.
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. As a first step to fulfilling that mission,... [more]
The iPhone is an amazing device. But iPhone users realize it's a little less amazing once they stop answering their mail, tweeting and posting to Facebook, and use it as a phone. Add to that the furstration of dealing with a large corporate call centre dedicated to keeping you as far away from actual service and contact with a human being, and you've got a real problem in th epalm of your hand.
Fonolo, an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch based on the popular website, aims to rid users of these frustrations by letting them cut around the usual phone maze and get straight to a CSR. By listing the entire phone tree, Fonolo empowers users to get around unfriendly menus, and the app also remembers your history so you don't have to navigate around menus if you call back. A cursory search of the app revelaed Rogers (my nemesis) as well as informing me that the company is "currently offline" (no surprise there.)
Besides the "stick it to the man" aspect of the app, I also like the fact that it operates over wifi, saving users from onerous cell charges. I don't have a landline, and previously I would hop on Skype for what was sure to be a long wait for service. I've tried to keep my interactions with giant firms over the phone to a minimum, but sometimes you simply have to talk to a human, and in those cases, Fonolo looks like it will keep you from smashing things and going berserk before you get to said human.
Toronto-based Fonolo makes it easier and less frustrating to call large companies with its ground-breaking, Web-based service that puts an end to... [more]
Vancouver has been wondering for awhile what Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield was up to with his new startup Tiny Speck. Last night he revealed his first project: Glitch.
As suspected by many, it’s an online game in the vein of Game Neverending, the gaming project that eventually became photo-sharing Flickr. Glitch is a massively-multiplayer game, playable in the browser and built in the spirit of the web. It is currently in development and will launch late in 2010. Private alpha is beginning shortly and a public beta period will begin this summer.
It's called Glitch because in the far-distant and totally-perfect future, the world starts becoming less and less probable, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, and there occurs what comes to be called the "glitch" — a grave danger of disemprobablization. This results in a time-traveling effort at saving the future, going back into the minds of eleven great giants walking sacred paths on a barren asteroid who sing and think and hum the world into existence and ... you know what? You'll probably just have to wait and play the game :)
If you're intrigued, be sure to check out the teaser video on the Glitch website. And if you'd like to learn more, check out Daniel Terdiman's exclusive interview of Butterfield over on cnet.
Coming soon... [more]
If 2009 was about creating awareness of social media communities, then 2010 should be about exploring how to meaningfully engage. At a minimum, all marketers should be monitoring how their brands live online. Do you have a solid grasp of the social media landscape where your product or service is being discussed? If you don’t, then you are missing out on a golden opportunity to listen in and learn from your customers.
Whether you are new to social media or an early adopter, spend two days with leading social media thinkers, speakers and practitioners and learn how to seamlessly add the power of social media to your traditional media efforts.
On February 24th and 25th the Third Annual Social Media Marketing event will be taking place at the Old Mill Inn & Spa in beautiful Toronto.
For more information on this event, including registration details, please visit the Social Media Marketing website.
The Mark, a Toronto-based online daily news magazine, announced today that it has closed its first round of funding, led by Innovation Grade Capital. Thunder Road Capital and Venture Communications CEO Arlene Dickinson also participated in the round.
The total sum raised was not disclosed. The Mark plans to use the funding to add hundreds of new contributors, expand their multimedia offering, launch a French site, and sign revenue and content distribution partnerships.
Launched in May 2009, The Mark has assembled more than 600 Canadian contributors across politics, business, science, technology, sports and the arts.
The Mark is Canada's daily online forum for news, commentary, and debate. The Mark is founded on the idea that thousands of credible Canadians have... [more]
The folks at Vancouver's Elastic Path have been kind enough to share their friends and family discount with Techvibes readers.
So here you go:
Get outfitted for the Games! Use promo code EPFRIENDS2010 for 15% off at www.vancouver2010.com/store.
15% off any purchase, no minimum, expires February 14, 2010.
Please use EPFRIENDS2010US in you are shipping to the US.
Exclusions: Red Mittens, Petro Canada glasses, video games.
Elastic Path Software provides a flexible ecommerce platform that gives enterprises the capabilities and control to deliver innovation in a complex... [more]
If there’s one thing people in Portland love to do, it’s muck with technology. Sometimes, that mucking results in something interesting. Sometimes, that something interesting has enough potential that it could become a full-fledged company. But then there’s difficult transitional period. How do you find co-founders? How do you get the idea off the ground? What is going to force you to actually make something happen?
All good questions. And you might find the answers to them at Startup Weekend Portland.
That’s right. After a little hiatus from Portland, last year - and a stop in Corvallis near the end of last year - everyone’s favorite startup starting sprint is headed back to Portland. The event will be held March 5-7 at NedSpace Old Town. Tickets are $75 each.
Hold the phone. What’s Startup Weekend, you ask?
Startup Weekend is a 54-hour startup event that provides networking, resources, and incentives for individuals and teams to go from idea to launch. Get connected with local developers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Build community. Start companies. No talk. All action.
In other words, it’s an intensive bootcamp for helping you bring your startup idea to fruition with other like-minded folks.
What kinds of companies come out of startup weekend? Well, the most impressive alumnus of Startup Weekend Portland has to be Portland-based Mugasha, the best way to listen to electronica online. And there were a number of other Portland projects started that still may become going concerns one day.
But arguably, launching companies may be secondary to gaining the experience and making connections with peers whom you might not otherwise meet. So if you’ve got an idea, definitely show up. And if you don’t have an idea yet? Definitely show up.
Still looking for more details? Stay tuned to Startup Weekend Portland, join the Startup Weekend community, or follow Startup Weekend on Twitter. I’ll keep you up-to-date as more details emerge.
The following is a guest post by Vancouver's Michael Fergusson, CEO of Ayogo Games. Ayogo creates innovative gaming experiences enjoyed on social networks and mobile platforms. This post is part of an ongoing series that discusses the business side of casual social games. Make sure to check out Ayogo's blog and join the conversation.
What’s a game and why are games important? I tried to address this question in the talk I gave to the International Internet Marketing Association.
One good definition of a game is “an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context." (Serious Games, Clark C. Abt, 1970) As you may have noted to yourself already, this can describe all of manner of human endeavor from finance (sometimes not in a good way) to education to medicine. Airline pilots are required to practice in simulators that look a lot like big console games, and many of our sports such as biathlon, javelin, archery, are based directly or indirectly on survival skills our ancestors developed from necessity. Today, we use those skills for the fun of it. Why is that?
Games and play are a basic survival adaptation. Think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (basic human needs are represented in the shape of a pyramid, with the largest and lowest levels of needs at the bottom, and the need for self-actualization at the top): at all levels of the pyramid we work within a framework of rules, collaborating with others to reach our goals. Our brain has evolved to encourage our success by rewarding us when we're successful, beyond the inherent rewards of survival.
Here's an observation that I hope you will find interesting: When you call something "a game", there is generally an implication that you're talking about something that isn't (for lack of a better word) important. And in many cases that's true: the game is not important. But the interesting thing is that our brain doesn't necessarily know that. Our brain will give the same sort of dopamine reward for a solving a meaningless puzzle game as it does for learning how to properly tie a life saving knot (shout out to all the cub scouts out there).
This is valuable from an evolutionary perspective because most of our games, like hockey for example, are analogs to things in the real world. That’s why they work as games and that’s why we play them. Hockey teaches us about timing and teamwork, and helps us develop useful fine motor skills. These are the same skills and abilities, generally speaking, that we use to navigate our world, so we can survive. Even though we don’t truly require all these skills for survival purposes any longer, these same instincts remain, crying out to be satisfied in other ways. This is why we get a dopamine rush when we do well at a complex pattern-matching game, despite the fact that we'll likely never use those skills to learn which mushrooms make good soup, and which ones are poisonous.
Implications for design
When you're designing a game (or even a customer response form for the corporate website), understanding this mechanism of reward lets you recognize the patterns and use them to your advantage. As Eisenhower said: motivation is getting somebody do something because they want to do it. In coming posts, we'll talk about how that's done, by looking at examples from a variety of different games.
Ayogo is a Vancouver-based lab that creates innovative gaming experiences enjoyed on social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc.), and mobile... [more]
To help Vancouver businesses and their employees maximize productivity and avoid gridlock during the upcoming 2010 Olympic Winter Games, CounterPath Corporation is making its voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) softphones available for free to all businesses, academic institutions and government agencies in the Lower Mainland.
CounterPath’s VoIP platform gives CIOs and IT managers a fast, convenient option for supporting telecommuting, which 70 percent of British Columbia enterprises plan to expand or begin offering in time for the 2010 Games, according to a BC Human Resources Management Association survey. Although the 2010 Games span a little over two weeks – Feb. 12-28 – the survey found that the impact on employee commutes will last six to 10 weeks.
CounterPath’s Bria softphone goes beyond basic telecommuting services, such as voice calls and e-mail, to support a variety of other applications, including video calls, presence, file transfers and messaging, all from a single user interface and tied into the enterprise’s existing infrastructure. CounterPath’s solution also gives B,C. enterprises the flexibility to enable those applications for all employees or for specific groups, such as call center staff.
CounterPath will distribute softphones through February 28th and validate accounts for 60 days upon activation. B.C. enterprises and other organizations can take advantage of this offer by visiting www.counterpath.com/bria-games.
CounterPath Corporation is a leading provider of innovative desktop and mobile VoIP software products and solutions. The Company's product suite... [more]
At January's Vancouver Enterprise Forum, Jacob Malthouse participated in the Lightning Pitch panel and had 100 seconds to explain that his team was planning to become the registry for the .eco domain name. Malthouse's presentation was slick but that won't come as a surprise if you check out his company's WHO, WHAT, and HOW videos online.
Within the next year to 18 months ICANN - the US non-profit that regulates domain names globally - will open an application process that will allow hundreds of new domain suffixes (like .com or .ca) to be created. These new domains will be run by registries, who sell domain names for an annual fee.
Malthouse and Big Room Inc. will be applying to run the “.eco” (dot eco) registry. Big Room was founded in in 2007 with the goal of creating Dot Eco and over the last couple years they have assembled an international team of investors, advisors and partners to help design a model that would be socially, environmentally and financially sustainable.
Thanks to ICANN's ‘community-priority’ track which allow community focused domains to avoid being sent to auction if they can demonstrate community support, Big Room was a great shot at landing this green domain extension.
Big Room is backed by environmentally and socially aware angel and venture capital investors including Working Enterprises and Vancouver's Renewal Partners who fully support their efforts to run Dot Eco as a social venture.
Look out for an interview with Big Room over the next couple weeks where we'll look at their plans to establish community driven governance around the Dot Eco domain to ensure that it becomes a eco-marketing and transparent solution for millions of individuals and businesses who want to demonstrate their green commitment.
Big Room Inc. is a Canadian company based in Vancouver, British Columbia with an office in New Haven, Connecticut. It was founded in 2007 with the... [more]
