Entries from the 'Mobile' category
PunchMuch picture messaging: Fail?
PunchMuch, a digital TV channel driven off of interactive elements like viewers texting the station to vote for videos, is teaming up with Toronto’s MyThum Interactive to create North Aerica’s first mobile picture messaging service for broadcast TV. Viewers will now be able to send their pictures to air, along with traditional texting.
Though CTV (owners of PunchMuch) refer to these steps as “leading the way in viewer controlled, lean-foward interactive television”, one has ton wonder why a teen wouldn’t just go to Youtube or other video services and not bother with a clumsy interface mashing two fairly incompatible technologies together. Television isn’t very well suited to interactivity in the first place, and music videos are increasingly becoming an irrelevant marketing tool in a world where OK GO gets millions of hits online from a clever, low-budget music video they created themselves.
BlackBerry Partners Fund Announced?
VentureBeat reported yesterday that Research In Motion, the RBC and Thomson Reuters invested in an $150 million venture investment fund, called the BlackBerry Partners Fund, to support developers of applications running primarily on the Blackberry.
Shortly after reporting on the announcement, VentureBeat pulled their blog post but the details lingered in RSS readers prompting many (including Techcrunch) to jump on the news and potential slip-up.
The fund will be used to invest in both applications and services for the BlackBerry platform, but it won’t be exclusively to support the Blackberry. Companies that support other mobile platforms in addition to the Blackberry can also apply for monies for the fund. According to our source, the fund isn’t designed to be competitive with the iFund, because it will be free to invest in applications serving that platform too.
The venture firm backing the fund is Canada’s JLA Ventures, a Montreal and Toronto firm active in mobile. That firm will co-manage the investing process, together with the investment group of Canada’s largest bank, RBC Venture Partners. RIM, RBC and Thomson are anchor investors in the fund, and will advise in the fund’s management. Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, Research In Motion, is on the advisory board of JLA Ventures.
In the missing post VentureBeat claimed that they learned of the news in advance of the fund’s official launch and that an announcement will be made at an Orlando convention on Monday.
BC Advantage Funds Leads Mobidia Financing
BC Advantage Funds announced today that they have completed a further investment in Vancouver’s Mobidia Technology Inc. as lead investor in a $7,500,000 round of financing. Interest in the offering was strong, allowing Mobidia to complete a second closing later this month to accommodate additional investors.
“This financing comes at a very exciting time for Mobidia, with the explosion of peer-to-peer communication and streaming video placing a heavy burden on wireless networks and demonstrating a clear need for our technology,” remarked Derek Spratt, Mobidia’s CEO. “This financing will allow us to continue with our aggressive growth strategy, and continue to build on our relationships with our partners including Vodafone, T-Mobile, Sprint, Cisco and Microsoft, among others. We are also gratified at the over-whelming response to our financing, and are pleased to see it over-subscribed.”
David Raffa, Partner & COO of Advantage, said “along with an impressive track-record as a serial entrepreneur, Derek Spratt has brought new strategic focus to Mobidia. We are very pleased with the progress the company has made in the first half of this year, and are excited about its prospects given the extent of its current engagements with its partners.”
I had the chance to attend Spratt’s presentation at the Canadian Innovation Exchange last week in Toronto and while he didn’t pick up the top prize, his pitch was obviously very well received. BC Advantage Funds’ Raffa was also in attendance and participated in a Meet the Investors panel.
iPhone Arriving Soon, eh?
Calling all Mac fanboys: Rogers continued to be a tease this morning, signaling they will finally bring the iPhone to Canada later this year, but keeping mum on when exactly.
The real question is: will this be the original iPhone, or the rumored impending 3G version of the iPhone?
Redwood Technologies - from CBC to CIX
Alberta’s lone representation among the twenty presenting companies at next week’s Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) is Calgary’s Redwood Technologies Inc. Our own Stephen King covered their story, CTI connection and recent hiring of Stephen Nykolyn and Marc Wachmann last month here but after catching a CBC Newsworld feature on them I thought that they deserved another mention leading up to CIX.
Redwood’s primary service is momentem - a mobile telecom expense management subscription service for busy professionals. With momentem software on your handset, you have the ability to tag calls, emails, expenses and your activity in real-time. Allocate the information to clients and projects, attach notes or action items for reminder email follow-up, while flagging billable time or cost, all to assist in billing clients and/or making sense of your monthly cell phone bill via their reporting function.
I had the pleasure of talking to CEO Terry Hughes yesterday (on his Blackberry - I wonder where he’ll allocate our call) and have a feeling that next week’s CIX presentation will be a success - among the investors in attendance will be a Strategic Alliance Manager from Research in Motion.
iPhone in Canada: The Waiting Game
Techvibes writer Warren Frey contributes an article to Mac|Life on the iPhone in Canada, or rather, the lack of iPhone in Canada. Almost a year after it’s initial release, there as still been no official word on Canadian availability. That hasn’t stopped gadget lusting canucks from driving across the border, buying one, and applying a software unlock of medium difficulty. For the less brave or more busy, unlocked iPhones can be found on internet classifieds at marked up prices.
The most probable reason for the delay is an ongoing trademark dispute between Apple and Toronto-based Comwave Telecom. Comwave had been using the term for their iPhone Mobile Wifi phone, a neat technology but no Star Trek-like object of geek dreams. Interestingly, Comwave’s page lists their “iPhone” as sold out; perhaps an indication that it will be phased out.
The Canadian Trade-marks Database record for Apple’s application lists the status as “opposed”, reflecting Comwave’s claim. The record shows that the application was originally approved in April 2005, before an opposition was filed in August 2005. However, the record also shows a last updated date of April 15, 2008, suggesting that there is some current activity on the matter.
Another possible cause for the iPhone’s delay is Rogers. Introducing the iPhone might require them to lower their mobile data rates down significantly, a move they may be reluctant to make. Whereas in the US, $20 a month buys you unlimited data, Rogers asks $65 a month for 1 GB of data. It’s well known that the state of wireless in Canada sucks, and the Canadian wireless cartel seems content to drag its knuckles on innovation while wallpapering our train stations in advertising.
Warren, by the way, enjoys his iPhone very much.
Canadian Wireless Firms Worth Watching
As part of a regular series on innovative IT companies in various sectors, IDC Canada Analyst Krista Collins has just named 10 Canadian-based wireless companies that are worth watching.
- BelAir Networks, Ottawa - Makes mobile wireless broadband mesh network solutions.
- CellWand Communications, Toronto - Application for people wanting a taxi that detects a wireless caller’s location and finds the nearest cab.
- ComVu Media, Vancouver - PocketCaster software lets people stream video from their handsets directly to websites.
- GEOTrac International, Calgary - A GPS tracking and communications solution for the oil and gas industry.
- In Motion Technology, New Westminister, BC - onBoard Mobile Gateway lets public safety vehicles stay connected to multiple wireless local area networks.
- LIPSO Systems, Montreal - Delivery platform for delivering a variety messages to handsets from news events to bar codes.
- Rove Mobile, Ottawa - Mobile Admin application lets IT and network managers run their infrastructures from a variety of handsets.
- Spira Data, Calgary - Application lets remote workers enter field tickets on portable devices even if they’re offline
- Verrus Mobile, Vancouver - Pay-by-phone systems used by municipal parking systems.
- Wallace Wireless, Toronto - Wireless emergency response systems for enterprise workers.
While there is no shortage of wireless companies approaching marketing companies with ways to push messages out to mass audiences, a few of these companies are taking a different approach.
LIPSO is targeting the airline industry and Air Canada has tested its application for sending its passengers a 2-D bar code to handhelds which can be used to speed check-in. At least one US television station has bought ComVu’s PocketCaster for its news reporters so they can send immediate video from an incident while the heavy portable satellite transmitter is being set up. And the BC Ambulance Authority has used In Motion’s gateway to help cut dispatch time to 10 seconds from 45 seconds.
ICE08 wraps up after two exciting days
ICE08 wrapped up in Toronto yesterday after two full days of sharing information, ideas, forecasts and opinions on various topics. Some excerpts from the final day:
Scrabulous
One of the founders of Scrabulous, Jayant Agarwalla, flew over especially from India to share his experience in building one of the most popular (and controversial) games on Facebook. His app, which has taken no outside funding to date, generates about $25,000/month from ads placed above and below the game. It was launched in June 2007 and already has 3.2 million users! He mentioned that the Facebook application directory and the “mini-feed” have been the main generators of traffic for his app.
Funding in Canada
There was an interesting panel discussion on the funding climate in Canada which featured both venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who have successfully raised financing here. Jeremy Wright of b5media noted that his has been the only media company investment by Canadian VCs in the past 4 years (having raised $3 million from JLA and Brightspark). Vikas Gupta of Transgaming said that his company has found raising financing from strategic investors in the US more lucrative. The lone VC on the panel, Alan Gershenfeld, talked about the need for startups to focus on building their core value proposition as opposed to overloading their product with features. The consensus seemed to be that there is money available from angels and VCs in Canada, just need to know the right people.
Wireless innovation
Panelists from RIM, Viigo and Quebecor Media talked about innovations in the wireless world and what role their companies are playing in it. But as an audience member pointed out, the Canadian carriers basically stifle innovation in the mobile space here with their policies. There was a strong call for them to be more open, otherwise we are left discussing the innovations going on in the US and other parts of the world.
Web 2.0
The concluding session on the state of the web, which featured a presentation by Salim Ismail (former head of Yahoo Brickhouse), was the highlight of the conference. Salim talked about how the web has evolved from email in the 80s, to the web browser in the 90s and now the RSS aggregator in the 00s. In the 90s, there were few publishers of content (CNN, ESPN, etc) and millions of viewers. But with the advent of Web 2.0, that has meant that there are now millions of publishers as well - individuals creating their own blogs. And RSS / syndication ties that in to how that content is consumed. Salim also mentioned that the current publically searchable web is about 60-80 billion webpages, but that there is a 400-500x bigger “hidden web” which Google, Yahoo, etc don’t search. This is the data stored in the databases which is only retrieved when specifically asked for. Intriguing stuff.
And then there were other discussions on the future of gaming platforms, interactive marketing, the growing talent crisis and on the relevance of copyright as an effective legal tool. Along with the engaging sessions, the main value was in the tremendous networking opportunity with the speakers and delegates from a variety of interactive media backgrounds. Overall, ICE08 was a brilliantly organized event held at a fantastic venue (The Carlu) and I am already looking forward to the one next year!
Stephen Nykolyn and Marc Wachmann help Redwood gain Momentem
Yes, yes, I know. “Momentem” in the title of this blog post is spelled incorrectly. But, that’s the way Calgary based Redwood Technologies spells the brand name of their signature cell-phone billing/accounting software.
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The problem Redwood is trying to solve is a simple one, and, ’cause of that, I love it. At the end of every month, you get a big long cell phone bill with a near-endless list of numbers. The problem comes if you’re in the position of attributing each call to a specific customer account, like lawyers and consultants. Momentem solves that problem.
Norm Gaskarth, President, founded Redwood Technologies in 2003 and was joined in 2006 by Terry Hughes as CEO when CTI introduced the two of them. Redwood is one of publicly funded CTI’s many success stories as it plays it’s high-tech sector expansion role in Calgary. I wrote about CTI in a previous post.
It’s only recently I heard about Redwood, though, when a friend of mine, Stephen Nykolyn joined them as “VP Sales Americas.” Stephen has a long history in working in a sales and distribution capacity in the wireless industry, and was instrumental in getting Calgary-based KnowledgeWhere and Blister Entertainment on the map. Likewise, the new CTO, Marc Wachmann, was also the chief architect at KnowledgeWhere and helps bring leading-edge wireless development to Redwood.
Like a lot of startup’s, things get started with a good idea and a kick-ass prototype, but start to fizzle when the founders need help with leadership, monetizing/selling the product, and raising enough cash to bring it to market.
Pointstreak goes Mobile with BlackBerry
Vancouver-based Pointstreak.com Inc. announced today the launch of Pointstreak Mobile, a custom software application that enables Pointstreak users to record live game stats during sports events and immediately deliver game information to the Internet from their BlackBerry. Pointstreak Mobile for BlackBerry will allow users - typically a league scorekeeper or a volunteer parent - to record game stats and deliver live game events to league/association websites from their BlackBerry . Game data is uploaded directly from the user’s BlackBerry at the sports venue and then fed through Pointstreak’s Electronic Gamesheet System.
Times have changed since I played minor hockey and eagerly anticipated a bi-weekly stats update from our coach via snail mail. Coach Wise would gather up all the carbon-copy score-sheets and summarize every player’s stats into the familiar games played, goals, assists, points, and PIMs columns and then photocopy the handwritten updates.
Prior to the development of Pointstreak Mobile, data was collected at the game using Pointstreak’s ruggedized touch-screen terminals or down-loadable software on the user’s own laptop. With Pointstreak Mobile, customers can use their existing BlackBerries to record and post games instead of investing in new or specialized hardware.
