Entries from the 'Wireless' category
Fido and Rogers go “Uno”
Fido and Rogers are bringing Wifi and GSM technologies together with UNO, a service plan and handset designed around creating “zones” for unlimited calling. The handset is designed to default to a wireless network while at home, so minutes aren’t used on the phone, and defaulting to a customer’s wireless plan while on the go. The wifi/GSM plan will also be available through Rogers, and will be an optional add-in to an existing plan, at $15 for unlimited local calls and $20 for unlimited local and long distance (from a wifi hot spot.)
With landline use shrinking and Canada’s wireless environment screaming for customer service and innovation, Uno could be a success…..but better still would be a plan that works with phones that are already wifi-enabled, like the Nokia N95 and Apple’s iPhone, both of which are set to debut soon on the Rogers network. The Uno plan will also require a special router, and really, couldn’t the same savings come from reduced wireless rates?
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.
.gif)
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.
Beer, Hockey, and Betting
Yesterday Vancouver’s Exponentia and Labatt Breweries announced the launch of Bud Light PlayAction Live – a live online interactive prediction and trivia game on TSN.ca. Exponentia has been developing multi-platform interactive applications for sports and entertainment clients for over 6 years. The live online platform, played through the remainder of the NHL regular season and playoffs on TSN, allows NHL fans to play along live with the action against fans from across the country.
In place since December, Bud Light PlayAction Live gives fans the chance to make live predictions as they watch each game – predictions such as: “All-Tied Up! Who will score next?”; “Going to Overtime: How will this one end?”; and “Power Shortage! Will Ottawa score on this power play?”. Points are awarded for correct predictions that are triggered by the live action, with a winner of each game receiving a Bud Light prize pack. One lucky winner will win a plasma TV from Pioneer and Blu Ray DVD player.
Exponentia and TSN.ca have been working together for over five years to bring innovative interactivity to sports fans. In 2006, Exponentia launched the first ever live mobile prediction game with the NHL.
The State of Wireless in Canada Sucks
Thomas Purves of WirelessNorth.ca did an Ignite presentation titled The State of Wireless in Canada Sucks earlier this week at DemoCampToronto17 and received a standing ovation. I can see why.
The idea behind Purves’ presentation was born last April when he posted a mobile data rate comparison bar chart on his personal blog comparing Canadian rates to those in other countries. The rates of Telus, Bell, Fido, and Rogers tower above similiar packages from Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US, and Rwanda. This chart ignited a discussion on his blog 148 comments strong and elicited over 1,600 Diggs.
Mob4hire Crowdsources Mobile App Testing
I love simple business ideas built around exceedingly painful problems. If you are one of the 10,000+ developers that write applications for mobile phones, how can you possibly test your software efficiently on 7,500 different cell phone handsets on 400 different wireless networks around the world?
That was the question that Paul Poutanen asked himself. From his days at Calgary based KnowledgeWhere as President of Blister Entertainment and Wi-LAN, Paul knew that it cost about $6,000 per handset to test an application (buying the handset in all the different O/S and memory configurations along with the time it takes to do the Q/A). He also knew that with 4 billion handsets in the world, there must be a lot of people who could take care of the task.
Thus was born www.mob4hire.com. Mob4Hire is reducing the pain of mobile application developers to test their applications through crowdsourcing. Essentially, testers bid, test and get paid for the projects that mobile developers contribute to the site.
Mob4hire is in the ALPHA/BETA stage of development right now, with Paul and his team focused on recruiting testers. While the community is still relatively small, it includes people from Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, India, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, UK, and the US. Mob4hire is well on it’s way to establishing it’s goal of 5,000 community members.
Paul likens the state of the current wireless industry to the PC industry in the early ‘90s, “It’s extremely fast paced and chaotic, with a lot of players, standards and opportunity.”
One of the interesting aspects about Mob4hire is that it originated as an idea at Cambrian House. It competed in the Cambrian House Tournament of Champions from August 25 to September 19, 2007, and the crowd sourcing community helped Paul incubate the idea to the extent that he was able to launch and be live in December 2007!
Mob4hire was #10 on the January 2008 Alberta Start-up index.
Smart’s Senteo Clicks with Teachers and Students
Canada.com makes me wish I was born later with a story about remote “clickers” in the classroom. Calgary-based SMART Technologies, makers of the SMART Board, introduced their Senteo interactive response system this year. With it, a teacher posts a question on a screen or projector, and students use their clickers to input answers that are wirelessly sent to the teacher’s computer, where results are displayed in real time. Answers can be multiple choice, true/false, or numeric. While the article makes the comparison to a game show, the system avoids encouraging competition by keeping individual responses anonymous, except to the teacher.
An interesting aspect of this technology is that it is being used with students from Grade 1 to University. Teachers report that the clickers increase classroom participation and give them instant feedback on the students’ understanding of lessons. There is little research on the effectiveness of clickers, though one study conducted by University of Waterloo professor Alan Webb concluded that there was no impact on student grades. Regardless, Webb still uses the devices, agreeing that they increase students’ attention to the class. At $1600+ for a classroom set, clickers won’t free teachers from marking quizzes anytime soon. However, with positive feedback from teachers, this technology may go a long way to level the experience between the hand-raising student at the front and the quiet student at the back.
CellClients.com - no more cancellation fees
Too many dropped calls? Too expensive? Moving? Are you looking to get out of your cell phone contract? There are many different reasons for wanting to end your relationship with your cell phone company, but there’s almost always one catch: an early cancellation fee. Usually the cancellation fee starts at $100, but it depends on your carrier and the length remaining on your contract; it can cost several hundred dollars to break free. In the end, it’s usually too expensive to be worthwhile, and rather than overpay to leave, it’s easier to remain an unhappy customer.
Sound familiar? When Bijan Shahrokhi started thinking about trying to end his cell phone contract, he came to realize that with over two years left on his contract, he too would need to spend hundreds of dollars. Rather than giving up, he came up with the idea for CellClients.com. CellClients.com is quite simple; people wanting to cancel their phones advertise their plan (and any incentives for taking it over), and people looking for a cell phone simply browse for a plan that makes sense for them. The idea itself isn’t new, and it isn’t new to cell phones, either. Several websites have the same offer, like Cellswapper and Celltradeusa. So what makes CellClients different?
One of the major differentiating factors is that CellClients is a Toronto-based company established to serve the needs of Canadians. For many people (myself included), with all things being equal, this would be a deciding factor. Another great aspect of CellClients is you can post your cell plan for free, and if and when you get responses, you can choose whether or not to pay one time service fee of $14.90 to unlock the mailbox. Possibly the best feature, however, is the TXT me feature.
Instead of having to check your E-mail to find out if you’ve gotten a response, CellClients can send you a text message so you’re instantly notified that someone is interested in your plan. It makes perfect sense; you obviously have a cell phone, you want to get rid of it, and by finding out the instant someone is interested, you can ensure they don’t move on to a someone else’s plan.
Having a cell phone can be a luxury, but if you’re ready to break free, a cell phone can be a nightmare. With plans in all price ranges, from all carriers, and free, no-obligation postings, CellClients may be your dream come true.
