Three Calgary Mobile Companies at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

Poynt, Mob4hire and Momentem are a driving force in Canada’ Emerging Technology landscape. They are in Barcelona at the world’s largest mobile conference, Mobile World Congress. A week long event held annually in Barcelona, Spain, Mobile World Congress attracts the largest mobile companies, newest apps and industry leaders.

Poynt, the leader in mobile local search, is a convenient and timesaving GPS-enabled application that connects and guides consumers to local businesses. Poynt gives consumers the ability to move beyond discovery of their local area to view movie trailers and showtimes, book dining reservations, view directions on a map, click-to-call a business or view a website.

Mob4hire, the leader in Brand Mobile Optimization, uses its international community of mobile experts in 153 countries to provide market research, mobile engagement measurement, usability, user experience and functional testing services to global brands, telecoms, ad agencies, content providers and mobile app/web developers.

Momentem, powered by parent company Wmode, is recognized as one of the leading BlackBerry business apps by ZDNet, MSN Tech and Gadgets,Fierce Wireless, AOL, and IT Pro magazine. It is a subscription-based app and hosted service that allows mobile users to instantly allocate mobile calls and activities to specific clients and projects, enabling them to recover more money and keep an audit trail of their mobile activities.

All three companies are over at MWC discussing the road to monetization for mobile apps. “The success of the Poynt app has been driven by a global user base, and we have built an App that connects users with the world around them,” said Andrew Osis, CEO of Poynt Corp. “We take pride in being a Canadian company that is worldwide industry leader both in innovation and business”.

Stephen King, Mob4Hire’s CEO explains making money from your app in no uncertain terms,  "It's a very simple equation; if your mobile App doesn't get at least 4 stars out of 5 in app store user reviews, no one will buy or download it. By helping companies create great apps and mobile websites through our mobile usability research and testing tools, we increase user engagement and recommendations leading to viral growth. Our friends at Poynt and WMode Momentum are prime examples; GREAT apps and GREAT viral growth!"

Talking about how they have monetized their service, Terry Hughes, Head of Market Development at Wmode, said, “With Momentem we have proved that people are prepared to pay for an app and subscribe to a service when they receive a real tangible value. We deliver a guaranteed ROI coupled with a high quality service for busy professionals, and they are happy to pay several dollars per month."

Startup Weekend Edmonton recap

Startup Weekend had just over 50 people come out this weekend for two and a half days of planning, coding a presenting apps. They ended up with 7 teams (the smallest being 2 and the largest being 14) with  a mix of developers, designers, business people, students, and more. One of the goals for the weekend was to get some diverse groups working together and co-organizer Cam Linke says that definitely happened. For a couple of the apps it will be little more than a weekend project. However most of the teams want to continue what they built in some manner, and a couple of the teams used Startup Weekend as the starting point for startups they want to keep growing.

Seven team built apps this weekend:

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Calgary company Poynt celebrating MWC with a few announcements

Local company Poynt kicked of Mobile World Congress today with four announcements. First, Poynt for Android recently added a gas widget to it’s offerings. The gas widget allows users to search for the nine best gas prices in their local area directly from their homescreen. Poynt CEO, Andrew Osis talks about device integration as integral to the Poynt App. That focus on device integration is one of the reasons Poynt has been selected to exhibit in the Android booth at Mobile World Congress, on this week in Barcelona.

The next two announcements are that Poynt for iPhone is now available in both Australia and Germany. Poynt is aiming to make Poynt available across all devices and continues to work towards that goal.

Finally, Poynt has launched a share feature for Android and BlackBerry users, providing the capability to share local search results on Facebook and Twitter. The addition of the Share feature allows users to share their location and search results with Facebook friends on Android and Twitter followers on both Blackberry and Android. From the homescreen of their device, users can share the Poynt App with their contacts. Users can also share directly from a search results page, enabling them to post where they are currently located.

The new version of Poynt is immediately available for download for BlackBerry smartphones and Android devices via Over the Air download at m.poynt.com.

The C100 60 Minutes in The Valley Event

The C100, a group of Canadians in The Valley that host events to promote Canadian Entrepreneurs, hosted an afternoon of presenting and mentoring via Cisco’s telepresence conference rooms. A non-profit, member driven organization, The C100 aims to grow successful, Canadian-led technology companies.

In Calgary, three companies spent the afternoon presenting and getting advice. Each company had an hour to present, ask questions and get feedback. The feedback was from a combination of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and mentors in a separate conference room in San Jose.

Mentors listened to the presentations, pointed out issues and tried to provide solutions or helpful suggestions. They also added thoughts and ideas around overcoming hurdles the Canadian companies were facing. The mentors offered up advice, opinions, introductions and free office space.

If you get a chance to check out one of Cisco’s telepresence conference rooms, it’s a neat experience. Each room is set up exactly the same, further adding to the illusion that you are all in the same room. For more information on The C100, check out their website. They list confirmed C100 events on there, so check back to see what event you’d like to attend.

Startup Weekend Edmonton is happening right now

We hope everyone got a good night's sleep last night and they are ready to build some great stuff today at Startup Weekend Edmonton. If you're not familiar with it, Startup Weekend events are held around the world. It's 54 hours of building a mobile or web app that could turn into a credible product by the end of the weekend. The weekend brings together everyone from developers and designers, to copywriters and marketers.

Toronto recently hosted a Startup Weekend and the end result was Task Ave. Check it out to see the type of app you'll be getting to see at the end of the weekend.

Make sure to catch the demos from Startup Weekend Edmonton Sunday, February 13 at 6pm, over at Original Joe's. More details on the website. 

Five Alberta IT companies presenting at the Canadian Financing Forum in Vancouver

The Canadian Financing Forum is being held today at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. It matches North American corporate and venture capital investors with entrepreneurs.  

This is the 14th anniversary of the Canadian Financing Forum in Vancouver, but the first that the organizers of the Banff Venture Forum have been at the helm.

From Calgary, presenting companies included:

  • Chaordix, offering crowdsourcing for innovation, market research and brand loyalty
  • Intelliview, a smart video surveillance system
  • Myotis Wireless, low power, high performance radios
  • Userful, multiseat linux desktop virtualization

Alberta also had a company from Edmonton present:

Highlights from the day included a keynote from Steve Munford, the CEO of Sophos, talking about the journey from start-up to mega-exit. TechVibes will follow up with each of the participating Alberta companies to share their feedback from the day.

CE3C, MADT and ACAD are happy to present Factory C4A

Those crazy creative kids up at ACAD are putting together a pretty unique opportunity for artists through Factory C4A. 

From February 7 to 11, then February 14 to 18, artists and students can learn computer programming for the creation and manipulation of virtual sculpture, photos, videos, audio and visuals for performance and installation using computers, touchscreens (iPad, iPhones) and projection screens. Check out the Registration and programme information.

Factory C4A is an artist workshop, an intensive bootcamp and an artistic intervention all in one. The project focuses on learning through making. Built on top of Cocoa, C4A is a framework for artistic production created by Travis Kirton. Cocoa is Apple's development framework for iPhone, iPad and all Mac apps, designed to make it easy to work with drawing, animation, images, and typography. Cocoa's video, midi and quartz components make it especially suited for creating performance works, VJing, and live visuals.

Factory C4A will run for two one-week sessions. Each session will have 15 full-time participants challenged to learn Cocoa by rapid experimentation.  Doors are open to drop-in participants who may view, test and interact with both the content and the full-time participants.

Guess who’s going to India? Hint: It’s Calgary-based CADcrowd

CADcrowd, a Calgary company helping firms hire CAD staff globally, has been selected as 1 of 4 sponsored companies from Canada attending INDIASOFT 2011. The conference will be held in Pune, India and focuses on embedded software, IT enabled services and joint ventures with Indian companies. Alberta International and Intergovernmental Relations have cooperated with the Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council of India to sponsor directors Mackenzie Brown and Mikeal Abramoff to attend the event. “It is a great honour and opportunity to nurture our existing partnerships and create new relationships to capitalize on the immense opportunities” says Abramoff.

CADcrowd became aware of the opportunity as the Alberta International and Intergovernmental Relations office was fielding applications to select targeted firms to attend INDIASOFT 2011. The criteria for selection seemed to match up perfectly with what CADcrowd does and their application was accepted. The event will be held on March 25 and 26 in Pune, India.

Global procurement of engineering services has doubled since 2007 to over $80 billion and is expected to continue at double digit growth rates. Additionally, skilled labour shortages are poised to stifle the Canadian economy as early as 2012 fuelled by economic growth and a retiring baby boomer workforce. CADcrowd provides a solution to these challenges as globalization and the procurement of global services is more than just a trend. “Our integrated project management and software solutions make this process efficient and successful. CADcrowd has a vision to fill the growing need to benefit the Alberta economy” says Brown.

CADcrowd’s Mikeal Abramoff will be sharing his experience at INDIASOFT 2011 with TechVibes readers when he returns. 

Kryos announces the launch of the Velocity AppXtender

Yesterday Calgary based Kryos announced the release of the Velocity AppXtender for IBM Lotus Domino yesterday, offering Lotus administrators and developers the ability to quickly & easily extend Domino databases to the BlackBerry device, through a drag-and-drop interface.

Velocity has been on the market for a couple of years now, as a mobile application platform that supports developers in building smartphone applications within weeks versus months, without requiring any specialized developer skills.

Velocity AppXtender for IBM Lotus Domino is a Velocity plug-in for Lotus Notes that allows Domino administrators and developers to extend Domino applications to the BlackBerry platform with point and click ease. Domino professionals can create fully customized mobile applications with a wide variety of styles, graphics, and layouts to choose from. Existing Domino application security settings are ported automatically into the smartphone app and development work can be previewed instantly on any BlackBerry smartphone or in the BlackBerry simulator. Velocity AppXtender ships with three Domino templates (Document Library, Discussion, and Address Book) and a preconfigured Approval for Expenditure workflow app to support rapid development.

A few of the highlights of the Velocity AppXtender for IBM Lotus Domino are that it makes use of readily available, in-house developer skills, it’s based on open industry standards and it offers unlimited scalability for future us and handles smartphone updates automatically. The Velocity AppXtender for IBM Lotus Domino allows for rapid application development (weeks of development instead of months) and it allows for IT to centrally manage and control application useage and deployment. It’s also an affordable solution for the mid-level enterprise market. Look for more news on Calgary based Kryos over the next few weeks.

What we love about TxtMeNow

TxtMeNow is a Canadian company that increases the touch points between vendors and consumers. They started off in mobile couponing and now include event professional appointment reminders and event management in their roster of services.

Mobile couponing seems to make so much sense. It’s not in your face, it’s not bad for the environment and it’s fast. While it isn’t new, we like how TxtMeNow is partnering local businesses together with one another. For example, if you sign up for a Yoga Class, you can get a coupon for the Juice Bar around the corner. Consumers enjoy the added experience and vendors appreciate the boost – a small way of helping build up the local community.

Appointment Reminders go straight to SMS. Instead of having someone call about your next dental appointment, you can sign up for appointment reminders when you first schedule the appointment. TxtMeNow will send out all of the information around the appointment. If you need to reschedule, you can text back saying “reschedule” and do it all straight from your phone.

Event Management, regardless of the type of mobile phone you have. We can’t lie, we love fancy iPhone apps. However, not everyone has an iPhone. TxtMeNow offers a solution that works for all mobile phones, including that old Razr you insist on carrying around. Schedule session reminders, SMS links to presentations, or post-event wrap ups. Additionally, attendees can use short codes to trade contact information, without needing to keep track of a stack of business cards.

The president of TxtMeNow, Anil Hasham is speaking at MWC in Barcelona next month on geofencing for mobile couponing and quantifying the rate of return. Interesting stuff from a great local company.