BC Demo Days II Overview
The second annual B.C. Demo Days took place today and I thought I’d share what happened at the event, and talk about some of the presentations.
The first big event of the day was the announcement of the merger between New Media BC and WINBC, which will now be known as DigiBC. In case you don’t know what either company is about, here is a small blurb about each company from their respective websites. New Media BC - “New Media BC has the mandate to strategically promote and connect BC’s thriving digital media companies and grow the industry by enlisting the support of government and private sector partners from BC and abroad.” WINBC - “Representing more than 250 member companies, the Wireless Innovation Network society of BC (WINBC), is the focal point for wireless in BC. The organization brings this diverse sector closer together by fostering collaboration among early-stage wireless companies in BC.”. For more information, check out their respective about pages on the New Media BC and WINBC websites. Considering all the work they’ve done for local companies in B.C. over the years, I’m excited to see what they can do with all the talent accumulated into one company!
Next, Michael Bidu (WINBC’s Executive Director) and Jeff Laporte (WINBC’s Technical Director) talked about some of the more interesting technologies that they’ve been working on, and they also talked specifically about the Olympics and what they plan to showcase during the Games. The thing I found most interesting was an Olympic media hub to be situated in the middle of Robson Square for the Olympics. They talked about, such as a database of business contacts that you’ll be able to sync with your phone, and they’ll have displays all over the square to highlight some of Vancouver’s most innovative companies. The square also has a skating rink! I’m hoping to volunteer here during the Olympics, it could be a lot of fun.
After Michael and Jeff were finished, the presentations commenced. There were a multitude of different new media and technology companies at the conference to present, all of them British Columbia-based. Below are quick write-ups about each presentation.
· I didn’t get a chance to get the name of the presenter, but the presentation was relatively well executed, and they had some interesting topics. They’re a software company that focuses mainly on security in the technology world, fixated mostly on tracking of devices such as laptops, PCs, and phones. If your data is lost or stolen, you can remotely delete whatever sensitive materials you have. They work with law enforcement to get your tech back in one piece through GPS. Clearly Microsoft is picking up some steam …
· Contact: jamesb@airg.com
· James talked about some of the cool services offered by AirG, and there were a lot of services. Some of the ones I managed to write down: Voice, Sports, Games, Dating, Chat, Divas (?), and Phatlounge (?). AirG is quite well-known in the mobile space, and seem to be rapidly expanding. When I checked out their site, you’re asked to enter your mobile number and you would then receive a text to view their site on your phone. I personally think that is a mistake, that they should have both a website to highlight their company and a website for their services, but maybe I just didn’t look hard enough.
· Presenter: Sean Howe
· Atimi is a software company that has made many applications over a number of different companies. Some of the notable companies they talked about: New York Times, ESPN, and Access Hollywood iPhone applications, to name a few. They’ve made a lot of apps and have been in business for a long time, so despite this being the first time I’ve heard of them, they’ve established themselves as a force in the mobile world to be reckoned with.
· Presenter: Alex Mendelev
· They are a relatively new company who has been recently focusing on Facebook development, with games such as slots and scratch & win. They talked largely about Facebook and how they are big believers of the platform. Oh, and this company got the largest cowbell out of them all ;). People who attended the conference will know what I mean.
· Presenter and Contact: Aaron Hilton - aaron@cellmap.com
· This presentation focused, obviously, on cell phone maps. They create custom map software for mobile platforms, for such places like UVic and Stanley Park in order to know what to see and how to get around. They also developed an iPhone app for Canpages. At the moment they are working on a mobile content platform, which is supposed to send real time location-based services to your cell phones.
· This presentation was much different from all the previous ones in the sense that they focused on a media instead of web and wireless innovations. They primarily create effects for movies. They showed us a really amazing video of Angels and Demons, highlighting exactly how the movie was made without needing to physically be in the Vatican to film it (because there was no way that movie would be allowed to be filmed in any Catholic-owned area). Amazing stuff. They might have the same video on their website, go check it out!
· This company offers a mobile solution to help persons with disabilities find parking quickly and easily. It uses real time maps to show locations, free spots, and has the ability to report anyone who is using the parking spots illegally. I wish I used this when I broke my ankle!
Darim Group
· Presenter: Chang Hang
· This was a fascinating presentation, based on personal video cameras that you try to hide as best you can that hooks up to certain parts of your body. This camera is used in the military and police, but they are trying to enter the consumer market. The idea was that you could attach this camera to your clothing and stream your life live to the world. The problem with this, in my opinion, is that the cameras are way too noticeable; they’re going to need to use smaller equipment. An interesting idea nonetheless, if it was discreet enough, people may use it.
· Presenter: Ashish Anand
· The general idea behind Muutu is that it is localized search. You would search, for example, a name in a particular city and the search engine would do its best to find you all the “John Smith’s” in Phoenix. The web app is currently in beta format and supporting specifically B.C. and California.
· While you may never have heard of this company, it has made quite a few high profile games, such as Punch Out, Mario Strikers, and NHL Hitz. The problem is Nintendo tends to overshadow when it comes to the name on the box, which tends to make their brand name suffer, but their games are of the highest quality. I believe they said they were hiring as well, if anyone is interested (I’m sure most of these companies are, but this one mentioned it in their presentation).
· This company’s pitch was that they do the best they can to improve your overall product in all aspects from marketing down to user interface, although it seems the focus was to improve the core business aspects more than your actual product.
· While this presentation started off looking to be another location-based company, I was taken aback by the technology displayed. They demonstrated how fast they were able to get locations of various cell and GPS-enabled products compared to other competitors, and it seemed very quick. And I can personally vouch for that; I’ve worked with some location-based APIs, and this one seems to take the cake. They have a lot of different tracking configurations, so if you want more detail I’d recommend checking the website, there is only so much they can pitch in 3 minutes!
Simon Fraser University Project
· Presenter and Contact: Craig Scratchley - wcs@ensc.sfu.ca
· Talking about this project will be a bit different than the rest, because I personally know about the project and the professor who presented, and was the one who got him to come and give a talk. This is a project that uses your location to give you relative information to the objects around you, but it doesn’t use just simple GPS navigation. While it does use GPS as a starting point, the first step you take is calculated with a sensor module that has 3 axes of accelerometers, 3 axes of gyroscopic sensors, and 3 axes of magnetometers. Using calculations based on these sensors and your initial location it finds your current location. The project is currently supported by Nokia on the Symbian platform, but they are building the base code on a flavour of Linux in order to be able to port it to many other platforms. I may get involved in this project a couple months down the road when I free up some time.
· Presenter: Nima Kaviani
· I stepped out during this presentation, but from what I can remember it was a project based on interactive ways of dealing with displays.
Virtual Wide Web
· This project seemed exciting, although they may be raising the bar too high. The idea is that VWW is a recreation of the web in three dimensions, although to me, it seemed like a rival of Second Life for the PS3. One of the quotes from the presentation said “Do you wish you could go back in time and create a startup on something you know you could have made, but didn’t have the idea for? That wish is coming to life with VWW”. This thing does sound like it has the potential to be great; it sounds like a quasi real life MMO . The demo looked great and the integration of business into the program sounds promising, but I don’t think it’s the second coming on the Internet. Looking forward to seeing more though!
· The first thing talked about was that Vantrash is a simple site that allows you to find out when garbage collection is going to be in your area. While it seemed like there wasn’t more to it, it’s the backend that impressed me the most. It uses a REST-ful API to dish out the data, and apparently there is more data than just the garbage collection schedule, so I expect a couple more products to roll from these guys pretty soon.
· This company is purely about pay-for-parking, and they seem to have a solid stronghold in the industry, as apparently they are working with 90 different cities across North America and Europe. Essentially, instead of using coins, you use your phone account, and instead of wondering when time expires, it lets you know in the form of text/email/whatever. One very interesting point was that there is a particular city (London?) that is eliminating pay by toll completely and instead just using polls with information on how to pay by phone. Food for thought on how much we’re relying on phones these days.
· Presenter: Simon Bucker
· These guys essentially want to change the way we advertise on the web. Their idea is that we as consumers are so accustomed to advertising that we can ignore most of it, but what Wireless Image intends to do is to throw advertising at you in a way you can’t ignore. One of their strategies involves brands, phones, and ringtones. Their thinking is that teenagers love all of these things, and so if they were to offer free ringtones, they would eat them up. The catch is that there is embedded branding information in these ringtones. Although this is just one of the many planned in-your-face advertise ideas they’ve got in store. Keep an eye on this company to see how their strategy pans out.
· Contact: jeff@xomodigital.ca
· The XOMO application is completely focused on festivals. Essentially what the idea entails is you having a GPS-enabled phone, and for it to give you real time information on what is going on around you, what you should go, what you should see, and what you should do. Outside of that aspect, it also allows you to upload photos of the event as it goes on, and based on the location, it will upload these photos to the appropriate festival photo album. It sounds pretty cool in concept, but I’m not sure how often people are going to be whipping out their phones to find out what to do when they’re at a music festival. We’ll see how this project pans out. Make sure you check out their geo-tagged feature.
· The pitch is that they are an interactive entertainment site that will create quality media content for whatever product you have. They mostly do flash, which I’m not particularly fond of, but these guys clearly love it, and if I wanted something flashy (pun intended), I would love to have these guys create professional content. Their demos looked good, and I particularly liked the Santa fight.
So there you have it! These are summaries of some of the best and most innovative companies coming straight from British Columbia. If there are companies from the events reading this, let me know if there is any information I left out that you would like added.
Shawn Jansepar
