Select Start Studios is a mobile app development shop based in Ottawa, Canada and it was recently acquired by the up-and-coming eCommerce company Shopify. The acquisition makes a lot of sense as eCommerce is increasingly happening on mobile devices and rather than Shopify outsourcing its mobile efforts, it made more sense for Shopfiy to acquire a group like Select Start and develop the mobile products internally. While Select Start promoted the fact that it does cross-platform development and included BlackBerry, the company is better known for its iOS products such as Getaround.
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Author: Kyle McInnes
Sometimes it’s nice to get a break from the startup world. It seems Silicon Valley churns out the next “game changing” startup about once a month and the vast majority of these companies are a waste of everybody’s time. Take Kevin Rose’s Oink for example. It’s not a bad a idea, it’s just a waste of your time. No offence to Rose because Oink would be awesome if everyone in your city used it, but that’s incredibly unlikely. What’s more likely is that this idea will pivot about six times until it’s something very different than what it started, or the idea will simply fade into oblivion. In the meantime, if you’re an iPhone user and your friends are into trying every free app that hits the App Store, you will likely get bombarded with friend requests for each of these startups.
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RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins said that the city of Ottawa is “central to its software strategy” and that has implications for both the city and the company. Ottawa is a city with a long history of tech and culture that can bring a lot of value to RIM. But there some obstacles ahead.
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The news of RIM promoting its COO Thorsten Heins to the position of CEO seems like its a good move from a shareholder perspective, but we won’t know its affect on the company for some time. Shareholders have been demanding a change in leadership for some time now, and if the Co-CEOs stepping down will instill more confidence in the company, then it had to happen sooner rather than later. We’re going to hold off on any judgements about Heins and his ability to lead until he’s had some time to get comfortable in the role. There’s a lot at stake here and the company is going through a major transition. Here are 5 key milestones that we see on the near horizon for Thorsten Heins.
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There’s an increasing need for innovative marketing solutions for mobile apps as the number of these apps increases and discoverability decreases. The answer to marketing apps effectively is far beyond traditional marketing such as advertising and traditional media outreach. Marketing apps has to come from good technology and implementation. AppCarousel is an interesting marketing approach because it takes the success of carousel features and gives that experience to carriers, brands and developers that want a better way to showcase their apps.
Continue reading ‘Wmode Spins Off AppCarousel Business to Help Carriers and Developers With App Marketing’
Open Data is important because it releases tax payer funded data to those that pay for it, allowing passionate developers and citizens to make better use of the data. The City of Ottawa, Canada, is dealing with a publicly funded transportation chief that won’t release data to the tax payers funding them. In this case, the GPS data broadcasted by busses in Ottawa is being held hostage by the transportation bureaucracy, and your city could face something similar.
Continue reading ‘Encourage Your City Councillors and Government to Make Data Open’
