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.
Continue reading ‘Mobile Development Studio Select Start Acquired by eCommerce Company Shopify’
Tag: canada
The PlayBook has been getting some good pricing options in many of the major retail outlets. There has been talk of Best Buy USA offering the 16GB BlackBerry PlayBook for $299, as well as the 32GB model for $399 and the 64GB model for $499. I was recently at Costco and its prices seem much better, especially since the Canadian dollar is worth less than the American lately. More after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Costco Selling the 16GB BlackBerry PlayBook for $274.99′
GroupMe was recently acquired by Microsoft/Skype for over $50 million. It’s a great sign that if you build a great app and company around it, you can still be acquired for a ton of money even if you don’t make a single dollar in revenue. The company doesn’t seem to have slowed down after its acquisition though and has announced version 3.0 which includes availability in Canada. Click through for more details.
Continue reading ‘GroupMe Goes 3.0 With New Features and Support for Canada’
Sympatico has launched their mobile portal app on BlackBerry App World. The free, bilingual app delivers Sympatico’s Canadian users access to news, music and entertainment stories, similar to what’s found on their Sympatico.ca portal. Sympatico’s mobile portal app also features a number of mobile features like location-based content including local weather, as well as push notifications for breaking news, a built-in QR code reader and the ability to share news items over social networks.
Download the Sympatico.ca mobile portal app for free in App World.
Ceridian has launched a payroll app called Powerpay that lets you review and approve payroll data using your BlackBerry. The app is available exclusively to existing Powerpay Web customers used by over 30,000 Canadian businesses. The app provides a sercure login process (pictured above), and features:
- Preview and approve payroll using your BlackBerry
- Employee and corporate level data verification including; hours and earnings, employee deductions and employer contributions, net pay, and company totals
- Ensure data security with HTTPS transmissions and three levels of authentication – data is not stored on your device
- The same familiar interface you’re used to with Powerpay Web – no steep learning curve
- On-demand support from our award-winning Small Business Services Team
There’s been some buzz lately about the Avatar Builder app that RIM released. It’s a pretty cool project that comes shortly after the success of several other avatar builders on App World. The problem, is that for some reason RIM has decided to not support its home country of Canada. The app even supports countries like Saint Vincent and the Grenadine, but not the country where its headquarters is located. It’s almost hilarious.
The app’s purpose seems to be a way to promote the BlackBerry Newsletter which contains special offers, news and app recommendations. But even when you sign up for the newsletter, Canada is available as a country to select.
So if you’re in any other country on the planet other than Canada, feel free to check out the girls and guys versions of the Avatar Builder. It looks like a fun way to make a new BBM avatar.
Update from BerryReview: For those of you whose country limits them from downloading this app, you can grab it OTA from these links:
Avatar Builder Guys Edition – http://goo.gl/0Wzmn
Avatar Builder Girls Edition – http://goo.gl/DvmUO
Apparently it has something to do with the EULA which is completely insane because nobody is going to sue over an avatar. RIM Legal needs to get their heads examined.
