There’s a trend in the tech industry these days, especially in mobile, for tech accelerators. The general way these things work is that your company applies, and if accepted, is given a small sum of money up front to begin work on a product. For a period of anywhere between 3 and 6 months, companies in an accelerator work tremendously hard and are given support by mentors to get to a working product stage complete with demo. Ideally, startups leaving an accelerator will have enough traction to raise money to build an actual company. The most recent Canadian accelerator to launch is Extreme Startups, which is part of the same family as Xtreme Labs, whose BlackBerry apps we’ve written about many times.
Continue reading ‘Extreme Startups Launches in Toronto With Up to $200K Funding For Companies’
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Xtreme Labs is a development shop which has a venture capital wing called Extreme Venture Partners. BlackBerry users may recognize some of Xtreme Labs’ handy work with app such as Fixmo, Unify4Life, and others. Exteme Venture Partners has announced a new year of ExtremeU, an accelerator-type program that provides seed funding and mentorship to startups.
Continue reading ‘Startups: Apply Now for the ExtremeU Accelerator Program’
The Canadian Film Centre has announced that it will have two PlayBook apps available for demo at Scotiabank Nuit Blanche in Toronto. The apps look really cool and one of them is pretty innovative and is in a category of its own called an art app. More after the jump.
Continue reading ‘CFC Announces 2 PlayBook Apps Available for Demo at Scotiabank Nuit Blanche in Toronto’
Right on the heels of SmrtGuard announcing it has released its panic button feature as a standalone app, Guardly is now available in App World. Keep reading to learn more about this app.
Continue reading ‘Guardly Free Personal Security App Goes Live in App World’
Guardly CEO Josh Sookman demos the app for iPhone.
Guardly will be launching its mobile personal safety app for BlackBerry next week. The app turns a BlackBerry into a next-generation mobile personal safety service and has been available for iPhone since April. The app is geared towards students, young professionals, travelers, seniors living alone, or anyone who frequently walks alone at night, and people who may find themselves in abusive relationships or faced with medical conditions. Friends and family can also use Guardly to watch over each other during natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, floods and tornadoes.
The app provides 1-tap connection to a trusted safety network via conference call, email, text message, the web and real-time location tracking. Guardly can even auto-dial 911, campus security or other first responders as part of the alert. The app includes a free basic alerting service and a premium version that includes powerful collaboration features.
Interestingly, the founder and CEO, Josh Sookman, is ex-BlackBerry Partners Fund so he clearly knows how to raise money for the startup.
We’re here at the International Startup Festival in Montreal and we’re going to be posting about some of the startups and cool companies. The first on our list is Urban Orca based in Toronto, Canada. The idea behind Urban Orca is pretty simple: “UrbanOrca helps you meet people with shared interests and do more of the things you love. Finally, the virtual world supports the real world.”
Continue reading ‘Startup Showcase: Urban Orca Connects People Around Activities #startupfest’
