VeloCity, the University of Waterloo’s student startup incubator program has added two experienced staffers to their team. Mike Kirkup of RIM developer relations fame will be VeloCity’s new Director and Brett Shellhammer will be bringing his startup and Silicon Valley experience to the role of Executive In Residence.
Continue reading ‘VeloCity announces new leadership team: Mike Kirkup and Brett Shellhammer’
Tag: waterloo
We’re here at We Day in Waterloo. It’s a pretty amazing event that brings together around 7 thousand youth to fight global poverty and promote social justice. The event features the two young men who started Free The Children, as well as a host of celebrities to help the cause.
Continue reading ‘RIM Sponsored We Day Brings 7 Thousand Youth Together to Fight Poverty #WeDay’
If you use Motek’s Code Mucher, you may have noticed being asked to join AppFriendly. The network promotes the fact that AppFriendly gives app recommendations and when you accept the terms and conditions, it downloads an odd app to your device. The AppFriendly app doesn’t have an icon but it does sit on your device running some sort of system process, as seen in the app management settings.
From browsing the AppFriendly network, it looks like Motek is looking to build a social network with profiles, social integration, app ratings and recommendations. The service is obviously in Alpha stealth mode because none of the links work, but it still gives you an idea of how it works and the features it will have. Motek already has a community around their apps where they give users points that can be redeemed for digital goods, and it looks like AppFriendly is a way of extending this ecosystem to other developers. When asked about AppFriendly, Motek responded with: “It’s in Alpha mode right now so we can’t say too much at this point but definitely will share more with you when it’s ready.”
Hit the jump for screenshots of the AppFriendly network.
Continue reading ‘Motek Mobile Developing App Recommendation Engine AppFriendly for BlackBerry’
Being at RIM’s doorstep has helped the developer community in Southern Ontario grow tremendously. Smaller companies and startups have been setting up offices nearby that have given rise to a strong support network of startups, mobile developers and entrepreneurs.
With acquisitions in the gaming, content distribution and payment, Google’s Waterloo offices have grown with a strong mobile focus. Here are a few of the recent additions:
Social Deck is a social gaming platform that specializes in content discovery, distribution and monetization.
PushLife is a cross-platform digital content management and distribution system for mobile.
Zetawire developed their own mobile banking advertizing technology, identity management, credit card and mobile coupon transaction processing.
It’s interesting to see what catch-up moves Google is making in growing it’s mobile business. Tapping a competitor’s developer ecosystem is becoming a bit easier now that mobile developers are developing for multiple platforms. I’m not surprised that Google is paying close attention to the innovative yet underrated Canadian Tech sector.
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip are concluding a nine day tour of Canada which took them to Halifax, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Toronto and RIM’s headquarters in Waterloo Ontario. Following her tour of Canada’s high tech hub with co-founder Mike Lazaridis, the Queen was presented with her own personalized, white, BlackBerry Bold 9700. The Bold 9700 came preloaded with a wallpaper of children from Queen Elizabeth Public School in Kitchener offering flowers. It’s rumored that the Queen isn’t a stranger to these devices, but Palace officials wouldn’t confirm whether a Royal BlackBerry already exists.
As the Queen was guided around RIM’s assembly floor, which is specially designed to guard against electrostatic shocks, the Queen and company wore white jackets like all the employees at the facility. According to RIM, this was the first time the media had been allowed on the RIM work floor. The whole experience was very reminiscent of back in 1878 when Queen Victoria met Alexander Graham Bell and tried his new invention: the telephone.
This isn’t breaking news as it went live about a month ago, but it slipped under my radar and I have to post it. The Canadian Wilfrid Laurier School of Business and Economics in Waterloo, Ontario (near RIM headquarters), offers an MBA BlackBerry pilot program. The program puts a BlackBerry Curve 8900 in the hands of every student, as well as provides them with education and collaboration tools for their device.
The faculty even talks about using push technology to push content to their students’ BlackBerrys, and will be recording metrics to gauge which content is being accessed.
So if you’re a student in this program, feel free to hit up BlackBerry Cool for software and accessories. I have no problem giving you some cool applications for the device to test what it can do.
