Canada Bombshell

In this era of extreme caffeination, what iPhone applications could be more fitting than those that lead you to your favourite cup of Tim Hortons or Starbucks? TimmyMe and BucksMe do exactly that.

Both apps were created by developers Blaine Korte and Cory Jacobsen, both employees of zu.com communications in Saskatoon. TimmyMe, launched in August, reached the second most-popular free iPhone application spot in Canada and BucksMe, launched October 14th, is currently one of the top twenty most popular paid iPhone applications in Canada.

Both applications use geolocation to determine the nearest Tim Hortons or Starbucks locations based on the user’s position. BucksMe has the added feature of an interactive map that allows users to choose an exact position to search from; this would come in handy if you want to know how close the nearest location is in an unfamiliar city or neighborhood or for planning future trips.

BucksMe also offers a digital note pad that records orders manually — convenient if you’re making an office run and don’t want to get the boss’s order wrong. Distances are displayed in miles and kilometres and up to 25 locations can be viewed for each search in a convenient results bar format.  These added features justify the 99-cent price tag, where as TimmyMe is free.

Korte and Jacobsen say they wanted to develop a distinctly Canadian iPhone app – and what is more Canadian than Tim Hortons? Maybe only the beaver and the maple leaf and these don’t lend themselves to iPhone apps quite as easily. TimmyMe currently boasts 46,000 users.

If you have a hankering for juicy celebrity gossip, an all-in-one, one-stop-shop website — The Velvet Hot Tub — is just what the doctor ordered.

With real-time updates of stories from around the web, The Velvet Hot Tub rates each article by temperature (currently the top story is 110 degrees Fahrenheit). The more clicks a story receives, the hotter it gets. It also lists articles in order of release time.

A news aggregator, it posts over 300 stories each day from more than 40 of the most popular celebrity blogs including: TMZ, Perez Hilton, Yeeeah! and Seriously OMG among others.

Other features include a search function that allows you to find the latest news on individual celebrities.

Vancouver-based The Velvet Hot Tub Inc. launched in 2008.

“It’s a quick, complete listings of all the latest celebrity gossip and technology news,” says Co-founder Lars Vedo. “Currently under the radar, those who have discovered it are self-professed addicts.”

Vedo and his team are also responsible for Newte.ch: real tech reviews from top tech blogs. The site architecture is identical to Velvet Hot Tub except instead of celebrity gossip, it features the latest technology news.

Newte.ch grabs articles from the top 40 tech blogs in real time: see stories from sites such as Tech Crunch, Gizmodo and ZDnet.

Both sites feature Google Gadgets for easy homepage access. RSS feeds to come.

For those of you who know me, I am a big fan of REM. From the ChronicTown EP in 1980 to their 2008 release Accelerate, their music has helped shape my life.

Last night, I saw them live for the sixth time in Vancouver; it was a great show. I don’t want to review the show here as many other people will do that in their blogs. I want to talk about how REM is using social media to viral market the band, the songs and their brand.

There are a handful of bands in the world that ‘get it.’ REM is one of them. Instead of fighting technology, they are embracing and encouraging it. For example, the band released twelve different HD versions of the video for their first single (Supernatural Superserious) and encouraged people to download them and create a mash-up which the band would link to from their site. Several hundred fans created mash-ups and posted them on YouTube.

For the tour, the band has created a page that tells fans which media tags to use and asks them to post during the shows. Last night, there were a handful of people (myself included) sending tweets from the show. A few people were streaming live video on ShoZu. Photos were being uploaded live from the venue from iPhones using iFlickr. There was some live blogging going on too.

For the technologically advanced, this is nothing new. But for a big band to encourage uploading user-generated content, this is a big step forward. In the past, the rules for many bands was ‘no cameras, no recording devices.’ For REM, the rules are: we want you to help us viral the media.

From diehard fans to casual listeners, the REM rule engages a community and enhances their fan base. My guess is that half of the people at last night’s concert will do some sort of REM search today and find some amazing videos, photos and reviews. But the big win is for fans around the world that could not make it to the concert. They were able to see live set-lists, photos, videos and blogs about the concert, as it occurred. For these fans, it brings them closer to the band and increases REM’s brand. And all of this will trickle down to revenue for the band as it will increase ticket sales, merchandise sales and, for those people like me who still buy music, audio sales.

REM did one more thing right. They used their own site as a launching pad for the user-generated content. The most recent tweets, Flickr photos, YouTube videos and blog postings can all be found on their tour page in one convienent place. Fans will quickly find that it is much easier to go this page than to search the web. Once again, this increases REM’s brand by gaining eyeballs at their site and making things easier for fans.

One more interactive thing: the stage show made use of about a dozen cameras feeding an LED light curtain, much like U2 used on their last tour. REM had live video mixed with abstract images and song lyrics. A great effect. Something the band should consider is making some of that content available for fans for mash-ups.

Maybe I am biased, because I love the band, but I really believe REM is a leader in where the music industry is headed. Amazing, considering the band is 28 years-old. Great job guys!

Most conferences I attend or participate in, or co-produce for that matter, tend to lean a tad more toward the “geeky” type of affairs as opposed to the more creative. Working in social media and technology for the past several years, this fact is just par for the course and happens to be the kind of event I enjoy, much to my own surprise and even though some of the time those uber geeky topics and conversations are over my head. It is these conferences that have helped in convincing the rest of the world that being geeky is in style and they have assisted in bringing the affectionate term “cool geek” into the mainstream.

I definitely don’t rank in the cool geek stardom status. I can write *some* code and I built an entire Flash website from scratch, once. I was the art student who wished her ways of straight-A’s in math didn’t up and vanish from the left brain after Math 12. I love technology and everything fabulously geeky about it. I dream about better applications and how I could implement them, but I can’t build them. I think what I love most about technology is how creative it can be. I think that’s why I’m still here. What does any of this mean and where might you fall? Are you a geeky artist? Or an artsy geek?

VIDFEST is the perfect answer for the creative geek and techy artist in you. This year will be my third consecutive year at VIDFEST and it’s one of my favourite conferences for this reason. It tends not to focus so much on the business of technology or creative content, but more on creative content and contribution itself - how creativity advances technology and how technology inspires us all to think creatively. It fuels my definition of inspiring. It’s the perfect equation, if you will, of techy and creative, where geek meets artist.

If you’re visiting the VIDFEST site in these last few days and hours before things kick off, wondering if you should attend, you should, no matter what side of the brain is urging you to. The official program alone is reason enough. But if it’s not, speaking from an artsy-geekish perspective: You will meet great people, you will have memorable connections, you will have fun, you will be inspired.

Photo Credits: kk+ and Mark Busse
xposted from VIDFEST Blog

How many hours are there in a day? 24. This isn’t a trick question; bear with us. How many hours or minutes do you want to spend during this 24-hour period on the phone trying to book appointments with your: dentist, hair dresser, masseuse, councillor? Probably as few as possible.  An online appointment-booking system may just shave off most of the time you currently spend on hold, hearing a busy signal or being told to call back later. Enter 24hr Assistant.

This Saskatoon web-based, appointment-scheduling system appeals to businesses that waste valuable manpower booking appointments manually. The 24hr Assistant allows customers to book their own appointments with whomever staff they wish. Imagine all of your customers or clients doing their own bookings! (Sigh of relief.) 24hr Assistant also offers other business-friendly features such as appointment history and client information. We really like this novel and highly relevant idea and believe it will be a big hit.

Kinzin is transforming how families share the most important little people in their lives with the latest launch of Kinzin.com.

Privacy and security online is important to many of us, especially to parents. Kinzin understands this better than anyone and has created an online space for you to share your kids’ photos safely and as private as you deem: you control who gets to see your content. Inviting people to your social network, or rather, subscribing any of your friends or family members into your space, is one of the features that puts Kinzin ahead of other photo-sharing networks.

There is another quality that is probably the most exciting new feature in this launch: social networks in the mail! For Grandma, who doesn’t have a computer or doesn’t know the first thing about social networks or “online communities”, is now able to be a part of your life online. In just a few clicks (and a truly unbelievable low cost), your family members can receive prints of your top 10 images each month, chosen by you, VIA THE MAIL! All of those headaches or concerns over certain family member’s dial-up, download times and those phone calls we all inevitably receive, “How do I login again?” are out the window. There’s something to be said about “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. Kinzin has created a really easy way for anyone you choose to receive the cutest, up-to-date images of your kids through the postal service. I’ve given up trying to teach some of the folks in my parent’s generation (and up) how to enter a URL or surf and search. Sign me up for monthly prints!!

There are some other really neat features that help to create that perfect snapshot in time of your kids. You can add status messages, photo titles and descriptions and the family can comment on photos as well. All of these features are available for each and every image so that every memory can easily be captured and each moment can be put into precise context, not just uploaded as part of an album in a bank of photos.

We all need special tools to be able to share the kinds of private information and experiences about our kids - Kinzin provides this for you in the most perfect package - whether you use Facebook, Flickr, or like Grandma, good ol’ fashioned mail!

Check out Kinzin.com

If you’ve sat up and taken notice of what’s happening on the Internet these days you have two words to say: SOCIAL MEDIA. Social media websites are screaming success when it comes to what people are doing on the Web at school, work, on the subway, in the park, etc. Social media websites,  Facebook, Twitter, socialthing!, Flickr (and many others), allow users to come together and connect in an instantaneous way previously impossible on the Web.

Social Media Workshop, Digital Media Connects Us: How Social Media is Enabling Business, Relationships, Entertainment and Play, takes place May 1 - 4 at the Banff Centre.  This workshop event brings together key speakers from leading companies, such as Flickr, to discuss key issues and lead case studies and group activities. If you want to learn how to harness social media for the benefit of you businesses (and your life), this is where to learn it.

Attention digital media producers, bloggers, artists, inventors, game developers, designers, podcasters and anyone else with even the slightest interest in digital media. The Vancouver International Digital Festival, May 21 to 24, is an event not to be overlooked. It draws attendees and speakers from around the world to discuss the latest goings-on in the industry.

From an International Partnering Forum at the Granville Island Hotel to a Pitch-n-Play at the Emily Carr Institute, the locations are as enticing as the events themselves. Previous speakers include: John Walker, Feature Film Producer/Director of Production, Pixar Animation Studios, Mark Verheiden, Co-Executive Producer/Writer, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and Ken Lobb, Studio Manager of Studio RX, Microsoft Corp. If you’re looking for the opportunity to interact with some of the world’s top digital media executives, this is it.

Ottawa-based Overlay.tv offers users a video-viewing experience unlike anything that currently exists on the Web. Self described as a video commerce platform, Overlay.tv enables users to stream videos from websites such as YouTube and MySpace while “overlaying” pictures, images, graphics and product information that appear while the video is playing. It reminds one of an online, advertising-based version of VH1’s Pop Up Video.

Overlay.tv is unique in that it doesn’t interrupt the viewing experience but rather incorporates advertising and other information directly into the video itself. Viewers can also choose to turn the “overlay” feature off. Giant corporations such as Amazon.com, iTunes and Wal-Mart have signed on to allow users to “click through,” (why wouldn’t they want the increased traffic?) laying the foundation for remarkable advertising potential. Overlay.tv is an intuitive, intelligent way to improve the user-experience. Will it possibly lead to an end of ads interrupting videos you’re waiting to see?

I got some interesting spam in the old Inbox today, something above and beyond the run-of-the-mill zipped files promising CHEAP!! DESIGNER!! SHOES!!! or herbal pills guaranteed to add inches in diameter as well as length.

The missive in question was from a new “social networking” site called Usual Beings (Disclaimer: not my fault if you Google it, pay the site a visit and wind up on 1,000,001 spam lists - you’ve been warned). An excerpt from their pitch:

Usual Beings is a better place to do your social networking. It does everything that you want your social network to do! Usual Beings has the regular features plus new added bonuses that others don’t including:
-music
-movies
-games
-classifieds
-news
-forum
-dictionary
-your personal garage
-the ability to view the last person that viewed your profile!

So, as much as I warn strenuously against it above, I Googled them (I didn’t click on the link that came in the email - whaddya think I am, stupid?) and took a brief look through the site.

Being the curious sort, the first thing I usually do when visiting a new site that looks promising is try to find the “About Us” or “Contact Us” page to see where they’re based, what kind of info is available about the company, its management, history, etc. Along the bottom navigation of the home page, there’s a link to Usual Beings’ terms of service, wherein is contained this gem:

You agree that we can use your information anyway we want. All information given is not our responsibility. All your information can be sold to anyone. Your information can be used to gather information on you and others. Your information is not private. The information you provide must be yours and all images sounds music and everything else must be yours. If you upload any copyrighted material we will turn you over to the proper authorities immediatly [sic] and all information we have on you.

Kinda makes that Facebook privacy policy everyone was flapping about last year look positively benign, don’t it?