From the monthly archives: January 2011
Yesterday, Guardly held Toronto’s first Twilio meetup at our North HQ. The event was wildly successful! Many walked away with a better understanding of how Twilio works and how simple it is to build powerful communications apps. I had an opportunity to meet almost everyone in the crowd and I look forward to meeting everyone else in the community at our next meetup!
We did our best to attract folks with some beer, swag (t-shirts, stickers) and demos. Next event, stay tuned for a Twilio hack-a-thon where we will be giving away prizes including free Twilio credit! For upcoming meetups, if you are interested in helping to organize the event, present/demo, share your findings, build new innovative solutions or just hang out, please feel free to get in touch at: twiliotoronto [at] guardly [dot] com
A few pics of the night:
Here I am, giving a brief introduction. Photo credit: @mhp.
Nolan rocks out a fantastic Twilio presentation, caught teaching everyone about TwiML verbs. Photo credit: @dxjones‘s Tweet.
Marcus gives a Broadplay demo/overview. Photo credit: @mhp.
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Do you enjoy helping others? Could you handle an emergency? Would you like to provide extra assistance to those in need? If so, there’s an iPhone app designed to get you involved. In the San Francisco suburb of San Ramon, California, a new iPhone app titled Fire Department is preparing for its launch. The purpose of the application is to allow iPhone users to have access to emergency activity in the community so that help may be provided.
As noted in recent Forbes and TechCrunch articles, this technology empowers the community to help save lives. Notifications are sent to iPhone users with the app, providing details on the emergency and locations of the nearest Automated External Defibrillator (AEDs). This innovative application highlights how smartphones are going above and beyond the basics of calling and texting, to make a difference between life and death.
There couldn’t have been a better time for this app to launch as over the last year the Ontario Legislature has been reviewing Bill 41, the Defibrillator Access Act, 2010. This legislation would mandate AEDs to be installed in all public buildings. Bill 41 is currently in its third reading, and should it be enacted, it would be the first of its kind in Canada. Since 2001, all fifty states in America had enacted defibrillator laws or adopted regulations. The American Heart Association notes that at least 20,000 lives could be saved annually by using AEDs during sudden cardiac arrest. By encouraging the use of AEDs and making them accessible, as many as 50,000 deaths from cardiac arrest could be prevented each year (National Conference of State Legislatures).
Guardly is a strong advocate of personal safety, and with the hopes of Bill 41 being passed in Ontario our application could go beyond alerting your personal safety network to providing immediate assistance that may directly save lives. When handling a cardiac arrest emergency, timing is critical and being aware of the locations of AEDs is crucial. In recent news, a Macleans study indicated that the odds of surviving a cardiac arrest when receiving electrical shocks are higher for individuals who are in a public venue compared to those who are at home. It found that 34% of cardiac arrest victims who received electrical shocks from a defibrillator in public venues survived, versus only 11.6 per cent of those shocked at home.
Guardly understands the importance of AEDs and we hope to partner with companies that can provide that data to incorporate a similar feature to that of Fire Department in our own safety application in the future. For now, Guardly will compliment such apps as Fire Department by allowing users to instantly alert, connect, and then collaborate with their personal safety network when having an emergency. Our mission is to help save lives by reducing the amount of time it takes for responders to react in an emergency. For more information on how the Guardly app works visit the overview section on our company website. Stay safe!
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Source: VentureBeat (written by Matt Marshall).
There’s a lot of buzz about the innovation renaissance in New York. But the action in Toronto, just 340 miles to the north — and I do mean north — often goes unnoticed.
A week ago, on the tail of a snowstorm, VentureBeat landed in Toronto and held our first-ever meetup there — part of our prowl for the best companies in the world. Here’s how these events work: We partner with savvy investors to provide feedback, and invite them to DEMO, the product-launch conference I executive produce, if they’re a good fit.
We found the city humming. Some 277 people turned out to our evening meetup (photo top left), organized on just two weeks’ notice. With the mobile revolution in full force, Toronto benefits from the local talent. RIM, the maker of BlackBerry smartphones, is located in Waterloo, about an hour away but part of the local ecosystem. Employees are starting to leave RIM to start cool companies. Rogers, a major wireless communications company, is investing in startups through its venture arm, which was our local partner for screening hot startups. And local universities pump out a qualified workforce – a diverse group of systems designers and hardware, software, electrical and computer science engineers.
That diversity is a perfect recipe for a firm like Xtreme Labs, a Toronto-based mobile developer shop that has exploded to 95 developers, from just 15 only a year and a half ago — and with plans to hire another 50 developers. Farhan Thawar, VP of engineering at Xtreme, tells me he’s sucking up talent from anywhere he can find it — hiring Americans for the first time in his decade-long experience in hiring, pulling them in from places like California and New York — a reverse brain-drain that has long flowed in the opposite direction. Xtreme made its name by developing deep expertise in building native apps for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and now Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7.
Xtreme has kicked off its own incubator arm, and is supporting startups such as Guard.ly, a super simple app that offers personal security in cloud by letting your friends know where you are at all times, and Pophire, which helps companies leverage the social networks of their employees to get referrals for prospective employees.
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Source: OCAD University press release.
(Toronto — January 14, 2011) OCAD University has been granted $359,800 in funding from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) through the Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative. The funds support the commercialization of research projects with 12 distinct OCADU research partners and their private sector partners.
The announcement was made today by MP Paul Calandra (Oak Ridges—Markham), on behalf of the Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for FedDev Ontario.
“This investment will create jobs and sustain economic growth by helping small businesses get new ideas into the marketplace faster,” said MP Calandra. “Our government is committed to supporting families, businesses and communities of southern Ontario.”
“The projects funded through the FedDev Ontario program are game changers in their respective fields and reflect OCAD University’s diverse design and digital learning and research environment,” said Dr. Sara Diamond, President of OCAD University. “OCADU is a proud incubator of student innovation and commercially viable faculty research. We have demonstrable links to the SME sector. By bringing this talent together with the help of FedDev Ontario, we are fostering the creation of innovative products and services in the fields of mobile, health, environmental and digital technologies. We thank the Government of Canada for their support.”
The projects are wide-ranging, involving the development of haptic holography technologies; gesture control technology to leverage interactivity between children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and their peers; toys that teach children the fundamentals of digital technology; swimming devices that aid those who are physically challenged; social, mobile games encouraging pro-environmental behaviour; and more.
The projects are:
- The Haptic Holography Project, joining OCADU’s 30+ years of experience in innovation in holography with private sector partner Entact Robotics, will develop haptic holography technology, allowing users to interface with 3D displays that provide sensory feedback; this technology is foreseen to have many interesting future applications such as superior medical training technology (OCADU Faculty Lead: Assistant Professor Michael Page, Faculty of Art);
- The Extend Project partners OCADU with marblemedia, a content creation company that specializes in broadcast television and interactive content, to leverage OCADU’s expertise in design thinking and independent game development with the aim to develop original IP, market opportunities and business models (OCADU Faculty Lead: Assistant Professor Emma Westecott, Faculty of Design);
- With You, designed by OCADU alumni Haniyeh Khosravi Fard, is a social interactive experience product that has the potential to become a passive diagnostic tool and a significant contributor to therapy for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); With You partners Khosravi Ford with GestureTek, a world leader in interactive gesture control technology (OCADU Faculty Leads: Professor Job Rutgers and Associate Professor Suzanne Stein, Faculty of Design);
- Logic Blocks, designed by OCADU alumni Greg Crossley, is partnered with Nytric, an innovation consulting firm focused on turning innovative ideas into successful products; Logic Blocks are designed to teach children about the most fundamental concept in digital technology: boolean logic (OCADU Faculty Lead: Professor Job Rutgers, Faculty of Design);
- OCADU has partnered with moulded and fabricated foam product supplier kristoFOAM to further develop swimming device prototype Mantiro, designed by OCADU alumni Farhad Shabani, with the goal of creating a device that will assist physically challenged people and the elderly to enable them to have a safe water experience (OCADU Faculty Lead: Associate Professor Diane Croteau, Faculty of Design);
- A partnership with DuROCK, called Visible Campus, will create pavement elements, street furniture and way finding that express the vibrancy and innovation going on at OCADU, as a means of linking the corridor of the 12-building campus (OCADU Faculty Lead: Professor Job Rutgers, Faculty of Design);
- Albedo Informatics, a social games start-up company, will collaborate with OCADU to create My Green City, a cross-platform game/application for the iPhone and Facebook that will encourage players to engage in pro-environmental behaviour through a green rewards system (OCADU Faculty Lead: Assistant Professor Emma Westecott, Faculty of Design);
- Info Viz pairs OCADU researchers with Echo Mobile to map contributions and conversations on social networks, using information visualization (OCADU Faculty Lead: Associate Professor Judith Doyle, Faculty of Art);
- OCADU will engage in research towards further commercialization of Media Lab Toronto’s TXTris tangible social messaging platform (OCADU Faculty Lead: Associate Professor Judith Doyle, Faculty of Art);
- The Neutral Carbon Product project pairs Zerofootprint with OCADU to develop a visualization aesthetic that communicates the carbon foot print of a product, for all its components, including the distance travelled, to give consumers information leading to greener choices and purchasing behaviours (OCADU Faculty Leads: Associate Professor Suzanne Stein, Faculty of Design, and Assistant Professor Barbara Rauch, Faculty of Art);
- OCADU’s Mobile Experience Innovation Centre (MEIC) is partnered with Guardly, a mobile personal/home alarm and monitoring security service, to broaden the number of supported devices that can run its mobile application, such as BlackBerry® Smartphones and/or Google Android Smartphones;
- The Sousveiller Project, an initiative of OCADU MEIC partner and interaction design/research firm Normative Inc., is a web and mobile application focused on creating a publicly accessible data set of urban locations that contain visual surveillance technology; the resulting data set would be public as a research, design and technology resource for both private and public sector organizations and is expected to impact the field dedicated to “designing for data shade.”
For more information about these and OCADU’s other research initiatives, visit: http://www.ocad.ca/research.htm.
Today’s release from Federal Economic Development Agency of Southwestern Ontario (FedDev Ontario):
Government of Canada Supports Innovation at Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses in Greater Toronto Area
Economic Action Plan invests in jobs and growth through research and development
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Exciting times! It was announced today that Guardly was awarded a grant from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) in conjunction with OCAD University through the Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative.
The funds support the commercialization of research projects with 12 distinct OCADU research partners and their private sector partners.
Guardly partnered with OCADU’s Mobile Experience Innovation Centre (MEIC) to gain access to a technology incubator space, resources to assist in developing Guardly mobile applications on Google Android devices and advise on designing mobile applications for users undergoing stressful situations.
We look forward to a fruitful relationship!
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