TeamPages Upgrades their Line-up
Our next-door neighbour and favorite social networking tool for amateur sports teams has been hard at work since crossing the Straight of Georgia. TeamPages has carefully listened to user feedback and made a wack of usability improvements to the site.
Teams now have control over the look & feel of their TeamPage by customizing it with team logos and team photos. They’ve also improved the navigation to make it easier for users to find their favorite features fast. Most importantly TeamPages have simplified the sign-up process, so now anyone can create a website for their team in less than 4 minutes flat.
Say hello to iDebt
The deadline for our print ad commission over at AdHackis fast approaching (11:59pm tonight) but it looks like we should have a couple great concepts to choose from. If you didn’t get a chance to submit a candidate for our $150 commission, be sure to check out AdHack’s latest assignment that cuts off on Monday, July 28th.
AdHack is giving away a pair of the Panasonic RP-SC500 noise-canceling headphones to the best “iPhone ad that Rogers should have used to launch and promote the iPhone in Canada”. This one by Dave Gibson caught my eye tonight.
TinyMassive.com launches widget network
Earlier this month, the world of interactive shopping widgets got some girl power. Former e-commerce merchants Kate Hiscox and Lauren Miller, better known as TinyMassive.com launched the TinyEverywhere shopping widget network. Instantly their sleek and innovative product widgets began appearing on blogs and websites. CPMs of up to $6 and revenue for both website publishers and merchants could make this a great Google Adsense alternative for bloggers.
TinyMassive scans the page the widget lives on similar to contextual Adsense ads and serves up relevant products directly. The widget pulls listings from multiple stores and pays out on a CPC model. The 3-step sign-up process is slick and worth a look.
While selling online, the all-female team were frustrated with the ROI from leads delivered to their online stores via shopping comparison engines and widget networks. Following the acquisition of their e-commerce business in 2007, the women created TinyMassive.com and began collaborating with merchants and publishers across North America.
The launch of their shopping widget network is only the first step - look out for the launch of their comparison shopping marketplace later this summer. TinyMassive.com’s web development partner is Lightmaker Vancouver.
Drupal Camp Season Ends in Victoria
Just popped up on my reader that Victoria web shop North Studio has laid out the dates for Drupal Camp Victoria. Very well planned dates they are, overlapping with the Great Canadian Beer Festival, of which the DrupalCamp organizers have a limited but sizeable number of tickets. Visit the Victora Drupal Camp site to register (not accessible at the moment, possible DNS delay).
Via Raincity Studios blog, mixed media man Dave Olson has done a wrapup on recent Drupal Camps in Seattle, Alberta, and Portland. Kudos to Dave and the other organizers of DCV for contributing part of their budget surplus to the Seattle and Alberta events.
Lightmaker Makes Themselves at Home
Vancouver’s tech community continues to flourish in part thanks to a continuing wave of global businesses setting up shop in town. One of those companies is London, England-based Lightmaker. Lightmaker is a Top 5 Digital Agency in the UK and boasts 235 employees worldwide.
I had a chance to sit down over lunch today with Lightmaker Vancouver Managing Director Tom Rossiter. Nine months ago Rossiter set out for Vancouver to open Lightmaker’s seventh office, expanding their North American presence to complement offices in Orlando and San Francisco. As their first Canadian production pod, the Yaletown office has been super successful carving out a local niche.
Lightmaker’s portfolio includes many companies with offices in the Pacific Northwest, including Microsoft, Electronic Arts and Adobe - so the Vancouver location and time zone aims to strengthen those relationships. Lightmaker’s local skill-set has won them some significant work on a couple interesting web start-ups including TinyMassive.com - more on those in future blog posts.
Look for Lightmaker Vancouver to kick into recruiting mode again very soon.
Edmonton Hosts Canada’s Largest LAN Party
In the same way that a butterfly can’t miss being a caterpillar, I can’t miss my hometown of Edmonton. However, I am regretful that I won’t be able to make it back for Fragapalooza, August 7 - 11, 2008, Canada’s largest LAN party, now in it’s 11th year. A LAN party is an event where attendees bring their computers and monitors, network them together, and play computer games for a weekend, sleep highly optional. Gaming on a LAN is fast and free of lag, with the added benefit of being in the same room as the dude you just sniped from across the map. These events can range greatly in size, from a dozen guys in a garage, to Fragapalooza, with 800+ gamers in the Northland Sportex, a tradeshow space/curling rink. (The Sportex will be a great improvement over the Mayfield Hotel of years past, which always seemed to resent hundreds of gamers descending on their overrated hotel) In larger events, tournaments are usually held, but most of the action happens in pickup games that are going constantly. LAN parties also serve as an amazing gathering of geek culture, and a file sharing free-for-all as people generously open their directories to the gigabit network. The environment is nearly always Windows-homogenous, my LAN chums would surely berate me if I brought my MacBook Pro.
Vancouver has two sizeable, back to back LAN parties coming up soon: Digital Storm LAN (~200 gamers) runs August 1 - 3, 2008, at the Croatian Cultural Centre in East Van, and VanLan (~500 gamers) runs August 4 - 6 in the UBC War Memorial Gym.
Later in the summer, August 30 - September 1, 2008, Montreal will host the World Cyber Games Canadian Championships at La Ronde/Six Flags. Dubbing itself as an Olympics of gaming, the WCG has major sponsorship from the likes of Samsung and Microsoft, with multiple local rounds leading up to a world final and millions in total prize money. These events attract the top, most elite gamers, some of whom are playing professionally.
In the six years since attending my first Fragapalooza, I’ve seen these events gradually become better sponsored, and the tournaments becoming more competitive. Fragapalooza has $65,000 in prizes of hardware and accessories, not bad for a volunteer-run event. While PC gaming is frequently cited as becoming less popular as game consoles become mini-PCs in themselves, these events show a dedicated following of PC gamers. The sponsors realize the value of this enthusiast market that’s willing to spend thousands building their own super gaming machines. PC gamers that have stuck it out this long know, as I know, that first-person-shooter gaming was meant for a mouse and keyboard, not two nubby sticks.
QA Specialist - airG
How often does an opportunity come along to build a product that will end up in the hands of millions of customers and shape the future of the mobile entertainment industry?
At airG, we develop mobile communities and wireless social networking products that resonate with the hip and trend defining 18 – 30 demographic. We’re working with industry leaders such as Verizon, Sprint Nextel, AT&T, Bell Canada and T-Mobile to define an entirely new way of interacting on your mobile phone. In our ideally situated office on fashionable Robson Street in Vancouver, we’re creating products that enable millions of customers to experience a sense of being connected. Wirelessly.
airG has the fastest growing social network on mobile phones with more than 20 million unique users worldwide and is available on more than 100 mobile operators in over 40 countries, and growing! To further accelerate this rapid growth, we are in search of a talented and motivated QA Specialist to join our team!
Your Responsibilities:
- Develop basic test cases based on functional specifications and requirements
- Execute manual and automated tests
- Discover and explore defects leading to a complete defect report
- Review and provide feedback on product specifications and requirements
- Maintain task information and report progress and test results in compliance to established process
- Monitor, review and verify assigned defects in a timely and efficient manner
- Archive builds and project results, materials and outputs as required
- Provide qualitative quality assessments based on testing and usage of product
- Assure that developed products meet requirements and are within total quality management standards
Your Qualifications:
- Technical diploma or equivalent work experience
- Minimum 2 years experience in quality assurance and software testing with exposure to manual and scripted testing of computer software
- Computer hardware/software troubleshooting experience
In addition to having a flexible and relaxed work environment, we believe that our culture and values set us apart. We are young, vibrant and passionate about what we do. The values that we all share and look for in those we work with include being entrepreneurial, creative, accomplished, team oriented, motivated, hard working and professional. airG offers an attractive and competitive compensation package, a comprehensive benefits plan including a flexible wellness program and staff purchase plan for mobile devices.
Plug into the world‘s largest mobile community. Plug into airG. To apply now, check out our website.
BC Discovery Fund Invests in MovieSet
British Columbia Discovery Fund (VCC) Inc. announced today that it has invested $1.5 Million into MovieSet as part of a $5 million financing. The first tranche of the $5 Million was led by Rho Canada - the Canadian venture arm of Rho Capital Partners of New York. In connection with this investment, Charles Cook of Discovery Capital Management Corp., the manager of the Fund, has been appointed to the board of directors of MovieSet.
“BC Discovery Fund is excited to be making its first investment in a Web 2.0 business. MovieSet has created a unique interactive social networking environment for the film industry and its fans,” said Charles Cook, Investment Manager of the Fund. “We expect that MovieSet can capture a substantial audience of unique visitors, enabling the Company to capitalize on the interest, and positive investment outcomes, that other successful social networking websites have generated.”
With this investment in MovieSet, the BC Discovery Fund has made investments totaling $9.3 million so far in 2008.
Electronic Arts gets an Agent
Historically video game producers have relyed heavily on established comic book and literary franchises for game concepts but it seems the tables have turned and the list of films based on video games continues to grow.
Electronic Arts (EA) announced today that it has signed on with Hollywood talent and literary agency United Talent Agency (UTA) for representation in motion pictures and television. UTA will help the company develop a comprehensive strategy for moving its intellectual property into the realm of large-budget motion pictures and television series.
EA’s portfolio of titles includes top-selling franchises such as Army of Two and Need for Speed as well as eagerly awaited new titles such as Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge. The relationship is expected to significantly ramp up EA’s film and television slate, which currently includes a feature version of the popular The Sims game in script development at 20th Century Fox with producer John Davis and a MySims animated television series in development at Film Roman. EA is also in production with Starz/Film Roman on an animated DVD feature version of its new title Dead Space to launch with the game.
Gravity Factor takes on Marqui
Since we broke the Marqui Receivership story in June, Marqui clients have been wondering what’s going to happen to their content if a buyer doesnt pick up the SaaS company’s assets. As of today it looks like there might be another option in the market for clients in search of a replacement marketing automation solution.
Vancouver-based Gravity Factor Inc. launched a new marketing automation suite today that enables mid-market and B2B marketing professionals easily execute and rapidly improve the effectiveness of their demand generation activities.
From one easy-to-use dashboard, sales and marketing teams will be able to control online brand and messaging, generate more qualified leads, drive revenue, and evaluate and optimize their marketing activities within Salesforce.com, or another CRM, in order to make better business decisions.
Gravity Factor’s CEO is Rick Patri a former Marqui executive. Gravity Factor claims to be the first suite combining Content Management, Email Marketing, Mobile Marketing, eCommerce, CRM and Analytics.
Interesting side note - Marqui’s trademarked tagline is The Marketing Automation Company and Gravity Factor has adopted The Marketing Automation Experts as their brand-differentiating slogan. Nice.
