Our friends at Accelerate Okanagan invite you to the Okanagan Technology Community New Year Kick Off Party at the Laurel Packinghouse in downtown Kelowna! A great excuse for a road trip.
Last year over 300 community members enjoyed an evening of great local food, drink and entertainment. Please be sure to register so you don’t miss out on what is sure to be one of the technology community events of the year.
Friday, Jan 11th, 2013 | Laurel Packinghouse | 7pm-midnight
Mouth watering local fare and drinks:
Themed cocktails, wines and local brews.
Free non-alcoholic options
Awesome appies
To keep you entertained:
The Blue Room brought to you by KPMG
Poker, Blackjack & Roulette
Games, meetups and a few surprises brought to you by Digital Okanagan
Ticket price: $30 per person (AO Premium Members: $20) including a free taxi ride home. This is a ticket-only event. Tickets MUST be bought by 5pm, January 9th. Last year was a complete sell out so sign up quickly to avoid disappointment.
Tweet it up at #AOKickOff
View the photos from last year here and check out the video.
Code Search cloud edition is a source code analysis search engine endorsed by Microsoft and powered by Azure that automates software change impact analysis in the cloud.
Find it EZ Code Search is the world’s first cloud-based source code analysis tool. A Microsoft award winning search engine, Find it EZ is certified Microsoft Platform Ready for SQL Server 2012, SQL Azure and SQL Reporting Services.
Parksville’s Pixton Comics Inc., creators of an online comic-making platform with an intuitive click-n-drag interface, has come out on top with the $30,000 grand prize in the 2nd annual BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional. In total, $60,000 in cash prizes was awarded at a ceremony held in Kelowna last night.
With over 750,000 registered users in more than 200 countries and representing 40 languages, Pixton’s online storytelling platform gives people of all ages the power to tell stories and share ideas through comic on the web. Pixton.com allows users to customize their very own comic – from fully posable and expressive characters to speech bubbles and photos, providing an unparalleled creative and social experience for consumers, educators and businesses. Read more
Over the last two weeks we’ve be highlighting the finalists leading up to the Awards Ceremony this week on February 23rd in Kelowna.
Here is Part V featuring four randomly selected finalists from around the province (You can read Part I here, Part II here, Part III here, and Part IV here). And, yes, we know that this final part only includes three finalists, making the total number of finalists 19 instead of 20.
Wifarer has commercialized the world’s only indoor GPS solution through a smart phone app which uses data from a venue’s existing WiFi system to pinpoint a smart phone’s location in a venue in real time to an average accuracy of 2 to 6 feet. Wifarer provides visitors with a free, personal, hand-held guide through a venue, while providing venues with a way to monetize, analyze and optimize their visitors’ journeys.
SoKap isn’t just a fundraising platform. It’s a social utility created to accelerate big ideas in movies, music and publishing. SoKap helps creative entrepreneurs raise funds, build markets and connect directly with consumers. In short, it is a simple, transparent payment program that is completely set up and controlled by each user.
MediaCore is a cloud-based, online video learning platform optimized for K-12, post-secondary and training institutions, corporations and conferences that provide education to students and staff online. It allows an organization to launch and control their own educational video experience that can be shared publicly or privately across desktop and mobile devices.
Vocaba is a clean, simple, yet powerful web application that helps people learn vocabulary and terminology in any subject. Users quiz themselves using flashcards and their progress is automatically tracked, helping them study more effectively.
Votari is an easy to use, real-time question and response web application that allows teachers and presenters to ask their audience questions and instantly collect responses submitted over their smart phone devices. With Votari, teachers can very quickly determine general understanding of a topic or adapt the class accordingly.
Waterpac – Trail
Waterpac makes a portable, tea-bag style water purifier for removing chlorine from a personal-sized container of tap water. It is 100% biodegradable and meets NSF standards.
WTFast is an online game accelerator service, which reduces the latency in popular MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games such as World of Warcraft. WTFast’s software allows users to effectively optimize the game data to experience increased connection speeds by 60-90%.
StreetText adds a layer of interactive marketing to a small business’ current marketing mix by enabling owners to deliver targeted messages and promotions directly to customers’ mobile phones by text. The company’s full-scale mobile marketing automation platform will enable businesses to build a life-cycle marketing engine and convert one-time customers into repeat customers.
TanMan Sun Control Product Ltd. offers a full spectrum of UVA/UVB SPF 30+ sunscreen protection products that provide ‘grip enhancing’ characteristics for better performance in sport. TanMan’s products have ten times the shelf life of comparable products on the market and business card-size packaging makes it easy to take with you anywhere.
Trajectory Design Automation Corp. helps computer chip companies design better chips. Its first product, a temperature-modeling software tool for digital integrated circuit design, uses analytical solutions to obtain highly accurate 3D temperature forecasts, enabling faster design turnaround for engineers and better chips as a result.
UnityJDBC makes data reporting and analysis faster and more efficient, allowing data from multiple sources to be queried, manipulated, combined and summarized for rapid decision-making. The software works with any Java-enabled platform and is currently benefiting clients in system development, health informatics and banking.
Over the next two weeks we’ll be highlighting the finalists leading up to the Awards Ceremony on February 23rd in Kelowna.
Here is Part II featuring four randomly selected finalists from around the province (You can read Part I here).
Mazza Innovation Ltd. – Penticton
Mazza Innovation Ltd. is leading the development of pressurized low polarity water (PLPW) extraction technology to extract high-value phytochemicals from plants which can be incorporated into products such as foods, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Mazza Innovations will enable manufacturers to produce innovative, high-quality products that are environmentally sustainable and cost competitive.
Net Shift Auction is a web-based auction system that lets media outlets and non-profit organizations run auctions to generate revenue or raise money for their charity. Net Shift Auction’s complete auction system also provides clients with support, training and guidance on how to run auctions and succeed.
Pixton.com is an online comic-making tool and community for anyone who want to express themselves and communicate creatively. Its intuitive click-n-drag interface allows users to customize every aspect of a comic, from fully posable and expressive characters to speech bubbles, photos and more. Authors can even collaborate in real time. The platform provides an unparalleled creative and social experience for consumers, educators and businesses.
Sirr Excavator Hands Inc.’s XHAND™ is a live, multi-function excavator attachment with screening capabilities. Whereas excavators used in today’s logging and construction industries are single-function buckets without screening capabilities, the XHAND is an integrated unit that uses the functions of the Excavator, Cat, Shovel Loader and Screener – and its three-section attachment can change functions on the go.
ChatterBlock synthesizes city-based information in an intuitive, accessible and protected social network environment. For the busy modern family, ChatterBlock is a resource for parents offering detailed community event and activity listings with reliable and relevant recommendations from other parents that will benefit a child’s development.
Ducharme Landscapes Inc. has created Ducharme Service Management, a web and subscription-based geographic scheduling system. The software is designed to create service schedules according to the customers’ geographic location while managing staff availability, recording customer information and, as a result, significantly reducing administrative work load.
Global Endeavours Ltd. has developed a rapid, safe solution for ruptures or leaks on any type of hydrocarbon transport vehicle on land, sea or water. Can-Gel ™ is a series of products that allow stored hydrocarbons, such as diesel fuel or crude oil, to gel thereby minimizing the risk to the environment and loss when a vessel or tank is breached.
KeepMii aggregates and organizes photos, mobile uploads with captions, tweets and blog posts chronologically so you are able to quickly identify, hand pick and save specific memories forever. It provides custom built folders for the safe-keeping of memories to print or share. KeepMii easily integrates existing content on hard drives, mobile devices or social media sites.
BCIC-New Ventures is pleased to announce the top 20 finalists in its BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional for early-stage BC technology entrepreneurs based outside the Lower Mainland.
Similar to the province-wide competition, the four-month, three-round regional competition includes a unique mix of business education, networking and mentoring. This year’s regional competition attracted more than 40 applications from technology startups across our province.
The Round 3 Top 20 finalists include businesses in the life sciences, cleantech, sustainability, new media and high technology sectors (in alphabetical order).
AAA Internet Publishing, Inc. (DBA WTFast), West Kelowna
We’re pleased to announce the 49 businesses advancing to Round 2 of the BCIC-New Ventures BC Competition: Regional after completing and fulfilling the eligibility requirements in Round 1.
The regional competition was open to businesses located outside of the Lower Mainland and the breakdown of applications by type of business is as follows:
Bioenergy: 2%
IT/Media: 65.3%
Life Sciences: 4.1%
Cleantech: 16.3%
Other: 12.2%
Congratulations to those advancing (in alphabetical order):
Our friends at Accelerate Okanagan invite you to the Okanagan Technology Community New Year Kick Off Party at the Laurel Packinghouse in downtown Kelowna! A great excuse for a road trip.
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