WINBC Announces Winners of Fourth Annual Wireless Innovation Contest
Written by WINBC
Friday, 30 March 2007
Orlando, FL, CTIA Wireless – March 27, 2007 – The Wireless Innovation Network of BC (WINBC) today announces the winners of the fourth annual Wireless Innovation Contest 2007 (WIC’07). The award recipients are wireless companies and technologies from across North America that have proven to improve user experiences and operational processes.
The winners are:
Taking Care of Business – Public Sector: In Motion Technology (based in Vancouver, BC):
In Motion Technology provides cognitive wireless systems enabling public safety organizations to communicate life-critical information while in motion. In Motion’s vehicle-area networks dynamically sense and select the best network enabling an emergency medical response professional to send a patient’s electronic health record from an ambulance to a hospital while en route, a police officer to access video or driver records from a patrol car, a fire fighter to access building blueprints at the scene of a fire and a municipality IT director to provide the communications infrastructure to support these types of applications.
Taking Care of Business – Private Sector: Mobile Complete (based in San Mateo, CA):
Through Mobile Complete’s DeviceAnywhereTM, content providers are able to develop, test, and monitor applications across the diversity of handsets and global operators with an ordinary Internet browser. Users no longer need to invest in device labs or even be physically present in the network.
Taking Care of Yourself – Home and Entertainment: SurfKitchen (US base in New York, NY):
SurfKitchen is uniquely focused on enabling MNOs to deliver a superior mobile data experience by offering user-friendly interfaces to ensure simple, fast and intuitive discovery, consumption and repeat usage of mobile data services.
Taking Care of Yourself – Sports and Recreation: Limbo 41414 (based in Burlingame, CA):
Limbo 41414 has a solution that combines user entertainment with targeted advertising for media and MNOs, to increase ARPU for mobile operators. The flagship product, Limbo Auction, is a text-message-based game where users compete against other live players to find and retain the lowest, unique bid™ (the lowest bid that no other person has bid).
Taking Care of the Community: ComVu (based in Vancouver, BC):
ComVu’s automated PocketCaster system makes it one-button easy to broadcast live video from a mobile phone, archive it on a server for later viewing, and instantly publish to online communities, blogs, and TV broadcasters for breaking stories.
“Mobile data revenues have consistently lagged in the North American marketplace, and the results of this contest speak loudly to the fact that the market here is trending toward a more dynamic mobile experience,” said Tracy Allard, regional VP of North America for SurfKitchen. “The results of our WINBC award-winning deployment at Orange show that deploying an on device portal that provides a simplified, user-centric experience has led to a dramatic recovery of ARPU through increased consumption of data services.”
Runners up in WIC’07 are as follows:
Taking care of business – public sector: Gogomo – Metadata Management
Taking care of business – private sector: Innoviti Embedded – ZigBee point-of-sale (PoS) wireless solution
Taking care of yourself – home and entertainment: Real Dice Inc. – Real Dice World
Taking care of yourself – sports and recreation: Loc-Aid - Loc-Aid ACE
Taking care of the community: Rave Wireless – Rave Guardian
The winners were selected by an impressive panel of judges, including Tom Nyberg (Nokia Multimedia), Chris Langdon (TELUS), Ray Gilbert (Alcatel-Lucent), Oliver Starr (Guidewire Group), Madeline Duva (3rd Eye Consulting) and Ken Blakeslee (WebMobility Ventures).
“We received great entries from excellent contenders across all five categories for this year’s contest,” says Shana Korotash, Executive Director of WINBC. “The companies entering this year continue to push the agenda to deliver practical solutions to organizational and everyday problems. We’d like to congratulate the winners and thank the judges for their efforts in pouring over the entries and in bringing their experiences and views to the selections.”
Open to Canadian and American wireless developers and solution providers that have deployed a wireless solution, contest entries were submitted in one of five categories:
Taking Care of Business:
Public Sector: a solution that showcases new processes or models, improves productivity and/or saves money in the public service (utilities, health, government, fire or police services).
Private Sector: a solution that showcases new processes or models, improves productivity or facilitates commerce in the private sector.
Taking Care of Yourself:
Home & Entertainment: a solution that entertains or facilitates life at home.
Sports & Recreation: a solution that showcases wireless in a sport, recreation, fitness or wellness setting.
Taking Care of the Community:
Community & Citizenship: a solution that serves to make our lives better, easier or simply more enjoyable.
Entries came from all corners of North America, including California, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, Florida, Washington DC, Massachusetts, New York, BC, Alberta, Quebec and Ontario.
A benefit valued at $100,000, Wireless Excellence winners are rewarded with targeted exposure in media and at trade shows, inclusion in a special case study publication, and a one-hour mentor session with the panel of judges during CTIA Wireless.
“We are honored to be recognized for technology that improves operational processes, user experiences and life-saving services to the public,” said Kirk Moir, president and CEO, In Motion Technology. “This further validates the need for our technology that helps people better communicate while in motion.”
WINBC is the producer of WIC’07 and the contest is supported by key industry leaders Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia, TELUS and IDC, and marketing partners CTIA WIRELESS 2007, RCR Wireless News, FierceWireless.com, Wireless Industry Partnership, Outlook4Mobility, CCNMatthews, SymbianOne and Forum Nokia.
“Wireless companies across North America are proving that their creative and innovative solutions are driving economic and social changes not only on our continent, but around the world,” comments Tom Nyberg, Director of Product Marketing, Multimedia, Nokia. “We’re happy to see the Wireless Innovation Contest go from strength to strength and are proud to work with WINBC and other industry leaders to raise the profile of wireless innovation in North America.”
The winners and runners-up were recognized at an award reception held yesterday evening at CTIA Wireless. The case study booklet of winning and runner-up entries is available at (URL). The fifth annual Wireless Innovations Contest 2008 (WIC’08) will be calling for entries in November 2007.
About WINBC
WINBC (Wireless Innovation Network Society of BC) is the producer of WIC’07. WINBC is the focal point for wireless in BC and a leading industry association in Canada. British Columbia has a 25-year history of successful wireless design and innovation and has grown to over 250 wireless companies representing all areas of the wireless value chain from infrastructure and devices to enabling software, enterprise applications, games and peer-to-peer solutions. Companies include Sierra Wireless, Nokia, Digital Dispatch, Colligo, Air G and others. To find your wireless partner go to: www.winbc.org.
Mobile Technology Feature - Top 10 Business Apps for Android - Android has become one of the most popular mobile operating systems
in the world due to advanced software, competitive manufacturers, and an
app market that is filled with exciting and useful applications. Read
on for this fine Top 10 List compiled by tech writer, Blake Sanders
The Really Big List of Mapping, Geo location Mobile developer resources, APIs and Tools - The Mobile Ecosystem... no question that mobile is huge and
the opportunity for developers, in particular, geo developers! There's
loads of developer resources on the web so to help the developer,
here's a listing of just some of the fine dev resources, blogs,
toolsets and more to consider when developing or porting your app to a
smartphone or Tablet.
ArcGIS.com Mashup Tutorial with Flickr and Foursquare data-
Here's a simple "how to" tutorial on working with the free ArcGIS.com
to easily import KML or RSS data from Flickr and foursquare into ArcGIS
to create your own custom map mashup. ArcGIS.com has some recent
updates including support for KML, be sure to check it out!
Most Users of Free Photo Apps Say Adding Cool Effects is Most Useful - Adding cool effects
to photos was rated as the most useful thing by more than halfof
consumers surveyed using free online photography services, according to
CatchFree a free
online service that helps people find the best free mobile and web applications
to perform useful tasks.
Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet Up Close - No Replacement for the iPad But Pretty Darned Sweet - As could be
expected, speculation and blogging is rampant with many stories and
pseudo "reviews" coming out, many of them touting the next "iPad
killer".
Mobile Developer Resource - MapQuest & The Mobile Worker - Facility management companies, surveyors, multi-level marketing,
insurance claims, pipeline companies, water utilities; all have field
workers who would benefit from mobile applications. Not only checking in
to work sites, but keeping a record of the work done
Flickr GPS Photo Tag Tip - Here's a tip for Flickr users who want to share their GPS information
with their photos. note, in order to do this you'll need to be
capturing photos using a GPS-enabled or GPS-aware camera (see you're
smartphone hardware settings to ensure that GPS or location sharing is
turned "ON)".
Mobile data usage in Canada to triple between 2010 and 2012 - Some interesting, yet not terribly surprising, numbers on mobile
usage coming out of Canada. According to a report summarized on
Techvibes, mobile usage is soaring, in particular, the smartphone
segment
Social Location Directory
Do you have a location-aware application, social location service or other location-sensitive service that you'd like to share with us? Please browse this growing directory of Social location Services and feel free to leave a link to your favorite service! See the Directory HERE
Suggested Reading
The Underground Guide To The iPhone:
The iPhone is – if I may say so – one of the greatest mobile
revolutions of the past decade. More and more, mobile phones seem to
materialize out of our wildest dreams. Because of the tight integration
of third-party applications, you can do nearly everything with your
device — be it gaming, working, fooling around, and of course phoning.
Good Mobile Messaging: Executives and professional field forces spend an increasing amount of time on the road tending to business.
Mobile Apps - Native or Web?:
You probably have a plan to build a mobile app, but you've struggled
with the basic question - Should I build it using open web standards
such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, or should I build it as a native app
for the devices I want to target?
iBike Coach App- a new “Always On” feature always gathers data
Nike+ GPS App- for sports tracking, recording and sharing
Featured Events
Content & Apps for Automotive Europe 2012 (18-19 April, Germany)
will give you key insights on how in-vehicle connectivity is being
revolutionised as OEMs integrate dynamic content to stay relevant
throughout the vehicle life cycle.
Location Intelligence for Enterprise - Europe 2012, January 16-17, London Hear from Google, Jones Lang LaSalle, Tesco, Willis, Oracle,
ESRI, Microsoft, PBBI and many more as they debate the best strategies
for business models and integration.
Consumer Telematics Show 2012 (Jan 9, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, USA) is the most prestigious and
dynamic consumer telematics focused meeting for the automotive industry.
Held in Las Vegas on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES),
this year's senior-level speakers will include General Motors, Audi,
Toyota, Panasonic, Continental, Hughes Telematics, Gartner, KIA,
Mercedes-Benz and many more
Esri Dev Summit - The
Esri Developer Summit (DevSummit) brings together developers and GIS
professionals from all over the globe. March 26-29, 2012, Palm Springs,
CA
