Off to the WILD West…well IT Expo West!
We are super excited to be at IT Expo West this week not just because it’s in LA and we run the chance of brushing shoulders with a few movie starts, but also because we’ve got some really cool integrations between CRM and VoIP that are going to be a hit with business owners and VoIP providers alike. Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, MS CRM, and TAPI are just some of the integrations we’re starting with to help seamlessly integrate VoIP and business processes like CRM systems. Using InGenius Connector as the call control application users can make calls directly from their CRM application. Users increase productivity, managers enhance call tracking capabilities, and VoIP providers increase the value of their product offering while differentiating from the competition. All in all, InGenius Connector and CRM plug-ins can help both CRM users and VoIP providers enhance their sales services and provide greater value to their customers. Stop by booth #115 at IT Expo tomorrow to say hello and see the applications in action.
We’ve already run into one celebrity on our way here; the Travelocity gnome!
Are you plugged in?
So I was sitting at my desk thinking about all the applications that I use on a daily basis to ensure that I am tied into my co-workers, managers, and customers and realizing how thankful I was for Mitel Unified Communicator Express and InGenius CRM Plug-ins.
As the product marketing specialist at InGenius, it is vital that I maintain communication with the development and technical support team, senior management team, sales representatives, channel partners, beta users, and customers so that I can do my job effectively and provide our users, partners and customers with the quality and helpful customer service they deserve. With Mitel Unified Communicator Express it has made my life so much easier and my relationship management much more effective. I can easily lookup and dial a contact, send an email to a caller, create new outlook contacts and with the aid of the CRM plug-in, have the caller’s CRM page open automatically when they call my extension.
Since Mitel Unified Communicator Express also has a built in optional softphone, I have created multiple profiles on my lap top computer so that I can connect to my desk phone when I’m at the office and my softphone when I am on the road. It’s so simple to install and use that I am not sure how I ever got along without it. In fact, it is only second to Outlook for the application that I use the most. This application has helped me to fill plugged in to all my contacts without feeling that I have yet another application open on my desktop.
So I was sitting at my desk thinking about all the applications that I use on a daily basis to ensure that I am tied into my co-workers, managers, and customers and realizing how thankful I was for Mitel Unified Communicator Express and InGenius CRM Plug-ins.
As the product marketing specialist at InGenius, it is vital that I maintain communication with the development and technical support team, senior management team, sales representatives, channel partners, beta users, and customers so that I can do my job effectively and provide our users, partners and customers with the quality and helpful customer service they deserve. With Mitel Unified Communicator Express it has made my life so much easier and my relationship management much more effective. I can easily lookup and dial a contact, send an email to a caller, create new outlook contacts and with the aid of the CRM plug-in, have the caller’s CRM page open automatically when they call my extension.
Since Mitel Unified Communicator Express also has a built in optional softphone, I have created multiple profiles on my lap top computer so that I can connect to my desk phone when I’m at the office and my softphone when I am on the road. It’s so simple to install and use that I am not sure how I ever got along without it. In fact, it is only second to Outlook for the application that I use the most. This application has helped me to fill plugged in to all my contacts without feeling that I have yet another application open on my desktop.
One Sweet Suite! Mitel Releases Live Content Suite for 5360 IP Phones
It has been a few months since we first mentioned Mitel’s Live Content Suite application, and we are thrilled that the product has finally been released for Mitel 5360 IP phones.
Developed by the InGenius Telephony Software team, this application is truly innovative and forward thinking in the way it embraces personalization and leverages live content.
Live Content Suite has three main parts:
- Live Desktop Portal, a web-based phone programming portal
- Live Blogger, an application for using standard blog tools to deliver custom content to phones
- Live Applications, applications such as LiveTwitter Reader, Live Weather, and Live Flickr that deliver dynamic content to phones
This is just one of the many “Unified Communications 2.0″ applications to come out InGenius and users can expect to see more in the very near future!
Live Content Suite is expected to become available for other Mitel display phone models (5320, 5330, and 5340) in the coming months.
Check out www.livecontentsuite.com to learn more!
How the Application Framework for SpectraLink phones came about
We’re really excited about the Application Framework we’ve built for SpectraLink phones. This product adds a whole new range of capabilities to the handsets, and adds a whole new way of developing applications.
We’re seeing a TON of interest in this product at the Team Polycom event in San Diego (Feb, 2010), especially among Hospitality sales people and dealers.
We’re announcing this framework with two initial applications: A directory application, and a Set to Set texting application.
Fig. Texting application, and directory app – with search window, and some pinned contacts.
The project started when we were asked to develop an emergency broadcast system for use in a large cruise ship. They needed a way to display messages on all passenger phones, and on all the SpectraLink phones used by the crew on the ship. We used an InGenius product called Broadcast Alert to handle the creation of the broadcasts, and we built this framework to handle information display on the handsets.
We wanted to implement scrolling text on the handsets, and we wanted crew to be able to respond to messages – to acknowledge receipt, and to possibly request assistance. The standard handset display only allowed a few lines of text, and user interactivity was pretty difficult.
We ended up switching to using the handsets in a graphical display mode – which allows us full control over the contents of the display, and we can display icons, and buttons in addition to text – text in whatever font we choose!
We designed an extremely sophisticated algorithm to manage display updates – the algorithm determines which pixels on the phone have changed between updates – and only sends the differences. This GREATLY reduces the communications traffic, and makes this display updated mechanism feasible.
Then we built a really awesome notification app to handle the broadcast alerts…
Then, things got really out of hand, and we went nuts and built something we think is just awesome!
So, what is the InGenius Application Framework for SpectraLink phones?
We’ve created a system that instantiates a small virtual operating system for each of the SpectraLink phones in the system. (And we’ve tested this with thousands of phones, on a non-beefy server.) Each of the tiny operating systems allows you to control the phone’s screen and ringer, and can respond to button presses. We have a nice library of system calls that let you write to the screen using text, graphics, and icons, gather input from a user, etc.
Basically, using standard .Net tools like Visual Studio and C# developers simply write a very small app that runs on one phone. The Framework then replicates this app across all the phones! We’ve even built a sophisticated simulator that allows developers to create and debug apps in .Net – then easily release them to real phones.
The OS supports multi-tasking – so all the apps you have running on your phone run simultaneously, in the background. In our testing, we’ve written alarm clock apps, timers, broadcast alert apps etc, and they all run smoothly in the background – and can jump to the foreground when required.
Apps can easily talk to each-other – making it easy for apps like our Directory app to start our Texting app and pass in the current contact…
We’ve built in a login system – so users can securely share phones. When you log into a phone, your apps resume, with all your data and program states intact. Your apps can even keep running while you’re logged off - so any texts or messages you may have received will be available when you next log on! The log in system is ideal in situations where phones are shared – like Nurse call stations, or big box retailers.
There’s a passthrough for legacy OAI applications – commands not meant for our framework are simply sent along to the legacy apps.
Check out the details on our product page.
Finally, here’s a view of the Simulator!
InGenius Application Server for SpectraLink Handsets
After just releasing InGenius Connector for General Availability on Asterisk Exchange and unpacking from ITExpo, the InGenius team is packing their bags again to head West to attend the TEAM Polycom event next week in San Diego, CA.
Located in the Applications Beyond Voice Pavilion, booth 504, InGenius will be revealing the InGenius Application Server for Spectralink Wireless Handsets.
This incredibly cool application server offers something for both Spectralink users and Spectralink Application developers. It is shipped with a set-to-set texting application and a corporate directory look-up application, and also has the ability to run multiple applications simultaneously. As an added bonus, InGenius Application Server houses a framework that can be extended to develop or customize applications using commonly available Microsoft .Net development tools.
Whether you are looking to increase company communication and productivity or trying to extend the value of your Spectralink 8020/8030 Wireless telephone offering, InGenius Application Server offers a quality solution that fits current and future business needs. If you are attending TEAM Polycom we would love to give you a demo, stop by booth 504 and say hello!
InGenius is attending ITExpo East 2010
InGenius is very happy to be attending ITExpo East in Miami on January 20-23 as members of the Ontario pavilion in Booth 512. We are going to be showing InGenius Connector and all the cool things that it can do to help accelerate and simplify phone communications for those with a Polycom phone, Asterisk switch, BroadSoft Network or Mitel switch.
InGenius Connector has been in beta for the past few months and we are receiving a tremendous response from Polycom sales representatives, Asterisk solution providers, ITSPs and basic end-users about the value and benefits it supplies to them and their customers. Over and over we hear how much people love InGenius Connector and how well it integrates with their Outlook contacts, and Active Directory or LDAP directory. Users just can’t get over the cool Google search functions and how easy the application is to install and use. Once a person starts using InGenius Connector, they really wonder how the ever got along with out it. If you plan on attending ITExpo East please stop by booth 512 and we will be happy to give you a demo of InGenius Connector.
The World is Just One Click Away with InGenius Connector
We are at BroadSoft Connections 2009 and we are very happy to introduce InGenius Connector as a fully supported application for the BroadSoft Network.
Combine the power of the Microsoft®, the power of Google®, and the power of Broadsoft to accelerate and simplify all your phone communications with InGenius Connector. InGenius Connector is a PC application that provides click-to-dial capabilities and incoming caller ID screen pop, with full BroadSoft Directory, Microsoft® Outlook® and Active Directory® or LDAP Directory integration. And, InGenius Connector provides integrated web searches with GoogleMaps® and GoogleSearch® to locate and dial new contacts with just a single click. Integrated optional softphone, same great UI!
If you are at BroadSoft Connections we would be happy to give you a demo. Stop by booth 41 and talk with our CEO Dale Gantous, or our CTO Rich Loen. Click here to see a video of InGenius Connector in action!
Enhanced hotel guest experience with Application Builder for Mitel phones!
Have you ever been to the hotel and needed to rent a car, look for a restaurant, wanted to contact the hotel’s spa, or just needed more towels? Of course you have, but how many times did you have to flip through a huge hotel binder, call the front desk or open your lap top to find what you were looking for? Imagine you go to a hotel and everything you are looking for is already programmed into the hotel’s phone. All you have to do is push a button and menus for car rental businesses, local restaurants, hotel spa services, and housekeeping are all there and waiting to be accessed. Well, this is exactly what InGenius Application Builder was designed to provide! It’s super easy to use and gives you all the amenities you require at the touch of a button. What is really cool about this application is that you can also choose from a variety of languages. If you are in France but don’t speak French, you’ll have no worries if the Mitel phone in the hotel has Application Builder. By the time you get to your room the French phone menu could automatically be switched to English or it could offer you a language menu so that you could choose to have it display English instead of French. This would be a really great application for any hotel wanting to provide their guests with better customer service and a better all round experience.
Live Content for Mitel 5300 Series Phones!
InGenius is very excited to be a part of the Mitel Business Partner Forum & Technology Expo 2009 happening today and tomorrow in Las Vegas! At the expo we will showcase some of our new software: Live Content Creator and Desktop Power Portal. These cool applications give users the ability to have LIVE content on their Mitel 5300 series phones.
DESKTOP POWER PORTAL
- Screen Caption of Desktop Power Portal
InGenius Desktop Power Portal is a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use web portal application for personalizing both telephony functions and new live content applications on your Mitel 5300 IP desktop phone connected to a 3300. To enhance the features of Desktop Power Portal combine it with Live Content Creator to program live, up-to-the-minute easily editable content on phone keys!
LIVE CONTENT CREATOR
Allows you to easily create and manage a variety of LIVE content for your Mitel 5300 series phone.
Perhaps you want to give your sales staff an extra boost by offering a few promotions…
Live Content Creator
Or you want to follow what people are saying about your company on twitter…
- Live Content Creator
Or you’re curious about the weather…
Live Content Creator
Live Content Creator provides up-to-date information to a device that’s always on giving you the freedom and flexibility to do a variety of things like promoting “What’s On Today”, showcasing Daily specials, and personalizing your phone with data feeds like Weather, Twitter searches and even Flickr photos!
So how does this InGenius Software work?
- Program live content onto a button on your phone using InGenius Desktop Power Portal, or using a Guestbook application in the Application Builder for 5360 phones (coming soon). For more information on Application Builder, click here.
- When programming the phone key, select the content source, which can be a local atom feed behind your firewall or an externally hosted blog.
- Press the programmed button on your phone.
- The Live Content Creator server, an optional part of InGenius Desktop Power Portal, retrieves the live content, formats it appropriately for your phone model, and makes the content “safe” by removing flash animations and other non-compatible content.
- View content on your phone!
Live Content Creator Architecture
<!–[endif]–>
Traveling through Ottawa? Check out this Airport Art!
Ottawa photographer Olga Novoa is displaying some of her recent work at the Ottawa airport – but you’ll need a boarding pass to see.
Give yourself an extra 20 minutes when you’re next traveling to check it out!
Exhibit 05
Details:
OLGA NOVOA PORTFOLIO PHOTO EXHIBIT 09
Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport
YOW Art Gallery – The domestic/international holdroom.
Starts: April 7, 2009.
Open Daily and Nightly including Saturday, Sunday and Holidays.
Closes: After 12 weeks / Daylight hours are best for viewing.
If you are not a lucky traveler during the months of Spring please visit
http://tinyurl.com/photoexhibit and make sure to read the Polaroid tags.
You can also visit the actual display at the YOW gallery via
http://tinyurl.com/YOW-gallery
For more information about the artist, photographic services and prices
please contact:
OLGA NOVOA
Photographer & Graphic Artist
_____________________________
EVOLUTION | PHOTO & DESIGN
Ph: +1 613 601.1150
Ottawa, On.
C A N A D A
http://www.olganovoa.com/
info@olganovoa.com
InGenius exhibiting Mitel solutions at IT Expo
We’re heading off to IT Expo tomorrow (Booth 501) to show off our new Mitel product line, including:
- Unified Communicator Express
- InGenius Broadcast Alert
- InGenius App Builder
- InGenius simplER
So, what the heck is this stuff?
Mitel Unified Communicator Express
The marketing blurb goes like this:
<blurb> Mitel Unified Communicator® (UC) Express is a lightweight, serverless unified communications client that connects your Mitel business phone with Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Active Directory, Windows Live Messenger, and Windows Desktop Search on your PC. Productivity enhancements like click-to-dial, incoming caller ID pop-up, PC-based missed calls and speed calls list, and personal (Microsoft® Outlook®) directory integration. Available at Mitel. </blurb>
UCX is cool, because it’s a PC telephony client done right. It can optionally run right in your Windows taskbar, and can even be fully utilized from the tray icon. We have spent hundreds of hours trying to make the UI simple, yet extremely functional. You won’t find a huge app popping up every time the phone rings, or when you want to make a call – simply type in a few characters of the name of the person you want to call – and the app will find the number and dial. Nothing pops up or distracts the user.
UCX is the new version of Mitel’s Integrated Office Companion. UCX is an incredible upgrade to IOC, adding many cool features such as:
- Multiple phone profiles: If you have phones at your office, home, and on the road, you can set up phone profiles. UCX will automatically sign onto the phone appropriate for your location,
- Support for Mitel 5330, 5340, and the new 5312 and 5324 phones,
- Excellent support for Vista,
- And, we’re very excited to announce that UCX will soon have a built-in softphone, which you can use when you’re away from your desk.
- UCX is also extendable through TAPI, or our plugin API which we can adapt to your CRM solution, even if web based like salesforce.com. It’s a powerful tool for all employees, not just sales or call center agents.
InGenius Broadcast Alert
Broadcast Alert is a mass notification system that can send alerts to 10′s of thousands of your employees, via alerts that pop up on their PC’s, and their Mitel phones. Features include:
- PC client that’s easy to role out in large installations,
- PC client can display an alert, including an audio alert, and text and graphical instructions, and can even completely lock out the user’s PC – so the user is compelled to leave their office.
- Alerts can be displayed on Mitel’s 5300 series phones – currently supported on the 5340 and 5330 models, and soon on all 53xx phones.
- Alerts can be sent to user specified zones,
- Each Zone can have a custom exit instructions and graphic, allowing you to specify exit instructions for each floor of a building, or each building on campus,
- The system is EXTREMELY easy to maintain – new clients show up in the right zones automatically, without any administrator involvement.
- Users automatically change zones if they are mobile – so a laptop user will automatically join the zone of whatever building they are in as they move about the campus.
InGenius Application Builder
Build HTML applications for your Mitel and Polycom phones using a wizard based online tool.
App Builder is an online tool that makes it easy to create HTML applications for the hospitality industry, with other verticals coming soon.
You simply follow through the wizard, then click on download to obtain a sophisticated HTML application customized for your property.
We’re excited to be demonstrating new support for Polycom phones at IT Expo. Polycom’s phones include colour models which are perfect for use with App Builder. Stop by and check it out!
InGenius simplER
simplER is a great product for users of Mitel’s 3300 series of switches. simplER monitors your 3300 looking for calls to 911 or any other emergency numbers you specify. When it detects an emergency call in progress, simplER looks up the caller in your Active Directory database, determines the caller’s location and name, then alerts approriate first responders for that office area, building floor, or campus building.
As the name implies, simplER is incredibly easy to configure and maintain, and is extremely flexible in it’s notification options. You can customize the notifications that are sent, and easily manage the notification groups by simply creating Active Directory groups following a simple naming convention.
simplER is an essential tool for EVERY Mitel 3300 system installation.
New and Exciting Stuff we can’t talk about here!
We’ll be highlighting some other exciting new stuff at IT Expo – including solutions for Asterisk users, advanced SIP softphone functionality and more. Please stop by at booth 501!
We’ll be posting photos and more blog entries from the show. Keep checking back for more exciting news from the show!
Heading off to Coldplay!
We watched these guys on some CBC show a while ago. They looked pretty cool- hope the show’s good!
Update: And it was a very good show! Tons of photos here:
Everyone there had cameras, even SLR’s. Video. Nobody stopped ‘em. Not like the “old” days.
My iPhone apps today
One of the groundbreaking differences between the iPhone and all other cellular phones is the App Store. You can bet that RIM, Nokia, et al are hard at work on a similar system.
Here’s the app’s I’ve got loaded today:
- Flashlight – Turns out to be fairly useful when lost in the dark.
- Bloomberg – more detailed stock info than the built-in app.
- Monkeyball – Fun, but the motion sensing is not well done. These guys should talk to the Labyrinth guys to see how to do motion sensing properly.
- Shazam – This is just cool.
- Weatherbug – OK app. Better weather forcasts than the built-in weather app.
- WordPress – cool – but it would be pretty difficult to type a REAL blog entry here.
- WritingPad – Interesting to see people inventing new input paradigms. This one is so so.
- Remote – Cool, but it would be great if it worked with FrontRow on my TV’s Mac Mini.
- Jott – Jott is a very cool service, and this app is well done.
- AirMe – I LOVE what this app SHOULD do, if ONLY it did it reliably. I’m hoping they release a new version soon.
- Labyrinth – THE COOLEST APP. This is what I show people when they wonder what the fuss is about.
- TouchCalc – OK.
- SpeakEasy – Nice audio recorder but doesn’t upload yet – which is functionality I’d love.
- Tuner – Nice to have a radio in your phone.
- AccuFuel – Bit of a pain to enter the fuel info, and a pain to configure. Km’s vs Miles vs liters per km, etc.
- ezimba – Interesting. The basic need I had was to crop photos, and I couldn’t find it after quite a bit of searching. I know it MUST be there…
- eReader – I had an account already so this was a no-brainer. I WISH I could override the motion sensor so I could read while lying in bed…
- VNC – Cool just because you can.
- Enigmo – Nicely done app. Another showcase app.
- Holdem – I’m not into poker enough to appreciate this app.
- Dice Bag – This app sucks. I was hoping for a nice simulation of dice rolling. All it does is display a number in the corner of the screen. TRY HARDER GUYS.
- Crash Cart – Cool. My kids love this app – but the motions sensing is not as nice as I’d like to see.
- OneTap – Very nice movie finder. Lots of nice features.
- Remember The Milk – Not strictly an iPhone app, but SO WELL DONE that I’m including it. Nice.
- Scrabble – I play this more than anything. The first version sucked HUGELY and crashed EVERY TIME you used it. The recent update is much improved. Also, they’ve improved the load time – but it’s still spending WAY TOO LONG showing me logos and startup screens.
- Audio Rec. Guitar Toolkit – Nice app.
- WeightTrack – Nice enough – but my phone isn’t near my scale.
- NetShare – I’m AMAZED this is allowed, and that this works. I downloaded it immediately, before it’s deleted from the App Store. Hopefully Rogers can’t detect that I’m using this (of course, I never do.)
- Exposure – Nice app – I wish I could upload from the phone to Flickr using this.
- Sketches – It would be nice to be able to have larger drawing surfaces. Nicely done.
Things my iPhone does to piss me off…
iPhone 3G
Doesn’t work as a phone – I received a call from my wife last weekend. Pulled the iPhone out of my pocket, and stared at the completely BLACK screen of my ringing phone. I tried pressing every button, dragging across where the “answer the call” slider is, but NOTHING worked. Then, she called again a minute later – and the same thing happened. Rats.
Apps that don’t work – I LOVE the idea of the AirMe application. This is a terrific app that lets you take photos, then automatically geotags them, weather tags them, then uploads them to Flickr – all with one click!!! WOW! Too bad it only works for one or two photos in a row, then crashes. Lots of apps crash – and I understand completely the issues that face the developers – we’re facing them ourselves.
TERRIBLE battery life – I’ve been a Blackberry user since the first year they were available. My FIRST blackberry would last for over 2 weeks on a charge. Then they added phone capability and colour, and it lasted about a day and a half. BUT, the iPhone does not even last one day! After charging all night, it’s dead by supper time. I have to charge it at work, or during supper if I’m planning to head out at night. Sucks.
NO coverage at my cottage – yes, not the iPhone’s fault – TOTALLY Roger’s fault. But is sucks that my Bell Blackberry gets 4 bars of signal strength, whereas my iPhone gets NO SIGNAL, except if I go outside, and hold the phone in one special location, angled JUST SO. PLEASE improve your coverage Rogers…
And, I love this thing. Go figure.
An interesting observation about GPS receivers
We do a lot of highway driving every week. It’s amazing how many cars are now using GPS devices! I’d say it’s about 1/4 to 1/3 of all cars on the highway are using them – closely following the on-screen routes to their destinations.
Garmin Nuvi 650
What’s interesting is that the algorithm used by these devices doesn’t always keep you on the big highways. I was quite surprised that our special back-roads route to our cottage (devised over YEARS of trial and error, backtracking and testing) was the route that our Garmin GPS chose – without any prompting on our part. It chose this crazy route through the back roads of Quebec to bring us from Ottawa to St. Sauveur.
And, on a recent trip to the Maine coast, our GPS brought us on a beautiful shortcut route – which was a couple of minutes shorter than the highway – but was a route you would NEVER choose unless you were a local. It was just one step up from a dirt road – lots of crazy twists and turns around huge boulders in the highway!
So, what’s happening is that people along these tiny, middle of nowhere routes must now be experiencing a huge increase in traffic!
I’ll bet that if you measured the traffic on this tiny road in Maine this year, compared to last year you’d see a huge increase in traffic! And I’ll bet the highway engineers and designers have no idea this is happening!
An unexpected side effect of the growth of GPS receiver use.
Hurry up and wait at the iPhone App Store!!!
We’ve been hard at work on some iPhone applications – and we’re ready to get them online – but like many other developers we’re stuck waiting in Apple’s queue’s.
First there’s the long wait to simply be accepted as iPhone developers. We signed up on the first day – but still haven’t been accepted as full-on developers.
THEN there’s the wait to get your app approved by Apple. Apparently the process is pretty sketchy at this point. Applications are being turned down for no reason, or for very ambiguous reasons. And, once your app is approved and up on the site, it can take weeks for updates to your app to be made public.
The beta process is pretty difficult too. We’re allowed to trial an application on up to 5 devices – so every application has a pretty small beta group. Sort of explains why the apps are so buggy.
The final thing we’re struggling with is a pretty restricting API. While we agree the apps have to be sandboxed to protect the functionality of the phone, it’s pretty restricting. We wanted to create a power management application – a REALLY easy way to put the phone in low power mode – and switch back to high power mode when you want to do some surfing, for instance. Unfortunately the power API’s are not available to us – and some early hacks by third party developers don’t work with the 2.0 API.
And, so we wait…
Meanwhile, if you are looking for a pretty hot iPhone application development shop – we’re READY!!! We’ve got quite a bit of experience, and are looking for some more cool work in this area.
Dale Gantous profiled at Red Canary
The Red Canary web site recently interviewed our CEO Dale Gantous, and has published a very nice profile of Dale and her career.
Wat to go Dale!!! We too think that you “ooze personality” and keep us all happy and excited about our cool work.
Dale Gantous, InGenius CEO
Our CEO Dale Gantous – Top Woman Entrepreneur in Canada!
We’re thrilled to announce that Dale Gantous has recently received the Sara Kirke award. This award, presented by CATA, is given to the top female entrepreneur in Canada.
To quote the CATA site:
The Sara Kirke Award for Woman Entrepreneurship is presented to the woman who has shown the most outstanding technological innovation and corporate leadership — leadership that has significantly expanded the frontiers of Canada’s advanced technology industry. The purpose of the Award is to celebrate innovation, entrepreneurship and create positive role models for women.
Sara Kirke is considered by many to be North America’s first entrepreneur. Sara Kirke arrived in Newfoundland in 1638 with her husband David Kirke, who was soon recalled to England. Sara, however, continued to reside in Avalon, and conducted business as usual from the Pool Plantation. Lady Kirke was a remarkable individual as she managed affairs at the Pool Plantation and became one of the most successful merchants on the English Shore — and was almost certainly North America’s first and foremost woman entrepreneur.
The Selection Committee of the Sara Kirke Award is made up of members of CATA’s Women in Technology Forum National Advisory Board. The chair of the Sara Kirke selection committee is Dr. Barbara Orser, Deloitte Chair for Women’s Entrepreneurship, University of Ottawa.
CATA’s WIT (Women in Technology) Forum is a new community network launched by CATA designed to boost women’s participation and advancement in the high-growth technology sector.
In judging the nominees for the award, the Selection Committee is looking for women leaders who demonstrated consistent innovation and leadership skills, resulting in the creation and international acceptance of significant world-class products and/or the establishment and development of a major advanced technology company or companies that have withstood the test of time.
More details here.
Fuzzy Time!
Fuzzy Time is a recent meme in the blogosphere – some design firm built a mockup of a clock that told the time – sort of. Instead of an exact time like 5:16pm, it would show “Five Fifteen” or “Quarter After Five.”
This sounded kind-of cool, so I built an HTML version of this clock. (Open in it’s own window, then resize the window to about 2 or 3 inches wide)
The app has a pretty decent list of time variants. Each minute it scans through all the time variants, chooses the ones which apply now, and then chooses a random one of the candidates to be displayed as the time. The whole source for the thing can be seen if you “view source” – check it out, and let me know if you come up with some time variants I haven’t thought of!
It’s nice to run this clock in a window on your desktop – and to do that, check out Bubbles! Bubbles lets you run HTML applications as though they are PC Desktop apps.
For more fuzzy clocks:
InGenius Application Builder up for VON Award!
InGenius is proud to be one of the finalists for a VON award for our innovative online application – the Mitel Application Builder. Winners will be announced at the VON show.
Application Builder is a tool used to build HTML applications which run on Mitel’s large-screen 5330 and 5340 phones.
Currently, you can build screen saver applications, and hospitality applications – and we’re planning to add many more applications over the next year.
Application Builder is innovative in that dealers or customers can sign up for free, and build trial applications for free. The tool supports online demos – you and your customers can see what your application will look like in our online phone simulator – then when you’re happy, download the application to your Mitel 3300 switch, and phones.
InGenius is happy to be in the company of many excellent finalists, including Alec Saunder’s iotum, another Ottawa firm.
Update: Well, we didn’t make the top 10, but we’re pretty happy with the exposure and recognition of our hard work. Thanks VON!
