Every term, four co-op student software developers are brought into the Communitech Hub and with a little bit of help and guidance create four entirely new software prototypes. This term's conclusion came on December 14th with our regularly occurring Apps Factory Demo Day.
These ideas come from people we call Idea Sponsors. People who have a good idea and for whatever reason don't have the development capacity or technical knowledge to develop it themselves. Every term we look for Idea Sponsors we can help, and every term we pick four. We'll be looking for Idea Sponsors again sometime in late January or early February. If you have a great idea for an app keep your eyes peeled!
ANTVibes
ANTVibes is an Accelerator Centre tenant taking the guesswork out of pronouncing names. You can read more in Anthony Reinhart's profile of them from October.
The Communitech Apps Factory helped research the options for a mobile application and have started building a prototype BlackBerry application that allows users to automatically attach their Audible Name Tag (ANT) to emails, as well as collect any ANTs on incoming emails and update the user's contact information.
Cultural Tourism
In association with the The James Wegg Review, the Communitech Apps Factory developed a prototype of a new mobile application highlighting Cultural Tourism. This application currently focuses on the Niagara Region with big plans for expansion throughout North America and the world.
Foodlink Waterloo Region
Foodlink promotes local food in Waterloo Region in many ways, but one of the most famous is their Buy Local! Buy Fresh! campaign and its associated map, available in physical form or online.
For Foodlink, the Communitech Apps Factory started development of a mobile application that presents the data used for the map in a beautiful new mobile-specific interface designed by CuteGecko. The Apps Factory worked with Tilted Pixel to define an API for the existing site and developed a cross-platform application that will be available for all to download someday soon.
SnapSort
Inspired by an idea from the great minds at Accelerator Centre tenant SnapSort, the Apps Factory developed a server/client application for mobile phones that encourages users to share photographs with high local meaning, in both time and space. Users can view these photographs in a live stream, allowing them to experience a concert, political rally, or other major event from many perspectives at once.
Next Time
This wraps up our second term. Recently our pilot project was extended to a third term, so we have lined up four entirely new Idea Sponsors and the new team starts on January 3rd. Our first term seemed to be about gaming, and our second was about location-based services. It is harder for me to see a common thread this term but my feeling right now is that we're focusing on data collection and visualization. The projects we're tackling are going to span industries from health and medical research to trucking and shipping.
As we conclude our pilot phase and we start laying the groundwork for our long-term plans and goals we will be talking a lot more about the things we've learned over the past eight months. We will see how the Apps Factory helping Waterloo Region companies Start new and exciting projects, Grow their workforce and Succeed.
