Interview with Jonathan Kohl – Author, Consultant, and Mobile Enthusiast
February 6th, 2013 | Kevin Dubienski

My week started off with a bang!  I had a chance to run down to Mobile Monday where I caught up one of Calgary’s sharpest, Jonathan Kohl.  He’s a Calgary based consultant with a keen focus on mobile application development, policy and strategy.  I had the opportunity to ask Jonathan a few questions this is where our conversation went…

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Charity App Challenge Feb. 1, 2, and 3!
January 28th, 2013 | Kevin Dubienski

Howdy Calgary Developers,

The Calgary Charity App Challenge has just announced the prize money to be $30,000 which will be awarded to the winning app dev team!

Take a quick peek over at the techvibes page for a few more details on the event.  Don’t forget to RSVP if you haven’t yet!

Calgary’s Charity App Challenge Offering $30,000 Contract to Winning Development Team

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Expand Your Playlist With Remixes
January 25th, 2013 | Connor Turner

Remixes - By Decoder & UppercutLast year, just before the holiday season kicked into gear, Calgary app developers Decoder and design collective Uppercut quietly launched the Soundcloud powered app Remixes. For those of you who enjoy the creativity of the mash-up/cover/remix culture that has overtaken the music industry since the beginning of the decade, Remixes is a must have app on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

This stunningly beautiful app works by sorting through your existing collection of tracks on your iTunes library. From there it scours Soundclound’s vast catalog of unique music; matching remixes, covers, live versions of the tracks contained in your library. Once these tracks are added to Remixes, users can pop in to their favorite artist or track, select the track they want to hear a variant on and get a full list of available tracks. Then users can favorite any newly discovered track for listening to later or share with their social networks. Remixes also will search through your library to connect you with a list of recommended Radio stations for even further music exploration. read more

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Eat Canada, Just in Time for the Holidays!
December 20th, 2012 | Kevin Dubienski

Preview of what Eats Canada looks like in iOS devices.The Holidays are upon us and everyones caught the Christmas bug.  Scrambling about for presents and fresh eats are high on the list for most Calgarians. Eat Canada app has launched just in time for the season!  Local developer Jeremy Gale and CBC’s opinionated eating machine John Gilchrist have teamed up to release an app of their own.

When I first opened the app I was delighted to find reviews of restaurants in 11 of Canada’s biggest cities.  The app is smartly geared for the business traveler seeking a simple way to find eateries for their business luncheons or taking a client to dinner.  All the restaurants are also located in the downtown core of each city!  Reviews are written by a pro food critics, giving me trust in their experienced taste buds behind the words they write.  Driving me even more value, this app allows me to contact each restaurant, find the best route, and even make a reservation! read more

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Charity App Challenge Kick Off Party – Please RSVP!
December 12th, 2012 | Kevin Dubienski

The Charity App Challenge is an initiative to show technology can be leveraged for social good – hack-a-thon style!  Space is limited however the organizers would love to see the developers of Calgary coming together to make this happen. Don’t be a grinch, roll up your sleeves, and get ready to give back!

This year the Calgary Herald’s Christmas Fund has decided to champion mobile for its participating charities to help them in their organizational endeavours. The Hack-a-thon will be taking place over a 48 hour period, February 2-3, 2013 at the Calgary Herald. The winning app will receive funding to complete development. read more

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BeauCoo App Review!
December 6th, 2012 | Gavin Miller

BeauCoo Banner

Unless you live under a yyc rock you’ve heard the news that Beaucoo has launched! Beaucoo is the brain child of the Decoder team which includes the dynamic duo of Christian and Victoria Maclean.

The Beaucoo tagline is “Pics on someone your own size!” which ties in with it’s main aim: Beaucoo is an app to share fashion between women of the same size.

I was able to get my hands on an invite and a sneak peak at what the inside of the women’s fashion world looks like. However I realized that as a man, I was in way over my head! So for this post I’ve recruited our female designer Avery Kinsella to help out.

Gavin: What can you do in the app?

Avery: It’s like Instagram meets fashion. I’m able to take photos and post them, and see other people’s photos. I can also friend people that are similar in size to me and see what they’re posting really easy. There’s also a useful filter so if I want to just see skirts I can filter for that — which is super helpful.

Gavin: What do you think of Beaucoo?

Avery: The concept for the application is great. I feel that there are a lot of women out there that struggle with not knowing how clothes will fit on them because a model’s body type is no where close to average. If the user base gets large enough I feel Beaucoo could replace looking at clothes from a store’s websites or look books. It is amazing to look at how something will fit on other people that are my size!

BeauCoo App

Gavin: How about the design of the app, what jumped out at you?

Avery: I enjoyed the design and thought it matched the product nicely. The design was carried throughout the whole application, and made it look unified and well thought out. The app was easy to use and navigate.

Speaking with Victoria about the app she told me that they’ve just submitted their next update to the app store, which is going to bring with it some tighter integration with the iPhone camera, and a few brand related features. The team is also looking at hitting up new platforms which they expect to release in the New Year.

Overall, Avery and I were really impressed with Beaucoo. There is a ton of polish and thought that has been put into the app.

And more than that, Beaucoo solves a real need for women: Finding clothing that fits. For this reason we feel like Beaucoo is going to make a huge splash in the tech scene of 2013. They’ve got the right team, a great product, and a cute fuzzy bunny mascot (I can’t wait for the plush toy spin off!)

Overall we’re super proud to see Beaucoo rolling out of Calgary and can’t wait to point back to this post and say “see we told you Beaucoo was going to go big!”

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