DemoCamp Edmonton 17, The Tools to do More.

by Paul Lemmerick in DONOVAN WORLD

19

Jan
2012

FILED UNDER

DemoCamp Edmonton, the informal tech show-and-tell for developers, creatives, and entrepreneurs put on by Startup Edmonton, ran an excellent showing of projects last night on January 18, 2012. Held every few months, the evening of demonstrations allows both leaders of the local creative industry as well as those just getting their start to show off their latest projects, from rough hack jobs to perfectly polished and highly marketable products.

Interestingly, as Apple unveils their iBook Author today – a free app that allows users to create their own tablet-based books – one theme of last night’s event was educational application. How to make learning easier and more interactive was a question one presenter tried to answer.

Here’s who the DONOVAN team saw last night:

Zeel – Built by the folks at Rocketfuel Games, Zeel is an app that allows you to follow and engage in conversations on Twitter relating to whatever subject matter you choose. Get live tweets during a football game – or tech conference – and tweet right back at your friends following the same thread.

Get Blocked Content – Ben Zitlau gave the audience a quick tutorial on a simple hack he’s been working on for getting US-only content that’s blocked in Canada via services such as Pandora Radio and Netflix. Watch the walkthrough here.

Educational Flash App for Tablets – With an intelligent work-around for using flash on the iPad, Randy Troppmann, interactive designer and developer with NAIT, built a touch-based tool for teaching students a wide range of subject matter on tablets of all kinds. It was nice to see how hands-on you can get with the lesson plans and tests.

Web Suite Pro – Designed for use by businesses around the world, this cloud-based project management tool is seriously feature heavy. Websuitepro.com

Slapshot Heroes – This mobile game is an off-shoot from the larger desktop game called Rinksters (rinksters.com). It might be a kid’s game, but it still looks like something a few of us at DONOVAN might pick up and play (for hours).

(You might not be able to tell from this photograph, but pictured above is a screenshot of Slapshot Heroes in action. Gameplay looks similar to Angry Birds, but it’s a little more challenging and the goals are different – no pigs to destroy, for one.)

Linelo – Highly searchable and easily formatted notes are the future, read more at linelo.net

There was a great audience turnout at DemoCamp Edmonton 17, a testament to the growing creative and technology industries in Edmonton. When a diverse group of developers with a wide range of projects can entice an auditorium full of people to brave the cold to hear them speak, it’s a sign DemoCamp Edmonton is doing something right.

@plemmerick’s pick: The flash-enabled teaching tool made the top of Paul’s list because it was so easy to use and looked to have a wide range of applications.

@kevinnewcombe’s pick: Slapshot Heroes, the mobile hockey game, is Kevin’s favourite. Both the presenter and the product were amusing to watch.

@blnkslate’s pick: At first, Zeel App might appear to be for heavy Twitter users only, but after getting the hang of it, Matt feels that many people will find it useful for their everyday social media needs.

Read about past DemoCamp Edmonton nights. And check out Mastermaq’s blog for more on DemoCamp Edmonton 17.

Paul Lemmerick is a Copywriter at DONOVAN. Comments on this post or suggestions for future topics are welcome.