- Toronto GirlGeek: the algorithms edition!
I am really excited to be speaking at the next Toronto Girl Geek evening. I remember attending one of the first Girl Geek dinners in London in 2005. It was organized by Sarah Blow, the founder of Girl Geeks. That evening was pretty much magical: I met Robert Scobble and Maryam Scobble. I also met Hugh MacLeod, Ben Metcalfe, Henriette Weber Andersen and a lot of awesome attendees whose names I can no longer recall unfortunately! It was a surprising evening, full of technology discussions, blogging, changing the world conversations and great wine – I vaguely remember a wine sponsorship there! Next week the Toronto Girl Geek evening is all about Algorithms. And that’s of course something I am super excited about!
Not only am I speaking but we will be hosting in our offices. I would suggest that you get a ticket, but I hear it is sold out! Can’t believe that there are that many people interested in hearing about algorithms!
Inspire more women and girls into a career in science, engineering or technology by supporting Girl Geek Dinners. Perhaps your company could host the next one?
- Small Business Forum 2010
Are you ready for Toronto’s entrepreneurial event of the year?
Join Chris O’Neill of Google Canada, Austin Hill of Brudder Ventures, Leila Boujnane of Idée Inc., Nancy Peterson of Homestars, Darren Anderson of Vive Nano, Erin Bury of Sprouter, Mike McDerment of Freshbooks and many, many others at the Small Business Forum – Toronto’s entrepreneurial event of the year!
On October 19th, more than 2,000 entrepreneurs, prospective entrepreneurs and small business owners will attend Enterprise Toronto’s 10th annual Small Business Forum. This year’s theme – finding and retaining customers!
When: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 8:00 AM – 9:00 PM
Where: Metro Toronto Convention Centre
255 Front St W, Toronto, ON, Canada
- HackTO2: It is a wrap! Until next time.
Another successful HackTO has come and gone; we hope you had as much fun attending as we did hosting! There was so much talent packed into the ideeplex, I’m surprised zombies couldn’t smell the steaming brains from miles away.
Many of you have put your completed HackTO projects online, and I have included links to those projects here to share with the rest of the HackTO gang. If your project is missing from this post, please drop us a line and we’ll add it.
Nom Nom Nom Rank (Winner: First Place)
By: Adam McKerlie, Ash Christopher and Terence Lo
Using: Yellow Pages API, Google Weather API, and the Foursquare API
Description: Most work places in dense urban areas are surrounded by plenty of restaurants. With too many options, lunch decision paralysis is a very real problem. With “Nom Nom Nom Rank“, we rank the restaurants and determine your best choice based on predefined metrics such as weather, popularity and how busy the location is.
Note: Their domain was just registered, so the link may not work right away. Follow Nom Nom Nom Rank on Twitter
Fun Thing (Winner: Second Place)
By: Logan Aube
Using: Cadmus API
Description: Fun Thing is a Small Platformer that uses the Cadmus API to turn HackTO’s Twitter feed into a cool level of a game!
Note: After you click play you’ll probably need to click the screen again to get the controls working! Left, Right and Space to Jump. Catch the icons of your friends to invert the screen’s colours but also to gain points! If you stay on a tweet for too long it will start to fall.
wp-instapaywall (Winner: Third Place)
By: Mo Jangda
Using: Freshbooks API
Description: Mo has written up an awesome post about his project on his blog! In its simplest form, the plugin lets you paywall your blog posts and make money by charging readers for full access to them.
Jira (Honourable Mention)
By: Jason Cornell, Igor Frenkel, Ricardo Peters and Ashley Lewis
Using: PixMatch API and ISBNdb API
Description: Jira is an iPhone application that allows you to upload a photo of a book cover and using the PixMatch API, return the ISBN and book cover of the book. Then by using the ISBNdb API, it returns the book title, author, publisher, and stores with prices. You can then select one of the stores and go directly to the website for purchase.
Note: Visit this project using your iPhone — requires the Quickpic application
Cash $oup! WTF?
By: Peter Vernigorov and Khurram Virani
Using: OANDA/FxTrade API
Description: Cash $oup! WTF? uses the HTML5 canvas and the Processing.js framework to draw floating organisms in a Primordial soup where each organism represents a currency exchange rate. The organisms grow and shrink in real time to reflect real time foreign exchange rates pulled from OANDA’s FxTrade API.
Note: The demo points to the development server so the rates being used are not current. The github repo is here.
currency_bot
By: Anita Kuno and Johnny Tong
Using: OANDA/FxTrade API
Description: currency_bot is a twitter bot announcing the value of one Canadian dollar in other currencies.
Media Gorge
By: Simon South, Alexa Clark and Gerry Thorpe
Description: 4square for media – check in for books, movies, music, etc.
Multi-currency time tracker
By Brian Smith
Using: OANDA/FxTrade API and Freshbooks API
Description: Multi-currency time tracker is a tool which tracks time for billing in multiple currencies, then
submits it to Freshbooks.Note: The Freshbooks functionality no longer works, but Brian will leave the OANDA stuff up as long as their API stays the same.
Trend-Blaster 3000
By Nick Hoffman and Sully Syed
Using: OANDA/FxTrade API
Description: Trend-Blaster 3000 plots a currency’s value over the course of a year on a graph. By zooming in on sections of the graph and clicking on data points, New York Times articles for that time period are listed below. Using this information, it is possible to draw conclusions regarding the fluctuations in the currency.
Tyke Tycoon
By: Matt Okura, Melina Stathopoulos and Martine Vong
Using: OANDA/FxTrade API, Yellw Pages API and Google Maps API
Description: Tyke Tycoon is a children’s game prototype for mobile touch screen devices. It lets kids track the money they find or receive (how much and where), shows them where the nearest bank is, and shows them how much their money is worth in various international currencies.
Note: The currency conversion has been removed from this project as it no longer connects to OANDA
Thanks to all the folks who submitted project information for this post. Once again, if we are missing your project info, please let us know!
We’ll be posting photos soon as well, so if you have any of your own photos that you would like featured on the site do drop us a line or simply upload them to Flickr and tag them HackTO
We hope you enjoyed HackTO2, and keep on hackin’!
- Ignite! Toronto 4
Ignite TO
Ignite Toronto is taking place on September 2, 2010 at the Drake hotel in Toronto and I am excited about it as I will be presenting this time -rather than just watching! And you should too at the next Ignite Toronto.
What is Ignite?
Fast-paced, fun, thought-provoking, social, local, global—Ignite is all of these and more. It’s a high-energy evening of 5-minute talks by people who have an idea—and the guts to get onstage and share it with their hometown crowd. Run by local volunteers who are connected through the global Ignite network, Ignite is a force for raising the collective IQ and building connections in each city.
Ignite started in Seattle in December 2006 and you can read all about it here. Registration for Ignite Toronto (which by the way is organized by Michele Perras & Peter Horvath) is open. To get a taste for what to expect at the next Ignite Toronto view the previous Ignite videos! Smashing.
Have a great weekend folks!
Photograph by Matthew Burpee
- HackTO: API hacking in Toronto!
On Saturday May 15, Toronto’s finest hackers and developers gathered at the ideeplex in Toronto for some serious geekery at the first ever HackTO hack-a-thon.
Being social… or being too busy to be social!
The challenge? Build a sexy web application using any combination of open APIs made available by our fantastic sponsors: Canpages, Freshbooks, Idee, OPENapps and PostRank. Oh, and build it in UNDER FOUR HOURS.
The reward? Besides total geek-cred, the top three applications received either an iPad, a $500 gift certificate for the Apple store or a $250 gift certificate for Amazon. All applications developed remained property of their creators, of course… this event was for people-meeting and stuff-strutting!
As part of the HackTO schedule we decided to introduce an unconference component: developers put their application ideas up on a white board and specified if they were looking for a team member to work with, or if they were going “rogue” independently. We ended up with a pretty good combination of rogue developers and teams. A total of 13 applications were outlined on the board by 10:30, which was our coding start time.
Yours truly thinking of more illustrative doodles for the whiteboard
Off to the races. Competition was stiff, coffee was flowing, laptops were clacking, and some creative work spaces began to sprout up…
Of course somewhere along the way we needed to break for food, although it was hard to tear some hackers away from their laptops just when they’d hit a groove! But two, three, or TEN slices of pizza later it was back to business.
Yummy pie from Pizzaiolo…
…some of us liked it more than others!
Shortly after lunch, it was serious CRUNCH TIME. The only sounds to be heard were furious fingers flailing on keyboards, the clinking of coffee spoons, the crunching of carbs, and the occasional %#$@! For some, helmets were required gear for getting down to the nitty gritty.
Buckle up, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.Several pints of blood, sweet and tears later, finishing touches were made and laptops were closed. Each team presented their awesome application to the crowd, and to our wonderful panel of judges whom we would like to thank from the bottom of our collective geeky hearts: Jonas Brandon, April Dunford and Joe Stump. Thanks, dudes!
There were so many great apps, it was hard to choose the winners. But without further ado, here is what the judges selected:
Honourable mention (for lolz)
Million-Dollar Microsite-Maker by Nick Hoffman and Andrew Louis
Pick a topic and a city in Canada (e.g. dating in Toronto), then fill out a form to instantly assemble a web site complete with content, local business listings and advertising. Uses the CanPages API.
Get rich quick!
Honourable mention (Application by a sponsoring team)
Soleil by Mark Bloore and Martine Vong
Submit an image, and Soleil breaks it down into a grid of colour, then replaces each colour in the grid with a similarly-coloured image to create a mosaic version of the original image. Uses Idee’s Piximilar API.
Submitted image
Result mosaic image!Runner up
Image Statter by Rida Al Barazi
Grab a set or feed of images, identify those images that come from the highest-ranking source (e.g. sources with many incoming/outgoing links or flagged as interesting), and extract the image colours to create colour templates. Get a pie-chart breakdown of how each colour is used proportionally within the image. Uses the PostRank and Piximilar APIs.
Third place (winner of the $250 Amazon gift certificate)
Submit any web site address with an RSS feed, or provide your Google Reader feeds to receive a list of suggested feeds based on your interests. Uses the PostRank API.
Hungry for new feeds?
Second place (winner of the $500 Apple store certificate)
Photosimilar by James Hatheway and Libin Pan
Take a photo with your iPhone or select a photo from your iPhone’s image gallery, and find visually similar images on the web (e.g. images with the same look, feel, colours, etc.). Uses the Piximilar API.
First place (winner of a 32GB iPad)
what the colour?! by Mo Jangda
Submit a colour palette from colourlovers.com and retreive images that contain either all of the colours in that palette, or images matching individual colours in the palette. Click on your result images to find even more palette-inspired images. Uses the Piximilar API with colourlovers.com.
Who doesn’t love colour?!Congratulations to the winners, and a huge round of applause to everyone who participated in this very first hack-a-thon. It’s amazing what can be accomplished with great minds and a tight deadline!
It was great to meet you all, and we hope you had fun. If you are looking to connect with anyone that you met at HackTO, don’t forget that the names, faces and Twitter accounts of everyone at the event are available right here.
We are already excited about planning the next event, so we’ll see you again soon… keep hacking!
P.S. PostRank: here’s some love for you courtesy of Soleil!
- We are hiring!
Despite our best efforts compute clusters and robots still need help and TinEye can’t build all it needs on its own. So we need help. We are hiring for a number of positions but our first need is live on our website: we are looking for an awesome system administrator. Learn about Idée, TinEye – our great reverse image search engine – and our environment before dropping us a note. Would love to hear from you!
- Attention technophiles and TinEye fans!
Hello, fellow nerds and geeks! If you:
a) looooove technology
b) are a STUDENT (proof required)
and
c) live in the Greater Toronto Area
Then you’re in luck! Because we’ve got two student tickets to meshU burning a hole in our collective pocket, and they’re up for grabs!
For those out of the loop, meshU is “…a one-day event of focused workshops on design, development and team management given by those who have earned their stripes in the startup game”. You will get to hear from–and hang out with–some pretty cool peeps in the technology arena.
The TinEye team is all about technology love, and the execution of great ideas. So if you’re interested in scoring a ticket for the big day on May 17th, drop us a line and tell us why you want to go. What tools and technologies are you into? What cool projects are you working on? What are your plans for world domination?
The two most interesting responses (as judged by our staff of robots) will each receive one ticket. We will be accepting entries until Wednesday May 5th at midnight, EST. Winners will be announced the following day! Remember, you must be a student to use these tickets, and meshU will ask for identification.
Oh, and this probably goes without saying, but meshU is a small event and tickets sold out… so if you won’t be able to make it to Toronto for the 17th yourself, please be a dear and wait for the next TinEye giveaway. Thanks!
- TinEye makes the headlines (again!)
Yesterday the National Post poked fun at the cover of the new City of Toronto “Fun Guide”. The image of a smiling family on the cover was photoshopped to replace the original man in the photo with someone else.
A graphics editor at the National Post saw the suspicious-looking cover and decided to run it through TinEye. Sure enough, TinEye was able to locate the original image.
Compare the original image with the Fun Guide version by rolling your mouse over the image below.
- To pose, perchance to sleeveface…
As we mentioned last week, the sleeveface contest at the idéeplex during our TinEye Music beta release party was a ton of fun. Now it’s time to select the winners of our sleeveface-off.
To // Sleeveface // : one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion.
Here’s the official “How to Sleeveface” video:
As we told our friends at the iParty, the best of the sleeveface snapshots will win a prize. Jen Dodd clearly pulled off a winning sleeveface with her Nina Hagen look below, so she’s queued up for a prize for sure.
Who else do you think deserves a little something for their sleevefacing efforts? Leave us your comments with your top two picks from the photos below and we’ll tally up the votes and award two more prizes.
Steve Jobs says “there’s one more thing…”
Alannah Myles looking fierce
Superman at the idéeplex (looking a little blurry!)
Bob Marley contemplates image search
J.Lo poses (FYI, it’s Amber!)
Sarah Palin is pro-Heineken, gosh darn it!
Okay, so those are our contestants for the prizes. But wait! I have a few more snaps for you – here are the idéalists avoiding work on a Friday afternoon by sleevefacing:
Prince gives idée the thumbs up
Lennon gets serious about image search
Lookin’ fine Barry…
Having a Sheryl Crow moment
Uhm, Leila… that‘s not *quite* right!
- That’s better!
If you are diggin’ the sleeveface you can see more on Flickr and Facebook. Even fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld is into sleeveface (kind of anyway).
Happy sleevefacing friends! If you try it out remember to post a link to your photos in the comments, we’d love to see them.
- Toronto AWS Start-Up Tour
Last week we gave you a heads up about the upcoming AWS Start-Up Tour. Here are a few more details about the Toronto stop.The team from Amazon will be in town on September 15th (that’s been changed from the 16th) and our CEO and CTO will be speaking at the half-day meet and learn event showcasing companies and technologies that use AWS services.
Last year’s AWS Start-Up Tour featured AideRSS, Geezeo, Renkoo, SmugMug, Slideshare, Animoto, Ooyala and more. You can check out a number of their presentations from the 2007 tour over on slideshare.
If you are interested in attending this year’s event here in Toronto, head on over to the Start-Up Tour site to learn a bit more or register today.
Where: MaRS Discovery Centre
Who: Local CEOs, CTOs, founders of start-ups and investors
When: 2pm-5pm, followed by a networking reception
Event Schedule:
2:00-2:20 Opening Statements by Adam Selipsky, VP, Amazon Web Services
2:20-3:00 AWS Presentation by Mike Culver, Evangelist, Amazon Web Services
3:15-4:05 Presentations:
Carlos Barrettara, Co-Founder, Polar Mobile
Ilya Grigorik, Co-Founder, AideRSS
Chris Thiessen, Founder, Zoomii
Leila Boujnane, Chief Executive Officer, Idee Inc. (that’s us!)
Farhan Thawar, Chief Software Architect, I Love Rewards4:05-4:35 Q&A
4:35-5:00 Closing Statements by Adam Selipsky, VP, Amazon Web Services
5:00-7:00 Cocktail/Networking Reception
If that doesn’t sound like a slam-dunk of an event for start-ups in the early stages of a project that might benefit from the AWS offerings, I don’t know what would. See you there!
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