app

Join real-time app pilot

The Go Downtown app helps users find out what is happening in town right now.

Go Downtown has launched a public pilot of its real-time urban mapping mobile application in the Metro Vancouver area. The app is now free to download at the Canadian App Store and Google Play.

The new app helps users in large cities find out what is happening around town right now, and where to go to participate. The app indicates the location of live events and highlights crowd hot spots using a live foot-traffic heatmap.

The main mapping platforms like Google, Apple or Bing present mostly static data, while the information about live urban events – such as bands, parties, shows, etc. – is fragmented across the net and hard to find. Go Downtown changes the way we plan our hangouts and find out where the action is, by visualizing the live city. The social app aggregates information about events – such as festivals, shows, live music, food truck locations, happy hours and more – from user reports and other sources and displays them on the map. Users can share the details of an event they like and the app produces a walking route to take them there.

Go Downtown also features a live foot-traffic heatmap. The app aggregates the location and speed of its users to generate a real-time foot-traffic “synoptic map.” The heatmap highlights pedestrian hot spots and helps users find where the action is and where people are going. Users can even filter the map to find hot spots of specific groups of people based on their demographic and common interests.

In addition, the app offers themed walking routes – like “tourist attractions,” “shopping spree,” “pub crawl” and other things near the user – that enable the user to explore the city by walking.

“The concept of real-time urban mapping is powerful,” said Yaron Bazaz, co-founder and chief executive officer of Go Downtown. “Waze revolutionized mapping by using real-time user reports to map current traffic congestions and help drivers. Go Downtown takes real-time mapping further by utilizing user inputs to depict urban life. Where are people hanging out right now, what cultural events are taking place today? The ability to digest all this information, visualize it and analyze patterns will have enormous impact on users, businesses and local authorities.”

In addition, the real-time foot-traffic data and live urban events information generated serves a wide range of markets: from leading retail chains and car-sharing ventures that would like to understand foot-traffic patterns, to universities and cities that can use it for better planning. Go Downtown predicts that live foot-traffic data pattern analysis and forecast will play a key role in many Smart City initiatives and will be widely used by urban planners to plan more pedestrian-friendly cities.

Earlier this year, the startup ran a successful pilot at the University of British Columbia with the support of the faculty and the student organization. During the pilot, the app aggregated the foot traffic of hundreds of participants and mapped the main walking routes students were using throughout the campus.

Following the public pilot in Vancouver, the company plans to expand the service to more cities in Canada and the United States. To participate in the Vancouver pilot, visit godowntown.mobi to download the iOS version from the App Store or the Android version from Google Play.

New b’nai mitzvah app

(screenshot from mitzvahtools.com)

Mitzvah Tools 2.0 aims to make every aspect of bar and bat mitzvah preparation easier for everyone involved. The app schedules meetings, keeps track of progress, enables long-distance learning, organizes essential information like the Torah portions and honors at the ceremony, and makes resources for studying available to the student. The architect of the app is Rabbi Dan Moskovitz of Temple Sholom, who is founder and chief executive officer of Mitzvah Tools.

Moskovitz’s interest in digital Torah education tools goes way back. He has been a computer geek since his own bar mitzvah, which took place in the days of the Atari 400. In rabbinical school, he developed software to help him with the Jewish calendar and, while working in a Los Angeles synagogue in 1998, he created a database to track the progress of children studying for their b’nai mitzvah. In 2003, he developed Mitzvah Tools 1.0, a much more limited version of the current platform.

Mitzvah Tools 2.0, which was released in June, was developed with the help of Cantor Mark Britowich, director of sales and operations at Mitzvah Tools, who has more than 20 years of experience in b’nai mitzvah education. Vancouver’s Mark Fromson was the project manager and Australia-based Salim Jordan led an international team of programmers.

Mitzvah Tools was completely updated to help synagogues prepare their b’nai mitzvah students. According to the app’s website, “the original was locked in the rigidity of fixed browser widths and ’90s graphics. We kicked some new life into this trusty tool with a fresh identity and comprehensive design system to define its look and feel.”

The entire b’nai mitzvah educational team can interact using Mitzvah Tools to manage the study process together. Each student’s resources and their assignments can be accessed, and the student can attach recordings and send them to their tutor to review. Tutors and other team members can work from any location, and Mitzvah Tools enables video chats between tutor and student.

The app’s multimedia resource bank includes the chanting of every Torah and Haftorah portion. Recordings of prayers, various Torah commentaries and pages of the Tikkun (a book of the text as it appears in the Torah scroll) can all be stored and shared, as well as any other relevant files. All members of the team can communicate with each other, and students and parents can communicate with their team members, as well, with privacy settings available to restrict who can access different conversations.

Since its release in June, Mitzvah Tools is already in some 30 congregations. For more information, visit mitzvahtools.com.

Matthew Gindin is a Vancouver freelance writer and journalist. He blogs on spirituality and social justice at seeking her voice (hashkata.com) and has been published in the Forward, Tikkun, Elephant Journal and elsewhere.

Connecting local food fans

With the Tangoo app, Paul Davidescu, centre, brings together restaurateurs, social influencers and diners. (photo from tangoo.ca)

Food is more than nourishment, says Paul Davidescu, it builds community. The Vancouver entrepreneur is behind an app that aims to unite people over food.

“We are passionate about creating community,” said Davidescu, whose company, Tangoo, is connecting local food fans. “The way that we believe you create community is over the dinner table, where you get people together for dinner, brunch, what we call breaking bread, because that’s when the big ideas get created, that’s when people find love, that’s when people really get together.”

For restaurateurs, Tangoo promises to “attract the perfect customer by sharing your business story through social media influencers, our pocket concierge app, and integrated marketing solutions.” For diners, Tangoo offers “the pulse of the city’s best dining experiences, exclusively recommended by foodie influencers featured on the app.” And, for social influencers – a relatively new but increasingly powerful demographic – Tangoo offers a front row seat to emerging food trends in the city.

Davidescu, who graduated from the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business in 2012, explained that businesses are having an increasingly difficult time connecting with young consumers through traditional media.

“Nowadays, PR [and] social media are turning into one, especially if you’re looking at targeting millennials,” he said. “They don’t really watch TV anymore. They’re on social media.”

Tangoo’s approach is to provide information through their mobile app that helps potential customers get a sense of a restaurant’s personality. Part of the experience includes the opinions of local figures like chef Vikram Vij, record label founder Ari Paunonen and lifestyle expert Natalie Langston on their favorite meal destinations.

While the Tangoo app has about 20,000 users, Davidescu’s vision is to leverage the existing audiences of influencers. By inviting well-known figures and social media bigshots to be the first to experience, say, a new summer cocktail or a dining room’s revamped menu, Tangoo helps restaurants get their news out to the people who most closely follow such things.

“We started to actually connect these influencers who we already have on our app with the actual restaurants directly,” he said. “Not to the point where they’re just recommending them on our app, but they’re actually going into the restaurant and they’re tasting the food and actually posting on their own Instagram.”

Influencer marketing, as it is known, is Tangoo’s bread and butter.

“Think of it as more informal PR,” he said. For businesses with tight budgets – and restaurants tend to operate on narrow margins – conventional media can be very expensive and social media can be a time-consuming gig.

“You resort to either not doing social media or giving it to your manager at the bar who is multitasking and will never, ever do a very good job on that,” said Davidescu.

Tangoo aims to do the work for the restaurant by connecting them with social media figures with foodie followers.

“It’s kind of like getting guaranteed press through a very targeted channel,” he said. “We are trying to make PR really affordable for restaurants, that’s the core. They’re the ones that nurture community by being alive and keeping things interesting.”

Right now, Tangoo is busy with the Vancouver food scene, but Davidescu said it could grow organically to other cities in future.

“There are a lot of restaurants in Vancouver,” said Davidescu, who was born in Mexico and came here as a child. He was a camper and counselor at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, Camp Hatikvah and Camp Biluim in Quebec. When he was a student at UBC, he helped organize an interfaith discussion group. As part of his co-op studies in business school, he had placements in Germany and Barcelona.

Davidescu said there is a connection between his Jewishness and his devotion to food and connecting over a meal. Community is built across the table, he said.

“Food is cultural,” he said.

“It’s a way to just bring people together.”

Making healthy connections

High-tech entrepreneur Galya Westler is at TEDxStanleyPark on May 28. (photo from Galya Westler)

The social media available to help us connect with one another are ever-increasing, but they are not always effective. In fact, they often have the opposite effect – when we realize the relations they engender are illusory, we experience feelings of loneliness and inadequacy. So says Galya Westler, a local high-tech entrepreneur, who is creating a simpler, more intimate solution to connect people with their respective communities.

In keeping with the theme of “Ideas to Action,” Westler – along with 14 other local thought leaders – will take the stage at the third annual TEDxStanleyPark on May 28 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. She will deliver a talk entitled Social Media Obesity and Loneliness. She will discuss the growing phenomenon of social media addiction, recount her personal experiences in trying to connect with others during a particularly traumatic period in her life and explore how to use technology to overcome a social media addiction.

According to Westler, too many people suffer from what she terms “social media obesity,” or an addiction to social media, and are “pigging out on selfies of attention.” Moreover, in their effort to be noticed, social media addicts often lose appreciation of how they act in the online world – and exaggerations serve only to enhance the gap between online personas and reality. The ultimate consequence: feelings of inadequacy, disappointment, depression and loneliness.

Westler examines the subject from the point of view of a social media developer with a decade of experience in creating or enhancing online communities. This summer, she will launch Plazus Mobile Social App Builder, her most ambitious social media application platform to date.

Born in Montreal, Westler grew up in Ra’anana after her Israeli parents returned home upon her father’s completion of his PhD at the University of Montreal.

She served as a commander of a radar post in the Gaza Strip during her mandatory military service with the Israel Defence Forces. She describes her experience as “amazing” and “life-changing.” Introverted and lacking confidence in high school, she said her army service – carried out in a male-dominated environment – enabled her to blossom into an outgoing and hardworking soldier who rose to challenges. She would carry this learned lesson with her as she pursued higher education.

Despite an affinity for the humanities, Westler enrolled in Shenkar College’s four-year software engineering program. She had been counseled to do so by her father, a senior high-tech professional in Israel, who told her: “If you study software engineering, the doors will open for you.”

The program was challenging and Westler struggled – not only with the material, but also with the pressure from those around her who suggested she give up and drop out. This discouragement only strengthened her resolve and she persevered to finish the program. Of the 40 students who had enrolled with her, only 11 completed their studies. Westler was the only female graduate.

After a year of working in Israel’s high-tech industry, Westler decided to move back to Canada, settling in British Columbia. She worked for a number of tech companies before opting to incorporate her own, giving her the independence she sought. “I did the corporate-ladder thing, but never quite fit in,” she said.

Since incorporating her first company, 2Galvanize Ltd., in 2008, Westler has built close to 100 websites, mobile applications and backend systems for different companies, including the Yellow Pages. She specializes in creating private social “ecosystems,” or networks, that enable people to communicate on an “authentic” level, unlike other social media sites that she describes as too big and overwhelming to navigate and digest. Her mission is to create systems that support efforts that enable people to communicate in a manner emblematic of times past: “more intimate, more humbly and, very importantly, in small groups.” This led to her involvement with Bazinga, an app that connects building residents to their strata councils, and Wag Around, an app that connects dog owners and facilitates interactions offline.

Simplifying genuine communication between people and their respective communities is what motivates Westler to develop new tools. “The reason I do the work I do is because I truly want to connect people, and the best way to do that is to give them an excuse to connect based on common interests,” she explained.

Westler’s newest commercial development, Plazus Mobile Social App Builder, applies the principle of connecting people in the business realm as a means of facilitating dialogue or enhancing brand. The name combines the words “plaza” and “us,” a tongue-in-cheek homage to more traditional ways of communicating.

Set to launch at the end of June, Plazus is a B2B (business to business) social media tool that will provide a company or organization with an easy, structured and relatively inexpensive way to connect with their customers and communities in their own social ecosystems. It seeks to do this functionally, interactively and in an esthetically appealing manner.

Westler is filled with anticipation as her two seed investors, a team of 10 techies and more than 60 early-adopter customers, eagerly await the launch of Plazus Technologies’ beta product.

Westler credits many of her entrepreneurial successes in Canada to her Israeli chutzpah. Although she misses Israel, particularly Tel Aviv’s culture and lifestyle, and acknowledges that research and development thrives in Israel because of wonderful talent, she said that her seven years in Vancouver have been “amazing … it’s paradise.”

Westler’s goal is to continue to grow her business and open offices in both Vancouver and Tel Aviv, which would enable her to travel regularly between the two places in the world she loves most.

She said it is important for her to stay connected to Israel for both personal and professional reasons, and she has spoken in Israel about her work and her entrepreneurial path on more than one occasion, including to a women’s Lean In Circle at Google’s office in Tel Aviv and at StarTAU, Tel Aviv University’s Entrepreneurship Centre.

True to her commitment to connect individuals with like-minded community members, Westler herself is involved in a number of different groups and causes. She serves as president of the Vancouver Entrepreneurs Toastmasters Club and is active in several other local business organizations.

For more information about TEDxStanleyPark, visit tedxstanleypark.com or email [email protected].

Alexis Pavlich is a Vancouver-based freelance writer.

אפליקציה סלולרית ברכבים

אפליקציה סלולרית ברכבים: חברת הביטוח דז’רדינס מציעה לעקוב אחרי הנהגים תמורת עשרים וחמישה אחוז הנחה בפוליסה

לקוחות של חברת הביטוח המקומית דז’רדינס שיסכימו לתת לה אור ירוק לעקוב אחר נהיגתם, יקבלו בתמורה הנחה משמעותית בפוליסת הביטוח, בשיעור של עד עשרים וחמישה אחוז. כך החליטה חברת הביטוח לאחרונה, במסגרת קמפיין חדש כדי לעודד נהגים לנהוג בזהירות, כך שהדבר יגרום להקטנה משמעותית של מספר התאונות והנזקים בנפש וברכוש.

ד’זרנדיס היא בעצם חברה הראשונה בקנדה שמציעה ללקוחותיה ממש בימים אלה להתקין אפליקציה במכשיר הסלולר שלהם, שתאפשר לה לעקוב מקרוב אחר התנהגותם בכביש, כאמור תמורת הנחה בביטוח. האפליקציה תספק לדז’רנדיס מספר נתונים משמעותיים. ובהם: מהירות הנהיגה של הרכב, מרחק השמירה מהרכב שנמצא מקדימה, כמה פעמים לחץ הנהג על דוושת המעצור, באיזה יום הוא נהג ובאיזה שעה הוא נמצא על הכביש. עם סיום הנהיגה האפליקציה מסכמת את הנתונים ומעניקה לנהג ניקוד על צורת התנהגותו והתנהלותו בכביש, שמועברים למאגרי המידע של חברת הביטוח.

אחת מעובדות של חברת דז’רדינס שמפעילה את האפליקציה במסגרת ניסוי שמתקיים מאז חודש ספטמבר, מציינת כי רק מעצם השימוש בה היא כבר הפכה לנהגת יותר זהירה ומבוקרת שמקפידה על חוקי התנועה.

אך יש גם לא מעט שמבקרים את הפרוייקט החדש וטוענים שהאפליקציה תאפשר בעצם לדז’רדינס להשיג מידע אישי על לקוחותיה, ומי יודע לאיזה ידים הוא אף יכול להתגלגל. בדז’דינס שוללים את הטענות האלה ואומרים בתגובה, כי הם יאספו רק מידע על התנהגות הנהגים בכביש, והוא לא יועבר לשום צד שלישי. אגב גורמי אכיפת החוק יוכלו לקבל את המידע מחברת הביטוח רק אם יציגו צו בפניה מבית המשפט.

אפליקציה סלולרית במסעדות: מסעדות מוכרות מראש כרטיסים לשולחנות למנוע הפסדים מהזמנות

כמה פעמים הגענו למסעדה ונאלצנו להמתין בכניסה בתור ארוך ובלתי נגמר עד שפקעה סבלנותנו. ומה שעוד יותר מרגיז שראינו לא מעט שולחנות שפשוט עומדים להם ריקים וגלמודים עם השלטים מאירי העיניים “שמור”, ואף אחד לא יושב סביבם.

מתברר שהשולחנות “השמורים” האלה מעצבנים לא פחות גם את בעלי המסעדות, שמפסידים כסף רב מהתופעה הנפוצה הזו. הרבה לקוחות שמזמינים שולחנות מראש מאחרים מאוד להגיע, וחלק מהם אף לא טורח בכלל לבוא ולהודיע על כך למסעדות.

בעלי מסעדות בקנדה החליטו שהגיע הזמן לעשות מעשה ולשנות את רוע הגזרה, של מכת השולחנות הריקים. חלקם בחרו בפתרון קל ביותר והם ולא מקבלים עוד הזמנות מראש. התוצאות מורגשות היטב בשטח. אחוז תפוסת השולחנות גדל בשיעור משמעותי של למעלה מעשרים וחמישה אחוז, ובהתאם לכך ההכנסות הולכות וטופחות. ישנם בעלי מסעדות שמנסים אף “לחנך” את הלקוחות, וגובים פקדון מכובד עבור הזמנת שולחנות מראש, שלא יוחזר אם לא יופיעו.

ואילו ישנם בעלי מסעדות אחרים, בעיקר אלה שנמנים על הדור הצעיר יותר, שהחליטו לחפש פתרונות יצירתיים מבוססים על טכנולוגיה, כדי לאפשר ללקוחות להזמין מקומות מראש, אך במקביל גם לא להפסיד גם כסף. הם החלו לאחרונה להפעיל אפליקציה במכשיר הסלולר למכירת כרטיסים מראש עבור השולחנות, בדומה למה שקורה בענף האירועים. מחירי הכרטיסים משתנים בהתאם לרמת התפוסה המסעדה, מועד ההזמנה (למשל: באיזה שבוע מדובר, באיזה יום מדובר ואפילו באיזה שעה מדובר), מיקום השולחן וסוג התפריט. האפליקציה מדווחת גם בזמן אמת ללקוחות פוטנציאליים, מהו זמן ההמתנה לשולחנות באותו יום ואם יש בכלל שולחנות פנויים. כך שכולם יוצאים מורווחים מהאפלקציה הזו.