Check out the article in The Coast here.

MindSea Development Inc., located in Halifax Nova Scotia, developers of several popular mobile apps including Pocketbooth and Transit to Go have just launched a new iPhone application.

“Halifax is home to a large contingent of active and retired armed forces and reserve veterans, including wartime merchant marines” says President & Founder Bill Wilson. “We are proud to help honour all veterans especially given that our hometown of Halifax has played such a historic and strategic role in past and current world events.”

The App, which has been developed for Veterans Affairs Canada, will support ongoing and increased participation in Veterans’ Week (Nov. 5-11) and Remembrance Day activities by delivering a variety of information to iPhone users. Once installed the app offers up-to-date GPS supported location search for events and ceremonies nationally, social media feeds from Facebook and YouTube resources. Users will also be able to interactively share their own individual contributions to the Veteran’s Affair’s national “How will you remember” campaign.

“The MindSea development team really enjoyed working on this project, which provides an innovative way of linking both younger and older Canadians with veteran history and information on the contributions that veterans have made to society. ” says Wilson. The app is available for download in both Canadian official languages from the Apple App store.

Contact

Bill Wilson
Founder
MindSea Development Inc.

902 452-8492
bill@mindsea.com

Dale Zak organized the first Hackathon last July in Halifax which produced two apps, Wish You Were Here supporting Feed Nova Scotia and Meet Me Here, supporting Phoenix Youth. This year we had events in Halifax, Saskatoon and Montreal with teams working on seven new apps as well as updating our existing apps.

MindSea was proud to help organize and sponsor the Halifax event, and I am happy to report that we had over 25 people show up to donate their skills. Our push this year was to get more marketers and designers and I think we handily met that goal. Each team had a couple of designers and marketers which was really nice to see and made a big difference in our productivity. This extra horse-power allowed the Halifax team to take on four apps!

• Sushi Hiro – in support of Stepping Stone is a Sushi making game for the iPad
• Artists 4 Good – in support of Clean Nova Scotia is an iPad wallpaper app that show cases local artists
• Swipey-Tappy – in support of Leave Out Violence – a game that works similar to the simon says genre of games but using gestures and taps
• Stick Person Theatre – in support of Joints In Motion – an application that allows you to create stick person animations in interesting situations like walking on the moon

Saskatoon had a great turnout as well and they are building some great apps. Here is how Dale Zak described the apps in his post about the weekend.

WeDJ, a social DJ’ing app with a twist that will benefit Choc’laCure who help raise funds for the Saskatoon Cancer Centre, CoachPad a handy sports team sketchpad that supports North East Outreach a small non-profit charitable organization in Melfort, Saskatchewan that provides 24 hour crisis hotline and finally ShouldI, a social decision maker that will benefit Saskatoon Friendship Inn who provide breakfast and lunch for over 500 people daily.

Well, now we head in to the most important stage: finishing the apps, getting the word out and getting the proceeds into the hands of the charities. We have an extremely dedicated group of volunteers that have committed to getting these apps done, so stay tuned over the next little while and you will see some shiny new apps in the App Store.

I would like to thank Dale Zak for coming up with this crazy idea and keeping everyone motivated; his energy level and commitment to social change is unwavering.

The iHackathon in the news

For more information about Apps 4 Good and our mission check out the website at www.Apps4Good.ca

Check out the iHackathon segment in episode 214 of CommandN.tv, around the 5:00 minute mark.

Michelle Doucette took some fantastic photos for us this year.

We had some nice coverage on CBC both east and west:

• Developing iPhone Apps for Charity
• Sask. Developer builds apps for charity

T2Go Halifax Routes Around Me Screenshot

Metro Transit provides reliable service, but this system can be difficult to navigate and decipher, even for experienced riders, especially when traveling at non-peak times and from stops not detailed on the paper- based schedules. Patrons can struggle when determining what route to take at different times throughout the day, the nearest stop location at any given point, and the exact time of the buses’ scheduled arrival. Transit to Go has been developed to respond to this challenge, providing a user-friendly guide to the peninsula’s transit system for the commuting iPhone owner.

The application, the brainchild of software developers Dmitri Dolguikh, Willliam Lachance and Bill Wilson, is simple: when using Transit to Go, a patron can either input a stop number into the “Look up Stop” screen, or use the “Around Me” option and have the device’s GPS technology, or the manual entry of an address, aid in determining the location and schedule of nearby stops.

For the data that fuel the Halifax iteration of Transit to Go, an application that will begin to unroll in other select Canadian cities after its inaugural, East Coast launch, the group of developers turned to the local online route-planner, hbus.ca, developed by Lachance in spring ’09. This site not only provides the software “brains” behind Transit To Go, but is also the only publicly available source of machine-readable bus and route schedule information in Halifax. Unlike transit operators such as the ETS in Edmonton, or the SFMTA in San Francisco, Metro Transit does not release its route information to the public—although, since hbus.ca was created, Metro Transit has privately released this information to Google Transit, a Google web service. The detailed stop information used by hbus.ca and Transit to Go was gathered by hand using a bike and a handheld GPS device.

Transit to Go is the result of three local developers coming together in the right place at the right time. During Halifax Weekend, held at the Hub Halifax in late March 2009, Wilson, who had despairingly crossed off “transit iPhone application” from his to-do list since Halifax’s route information was not publicly available, met Lachance—a man with the missing link. Add Dolguikh, also in attendance, to the equation, along with the visual talents of Nick Brunt of Hi There Web Design and Marketing, and you have the team behind a useful tool for accessing the transit system presented in an innovative, simple and attractive interface.

“Creating a transit application for the iPhone is a perfect fit,” says Wilson, pointing out the device’s mobility and innate GPS capabilities. “Recently, one of my good friends created and launched the Red Rocket, a transit app for Toronto. Ever since, I’ve thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to do this for Halifax?’”

The Halifax iteration of Transit to Go has been made available for purchase as of January 15, 2010, on the iPhone App Store. Please visit www.transittogo.com for more details.

About the MindSea Team

Dmitri Dolguikh: In addition to 10 years of experience as a software developer, Dolguikh brings Masters in Engineering degrees in Control Systems from Moscow State University of Aerospace Technologies, as well as in Internetworking from Dalhousie University, to the table. His career has included the development of large-scale enterprise software, as well as of desktop, web and mobile software. Dolguikh, an advocate of feedback driven approaches, lives and works in Halifax, NS.

Nick Brunt: Currently working as principal designer of his own company, Hi There, Nick has been working as a Halifax-based designer with a focus on web and design for usability for the past six years. He is also working as an illustrator and artist, continuing to show artwork with Argyle Fine Art. Brunt lives and works in Halifax, NS.

William Lachance: Lachance is a software developer with over seven years of industry experience. He is currently employed by the Navarra Group, an independant software consultancy that he helped co-found in 2008. In spring 2009, he launched the popular hbus.ca bus travel-planning site for Halifax. Lachance holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Computer Science and Philosophy from the University of Toronto and currently lives and works in Montreal, QC.

Bill Wilson: Wilson’s career in software development began in the mid ’90s with a consumer software-updating tool, and has since had him working on such projects as aerospace software and corporate instant messaging software. Most recently, he has dove into the world of Mac and iPhone software, with a focus on community-based projects that has brought him on board Halifax’s Apps4Good initiative. As the principal consultant for MindSea, Wilson is mindful of team dynamics, iterative development and constant improvement. He brings experience in the entire project life cycle to his management role, including business analysis, project management and delivery. Wilson, who when not creating software can be found building and flying kites, lives and works in Halifax, NS.

Contact: Bill Wilson Principal Consultant, MindSea Development Inc. bill@mindsea.com 902.452.8492

Secondary Contact: Nadine LaRoche Principal, Interrobang Inc. nlaroche@gmail.com 902.877.8118

Shared business-space gamble an adventure

IN A CITY filled with people working on laptops in coffee shops, a collaborative workspace like the Hub on Barrington Street seems like a sure-fire business venture.
However, potential imitators of this eclectic, membership-driven enterprise might want to have a chat with the partners behind the year-old operation before beginning renovations for a shared business-space venture of their own.

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Mr. Dolguikh was at the Barrington Street site collaborating on a project with information technology professional Bill Wilson of MindSea Development Inc.

“We can work just about anywhere in this business, but there are times when a project requires we get together,” Mr. Wilson said of the group gathering at the Hub.

Read the full story at http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1155214.html