Refresh Events

Refresh Events encourages collaborative partnerships, fosters education at all skill levels and creates networking opportunities within the Toronto interactive community.

Posts tagged with “mobile”

An Interview with Ken Seto

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 | By: Justin Kozuch

We sat down with Ken Seto, co-founder of Endloop, to talk about their upcoming iPhone app, TweetCapz.

Refresh Events: Hi Ken, thanks for sitting down with us. Tell us a bit more about TweetCapz. What does it do, who’s it for, and all that good stuff.

Ken Seto: Thanks for having us. A brief bit about ourselves: Endloop is an iPhone app and game development studio. Our focus is on simple but highly usable applications and highly addictive games with easy to use interfaces and controls. As for the project, TweetCapz is our 2nd iPhone app and it’s currently under review by Apple for release on the App Store. We expect it to be approved very soon.

TweetCapz is a social networking enabled photo captioning application. You can use TweetCapz to take a photo, add captions like labels, speech bubbles, LOLCats or FAIL style text, emoticons and other graphics. You can drag and place these elements anywhere on the photo to your desire. Once your masterpiece is complete, TweetCapz enables you to share it with your friends via Twitter, Facebook, or email. You can also just save it to your photo gallery for later. We believe TweetCapz will appeal to anyone who enjoys taking photos, especially of funny situations and sharing them on Twitter and Facebook.

RE: A “social networking enabled photo captioning application”. That’s quite a mouthful! Why did you decide to create this?

KS: My brother Garry and myself love our iphones and we love tweeting photos daily. This was a natural extension of this activity. We built this for ourselves as much as anyone else and if you follow our twitter streams @kenseto and @garryseto, you’ll see how often we tweet photos and the wide variety of compositions you can create with TweetCapz.

RE: Which language(s)/framework(s) were used to build this application, and why did you choose them?

KS: We used the iPhone 3.0 SDK and APIs for Twitter, Facebook, TwitPic, and yFrog.

RE: Tell us about the business model behind TweetCapz. How does Endloop intend to monetize this application?

KS: Endloop’s goals is to create kickass iPhone apps and games. We sincerely believe that if we create highly useful and compelling iphone applications, we will attain the sales numbers we need to continue making more cool apps. TweetCapz will be selling for $0.99 initially as the launch price. We will also feature a community site at http://tweetcapz.com that will capture all the #tweetcapz tweets and allow visitors to vote on the pictures. The site will have a small amount of ads to pay for the hosting.

RE: What’s the coolest or most useful feature of your application?

KS: TweetCapz’s coolest feature is that you can share your funny captioned photos to both Twitter and Facebook, two of the most popular social networks.

RE: What are your goals and plans for the future of this application?

KS: We plan to add controls for sizing and possibly rotation of the text, caption and graphic elements that you place on top of the photo. There are some plans regarding adding additional graphics and fonts but that hasn’t been fully hashed out yet.

RE: What advice would you give to someone who is thinking of creating applications/software for the web?

KS: Go for it! It’s never been cheaper to create your own web/software products. There’s a ton of open source tools and platforms out there for you to leverage. All it takes is a good idea and solid execution. Make sure you spend time on the user experience design.

RE: If there is one thing that you could change about this application, what would it be?

KS: We think we’ve a great base to start from and plan to add a lot more features to TweetCapz as we go forth. I don’t think I would change anything at this point other than speeding up Apple’s approval process.

RE: And finally, for the bacon-loving community, how much bacon is there in the application?

KS: As much bacon as you want!

RE: Thanks for your time, Ken. We look forward to seeing TweetCapz out in the wild!

KS: Thanks for the opportunity!

===

For more information about TweetCapz and Endloop, check out:

Company: endloop.ca
Facebook: facebook.com/endloop
Twitter: www.twitter.com/endloopinc
Ken Seto’s Twitter: twitter.com/kenseto
Garry Seto’s Twitter: twitter.com/garryseto
TweetCapz community site: tweetcapz.com

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iPhone Application Development Workshop – Ticket Giveaways

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 | By: Justin Kozuch

Haven’t bought your ticket yet? You’re in luck! We’re giving away 3 tickets to our iPhone Application Development Workshop.

Want to know how to win? It’s simple; there are 2 ways you can win:

Come out to WiredWednesday tonight at The Pilot at 7pm. Come learn from one of Canada’s most esteemed entrepreneurs as we talk startup essentials with Stuart MacDonald, founder of Expedia.ca and TripHarbour.ca.& co-founder of the popular Mesh conference. Benefit from insights gleaned in the trenches as Stuart shares his personal experience going from start-up to national success. Challenges, inspiration, and answers to your questions in a post-presentation fireside chat moderated by Sarah Prevette. The night will also feature presentations from three innovative web startups – Spreed, Homestars.com & Zoocasa.com. We’ll be drawing one lucky attendees business card from the infamous glass jar, so make sure to bring your business cards and a good time! Details about the event available at http://redwirenation.com/events/149

On Friday May 15th, the SpinTO party will be dropping at 8pm at the Mod Club (722 College Street, map). The SpinTO Project is a community-led initiative to raise funds and awareness for the Friends for Life Bike Rally to benefit the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation. The project will combine a major fundraising event called SpinTO on May 15th, together with a community-media project featuring stories of the Bike Rally at SpinTO.ca. SpinTO has been organized by a team of community contributors, led by Mark Kuznicki and Adam Schwabe, both riders in the 2009 Bike Rally. Get your tickets now for a chance to win 2 free tickets to the workshop! They’re only $10, and it’s going to be party you’ll soon not forget!

Refresh Events is proud to be a supporter of both these fantastic events, and we encourage you to be in attendance!

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Introduction to iPhone Application Development

Monday, May 4th, 2009 | By: Justin Kozuch

Refresh Events is proud to announce the first in our workshop series, “Introduction to iPhone Application Development“.

Dan Drew, senior architect at Brightspark (www.brightspark.com) will show you how to create an iPhone application, show you some tips and tricks, and answer any questions you may have. Topics will include:

  • Creating an iPhone project and actually getting it to work
  • Introduction to Objective C and the Cocoa framework
  • The iPhone User Interface Explained
  • Understanding Interface Builder

This workshop is for those who are interested in learning how to develop and monetize applications for the iPhone. If you haven’t built an iPhone application before, not to worry. This workshop will take you from through the development process from cradle to grave. You must be familiar with the basics of programming, however you are not required to have built iPhone applications prior to attending this workshop.

Tickets for this event are $150. To get an additional 10% off, quote REFRESH when purchasing your tickets.

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StayFresh07: Tom Purves, Mobile & Ignites (Again!)

Friday, March 27th, 2009 | By: Justin Kozuch

As a society, we have become increasingly dependent on getting our information while we are on the move. Larger screen, more powerful devices and the advent of third party applications for the iPhone have changed the way we look at mobile and the mobile web.

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