Archives for March 2014

Have you ever dreamt of building your own laser tag course?  Imagine your favorite first-person shooter video game in real life. Welcome to Skirmos: Skirmish Open Source Laser Tag.

Skirmos is an open source laser tag system that can be used for any and every game possible. It has the flexibility to be played indoors or out; in small or large games. Its unique open source nature allows anyone to make their own creative gametypes. Whether it’s free-for-all or capture the flag, a realistic simulation, or a replica from your favorite video game, Skirmos can be played in any manner you can think of.

The Skirmos Kickstarter campaign has 13 days remaining.  Make your contribution today and bring this awesomeness to reality!

2014 VIATeC Technology Awards – Nominations open Monday, March 17th

“The VIATeC Awards have become known as a unique event focused on entertaining the crowd with humor and irreverence while shining the spotlight on some of our awesome technology companies,” says Dan Gunn, Executive Director of VIATeC, the Victoria Advanced Technology Council. “It’s a great way for local tech firms to get increased profile with local media, policy makers and their peers which always helps when looking to hire new staff, find new customers or raise investment.”

Nominations will open at 9:00am on Monday, March 17th.  Click here to access the nomination form (will not open until March 17th). 

In total, twelve awards are presented at the evening gala

• Technology Company of the Year
• Emerging Technology Company of the Year
• Startup of the Year
• Product of the Year
• Innovative Excellence
• Executive of the Year
• Employee/Team of the Year
• Employer of the Year
• Education Champion
• Colin Lennox Award for Technology Champion
• VIATeC Member of the Year
• * Strategy of the Year

*New award category for 2014

More about the award categories:

Technology Company of the Year
Recognizes a Greater Victoria company that has demonstrated excellence in innovation and a commitment to the technology community while embracing sound business fundamentals.

Emerging Technology Company of the Year
Recognizes a Greater Victoria company that has the greatest potential to demonstrate excellence in innovation and a commitment to the technology community while embracing sound business fundamentals. This category is reserved for operations that have been established for less than 3 years.

Start-up of the Year
Recognizes a Greater Victoria company less than 2 years old that demonstrate significant potential to generate revenue, raise investment, or to have significant social benefit.

Product of the Year
Recognizes a Greater Victoria company that has achieved success in the commercialization of an innovative technology product (eg. market acceptance and sales).

Innovative Excellence
Recognizes a Greater Victoria company that has researched and designed an innovative service, process or product that is expected to revolutionize a sector, method of business or way of life.

Executive of the Year
Recognizes an individual who has had a significant impact on the success of an organization as a direct result of their leadership. For this award, executives are considered to be those that typically hold senior titles, eg. CEO, CFO, COO, President, Vice- President.

Employee /Team of the Year
Recognizes an individual or team in the technology sector who demonstrates outstanding initiative and service delivery, and has had a significant impact on the company for which they work.

Employer of the Year
Recognizes a company that has demonstrated its commitment to their staff and provides a pleasant workplace.

VIATeC Member of the Year
Recognizes a member of VIATeC who has demonstrated outstanding commitment to the technology sector through involvement, volunteering and support of VIATeC. The recipient of this award is selected by VIATeC.

Strategy of the Year
Recognizes the best strategy implemented by or for a Greater Victoria organization. Nominated companies are required to provide a letter of support clearly explaining their strategy and milestones.  The judges will consider impact and results from the underlying strategy.

The Colin Lennox Award for Technology Champion
Recognizes an individual who has demonstrated passion and commitment to the Greater Victoria technology sector for at least ten years. Their long-standing support has been instrumental in Greater Victoria ‘s continued success on the world technology stage.

Education Champion 
This award recognizes a teacher who inspires their students using innovative tools and technology. We are looking for teachers that use 21st Century Learning techniques to help prepare student to thrive in a knowledge-based society.

This is not just the next big thing in music. PonoMusic has the potential to completely re-shape the way creators create it and listeners experience it.

It all comes down to sound. As Neil Young (Pono’s founder and visionary) stated in his SXSW 2014 keynote speech, “Pono is a grassroots movement whose mission is to bring back the soul of music, which has been left behind in the evolution of       convenience.”

The quality of audio that we listen to is dependent on the bit rate at which it is recorded at. The MP3 audio files that we are accustom to today have a bit rate of 192kbps or 256kbps. These are highly compressed files, and are smaller in size than higher resolution music files.

PonoMusic files have about 6 times more musical information than a typical mp3. With ultra-high quality resolution recordings (24 bit/192kHz), the difference between a PonoMusic digital file and an mp3 is about 30 times more data from which your player reconstructs the “song”.

What does this mean for you, the listener? It means that you will soon listen to music from a completely new dynamic than you ever have before.

Pono recently launched a kickstarter campaign that raised over $1.5 million dollars in it’s first 48 hours.

Find out more about PonoMusic or donate to their kickstarter campaign here.

[vimeo 88705147 w=500 h=278]

PONO Kickstarter from pono on Vimeo.