Simple Story Videos – Describe Your Product with an Animated Video

Kyle Braatz sent us a message the other day to tell us about a new division of NetGen that recently launched called SimpleStoryVideos. More and more companies these days are using videos to describe what their products do. When you go to the frontpage of Drop Box as an example, all they have a is a simple video to describe everything:

Kyle’s team has worked with a few organizations in Ottawa on some videos (including the United Way and myReviewRoom) and has even created one for TechCrunch Disrupt participant Spenz.

If you’d like your startup to be listed in the Startup Ottawa directory as well, make sure to visit our directory page here: Ottawa Startup Directory

Startup Directory: FreedomCafe

Company Name: FreedomCafe

http://www.freedomcafe.ca

Description: FreedomCafe is a ‘home office away from home’ for solopreneurs, consultants, and virtual teams. Professionals working from a home base now have a convenient location in west end Ottawa where they can drop-in to use workspace and meeting rooms. There’s free parking and, of course, free wireless Internet. Professionals are invited to drop-in and pay an hourly rate or purchase a monthly membership. Membership offers further perks like promoting their company on FreedomCafe.ca’s “Our Members” page and guest blogging. Visit FreedomCafe in the real world at Suite 204, 3710 Richmond Road in Bells Corners, or see what’s buzzing at www.freedomcafe.ca and twittering @FreedomCafe_ca.

Startup Directory: RareLogic Inc.

Eseri – Hosted IT in a Box

Bill Stewart sent us a message the other day about his new startup called Eseri. Essentially, what they’ve done is take all of the best open source desktop applications and are providing them as a hosted service. When I first heard about this, I thought… how does this compare to Google Apps? Here is the answer straight from Bill:

1. A real desktop in the cloud, with a full and familiar interface, folders, files, all the usual desktop elements, that performs like it is running locally even though it is securely and safely stored in our data centre. You can run the Internet desktop window side by side with anything else on your local machine!

2. An unprecedentedly powerful suite of software to accelerate your organization’s productivity, at no additional cost or effort on your part, on every user’s desktop: CRM, Document Management, Web conferencing, Timesheet, Project Management, Graphics, Wiki, Blackberry sync, and much more.

3. The ability to create a new team member’s desktop with one click, which they can start using in minutes, no matter where they are, no matter what machine and operating system they have locally, bringing them into your organization where they can collaborate securely with the rest of your team. All multi-user applications have secure single-sign-on – no multiple logins needed to access CRM or document management. If you wish you can archive any desktop with one click to reduce costs. And then bring it back later if you wish with one click.

Eseri is offering a sweet deal for startups where you get access to this hosted desktop environment for free for 3 months. If you’re interested, make sure to contact Bill directly: wstewart [-at-] eseri [-.-] com

Startup Directory: Select Start Studios

URL: http://selectstartstudios.com

Description: Select Start Studios creates world-class applications for the Apple iPhone, Google Android, BlackBerry, and the web. Our designers and developers are a full-service solution delivering your brands, products, and services to millions of mobile customers. We help companies connect with users to drive sales and increase brand visibility with thoughtfully designed and intuitive applications.

Contact: info (at) selectstartstudios (dot) com

Carleton Poster of Tech Companies

In early 2010, Carleton University is looking to publish an updated poster featuring ‘innovation-based companies’ founded or co-founded by Carleton alumni and faculty. ‘Innovation-based companies’ are defined as “companies founded to either develop new technology that forms the basis of new applications, services or products or, conversely, develop new applications, services or products using existing technology”.

Luc Lalande, Director of the Innovation Transfer Office at Carleton, is looking for help identifying these companies. If you have information on some of them, please contribute to the list or contact Luc via Twitter or e-mail (luc_lalande [at] carleton.ca).

Business Launch Solutions…

Wendy Mayhew recently got in touch to tell me about her new business which is called Business Launch Solutions.  Her company is a B2B liaison company that provides fundamental services to the start-up community.

Most start-ups don’t have the time or the resources needed to launch, manage or grow their business. We cover every aspect of starting a business from setting up your office to designing your trade show booth and, of course, everything in between – one step at a time. We do this through our experienced and professional team of experts.  A full list of our services is on our website – www.launchitright.com

Contact Wendy Mayhew – wendy {at }launchitright {dot} com

AffinityClick hits beta, and it looks great.

Justin Shimoon ( ex-CEO of Sitebrand ) didn’t wait long to launch his next venture. Justin has just launched a new ad network into beta that promises to help blogs and websites monetize better than those Google AdSense text links we’re all learning to ignore.

AffinityClick combines relevant product photos and information to create a very compelling ad format that’s sure to be a click magnet.

The site looks great and I think he’s on to a winner.

Ottawa Startup Directory: Corkboard.it

Company Name: Corkboard.it

URL: corkboard.it

Description: "Corkboard is a free Web and mobile application that helps you keep track of the products, places, events and ideas you want to remember.

When you add something to your Corkboard, you can share it (or keep it private!), set a reminder, post it to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, organize it into Collections, see related Postings, go shopping (if it’s a product), and more. "

Contact: marcelo (at) corkboard (dot) it

New design for StartupOttawa

So it should be obvious that we have re-designed the Startup Ottawa site.  The new site was largely due to the efforts of Mark Stephenson, Scott Annan and  Paul Ouderkirk.  Mark is responsible for the amazing Startup Ottawa header.  Scott did the job-board and new startup directory. Paul and his new company Shiny Metal Hosting is our amazing sys admin.  I mostly watched and observed as other more talented people made this whole thing happen.  In any case, the new site introduces some interesting new features. 

New Header and Latest Comment : The first being that you can now see the last comment just to the right of the header. Its a nice touch and will allow people to see whats being said. 

Sponsorship: If you look to the right column you’ll see that we have introduced sponsorship advertising to Startup Ottawa, then shamelessly put links to our own companies.  The current batch of ads are placeholders only, we’d like to open up those spots to bidding for any one who wants to showcase themselves on the site.  If you click on the sponsorship page you’ll see what I mean.  Before anyone freaks out, none of the money that we would be making from sponsorship will go into the pockets of anyone associated with Startup Ottawa.  Instead we’d like to use any funds that we generate will be put straight back into the Startup Ottawa community through better events in better venues with free drinks (if possible). 

Free Job Board:  The site also showcase a free job board for Ottawa startups to post their jobs.  Right now you can simply submit jobs for approval and if they fit the bill they will get shown.  This should help solve a very real problem that the Ottawa scene suffers from which is finding good talent.

Refined Startup Directory:  Scott A, has greatly improved the Startup Directory and is currently in the process of seeing how we can make this section work better.

This coming spring and summer, we’d like to try and ramp up our modest scene by hosting some new types of events and eventually hosting a discussion board so everyone can participate more actively.

Lastly, I also want to thanks our contributers: Luc Levesque, Aydin Mirzaee, Allan Isfan, James Smith and Shane McLean.  They write most of the content and are a huge reason our startup scene is so well docuemented.

Please enjoye the new design and feel free to let us know what you think about it and how it can be improved.