Archive for the 'Vancouver' Category

Crazy MomCat reviews Kinzin

Published by
Michael (23%) Fergusson
May 2, 2008 in Blog, Community, Facebook, Family, Family activities, Kinzin, Privacy, Private Family Photo Sharing, Review, These Are My Kids, Uncategorized and Vancouver. 0 Comments

Crazy MomCat has posted a review of Kinzin today. She starts out by describing her ongoing concerns about privacy, her frustration with existing photo sharing sites that make privacy hard and bombard your visitors with ads for photo finishing services. Then:

“…I think I’ve finally found a solution to all of this. Kinzin is a new site dedicated to protecting your privacy while letting you show family and friends what is new with you and your family.”

That’s great stuff. She loves the new photo “print and mail” service as well, which she uses to keep her Father-in-law up to date with the latest photos of the kids. Thanks, Crazy MomCat. Everything we do, we do for you! :-)

CBC Television Interview With Kinzin’s Michael Fergusson

Published by
Megan Cole
March 3, 2008 in Application, CBC, Community, Facebook, Kinzin, Michael Fergusson and Vancouver. 0 Comments

A few weeks back, Michael Fergusson was interviewed in a 6 o’clock Vancouver news piece on the MySpace security breach. Watch the clip here, from the comforts of your own computer screen:

KINZIN TV

Published by
Megan Cole
January 30, 2008 in CBC, Family, Kinzin, Leo Laporte, Privacy, TV, Television, The Lab, These Are My Kids and Vancouver. 0 Comments

cbcBig day across the airwaves for Kinzin. Tonight, the CBC is airing a story about online privacy and security in the wake of the MySpace breach. Michael Fergusson is featured in the story with his take on social networking and the privacy issue, and speaks in reference to Kinzin’s latest application These Are My Kids. Catch the story airing on CBC local Vancouver news tonight at 6pm. (Thanks to Tod for sending them this way!)

lab logoSticking with TV Fame, Episode 140 of The Lab With Leo Laporte airs today on G4 Tech TV in Canada (The How-To Channel in Australia). Michael does a segment with Leo, talking about designing and building applications in the era of social networking. That interview will be made available on The Lab website after it airs on television.

From “Launch” to “Garage”, techy event speaking.

Published by
Megan Cole
January 28, 2008 in Application, Community, Facebook, Facebook Garage, Kinzin, Technology, These Are My Kids and Vancouver. 0 Comments

Kinzin "These Are My Kids" at Launch Party VancouverThe Kinzin team spent the better part of their Friday evening at Launch Party Vancouver 03, showing off the application These Are My Kids. If you haven’t read or heard what this latest app is all about, please read more here.

It was a fantastic evening, to say the least. Michael, Frank, Julie and Paul held court all night to the many new fans wanting to find out more, take a look at the interface and have a spin for themselves. We are extremely grateful for the interest and enthusiasm for These Are My Kids from those of you who attended, and we very much appreciate the time that each person gave to learn more about it. It is an incredibly rewarding feeling to have such a great tech community come to such an event and to support the work that is being produced. It was inspiring and exciting.

A quick, but very necessary thank-you to the organizers of LPV: Maura, Danny, Dimitri; and to the sponsors as well: Sun Microsystems, Strutta, Techvibes, Layer7, QC Docs and Growthworks. This event is a treat. Looking forward to the next.

And onto the next…

Monday night, Michael Fergusson will be at the Vancouver Facebook Garage Event at the Vancouver Film School. There may just be a little room left on the event page, so add your name and come check out Vancouver’s newest and hottest Facebook applications. There are amazing things happening in this city, and this event shows off the best of what’s being developed for Facebook, and beyond…

And if you can’t make it out, just follow along on Miss 604’s live blogging rendition, and watch the night unfold before your very own monitor-watching, live-streaming eyes. :)

Before Going Forward, We Must Go Back: Raincity’s Dave O. Talks To MF on Kinzin, “Are You Normal?”, Facebook and The Online Family Experience

Published by
Megan Cole
January 15, 2008 in Application, Are You Normal?, Dave Olson, Facebook, Kinzin, Michael Fergusson, Podcast, Raincity Radio and Vancouver. 1 Comment

Michael Fergusson on RCS RadioWhile Kinzin is getting set to release their next web application that will allow families more opportunities to share, Dave Olson at Raincity Studios posted this episode on Raincity Radio just before the Holiday season. It’s a great interview (in fine Dave O. fashion) with Kinzin’s Michael Fergusson - there’s a lot in this conversation that is interesting and inspiring: on Kinzin, web applications, privacy, family, our online habits and how Kinzin wants to work along side of, or “on top of”, social networks to help the online world share what’s important and valuable to them.

Get the podcast here.
photo credit: Dave O.

“Vancouver’s Biggest Facebook App” (According To…)

Published by
Megan Cole
December 5, 2007 in Adonomics, Application, Are You Normal?, Facebook, Hockey Pool, Statistics and Vancouver. 3 Comments

Adonomics
…US!
No, not quite. We’re not *that* cheeky. But there are some cold, hard facts that do make the Kinzin Team take notice and feel pretty swell about all that’s evolved with our Facebook app, “Are You Normal?”.

Paul Prescod, Kinzin’s DAD, uses this neat Facebook analytics and advertising platform, Adonomics: it’s OPEN and FREE, and quite fun to play with, if you’re into Facebook analysis. And really, who isn’t? Adonomics gives you statistics on your daily active users, gains and losses, measured in days, weeks and months and displays your Facebook ranking overall.

So we thought we’d take a look and compare our app with the likes of another Vancouver success story, this city’s most successful app to date, Hockey Pool. (Go Canucks.) Hockey Pool grabbed a pretty substantial audience right off the bat (kudos to Ben - it’s a great application!) The unfortunate reality for this application is that it’s seasonal, and as Paul pointed out to me, it helps that our app is, well, not . :)

According to the chart, we’re beating Hockey Pool (gasp!) in two out of three metrics and could be closing in on the third… Thanks to Adonomics, we can officially state with zero discrepancy that “Are You Normal?” is Vancouver’s biggest Facebook app for installs. Hey Ben: Maybe we should have a go at a Hockey Normalcy app….

Joyent Accelerators Work: Kinzin’s Proof Is In The App

Published by
Megan Cole
November 13, 2007 in Application, Are You Normal?, Facebook, Joyent, Kinzin, Technology and Vancouver. 0 Comments

Joyent Accelerator
Today Joyent announced their new Facebook developers program, Joyent Accelerators. Kinzin is well acquainted with Joyent’s infrastructure - it’s what has made the scalability of the “Are You Normal?” Facebook application manageable and successful. The app has jumped to half a million users in a month, has been one of the top apps on the “Recently Popular” Facebook list (more than once), and continues to add tens of thousands new users every day. Joyent’s full case study and more details on the app can be found here.

Joyent Accelerators is “free, fast and scalable hosting”, as quoted by Facebook Senior Platform Manager, Dave Morin.

Joyent has partnered with Facebook and Dell to deliver this sophisticated, scalable, on-demand infrastructure. For developers, it means a quick and efficient launch of Facebook applications that are capable of scaling to millions of users - FOR FREE.

You can read plenty more about this announcement and partnership on a number of our technologist friends’ tech news sites: Read/Write Web, Innovation Creators, Rootly, Social media today, Information Week.

  • Thank-you to Kristie Wells, Mark Mayo and the Joyent Team.

    • More mainstream media attention for “Are You Normal?”

    Published by
    Michael (23%) Fergusson
    November 2, 2007     in 24 Hours Newspaper, About Kinzin, Application, Are You Normal?, Community, Facebook, Kinzin, Media, Social Networks, Statistics, Vancouver and Writers. 0 Comments

    Whew. What a week!

    Last week, 24 Hours Newspaper published a story about Kinzin’s Facebook plugin Are You Normal? in their print and online magazine (photo on the left, by Rob Kruyt, that accompanied the article). In the article, I’m quoted as saying that we’ve reached 90,000 people around the world. Thanks to the power of the network effect, as of this writing we’ve already passed 245,000 (from 184 countries!) and still going strong.

    The point of this post is not to toot our own horn (at least, not only to do that :-), but to mention for your interest that the next set of survey questions we publish will be written in part by our user base. We’ve had questions submitted from Finland, Spain, Greece, Australia, and the UK so far. I’m very excited about this in particular. As with many things, when we’re talking about what’s “normal”, what we choose to measure is often as interesting as the results.

    I’ll keep you posted as things progress…

    Kinzin’s Paul Prescod At Vancouver’s First Facebook Developers Garage

    Published by
    Megan Cole
    October 24, 2007     in About Kinzin, Application, Are You Normal?, Developer, Facebook, Facebook Garage, Paul Prescod, Technology and Vancouver. 1 Comment

    Facebook Developer Garage Vancouver Oct 2007

    Last night was all about the app.

    Vancouver, or more recently referred to as “Techcouver”, held its’ first Facebook Developer Garage event downtown at the Vancouver Film School. The event was completely “sold-out” by over double the capacity of the space, so there wasn’t a seat to be had. Once the Nazi-tech guy made his way from the floor back to the booth for the main event to commence, people began to fill the isles and find space wherever they could. It was a packed house.
    Facebook Developer Garage Vancouver Oct 2007

    There were about 9 Facebook applications in all that were on display over the 3 hours. Each developer, or team of developers, grabbed the spotlight for a 10-minute overview of their respective app and covered any technical aspects worth mentioning and sharing, followed by a brief Q and A for each. David Morin, Senior Platform Manager for Facebook (nice title buddy) was meant to be joining us in the flesh for our inaugural evening, but had to cancel 48 hours in advance due to some “big meeting” at HQ. But he was kind enough to take a few minutes out to appear via Skype Video, as he said a few nice words, opened it up to the floor for some questions, when sadly, the connection was lost.

    Facebook Developer Garage Vancouver Oct 2007
    Paul Prescod, ‘DAD’ at Kinzin, shared the “Are You Normal?” app with the crowd. When he gave the current-users statistics (now over 114K in 3 short weeks), there was a gasp as a hush fell over the room. Well, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. But nonetheless, impressive stuff! Johnny Bufu and Boris Mann wrapped the night with a few words on the open web. Facebook? Open??

    There is a complete breakdown of each presentation on the live blog post from Miss 604, and on Roland Tanglao’s Jaiku Channel.

    Front Page News: Our Facebook App In “24 Hours Vancouver”

    Published by
    Megan Cole
    October 23, 2007     in 24 Hours Newspaper, Are You Normal?, Community, Facebook, Media, Technology and Vancouver. 0 Comments

    Are You Normal? front page of 24 HoursAsking the question Are You Normal? is front page material today on Vancouver’s 24 Hours daily. Writer Darcy Makwana caught up with Kinzin’s Michael Fergusson for all the skinny on our Facebook application, “Are You Normal?” that hits 100, 000 users today.

    Read the full article here.

    Paul Prescod, the application lead developer will be giving a demo and will present the technical aspects of the app at Vancouver’s first Facebook Garage event, tonight at 5:30 - it’s first come, first serve at the door, so get there early to find a seat!

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