In the News

Councillor Introduces iPhone App

An Ottawa City Councillor is believed to be Canada's first municipal elected official to introduce an iPhone and iTouch application.

An App for On-the-Fly Decisions

With an iPhone in hand John Craig charts through a specialized application, or app. Craig works for an Ottawa tech firm Purpleforge. They created an iPhone application for all the NCC-organized events going on in Ottawa on Canada’s birthday.

The Art of Online Campaigning

John Craig of Purple Forge authored the featured article "The Art of Online Campaigning" in this month's issue of Campaigns & Elections

Are you managing a campaign or running for office this year? If you subscribe to traditional campaign strategy, right now you are probably earmarking a sizeable portion of your campaign budget to lawn signs and door hangers. Your PR team might also be lining you up for some coverage in the local newspaper and some sound-bytes for the nightly news. If you are running a big budget campaign you are probably organizing a huge television ad blitz. Your strategy is based on timeless methods that have never failed ... yet.

Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.
— Sun Tzu

Canada Day - There's an App For That!

During Canada Day celebrations the National Capital Commission offered a free application to allow residents and tourists to track Canada Day celebrations on their iPhones.

The application, developed Purple Forge, provided details on all Canada Day events and gave people practical advice, such as where people can locate the lost and found.

Canada Day celebrations spanned over three main sites including Parliament Hill, Major's Hill Park and Jacques-Cartier Park and featured over 50 performers.

The app helped people decide where to go, find directions and updated them on any changes to plans.

"This is the new way definitely. Everyone's walking around with these kinds of devices and they are all wired in. My kids are like that too," said tourist James Ferr in a CTV interview.

UK parties iPhone apps. Who got it wrong, who got it right

All the major parties have talked the talk about learning from Obama’s celebrated success at using technology to build a grassroots campaign which engaged voters and all the major parties have released iPhone apps. I got to wondering – have they blended what they’ve learnt from Obama with the power of the iPhone to engage its users?