Travel game with Google Street View

During my recent Karos Health trip to Chicago for RSNA, I accidentally discovered a fun game to play using my iPhone and Google Street View. On this and previous trips I’ve emailed photos to my son to show him some of the sights that I see. Often the pictures are taken while traveling from one location to another.

On this Chicago trip, my son noted in an email that one of the pictures I sent was similar to one that I had sent him during last year’s trip. I responded that it was probably the exact same view, as I would have taken both pictures while riding a bus between our hotel and the conference site. The next day he sent me an email showing me that he had found a similar picture on Google Street View.

Buildings in downtown Chicago

(My Picture)

A Google view of Chicago

(Street View Picture)

And thus, a new (for us, anyway) game was born.

Every day for the remainder of the trip I sent him a new photo, and he found corresponding shots in Street View for all of them. At first, I included clues in my emails, but eventually stopped and just let him discover clues in the the photos themselves. He didn’t have any trouble.

A view of Chicago

(My Picture)

A view of Chicago

(Street View Picture)

This turned out to be something that makes a business trip more interesting for my family. We might even continue the game here in Waterloo.

Karos Health visits RSNA

The Karos Health booth at RSNA

Last week I was in Chicago with my Karos Health colleagues for the 97th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. That’s a bit of a mouthful, and around Karos we just refer to it as RSNA. It’s an important annual event on our company calendar, as the Technical Exhibits portion of the assembly — essentially a trade show — provides an opportunity to meet with a vast number of healthcare hardware and software vendors.

We were at the event last year as well, but with a much more modest presence.

This year, we had our own booth, and many of the meetings that we had with partners and customers were held there. We had four demo stations, in contrast with our single station last year, and there were several occasions when we had multiple demonstrations going on. As with last year, we were quite proactive in arranging meetings ahead of time. In an encouraging development over last year, we saw more people who sought us out in our booth based on a recommendation or having a specific problem that they hoped one of our products could solve.

We introduced a new product at this year’s event and I was happy to be able to demonstrate it in its current early state. People were engaged, we got some good input and feedback, and the product looks like it meets a real need.

The event was a complete success for Karos. We could not have expected a better experience than we had. Now the work of following up on potential opportunities begins.

Serious play at Felt lab with uxWaterloo

A group of people looking at a screen at a uxWaterloo event at Felt Lab

We had a great uxWaterloo event at Felt lab yesterday, and Paul Goodwin and his student team from REAP were wonderful hosts. There were plenty of interactive display toys to play with, and lots of opportunity for “thinkering” with like-minded people who attended.

Darin White has a nice summary in the form of a photo essay over at his always interesting makebright place. We’ll have more at uxWaterloo soon, too.

Thanks to everyone for coming out and making the event a success.

uxWaterloo design workshop with REEP

People sketching potential solutions for REEP at uxWaterloo event

Last Thursday the uxWaterloo meeting for October featured a new kind of activity. While we had done design workshops in the past, we had never previously had a design workshop focused on a real-world problem.

REEP Green Solutions, a Waterloo Region not-for-profit organization focused on the environment, is working on a web application that’s intended to help consumers understand the case for making upgrades to their homes that will increase energy efficiency. REEP approached uxWaterloo for help, and Thursday’s design workshop was the result.

People surrounding a table covered with sticky notes

Working in small groups, workshop attendees brainstormed initial designs to deliver a compelling user experience for the application. REEP team members provided input, answered questions, and otherwise provided context for the design work. They had previously provided personas to work from, and a high-level functional description of their vision.

While the timeframe was ridiculously condensed — the meeting was only 90 minutes from start to finish — the workshop was a great success. Everyone seemed to have a great time, with many interesting ideas emerging from the action. The REEP team was excited by the ideas they saw and heard, and are already thinking about next steps.

Steve Jobs

Apples Steve Jobs memorial page on a Macbook

I’m surprisingly saddened by the passing of Apple’s Steve Jobs, a man I never met. I’m also feeling surprisingly reflective. I can’t think of any other company or person whose products have had such a profound impact on my daily life for such a long time.

The Mac wasn’t the first computer that I ever used, but my first Mac made a liberating, empowering, and lasting impression on me. I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that I would not be doing what I’m doing in my career as a designer without the Mac and later products from Apple.

I think that my best response today is to use my Mac to try to make the world a better place. I hope that I can have even a fraction of the impact that Jobs had.

It feels overwhelmingly fitting to finish off this short post by saying that I wrote it on my iPad.

2011 Oktoberfest Parade

Inflatable WestJet airplane flies in the Oktoberfest Parade

I enjoyed another Oktoberfest Parade with my family this year. We live near the parade route, and it’s a short walk for us to get there and set up our lawn chairs. The beautiful weather seemed to bring a out a larger crowd than I’ve sometimes seen in years past. Personal highlights included some sort of precision rake team from the City of Kitchener, the Fergus Pipe Band, an implausibly cool float from the Waterloo, Wellington, Dufferin & Grey Building & Construction Trades Council, and a very mobile giant airplane balloon that was helpfully identified as “Inflatable Airplane” on the WestJet sponsorship banner that preceded it. Fun stuff.

The Jazz Room finds its groove

Kollage leader Archie Alleyne on drums along with trumpeter Alexander Brown, performing at The Jazz Room

I’m a bit of a jazz fan, and I was excited at the news last winter that Waterloo Region would soon be home to a jazz club. Even better, the Grand River Jazz Society (GRJS) planned on presenting weekly live jazz events.

By September the society had opened The Jazz Room at the Huether Hotel in Waterloo, and had generated some real buzz around a musical art form that has been around for a century. They have performances planned for every Friday and Saturday for the next several months.

The venue has been open for a few weeks now, and I finally made it out this past Saturday night. I’ll note here that I’m no music critic, and I won’t try to review the music in any way, other than to say that it was terrific — having been to many jazz performances over the years, I do believe that jazz really is an art form that is at its best when experienced live.

My friend Michel and I arrived for our evening of jazz at around 6:30pm, getting supper and enjoying a set of solo piano by Glenn Buhr. Having arrived early we had great seats in front of the small stage, which made it easy to get immersed in listening to the music.

The headliner for the night was Kollage, represented in a quartet form — it’s usually a sextet — by its leader Archie Alleyne on drums along with pianist Stacie McGregor, bassist Artie Roth, and trumpeter Alexander Brown. Again, the music was terrific, and listening to Archie’s stories drawn from his decades-long career was a real delight. The three sets of great music from Kollage were enthusiastically received by the audience.

On a final note, the venue itself is warm and inviting, and has a great small club feel. Of course, that’s what The Jazz Room is, but getting the vibe right is still a tricky balance. GRJS has done a great job in preparing an intimate space for live jazz. There isn’t a bad seat in the house, and the experience is enjoyable all around.

Waterloo life has gotten better with the arrival of The Jazz Room, and I’m looking forward to returning there soon.

Stephen Hawking Centre at Perimeter Institute

Waterloo’s Perimeter Institute had a very public celebration of the opening of its new Stephen Hawking Centre on September 16, 17, and 18. I’m only getting around to marking that celebration now, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t floored by the experience of attending many of the events over those three days.

My family and I, in various combinations, enjoyed a tour of the new facility, the Physica Phantastica exhibit, three different pubic lectures (George Dyson, Hod Lipson, and Julie Payette), and a Science in the Pub session on creativity. Wow.

The highlight for me, though, was to be in the audience for the introduction of Xiao-Gang Wen as the first holder of PI’s Isaac Newton Chair. That was a moment that was striking for any number of reasons, not least being the presence of the Perimeter Institute’s founding benefactor Mike Lazeridis, who clearly has a real interest in its mission and success.

The variety of events was amazing, and the crowds that turned out to mark the occasion and celebrate science are a great indication of the pride and support in the community for PI. In turn, the visible and ongoing commitment by PI to its Public Outreach program makes for an thoroughly engaging community experience.

What an extraordinary institution to have in this community.

Karos Health goes to a career fair

I’ve written several times here about working at Karos Health, most recently about our co-op recruiting event at the University of Waterloo. Only a week after that event, Karos Health will be present at the Partnerships for Employment Career Fair on Wednesday, September 28, from 10:00am until 3:30pm at RIM Park in Waterloo.

Partnerships for Employment provides an opportunity for students and alumni from the University of Guelph, University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Conestoga College to meet with employers and to learn more about the employment opportunities available. Karos Health happens to have several software-related positions open, and we’re looking forward to meeting with potential candidates at the fair.

If you’re planning on being at the event, and are interested in working at Karos Health, please drop by and see us at booth 77 and say hello. We’d love to meet you. For that matter, please feel free to talk to me any time about career opportunities at Karos Health.

This post originally appeared on the Karos Health blog in a slightly different form.

Karos Health co-op recruiting event at UW

Some of you may know that I work at a Waterloo-based software company called Karos Health. As I’ve written about in the past, Karos Health recruits students from the University of Waterloo for co-op work terms. It’s only September, but we’re already looking ahead to the Winter 2012 term and we’re actively looking for software developers and software testers.

To that end, on September 21, from 11:30am to 1:00pm, Karos Health will hold a recruiting event at the Davis Centre on the University of Waterloo campus. We’ll be in The Fishbowl, happily chatting with anyone who wants to learn more about of working at Karos.

You can read more about our co-op jobs now, or just plan on coming out to the event and learning about us there.

We’re a small startup with a terrific team that already has products in the market and customers who are excited by what we’re doing. We’re collaborative, smart, and committed to creating great products while having fun doing it. At Karos you’ll have a chance to try different things, get your code into shipping products, test new product releases and make a meaningful difference to health care providers and patients. And, once a month, you’ll be fed the best waffles you’ve ever eaten.

If you’re at all curious about working at Karos, this will be an opportunity to talk to many of the people, including current and past co-op students, who are creating the software that powers our products. Want to know what tools we use? Or how we manage our source code? Or how we practice Scrum and other Agile techniques? This is the place to find out, and to hear about why your next great co-op job might well be here at Karos.

No RSVP required. Just come by the Davis Centre, enjoy some free food that we’ll provide, and learn about working at a terrific software startup right here in Waterloo.

This post originally appeared on the Karos Health blog in a slightly different form.