SFU grads help indecisive consumers with QuikPiq iPhone app
May 17, 2011
By Gillian Shaw, Vancouver Sun
Can’t decide which dress looks best? What phone to buy?
Poll your friends to vote -there’s an app for that.
QUIKPIQ, IPHONE, FREE
From Simon Fraser University grads, an app that’s perfect for the indecisive shopper. Or anyone else who’d like to get suggestions from their social network before they decide to buy a dress, go with a new hair colour -or as in the case of one enterprising musician, use QuikPiq to get fans to vote on an album cover.
I first saw a Web version of this last fall, a prototype that led to the recent release of the QuikPiq iPhone app and a new web app.
The creators have fine-tuned the new release and as QuikPiq cofounder and SFU Beedie School of Business grad Ashish Gurung says, “People are having fun with it.” QuikPiq is the brainchild of Gurung, SFU communications grad Anoop Aulakh and Don Masakayan, who is still at SFU, where he’s studying interactive arts and technology. Users are sharing photos and polling their friends for advice on everything from restaurant dishes to haircuts. Create a poll using two photos asking for opinions or post just one photo with a yes or no option. Keep your poll private using SMS or email or log in using your Twitter or Facebook profile to ask your entire network for an opinion.
LIVEPROFILE, IPHONE, IPOD TOUCH, ANDROID, BLACKBERRY, FREE
In one day this app had 400,000 new users sign up. It’s a messenger service with versions for iPhone, BlackBerry and Android operating systems. A little like BlackBerry messenger and other alternatives to text, it synchronizes with Twitter and Facebook to allow for status updates as well as offering one-to-one photo/ video and text messaging. When you sign up, you get a PIN as an identifier; unlike texts that can come with a price tag, LiveProfile is free.
TD BANK, IPHONE, ANDROID, BLACKBERRY, FREE
TD Bank has updated and expanded its mobile app and at more than one million North American downloads boasts it’s the most of any Canadian bank. Along with the regular banking features that came in the earlier version, the upgraded app lets investors check account balances and activity as well as see real-time market data and track prices through a customizable watchlist. Another new feature is the addition of Interac email money transfers.
BMO MARKETPLACE, IPHONE, IPOD TOUCH, IPAD, ANDROID, FREE
BMO has added a new app, the BMO Marketplace, which offers features such as a retirement calculator and a home ownership cost tracker to compare the cost of potential homes.
WEATHER NETWORK WEATHEREYE HD FOR PLAYBOOK, FREE
The Weather Network was quick to release a version of its mobile app for the new PlayBook, being rewarded for its efforts with more than 21,000 downloads and a ranking of 12 among free PlayBook apps in BlackBerry’s app world. The WeatherEye HD for the PlayBook compiles weather reports along with alerts, short-and long-term forecasts and the ability to track weather in multiple cities, with those cities saved in the app.
This article was printed in the Tuesday, May 17 edition of the Vancouver Sun.
Click here to read the article online.