Media Coverage

Whirlscape exits beta, launches version 2.0 of the Minuum keyboard

March 13, 2014
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

Whirlscape Inc., a graduate of the University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology (UTEST) program’s cohort graduate, exits beta with the version 2.0 release of Minuum, their hit “small keyboard for big fingers.”

Whirlscape Inc. graduated from the University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology (UTEST) program’s first cohort. UTEST is accepting applications for its third cohort until April 17. Click here to apply.

Version 2.0’s release is already a popular download for Android Apps in the Google Play store. Users can get a 30-day free trial of Minuum and experience new features, including a widely anticipated addition of a Brazilian Portuguese language module, the company’s most requested language.

Screen Shot 2014-03-13 at 10.20.33 AM — Whirlscape Inc. released version 2.0 of the Minuum keyboard with a host of new features, including the highly-requested addition of a Portuguese (BR) language module.

Will Walmsley, Whirlscape’s CEO, spoke with Daniel Bader of MobileSyrup. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“We’re constantly testing out new features and improving the disambiguation algorithms,” says Will Walmsley, CEO and co-founder of the company he started at U of T’s Dynamic Graphics Project lab. The company raised $500,000 in seed funding earlier this year, and under the advisement of Y Combinator, began releasing often, trialling new features in what they call Bonus Panels, secondary functions that quickly allow users to change languages, add emojis and more.

Techvibes highlights UTEST’s third cohort

Techvibes, a publication dedicated to covering latest trends in start-up culture and social and mobile news, covered the University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology (UTEST) program’s call for applications in an online article on March 1, 2014.

Applications for UTEST’s third cohort are open until April 17, 2014. Co-directors Kurtis Scissons and Mike Betts will work with selected applicants for a period of twelve months to guide their idea to market. Successful applicants receive work space for a year, mentorship, $30,000 in funding and access to industry expertise.

OtoSim Inc. and U of T collaboration makes MEdSim Magazine

MEdSim Magazine profiled OtoSim Inc. and their partnership with the University of Toronto to establish a Student Training Fund in otoscopy.

Led by a $200,000 donation by Mr. Ralph Chiodo of Active Green + Ross, OtoSim Inc. provided 66 OtoSim™ simulation units to U of T.

Otoscopy, the diagnostic examination of the ear, is one of the most poorly acquired medical skills in students because traditional methods of study rely on lectures and print material. Using the OtoSim™ simulation unit allows students to interactively improve otoscopy skills before they reach the clinic.

Whirlscape’s Minuum keyboard makes SmartTV typing easy

February 26, 2014
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology (UTEST) graduate Whirlscape Inc. released a video on February 25, 2014 showing how their Minuum keyboard can make typing on Smart TVs and consoles easy.

UTEST is currently accepting applications for its third cohort. Apply now.

Minuum, the “little keyboard for big fingers” is making waves in wearable technology with their disambiguation algorithm and advanced language modelling, which can be used on Android devices and smart watches.

Read Darrell Etherington‘s article about Minuum on Smart TVs and consoles in Tech Crunch and coverage in Geeky Gadgets, an online technology review and resource publication. You can also read more about the U of T science behind Minuum here.

Dr. Raphael (Rafi) Hofstein joins Quebec’s CQDM Board of Directors

February 21, 2014
Susanne Staer
Industry Partners

**Dr. Raphael Hofstein** has joined the Quebec Consortium for Drug Discovery (CQDM) Board of Directors.

MaRS Innovation’s President and CEO, Dr. Raphael (Rafi) Hofstein, was appointed to the Quebec Consortium for Drug Discovery (CQDM) Board of Directors on February 18.

CQDM is a Quebec-based not-for profit that funds and supports joint projects in private and biopharmaceutical sectors.

Here’s an excerpt from CQDM’s announcement:

Dr. Hofstein, actively involved in the field of biotechnology, partnerships and technology transfer for over 30 years, greatly contributed to defining Israel as a world leader in biotechnology. In Israel, Dr. Hofstein held various positions including R & D Manager and Chief of Immunochemistry with the International Genetic Scientific Partnership, Scientific Director at Biotechnological Applications Ltd., Scientific Director and Vice-President, Business Development at Ecogen Inc., prior to becoming President of Mindsense Biosystems Ltd., and then founder, President and CEO, and chairman of the Board of Hadasit Ltd.

Dr. Hofstein was also president of BIOMED, the annual biomedical conference of Israel for many years. He was also co-founder and member of the Israeli Life Sciences Industry Organization and co-founder and executive of Israel’s Tech Transfer Network. Dr. Hofstein now serves on various boards, including Life Sciences Ontario, Clinical Trials Ontario as well as the Organizing Committee of the Public Policy Forum on venture capital and innovation. Dr. Hofstein holds a Ph.D. in the life sciences and chemistry, and completed his postdoctoral studies at the Harvard Medical School.

MaRS Innovation sponsoring OCAD’s incubator companies in The Artist Project

February 21, 2014
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

OCAD U, one of MaRS Innovation’s 16 member institutions, is participating in seventh annual showcase know as The Artist Project from February 20 to 23. The event demonstrates how art intersects with people, fashion and the environment.

MaRS Innovation is supporting several fashion installations through OCAD’s Imagination Catalyst in the Installation Zone, specifically artists Jennifer Ilett and MeU.

Jennifer Ilett, in collaboration with Sprout Guerrilla, will be showcasing a special moss graffiti art installation that combines technical, digital techniques and imagery with the natural media of living plant life.

UTEST grad Crowdmark profiled in The Globe and Mail article

February 18, 2014
Susanne Staer
Crowdmark

Crowdmark Logo: Grade Better Crowdmark, a graduate of the University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology (UTEST) program’s first cohort, was the focus of a February 17 article by Ivor Tossell, The Globe and Mail‘s technology culture columnist.

Dr. James Colliander, co-founder and CEO of Crowdmark — **Dr. James Colliander**, co-founder and CEO of Crowdmark.

Created by U of T professor James Colliander, Crowdmark allows educators to quickly and efficiently grade large amounts of tests and exams. Tossell highlighted Crowdmark’s innovation and ease-of-use for the grader. The product is cloud-based, meaning that a team of educators marking the same group of exams don’t have to be in the same room at the same time. Instead, grading can be done remotely.

Tossell spoke with Colliander and Lyssa Neel, Crowdmark’s chief operating officer and a former MI project manager. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

James Colliander, a professor at the University of Toronto, found himself staring at about 5,000 pages of papers from a national math exam. Traditionally, a cadre of markers would sit around a large table for marathon grading sessions, assembly line style, each one tackling the answer to one question before passing it on to the next marker.

Mr. Colliander hacked together an expedient: He scanned the pages into a software framework and distributed them to markers digitally. He was essentially able to parallelize the marking process.

Dr. Lyssa Neel, COO of Crowdmark and former MI project manager.

“The markers didn’t all have to be in the same place, so they could move much faster,” says Lyssa Neel, COO of Crowdmark, the company that, with Mr. Colliander as CEO, has brought the idea to market.

Crowdmark is an online service that takes the idea of distributed marking and scales it to an institutional level.

WaveCheck Indiegogo campaign co-directors featured in MedCity News article

MaRS Innovation’s Dr. Fazila Seker and Elizabeth Monier-Williams spoke with Deanna Pogorelc of MedCity News about how to define success for campaigns crowdfunding for technologies and research related to the medical field.

The article, in MedCity News‘ Hot Topics section, questions whether a crowdfunding campaign needs to reach its funding goal to be deemed successful.

Seker and Monier-Williams completed an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in December for WaveCheck, a clinical technique developed to let women and men know if their breast cancer chemotherapy is working within weeks of beginning treatment instead of months later when treatment has already ended.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Fazila Seker, the director of technology and venture development at commercialization agency MaRS Innovation, said that one of the trickiest things about the crowdfunding industry is the notion that these platforms have an established crowd that’s lurking around looking for the next best thing.

“You can’t rely entirely on that,” she said. “You need to go out there and do your research and create your own following.”

Huffington Post : MaRS Innovation among driving forces in Canada’s start-up landscape

February 12, 2014
Susanne Staer
Crowdmark

Toronto at night — Toronto’s skyline at night.

In “Big-Brain Hunting: The Key to Supercluster Success,” the Huffington Post‘s Pat Lynch investigates how and what makes start-ups successful. Attracting top-talent is listed as a major reason, but so is the environment required to give start-ups the tools they need to flourish.

Lynch highlights MaRS Innovation as a driving force in sustaining the innovation industry in Canada by attracting big ideas and global talent, using former MI project manager Lyssa Neel as an example.

Neel helped launch the education sector start-up Crowdmark, and is now the company’s chief operating officer. Crowdmark is a graduate of University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology (UTEST) program; UTEST is now accepting applications for their third cohort until April 11, 2014.

BCS’s Bedside PEWS™ covered in Hospital News

Bedside Clinical Systems and their flagship product, Bedside PEWS™, were featured in the February 2014 issue of Hospital News.

Bedside Clinical Systems‘ (BCS) flagship product, the Bedside Paediatric Warning System or BedSidePEWS™, was covered in the February 2014 edition of Hospital News.

The article, written by Rajesh Sharma who is president and CMO of BCS, explains how the technology helps decrease the amount of code blues in paediatric patients.

Invented by Dr. Christopher Parshuram of the Hospital of Sick Children (SickKids), Bedside PEWS™ is now in three hospitals in Canada, the United States and New Zealand. The technology received FDA approval last year.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

The program digitally logs, charts, and evaluates seven vital sign items thst sre part of routine clinical assessments and then summarizes them into a singly score. From the BedsidePEWS™ score, care providers can better match the level of care with the patient’s required needs, thereby improving patient outcomes and reducing the number of urgent calls, code blue incidents and related deaths.

“Identifying at-risk patients is significant since approximately 5,000 children in North America experience a code blue event each year, from which too many children die or sustain neurological deficit. BedsidePEWS™ hopes to improve outcomes for these patients and their families,” says Dr. Parshuram.

Whirlscape exits beta, launches version 2.0 of the Minuum keyboard

Techvibes highlights UTEST’s third cohort

OtoSim Inc. and U of T collaboration makes MEdSim Magazine

Whirlscape’s Minuum keyboard makes SmartTV typing easy

Dr. Raphael (Rafi) Hofstein joins Quebec’s CQDM Board of Directors

MaRS Innovation sponsoring OCAD’s incubator companies in The Artist Project

WaveCheck Indiegogo campaign co-directors featured in MedCity News article

Huffington Post : MaRS Innovation among driving forces in Canada’s start-up landscape

BCS’s Bedside PEWS™ covered in Hospital News

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