14 Oranges CEO Sylvain Marcotte spoke on Evolution Radio about the value of mobile apps for governments. 14 Oranges has deployed apps for governments serving a variety of functions, from citizen engagement apps for the City of Surrey, to mobile workforce management apps for the City of Richmond. Listen to the latest edition of plugged in podcast below.
Interested in mobile app statistics from 2017? Check out our infographic here.
Cabo Transfers today announced the release of its revised website to simplify booking and paying for private and group transfers from the San Jose de Cabo (SJD) airport to any of the resorts in the surrounding area. The new website, developed by 14 Oranges, allows customers and partners to book their premium services from a website or smartphone on the go.
PRWeb: Feb 28, 2017, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
Cabo Transfers, the premiere, private, full concierge transfer and excursion service for visitors to Cabo San Lucas and the surrounding area, today announced the launch of their new website supporting both standard web and mobile browsers. The website allows visitors and partners to easily book and pay for a comfortable and luxurious transfer from the airport to their preferred Cabo San Lucas vacation destination.
In addition to airport transfer services, Cabo Transfers also offers roundtrip private driver services for dinners, trips to the grocery store and excursions to noted local attractions such as Hotel California, the Palmilla Golf Club or Cabo Dolphin Encounters. With more travellers booking their accommodations through services such as Airbnb and VRBO, grocery store trips have become increasingly popular.
The website is designed to simplify quoting, booking and confirmation and provides an integrated payment system for their fleet of vehicles ranging from a Ford Expedition up to a full-sized motor coaches to accommodate any sized group.
One of the more innovative services supported by the website is Cabo Transfers’ new partner booking portal, allowing travel agents, wedding planners and hotel partners to easily book transfer services on behalf of their clients. As a member of the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) this service fits tightly into the mission of shared knowledge and access to services between member organizations. The portal will be launched in the 2nd quarter of 2017.
“Our new website shows our commitment to our customers and partners as the safest and most trusted private hired car service serving Cabo San Lucas,” said Mark Diesvelt, the Online Systems Manager at Cabo Transfers, “14 Oranges has delivered an exceptional user website experience in line with this goal, helping us to service our stakeholders on the web or on the smartphone platform of their choice.”
14 Oranges is a leading provider of web and mobile services supporting on-demand services and the uberfication of everything. Supporting web and mobile solutions for the tourism, government and enterprise markets, our customers trust us with their most critical revenue generating and operations management systems.
About Cabo Transfers
At Cabo Transfers, we strive to provide the most elite transportation service in the Los Cabos area. It starts with our luxurious and comfortable vehicles. It continues with our high level of transportation service with our staff. Finally, our competitive rates will showcase why we are able to exceed our guest’s expectations. Cabo Transfers will keep you from worrying about your transportation needs any time you travel to beautiful, sunny Los Cabos. Cabo Transfers is a long standing member of ASTA (American Society of Travel Agents) and the only transportation company in Los Cabos with NLA (National Limousine Association) accreditation.
Contact: Mark Diesvelt, mark(AT)cabotransfers.com
About 14 Oranges
14 Oranges, is a leading provider of turnkey web and mobile application services to support our customer’s key requirement for simple end user engagement and efficient operational management. Headquartered in Richmond, BC with offices in Ottawa and Halifax, 14 Oranges sells its services to governments, retail organizations and enterprises. 14 Oranges’ web and mobile application services brings a mobile-first design approach, enabling our customers’ end users to connect with their organization on-the-go, while they in turn manage their organization from their smartphone. Managers realize an immediate return on investment (ROI) from increased end user engagement and an increase in their organization’s productivity.
As a child of the 80s, I can remember running home to tape Video Hits on my VHS and of course, that first MTV video dance held at school. Video may have wounded the radio star, but today apps and direct video streaming from content providers (called over-the-top delivery) are bypassing the traditional business models of cable and television networks. In this episode of Evolution 107.9’s Plugged In, I discuss with Camille Iverson how the world of television is changing. Listen in here.
For this episode of Evolutions 107.9’s Plugged In, I spoke with BCIT’s Zach Hodder about the wide variety of apps being used to order food online, and the future of delivery services! Tune in and listen to me “drone on” during our podcast on Soundcloud.
I remember finding a copy of my father’s 637 Best Things Anyone Ever Said by Robert Byrne when I was just entering the workforce and consuming these brainy, and often witty quotes, from people as diverse as Hemmingway, Plato and Einstein.
My father used to use these quotes in speeches and talks he’d give to make his audience ponder the wisdom of the wise and famous while he shared the latest business innovation of his firm.
This is the premise behind the service we developed for our customer Nimble Quotes. Nimble Quotes is a web service that automatically tweets famous quotes on your behalf on a random or set time interval. It’s based on five very easy setup pages, that allow you to choose the categories of quotes you want to draw from, the hashtags that go along with the quote, and the pictures and colours to go along with your quotes. No need to leaf through thousands of pages of quotes to find that bon mot … Nimble Quotes has them all.
It’s a set and forget service! So along with your standard marketing tweets sharing your latest news, you get to add in some quotes from your favorite author or historical figure to add some wise words that can capture the imagination of your followers.
That’s because we quote connoisseurs all know … “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein.
So I have to admit when I got home from work a few weeks ago, I was tired and ready to relax, when I heard my wife say, “Sure … Dad will know how to get that game on your tablet.”
I cringed a bit.
But I bit the bullet and got it done! I installed the Pokémon Go app and signed my son up to give it a try. He immediately caught a Charmander. Being over 40, Pokémon was not a ‘thing’ for my generation, and I wasn’t personally familiar with the game until my oldest started talking about it a couple years ago. My wife had found someone on Craigslist giving away thousands of Pokémon cards and the game 52 pickup took on a whole new meaning. Pokémon Go is 250 pickup … with a lot of walking.
So for those unfamiliar I will give a total ground level view of the Pokémon world as I know it. Basically, it is a collection of games, trading cards, etc. that revolve around a world where humans live in conjunction with Pokémon; creatures with various special powers. These creatures are captured and trained by humans known as Trainers. Trainers then pit their Pokémon against others in mini-battles.
There are actually more than 700 different Pokémon and it has grown in popularity for more than 15 years now crossing through a couple of generations.
Well I will give you two versions of the same answer. Tech and non tech.
The Non-Tech Answer
Pokémon Go is an interactive video game, played on tablets and phones, where players assume to role of Pokémon Trainers attempting to Level Up by gaining experience points. Players explore the world by navigating around their actual physical location, using a map interface, attempting to find/capture Pokémon, visit Poke Stops to get rewards and Gyms. Pokémon appear from time to time or can be enticed to appear using various lures found at Poke Stops. At higher levels players go to Gyms to battle using their Pokémon against other Trainers’ Pokémon.
Tech Answer
Pokémon Go is an interactive video game developed to run on GPS enabled mobile devices with a data connection. Players create a persona in the game and are encouraged to explore the literal world in search of data points corresponding to characters/locations in the game. The game takes place on top of a Google Maps interface where the whole Earth is represented.
My Assumption – Data points are created worldwide algorithmically allowing users to play the game nearly everywhere. The locations are often in public places like schools and parks.
Cultural Phenomena
As a side note, at this point I want to mention some interesting cultural phenomena which have become apparent as a result of the launch of this new game.
First, it doesn’t appear twenty-somethings are embarrassed to play this game. This may not seem a big deal to many of you but to me I was really surprised that these late teens to mid twenties are right out there playing it and loving it.
Second, this game is really social. When my son and I went out on a bike ride to play the first week this game was released we ran into a dozen people playing and all of them would come running over to say hey and ask what we had found. I just about fell of my bike. At one point it was me (40), my son (7), and a collection of guys and gals in their 20’s. Totally inclusive.
What has really struck me as interesting about this game is the successful use of GPS and world maps along with a game. This is by no means the first time this has been done but I would certainly argue this is the most viral example to date. This is such an excellent example of a creative blend of pop culture and technology. Geocaching has been around for years and we at 14 Oranges developed a product called Questogo that allows organizations to create location enabled scavenger hunts. Check out Questogo it is a really cool product and a very useful tool in teaching and team building.
What Pokémon Go has done is to leverage an existing group of kids already familiar with the Pokémon universe, with ready access to the required technology. This made its growth viral. I absolutely anticipate a huge number of these types of games to come in the near future, many likely to use the same platform with different character sets.
Would this Apply to Mobile Workers?
For sure! Again, Pokémon Go is really just an excellent example of leveraging technology to provide a new interface into how we work. Gaming (or Gamification as this approach is sometimes called) is just an approach that could create a more interactive and enjoyable experience for field service workers and their customers. Now, there is no real job (yet) that pays money to collect Pokémon, but there are ways this technology could be applied to improve and measure how mobile workforces function.
Now there is nothing all that new about Pokémon Go. The technology of GPS and mobile data access has been around for a long time, and we have used it to underpin our new Mobile Workforce Management Service. But Pokémon Go has shown how changing the interface and introducing novel themes and rewards can drive rapid engagement towards greater productivity. In its own right, it has instantly created a crowd sourced workforce collecting Pokémon!
Getting back to business … think about the ROI in these terms for a second:
1 Mobile worker can complete an average of 5 tasks per day
1 Dispatcher/admin person is required per 15 mobile workers.
Effectively leveraging mobile software tools that are location enabled and aware could change this scenario to:
1 Mobile worker can now complete 8 tasks per day.
1 Dispatcher/admin person can now handle 30 or more mobile workers.
These numbers are not made up. They are actually based on our experience with a real customer using our Mobile Workforce Management Service. Now our service doesn’t have as many battles with Bubasaurs and Rattatas (sounds like furniture from an Ikea catalog …), but if you do the math on the return in productivity, solutions like this pay for themselves in short order.
In summary, Pokémon Go is definitely a novel new use of GPS and data technology, and I’ll admit, it’s pretty fun. However, I won’t be playing it much unless my son twists my arm. It does illustrate to me that the next generation of mobile enabled software is on its way pulling together real time data with location + context aware software. Pulling in open data as required these apps are already changing the way we play outside, and there is more innovation to come from this.
We see customers adopting these technologies see startup costs as a barrier to entry, but the benefits in productivity and customer satisfaction stand to change the way we are served in the future.
Now excuse me while I go help my son catch a Pikachu! 
