The Road to Banff Competition featured companies either in ICT, Life Sciences, or Cleantech, with revenues less than $5 million and outside funding of less than $2.5 million.

1. OpenEra is the winner of this year's Canada 3.0 Road to Banff competition, an innovative cross-cloud content management system that bridges your different cloud- and enterprise-based networks together like Dropbox, Basecamp, Box, Workday, Microsoft Exchange, Evernote, and SugarSync. You can also share your content socially via Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter.

You can login to all of these platforms with a single sign-in. It will allow for automated content distribution, cross-cloud search, social content sharing, and reporting analytics. One will even be able to find, share, and manage any files from any cloud in two taps on a mobile device.

2. Qwalify's RecruitMe, the second place finisher, is a recruiting widget tool that companies can place into corporate websites to attract top talent. They say not to settle for average prospects because of time constraints-recruiting should be an ongoing thing, not just when you need new employees. Companies that add the widget will have anybody who wants to work for said company provided people visit the site express their interest quickly and easily.

3. XYZ Interactive, which finished third, manufacturers sensors for a vast array of product applications in the field of "mobile gesturing." Some of their products and services include 3D immersive environments, interactive toys, one-dimensional depth measurement sensors, two-dimensional left-right direction sensors, and 3D gesture sensing arrays known as "touchless touchscreens."

Further, the company also offers a 3D plus six degrees of freedom that provides sensor systems utilizing active coded communication between infrared emitters and receivers for precision location orientation and device control. This could essentially be a cheaper form of augmented reality. The company suggested other applications are immersive gaming for peripheral-type inputs, control rooms and caves, smart badge tracking, and smart asset tracking.

Runner-ups include: Uberflip, Canopy Labs, I Think Security, WillPwn4Food, Philanthrokidz, Uknowa and Bonfire.

Source:
Posted by Dan Verhaeghe on 2012-04-27