Two Apps to be Presented at Winston Salem Chamber of Commerce Tech Briefing on September 15th

Smartphones in the U.S. are expected to overtake feature phones by the end of 2011 (Nielsenwire, March 2010); therefore, it is no wonder that “there’s an app for that” can be said for virtually everything. At the 2011 Tech Briefing on September 15th, audience members will get to hear about two different apps, locally created and developed.

The Treks in the City™ mobile application, created by Winston-Salem based technology company, Small Footprint, uses geo-location technology to identify the users' current location in proximity to a host of other mapped locations. Users who download the application are able to experience the following functionality:

• Select a Trek and tour the area using particular area of interest, such as Architecture, Entertainment or the locations of four annual scavenger hunts held in the downtown area.

• Easily find downtown locations and get walking directions from the current location.

• Share pictures and comments on various Trek locations.

• Visit a related Web site or place a call to a destination directly from the Treks in the City™ mobile application.

Verbal Victor, an iphone app created by Wake Forest University Assistant Computer Science Professor Paúl Pauca, is designed to help children with development disabilities communicate better. Paúl’s son Victor was born with a rare genetic disorder that causes delays in cognitive abilities, motor skills, and social development and language skills. Paúl wanted to find a way to help Victor communicate better but found that the available therapeutic tools were very primitive, difficult to use and costly. With the help of students in his computer science class, he developed an application that with a touch of the screen allowed Victor to communicate such things as “I want to play” with a graphic image of toys or “I want to eat “ with an image of food.

Learn more about these apps and how they came to be at the Tech Briefing on September 15 at 8 a.m at the Benton Convention Center.