APPOVATE: Have You Seen This Puppy?

Australia is more than just the lucky mining country, it is also an innovation leader. From the Hills Hoist and Victa rotary lawn mower to more modern day innovation like the CSIRO’s WiFi technologies. And while many people think of Silicon Valley as the exclusive centre of mobile and social app gestation, a number of small Aussie start ups are making their mark. Today I want to share one such small app developer.

Ever thought “there must be a better way”? I have and so did the CEO of the Animal Welfare League NSW, Tim Vasudeva, when he came to the small 5 person team at Bell George with his idea for an app to help pet owners and local councils get in touch using their smart phones. Bell George went on to win Best Mobile App - Not For Profit category in this years Australian Mobile Awards. It just goes to show what a great idea, great team and great tech can achieve quickly these days.

Today’s Platform as a Service offerings allow startups to quickly build, deploy and scale cutting edge social and mobile apps suited for both consumer and business users (Bell George also was a finalist for their field management app for businesses at the same awards contest). By removing the tiresome infrastructure (physical or vitrual) usually required to host apps, platforms like Heroku and Force.com allow budding startups to focus on developing their unqiue app and meeting their customers needs.

Why should you care? Because small passionate teams can now spend time thinking about you, the user, and what you need instead of building the layers of technology that used to be needed to make it work.

Know any apps built by Aussies (or Kiwis) that are worth a mention? Add them in the comments to help share them with our readers.