Archive for November, 2011
Clouds of confusion
Nov 30th
by Elaine Mah
About a year ago, I wrote about cloud computing and how small businesses see the benefits of cloud but struggle with how to capitalize on those advantages.
- Elaine Mah
So fast forward 12 months and the concept of “cloud” is ubiquitous — or is it?
While I don’t think you can turn on the TV, flip through a magazine or read a business journal without seeing something about “the cloud”, earlier this year Eweek* surveyed small businesses in the US and found 71 per cent of respondents hadn’t even heard of cloud computing. Of those that had heard of the cloud, only 26 per cent could actually define it. These numbers surprised me and I don’t think you can ignore them.
At Intel we define cloud computing as services and data residing as shared resources accessible by any authenticated device over the Internet. An easy analogy is to think of these shared resources such as software and information being provided to computers, tablets and smartphones, as a utility, like electricity.
For most small businesses, cloud services tend to be software-based such as customer relationship management tools (CRM) and programs that automate business processes like inventory control and sales forecasting. Read the rest of this entry »
The weird and wonderful world of gathering customer insights
Nov 27th
by Christine Wong
In this crazy, weird, wired world of 24/7 virtual connectivity, Pamela Bailey still makes face-to-face house calls to SMBs.
- Christine Wong
In the most memorable one to date, she paid a visit to a shipping yard office in Singapore, realizing the manager’s “office” was actually a shipping container perched rather precariously on stilts out in the ocean.
“It was raining really heavily,” Bailey recalls. “I was a little bit concerned about the stilts falling apart and me falling out of the shipping container. But it was a great experience!”
All part of her Edmonton-based job as experience design manager at Intuit Canada. That basically means she travels the globe knocking on doors (including the rickety one on the shipping container) to see, firsthand, how SMBs use Intuit products. Read the rest of this entry »
Every startup needs a video ‘elevator pitch’
Nov 25th
If you’ve run into me in person in the past couple of weeks, I’ve probably insisted on telling you about The $1,000 Minute, our YouTube elevator pitch contest for tech startups. I’m starting to feel like a broken record, and strangely meta, giving everyone I meet the pitch on this elevator pitch contest, but I’m doing it because I think every startup needs to have a video like this.
I didn’t start this contest because I think YouTube needs more videos, or because I think startup founders need some more work to fill
Brian Jackson, Associate Editor, ITBusiness.ca
their time. I started it because I think startups in Canada need more exposure, and need to be willing to promote themselves more actively and spread awareness about their companies. What better and more simple way to do that than a one-minute video that can be widely distributed across the Web?
Why Glenn Gould may be the model for future T.O. startups
Nov 24th
by Shane Schick
Just a block or so from the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where we held our second annual Technicity.ca event this week, there’s this great bench that sits outside the CBC building that gave me a sense of what the future startup leaders in the city might look like.
Shane Schick, editor-in-chief, IT World Canada
Integrated into the side of the bench is a statue of the late, great pianist Glenn Gould. He’s dressed in a warm coat and gloves, and is leaning forward as though ready to engage whoever sits next to him in a serious conversation. As I passed this bench on my way to Technicity it’s not so much that I think our next generation of tech CEOs will look like Gould, but they may possess similar character traits. Read the rest of this entry »
Making waves in radio and television
Nov 23rd
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
In our last post, we caught up with Screenreach Interactive founder and CEO Paul Rawlings on his way out the door to attend the Digital Signage Investor Conference in New York. We explored how the company has developed its target markets, including the digital signage, or “out of home advertising,” market.
It has been a busy month for the company since then as it continues to build market share in the digital signage, television and radio industries.
David Weinfeld, Screenreach’s chief strategy officer, is based in New York. He and Rawlings hit the tradeshow floor together to speak with experts in the digital signage industry to deepen their understanding of how best to serve this growing global market.
“The conference really gave us a chance to get into the shoes of the clients we wish to serve,” Weinfeld said. “As a result, we are making some exciting changes to the product that we think will make a significant difference in how useful and appealing it is to advertisers and digital signage operators.”
Gadget of choice
After New York, Rawlings headed to Radio Festival, Europe’s top radio industry event, where Screenreach was a sponsor. As we explored in the last post, radio is a growing market for Screenreach and it already counts among its customers in the space Bauer Media, which operates 42 radio stations across the U.K.
“Radio Festival was a very interesting experience for us,” Rawlings said. “It gave us the chance to hear some of the challenges facing the industry. One thing we hadn’t realized was just how important research is to the business of radio. Screach offers deep consumer profiling and we have perhaps been underselling this feature.”
Popular U.K. television program The Gadget Show also held a session within the festival which demonstrated up and coming technologies set to change the radio industry. Screach was used by the audience to allow them to vote on their favourite technology from each round and was also voted the winning gadget in the final round.
Making current affairs interactive
Screenreach has also been working with U.K. television network Channel 4 to provide an app for its long-running current affairs program, Dispatches.
The opportunity to work on the show arose through Tom Gutteridge, a member of Screenreach’s board who worked previously as the CEO of Freemantle Media in the U.S. He made the initial contact with Channel 4 through his production company, Standing Stone.
“This is exciting for us as it will be the first time we’ve seen Screach used in this context,” Rawlings said. “So far, many Screach adopters have used the technology for games and quizzes and our trial on Dispatches will really show how versatile the product is.”
Channel 4 will use Screach to give viewers more control over their news consumption. It will provide additional content and information related to the Dispatches program in real time, provide integration with Facebook and Twitter to encourage viewers to chat with each other during the program via their mobile devices, and provide them with a live polling feature.
“With the polls feature, an example would be if the program was featuring a story that refers to trains, we can ask viewers questions such as ‘how many times have you had to stand on a train journey in the last few months?’ for which they will then see an instant poll,” Channel 4’s Vicky Taylor said in a recent interview.
Playing nice with iOS and Android
Back in the office, Screenreach’s development team has been busy working on the Android platform. It’s now possible for a user to install the Screach app on a tablet device, running either iOS or Android, and engage in a multiplayer experience with other users.
Previously, the only way a user’s smartphone could interact with a tablet was through Wi-Fi synching, AirPlay (synchronization between iOS devices), or through devices with matching operating systems, such as an iPhone and iPad.
With the latest development, an Android tablet can be used as a travelling game board, and people can interact with it through Screach using either an iPhone or an Android device.
Taking stock
For Rawlings and his team, the past month has provided valuable lessons about the importance of refining the current product messaging depending on the needs of specific market verticals.
“This is very exciting for us,” he said. “It means that our continued development opens windows of opportunity that we previously had not foreseen. If we think back to a year ago, so much has changed. One of the favourite sayings in the office is ‘do you want to see something cool’ which is followed by a group gathering around someone’s desk to see something we couldn’t even have imagined the week before. This makes it a very exciting product to work on.”
This is the third article in a continuing monthly series chronicling the growth path of Screenreach Interactive, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screenreach’s flagship product, Screach, is an interactive digital media platform that allows users to create real-time, two-way interactive experiences between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. We invite your feedback.
Driving steady organic growth on a shoestring
Nov 23rd
By Francis Moran
Many startups with aspirations of grandeur have fallen prey to the temptation to call themselves a “leading provider of …”. But at Teamly, founder and CEO Scott Allison and his team appreciate that earning the label is a “big hairy audacious goal” which takes a lot of hard work and no shortage of hustling.
Teamly is a two-year-old startup which has brought to market an innovative productivity and project management tool which it delivers through a Software-as-a-Service (Saas) model. Or, as described in the company’s vision statement, “Teamly provides online teamwork software that helps businesses be more successful through more aligned and effective people.”
Securing the Ubiquitous iPhone
Nov 21st
by Claudiu Popa
According to popular expert opinion, there are seven areas in today’s mobile devices where vulnerabilities can create security or privacy breaches. Nowhere is this more rational than in the paragon of mobile digital success: the iPhone.
Claudiu Popa
Nothing short of a juggernaut, new versions of the quasi-ubiquitous device have all but evaded attempts at hacking it by consistently introducing innovative new features and by leveraging a strategy of built-in obsolescence.
It follows then that each of these areas corresponds to ways to specific security controls at that level, tactically building a ‘defense in depth’ approach to securing the iPhone. In the name of brevity, here are these safeguards: Read the rest of this entry »
Canadians prove wise on creating healthy tech startup atmosphere
Nov 18th
Canadians think the government is doing a decent job of offering technology startups support, but almost nobody thinks this nation is a world leader when it comes to giving entrepreneurs a hand.
And they’re right on the money. With the help of AskingCanadians, we polled 1005 respondents from Nov. 8 to 11 about how Canada
Brian Jackson, Associate Editor, ITBusiness.ca
compares to the rest of the world in terms of the ease of starting a technology-based company here. Then we asked them to rank what they thought were the most important things to do in order to make Canada a world leader in this important pillar of economic development.
Digital signage: Telling the right story to drive customer acquisition
Nov 17th
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
When we caught up with Screenreach Interactive founder and CEO Paul Rawlings, he was in the midst of packing for a trip to New York, where he was booked as a panellist for the Digital Signage Investor Conference.
Digital signage, a so-called form of “out-of-home advertising,” delivers video content, advertisements and messages to specific locations at specific times on static or touch screens, often in combination with movement detection and image capture technology. According to one recent industry forecast, the market is growing at a compound annual rate of 40 per cent, with 22 million digital signs expected to be deployed world-wide by 2015.
For Screenreach, it’s an industry ripe for the Screach app.
The fine art of the business hustle
Nov 21st
Posted by Francis Moran in Managing Business
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For a pre-revenue startup that is bootstrapping its way to market, incurring the cost to travel to another city to attend an industry trade conference with an admission price of $1,000 may appear to be an expensive endeavour. For Katie and Luke Hrycak, sibling co-founders of CommentAir Technologies, it’s the kind of opportunity they can’t afford to let slip by.
The 2011 Sports Management Conference and Trade Show, taking place in Toronto on Nov. 14 and 15, features dozens of speakers from the senior ranks of professional sports from across North America, from team owners and league commissioners, to broadcasters and professional services which cater to the industry. It is the very sort of high-profile event they need to draw attention to CommentAir’s programmable earpiece technology.
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