Archive for December, 2011
2011 showed us what Canadian startups are really made of
Dec 23rd
by Christine Wong
Forgive me for stealing from Charles Dickens but it is the holiday season after all: was 2011 the best of times or the worst of times for startups?
- Christine Wong
There were some incredible highs and lows for tech entrepreneurs this year.
On the positive side, there were numerous Canadian startups (34 according to an informal count by Techvibes.com) that made successful exits through being acquired: Rypple, Radian6 (both by Salesforce.com), Flock, Five Mobile (both by Zynga), PostRank (by Google) and Back Type (by Twitter).
One of those deals even involved a resurrection of sorts (okay, now I’m leaving the Christmas motif and veering into Easter territory) as Sprouter, just weeks after declaring it was shutting down due to lack of capital, was snapped up by Postmedia Network Inc. Read the rest of this entry »
Toasters hit with tariff to reflect bread’s value
Dec 21st
By Brian Jackson
Editor’s note: This is a satirical take on today’s news article (read it here) about a request by the Canadian Private Copying Collective to the Copyright Board of Canada to place a tariff on microSD cards, to reflect the value of the songs copied to them by users. It was suggested that a loaf of bread could serve as analogy for a song, as a product that consumers regularly purchase…
The Lunching Rights Board of Canada has made a decision that a tariff request made by the Canadian Bread Creator’s Collective (CBCC) will be allowed, and a tariff will be charged on various tools that allow consumers to eat their bread in different forms starting in 2012.
Consumers can expect to pay an additional fee on sandwich presses and toasters starting in the New Year, as the Lunching Rights Board agreed that such instruments derive value from bread, and bread makers should be paid for that value. Toasters that only fit bread slices will carry an extra fee of $0.50 per toaster, while toasters that are wide enough to fit bagels will have a $1 fee. Deluxe toasters that fit four slices or more will carry an extra $3 fee, as will sandwich presses.
Brian Jackson, Associate Editor, ITBusiness.ca
Challenging the status quo
Dec 21st
By Francis Moran
When trying to sell a new and innovative product, and a premium one at that, into a somewhat conservative market, there is often no greater competition than the status quo.
The team at NanoScale Corporation knows this all too well. After years developing its intellectual property into a range of products for the defence, police and hazmat markets, NanoScale has focused its efforts around expanding in the civilian disaster restoration market. Here, restoration professionals work to repair, remediate and decontaminate commercial and residential properties damaged by fire, storms, water, sewer backups and mould. In North America alone, this market is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. It is a steady market sheltered from general economic volatility given that disasters and accidents happen all the time and the cost of restoration is typically covered by an insurer.
While NanoScale has made inroads into this market in recent years, it remains challenged to overcome the status quo and the reluctance of its potential customers to embrace new products and technologies quite unlike what they are accustomed to. Read the rest of this entry »
Countering artificial commoditization and poor pricing
Dec 20th
by Stewart Crawford
I stumbled upon awesome white paper from my friend Larry Walsh and the teams from N-Able and Netenrich.
As an experienced MSP consultant or MSP Coachwho has built a very successful IT Support firm, I often stop and think about how my MSP coaching clients are pricing themselves in the marketplace today.
Stewart Crawford
There is a pricing challenge in our industry. It starts with how we see our value as an IT Professional” or “IT Consultant” versus just the regular “joe computer fix it guy”. Read the rest of this entry »
Why do startups hate agreements?
Dec 19th
by Monica Goyal
I recently considered entering a business relationship with a startup. These conversations always seem to end with the same awkwardness around signing an agreement. My response, as always, was: I’ll certainly look it over; sometimes I might suggest a revision, and then I may sign it.
Monica Goyal
For some reason, this attention to contracts surprises some. It’s as if contracts are seen as a necessary evil, a nice to have, rather than an important part of solid business partnerships. I totally understand. Most new businesses are most concerned with becoming profitable as quickly as possible, not spending a lot time revising contracts. Read the rest of this entry »
Is it time to do away with email?
Dec 15th
by Nestor E. Arellano
I’ll be off this Friday and two more days next week. My editor, Brian, will be taking a few days off this week as well and I imagine a few other writers at IT World Canada will be taking some staggered days off during the holiday season just as most workers in other companies will be this month and the next.
A good way to catch up on rest, spend some quality time with family and hopefully get away from work email.
But maybe that last thought on email isn’t quite right. Could you imagine how much mail your inbox would accumulate if it went unattended for even just a couple of days?
Nestor Arellano
Email overload has been a constant complaint ever since the technology was introduced to corporate communication. I seriously think that whatever amount of paper mail email might have done away with, it has returned a hundred fold in digital correspondence – to the point that the typical workforce is now weighed down by the daily churn of online messages pinging back and fort at the office.
Some studies say that if a worker receives an average of 15 emails a day, reading through them could take up at least an hour of interrupted work. If that worker is part of a 20-person workplace that could amount to 20 hours of work time lost each day or a loss of $2000 per week based on $20//hour salary. A survey by Salesforce.com also found that 70 per cent of emails sent at work were had no relevance to work at all. Read the rest of this entry »
HP makes Web OS open source
Dec 15th
by Kye Husbands
You read that right and the first question probably going through your mind is, well, why the heck not?
Three months ago HP’s Touchpad, Web OS and their whole computer business were in the garbage, but HP’s recent move could resurrect Web OS and spur a whole new level of interest and traction for HP down the road.
HP Toucpad
Let’s be clear about this. This is a gamble by HP but they really don’t have anything to lose by doing it and rather, everything to gain. However, this move has the potential to be very disruptive to what was quickly becoming a two horse race between Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
So what does open sourcing Web OS mean for the smartphone industry?
How HoHoTO turned crowdsourcing into a cause
Dec 14th
By Shane Schick
Startups know what it means to be hungry. They tend to be launched by people who work extremely hard for what are sometimes small dividends, at least initially. They have to be very efficient with their expenses and other resources. They know they need to lean on each other for support occasionally, just to survive. They still have it a lot better than the many people in Toronto who go hungry every day — not hungry for success but for actual food. That’s probably why so many of them contribute to HohoTO.
Although it’s a holiday fundraiser rather than an actual company, after three years HoHoTO.ca already looks like more of a well-oiled machine than many other young Toronto tech firms vying for investors and customers. Launched by a group of friends in the local IT scene to help the Daily Bread Food Bank through the Christmas season, the project grew large part through word-of-Web, with the efforts of bloggers, Twitter and Facebook users tapping into their networks to solicit donations, team members or both. This year’s event will take place on Thursday, Dec. 15 at the Mod Club on College Street. ITBusiness.ca is proud to be among the many sponsors. Read the rest of this entry »
Targeted attacks and how they’re happening now
Dec 13th
by Paul Wood
Targeted malware and advanced persistent threats (APTs) have been big news in 2011, particularly in the wake of the Stuxnet attacks of 2010, and the recent discovery of Duqu.
Paul Wood
Though the term has been overused and occasionally misused, it is undeniable that APTs represent a significant threat to some companies and industries. Symantec.cloud found that the number of APTs detected worldwide increased fourfold from January to November of this year. So as 2011 comes to a close, we thought it would be a good idea to use our November Intelligence Report to take a closer look at what have been dubbed “advanced persistent threats”. Read the rest of this entry »
Giving a fair shake to the eyes in the sky
Dec 11th
by Francis Moran
In July 2002, a FedEx Boeing 727 carrying cargo crashed on its approach for a night-time landing in Tallahassee, Fl. A U.S. National Transportation Safety Board investigation identified the first officer’s colour vision deficiency as a factor in the crash and recommended that all existing colour vision testing protocols employed by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) be reviewed. Four years later, this case, and the issues which it raised about colour blindness testing in the commercial aviation industry, was the subject of a panel at an international workshop hosted by Saudi Arabian Airlines.
For Matt Lemelin, CEO of Genevolve Vision Diagnostics, stories such as this validate his company’s mandate, and commercial potential, to redefine how colour blindness is tested, diagnosed and treated. As Genevolve moves closer to its commercial launch, he is eagerly looking at specific industries such as aviation, where there is an opportunity for the company to establish new testing standards that are more fair and equitable. Genevolve’s ultimate goal is to create a global colour vision standard for all occupations. Read the rest of this entry »
