Posts tagged Facebook
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 »
Companies exposing Canadians’ personal information face no penalty
Dec 9th
By Brian Jackson
As social networking becomes more popular and online advertisers seek more effective ways to target their messages, our society is trying to cope with how to protect our privacy while sharing more details about ourselves than ever before via the Web.
If you doubt that the collection of personal details online is the top privacy concern, just look to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s work over the last several years. It has been preoccupied with Facebook, protecting children’s’ online privacy, fighting spam, and Google Streetview, just to name a few. Now we hear that commissioner Jennifer Stoddart will be turning a watchful eye towards companies engaging in online behavioural advertising.
Brian Jackson, Associate Editor, ITBusiness.ca
Appearing at a conference hosted by the Association of Canadian Advertisers, Stoddart said advertisers can’t use tracking technology that users are unaware of or unable to decline. If they do, they could face disciplinary measures such as an audit by the office, or being taken to Federal Court and publicly shamed. But we’ve heard this watchdog bark before, and rarely have we seen it bite.
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.
SMBs actually hate social media
Nov 11th
Christine Wong
by Christine Wong
Time for a social media reality check, kids.
The myth: All companies are happily, constantly tweeting, posting and linking up a storm on social media, to their hearts’ delight and their bottom lines’ benefit.
The truth: … not so much.
The reality, based on a few new studies and a roomful of collective gaspers (I’ll get to them later), is that many SMBseither still haven’t jumped wholeheartedly onto the social media train – or the ones that have are struggling with how to use, manage and afford it.
Exhibit A: a surprising 49 per cent – yes, that’s half – of SMBs who responded to our ITB/Dell State of the Canadian SMB survey last year said they weren’t even using social media at all in their businesses. When we asked them why in this year’s survey, the top reason (cited by 35 per cent) was lack of time and resources. Another 16 per cent say they figure it’s just not worth investing in. Read the rest of this entry »
Supreme Court makes non-ridiculous ruling on hyperlinks
Oct 20th
By Brian Jackson
This week the Supreme Court of Canada decided that it would not make a ruling that would irrevocably harm the Internet, be impossible to enforce, and likely be ignored by all normal people who use the Internet.
To elaborate, the court delivered its ruling in the case of Crookes v. Newton, of which the central question of the case was whether a person could be liable for linking to defamatory content. It decided that it was not defamation because a link is not really publication, but just a digital reference that allows for someone to reach the original published material. For a more detailed description of the legal implications of the ruling, Michael Geist’s blog post lays out the important details well.
Brian Jackson, Associate Editor, ITBusiness.ca
What Google’s Eric Schmidt thinks of other tech CEOs
Sep 7th
Eric Schmidt’s career in the IT industry began long before his leadership roles at Google Inc., he reminded a large crowd at Dreamforce, Salesforce.com’s annual conference, last week.
The current executive chairman at Google, Schmidt started his career with Sun Microsystems Inc. as a software manager in 1983, working his way through the ranks before taking on the CEO role at Novell Inc. But it wasn’t until he joined Google as chairman and CEO in 2001 that he really felt “a sense that everything was possible,” he told Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff in their on stage discussion.
Brian Jackson, Associate Editor, ITBusiness.ca
Cameron must be off his chump to call for social media ban
Aug 12th
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s threat of blocking social media sites and BlackBerry Messenger service in reaction to rioting in London and surrounding cities is pure folly.
The logic of cutting off everyone’s access to communication tools because a few criminals are making use of them is bollocks. Imagine if the rioters used Molotov cocktails in their destructive experts – would a ban on the sale of liquor be considered? Also, it is rare to hear suggestions of gun bans after shootings take place.
Brian Jackson, Associate Editor, ITBusiness.ca
Google+ the ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of social networks
Jul 27th
By Edward N. Albro
When Google+ first launched, most people saw it, correctly, as a competitor to Facebook. But as you try Google’s social network, you realize that it has a lot in common with Twitter too. That versatility could be Google’s strength — but it could be its downfall too. Is Google+ trying to do too much?
Google+’s similarities to Facebook are obvious: You can use it to share updates, pictures and videos with family and friends. But Google+ can also be a lot like Twitter. Like Twitter (and unlike Facebook), absolute strangers can follow you without you following them or approving them (you can block people if you want). And while you can use Google+ to share personal news with people close to you, you can also use it to broadcast your thoughts on the news of the day to thousands of people you’ve never met.
Is your Facebook activity jeopardizing your career?
Jun 8th
By Monica Goyal
Under normal circumstances, it’s unlikely that these comments will travel back to your superior and result in your dismissal. However, if you make your feelings known on a popular social networking site such as Facebook, it’s an entirely different story.
Monica Goyal
As two car dealership employees in British Columbia discovered last week, posting derogatory comments about your employer could get you fired. Read the rest of this entry »
