Grand 2012 Offers Glimpse Into the Future

Sitting in the back of the huge Sheraton hotel conference rooms a couple of weeks ago, one not completely familiar with the complexities of computer programming and gaming dynamics may have found oneself to be a slight fish out of water. Design intuition, analytics, panopticon, polygonization of implicit surfaces, information appliances, haptic notification systems, procedural modeling and more acronyms than one could count could fool you into thinking you had stepped into a parallel universe.

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Toronto's Engagio Evolves into 'Social Conversations Network,' Adds Chrome Extension to Make Gmail Social

Toronto startup Engagio is becoming what it calls a "Social Conversations Network," which combines "the convenience of the social inbox utility with the power of the network via a new Engagement Discovery Dashboard." The dashboard reveals friends' conversations across whichever social networks and commenting communities they participate in.

“Users will be drawn to the Engagio dashboard because it reveals the conversations that their friends are engaging in from across the spectrum of the social web," says William Mougayar, the CEO and founder of Engagio. "It’s an engagement stream that is quite addictive.”

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Don't Sell Your Android Device

Don't sell your Android device.

Seriously, don't. Getting a new one? That's fine. Tuck your old one in your closet. Better yet, drill a hole through its hardrive or take a sledgehammer to the thing.

Just. Don't. Sell. It.

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Canadian Businesses More Prepared for Disaster Than Rest of World: Study

Symantec today announced the findings of its 2012 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey, which reveals that disaster preparedness is closely connected with small and medium sized businesses’ (SMBs) adoption of technologies like virtualization, cloud computing, and mobility. The survey also revealed how willing SMBs are in adopting these technologies, often with improved disaster preparedness as a goal, and how the move is paying off for them.

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Next Stop: Startup Canada National Tour Showcases Toronto's Top Entrepreneurs

Startup Canada will be showcasing Toronto’s top entrepreneurial talent this week as part of a two-week celebration of entrepreneurship in Ontario, the third stop in Startup Canada’s six-month National Tour. The Tour, which launched in March, is travelling across the country to promote entrepreneurship, identify key challenges facing Canadian entrepreneurs, and ignite new community-led solutions to those challenges.

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Twitter Launches Summify Product as Weekly Email Digests

In January, Twitter acquired Vancouver startup Summify and last month Techvibes reported that a few people started seeing Summify's Canadian-born technology in action.

Today Twitter made it official with a blog post titled The best of Twitter in your inbox. The post describes Twitter's new weekly email digest product that summarizes the most relevant Tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter.

Stories feature a design similar to the recently updated Discover tab, emphasizing who shared each story beneath summaries to help you decide which ones matter most to you.

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Canadian Businesses Could Do a Lot More to Protect Your Data

It’s seems that it’s not just Android phones that could do a better job protecting your data. The report, provided by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and conducted by Phoenix Strategic Perspectives, surveyed 1,000 businesses in various industries in order to measure their habits when storing personal data on digital devices.

While it was determined that 77% of the businesses polled consider it important to protect the privacy of customers (this seems low to me), it was also revealed that 48% of them store private data without any form of encryption whatsoever.

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Old School Canadian Taxi Company Launches Mobile App to Compete with Next-Gen Uber, Winston Startups

The taxi industry hasn't changed much over time. But with a sudden rush of competition from the likes of Uber and Canada's own Winston, their hand has been forced: innovate or perish.

Starting today, Torontonians looking for a lift can order a traditional taxi with two taps on their smartphone. Beck Taxi is claiming to be Toronto’s first Taxi company to introduce a mobile taxi app.

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The Banking Industry Just Changed How Canadians Will Pay for Goods From Now On

Thanks to a brand-new set of forward-thinking guidelines revealed today, Canadian banks will soon enable consumers to pay for goods with a tap of their smartphones. As Reuters points out, thousands of Canadian retailers already have the necessary equipment for mobile payments in place - it was only a matter of the Canadian Bankers Association setting open standards for secure transactions over smartphones to ignite the banks.

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