Entries from the 'Techvibes Media Inc.' category
Say hello to iDebt
The deadline for our print ad commission over at AdHackis fast approaching (11:59pm tonight) but it looks like we should have a couple great concepts to choose from. If you didn’t get a chance to submit a candidate for our $150 commission, be sure to check out AdHack’s latest assignment that cuts off on Monday, July 28th.
AdHack is giving away a pair of the Panasonic RP-SC500 noise-canceling headphones to the best “iPhone ad that Rogers should have used to launch and promote the iPhone in Canada”. This one by Dave Gibson caught my eye tonight.
IDC’s 10 Canadian Web 2.0 Companies to Watch
Global research powerhouse IDC has released their 10 Canadian Web 2.0 Companies to Watch list today and Mark MacLeod of StartupCFO was kind enough to republish the companies online.
- AdHack - Vancouver
- dthree Inc. - Mississauga
- Octopz - Toronto
- Overlay.TV - Ottawa
- PlanetEye - Toronto
- Ramius Corporation - Ottawa
- SceneCaster - Richmond Hill
- Standout Jobs - Montreal
- Tomoye Corporation - Gatineau
- Tungle - Montreal
This IDC study profiles 10 relatively small Canadian-based companies offering Web 2.0 solutions that IDC believes are worthy of highlighting to the broader industry and have the potential to make an impact in the information and communication technology (ICT) market.
This study provides a review of each company’s technology and go-to-market strategy and a customer example. It concludes with some of the overarching trends IDC is seeing in this market, the strategies and characteristics these 10 companies share, and essential guidance and analysis. This study also provides valuable input for ICT vendors large and small, investors, government, and service providers to identify success factors employed by emerging Canadian vendors with Web 2.0 solutions.
The 30-page report was written by IDC Canadian ICT Innovation analyst Krista Collins and it’s available for $3,500. Ouch. Anybody have a copy?
Cyberinfrastructure Summit in Banff
Cybera is hosting its 2nd annual Cyberinfrastructure Summit at the Banff Centre in Banff on September 29-30. Cybera Summit 08 will bring together cyberinfrastructure users, collaborators and innovators. The focus will be to build, strengthen and expand the cyberinfrastructure foundation in Alberta’s private sector and research community.
Summit Sessions:
Green IT / Clean Tech - It’s not that easy being green. In this session, we’ll look at the push for IT to go green. How can you ‘green up’ your IT operations? What are the cost benefits? Why is this important to your business?
Grassroots Innovation - DemoCampBanff - Where does innovation start? Demo Camp for one. These groups thrive on their ad-hoc organization and “no rules” rules. Talk about a fertile landscape for innovative ideas! Join us for a special Banff edition of Demo Camp.
Cloud Computing and Other Trends to Watch - The innovation landscape is constantly changing. In this session, we’ll focus on the top trends guiding this transition and what impacts these changes have on your business as well as your research and development activities.
Cyber-Venture Opportunities - Showing you the money. In this session, we’ll examine the business behind cyberinfrastructure – the venture capital and commercialization opportunities, as well as the new Alberta Action Plan: Bringing Technology to Market.
Disruptive Technologies - Blessing or bane? In this session, we’ll look at how disruptive technologies are changing the landscape, raising the bar and pushing the bounds of all that was possible in business and research.
Keynote Speakers:
- Bill Appelbe -Chief Executive Officer, Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing
- Paul Strong - Distinguished Research Scientist, eBay
- Nora Young - Producer and Host of Spark, CBC Radio
Who Should Attend?
- IT managers and executives
- Business strategy senior management
- Industry Researchers
- Small business and startups
- Technology advisors, CIOs, project managers, government ministry staff, graduate students
- Research community
This Summit will cater to anyone affiliated with the private sector, research organizations or academia that’s interested in cyberinfrastructure. It will also cater to those who have questions like, “How can I do my work more efficiently?” “How can I improve my business’s bottom line?” and “How can technology help me expand the possibilities of what I can achieve?” The Summit should also appeal to people looking to tap into Alberta’s innovative, forward-thinking community.
For more information and to register, visit the Cybera Summit 08 website.
Canadian Wireless Spectrum Auction Ends With Seven New Entrants
331 rounds, 39 days, 27 companies, $4.25 billion in revenue, and the Canadian wireless spectrum auction is over. The total amount raised vastly exceeded expectation, an encouraging start to what promises to be a new era in Canadian wireless competition. The auction was still dominated by the big three: Rogers ($999M), Telus ($880M), and Bell ($741M). However, 40% of the licenses were set aside for new entrants, with winners Globalive ($442M nationwide) Quebecor ($555M in Quebec), Data & Audio-Visual Enterprises ($243M in Ontario, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Victoria), Shaw ($190M in BC, Alberta, Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, and northern Ontario), Manitoba Telecom ($41M in Manitoba), Bragg Communications ($25M in Atlantic Canada), and the unglamorously named, US equity-backed 6934579 Canada Inc. ($52M in Ontario and Quebec). Check this Google Maps mashup for a breakdown by province.
With these new entrants, each province should get at least two new choices for wireless service. Of course, I remember a time when there were 2 or 3 other wireless companies to choose from, before mergers and acquisitions led to the current cerberus of RoBellus (variations considered: Tellogers, Bellogus). Hopefully we don’t find ourselves back in a wireless oligopoly in ten or twenty years.
$4.25 billion is a nice chunk of revenue for the Canadian government, handy to pay for things like an indefinite occupation of a country that posed no real threat, and it seems they are wasting no time to do it again. Via Reuters, Industry Minister Jim Prentice has said that an auction of 700 MHz airwaves will happen in “about 18 months”. The US recently auctioned their 700 MHz spectrum and raised $19.592 billion.
A spectrum auction isn’t the kind of thing that gets a lot of mainstream media attention, as the idea of selling airwaves seems strange, if not impossible, and some might argue immoral. For some thoughts on this subject, I present an excerpt from an essay “The Property Status of Airwaves”, by author and philosopher Ayn Rand, published April 1964.
Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property - by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort.
This is particularly true of broadcasting frequencies or waves, because they are produced by human action and do not exist without it. What exists in nature is only the potential and the medium through which those waves must travel. (That medium is not air; in legal discussions it is often referred to by the mythical term of “ether” - to indicate some element in space, at present unidentified.) Without the broadcasting station which generates the waves, that “ether” - on our present level of knowledge — is of no practical use or value to anyone.
Essay continues after the jump.
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On Dropping the “Under Five Years” Requirements for Start-up Indexes
We’ve had a lot of questions and prodding regarding the “under five years old” requirement of our Start-up Indexes. When they were originally started, we used the criteria that Marcelo was using for his Seattle Startup Index. That criteria was:
- Located in or around the specified city or area.
- Less than five years old
- Not a public company
- Is a tech company (either hardware, software, web application/service, or mobile)
We have been a little flexible with this criteria as the age of a company can be subject to interpretation depending on acquisitions, sell-outs, complete overhauls of a business model, etc. For instance, Techvibes the site/brand is six years old, but Techvibes Media Inc. is just over a year old. Even Wikipedia agrees that there is no definitive definition of “startup company”, and age isn’t really a valid measure. So, in the interest of more inclusive lists, we’re going to remove the “less than 5 years” requirement.
Going forward, we are looking to fold the start-up indexes into the functionality of the Techvibes company directory. Not only will this save me time producing them, but will allow for dynamic lists of varying criteria, supplying stats junkies with a greater fix.
If you have been holding back on suggesting your company because it was older, now is the time to suggest it for inclusion into future lists. Please include where you are located.
Design a Advertisement for Techvibes
Techvibes needs a print ad designed for Business in Vancouver’s 2008 BC TECH Magazine, so we’re giving crowdsourcing a shot and supporting a local Vancouver start-up in the process. Through James Sherrett’s AdHack we’ve commissioned the design of a 7 1/8″ x 1″ banner ad that will appear on one of the magazine ‘Lists’ pages.
We’re looking for something fun & simple that will get readers of this popular annual publication to visit Techvibes.com. We’re particularily interested in this issue as it comes out on August 26th which will be two short weeks after we launch the new & improved Techvibes site. If you’re interested in making $150 and getting some great exposure though the Techvibes blog, be sure to check out the requirements and submit your design by Thursday, July 24th at 11:59pm.
Rogers Hijacks Typos to Branded Search, Ads
Under the category of “what’s Rogers done this week?” and via Blamcast, comes word that Rogers has been redirecting DNS errors to their own “error page”. Whereas typing an invalid or misspelled domain name should give you a “can’t find the server” error, Rogers users will be redirected to a Rogers-branded page with advertisements, Yahoo search results, and headlines for Maclean’s and Chatelaine (both Rogers-owned). This also works on subdomains that don’t exist, for example, trying “forum.techvibes.com” (nonexistant) would take you to Rogers’ page, despite techvibes.com being a valid site.
While this behaviour isn’t illegal, and certainly allowable under their Terms of Service, it is shady and creates unexpected results for folks that are used to getting a plain error message. This behaviour is not unique to Rogers, as various US ISPs have dabbled in similar “functionality”. The technique was brought to the forefront in 2003 when VeriSign, who isn’t an ISP but operates 2 of the 13 DNS root servers, began redirecting misspellings to their own page. This didn’t last very long before public outcry and ICANN’s wrist slapping put an end to it.
Blamcast invites Rogers customers and domain owners alike to give Rogers a call and let them know how you feel about this bonus service: 1-888-764-3771. In the meantime, I’d like to thank Shaw for having provided me with eight years of reliable, fast, no-bullshit Internet service, and only nagging me once about pushing bandwidth limits.
GoDaddy.com sets up shop in Toronto
Low-cost domain registrar GoDaddy.com has opened an office in Toronto, its first location outside the US, and aims to be registering .CA domain names by August. GoDaddy.com is now certified by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) and is in the final stages of developing their .CA registration process.
Thanks to their controversial and frequently banned Super Bowl television ads, Canadians are very familar with GoDaddy.com and the company already have a strong and loyal customer base North of the border for .COM domains. Low-cost Canadian registrars should start to worry.
GoDaddy.com will kick off its entry into the Canadian market by sponsoring the TSN television broadcast of the NASCAR Napa Auto Parts 200 on August 2nd in Montreal. Canadian driver Ron Fellows will race the #5 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet.
GoDaddy’s Toronto office currently has one employee, Adam Dicker, and Canadian customer support will be handled through their US call centres. Those who follow the domain industry will recognize Dicker’s name - he was recently called out for bidding against customers in GoDaddy.com domain auctions. I can’t imagine CIRA will put up with that behaviour for long.
Telus and Bell Rumoured To Make Inevitable Leap to GSM
Via Wirelessnorth, come rumors that Bell and Telus will be switching to a GSM network from their current CDMA networks. While these are rumors with no cited source, it’s also a move that has been a probable for some time now. CDMA is, in an international context, an outdated technology. Many new smartphones are GSM-only, and this situation allowed Rogers/Fido to have a monopoly-backed cakewalk launching the iPhone in Canada. To stay competitive, this upgrade was inevitable for Bell and Telus, either sooner to GSM, or later to “4G”.
It’s good to see some rumors that we might start seeing real competition in Canada’s wireless industry… in a few years. It was a little over a year ago that considerations of a Telus-Bell merger were floating headlines. This move does make the current Canadian spectrum auction more interesting, though it’s still dominated by the “big three” (or the one cartel, depending on your cynicism). Fun Fact: Rogers believes that the radio waves, vibrating through your head right now, are worth in upwards of $997M.
In the meantime, I have to find a tux for the wedding; Rogers and I are getting married for three years, didn’t you hear?
McCain vs. Obama according to eBay
One of the side benefits of having access to reams of e-commerce sales data is having some fun and that is what Victoria’s Terapeak is up to.
Last month Terapeak was tracking the iPhone market and this month they’re tracking the 2008 Presidential Election candidates by number of items sold on eBay. Not a big surprise that Barack Obama is more ‘marketable’ right now but there is still plenty of time for John McCain to rack up some serious bumper sticker sales.
