Techvibes Technology News

Xtreme Labs' Speedtest Ranked in Top iPhone Utilities of 2008

Posted by Greg Andrews on Wed, December 3, 2008 11:13 PM · Filed under Toronto , Wireless , Venture Capital , Mobile · No Comments

Speedtest The year isn't quite out yet, but as MobileCrunch reports, Apple has created page on the iTunes Store listing the top sellers of year, dubbed "iTunes 2008". Toronto-based Xtreme Labs, part of Extreme Venture Partners, has developed a handful of free apps including Answers, Daily Poll, and World Traffic Cameras. But their most popular application of all has ranked as iTunes #7 free utility app of 2008: Speedtest.

Simple but effective, Speedtest performs a download/upload speed test on your 3G or Wifi connection. It is useful for troubleshooting network coverage issues, or simply for geeky curiosity. There were a few similar apps that came out when the Store launched, but Speedtest has been dominated the field and improved considerably since it's first release. Speedtest is ad supported, a $1.99 Pro version is available without ads. Further, Speedtest acts as an advertisment for their agency, with an About tab that lets you know they specialize in Internet and smartphone development.

Their own statistics show over 2 million tests run, and for most of these they have a GPS location stored. Theoritically then, Xtreme Labs has a large amount of data on the quality of 3G. I'd encourage Xtreme Labs to do something interesting with this data, like a map mashup or a study of speeds over time as more people have signed on with 3G data plans.

Did I miss any others on the list from Canada?

Company:: Xtreme Labs
Website:: http://xtremelabs.com/
Location:: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

We create quality software and achieve success rapidly through our Agile engineering process. Our process produces results that allow rapid... [more]

Wireless tech firm AirIQ cuts 36 per cent of workforce

Posted by Rob Lewis on Wed, December 3, 2008 6:39 PM · Filed under Toronto , Layoffs · No Comments

Pickering, ON-based AirIQ Inc. announced today that it will cut its workforce by 36 per cent (about 21 jobs) to save $1 million a year in the face of mounting economic uncertainty. AirIQ - which specializes in technology and services that allow its customers to locate, monitor, control and communicate with vehicles and marine vessels in real time - said it expects to pay one-time severance costs of about $850,000 over the next few quarters.

AirIQ has been undergoing a year-long restructuring that saw it reduce head count in 2007 from 123 to 59.

Company:: AirIQ
Website:: http://www.airiq.com
Location:: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

AirIQ trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol IQ. A leader in Wireless Location Services, specializing in Telematics and Security,... [more]

Venture Capital Firms Are Too Big

Posted by Basil Peters on Wed, December 3, 2008 4:39 PM · Filed under Denver-Boulder , Portland , Seattle , Calgary , Edmonton , Montréal , Ottawa , Toronto , Vancouver , Victoria , Kitchener-Waterloo , Venture Capital , Start-up , Guest Posts · No Comments

Many bloggers have been saying recently that the VC Model is Broken. One of the most important reasons is that Venture Capital Firms are just too big.

Why Venture Capital Firms Got Too Big

In the 20th century, technology companies often required tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to build out and prove. Companies like Intel, Microsoft, Amazon and Google required hundreds of millions of dollars to scale up to the size where they were proven winners. This was one of the factors that led to venture capital firms becoming ever larger.

Being a VC fund manager was also a great job for the fund principles, once the fund was large enough. Most VC funds are structured so the fund managers charge a management fee of about 2.5% of the value of the fund each year. The management fee pays the salaries of the fund managers and their support staff. A small VC firm usually has four partners and some support staff. This means that the annual operating budget for even a small fund quickly grows to more than $2 million per year.

Most VC managers believe a fund under $100 million isn’t economical. The goal of most VC managers is to grow the fund to several hundred million, in part, because then they can start pull down some very attractive compensations. This is another reason that venture capital firms have continued to grow.

The graph below shows how these trends have led to the phenomenal growth in the size of venture capital firms over the past 30 years.

VC Firms Have Gotten Too Big

Each VC Partner is Managing More and More Money

As VC funds have grown larger, the amount of money that each VC principle has to invest has grown even faster. Most VC funds can't invest less than a few million in each portfolio company.

What This Means for Entrepreneurs and Angel Investors

This necessity for venture capital firms to invest more and more in each company has profound implications for entrepreneurs and angel investors.

For most startups it means that venture capital firms probably aren't the best source of funding - or that they aren't even a desirable source of funding. The full post, on Venture Capital Firms Are Too Big, begins the explanation of why this is. This is also an important part of my upcoming book: "Early Exits - Exit Strategies for Entrepreneurs and Angel Investors - But Maybe Not VCs".

Company:: AngelBlog - Best Practices for Entrepreneurs and Angel Investors
Website:: http://www.AngelBlog.net?Techvibes
Location:: Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada

Angelblog propagates best practices for entrepreneurs and angel investors. [more]

Zerofootprint takes carbon footprints out of businesses and into the cloud

Posted by Warren Frey on Wed, December 3, 2008 2:21 PM · Filed under Toronto , CleanTech · No Comments

Toronto-based Zerofootprint has introduced a system called the Enterprise Carbon Manager, based on the Microsoft .NET framework, to enable companies to monitor their carbon footprint. The system works by collecting data from global emissions sources, providing real-time data feeds. By assembing and calculating all the data available, enterprises can get a handle on how much carbon they are responsible for and how it can be audited. The platform runs on a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, taking the buren off of intra-corporate IT departments and offloading the computing onto Zerofootprint.

With data centres and other hidden emmiters under more scrutiny as a source of global warming, Zerofootprint is likely to be a popular service amongst green-conscious companies looking to reduce their carbon footprint without cutting the bottom line.

Company:: Zerofootprint
Website:: http://zerofootprint.net
Location:: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The Zerofootprint group of companies empowers communities, businesses, and organizations to live ingeniously in a low carbon world. We do green.... [more]

Dont ask for whom the bell .tels

Posted by Warren Frey on Wed, December 3, 2008 1:50 PM · Filed under Denver-Boulder , Portland , Seattle , Calgary , Edmonton , Montréal , Ottawa , Toronto , Vancouver , Victoria , Kitchener-Waterloo , Domain Names · No Comments

Telnic, the registry operator for the new .tel top level domain, is accepting applications as of today for trademarks form businesses and organizations worldwide. Until February 2nd, 2009, trademark owenrs can register their brand using the .tel domain, a presence Telnic CEO Khashayar Mahdavi described as "the most significant innovation in the domain name system since .com".

Unlike .com, which merely stakes virtual space on the web, .tel is a link to contact information. And unlike a phone book, .tel can contains not only phone numbers, physical addresses and email addresses, but also links to one's Second Life or Xbox Live presence, or their Facebook or Myspace page. Individuals can also choose to have their location online, opening up new possibilities both in loss of privacy and marketing opportunity.

Initial registration, according to a post in the New York Times, is open only to businesses and other organizations, and will cost $400 a year. After February 3rd, the "land rush" will begin with registration open to individuals at $150 a year. That period ends on March 24th, when anyone else can register a .tel domain for $20 a year.