At the 2012 London Book Fair, the CEO and founder of Toronto startup Wattpad was fighting for the resolution that digital startups are the future of the publishing industry. On a team with Lulu.com's Bob Young, Allen Lau debated against traditional publishers Evan Schnittman of Hachette and Fionnuala Duggan of CourseSmart.
read more11:30am EST Update: News Release - Minister Kenney launches consultations for a new “start-up visa” for immigrant entrepreneurs
According to an advisory issued by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's office yesterday, the Canadian government is expected to announce in Toronto today the next step in launching a Startup Visa program.
While the details are still vague, Kenney and Dragon’s Den TV star Kevin O’Leary are apparently scheduled to make an announcement today regarding a new system aimed at identifying and speeding the path for "high value innovators."
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Toronto startup StoreMaker is rebranding itself as FeedSeed. Founded in August 2011, the startup has been planning a public launch in July.
“After a long search and much debate about different names, our team decided on FeedSeed,” said Mike Cunningham, CEO of FeedSeed. “We feel that it better explains our platform than StoreMarker did and to be honest, FeedSeed is easier to say.”
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Hyperdrive is Communitech's new $30 million technology startup incubator based in Ontario. When it was first announced a week ago, Communitech didn't reveal any of the funders. Today, they have.
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Last week, we wrote that Pebble—a smartwatch developed by Canadian Entrepreneur Eric Migicovsky—raised $1 million from 7,300 backers in just 24 hours on Kickstarter. Then we went on to report that, by the end of day two, that number had doubled to $2 million from 14,400 backers. This, despite the campaign's original goal of only $100,000, and the fact that the campaign still doesn't end for over a month.
While the pledging has slowed somewhat, Pebble has now cracked the next major milestone: $3 million. It took only five days to reach this number, 5,000% of the original goal.
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There are so many blogs and media outlets where you can leave comments. People oftentimes post comments on a large number of websites and are bound to forget about some of those discussions. Worse, it’s hard to remember where you’ve commented.
That’s why Engag.io was created: so that one has a central social conversations dashboard to respond to all comments. While many websites use Disqus, which does notify you when someone has responded to your comment, it is only integrated into a handful of online media sites. With Engag.io, you’ll be able to connect to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, HackerNews, Tumblr, and Google to start.
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Montreal's Vanilla Forums has announced the "general availability" of a new commenting feature. The new feature allows publishers to use Vanilla's platform to power blog comments and "turn those transient commenters into engaged community members."
When an article is published, Vanilla says, a new discussion thread is automatically created in the community forum and commenters can then participate in further conversations with each other in the community. Any comment posted to the blog or to the corresponding thread in the community is displayed in both places simultaneously, the Canadian startup explains.
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Vancouver's Hockey Community is a platform for recreational hockey players to find ice time, goalies and more—no matter what city you are in. Last week, they launched a new iPhone App that makes it even easier to find hockey games close to you.
And more important, if your team needs a goalie in a pinch they can help. Simply pick a location and request a goalie; Hockey Community will notify all the goalies in the area and fill your net.
Every section of the iPhone app is enhanced by smart algorithms that suggest teammates or potential players based on your previous games. And they use Twilio to make it easy for you to invite your buddies by text with a one-click button.
Looking for an Android version? Hockey Community is using Vancouver technology Phonegap, which will allow them to release an Android App in the coming months.
Yesterday, Brian Wong turned 21. Most people haven't accomplished much by that age—they're still figuring out their way through school, working a part time job, partying on weekends. They're not thinking about growing a business, building an empire, changing the world. Brian Wong is different.
The Vancouverite's entrepreneurial blood runs thick. The founder of Kiip, a mobile rewards network, is famous for being the youngest entrepreneur to ever raise venure capital funding for a startup when he was only 19 years old.
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Six years ago, Max Entin, founder of Toronto-based Siren Advertising started his own outsourced software development firm. When his developers had free time on their hands, they would work on creating proprietary products that the company could sell.
That’s when Entin’s team started to experiment with online advertising. Soon, they realized that they could make more money by focusing on online advertising, rather than software development. So, the company pivoted into Siren Advertising.
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