97% of teenagers agree that texting while driving is dangerous. Two-thirds agree that it is very dangerous.
And yet... half of them do it anyway.
This alarming statistic is the result of a nationwide survey conducted by telecom behemoth AT&T in the US. The research found that a shocking 43% of American teens have texted while driving in the past three months.
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Yesterday, we reported on news that Canada's banking industry was moving forward with a plan to transform smartphones into wallets. Just one day later, Rogers and CIBC have revealed a partnership.
CIBC customers whose smartphones run on the Rogers wireless network will be able to pay for goods at retailers with their smartphone instead of credit or debit cards. Data for MasterCard and Visa charge cards can be loaded onto the mobile devices, which will send a signal to a small receiver near the cash register at participating retailers.
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According to Report Linker, the global market for baby products is worth an amazing $7 billion annually, taking into account an estimated 4 million babies born each year (works out to ~$1800/baby/year). Rogers, it would seem, would like to branch into that market.
In partnership with a U.S. biomedical products company, Exmovere Holdings Ltd., Rogers will provide the Exmobaby, a smart-pyjamas that monitor your baby’s vital signs and movement. Using a range of sensors, and powered by a AAA battery, the Exmobaby will measure your baby’s temperature, perform electrocardiograms (ECGs) on your baby to monitor heart rate, and use an accelerometer to detect movement.
The data can be monitored from your mobile devices wirelessly, and Rogers will be the exclusive provider of this service at a cost of $9.99/month. Currently, only evaluation kits are available for retailers that want to carry the product, but the outfits should be available this fall for $149.
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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 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.
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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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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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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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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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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