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Canadian Startup Makes Fourth Batch of 500 Startups

Dave McClure's 500 Startups announced their fourth batch of startups for the Spring 2012 cohort today and Vancouver's Storypanda made the cut.

Storypanda is making kids stories collaborative by by allowing families to read, create and share their own stories on the iPad.

While the Storypanda team has already been working out of the Mountain View incubator program for over a month, today's announcement couldn't have come at a better time.

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Mobilemania: The Future of Mobile Gaming with XMG's Ray Sharma

XMG Studio sits atop the Trader’s Bank building at 67 Yonge Street. Once the highest skyscraper around, today it serves as the beautiful home to young organizations like XMG.

XMG was founded by Ray Sharma in 2009. The focal point of Sharma’s office is the pedestal desk, which really stands out in contrast to his wall decorated with Space Invaders graphics.

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BlackBerry Users to Save on Travel Time with TomTom Partnership

Earlier today at the CTIA Wireless Conference in New Orleans RIM announced a partnership with TomTom that will see the navigation systems provider's HD Traffic service make its way onto BlackBerry devices.

BlackBerry Traffic is now powered by TomTom HD Traffic, giving customers access to the most accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date traffic information on the market.

Additionally, TomTom maps and location content is used in BlackBerry Maps, and for BlackBerry Locate Services, which gives 3rd party software developers access to the mapping and traffic information for their own apps.

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Crowdfunding Raised $1.5 Billion Last Year, Poised to Raise $2.8 Billion This Year [Study]

Crowdfunding platforms around the world raised roughly $1.5 billion combined last year, Massolution says. An industry report released by the research group says that there were 350 crowdfunding platforms at the end of 2011, up 50% from the start of the year.

Massolution says that approximately one million campaigns were hosted by these platforms, for an average of nearly 2,900 campaigns per platform. The average amount of money that a single campaign raises is less than $700, however. Although we all know the story of Pebble, which is on pace to raise $10 million from Kickstarter.

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Patent Troll Slams RIM with Infringement Lawsuit Over Something You Wouldn't Expect

When will RIM catch a break? It was only last month that Dutch semiconductor company NXP sued the Waterloo-based BlackBerry maker for patent infringement. Now, a patent troll has emerged from the shadows to kick RIM while it's down.

Seattle-based shell company Hunter Point Ventures has come forth to claim that RIM's smartphones violate a "method for musical playlist selection in a portable audio device" that it owns. Specifically, HPV says RIM is infringing on US Patent 7667123.

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Pebble Smartwatch Gets Future-Proofed With Bluetooth Upgrade… But Only 10,000 Are Left!

Pebble, the smartwatch from Waterloo-born startup Allerta, which was founded by a Vancouver entrepreneur, will be getting an upgrade in technology Bluetooth 4.0—and it hasn't even been made yet. The wrist device, which is by far the most-funded Kickstarter campaign of all time, is now "future-proofed," as the Pebble team describes it in their most recent update on Kickstarter.

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The Trojan Horse of Huawei

Huawei, the Chinese owned telecommunications equipment manufacturer that provides Telus and Bell with LTE towers, is finding itself coming under a barrage of scrutiny in Australia and the United States over cyber security fears.

Huawei and Telus inked a deal in February. In late March the Australian government blocked Huawei from bidding on contracts for the country’s new national broadband network, a $38-billion megaproject, citing security concerns.

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