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Mobovivo Launches Social TV Platform to Utilize Second Screen

Mobovivo announced the launch of StayTuned, its new social television platform, at the 2012 NAB Show in Las Vegas this week. Mobovivo, which has offices in Calgary and Toronto, says that StayTuned allows producers, broadcasters, and film studios to connect with fans engaging with second screens. It was found recently that up to 88% of mobile device owners are utilizing a second screen while watching TV.

“Networks are losing audience engagement to games, Twitter and Facebook,” says Mobovivo founder and CEO, Trevor Doerksen. “Now, content producers and broadcasters can have a branded destination on the second screen to engage with fans using game mechanics and social media.”

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Meet Canada's New Preferred Marketing Developers for Facebook

Facebook today announced the combination of the Preferred Developed Consultant and Marketing API programs and the subsequent launch of the newly minted Preferred Marketing Developer program. There are now 232 of these developers spanning 35 countires. One of those countries is, of course, Canada.

So who are the Canadian preferred developers? The most notable PMD is Invoke Media, which was created by Vancouver entrepreneur Ryan Holmes—now the CEO of HootSuite, a $200-million, Canadian Startup Awards finalist—several years ago. Invoke, which is hiring, is a full-service digital agency specializing in social media, web, and mobile. Its most recent project is Foodee.

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Toronto Beta Startup StoreMaker Rebrands as FeedSeed, Prepares for Launch This Summer

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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Pushing $4 Million, Allerta's Pebble Becomes Most-Funded Kickstarter Campaign Ever

We've been following Pebble closely since it launched a seemingly normal Kickstarter campaign one week ago. But after reaching its original goal of $100,000 in just two hours, we knew this was going to be a legendary run.

Pebble, a smartwatch co-created by the Canadian entrepreneur who founded Waterloo-born Allerta (also the maker of inPulse, a BlackBerry watch), has seen its crowdfunding campaign soar off the charts. After hitting $1 million in a day, it hit $2 million in two days. Then $3 million, at which point we wondered - is crowdfunding the new venture capitalism?

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Toronto's Engag.io is a Social Conversations Dashboard to Manage Your Comments

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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Calgary’s Minigroup Brings in Superheroes to Gamify Marketing

Ready or not, this is the decade of gamification.

If you’re unfamiliar, gamification is the process of using game-like elements such as challenges, levels, badges, points and rewards to engage users, solve problems, and create pleasurable brand experiences. Being a gamer myself, I’m more likely to engage in an activity if it is fun. So when my twitter feed was flooded with quirky tweets like “Kapow! These masked men would keep their secret identities secret with Minigroup’s multiple profile feature," I was compelled to see what the fuss was all about.

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Montreal's Vanilla Forums Launches New Commenting Feature to Help Cultivate Online Communities

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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Need a Goalie for Your Next Hockey Game? There's an App for That

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.

Vancouver Startup Alchemoo Puts Instagram Images on Business Cards

A couple Vancouverites have tapped into a couple APIs to come up with a pretty cool mashup called Alchemoo which turns your Instagram collection into business cards and mini cards.

There’s not much to say about us, really. We love using our phones to capture and share the amazing things we see each day. We live in beautiful Vancouver, Canada, which makes it pretty easy to find Instagram-worthy shots on a regular basis. We figured why not bring those images off of our phones and into the real world? And, that's how Alchemoo was born.

Created by software engineer Eoin Hennessy and communications consultant Alia Lamaadar, Alchemoo taps into the Moo Print API and the Instagram API and is proudly Made in Vancouver.

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