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Startup Visa Program for Canada to be Announced Today?

11:30am 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 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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Pebble Raises $3 Million from 21,000 People in 5 Days. Is Crowdfunding the New Venture Capitalism?

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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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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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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Canadian Entrepreneur Brian Wong Turns 21, His Startup Kiip Turns One

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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Toronto’s Siren Advertising Invests Own Money into Client Ad Campaigns in Exchange for Revenue Share

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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Sony Beats Pebble to the Punch with SmartWatch, but Will it Flop?

After being unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show 2012 in January, Sony's SmartWatch debuted in the UK, and today became available in the US. It's a pretty direct competitor to Pebble, a watch created by Canadian entrepreneur Eric Migicovsky. With Sony's SmartWatch out now, and the Pebble not slated to launch until the fall, is Eric's startup already doomed?

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Launch Calling for Canadian Startups to Demo in Silicon Valley

In an effort to showcase how technology is improving education and changing the way we all learn, our friends at Launch have just announced a pretty awesome event on June 12 and 13 in Silicon Valley for startups who are working on disrupting the education space, and they are extending it to Canadian startups as well.

100 startups will be given the opportunity to demo, out of which 25 will be selected to present at the event. Here are the three best ways to secure a spot on stage:

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