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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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RIM Launches BlackBerry Screen Reader to Support Customers with Disabilities

This web page uses ActiveX controls that work only in Microsoft Internet Explorer. To ensure that BlackBerry Screen Reader is correctly downloaded to your BlackBerry, this site is not designed to work with any other Internet browsers. If you cannot use Internet Explorer, you may be able to download the software directly to your BlackBerry smartphone.

Waterloo's Research In Motion today launched BlackBerry Screen Reader. The free software application helps customers who are blind or visually impaired operate their smartphone. RIM says that Screen Reader provides an audible output based on visual information displayed on a BlackBerry.

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With 11 Days to Go and $8.8 Million Raised So Far, Can Pebble Crack $10 Million on Kickstarter?

Vancouver-born entrepreneur Eric Migicovsky has now raised nearly $9 million for his product, Pebble, a smartwatch for iPhones and Android smartphones, from funding site Kickstarter. Pebble, made by Waterloo-born Allerta, also the maker of InPulse for BlackBerry, has raised three times more money than any other Kickstarter campaign in history. And it's still not done.

With 59,000 backers and $8.8 million raised, can Pebble reach the unheard of milestone of $10 million in its final 10 days? After blitzing to $1 million in a single day, Pebble maintained its blistering momentum, reaching $3 million in just three days.

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The Interactive Shift: Mobile Sensor-Based and Physical-Based Tangible Interaction

QR Codes, augmented reality, NFC, motion-based video game technology, RFID, and more have been much debated real world-virtual world technologies. They allow for users with smartphones to interact with mobile communication technologies independently. While all are at various levels of popularity, Ana Serrano in the 2012 Stratford Report believes the latter are just first-generation examples of mobile interactivity.

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