The Biggest Challenge for Tech Startups? Recruitment and Retention [Infographic]

When you think of the formidable challenges tech startup CEOs face, a few obvious things come to mind, such as raising capital from poker-faced investors and trying to sell your brand new product to fleeting consumers. It's hard to build a company from scratch. But if the saying that a business is simply the people behind it holds true, then perhaps it's not surprising that PwC found CEOs' biggest challenge these days is recruiting and retaining talent.

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Women Vanishing From Technology Industry, Survey Reveals

Technology has been one of the slower sectors to widely adopt women in the workplace, particularly in senior positions. It seemed for a while that progress was being made—but now we're taking backward steps.

The number of women in senior tech positions  in North American companies is down this year—which marks the second year in a row of reduced female numbers. According to a survey by the Harvey Nash Group, just 9% of US chief information officers are female, down from 11% in 2011 and 12% in 2010.

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Montreal's LiveRides.ca Mobilizes Ridesharing Network with Free iPhone App

Quebec-based LiveRides.ca, a ridesharing network, has launched an iPhone app. The free mobile app will allow long distance commuters to find and offer car rides anywhere in Canada from their smartphone.

 “Canadians have traditionally stayed away from other forms of ridesharing. Up until now, drivers and passengers didn’t have the ability to see who they’d share a ride with,” said Steven LaChance, co-founder of LiveRides.ca. "With LiveRides social profiles, drivers and passengers now have the ability to view each other’s profiles to help them make a more informed decision about their travel partner. By sharing a ride, people save gas and money, reduce carbon emissions and meet new friends.” 

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Wind Mobile Losing Gusto as Growth Comes to Grinding Halt

Canadian discount wireless carrier Wind Mobile added only 12,364 new subscribers during its last quarter, the company reported today. This is up just 3% from the previous quarter.

The startup carrier now has 415,000 subscribers, despite once boasting about a lofty goal of having one million by this time. Wind is also struggling to increase ARPU—it's up only 2.2% year-over-year.

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All Teenagers Know the Dangers of Texting While Driving, But Half Still Do It Anyway: Study

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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Rogers and CIBC the First Bank and Telco to Partner for New Mobile Wallet Technology in Canada

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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Rogers To Sell Smart Baby Clothes, Make You A Lazier Parent

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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Grand 2012 Offers Glimpse Into the Future

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's Engagio Evolves into 'Social Conversations Network,' Adds Chrome Extension to Make Gmail Social

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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