QuickMobile Launches Analytics Dashboard with Real-Time Data for Event Marketers

Event marketers and organizers will now have access to real-time analytics data to improve event logistics and measure success with the release of QuickMobile’s new Analytics Dashboard. Accessible through the Vancouver startup's content management system, the new dashboard is available to all customers and delivers hourly updates of data captured from event attendees’ use of QuickMobile’s mobile meeting apps.

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Google Becoming Irrelevant: Social Search to Own 70% of Searching by 2013

Google’s search marketing services may be becoming irrelevant due to the rise of social search. That’s in addition to a failure to recognize that Google+ cannot be the sole solution to social search with an always increasing number of web properties.

Info-Tech Research Group expects that Google, which held 90% of the search market in 2010, will only hold 30% in 2013, due to the rising impact of social search. Most major research companies have struggled to recognize this as they measure search market share by search engine rather than the whole search paradigm.

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Canadian Startups Share Stories of Success and Failure at Mesh 2012

Yesterday marked Day 2 of the Mesh12 Conference in Toronto, Ontario. There were some inspiring and passionate presentations during the morning session, with speakers like Rebecca MacKinnon, author of The Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom, Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, David Weinberger, co-author of Too Big to Know and The Cluetrain Manifesto, and Canadian Dr. Michael Evans, founder of the New Health Design Lab.

Mesh12 Conference organizers Mark Evans and Stuart MacDonald moderated an afternoon breakout Q&A session entitled “Tales from the Trenches. Stories from Startups” which boasted an impressive list of Canadian startup founder speakers including: Aliza Pulver, Andy Yang, Evgeny Tchebotarev, Dups Wijayawardhana and Heather Payne.

Below are their stories – from getting started to surviving the twists and turns of running a business:

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Toronto's SecureKey Raises $30 Million from Intel, Visa, MasterCard, Rogers, and Telus

Toronto's SecureKey Technologies announced this morning that it has raised $30 million in growth capital to fund the commercial rollout of its innovative online and mobile authentication solutions.  

The financing round was led by Intel Capital and included new investors Visa Inc., MasterCard, Discover Financial Services, Rogers Venture Partners LLC, and TELUS Corporation.

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Success of Bait Cars Inspires Laptop and Bicycle Spinoffs (That May Even Get a Reality TV Show)

Bait cars have been so successful in capturing thieves in BC that the system has inspired spinoffs for bait computers and bait bicycles. In fact, a team of youth in Vancouver is developing a reality television show based on a bicycle with a GPS-broadcasting device hidden inside the frame.

Meanwhile, RCMP in the Vancouver suburb of Maple Ridge this week announced the recovery of four laptops stolen from local schools, thanks to tracking devices installed by the school district. It was the technology's first real-world test and passed with flying colours.

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