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Vancouver's Dyaptive Systems acquired by JDS Uniphase

Vancouver's Dyaptive Systems announced this morning that it has been acquired by JDS Uniphase Corp. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed however JDSU has indicated that they plan to retain Dyaptive's 40 employees as well as its offices in Vancouver.

Dyaptive is a provider of capacity test solutions for 2G, 3G and 4G wireless networks. With mass adoption of mobile devices, wireless equipment manufacturers and service providers need network performance visibility that extends to the end user experience.

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A Banner Year for Canada: These Were 2011's Canadian Tech Acquisitions

This morning we opened voting to The First Annual Canadian Startup Awards and among the categories is the Most Significant Canadian Acquisition of 2011.

Unlike the five other Startup Award categories, the list of candidates was limited as there were only so many acquisitons during the year. Luckily Canada had a huge year and our readers had plenty to choose from. And you can vote for one of the three finalists here.

As a Canadian tech site we're happy to report that we had acquisiton activity from coast-to-coast with Zynga shopping in Victoria, BC on Vancouver Island and both Salesforce and IBM taking their shopping cart to Frederiction, New Brunswick. Not surprisingly Toronto lead the way with 16 acquisitions followed by Techvibes hometown Vancouver with seven, Montreal with four, Waterloo with three, and Edmonton and Ottawa with one each.

Of the multinationals shopping in Canada for tech, IBM led the way with three acquistions followed by Google, RiM, Salesforce, and Zynga with two each. Twitter and Groupon also picked up Canadian technology in single deals.

After the jump is a timeline of all the acquisitions that Techvibes covered during 2011.

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Soundcloud Raises $50M, Valued at $200M, Mobile Music Industry Still Wide Open

Soundcloud, known as the "YouTube for audio" ranks 281st in Canada and 364th globally according to Alexa. Techcrunch reports they've acquired a new round of funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers at $50 million with a company valuation of $200 million. 

Gigaom also reports that the mobile app that SoundCloud released has added another million people to the platform. 

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Check out the Canadian Startup Award finalists and vote for your favourite

With so many talented entrepreneurs and innovative startups right here in Canada, Techvibes deemed it a necessity to recognize, honour, and celebrate these people and their companies. Presented by KPMG, The First Annual Canadian Startup Awards will do that.

Techvibes received well over 1,000 nominations across the six categories via comment, email and tweet. So the finalists were determined by you, our readers. In the case of the overall startup category we weren't able to narrow if down to three finalists which demonstrates the high quality of the current crop of Canadian startups.

Voting is open until 11:59pm PST on Tuesday, January 17th and the winners will be announced on Friday, January 20th. One vote per person.

Mobilicity Eyes IPO in 2012

If Wind Mobile doesn't buy Mobilicity, the startup wireless carrier may just go public instead. The Globe and Mail yesterday reported that the discount carrier is planning to launch an initial public offering in the first quarter of 2012.

The IPO would aim to raise $100 million but would be delayed should the stock market remain in its currently volatile state. The share price would be positioned between $15 and $20. The company, legally known as DAVE Wireless (its founder and former CEO, since resigned, was Dave Dobbin), already has several investment banks in place for the launch, sources say.

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iNovia raises $110 Million Fund for Internet, Digital Media, and Communications

iNovia Capital announced this morning that it has raised $110 million for its third fund, iNovia Investment Fund III L.P. (“iNovia III”).

iNovia III’s investment focus is in information technology companies in North America. The initial investment size can be as low as only a few hundred thousand in seed stage companies with more mature investments as high as $10 million over the life of a given company.

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Canadian Cloud Startup shines at CloudBeat in San Francisco

Earlier this month Vancouver's Xiimo was one of ten finalists at VentureBeat's CloudBeat Conference in San Francisco. Tagged as one of the most disruptive cloud based technology companies by a panel of cloud experts and venture capital teams, Xiimo beat out 100+ other software startups in the cloud space.

Xiimo makes smart tools for small businesses allowing them to publish local promotions, accept mobile payments, create loyalty programs and benefit from smart analytics. All from a single, easy-to-use dashboard.

Xiimo is currently in private alpha moving towards private beta in February and public beta by March 2012. They have also hinted at a major partnership announcement that could accelerate traction very soon.

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InvestorSense helps investors discover and evaluate emerging companies

In September Techvibes reported that Microsoft's Dennis Pilarinos was leaving Microsoft after 9 years of service culminating with the lead role at the Microsoft Development Center in Vancouver.

Yesterday Pilarinos, along with co-founders Eric Fleischman and Mark Bice, quietly launched his first post-Microsoft project to the public - InvestorSense.

InvestorSense helps investors discover and evaluate emerging companies that are aligned to their investment strategies. Think Crunchbase meets Angel List, but based on your personal criteria and tapped into your social graph via Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter.

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Help a Canadian Angel get recognized by TechCrunch

Today is the last day that TechCrunch is taking nominations for their 2011 Crunchies.

This year's Crunchies are the fifth annual competition and award ceremony recognizing and celebrating the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year. The Crunchies is co-hosted by GigaOm, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch. Best of all, the internet community is invited to choose who wins.

Thanks to Bob Chaworth-Musters of the Angel Forum, Vancouver-based angel investor Boris Wertz might have a shot to be recognized down south in the Angel of the Year Category.

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GameON: Finance 2012 looks at Accelerators and Massive Damage

GameON: Finance is North America's top business forum for the interactive entertainment industry, connecting developers, innovators, investors and industry leaders. And it's returning to Toronto in January.

Delegates will gather for two days of keynotes, case-studies, lectures and panel discussions providing insight on topics like emerging opportunities in game project financing and deal-making across platforms.

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