Google has officially launched its Earth Outreach program in Canada.
Google Earth Outreach helps nonprofit organizations using Google Earth and Maps. The program has highlighted climate change with Al Gore and brought Street View to the Amazon, among other projects.
The Canadian program has plans to work with aboriginal communities in BC, as well as projects involving the Boreal Forest, Arctic regions, and the David Suziuki Foundation.
This morning, Environics Communications hosted a panel discussion at MaRS in Toronto entitled “The B2B Social World.” Digital B2B marketing experts from Backup Heros, Wave Accounting, Sequentia Environics, and MaRS sat on a panel to discuss the successes and failures that they’ve faced when using social media to promote their businesses.
The conversation started by identifying the best channels to use for B2B social media marketing. The panellists agreed that Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, and online communities are some of the most effective tools for reaching potential customers and building relationships.
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The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is going to be widely available across Canada from the big three carriers, Rogers, Telus, and Bell. The phone will include the new Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system and is expected to hit Bell stores in early December, so you can start pre-ordering just in time for Christmas. If you're with Rogers or Telus, you might just have to wait until 2012.
Samsung in Canada now represents 24-26% of the overall mobile market and 21% of the smartphone market according to the IDC and other sources.
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This article was originally published on Smedio.
There’s no doubt that Google+ started on the right note – it came, saw and conquered the hearts of people all over the world. It had the wow factor and it hit other social media networks where it hurts the most.
And then Facebook hit back in style, launching one innovative feature after the other. Google+ responded back by opening itself to the enterprise with the launch of Google+ Pages and critics were back to their usual best – pitting Facebook Pages against Google+ Pages.
But now it seems Google’s had enough of Facebook vs. Google+ comparisons. Google, the world’s leading online search giant, has now changed its standard pitch and is saying that Google+ is not a social network that competes directly with Facebook.
As expected, people have interpreted this announcement in their own ways. Some believe Google is afraid of pitting Google+ against Facebook while others say the online search giant is now planning to market the broader Google+ ecosystem rather than just the social networking aspect.
In my opinion, it’s fair to say that Google+ is much more than being just a social network and here’s why.
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This article was originally published on Smedio.
When Google+ launched, it was widely projected as the next big Facebook Killer. While that didn’t happen, Google did a remarkable job of exploiting Facebook’s weaknesses with innovative features such as Circles and Hangouts. The world’s leading social network eventually hit back in style and as time passed, the initial euphoria over Google+ begin to fade away.
All this while, I maintained that the true litmus test for Google+ would be in the business segment when it takes on the world’s leading social network head-to-head. To that effect, I questioned whether Google+ can stand the test of time and the intense competition from Facebook or will it die in its own course.
Yesterday, Google formally launched Pages for Google+, thereby setting the stage for a titanic clash with Facebook Pages. The idea is to let people interact with a business much as they would with people over the network. While Facebook Pages eventually proved to be a game changer, the fate of Google+ Pages remains to be seen.
None the less, Google and Facebook competing hand-on to grab a lion’s share of the enterprise segment promises to be a mouthwatering prospect.
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Vancouver's Mobify announced last week that they’ve been selected by Google for their new GoMo program.
Google’s GoMo initiative is designed to help businesses embrace mobile by providing them with the tools and resources they need to make their websites more mobile-friendly.
Mobify is among 11 solutions recommended by Google in their Get Started section and the only Canadian one.
“We’re honored to be recognized by Google as a leading solution for creating mobile websites,” said Mobify CEO, Igor Faletski. “Our vision for One Web with full search, social, and email marketing integrity for websites whether they’re accessed from desktops or mobile devices aligns perfectly with the GoMo program.”
The Mobify platform powers some of the largest sites on the mobile web and now with Google's GoMo endorsement they'll be adding to that customer base significantly.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an integral part of digital marketing. Canada.topseos.com, the independent authority on search vendors in Canada, just released the list of the ten best enterprise search engine optimization companies in their rankings for the month of November 2011.
Mediative, part of the Yellow Pages Group, was ranked first overall. “Mediative is unique in the SEO industry, because we are able to integrate our understanding of search engine user behaviour, as well as website user behaviour into our SEO projects. Our research capabilities have helped medium sized clients all the way to Fortune 500 clients, understand their customer search behaviour,” says Mohamed Kahlain, VP Products and Marketing, Mediative.
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With the 2011 edition of the World's Most Powerful People now released, it's interesting to observe how potent the technology industry is. While the majority of the listees are leaders of big countries like Russia and major cities like New York, tech leaders remain affluent even on global scale. Aside from perhaps financial industry, no space stands out in the list quite like tech. So the question must be asked then—who, among the techies, are the most powerful of all?
1. Bill Gates (#5 overall)
Mr. Gates is much more about philanthropy than technology these days. In fact, Forbes lists his organization as the Bill & Melina Gates Foundation, not Microsoft, the highly impacting software giant he founded decades ago. Still, it's hard to ignore his historical significance in the tech space—and his tremendous wealth is not lost on Forbes.
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Last May Techvibes covered 7Geese from Vancouver's Paltech Solutions. Last week they announced that 7Geese is now available in the Google Apps marketplace.
7Geese is a social performance management software that empowers employees to better achieve goals, get recognized, and receive continuous feedback in an engaging social environment. Traditional performance management process are slow, painful, and in-effective. With 7Geese, we make performance management real-time and continuous, allowing ongoing feedback, recognition, and goal tracking.
With similarilites to both Toronto-based Rypple and enterprise social network Yammer, 7Geese is an company-wide social network with an emphasis on achieving goals and getting things done. They're gamifying the process and targeting companies that aren't interested in rigid goal setting, performance tracking, and project management software.
Over the next few months 7Geese will be integrating extensively with Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar applications.
Toronto-based Acuity Ads says they have become the fastest growing company in their respective advertising industry since launching in April. They are further revolutionizing the industry through their demand side platform that maximizes display advertising technology through consumer profiling, real-time bidding and machine learning technology in order to create connection with the consumer.
While they couldn't release any numbers, some of Acuity’s impressive clients include Dell, Sears, The Bank of Montreal, Ally, and RBC Financial Group.
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