Technology

Ten Canadian software companies to watch

by Martin · Jul 6, 2007

IDC Canada has highlighted ten emerging Canadian software companies in a new research study (press release; research store). According to IDC, these companies have “the potential to make an impact in the information and communications technology (ICT) market”.

I haven’t gotten my hands on the study but a ComputerWorld Canada article provides some very high level pointers on criteria and take-aways. In the article, executives from a few of the selected companies talk about what they see as key factors to success, including:

Networking through industry associations and research groups
Seeking the right partnerships
Building a strong customer base
Staying close and listening to the customers while keeping an eye on the evolving market
Clarity of vision

The ten Canadian companies examined in the study are:

Toronto Technology Week – This is my City!

by Martin · May 31, 2007

As part of her opening keynote for Toronto Technology Week, High Road Communications co-founder and president Mia Wedgbury (my boss) showed a video with Jay Goldman of Radiant Core, Mark Relph of Microsoft Canada (High Road client) and Ken Nickerson of iBinary talking about their view on tech in Toronto and what we can do to promote the region as a centre of excellence. Here’s the video that I uploaded to Soapbox. For Mia’s perspective, see here.

Video: Toronto Tech Week – This is my City!

The blind camera: Taking somebody else’s photos

by Martin · Feb 11, 2007

The networked camera has no objective. No lense, no zoom. It’s just a black box with a button and some electronics inside. “Buttons is a camera that actually shoots other’s photos, taking the notion of the networked camera to the extreme.” Sascha Pohflepp, a student of visual communication at the Berlin University of the Arts, has created it:

Photography has become a networked process. It no longer ends with pasting prints into an album. Instead, making them public through services like Flickr is rapidly becoming one of the main ways how we treat our visual memories. The photographic process extends from preserving a moment to an act of telecommunication, with numerous implications on how we perceive reality, how we make our memories and how we create a narrative from it.

If you liked Michael Wesch’s video (“Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us”) that has been posted all over the blogosphere recently, you might also enjoy the concept of Between Blinks & Buttons. You can watch a video here.

A library of SMS messages

by Martin · Feb 9, 2007

A team of researchers from the Technical University of Dresden, Germany, and GWT-TUD GmbH, an affiliated company, is building a library of SMS messages. They are hoping to collect 100,000 messages with several million words by April.

Instead of testing mobile applications and devices in an artificial environment with artificial data, the researchers want to collect, analyze and use real text messages to help make technology more “natural, intuitive and human”.

On its German-language website textforscher.de (German for “text researchers”) the team is looking for people who want to earn 10 Euros for an hour of entering sample text messages. The money can also be donated to charity.

Jon Arnold and Marc Robins team up

by Martin · Jan 23, 2007

Jon Arnold (blog), Canada’s independent voice on IP communications, has entered into a partnership with Marc Robins (blog) that “includes the two firms joining forces to provide an array of marketing, communications, strategy consulting and market research services to their growing roster of IP communications technology vendors and service providers.” They are also planning to launch a new joint electronic newsletter. This will be good. More in the press release.

Red Herring comes to Canada

by Martin · Dec 20, 2006

Looks like May and June will be busy months for tech people. After ICT Toronto recently declared the last week in May to be “Toronto Technology Week” (featuring mesh, BarCamp and the Canadian New Media Awards), Red Herring today announcend the launch of Red Herring Canada and its own tech conference in Montreal from June 13 to 15.

“With Red Herring Canada, we will help shine a light on a whole new crop of Canadian technology innovators who deserve more recognition.”

Joel Dreyfuss, Editor in Chief, Red Herring

I haven’t seen any details beyond the standard press release yet. But that’s good to hear. There are already a number of great events and awards for technology innovators in Canada, for example CIPA. But we can definitely use more help. Welcome to Canada, Red Herring!

Does Europe lead in using web technology for grassroots democracy?

by Martin · Dec 10, 2006

On Friday, members of a German grassroots democracy project launched a new website called Abgeordnetenwatch.de (that’s “MPwatch” in English), which allows people to find the members of the German federal parliament for their region, read about their voting records, and get in contact with them.

A similar site was first launched for the federal state of Hamburg in 2004. Now they have expanded it to the federal parliament. They have also received funding from BonVenture and attracted major media partners in German news portals Spiegel.de, Tagesspiegel.de and Welt.de. According to an article in Welt.de, not all MPs are happy about this development. One politician said the site is indirectly pressuring politicans to come up with responses or get a reputation of being “anti-democrats” (I’d agree that there might be unrealistic expectations for the speed of response but, in general, this politician might want to read his job description again. Maybe he skipped the part about communicating with constituents).

A little while ago, I wrote about another German grassroots democracy project, where people can submit questions to the German chancellor and get them answered by the Federal Press Office.

Today I read about great projects in the UK (hat tip to Neville Hobson). Simon Dickson has created a Google Map of all MPs in the United Kingdom, which links to a database of House of Commons Hansard Debates, Written Answers and Statements via an API by TheyWorkforYou.com. TheyWorkforYou.com is an awesome resource for citizens in the UK.

It is fascinating to see citizens – not governments – come up with all these ideas of using new web technology to make government and democracy more transparent and accessible.

Does Europe lead in this type of online grassroots democracy? What about Canada? And other countries? I am asking not as an accusation but because I have no idea about Canada yet and I’d like to find out more about developments. If you know about any projects, please let me know in the comment section or send me an email (see contact page).

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