Digital : Innovation + Job News

Ryerson University's Flybits research group, a team working in the school's Digital Media Zone, recently won a "Golden-idea" award for a head-mounted computer display designed for police and security officers.

"Police need access to information, and we usually give them a walkie-talkie," says Dr. Hossein Rahnama, the research director of Ryerson's DMZ. Officers typically need to stop what they are doing to call in requesting or relaying information before returning to the situation at hand. "With head-mounted displays, when they need information, they look at a small screen in front of their eyes and see maps, sensors, etc."

The idea was developed in partnership with the Swedish company Appear, for a challenge developed to find solutions for Motorola's Golden-i wireless headset. "This is a great achievement, showing how effective European and North American partners can work together," Rahnama says.

Such tools may be the future of computing, and not just for police. "This is the post-tablet future of computing," says Rahnama. "Right now, everyone is moving to tablets, but after that, the new generation will be wearable computing."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Dr. Hossein Rahnama, research director, Ryerson Digital Media Zone

The Academy of the Impossible, a new "open source social enterprise" that aims to provide new educational opportunities will officially open its Junction Triangle office and educational space with a party December 16. The project was created by executive director Emily Pohl-Weary and director Jesse Hirsch using a small grant from the Atkinson Foundation and support from Hirsch's organization Metaviews.

"I've been running this writing group, Parkdale Street Writers, since 2008, and we've been camping out in other people's spaces—the library, the community centre—and we were looking for a home," says Pohl-Weary. "Jesse Hirsch does a lot of talks and workshops on media and technology and he was looking for a place where he could turn two-hour workshops into longer-term learning and action. So the Academy of the Impossible is a space for those, and we're hoping we can incubate ideas and projects for students and members."

Pohl-Weary describes the model for the school as collaborative: "The people who use it will be creators and shapers. It more like a conversation, or a learning network, than a lecture."

The Academy launches with nine faculty members, including Hirsch and Pohl-Weary, but the executive director says that the innovative arts, cultural and social project is a labour of love for all of them. As time goes on, some of the programs will generate revenue, she says, and a fundraising strategy will emerge.

The December 16 opening party runs 5pm to 9pm at 231 Wallace Ave.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Emily Pohl-Weary, executive director, Academy of the Impossible

A Toronto-based startup founded by Ryerson alumni now offers the world's largest online database of distilled spirits. Daniel Donlonv of Distilus says the company now offers listings for more than 1,300 spirits from more than 100 countries.

Founded in 2009 by Marco Molinaro and business partner Nick Ajram, the company is currently in the process of rolling out a 2.0 version of its online catalogue. Donlon writes by email that one of the latest features of the site extends an innovation Distilus had previously offered only to Ontarians.

"When a user is looking to purchase a particular spirit, they can locate it on our site, determine the volume that they are interested in purchasing, and then view the LCBO locations nearest them that currently have it in stock. This feature has, however, just recently expanded to have universal appeal."

Now the site allows users all over the world to find beverages for sale in their own country. "Regardless of what country you live in, when you are viewing a product on the site, you will be able to find the retailers nearest you (sometimes in neighbouring countries, if it's not available in your home country) that carry that spirit, as well as pricing information that will be displayed in your home currency," Donlon says. "Also, if the option is available to you, you will be able to place an online order for the spirit and have it delivered to you by visiting the retailer's website."

Two years in, Donlon says the company has employed technological tools to create a worldwide virtual office. "We all use technology to communicate with one another to make our dream live, despite the fact that we live so far apart and are in different time zones.... Our dream of impacting the international liquor scene is becoming a reality."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Daniel Donlon, Marketing Intern, Distilus

Since launching in 2010, the Toronto-based home décor "flash sales" site Homesav.com has attracted more than 100,000 registered members. The first-year success, the company announced this fall, has drawn $1.2-million in financing from angel investors including the founding families of both Shopper's Drug Mart and ELTE.

Homesav.com will use the capital to grow its team—they are currently hiring for 10 positions—and launch initiatives to expand the company's reach.

The site offers high-end designer home furnishings at drastic discounts—the company says specials are as much as 80 per cent off the retail price—for a limited time. Currently handling more than 100 orders a day, Homesav.com just this week launched a month long "pop-up store" initiative with local new condo real estate listings site BuzzBuzzHome. The promotion will offer hand-picked items for sale to BuzzBuzzHome's users for one month, with new items being released for sale each week. Homesav.com says the partnership is an opportunity to extend its reach further into customers in the new condo-buying market.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Amanda Parker, public relations and media manager, Homesav.com

Founded in 2006 by Toronto entrepreneurs Alan Lau and Ivan Yuen, the mobile e-reading app company Wattpad, has a written an exciting story for itself this year.

"The easiest way to explain the concept is that it's like YouTube for books," says marketing coordinator Pamela Odina by phone. "People can share their own stories. We've got partnerships with some major publishers, there's a real mix of content."

That mix now extends to more than 1,000,000 free titles, and continues to grow. As does the company. This summer, Wattpad added their 1,000,000th registered user, and have added another 300,000 since then. But Odina says even those numbers don't tell the bigger story. "Many of our users are not registered, they're just reading. We get 7-million visitors a month."

On the heels of that success, the company announced $3.5 million in financing in September and moved into new office space near Yonge and Sheppard. Odina says the company is currently focused on building its team to develop more products and platforms. From the two founders five years ago, the company started the year with six staff and just hired number 11 this month. Odina says they plan to add another nine or so staff over the next year.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Pamela Odina, Marketing Coordinator, Wattpad

Designer Adam Schwabe began 2011 by launching Rocket Radar, a transit application for mobile devices that gives real-time next-vehicle information to Toronto Transit Commission subway and streetcar riders. His team added bus information to the service midway through the year. And last week they launched the service in four US cities: Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco and Davis.

"We've gotten a good reaction here in Toronto, and next week we're starting to reach out to users and media in those other cities to start promoting them," says Schwabe.

Thus far, the transit applications have been a side project for Schwabe and the two developers he's been working with from the beginning. For these US cities, a new part-time member was added to the team. "He's a package designer, and we've added a more real-world aesthetic to the design."

The newly added locations, which soft-launched about a month ago, were a natural fit because the transit services in those places provide data on the same platform the TTC does. "The technology was the same, so it was relatively easy for us to go to them."

In the short-term, Schwabe will be focusing on enhancing and expanding the functionality and reach of this batch of Radar apps. In the long term, adding more cities—New York, for instance—is a possibility.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Adam Schwabe, Founder, Rocket Radar

Toronto's Massive Damage brings an interesting twist to the world of zombie-apocalypse video games. Its first title, Please Stay Calm, has its brain-eating action take place wherever the user is. Using GPS technology and Foursquare's platform, the game is placed right at a mobile device's location.

"Basically our whole company is based on location-based gaming, using the real world as a playground for the game," says co-founder Ken Seto.

The launch of the mobile title in Canada in September and the US and the rest of the world in mid-October was the coming out for Massive Damage, which attracted $325,000 in angel funding on the launch. Seto says the free title (paid users get premium options) has been downloaded 166,000 times, with almost 10,000 daily users as of the end of November.

Seto says the staff has increased to eight employees from the two founding employees. They continue to hire, and expect to build the team to about 20 employees over the next 12 months.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Ken Seto, Co-founder, Massive Damage

Toronto-based Spatial View, headquartered near Front and University in the financial district, recently introduced a device to allow iPhone users to watch 3D content without glasses, and has also signed a slew of deals to provide such content, according to COO Al Lopez. The company has also recently released a screen attachment for laptops to allow similar 3D viewing. 
 
Launched strictly as a display technology company in 2004, Spatial View focused on "auto-stereoscopic 3D," which allows three-dimensional viewing without the use of glasses. "In the past couple years we've moved more into distribution of 3D content on mobile, laptop and desktop devices over the Internet," Lopez says, pointing to a recently announced deal to distribute a Peter Gabriel concert filmed by Eagle Rock Entertainment. "We'll have more exciting distribution announcements in the next month, names I'm sure you'll be familiar with."
 
Spatial View has 42 employees in offices in the US, Germany and Nova Scotia, along with its Toronto headquarters, Lopez says. But the staff is growing, with positions open now for six more employees. "We're seeing a lot of opportunity to grow as we expand to more and more platforms," Lopez says.

GO Transit, the Ontario-government-run regional transit network in the GTA, launched a new mobile application, GO Mobile, on Nov. 10.

The application for iPhones, Blackberrys and Android-enabled smartphones allows riders to view schedules, receive alerts and personalize information. In a release announcing the application, GO VP Mary Proc said the initiative should enhance customer service.

"We're very excited to offer our passengers the ability to access GO schedule information right in the palm of their hands," stated Proc.

Behind the scenes, the application represents a significant achievement not just for the transit service, but for Ryerson University's Digital Media Zone (DMZ), an 18-month-old innovation and business incubator at the downtown University. Six Ryerson students and one recent graduate collaborated to build the application for GO.

School representatives say this represents an evolution in the university classroom experience, with students getting hands-on, real-life experience dealing with projects for real-world clients. Stephen Johns, a computer-science grad who worked on the project said in a statement, "GO Transit was an ideal partner for our group as they were committed to experiential learning and developing a great, knowledge-based transit application."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Michael Forbes, Ryerson Digital Media Zone; Vanessa Thomas, GO Transit

Toronto startup InferSystems earlier this month announced the launch of its proprietary advertising bidding software. Just one day after that release, the company, founded in 2009, was named to the Canadian Innovation Exchange's list of the 20 most innovative tech companies in Canada.

InferSystems' proprietary technology, the Infer RTB Optimizer, aims to change the world of "real-time bidding" (RTB). Enabling media buying/selling platforms to build accurate data models from Internet response data, the prediction engine allows marketers to get better value for their online advertising money. Ben Mair, president and CEO of InferSystems, says the software will dramatically improve the return on investment for advertisers through a form of arbitrage. They system using a form of "machine learning" to continuously improve performance.

The Canadian Innovation Exchange's annual Top-20 list highlights companies selected from hundreds of applicants. The 20 winners will present at the annual CIX conference to be held at the MaRS Discovery District in December. CIX co-chair Chris Arsenault said in announcing the winners that the list represents the "leaders of tomorrow."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Lynn Walks, InferSystems; Jackie Peterson for CIX

At the 2011 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards last week, Toronto entrepreneur Razor Suleman was recognized in the business-to-business category for his company Achievers.

Founded originally in 2002 as I Love Rewards, Achievers offers client companies employee recognition software that allows peers and supervisors to give each other rewards for excellence in the workplace. The software employs social media-style tools to allow employees a platform to work together achieve organizational goals, and offers real world rewards for excellence.

"There is a significant demand for results-driven recognition solutions that offer more than that of traditional service awards," says Sarah-Beth Anders of Achievers. "The same stagnant rewards programs have existed since the 1940s, but Achievers is revolutionizing the industry with results-driven recognition tied with meaningful rewards."

Over the past year, the company has seen explosive growth, expanding from its Liberty Village offices to open a US location in San Francisco after raising $24.5 million in capital, according to Anders. The company also has an office in Boston. Across the three location, Achievers now employs 160 staff—double the number they did last year at this time. "We hope to double our number [again] within the next year," Anders says.

"The awards our company is recognized with—including Razor Suleman’s recent win as E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year in the B2B category—builds our brand and authenticates our success," Anders says in an email. "Receiving public acknowledgement helps to make our business reign top of mind among customers and prospects, and leads us that much closer to achieving our mission to change the way the world works." 

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Sarah-Beth Anders, Achievers

Toronto's Chango, a media company dedicated to "search retargetting"—serving display ads to customers based on their recent search activity after they have left Google, Bing and Yahoo—has been growing quickly. This year they were named to the Deloitte Fast 50 "companies to watch" list of Canada's fastest growing technology startups.

The pace of growth is likely to accelerate soon, as the federal government agency FedDev Ontario recently announced an investment in the company of $978,333 to support research into real-time bidding software and finance growth. Chango says the investment will lead to 37 new hires at its Toronto offices.

"The funding will be used to accelerate our growth plans into the fast-growing search retargetting space," CEO Chris Sukornyk said in the announcement. "We appreciate the support from FedDev Ontario to retain technology start-ups in Canada."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Chris Sukornyk, CEO, Chango; Gary Toft, Ministry of Economic Development

Yonge Street has reported on the explosive growth of technology company ViXS twice in the past year, and the good news has continued flowing for the company. Just last week, ViXS was named one of the top tech companies in Canada and its CEO, Sally Daubs, was named a top female entrepreneur by the prestigious Deloitte Fast 50.

Last month, the provincial government announced an investment that will help ViXS develop a new energy-efficient media processor to power multimedia devices including set-top boxes, TVs and digital recorders. The devices will help stream content to mobile tablets and smart phones.

The investment will help ViXS create 107 new jobs in Toronto. "We're positioning ViXS as an ahead-of-the-curve leader in digital media delivery," Daubs said in the announcement. "Through this investment, we can increase our world-class employee base, expand our global presence and support the GTA's ever-growing ICT cluster development."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Andrew Block, Office of the Minister of Economic Development and Innovation

When Artez Interactive launched its service helping charities with online fundraising 12 years ago, the business was new and the concept untried. 

"When we started we never would have imagined how big it would become," says CEO and chairman James Appleyard. "Our first year, a charity we were working with raised $50,000 online and they were delighted. This year we've raised $100 million online for charities around the world."

The Toronto for-profit company has built an empire innovating for nonprofit clients, and now has offices in in the US, the UK, Australia and around the world. Recently it continued its tradition of pioneering when it was the first company to launch a fundraising application on Facebook's new Open Graph platform.  Open Graph allows third-party websites to publish user activity to Facebook, increasing the ways sites connect to Facebook.

Appleyard says that when the company helped define the concept of online fundraising at its launch, back in 2004, it developed a software product that could be customized and used by all charities. It has been refining and building on that same product as the online world has grown and evolved. "We invented the electronic tax receipt," he says, "and now those are used everywhere in the world. We invented the personal fundraising page, the first framework for fundraising on the iPhone and Android phones and now we're first to the table with Facebook Open Graph." Appleyard says the immediate future for the industry involves continuing to make fundraising easy across the "multi-channel online world... so that if you're a supporter, you can fundraise equally well using whatever tool you're using."

He says the constant innovation has led to constant growth for the company—at 50 staff, Appleyard says it's fair to say they've doubled the number of employees in the past three years. Artez has 10 open positions now, and expects to add another 20 new employees over the next 12 months.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: James Appleyard, CEO & chairman, Artez Interactive

Toronto mobile application developer MobileFringe, a player in the business-to-business retail market for three years, has entered the consumer app market with its location-based discount program, Push a Deal.

Company co-founder and CEO Steve Sorge says the application offers discounts to people at businesses near their current location, and is more accessible to small retailers and food service companies than popular group-buying platforms.

"The feedback we were getting was that the group-buying model only worked for certain kinds of businesses, and for many retailers, the deep discounts and fees were unsustainable," says Sorge.

His software, he says, allows companies to offer smaller discounts of 10 to 15 per cent. MobileFringe will take a 25 per cent commission on the discount. Companies pay fees soley based on redemptions--sales made. That fact, plus the location-based nature of how it "pushes" alerts to customers' phones, make it very attractive for smaller businesses. "It's set up to be a long-term strategic tool in the mobile space for a lot of these companies that do not have the budget to create their own apps."

MobileFringe was founded in November 2008 and has established itself as a developer-for-hire in the retail industry, especially serving shopping centres. In the lead up to launching their first consumer application this year, they've hired four new employees, bringing their staff to 10, and moved from their "typical early-stage office" of 800-square-feet into a new 2,400-square-foot office. 

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Steve Sorge, CEO, MobileFringe