A couple of weeks ago, we published a story on ITBusiness.ca about the Seven Habits of Highly Intelligent Communities. The habits are part of a summit that will take place June 3 to 4 at George Brown College’s Waterfront Campus here in Toronto. The summit leads up to the annual Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) in New York, running from June 5 to June 7, an event that names the most intelligent community in the world.

However, ICF co-founder John Jung stresses there are more than just seven habits required in becoming an intelligent community – there’s also a rigorous application process that a city must undergo if it wants to take that title home.

There are actually five requirements in attaining intelligent community status:
- infrastructure
- knowledge workforce, or development and retention of talent
- innovation and creativity
- digital inclusion
- advocacy and marketing

The ICF is also considering adding a sixth criterion, making sustainability one of the requirements of an intelligent community.

There are currently 19 Canadian communities who have scored this intelligent community status, out of 120 around the world, Jung says. This year, Toronto and Stratford, Ont. have ranked in the world’s top seven. (See the list of the 19 communities at the bottom of the story).

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Five things that make a smart city smart

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Post to Twitter Post to Facebook Share on LinkedIn Share on LinkedIn Comment on this article Share with Google+ Published on: November 15th, 2012 ITBusiness Staff @itbusinessca

Although Toronto hasn’t made the top seven since 2007, it is on the list this year because it has great infrastructure, especially in the Waterfront area, where it provides high-speed wireless to both businesses and residents. Yet it also had to satisfy all of the other requirements in being an intelligent community.

Toronto’s elementary and high schools are also adding to a knowledge workforce, since young students are learning computer skills and becoming more comfortable with technology. The city’s universities and research institutions also make it a hotbed of innovation, and while many cities struggle with marketing and advocacy, Jung says even the lights of the CN Tower have displayed ICF’s colours to celebrate the city’s intelligent community status.

While this criteria is only applied to cities, Jung says SMBs can also pick up a few of these to become successful.

“SMBs, they are the heart to this whole thing. First of all, a lot of them work with the universities and they work with government and other institutions like non-profits to be advocates for this,” he says. “But at the end of the day, they’re the ones who make the applications and uses for everyday activity in the way that smart and intelligent communities exist.”

He gives the SMBs in Tallinn, Estonia as an example, citing the city of 400,000 as very supportive towards the startup community. Tallinn was the birthplace of Skype Inc., which went from a little-known communication tool to a household name before Microsoft Corp. acquired it for $8.5 billion in October 2011.

One of the reasons why Tallinn is recognized as an intelligent community is because it is digitally inclusive, and Skype was a huge contributor to that.

“Skype’s all about digital inclusion. Anyone can use it – heck, it was for free,” Jung says. “And they market it so well so that it’s become like Kleenex – like, oh I’ll Skype you.”

More recently, Tallinn’s SMBs have made it possible for locals to pay for parking using their smartphones using apps and near field communication (NFC) technology. That’s a prime example of digital inclusion, Jung says.

And SMBs can always use the ICF’s lists of the world’s most intelligent communities to make their own business decisions, Jung adds.

“They can develop new jobs, new processes and new business opportunities by utilizing the criteria that’s described in each one of these intelligent cities,” he says. “Businesses are looking at our lists to find smart cities around the world … if somebody in Canada wanted to target, which are the cities we should be going to and selling our applications or relocating, it’s a great list.”

The ICF will name the world’s most intelligent community in New York City, U.S. on June 7.

List of Canada’s Intelligent Communities:
1. Burlington, Ont.
2. Calgary, Alta. (Co-Winner for world’s most intelligent community with Seoul, Korea, 2002)
3. Edmonton, Alta.
4. Fredericton, N.B.
5. Kenora, Ont.
6. Kingston, Ont.
7. Moncton, N.B.
8. Nunavut Territory
9. Ottawa, Ont. (two times)
10. Quebec City, Que.
11. Saint John, N.B.
12. Stratford, Ont.
13. Sudbury, Ont.
14. Toronto, Ont. (two times)
15. Vancouver, B.C.
16. Waterloo, Ont. (two times and winner for world’s most intelligent community, 2007)
17. Western Valley, N.S.
18. Winnipeg, Man.
19. Windsor, Ont.

In an interview at Citrix Synergy, the virtualization and remote access vendor’s annual user conference, Mike Musson, vice-president of strategy and business development with the vendor, told ITBusiness.ca that a key competitive differentiator for Citrix’s software as a service (SaaS) offerings is that they’re designed to be simple both to manage and to use, as those doing the acquiring often aren’t sophisticated IT professionals or end users.

“The sweet spot for our SaaS products is the SMB,” said Musson. “If I’m running a law firm, I’m not expected to be an IT professional, but I want a service like GoToMyPC that lets me access a deposition that’s only on my work server from my home office.”

GoToMyPC is Citrix’s solution for remotely accessing a desktop from another computer, or even a mobile device. Musson said many of Citrix’s GoTo offerings are popular with SMBs and entrepreneurs, such as GoToMeeting, a meeting collaboration service he said is a particularly good fit with sales organizations.

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“SMBs need to put a good face forward to a potential investor or customer, and GoToMeeting lets them demo their product or service professionally when they don’t have a travel budget,” said Musson. “It lets them punch above their weight.”

Citrix recently added video conferencing to Podio, a social collaboration and project management similar to Salesforce.com’s Chatter. And a recent addition to GoToMyPC proving popular with SMBs is support for mobile devices.

Noting that many small business people now have iPads or other tablet devices for both personal and business use, GoToMyPC now allows them to access their desktop from their tablet, wherever they may be. For the SMB that wants a little more management, GoToMyPCCorporate gives them a variety of administration and access tools, including which users can access what from which devices.

“People in architecture and engineering have sophisticated applications with high security requirements,” said Musson. “They’re attracted to this paradigm because they don’t have to download files, and the encryption is built in.”

Enabling business mobility and a bring your own everything paradigm is a key technology direction for Citrix, and Musson said it’s a popular one with SMBs, who have both embraced the SaaS model and tend to be early adopters of mobile technology. He said Citrix’s offerings are priced not based on usage, but on monthly fees, providing budget predictability that SMBs appreciate. They’ve also focused on making the buying motion quick and simple, with some offerings able to be purchased and up and running online within 10 minutes.

“You’re not thinking about technology, you’re just having your meeting or doing your work,” said Musson. “SMBs don’t tend to get jazzed that they’re in the middle of DropBox; they just want to get their work done.”

“The experience and skills I’ve developed match perfectly the platform MaRS has here in Toronto,” he says in a phone interview. “It has that tissue that connects to entrepreneurs and young and emerging companies.”

Teja describes his experience as having been in seats on both sides of the table. He cut his entrepreneurial teeth as a co-founder for software firm MobShop Inc. soon after graduating from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. From there, he made a jump into the venture capital world as an entrepreneur in residence at Mosaic Partners and later became a partner with Brightspark Ventures. In between those roles, he put in stints at Indigo Books & Music as the vice-president of corporate development and served as the chief operating officer of B5media Inc.

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That mix of entrepreneurial experience and hands-on investing could benefit Treja at a place like MaRS. As head of the ICE Sector he’ll be responsible for overseeing the 5,500 square-foot open concept workspace that plays host to growing technology startups such as  Bitstrips, Wave Accounting, and Polar Mobile. He’ll also be partly overseeing the Jolt accelerator program that churns out startups in cohorts of six in six month periods. Then there’s the 60 volunteer mentors that assist MaRS wider community of 370 early-stage ventures.

	JOLT is a technology accelerator dedicated to building high-growth web and mobile companies that promise to transform the way consumers and enterprises
Toronto , ON	Type: Incubator Sector: technology

“It’s an exciting time for MaRS as it embarks on its next phase of growth,” he says. “Where I’d like to focus is really working with entrepreneurs and companies to identify high-impact companies that really create value for our eco-system.”

MaRS is getting set to open its Phase 2 building this Fall. Designed as part laboratory, part office-space, it will double the square-footage available to MaRS clients. So far its tenants include the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and Public Health Ontario.

MaRS has three categories of clients, according to Teja: entrepreneurs, corporations, and government. Part of its mandate is to provide a platform that balances the needs of those groups. Acting as an innovation hub, MaRS should be the tissue that connects the best entrepreneurs and companies with the right type of clients and opportunities available in the public sector, he says.

“As technology starts to move into areas… like healthcare and these big massive industries, there’s a role for government to help these companies understand the landscape,” Teja says. MaRS will be “helping to direct and create a platform about what kind of research and development is happening across the province and how we can develop that into an innovation opportunity.”

Building relationships with the financial community to support technology-based startups will also be a focus for Teja. A mentor with Extreme Startups and a managing partner with seed stage venture fund Decode Venture, he has a perspective on the venture capital situation in the Toronto-area and across Canada. Teja has also been involved in MaRS’ Investment Accelerator Fund in recent months.

“From a funding standpoint we’re so early on right now in terms of where our industry is going,” he says. “Without the right types of systems and infrastructure in place, w’ere going to have some great ideas, but we’re not going to capitalize on them.”

Partnerships between government and private sector will be an important part of creating that, he says. The number of funds available for entrepreneurs are few and far between and the financial industry should step up to support them. But entrepreneurs must do their part too, he adds.

“Investors are expecting big, strong visions and early data points to demonstrate some viability,” he says. “The bar has really been raised in terms of what it takes to raise venture capital money these days.”

It’s looking to be a busy schedule for Teja at MaRS, starting with day three of the job tomorrow.

Now Amoroso, who has a PhD in architectural design from the University of Toronto, is the co-founder of DataAppeal, a Toronto-based startup that takes data tied to a location and presents it as a 3D visualization.

While Amoroso didn’t know much about coding or programming when she first started the company, she realized she did have something the tech space could use – a knowledge of ‘big data’ and the ability to decode it.

“I was examining data and the invisible forces that shape our city, things are not normally shown. So demographic patterns, CO2 levels, and cellphone readings and things like that,” she says.

“So instead of actually designing built environments, I was thinking, how can data become a built environment? So I started creating three-dimensional topographical map landscapes that were crafted based on the palette of data.”

Everything clicked into place during a conference in Detroit, Mich. in May 2010, where Amoroso was appearing as a panellist.

“I had a visual of ozone levels in London and toxicity areas in the Great Lakes region and that really kind of sparked an interest in the audience. And at the time, I had just come out with one of my first books … and it all came together at that point,” she says.

“There was that research, there were people talking about it … and the next logical step was the idea of making the technology available to everyone.”

Amoroso went on to co-found DataAppeal in December 2011, along with her cousin, programmer Carlos Amoroso, and Haim Sechter, who focuses on the business side of the company.

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To use DataAppeal, users can go to the company Web site and upload their own data files. Typically, these would be Excel spreadsheets or similar types of data files. The data files need to include addresses with latitude and longitude coordinates, as well as numerical values assigned to the addresses – for example, the number of people living in that area or the number of sales at a retail store.

The numerical values are then rendered into a 3D model on Google Earth, creating shapes on a map. The shapes can appear as cones, spheres or spikes – whatever the user chooses to best illustrate their data.

And since DataAppeal is linked to Google Earth, users can even opt for an additional design feature called 3D Buildings Layer, which shows the shapes layered on top of images of buildings and roads. For example, a user could depict a spike jutting out of an individual building.

“The whole premise of our platform is to make data spatial, to make it three-dimensional because we live in a spatial world, so I was thinking of taking information and making it alive,” Amoroso says. “So you can begin to design it and play with the information and get a visual flair to it.”

So far, DataAppeal has attracted users from a variety of sectors, including some who work in mining, transportation, retail, urban planning and healthcare. Users with an educational background are also trying out the mapping process, since students respond better to data visualizations than static spreadsheets, Amoroso says.

SMBs could potentially use DataAppeal’s technology as well, she adds. For example, an IT company could track how many users actively use its applications and then redouble its branding efforts to target other markets. DataAppeal currently has about 2,000 users creating visualizations from their own data sets.

Amoroso envisions DataAppeal as an everyman’s tool in analyzing data and presenting it in a visually pleasing way – all the better for getting information across to others, she says. While there are other visualization applications out there, many of them require some skill, training and study in using a geographic information system.

Amoroso believes her startup is a simpler way for anyone to use data and tell a story through it – especially now that it is more accessible through the Internet.

It’s a welcome change, says Harvey Low, who works in the social research and analysis unit within the City of Toronto. The city also provides open data, meaning anyone can go online to access it. This could be useful for city residents who are curious about their neighbourhoods, and who might even want to observe correlations and trends within that data.

While the city has its own ways of visualizing data, Low says they only have access to 2D maps, so his department has used the DataAppeal’s 3D maps in its presentations.

“Sometimes, having an alternate way of describing and visualizing your data is a good thing,” Low says. “And we encourage that because we don’t have those technical tools, and that provides a user-friendly way of looking at our data that we would never have thought of.”

In the next few years, Amoroso says she hopes DataAppeal will continue to grow as big data becomes more ubiquitous. The startup currently offers users three subscription plans, ranging from a free package with basic features to other packages that start at $199 a year or $499 a year. Users who want to have maps created for them can send their data files to DataAppeal, and the designers will build them for $59 or more per data set.

“We’re trying to put this twist on creative cartography,” Amoroso says. “There’s this idea that data is becoming bigger and bigger as every day goes by … but people don’t know what to do with it.”

“We’re visualizing their information in a much more poetic way.”

DataAppeal created the video below as a tutorial for its data visualization process.

(Image: DataAppeal)

1.  Login to http://www.itbusiness.ca/wp-admin/with the username and password you’ve been provided.
2. Go to the “Blogs” section. You’ll be able to see the posts of all bloggers, but only be able to edit your own.
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5. You can edit the text or add images now as you see fit. To add an image click “Add Media” and insert either a image’s URL or upload a file to use.
6. Enter the caption for any images you’re inserting including the source of that image. Eg. Project management means people management. (Image source: Shutterstock.com).
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8. Click the blue “Submit for review” button (if not published yet) or “Update” button if its already published.
9. You can also edit your posts when viewing it on our site. If you’re logged into WordPress, a special navigation bar will appear on our site for you.
10. Remember to use “preview” to look at your changes to make sure they appear as expected.

According to the report, 69 per cent of Canadian businesses are using Facebook for collaborative purposes. Twitter and LinkedIn are also popular, being used by 59 per cent of Canadian businesses.

While consumer social tools are popular, the penetration for the major enterprise tools are much lower. Microsoft’s SharePoint has the highest share, at 40 per cent, followed by IBM Open Connections at 20 per cent and Salesforce Chatter at 19 per cent.

According to Avanade, a shift is expected within Canadian businesses over the next 12 months as the planned adoption of social collaboration technologies tilts more toward enterprise tools.

Interestingly, while adoption of these tools is growing, the experience hasn’t been uniformly positive for those companies that have made the investment. Some 28 per cent of decision-makers that have implemented stated they believe the tools to be a waste of time that distracts employees from their core jobs.

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The global numbers paint a largely similar picture to the rate of adoption in Canada. Worldwide, Facebook is being used by 74 per cent of businesses for enterprise collaboration, more than double the 39 per cent using SharePoint. Twitter clocked in second, at 51 per cent.

As Avanade notes, consumer-driven social technologies such as Facebook lack the tools and features of enterprise-grade offerings, such as document storage, the ability to share best practices across teams, sharing and group editing and integration with enterprise communications systems. This is why businesses are looking to shift from consumer-grade tools to more enterprise-class offerings. And many, such as Salesforce Chatter, scale down effectively to be practical for small and medium-sized busiensses.

“Forward-looking companies should analyze what they consider to be “social collaboration” tools in their businesses and look to promote true enterprise social collaboration with the right tools to yield faster, more productive teams,” advises Avanade.

SMBs looking to cut down on time spent trawling through time-consuming email may want to consider Kissflow, a new app that puts otherwise scattered workflow processes into one place.

Created by U.S. and India-based OrangeScape Inc., the app made its debut at Google I/O 2013 last week.

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Instead of trying to manually keep track of employees’ requests and expenses, Kissflow streamlines everything by allowing users to name the workflow process, design a form for all of the data, define the workflow (for example, whether a manager should approve at this point), configure permissions, and then publish the process so all users involved can access it.

The app also allows users to approve business-related notifications within e-mails without having to open the messages themselves, taking advantage of Google’s “quick action” notifications.

For example, if an employee asks his or her supervisor for time off, that can appear in an email with the “approve” option in the subject line. The app might also be useful for RSVPs to email invitations or to quickly check flight details.

Since OrangeScape designed the app for Google Apps, it also integrates nicely with Gmail, Docs, Calendar and Contacts and is hosted on Google Cloud SQL. Each business signed up for Kissflow gets a separate database, keeping data private and secure.

Kissflow is free for up to 10 users, featuring administration, reports and support, making it a good option for startups. For mid-market businesses and enterprise, OrangeScape also offers monthly subscription rates, starting at $3 per user per month. The app is also available for mobile devices and can be found in the Google Apps Marketplace.

Previously Cloud Drive was accessible to Canadians via the Amazon.com Web site, but now a localized version of the service is available. The Cloud service syncs a local folder from your computer to the Web, and across other PCs and mobile devices that you connect to the service. Amazon offers Cloud Drive for Windows and Mac to plug-in to the service, and Cloud Drive Photos for Android and iOS to sync photos from mobile devices.

Users who want more than the standard free 5 GB of storage can pay for more. Plans start at $10 per year for 20 GB of total storage.

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In other cloud storage news today, Flickr announced it is now offering 1 terabyte (1,000 GB) to users of its photo-sharing and storage service.

A few days back we did a review round up for HTC One and most reviewers say the HTC smartphone bests its Samsung counterpart.

Here is what the review mills are churning about the Samsung Galaxy 4.

The Body

This is one of the weakest points of the Samsung Galaxy S4. Many of us prefer a sturdy phone while this smartphone is more plastic and feels weak.

Business Insider’s Steve Kovach writes. “The entire phone is covered in creaky plastic, not solid metal and glass. Just take off the flimsy back cover and you’ll see what I’m talking about. It almost bends in half. Whereas the iPhone and HTC One designs scream quality, the Galaxy S4 design feels at least two years behind. It looks nearly identical to last year’s Galaxy S III, with only a few minor tweaks.”

It’s not so much about the quantity of space and the number of software’s but a phone which is strong and sturdy according to David Pierce of the Verge.

“I don’t need more cores, more gigahertz, or more software features that ostensibly help me use my phone more easily. I need a phone that feels good in my hand, looks good on my desk, does everything I expect it to, and gives me no reason to think it won’t last the life of my two-year contract.”

Features

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has many software features but are they all necessary? Maybe not.

Walt Mossberg wrote his opinion about the smart phone in All things D. “Nearly all Android phones already come with two email apps — one reserved for Google’s Gmail. But on the Galaxy S4, there are also two online video and music stores, two music and video players, two calendars and two browsers.

Yet out of the box, there’s no camera icon on the lock screen so you can immediately take a picture. (You can add this feature, via the settings menu, in – you guessed it – two different ways.)”

Dan Rowinski from readwrite.com feels that all of those software’s are just too much. “Your smart phone should not be a source of stress. With its new Galaxy S4, it seems Samsung may not have gotten the memo.

It seems that every feature Samsung could possibly dream up ended up in the Galaxy S4. The company pushes the envelope with technologies and features that keep the rest of the industry on its toes. Yet it packs the Galaxy S4 with so many of its own branded apps, so many features of questionable value that don’t even work properly, that it detracts from the overall quality of the device.”

You can of course turn all those features off if you wanted to.

Steve Kovach of Business insider feels that this phone can be customized according to anybody’s taste and preference. “Some of them are useful, some of them don’t work properly, and some of them are just plain gimmicky. But that’s also part of what makes the Galaxy S4 an appealing phone –– it’s versatile and completely customizable, able to adapt to your needs whether you’re a Smartphone pro or a novice. All those extras are there if you want them, yet hidden if you don’t.”

Performance

This is a place where the Samsung Galaxy 4 shines triumphantly.

Jordan Crook of TechCrunch says “At the end of the day, it’d be foolish to think that the Galaxy S4 isn’t a top-notch phone. Where specs, performance and software innovation are concerned, the company is clearly making strides. ”

David Pierce, from The Verge echoes this sentiment, “I ended my HTC One review by saying there were two Android phones worth buying, the One and the Nexus 4. That number is now very clearly three, but I had hoped against hope that Samsung would emerge the undisputed winner. The Galaxy S4 is a very good phone in most respects — it has a stellar camera and solid battery life, blistering performance and an impressively useful complement of software features. It’s a technological achievement — there’s no question about that.”

The Final verdict:

David Pogue (The NY Times) and Brad Molen (Engadget) put it across very well.

Pogue, The New York Times: “And here’s the funny thing: Now Samsung is starting to play it safe. The Galaxy is still a beautiful, high-horsepower Android phone. But basically, it’s an updated Galaxy S3. If this were Apple, who adds the letter S to denote a slightly upgraded model (“iPhone 4S,” for example), Samsung might have called this phone the Galaxy S3S.

Molen from Engadget “All told, both phones have different strengths and weaknesses, so one handset unfortunately won’t fit all. But when we compare it to the eye-catching look and feel of the One, we can’t help but think of one word to describe Samsung’s particular flagship entry: predictable.”

Yu, a management consultant at Lough Barnes Consulting Group, wanted to input changes to his site without having to go through red tape at work. Enter Readyportal, an online content management solution from Toronto’s Debut Logic Canada Inc.

“Prior to signing on with Readyportal, whenever we had to make a request, we had to file it with our Web designer, and then she would have to go through a process, and then we have to follow up to check on the status – it was all very out of our hands, pretty much,” Yu said.

“And ever since we signed onto Readyportal, it really empowered us to make quick and fast changes, because we’re a management consulting firm. We have to be agile to meet specific opportunities or the changes in the market, so Readyportal allowed us to do that very quickly.”

And although Yu has a background in software development, he said he found Readyportal was a good solution – not just for him, but also for the non-technical people in his office.

Readyportal is designed to mesh online content management with social collaboration. That allows businesses to easily access their own data, but it also allows them to connect internally and share information across their own networks.

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“An organization has all these conversations going on which we never are able to harness,” said Rajiv Chatterjee, founder of Debut Logic, which created Readyportal. “So hey, we went for a meeting, OK, our marketing budget is so-and-so, and then conversation happens and a document comes up.”

“Now the document is the end result, but what we have missed in the entire process is that we have not captured the … conversation that went into making this document. But that conversation is very important – it’s latent knowledge.”

This method of sharing information is also more secure than using a social network like a Facebook group to discuss workflow, he said.

Chatterjee pointed to Readyportal’s most recent installation for Army OneSource Resource Center, an online social services resource for American soldiers and their families. Readyportal’s system kicked in March 15, and it can be used for agencies supporting soldiers across the U.S. to share information. For example, if an agency shares information on how they deal with soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, another agency elsewhere in the U.S. can pick up on that and learn from its experiences.

And Chatterjee pointed out that Readyportal is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product, so it is quick to modify and customize. He counts bigger entities like the City of Amsterdam and the U.S. Department of Education as among his clients, but many of his customers are SMBs. Smaller businesses appreciate the fact that Readyportal can be implemented within weeks, rather than months, and that fees range from $50 a month to $10,000, depending on a company’s specific needs, he said.

Before starting Debut Logic in 2006, Chatterjee studied at the University of Houston and worked in San Francisco, Calif. He had been debating going to school for business when he changed his mind, opting instead to move to Toronto and build his own software company.

“Post 9/11 changed everything for me, to be honest. I didn’t want to live (in the U.S.) any more,” Chatterjee said. Of Indian descent, Chatterjee decided he’d prefer life north of the border and was enticed to come to Toronto because he had family in the city.

“And at that time, I didn’t know how great the software industry in Toronto was. I had no idea, because we always looked at Toronto software and were like, yeah, whatever, we’re the Silicon Valley guys … But it was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.”

But while family and a lifestyle change were the main reasons Chatterjee came to Canada, a strong software economy was what encouraged him to stay. He said he was really impressed by the engineering talent pool, the tax incentives for Canadian software companies, and the chance for his company to expand globally.

Readyportal’s next steps are to expand operations in Brazil and the U.K. It already has seven clients in South America and is looking to open a Sao Paolo office later this year. It works via partners in the U.K.

In a survey released this week, CompTIA revealed that out of the 125 Canadian business executives that it polled, 90 per cent of them were concerned about the skill gap between employees and job requirements in IT. More than half of them were also concerned about the quality of hires they were bringing into their workplaces.

While a lack of competence affects productivity and customer service delivery, another 38 per cent of the executives said they believed human error and a lack of skill endangered their companies’ security.

With the rise of social media, compounded by a lack of security expertise when using websites and applications, employers might be right to be concerned about their young employees and whether they are really up to scratch.

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But Canadian SMBs can narrow the skills gap by bringing in young, talented workers from internships and co-ops, said Denise Woods-Goldstein, international director in Canada for CompTIA. She was speaking at the iTech conference in Toronto on Thursday about tackling the issue of recruiting in IT.

“A lot of my training partners are looking for organizations to take the students on,” she said in an interview. “Not just giving them grunt jobs but actually giving them learning on the job to see that they like information technology.”

But Woods-Goldstein added that addressing the skills gap goes even farther. She said SMBs and bigger corporations alike have to be willing to invest in fresh talent, both in younger generations and after they’ve already been hired.

She pointed to certification exams, like the ones administered by CompTIA, as ways to ensure there’s a standardization of IT skills within a workplace. This is also really key in bringing young hires up to par and ensuring their skills keep up with their job requirements.

The CompTIA survey found the most coveted skills in the industry included knowledge of networks and infrastructure, server and data management, and storage and data backup.

To get young people to that point, CompTIA wants to reach students even earlier in their career path. It’s launching a pilot program for middle-schoolers in New Brunswick that will encourage students to pursue jobs in IT.

“Everyone’s got that neighbour who’s an expert and says, what about Nortel? They don’t hear all the good news that’s going on in IT, they think the negative and laying off. That’s not the case; IT is actually hiring at a tremendous speed right now,” Woods-Goldstein said. ”We want to get them into thinking about IT and diagnostics and figuring problem-solving.”

SMB executives who are interested in learning more about narrowing the skills gap can join CompTIA’s next executive forum meeting, held on June 18 in Ottawa.

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One of those young upstarts, Mobilicity, announced Thursday that it has entered into an agreement to be acquired by one of the dominant incumbents, Telus, in a deal worth $380 million. The transaction is of course subject to debt holder and federal regulatory approval.

“A concern for our customers and employees led us to approach Telus, which has a reputation for a strong customer focus, as evidenced by their industry leading client loyalty,” said Mobilicity president Stewart Lyons, in a statement. “I am confident Telus will look after our employees and our customers, mitigating any disruption to their service, while offering the best outcome for all stakeholders.”

Our colleague Howard Solomon from IT World Canada is covering the Mobilicity deal, and gathering reaction from company executives, analysts and stakeholders. Read his coverage at the link below.

For more: Mobilicity strikes deal to be sold to Telus

The new models are the Dell Precision T1700 small form-factor, the Dell Precision R7610 rack workstation, and the Dell Precision T1700 Mini-Tower.

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According to Dell, its Precision T1700 small form-factor (SFF) is about 30 per cent smaller than competitive offerings, making it easier to deploy in space-constrained work stations. Both the T1700 SFF and the Precision T1700 Mini-Tower (MT) are designed and certified for engineering, architecture and finance professionals, but Dell also says they’re ideal for higher education and students working computing-intensive applications such as entry-level 3D simulation.

Both models offer next generation Intel workstation-class processors, NVIDIA and AMD graphics with PCIx x16 Gen 3 slots and expanded ISV certifications.

Dell’s new Precision R7610 rack workstation contains he same power as the vendor’s flagship T7600 tower workstation in a 2U rack form-factor designed for data centres or OEM embedded solutions. It can be used by up to four users without losing performance using Citrix technology.The R7610 can support up to four single wide graphics cards or up to three double-wide NVIDIA Quadro K5000 cards.

“Dell continues to build on our heritage of developing innovative, cutting edge workstation technology by adding the smallest tower and most powerful rack workstation to our Dell Precision portfolio,” said Neil Hand, vice-president, for tablet and performance PCs at Dell, in a statement. “With increased power, reliability and new virtualization capabilities, these workstations deliver uncompromising performance, dependability and smart design that engineers and other high-end application users need to be successful.”

The R7610 rack workstation will be available on May 21 starting at $2,259. The T1700 MT and SFF will be available June 4, with pricing available at launch.

Toronto-based IT services outfit T4G has offices across the country and specializes in a range of technical categories including e-commerce, business intelligence, Web hosting, and more. Now it will be lending those services and the help of its 260 employees to the entrepreneurs looking to create a business in the accelerated environment at Incubes.

“By Incubes partnering up with T4G, we’ve got resources literally across the Canadian market,” says Ben Zlotnick, CEO of Incubes. “Their reach is beyond the borders and their focus is on everything that startups are currently doing.”

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The deal with non-profit organization CYBF also means startups could receive $15,000 in funding as they enter the program.

Incubes spends the first week of its program doing a full assessment of its new startups and creates an individual curriculum for each team. Part of that assessment will now be matching its IT needs with the expertise that T4G can provide. Incubes will also have the benefit of a new core mentor on its team with Domenic Ali, director of program services at T4G, coming on board.

“When you’re a small business and you’re looking for an expert, you’re looking for someone that is living and breathing the subject you need help with,” he says.

The deal between Incubes and T4G is an in-kind relationship, Zlotnick and Ali both explain.

“What we’re hoping to see is these small businesses grow and eventually they end up becoming T4G customers,” Ali says.

Startups interested in the Incubes program and some help from T4G must act quickly if they want to be in the next cohort. Applications for the fourth cohort closes May 24.

As I pull out my pen and flick over to another page on my notepad, I quickly switch on my voice recorder. Kliman casually glances at it.

“Once you get our app, you won’t be needing that,” he says. “We’re actually seeing it [used] with a number of journalists … As soon as you touch the button, Instaradio starts a radio broadcast, and [if you're on] Twitter, you can automatically push your recording there.”

Kliman was at the launch of the second cohort of IdeaBoost, a startup accelerator that focuses on Canadian companies whose ideas may well transform the landscape of entertainment media. Instaradio landed one of six spots in the cohort, giving his team access to mentorship, networking opportunities, and up to $15,000 in funding for the startup itself.

What got Instaradio into this accelerator’s cohort is that it may disrupt the way radio is traditionally presented, Kliman says.

“When you think about how audio producing has worked … there’s a ton of value in having a specific frequency because there’s only a limited number of frequencies on the dial,” he says. “We want to open it up so there’s an unlimited number of frequencies and anyone’s voice can be heard anywhere around the world.”

Unlike podcasts or edited radio clips, the beauty of Instaradio is that it’s automatically uploaded and it’s raw. That creates a wide range of possibilities for public relations, quotes in the media, emotional messages that email just can’t quite convey, or just for anyone looking to get a message out, Kliman adds.

Instaradio wasn’t the only startup that is gearing up to change the face of mainstream media. IdeaBoost’s other five winning startups included: Motion Panels +, which animates the images in manga and graphic novels for mobile devices; BeMused Network, which connects general audiences looking to discover local performing artists; Wondereur, a collection of photojournalistic essays on artists on the iPad and web that also sells art directly to readers; ALERT-TV+, an online system that allows content producers to target their audiences and measure trends; and Lightning Platform, a Software-as-a-Service tool allowing independent developers to create games and apps and to be able to host them in the cloud.

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IdeaBoost ultimately whittled down a shortlist of 15 companies to six finalists for the cohort, says Ana Serrano, chief digital officer of the CFC Media Lab, the group backing IdeaBoost.

“We’re really interested in how the entertainment media ecosystem is changing,” Serrano says. “There are some content players who are disrupting that space and there are also some enabling technology players who are disrupting that space. This cohort, we focused mostly on the platform plays and looked at a number of very different divergent product sets.”

And while many of these companies had the consumer as the end user in mind, some of them are also looking towards enterprise and SMBs.

Wondereur, which won an award from the Canadian Online Publishing Awards in 2012, promises to change the online shopping experience by selling art through visual storytelling. There is no longer a solid separation between content and advertising, according to co-founder Angelica Fox. She says she’s hoping IdeaBoost will help Wondereur expand into selling objects as well as art.

For Lightning Platform, the goal is to work with IdeaBoost to market it to app developers, get some feedback, and see how the business plan will develop from there, says Matt McPherson, head of operations. Ultimately, the startup aims to be a one-stop shop for developers to create the basic framework for their apps, later allowing non-technical people with no knowledge of coding to use a visual interface if they need to make changes.

This round of companies will spend the next four months working with IdeaBoost to get their projects off the ground. They’ll be pitching their business plans to the group’s founders, Corus Entertainment, Google and Shaw Media, when the program wraps up at the end of the summer.