March 19, 2013
Technology and your business
Welcome to m
y first blog post on the revitalized ITBusiness.ca Web site. My intention is to use this blog as a place to share a blend of experiences and thoughts from time to time. Here are a few things about me: I’ve been working in the technology industry full time since 1992, but my experience…
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March 16, 2013
App answers ‘is this a rash?’ with dermatologist expertise
On a family
vacation in Switzerland, a child developed a rash after soaking in a five-star hotel’s hot tub. The parents launched the iDoc24 app on their iPhone, took a photo of the rash, and submitted it for a tele-consultation. A licensed dermatologist responded in under 24 hours, saying the rash was folliculitis, an inflammation…
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March 12, 2013
BYOD is not just about mobile devices
Many CIOs di
smiss the BYOD (bring your own device) trend as little more than hype. When asked, they give the security issues as a reason for not offering BYOD. Â The so-called “hype” trend simply refers to employees taking their own personal computerized devices to work, it could be one or more of a smart phone,…
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March 09, 2013
What are the risks facing your business and your data?
A secret unit of the Chinese army is linked to global cyber espionage. A recent survey indicates that the majority of Web surfing young employees don’t follow online security policies. How are emerging breach disclosure and privacy rules going to affect your business?
These and numerous other security-related topics are the kinds of issues I intend to discuss in my ITBusiness blog.
Hi, I’m Claudiu Popa, principal Risk Advisor at Informatica (www.SecurityandPrivacy.ca), author and lecturer.
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March 07, 2013
The risk of commoditizing security and privacy
Protecting your small business means more than checking off a few boxes
If you’ve taken a stroll through office superstores or even a modern mega-bookstore you’ve no doubt noticed the abundance of ‘kits’ jockeying for position to help us neophytes tackle complex projects with a legal or regulatory slant: everything from creating a living will to wrapping up a divorce in a half hour flat is there, in all its checklist-powered splendor.
Does that level of commoditization work? You bet. It’s cheap and it directly addresses the interest of a specific segment of the public, namely those who would rather handle things themselves and save money in the process. The fine print is that you don’t get the personalized, guaranteed service of a dedicated professional. But so what? It’s better than nothing and if you choose to then hire a professional, you’re already going to be on the right track.
The problem arises when you do visit that lawyer, accountant or neurosurgeon and they dismiss all the good work you’ve done because it is simply based on a system they had nothing to do with developing. So you resign yourself to starting over and realize that you might have had a false sense of comfort about the whole thing all along.
Now imagine that one of those kits included a ‘Do-It-Yourself Life Insurance Policy Kit’ promising to give your family guaranteed income and zero-effort payout in adverse situations. Would you use it?
That depends. If that kit is published by a reputable company and as the first step in the process of getting your personalized policy, then you might consider it as a pleasant alternative to having to decipher the industry jargon of a somnambulant customer service representative. If however that ‘kit’ offers you a DIY solution to all your worldly problems in a pretty package, then it’s most likely going to cost you a lot more than the sticker price.
And so it is with the security and privacy space that I work in. I see everything from IT companies to product vendors promoting their wares with manufactured urgency. The move to commoditize security has little to do with superior product and more to do with reaping the rewards of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). It is always refreshing to see a true security professional or company that is responsible about their use of language and passionate about transferring knowledge, but these are few and far between.
As a small business owner or professional you should remember that security is still an immature industry and privacy is a nascent profession. Although threats to valuable assets are constantly emerging and calculable risk can be found everywhere, those who choose to operate in this space should always strive to educate before opting to instill fear in their (my) audience. So if you’re in the market for quality products and services, stay away from FUD and ask yourself if the all singing, all dancing software you’re being compelled to buy can really protect you or whether it’s just smoke and mirrors. Still in doubt? Let’s talk.
is a corporate security and privacy-risk advisor with Informatica Corporation and founder of KnowledgeFlow.ca. He is also co-author of The Canadian Privacy and Data Security Toolkit (Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, 2009) and Managing Personal Information (Reuters, 2012). Follow his informative tweets @datarisk or subscribe.ClaudiuPopa.com
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March 06, 2013
Tax credits not the answer to innovation blast-off
Could our co
untry really be just one tax break for investors away from unlocking its innovation potential? That’s what Liberal leadership candidate Marc Garneau suggested at StartupGrind Toronto on Tuesday night.  The MP and first Canadian to visit space provided more details on some of the economic policies he recently introduced to his campaign. The  fireside…
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March 05, 2013
Venio’s health app shifts focus from meal planning to food discovery
Starting on
February 1, new features will be added to Venio on a weekly basis. The general trend is to give users more options to personalize their profiles, select filters for certain food allergies or dietary preferences, follow their favorite food bloggers, and to connect with friends to reach common health goals. Among all this experimentation and fine-tuning, Venio has also been developing the V-score and is gearing up to submit it to peer reviewed journals. Creating a go-to standard for food labels that grocers and restaurants can use is ambitions but Carr-Harris is optimistic about the progress on this front.
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March 04, 2013
3 unanswered questions about the future of BlackBerry
Another rumo
ur being passed around mobile analysts is that Samsung will licence BlackBerry 10, giving it more clout in the smartphone battle against Apple. Samsung has won its sizeable market share be releasing compelling Android-based devices and broadening to a new OS not sold my HTC, Sony, or Motorola could be a real edge.
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March 03, 2013
Sanotron launching BC’s first digital health accelerator
We have seen the rise of over 10 digital health accelerators in the US in the past three years, yet Canada has failed to produce even one. While the US and Europe are moving very fast in the arena of digital health, Canada is struggling to get its game together to offer any significant competition.
Digital health is the umbrella term for mobile and Web-based health applications. This field is developing at the intersection of emerging technologies and healthcare and it is a distant cousin to stodgy IT infrastructures we’ve seen in the past. Digital health is agile, penetrative, and adaptive.
Since 2009, serial entrepreneur Micheal Bidu has been working to raise Canada’s competitive edge in the digital health arena. Thanks to his efforts, Canada is set out to get its first digital health accelerator in the fall of this year. 
Bidu’s eureka moment happened in 2009 at the  Wireless conference in Las Vegas. Cardiologist and author Dr. Eric Topol addressed an audience of wireless, telecom, and broadband experts, sending a clear message that their industries will change his industry – namely, healthcare – forever. Topol also announced the creation of the , a partnership between , , and Qualcomm.
This message got Bidu’s creative juices flowing. “In British Columbia, we have about 250 wireless companies and almost 1000 digital media companies from videogame, to Web 2.0, to social media companies. Companies like  and. We also have about 100 life sciences companies. How come nobody has ever thought about this in Canada?†Bidu recalls his trail of thought from the conference.
Michael Bidu (left) and Dr. Eric Topol at a 2012 conference in Las Vegas. (Image courtesy of Sanotron)
The same year, while running the Wireless Innovation Network of BC (WINBC), Bidu partnered with Karimah Es Sabar of Life Sciences BC and launched the BC Wireless Health and Life Sciences Initiative to get people talking across different industries and to test out the appetite for digital health innovation.
After more than three years of laying down the foundation, building an ecosystem through events and partnerships, the genesis of Canada’s first digital health accelerator is nearing its final stages. Meet . Sanotron is a conjugation of the Latin words for health, “sano,†and acceleration, “tron,†to signify “health accelerated.â€
This weekend Sanotron is hosting , a hackathon for digital health, in Vancouver. “We couldn’t be more thrilled to produce this event and give the health, medical, technology and creative industries in Vancouver the opportunity to work on some amazing digital health applications,†Bidu said.
Hacking Health Vancouver is a success. “We are very pleased with the collaboration with Hacking Health. We were hoping to get about a 150 or so healthcare professionals, designers, and business people. We have over 400 registrations but we only have room for about 200 people. It’s incredible,†Bidu said.
Accelerators like  and  are gold standards of technology accelerators but they’re set up for Web 2.0 companies, Bidu said, so they’re good models for certain businesses but not necessarily good models for digital health companies that tend to have longer development and prototyping stages.
A review of best practises of digital health accelerators such as  in San Francisco, CA,  in Chicago, IL, and  in Washington, DC, is the basis for Sanotron’s vision. Sanotron has identified five key elements for a successful digital health accelerator: research to identify key problems, a big network of partners, human-centered design, stakeholder integration, and new business models for commercialization.
Sanotron will work with strategic partners like Telus, Qualcomm, Vancouver General Hospital, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Pfizer to identify ten problems that will benefit from digital health solutions. Inspired by , a premiere design firm headquartered in San Francisco, CA, the accelerator will focus on human-centered design to create beautiful solutions that will empower consumers to take care of their health.
Inspired by the power of the network demonstrated by Y Combinator, Sanotron will grow its roster of public and private partnerships. Sanotron will employ social networking by connecting various key stakeholders in healthcare in order to drive consumer-centered solutions and integration. Sanotron will focus on leveraging new business models to drive better commercialization of products and services.
After spending one year developing an ecosystem through events and partnership, Sanotron is now gearing up to enrol its first cohort this fall. “We spent our first year to really understand what’s going on in the digital health market. Now, we’re looking for financing from public and private partners to raise enough money to support us over the next three years. When we reach these objectives, we will have a global call and invite companies to solve the ten significant problems for BC’s health system as well as Canada’s health system,†Bidu said.
As a final remark, Bidu voiced a call to action, “Why does Canada not have the right support to create digital health accelerators?â€
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March 02, 2013
Monolith Interactive fills prescription for healthcare industry apps
Woodside’s
view is that most health professionals are in healthcare for the people interactions and to spend as much as time as possible with patients. “Anything that health professionals can do differently that would reduce or optimize for more time with patients is a massive benefit and improvement of their work. For example, the tablet is something that doesn’t get between doctors and patients. It’s a tool for communication and it has the potential to improve and enhance doctor-patient relationships so doctors love it,†Woodside said.
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Five simple ways to cut your IT costs
Because of r
ising business expenses and taxes, it's more important now than ever to cut costs in any way possible. One sector of your business you may not have considered as an area in which you can save money is IT. While you certainly don't want to affect the quality of your business by making drastic changes, there are still effective ways that you can save a substantial amount.
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February 24, 2013
Wellx jumps regulatory, culture hurdles on way to improving health communications
Ragaz consid
ers himself part of a generation that prefers using newer modes of communications than face-to-face conversations and phone calls. Spurred by the frustrations he experienced as a patient, Ragaz wants to bring the efficiency and accessibility of emails and messaging to doctors’ offices.
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February 23, 2013
Building a new health tech innovation ecosphere collaboratively in York Region
Building a new health tech innovation ecosphere collaboratively in York Region
A very different kind of four hour kickoff event took place on January 15th in Newmarket, Ontario, hosted by the community hospital.
The “Healthcare Ecosphere†event could be a game changing first.
Eight health-tech consulting teams, five government and private funding organizations and Southlake’s hospital managers and staff gathered to hear 17 regional innovation health technology developers pitch their best new information technology ideas. In one place and at the same time.
The commercialization problem.
Southlake employs 400 physicians and a staff of 2,500. It serves a population of over 1 million people with a vision to provide them ‘shockingly excellent innovative care’.
Like all modern hospitals, Southlake was looking for new information technology solutions to the many health care delivery challenges that it must address.
In a nutshell, the amount of innovative healthcare technology created by healthcare IT SME’s outweighs what the existing healthcare system can acquire and deploy at any one time. Meaning that historically it has been very difficult to commercialize healthcare innovation in Canada, no matter how good. While the US, the UK and EU to some extent promote SME hospital product development with expenditures, there are no such programs here.
The Solution.
Former astronaut, Dr. Dave Williams, Southlake’s President and CEO is a believer in growing York Region’s home-grown innovators. Pivotal in making the Healthcare Ecosphere event happen, Williams saw that Southlake partnered with , York Region’s non-profit innovation centre for advanced health tech entrepreneurs. The collaboration was born and the idea came to life.
The event included commentaries on hospital partnerships by Southlake executives, a ‘success’ SME case study panel, short elevator pitches by all seventeen SME’s, normal networking and an unusual ‘speed dating’ mash-up where all of those there arranged quick meet ups on-the-spot with developers, hospital management and resource consultants.
Southlake set the stage by stipulating the innovation areas its managers were most interested in. These included IT technologies which would facilitate improvements in:
 Chronic disease management
 In-home remote monitoring devices/technology
 Health informatics and analytics
 Health systems and process re-engineering
 Imaging
 Mobile applications
“The idea is to link small-to-medium sized enterprises with hospitals to accelerate the commercialization of their ideas,†said Dan Wasserman, entrepreneur in residence at ventureLAB. Although the GTA and York Region is home to thousands of technology developers engineers, inventors and entrepreneurs, most often they need assistance to coordinate a successful commercial launch of their technology enterprises.
The results were immediately impressive.
Of the seventeen presenters, four were immediately deemed qualified to be invited to an angel funding organization’s venture capital screening meeting. This is considered an outstanding outcome demonstrating a very high ratio for early interest.
“The Healthcare Ecosphere is a model which we think will significantly help the healthcare sector more easily adopt technologies that will greatly improve patient outcomes “said Jeremy Laurin, President and CEO of ventureLAB. “We think it’s a good first step to building a true healthcare ecosphere for SME’s in York Region and maybe across Canada.â€
Here’s hoping.
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The trouble with mentors is…
The problem
is that many of these mentors and advisors are offered up to companies who have no control over their selection and little context in which to evaluate their real capability. Their counsel is usually free -- prompting this obvious aside about getting what you pay for -- and, because these are usually seasoned, experienced people giving freely of their time and immense wisdom, entrepreneurs feel obliged to give the input the full weight of their consideration.
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February 22, 2013
Top 10 Bestselling iPhone Screen Protectors
Here are the top 10 bestselling iPhone screen prot
ectors at Amazon.
No 1 . 5-Pack Premium Reusable LCD Screen Protector with Lint Cleaning Cloth for Apple iPhone 3G 8GB 16GB [Accessory Export Packaging] [...]
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February 21, 2013
Chat Services Take Wait-and-see Approach to Adopting Apple’s FaceTime
After Apple this week announced its new open stand
ard for video calling, dubbed FaceTime, major online chat providers have expressed interest in the new standards-based technology, but do not yet have plans to adopt it in their own services.
Announced on Monday, FaceTime will allow iPhone 4 users to video chat over Wi-Fi using the cameras [...]
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Top 10 Bestselling iPhone Cases
For iPhone users’ convenience, we sorted out the
bestselling iPhone cases at Amazon. New bestselling cases and price will be updated per week. Hope you can enjoy it.
NO 1. Otterbox Defender Case for iPhone 3G, 3G S (Black) $20.49
NO 2. [...]
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February 20, 2013
Bestselling iPhone Accessories
For iPhone users’ convenience, we sorted out the
bestselling iPhone accessories including iPhone cases, iPhone headphones and iPhone screen protectors at Amazon. New bestselling accessories and their prices will be updated every week. Hope you will enjoy it.
Top 10 Bestselling iPhone Cases
Top 10 Bestselling iPhone Headphones
Top 10 Bestselling iPhone Screen Protectors
// [...]
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Top 10 Bestselling iPhone Headsets
According to purchasers’ ratings on those accesso
ries, here we list out the most popular iPhone headsets for users’ reference.
No 1. Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth Headset $39.99
No 2. Apple iPhone 3G Stereo Headset /w Microphone (White) [...]
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February 19, 2013
8 Great Features in iPhone 4
The feature is in the details.
When creating iPhon
e 4, Apple designers and engineers didn’t start with a clean sheet of paper. They started with three years of experience designing and building the phones that redefined what a phone can do. iPhone 4 is the result of everything they’ve learned so far. And it’s all contained [...]
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