Oculus Rift’s CEO announced recently that its virtual reality headsets are months, not years, away. Will there immediately be applications for B2B? When we talk VR, the geekily inclined of a certain generation immediately thinks holodeck, and VR for recreation and entertainment. But B2B applications may come first. The ability to layer data or make […]
Category: Technology
B2BNN President Jen Evans talks gender inequality in tech on TVO’s The Agenda
This week, Jennifer Evans, the president of B2B News Network, was part of a panel discussion on a TV Ontario news show discussing the gender divide in the tech industry in Canada. On The Agenda with Steve Paikin, Evans offered her insight on how tech companies are ignoring female talent and the challenges she has faced in […]
5 steps to creating your company’s first mobile app
Your business is flourishing and now you want to bring a mobile app to market. You have the customers, the interest, the idea, and now you just need to get the app off and soaring. But you don’t want to dive headlong into such a complex process that you stumble and fall flat. Here are 5 steps […]
What every advertiser needs to know about the threat of URL masking
Move over, bots. URL masking is climbing the ranks of common fraud in the digital advertising industry. URL masking is used to trick advertisers into running their ads on sites with illicit or stolen content. Though these sites typically generate a lot of traffic, thereby boosting chargeable impressions to the advertiser, they often don’t generate […]
Advertising giant Publicis to buy Sapient for $3.7 billion
In a move some critics call a major overpayment, French advertising powerhouse Publicis announced Monday it will acquire marketing and consulting company Sapient for $3.7 billion US. The all-cash transaction equals $25 per share. In a press release [PDF], Maurice Lévy, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe, said: “Sapient is a ‘crown jewel,’ a one of […]
What you want in email marketing software
B2B marketers often find that email marketing is one of the most effective ways of reaching their target audience. In fact, the 2014 B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Report by Software Advice says that 97 per cent of all B2B marketers use an email marketing program. In a crowded field of email marketing programs, which ones […]
5 Bitcoin companies worth watching
The Bitcoin rush is underway. From the the inexplicable to the blatantly commercial, cottage industries and derivatives are springing up everywhere. Who is innovating fastest and who is selling pickaxes to the miners? Here are 5 companies to watch: 1) Our pick: Ethereum, headed by Vitalik Buterin, a Torontonian, cousin of Wild Apricot co-founder Dmitry […]
The Lego tool that saved a business…and expanded it
Lego cures all. One of the consequences of our device-obsessed world is RSI, or repetitive stress injury. But for artisan small business owners who are often performing the same tasks repeatedly this can be a career-killing injury. When Lynn Wyminga of Lynn’s Lids fell victim to a shoulder injury right before a big show, she […]
Walks become runs: ‘Moneyball’ lessons on digital measurement
I grew up watching all kinds of sports with my father, and to this day I love baseball. Though my brother, the other sports fan in the family, says baseball is ponderously slow, there’s something about its rhythms to love. I remember as a kid watching the larger-than-life baseball heroes of the ’70s and ’80s, […]
Bitcoin, blockchains and B2B: a primer
Happy Birthday, Bitcoin. It was on October 31, 2008 that the enigmatic (to put it mildly) Satoshi Nakamoto published the document that made him a billionaire, sired both Dogecoin (ain’t 2014 grand) and blockchains, and changed currency irrevocably. But the most amazing thing about Bitcoin is that that may be the least of its accomplishments. […]
From funnel to digital customer relationship: the evolution
One of those reassuring little white lies we tell ourselves as marketers is this: People make linear decisions. It’s simpler to draw straight lines about people’s behavior, so to date we have typically pushed people through carefully scripted marketing processes. But does that really reflect people’s actions and the ways they find information? Of course […]
5 startup lessons from great pet stores
A great pet store anticipates what their clients want and always delivers (literally and figuratively). Here are 5 simple lessons from great pet stores that all startups should adopt. 1. Be genuinely excited about all of your customers. So let me begin by letting you all know that I live in a large city (Toronto) […]
PayPal officially allowing shops to accept Bitcoin
PayPal is officially entering the world of all-digital money. The payment processing company will start accepting payments from customers that are using Bitcoin. According to CNN, Bitcoin is “an independent, government-less currency,” whereas PayPal is owned by eBay and works with merchants. As of today, PayPal completed a deal with the payment-processing companies inclusive with […]
Xerox Canada and GreenCentre Canada collaborating on green tech
Xerox Canada and GreenCentre Canada are collaborating to boost the commercialization of green tech in Canada. “We are thrilled to have access to the infrastructure and expertise at XRCC, which allows us to take our technology development to a whole new level,”said Rui Resendes, executive director of GreenCentre Canada, in a statement on October 1, […]
Twitter invests $10 million in MIT social media lab
Twitter is giving every tweet on its network to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, as well as a $10 million investment, to create a hub to better learn how to understand and use social networks. The Laboratory for Social Machines (LSM) will “focus on the development of new technologies to make sense of […]
1 gigabit speeds on DSL possible by 2016
DSL (Digital subscriber line), one of the initial technologies that heralded the era of high-speed Internet, is set to leap into the future, with Broadcom announcing a new technology that will allow speeds of 1 gigabit per second through DSL. That increase is about 1,000 times the data-transfer speed the technology offered when it debuted in the late […]