HAMILTON – A software review facility to be located at McMaster University receives $6.9 million in funding from the Ontario Research Fund as it prepares to open a new $21-million global research centre aimed at eliminating potential catastrophic medical, energy and transportation disasters due to software failure. The Centre for Safety-Critical Software Certification, a co-initiative including eight industry partners as well as University of Waterloo, York University and McMaster, will research and develop product-focused certification standards and processes for critical software applications. Applications will initially focus on the operation of pacemakers, health monitoring equipment, banking transactions, financial reporting, and nuclear reactors.
“Almost everything we do today relies on software, whether it’s making a heart beat properly, transferring funds or generating electricity,” says Tom Maibaum, principal investigator for the initiative and Canada Research Chair in Foundations of Software Engineering at McMaster. “Software failure can have catastrophic consequences on our lives and property. This project is about making a major improvement in the way we build safety-critical software applications, and the way in which we evaluate those applications in order to certify them as safe and effective.”
One of only a few such projects in the world, the centre will commercialize new technology through its industrial partners AMD, Atomic Energy Canada, Biosign Technologies, Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, Legacy Systems International, Ontario Power Generation, QNX Software Systems International, and Systemware Innovation. The centre also expects to graduate 10 master’s and 20 PhD students, as well as support four post-doctoral fellows and four research engineers over the next five years.

July 02, 2009 01:06 PM          Comments (0)    

Posted by Alec Saunders
The Boy Genius has published an angst filled missive directed at RIM on the future of BlackBerry OS. Here are a few choice quotes:
“RIM’s OS is more than antiquated, it’s borderline laughable.”
“There’s so many limitations to RIM’s OS, and even RIM’s data network that it offsets all the wonderful things they’ve managed to accomplish.”
“RIM delivers the same tired package in new hardware and people are starting to catch on. App World? Seriously? From every single developer I’ve spoke to, it’s a non-starter.”
“I’m just frustrated that RIM is going through hardware like it’s nobody’s business yet fails to deliver on the things that everyone wants. Screw business people, screw consumers, everyone wants a WebKit-based browser. It’s inexcusable RIM doesn’t get it.”
To be fair, you should read the whole piece. I’ve quoted some of the most negative things Boy Genius has to say to make a point. The point is that the business of mobile telephony is a software business now, and no longer a hardware business.
I’ve spent the last couple of days as a guest of Nokia learning about a tremendously exciting project they have under way in San Francisco which I’ll write about in the future. It’s obvious in conversation with the Nokia team here that the company has a tremendous and far reaching vision of what mobile can be about. However, Nokia suffers from a similar affliction to RIM. Symbian OS is different from BlackBerry OS. The same as BlackBerry OS, however, it is a maturing design that is now behind the state of the art.
Both companies are known and respected as innovators. RIM primarily gets credit for email, while Nokia introduced the world’s first GPS enabled phones, and the best camera phones in the market. Both are being perceptually eclipsed because others have shifted the basis of competition from handset innovation to applications and the overall integrated user experience. The basis of competition has shifted to the operating system and a war for developer mindshare.
RIM and Nokia have a challenge ahead of them. Click here to read more of Alec's post.

July 02, 2009 01:06 PM          Comments (0)    

Posted by Tyler Hamilton
I’m more and more appreciating the potential role that biogas production will play as our economy moves away from fossil fuels. I have a story today on Toronto Hydro’s efforts to build a 10-megawatt generation facility in the city’s east end that would burn biogas pumped in from a neighbouring wastewater treatment facility. In return, the byproduct thermal energy from the generation process will be sent back to the treatment facility, which relies on heat for a variety of applications. This kind of co-generation setup makes oodles of sense and can — and should — be replicated across other municipalities. The Ashbridge’s Bay treatment facility in Toronto’s east end is ideal because of its size. As the largest facility of its kind in the country, it treats the wastewater that’s flushed from 1.3 million residents.
The opportunities to tap energy from decaying biomass are seemingly endless. Cavendish Farms, a maker of potato products in Prince Edward Island, recently announced the commissioning of a facility that turns potato waste into biogas, which is then used in the boilers of the potato processing plant. The company points out that not only is biogas displacing the use of oil, but oil no longer needs to be trucked into the plant, nor are trucks required to haul away the potato waste to a landfill. The on-site anaerobic digester that produces the biogas also produces a byproduct that can be used as a natural, organic fertilizer on the fields that grow the potatos. A true win-win-win. The company expects to reduce its carbon footprint by 30 to 35 per cent.
Toronto Hydro, meanwhile, has a bunch of other biogas projects in the hopper . . . Click here to read more of Tyler's post.

June 30, 2009 09:53 PM          Comments (0)    

OTTAWA – Solaris Energy Partners gets the green light to build a solar farm in the town of Hawkesbury, situated halfway between the capital and Montreal. The company will finally proceed with the project after several years of debate with the municipality, which originally blocked the farm over concerns about stray voltage and surrendering farmland for non-agricultural use. Now, after working with the province to find a solution acceptable to the community, Solaris is going ahead with a smaller solar project than first proposed, on ground landscaped to conceal the solar panels. The farm will employ 10 full-time workers and produce enough electricity to power 5,400 homes.

June 30, 2009 09:45 PM          Comments (0)    

OTTAWA – Telesat Holdings Inc. appoints Nigel Gibson as vice president of international sales at Telesat, the world’s fourth largest fixed-satellite services operator. Mr. Gibson was previously VP of sales for Europe and the Middle East at SES New Skies, and VP of sales for northern Europe with GlobeCast. Prior to that he was in the broadcasting industry as head of DTH marketing for Sky Television in the UK. Mr. Gibson is a native of London, UK, and was educated at Leeds Metropolitan University, where he received a bachelor of arts (honours) in business studies.

June 30, 2009 09:31 PM          Comments (0)    

WATERLOO – Navtech Inc. expands its business in Africa and the Middle East, signing contracts with flydubai, Aero Contractors Nigeria, and Etihad Airways for its flight operations software. Aero Contractors Nigeria, which serves West African countries, inks a deal for flight planning product, WebFP, and Navtech’s FMS navigation data service; flydubai, which operates flights within a 4.5-hour flight radius of Dubai, signs a three-year contract for Navtech’s airport analysis data solution; and Etihad Airways makes a three-year deal for the FMS product, which it will use for its Airbus A320 fleet. “Navtech has focused its attention on building strong, long-term relationships with the growing airlines in the Middle East and Africa regions,” says Mike Hulley, Navtech’s CEO. “We’re delighted with the contracts as another step in partnering with these customers. They will be vital sources of feedback as our products and services continue to evolve.”

June 30, 2009 08:55 AM          Comments (0)    

OTTAWA – André Levasseur, (left in a Couvrette Ottawa photo) is appointed senior VP of finance and chief financial officer at Zarlink Semiconductor. Mr. Levasseur joined the company in 1998, and was corporate comptroller before his promotion. He obtained his chartered accountant designation in 1987, and began his professional career at Arthur Anderson and Co., serving as a senior auditor. He holds a graduate diploma in accounting and a BComm from Concordia.

June 30, 2009 08:05 AM          Comments (0)    

Posted by Alec Saunders
Yesterday YouTube doubled the upload limit available to users in response the increasing number of high definition videos that are being sent to the site. Now you can upload a 2G file, instead of a 1G file. YouTube has made it easier to upload a high definition file as well. According to Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee.com, YouTube has done this because “HD videos are now becoming a significant part of the YouTube library”.
They look gorgeous, no doubt.
Don’t expect to see a lot of Canadian high definition content, however. Not that there aren’t people in this country shooting high definition video, who might have a strong desire to share that video. It’s simply a matter of bandwidth and usage caps. All broadband providers in Canada, excepting a few small outfits in Vancouver, cap usage at between 50 and 150G of transfer per month, and restrict upload speeds to under 1 megabit per second, except Shaw who have raised their upload limit to a meagre 2 megabits. We’d be in our graves before YouTube received our videos at these speeds. Click here to read more of Alec's post.

June 30, 2009 07:55 AM          Comments (0)    

OTTAWA – Patent licencer MOSAID posts Q4 revenue of $18 million, up 6% from $17 million in the corresponding period in 2008. Net income of $5.6 million is up 4% over last year’s Q4 net income of $5.4 million. For the year, revenue of $62.5 million surpassed 2008 revenue of $55.1 million by 14%. Net income, however, was down to $5.8 million from $18.5 million in fiscal 2008, due primarily to a negative swing of $10 million in foreign exchange rates. Click here for complete details.

June 29, 2009 10:55 PM          Comments (0)    

Posted by Tyler Hamilton
Got an interesting package in the mail yesterday from lighting giant Sylvania, which is introducing a new line of LED-lit products. One is a bottle stopper — you know, those plastic corks you use to store an opened a bottle of wine? But this isn’t just any bottle stopper. Moulded within are two watch batteries that power an LED light that changes colors. The idea is that when you have guests over, you can impress them by lighting up the bottle of wine at the centre of the table. They also have drink coasters and place mats that do the same, creating a light show on the dining room table.
This wouldn’t be possible without LED efficiency. But it also shouldn’t be possible. It’s pointless. It merely encourages more waste. The batteries in most cases can’t be replaced. The batteries run out after 60 hours of use, after which most people will be inclined to chuck the item in the garbage.
This is a prime example of new energy-efficient technology enabling more consumption, more waste. Click here to read more of Tyler's post.

June 29, 2009 10:55 PM          Comments (0)    

OTTAWA — Protecode Inc. expands its global partner program, adding two new resellers, one in the US and the other in India. The IP management software firm says it is teaming up with Utah-based EscrowTech International Inc. and Bangalore’s Meteonic Innovation as part of its global expansion plan “aimed at responding to the growing need for reducing the business risks and the commercialization costs of software-intensive products and applications.” Protecode’s solutions help software developers using pre-existing code manage licensing and legal obligations while ensuring copyrights are not infringed upon.

June 26, 2009 09:52 AM          Comments (0)    

GUELPH – BIOREM Inc. is awarded two industrial air pollution treatment contracts in China worth $800,000. One, in Tianjin, will treat a complex air stream from an industrial installation. The other, in Shanghai, is for a biofilter system that will remove odorous and volatile organic compounds at the facilities of an unspecified “major industrial client” with whom Biorem has worked in the past, the company says. “Our significant investment into building a presence in China is beginning to show positive results in orders as well as a rapidly growing pipeline of opportunities,” says Peter Bruijns, president and CEO. Replacing legacy, non-green technologies such as chemical scrubbing, activated carbon and thermal oxidizers, Biorem has installed its next-generation biological air pollution systems in numerous sectors, including food & beverage, pharmaceutical, automotive, paint facilities and petrochemical.

June 26, 2009 08:57 AM          Comments (0)