78% of BC ers reported using Net  in 2007 compared with 73% national average.

Source: Joe Couture, The Vancouver Province, Friday 13 June 2008

British Columbians are Canada’s biggest Internet users and that’s no surprise to Gisele Baxter, an expert on Net culture. “I think we still think of the West Coast – and I think this is as true of Canada as it is of the States – as sort of a frontier, a place where there’s a sense f newness and possibility. It’s still a culture that’s more apt to embrace new technologies,” said Baxter, a University of BC professor, noting Microsoft and Apple both started on the West Coast.
 

Statistics Canada said  that 78 per cent of BC residents reported using the internet in 2007, compared with a national average of 73 per cent. High usage in metropolitan areas boosted BC’s numbers. In Bancouver, 78 per cent used the Internet and in Victoria, 83 per cent. The survey found that 96 per cent of those aged 16 to 24 used the Net, compared with 29 per cent of those over 65. In households making more than $95,000 annually, 91 per cent of people used the Internet, compared with 47 per cent in households making less than $24, 000 a year.
 

Among those with at least some post-secondary education, 84 per cent used the Internet, while only 58 per cent of those with less education did. Baxter said students are becoming increasingly more comfortable with the technology. “Now, if you find a student who doesn’t use the Internet, it’s more of a political decision – avoiding bandwagon jumping or going green or something,” she said. “It’s not that they haven’t had the opportunity to be exposed to it.”

The most significant thing Baxter has noticed in the Internet’s evolution over the last five years is an increased emphasis on interactivity. Users can post much more of their own content today than they could in the recent past, giving growth to sites like YouTube. “It’s been a gradual change, but a relatively rapid one,” she said. “Once the technology became established, it very quickly evolved.” Baxter’s assessment is backed up by the StatsCan figures.

E-mail and general browsing are still the most popular Internet activities, according to the survey, but banking and ordering goods are also big, and increasing numbers of Canadians are posting videos and photos online and contributing to blogs and discussion groups, the increasing level of interactive options has had an effect on every other aspect of pop culture, Baxter said – hence the rise of Idol-type reality show where viewers call or text in their votes.
 

BC Institute of Technology student Junstine Sing, like thousands of other BC ers, says she would have trouble living without the Net. “If I didn’t have access, I’d be very unhappy to put it lightly,” says Sing.

 

Internet Use Across Country

British Columbia: 78%

Alberta: 77%

Ontario: 75%

Saskatchewan: 73%

Manitoba: 70%

Quebec: 69%

Prince Edward Island: 69%

Nova Scotia: 69%

New Brunswick: 65%

Newfoundland and Labrador: 61%

Source: Statistics Canada

KELOWNA, BC and MONTREAL - 11 Jun 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) has signed an agreement to help build a $ CDN 75 million, 150,000 square foot "green" data center in the heart of British Columbia with gigaCENTER Services Corporation, in partnership with RackForce Networks.

 

The new facility called gigaCENTER Services Corp will be among the most efficient and "greenest" large-scale data centers in Canada. It is being developed using IBM's modular approach and will include power and cooling capabilities to support a variety of technologies from high-density blade servers to mainframes.

 

"We are building a data center with IBM in a safe and secure location to respond to growing issues about natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods," said Tim Dufour, CEO of both RackForce and gigaCENTER. "This center will support the latest technologies using 'green' hydro-generated power and the most efficient, environmentally friendly design. The IBM design is calculated at a Power Usage Effectiveness rating of 1.38, which will mean our facility will be among the most efficient in the industry."

 

Watch Video>

 

IBM products and services will be delivered over the three-year construction, with the first phase scheduled to open in December 2008. When completed, the facility will support 70,000 square feet of raised-floor data center space and create jobs for up to 100 employees.

 

Customers of the new center will be able to rent space in increments as small as one cabinet, up to dedicated cages and private rooms. The center will provide facilities to support on demand server capacity services and Business Continuity and Resiliency Services, delivered through RackForce and IBM Global Services.

 

"A year ago when IBM launched Project Big Green, one of its goals was to help identify ways to optimize data center usage and reduce energy consumption needs," said Steve Sams, IBM vice president, Global Site and Facilities Services. "This new data center is an example of this initiative. By offering 'green' colocation and data center services, gigaCENTER and IBM will enable enterprises to meet their corporate and IT environmental goals."

 

About RackForce

RackForce is a leading provider of green data center infrastructure and network services from its strategically located facilities in the heart of British Columbia, Canada. Through its superior data center design, automated systems and virtualization expertise it provides highly reliable On Demand servers, colocation and connectivity to a worldwide customer base.

About gigaCENTER

gigaCenter Services Corporation is a leader in the design, construction and operation of premium green data centers engineered to support the rigorous computing demands of today and the future. gigaCENTER will provide power and cooling capabilities to support a variety of technologies including high density blade servers, virtualized server clusters and mainframes.

About IBM

For more information about IBM, go to www.ibm.com.

 

Contact(s) information
Joanne Fortin IBM Communications - Canada (514) 964-8558 Fortin@ca.ibm.com	Tim Willeford IBM Media relations - USA (914) 766-4618 twilleford@us.ibm.com

June 2008

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Congratulations! You've taken a magnificent photo or you've just purchased the perfect one for your project. The end is not so near, though because as a design professional you want to put your custom stamp of creativity on the image. Many beginner designers open the Curves tool, slide the point left or right, close the box and often undo the change. Once you master the subtleties of the Curves tool, it will be your most powerful tool for controlling tonality and color regardless of whether your image is too light or too dark. Here are some Curves tips the iStock design team picked up from the Kelby Training PhotoShop CS3 conference today in Calgary. Think of Curves as a blind on a window. When the blind is all the way down, there's no light or total blackness, when it's all the way up you have maximum light or white. If there's an area of the image you would like to darken to bring out the detail of a shot, open Image>Adjustments>Curves. Then click and hold the eye-dropper tool to see the area you want to lighten, noted by the hollow circle moving on the graph. As you are using the eye-dropper control and click (PC) or command and click (Mac) and this will create a first point (Point A) on your Curves graph. From here you want to drag that point down (not left or right) to darken it. You may notice that this darkens the rest of your image, but don't worry. To correct this extra darkness, create a new point (Point B) by clicking in the Curves graph just under Point A. Point B is your fixing point and you should move that point ever so slightly, keeping it beneath Point A, until the tonal range is to your liking. Banish your fear of Curves forever!

2008 Call For Presenting Companies

Banff Venture Forum 2008

10 Years of Financing
in the Heart of the Rocky Mountains

October 2 & 3, 2008
Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel

Call for Banff Venture Forum 2008 presenting companies in the information and communications technologies, traditional and alternative energy technologies, clean technologies, life sciences, agricultural biotechnology and medical devices fields. 

• Present your early or growth stage IT, Energy Technology or Life Sciences company to technology investors gathered from across North America.
  
• Build your network with the leaders of technology commercialization at the premier investment forum in Canada.
  
• Past Banff Venture Forum presenting companies have reported over $300 million in financing and M&A activity.
  
• Get early exposure to the Banff Venture Forum selection committee, comprised of leading private equity investors.
  

APPLY NOW!  Application forms and information available at the Banff Venture Forum 2008 Website: Apply online.

Investor and general delegate registration is now open! Visit www.banffventureforum.com for registration, updates & announcements.  

Leading Industry Sponsors

           

                                    

Tech Village recently attended the KAST Spirit of Innovation Awards as we were a finalist in the category of Innovative Organization. Although we didn't win in our category, we did greatly benefit from the broad exposure and networking opportunities.

Thanks to KAST for coordinating this event and we look forward to the next one, hopefully we won't have to wait four years! Check out some photos of the event:

 

 

 

Web 3.0, according to Wikipedia, is a term used to describe the future of the web. Web 2.0 would refer to the recent evolution of the web. A brief description of this evolution would be apropos. Wikipedia explores the following ideas in the first 179 words of its definition of Web 2.0
“Web 2.0 is a term describing the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. The term became notable after the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web. According to Tim O’Reilly:

‘Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.’”

In Wikipedia’s definition of Web2.0, we’re given Tim O’reilly’s definition as well. 2.0 might also be referred to as the second iteration of the operating system of the Internet. In this version, social software enabled the masses to publish information to the platform, search helped to provide access to and sorting of all of this information, and data portability (via XML based web services) has enabled us to use the information in a variety of ways, most prominently by mashing up the information with other emerging web technologies. We could further elaborate on Web2.0 and revise or add to Tim or Wikipedia’s definition, but for the purposes of this creative exercise I will focus on expert perspective of Web3.0, or Web3, in addition to my own perspective on what 3.0 is and how it might evolve.

Of course we start with Wikipedia’s definition of 3.0, which includes a definition by some of the most prescient minds around the Internet operating platform. According to Wikipedia:

“In May 2006, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web stated:

‘People keep asking what Web 3.0 is. I think maybe when you’ve got an overlay of scalable vector graphics - everything rippling and folding and looking misty - on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you’ll have access to an unbelievable data resource.’

At the Seoul Digital Forum in May 2007, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was asked to define Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. He responded:

‘Web 2.0 is a marketing term, and I think you’ve just invented Web 3.0. But if I were to guess what Web 3.0 is, I would tell you that it’s a different way of building applications… My prediction would be that Web 3.0 will ultimately be seen as applications which are pieced together. There are a number of characteristics: the applications are relatively small, the data is in the cloud, the applications can run on any device, PC or mobile phone, the applications are very fast and they’re very customizable. Furthermore, the applications are distributed virally: literally by social networks, by email. You won’t go to the store and purchase them… That’s a very different application model than we’ve ever seen in computing.’

At the Technet Summit in November 2006, Jerry Yang, founder and Chief of Yahoo, stated:

‘Web 2.0 is well documented and talked about. The power of the Net reached a critical mass, with capabilities that can be done on a network level. We are also seeing richer devices over last four years and richer ways of interacting with the network, not only in hardware like game consoles and mobile devices, but also in the software layer. You don’t have to be a computer scientist to create a program. We are seeing that manifest in Web 2.0 and 3.0 will be a great extension of that, a true communal medium…the distinction between professional, semi-professional and consumers will get blurred, creating a network effect of business and applications.’

At the same Technet Summit, Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix, stated a simpler formula for defining the phases of the Web:

‘Web 1.0 was dial-up, 50K average bandwidth, Web 2.0 is an average 1 megabit of bandwidth and Web 3.0 will be 10 megabits of bandwidth all the time, which will be the full video Web, and that will feel like Web 3.0.’

Web 3.0 is frequently referred to as an environment consisting of intelligent web-based semantic applications and desktops, where the web is a database of information published via reusable formats such as XML, RDF, ICDL and other micro formats. By some, it is perceived as part of digital media contribution to the evolutionary path to artificial intelligence that can provide access to information driven by laws of mathematical probability previously calculated by Shannon’s Laws and Bayes’ Theorem. Web3.0 may bring the realization of the Semantic Web, where meaning can be extracted from data representations such as hypertext and utility driven by meaning.

Web 3.0 is also called the “Internet of Services”, where all of the aforementioned promote technology driven creative extrapolations and recombination’s of the information in line with new emerging data services. Again Wikipedia describes Web 3.0 as an “Executable” Web Abstraction Layer - driven by user generated content and broader, more advanced and accessible social media and publishing applications.

Digital Ethnographers such as Mike Wesch explore Web 3.0 as it relates to socio-technological values and the impact of the Internet on communication, thought discovery and the redefinition of information ownership. His video interpretation of the future of the web is compelling and visionary.

 

 

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Your monitor is a looking glass into the visual world of iStockphoto. It's important to set it up correctly but not surprisingly, many people don’t. One of the most important elements, and one of the most difficult to understand, is screen resolution. The higher the resolution, the more you can see. On the flip side, with the same screen, the higher the resolution, the smaller the items appear on screen. iStockphoto is optimized to work best at a minimum resolution of 1024x768. Our site reflows for bigger monitors so that you're able to see more results at once, which speeds up your search for the perfect image. CRT (heavy monitor shaped like an old TV) The best way to set your screen resolution on a CRT (cathode ray tube) is with a bit of experimentation. As you increase the resolution of a CRT, the refresh rate drops (the number of times the screen is drawn each second). You'll want to increase the resolution as much as possible while keeping the refresh rate at a minimum of 75-85 Hz. Check right now. Anything lower than 75 Hz will result in a noticeable flicker as the screen refreshes, which is the most common factor in eye strain and fatigue. Pick the highest resolution with an acceptable refresh rate, while keeping the elements and fonts at a comfortable size for your eyes. LCD (thin flat monitor) LCDs (liquid crystal display) don't exhibit the same kind of flicker as CRTs, so lower refresh rates are acceptable. The important thing with an LCD is that you're running it at its native resolution. What's your panel's native resolution? They're all different, but a few quick searches on Google or your owner's manual should give you the answer. What might be more important is how you have your LCD connected. Generally, an all-digital connection like DVI gives better results than a typical analog VGA connection. If your computer and LCD have a DVI connector, use it instead of the VGA.

Tech Village is thrilled to be chosen as one of 4 finalists for the category "Innovative Organization of the Year". We look forward to the Award Ceremony on May 22 in Nelson BC. Tickets are on saqle now but going fast. COme support Tech Village, win or loose, we are honored to be recognized as an innovator in our community.

KAST is offering support and financial assistance to West Kootenay/Boundary businesses who are interested in competing in the 2008 New Ventures BC Competition.

This competition enables BC innovators and entrepreneurs the opportunity to win up to $335,000 in prizes for their business idea .

The first step only requires a two page summary as an online application and KAST would be pleased to help you put this together . The closing deadline is Wednesday, April 23rd

For more information on Round 1 requirements click on the link: http://www.newventuresbc.com/part_rules.php#2

KAST is prepared to:

• provide support for the application process
• provide support for business plan development
• provide feedback on submissions
• provide financial support, up to $750 per team to attend competition events.

To read more about the event on the KAST website: http://www.kast.com/?q=node/1082

For more information on the Competition visit: New Ventures BC at http://www.newventuresbc.com/comp_overview.php

For more information on KAST assistance for NVBC contact the KAST office at 250-483-5052.

by Tommi West

You need a content management system (CMS), but you don't know which application framework to choose. The software must be free and open source, with a web-based user interface. Perhaps your employers have already mentioned that they want to avoid committing to a proprietary, closed application. With all the choices available, it can be daunting to choose one.

Whether you want to build the next big social networking site or a personal weblog, there is a CMS for you. Rather than searching for the CMS par excellence, choose the solution that best fits your project's requirements.

This article provides an overview of five of the top open source software (OSS) solutions: CMS Made Simple, Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress, and XOOPS. I describe their differences and similarities — based on my personal experience — to help you choose.

The similarities

All five OSS applications are free and licensed under the GNU General Public License. Their server-side code is written in PHP, and they use MySQL as the database. And all five are operating system–independent.

Software bundles such as WAMP (Windows), MAMP (Macintosh), and LAMP (Linux) make it easy to install the set of components (usually Apache, MySQL, and PHP) that make up the web server infrastructure.

All five CMSs have:

• Online communities that provide free support via forums
• Developers who contribute modules to add new functionality
• Human-readable and search engine–friendly URLs for search optimization
• Web browser WYSIWYG interfaces for site maintenance 
• Themes and templates to update the page design
• Translations and multilingual content integration
• Syndication of site content in RSS/XML feeds

They can be used to create the following and more:

• Blogs
• Contact forms
• Events calendars
• Guest books
• Image galleries
• Online newsletters
• Search engines

While these five CMSs have many similarities, each one also has unique benefits and limitations. The following sections describe each application and make comparisons based on my experience.

CMS Made Simple

CMS Made Simple and Drupal both include workflow engines for process management beyond basic approval of content. You can get up to speed much faster with CMS Made Simple, but Drupal has far more features (which you may or may not need).

I found that setting up a CMS Made Simple site was very straightforward, but not nearly as easy as using WordPress. Creating site navigation is easy, and you can quickly launch a simple site.

CMS Made Simple, Drupal, and WordPress all follow the W3C specification for XHTML compliance.

Theme templates enable you to easily update your site's layout, and modules extend functionality.

Unlike the other CMSs, CMS Made Simple does not offer support for creating the following features:

• Forums/discussion boards
• Tests/quizzes
• Wiki sites
• System-wide content versioning
• E-mail verification (using an activation key)

On the support forums, there's a great deal of activity in the German language section, which creates a bit of a barrier for English-language speakers. The documentation is not as extensive as the other CMSs reviewed in this article, so accessing help in the forums is essential.

Sample site: Russell Davis Architects

Drupal

Drupal is pronounced droo-puhl. (To hear the correct pronunciation, listen to the Drupal song.) This CMS won Packt Publishing's Overall 2007 Open Source Content Management System Award.

Drupal has extensive online documentation, supplemented with active forums, and Drupal.org is chock-full of instructions, such as the Drupal Cookbook, to help you get started.

I've found that Drupal is flexible and accessible, while being fairly easy to use as a powerful solution for a wide variety of projects. However, its vast feature set may be too much of a good thing if you are only planning to build a simple blog.

Unlike the other CMSs, Drupal offers some database replication for better scalability. And only Drupal supports NTLM authentication.

Drupal includes a PHPTemplate theme engine to create custom themes. PHP code snippets are used to define the look of the site, and are kept in a presentation layer — enabling designers to own the page layout without interacting with site functionality code.

After installing modules, the process of enabling, setting, and configuring permissions feels a bit redundant. Locating the areas to perform each of these tasks in the Administration menu can be challenging until you have done it a few times.

Drupal really shines in the way taxonomy and permissions can be assigned at a granular level. Rather than being limited to groups, individuals can each have their own access levels. And the level of categorization in Drupal is unlimited, so you can set up infinite views.

Drupal's global developer community participates enthusiastically and contributes new modules with add-on functionality at an amazing rate.

Sample site: FIEL

Joomla!

Joomla! is a forked evolution of Mambo. The differences between Joomla! and Mambo are subtle to the end user. Joomla!'s administration panel has been redesigned, but the primary difference is the large online community involved with Joomla! that is committed to the principles of open source development (there is a frenzy of activity on the Joomla! forums).

Developers create free extensions to add functionality, and these are available in the Joomla! extensions directory. It is worth noting that, for now, extensions that work with Mambo also work with Joomla! without requiring modifications, although this may change in future versions.

Joomla! supports e-commerce functionality, such as shopping carts, inventory tracking, and payment processing through third-party vendors. However, taxonomy is an area that could be improved because you are restricted to only a few levels. This may or may not affect your development — depending on the levels of categorization you need for your site. 

Although I haven't experienced it myself, I have read that sites with high traffic report slower load times. I have also found the WYSIWYG editor to be less intuitive to use than the other CMSs I evaluated.

Sample site: ArtSessions.net

WordPress

Since 2003, WordPress has become the largest self-hosted blogging software in the world, visited by millions of people every day.

Due to its popularity and longevity, there are more themes available online for WordPress than for any other CMS I investigated. The ThemeViewer is a great way to find one to use for your site.

According to WeblogToolsCollection.com, 0.8% of the Internet is run by WordPress. They project that at the current growth rate that number could reach 2–2.5% in a few years.

There are many online resources, such as the very clear online documentation, the WordPress Podcast, and plug-ins you can download to extend functionality.

Some high-traffic sites report slow performance, but by installing the WP-Cache plug-in and doing some tweaking to the wp-config.php file, you can enable caching to help increase load times. Many online tutorials address this if you happen to run into this issue.

Sample site: Ford Motor Company

XOOPS

Pronounced zoops, XOOPS is very customizable for controlling the layout of content blocks. The modules, while not as numerous as some of the other CMSs, are easy to install. Future versions promise to add even more Web 2.0 functionality, which is exciting.

The official home of XOOPS has recently been relaunched, and you can visit the XOOPS Foundation site to get more information. Additionally, many modules are available at the XOOPS Addons repository.

Like Drupal, XOOPS has a template engine (named Smarty) to help you customize page design while keeping the presentation code separate from the functionality.

XOOPS and Drupal both offer the ability to display product information and can also manage inventory — making them good candidates for building e-commerce sites.

XOOPS is popular globally, and it is nice to see such a variety of translations for both the software and the user documentation. However, that can also be a disadvantage if you are an English speaker because there is less online support.

Sample site: Concrete Connections

Where to go from here

Drupal, Joomla!, and XOOPS are best for building an e-commerce site because all three offer:

• Inventory management
• Support for third-party payment processing mechanisms (such as PayPal)
• Modules for shipping and sales tax calculators
• Shopping cart functionality

If you are looking to build a single blog website that doesn't need all the bells and whistles — then I recommend WordPress. It's easy to use, has a huge collection of available themes, and is XHTML-compliant.

I tend to agree with Packt Publishing's award. I think Drupal is the best overall CMS available — based on its high level of customization, flexibility, scalability, taxonomy, SSL support, e-commerce functionality, and extremely enthusiastic user community that develops modules and provides technical advice and support.

I hope this has given you some sense of direction as you navigate the many options and determine the CMS that best suits your requirements.

Want to contribute to istockphoto and not yet a members? Tell them Morph sent you!

Wanderlust with us Escape the ordinary by peering at some of the world's most compelling images within the collections of iStockphoto and Getty Images. #5749467 | iStock pick

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It’s the Ultimate Pitch and it’s open to the world’s creative community. Send us an idea that makes a world of difference. If it’s judged to be the best, we’ll flaunt your work across the globe and on the beach at Cannes Lions 2008. If you win, you'll get to go too. Stepping into the shoes of world-renowned Executive Creative Director Bob Scarpelli – soaking up the finest creative and enjoying all his usual luxury perks at the festival. And we’ll help you get the gig. Kick-start your brainstorm with our inspirational Catalyst search to land those "eureka!" moments. Then tap into our big-budget clips, original music tracks and award-winning images to bring your ideas to life. Play the video – Cannes awaits Enter the Ultimate Pitch Good luck.

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Thanks to Jason Taylor for sharing his table at the Science World / KAST event at Selkirk last weekend. JT's home made touch table was very impressive! Check out some pix from the event.

 

 

 

 

Does your corporate strategy make the most of today’s collaborative tools?
When you do business out of Sackville, N.S., like Harold Jarche does, you quickly learn about the power of collaboration technologies.


Mr. Jarche is an independent consultant who helps companies get the most of wikis, portals, virtual worlds and other tools that facilitate communication and community. Given that many of his clients are spread across the country, he’s also a prime example of the kind of user who relies on technologies that enable teamwork.

“There’s nobody in my kind of business in Sackville,” he says. “I have to use these web tools and collaboration processes.”

A lot of other Canadian enterprises are interested in using IT to create collaborative communities, but they’re somewhat unsure of where to begin. According to a recent survey commissioned by Toronto-based systems integration firm Avanade Canada, 22 per cent of Canadian companies have no clear strategy on the use of collaboration tools such as videoconferencing and unified communications, even though 91 per cent of them agreed that digital collaboration needs to be extended in the enterprise.

One way to dive in, is to look at a collaboration technology most companies now take for granted, like e-mail. The other low-hanging fruit are the simple web portals that allow employees to share ideas and keep track of projects.

“One of the main areas of work I have is in translating business and organizational needs into technical requirements,” Jarche says. “I wind up talking to a company that says, ‘We need a wiki.’ Then after we talk about it I say, ‘Your real issues are that your sales force on the road needs access to product information that constantly changes.’”

Once a company has mastered the art of using collaboration tools internally to improve R&D, sales and other business functions, the technology can become a new way of engaging customers as well. Last summer, Burnaby, B.C.-based Future Shop launched a major extension to its website that included artificially intelligent agents who highlight its products and a set of community forums where electronics enthusiasts could offer feedback and even assist each other on support issues.

“Stores are an environment where you’re faced with a product expert guiding you through the experience,” says Robert Pearson, Future Shop’s director of e-commerce. “If you looked at our website previously, that experience wasn’t being portrayed. That for us was our primary business driver.”

Mr. Jarche says there’s a big difference in how collaboration technologies work today compared to those of the past. “These tools are available to individuals. You don’t have to go through the IT department to use them,” he points out. “Where knowledge management failed 10 years ago was that we all got this new IT, but someone else was deciding what it would look like. With these tools, the users have much more control.”

How does your firm’s approach to collaboration measure up?

According to the Avanade Canada survey:

-67 per cent of Canadian organizations say they need to add new technologies to enhance their digital collaboration capabilities.

-the digital collaboration technologies to be adopted most aggressively in Canada in two years are enterprise search, virtual workspaces, video conferencing and VoIP.

-98 per cent of Canadian respondents see productivity as a key reason for further investment.

Courtesy of Intel Higher Technology

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