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2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007

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B U S I N E S S

PROMISES PROMISES Is municipal Wi-Fi living up to its PR?

T E C H N O L O G Y

MEDIOCRE WEB Political parties do little online

L I F E S T Y L E

SELLING TO THE SMBs Small firms are feeling the enterprise love

Social networking Your next business prospect will come from a friend, or a friend of a friend

PM 41000015

September/07 $4.95

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CONTENTS

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007

COVER

28 Networking Your next big prospect is at LinkedIn or Facebook.

By Danny Bradbury

24

28

Wireless cities Municipal Wi-Fi holds great promise for cities, but are those promises being kept? By Trevor Marshall

FEATURES

32

Online yawn Canadian political Web sites: the word “pedestrian” pops to mind. By Andrew Rideout

FROM THE EDITOR

6 8

LETTERS

BACKSPACE

Parking meters that do e-mail.

Plus: online democracy, the nano boom and telecoms cash in.

By Peter Wolchak

12

53

BIG IDEAS

Turbulence ahead Could environmental concerns knock the airlines out of the skies?

By Jim Harris

62

HOT TECH

I, robot Libraries of the future will employ robots to fetch books.

By Lisa Manfield

SMB

Managing services

64

How the Canadian Curling Association got back in the IT game.

Back to school, back to work Gear to

By Trevor Marshall

get you going again.

16

By Gail Balfour E-TRENDS

67

Formula for a growth industry: location-aware devices plus LBS applications. By Ian Harvey BIG IDEAS

Understanding governance Tech governance is not as tough as it sounds. By Catherine Boivie EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW

BIG IDEAS

Fine-tuning productivity Tactics for making the most of downtime.

The business of location

38

By Doug Cooper

68

AUTO FORWARD

22

16

Trike 2.0 A Canadian company employs car technology to create a trike for big kids.

By Michael Bettencourt

70

ENDGAME

Argos tech Pinball Clemons

Off-brand print cartridges may end up costing you more.

relies on a BlackBerry, sort of.

Plus: superhero entrepreneurs get their own trading cards.

By Gail Balfour

By Peter Wolchak and Mike Beggs

Save printer costs. Or not

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12

SMB

rejigging for small customers.

36

32

By Peter Wolchak

Selling to SMBs How big vendors are

22

TEK GADGETS

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DEPARTMENTS

4

8/20/07 12:20:13 AM

EDITOR’S LETTER

Hybrids sales to hit record levels.

Is that a good thing?

And: the “Web” and “blogging” seem popular nowadays.

Maybe someone should tell Ottawa Hybrids: seen to be doing good. There is a funny episode of South Park in which Gerald Broflovski dumps his old car for a shiny new hybrid. He then spends all day driving around telling people he’s an environmental hero, and eventually everyone in town starts driving hybrids.

The residents all become so self-righteous that soon a dark cloud of smug settles over the town, forcing everyone to go back to their gas guzzlers in order to clear the air.

While the story is played for laughs, the underlying social satire is dead-on: environmentally aware consumers are ditching older vehicles on the premise new ones are better for the planet. Toyota announced in July that it had sold one million hybrids worldwide—16,066 to Canadian buyers. And according to J.D. Power and Associates, hybrid sales will set a record in the U.S. in 2007, increasing 35 per cent over 2006.

But while burning less gas per kilometre is a good idea, replacing a serviceable car with a hybrid may not be because the environmental cost of making it could outweigh any efficiency gains.

A new car is made from parts manufactured in far-flung locations, shipped to a central plant and then assembled. The new car is then shipped to the buyer. Each step creates pollutants.

A study from CNW Marketing Research quantifies this. The company looked at the dustto-dust lifetime of a car, starting with its birth on the drawing board and finishing with its death in a scrap yard. CNW then calculated a dollarsper-lifetime-mile figure for various models and their conclusions are not good for the Gerald Broflovskis of the world: over a lifetime, hybrids consume more energy. The Honda Accord Hybrid has an energy cost per mile of US$3.29; the conventional Accord’s cost per mile is US$2.18. That means the hybrid’s energy footprint is 50 per cent greater.

Worse news: the behemoth Hummer H3 clocks in at only US$1.95 per mile.

These startling stats, CNW said, come from the higher eco-cost of the manufacture, replacement and disposal of items such as advanced batteries, electric motors and lighter-weight materials.

The study (available at http://cnwmr.com/nssfolder/automotiveenergy) is not without its detrac4

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tors; many find fault with the elements measured and the conclusions drawn. But even allowing CNW a significant margin of error, its dust-to-dust take on hybrids should be enough to give buyers pause.

Backbone planned a full story on this topic but, interestingly, at least a couple of automakers wouldn’t talk. GM, for example, ended an interview abruptly when the CNW report was mentioned.

Web 2.0 is missing on the Hill. Hats off to Hedy Fry, Garth Turner and any other Canadian politician who regularly uses the Web to communicate with citizens. The Internet, and especially Web 2.0 collaborative technology, is the best communication platform ever created and, as detailed in “Politics 2.0” on page 32 of this issue, politicos in Canada are decidedly behind the online times.

Turner was aggressively using the Web even before his unwillingness to let political prudence govern his mouth left him sitting as a lonely independent MP for a number of months, and hits to his already-popular blog at www.garth.ca only increased after he was slapped down by Stephen Harper. Turner has continued to develop his online presence: his site now offers MPtv, video segments in which Turner promises “behind-the-scenes news of your elected representatives and government in action in Ottawa.”

The site gets two million hits a month. How many other politicians talk to that many Canadians in a year?

Check out the Backblog: Back in July, professional accountant and blogger Neil McIntyre wrote about the increased use of Facebook and LinkedIn as job recruiting sites for large companies such as Ernst & Young. It was a timely post, appearing as it did prior to the cover story of this issue.

McIntyre joins a number of other prominent bloggers who post or cross-post at www.backbonemag.com/Backblog. Give the site a read, leave a comment, and if you would like to contribute, drop us an e-mail.

Peter Wolchak Editor pwolchak@backbonemag.com

B AC K B O N E

8/20/07 12:20:23 AM

company

special company

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But behind the façade, one is special. It is built on healthier margins, continual growth and more loyal customers. They have become special by creating new, clearly differentiated value, and defending it. They’re innovating. Innovation is critical to every objective in your business. It will not only make you special, it will keep you special. It can start with just a small change in your company.

A single process. You can even ask IBM where to start. Because we’ve been working with thousands of companies, large and small, in virtually every industry to help them become special. So, if you want to learn more about them, or how IBM can help you, start here. ibm.com/special/ca

what makes you special?

TM

IBM, the IBM logo and “what makes you special?” are trade-marks or registered trade-marks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States and/or other countries and are used under licence by IBM Canada Ltd. © Copyright 2007 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved.

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8/20/07 12:20:24 AM

B A C K S PA C E B Y

P E T E R

W O L C H A K

Nanotechnology a potential boon for Canada Nanotechnology could be the single most important technology advancement of this century, according to the Canadian Institute of Environmental Law and Policy (CIELAP), but only if there is a framework in place detailing its safe development and use.

Nanotech is the process of measuring, manipulating and manufacturing materials on a scale of 1 to 100 nanometres (nm). One nanometre is a billionth of a metre.

“The development and use of nanotechnology holds enormous potential for Canadian businesses,” said Anne Mitchell, CIELAP executive director, “(and we) believe that early adoption

$

of nanotechnology standards will make Canada more competitive in this growing field.”

In 2006, $12.4 billion was invested in nanotechnology research and development worldwide, according to CIELAP, and more than $50 billion worth of nano-enabled products were sold.

Nanotech is currently used in clothing, cosmetics, bedding, jewellery, sporting goods and nutritional and personal care items.

Susan Holtz of CIELAP outlined 12 required policy framework elements, including: public education and engagement, science and research support, commercialization, social and economic benefits, consumer protection, and labelling of

nanomaterials in consumer products.

“The policy challenges for nanotechnology are enormous and are currently dominated by a lack of scientific information and basic policy tools, including definitions and metrology; a legal and regulatory framework; and structures and resources for public engagement.”

The report is available at http://cielap.org/pub/ pub_NanoFramework.html.

Telecoms scored record profits last year, more coming this year

Are regulatory changes, tech innovations like Voice over IP and increased competition hurting the big telecom players? It seems not. After posting record profits last year, Canada’s telecommunications industry will see profit levels increase to $4.3 billion in 2007, according to the Conference Board’s Canadian Industrial Outlook: Canada’s Telecommunications Industry—Spring 2007.

The number of traditional fixed wire lines has steadily declined since its peak in 2001, while the number of cable telephony subscribers has climbed over the past 18 months. Also, recent proposed regulatory changes to local voice services could further limit price appreciation over the forecast period, the Conference Board said. “(But) despite modest sales growth and minimal price increases, industry profits reached a record high in 2006 thanks to weak growth in material and capital costs,” said Michael Burt, senior economist. “However, weak price appreciation and a shrinking market for traditional wired services will limit industry profit growth to an average of just 4.4 per cent annually between 2007 and 2011.”

GROWING A SMALL BUSINESS? HERE’S A CONTEST FOR YOU The Second Annual Markham Space Race is on, and small tech or export businesses based anywhere in Ontario are eligible to enter.

Entrants are judged on the strength of their growth plans. The winner lands a $63,100 prize package including a fully furnished 1,000-square-foot office for a year in the Town of Markham, a telecommunications package from Telus Business Solutions and thousands of dollars in business, legal, accounting, financial, HR and printing services. Second and third-place winners will receive packages valued at $30,000 and $15,000 respectively. Details are at www.markhamspacerace.ca.

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Park, pay, ENTERTAINMENT, MEDIA MARKET STILL CLIMBING The overall Canadian entertainment and media market is growing, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is predicting a 5.6 per cent compound annual growth rate to US$47 billion in 2011 from $36 billion in 2006.

Canadian growth is comparable to global projections at 6.4 per cent CAGR to US$2 trillion in 2011. Spending on the distribution of entertainment and media on convergent platforms (home computer, wireless handset and television) is also growing at high single-digit rates and will overtake traditional platforms in 2008. In Canada, the Internet access and advertising segment is expected to grow at 12.2 per cent CAGR, reaching US$4.5 billion in 2011 from US$2.5 billion in 2006.

check your e-mail

You pull into a parking spot and walk over to the meter. All you really expect that meter to do is take your coins and display your time limit. But for a new unit from Photo Violation Technologies, that’s just the basics.

The meters, currently being piloted in Vancouver and Niagara Falls, N.Y., call your cellphone to warn when the meter is running low and let you top up your time over the phone.

Drivers can also set the meters to pay in timed increments with a credit card. Both methods mean fewer parking tickets for drivers.

And because the meters are already hooked up to high-speed Internet links, the vendor has made each into a Wi-Fi hotspot, so drivers can check their e-mail as they sit in their cars before a meeting. Deploying these meters could give cities a Wi-Fi network in addition to highly functioning parking units.

B AC K B O N E

8/20/07 12:20:27 AM

Copyright ©2007 CA. All rights reserved.

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B A C K S PA C E

D r i v i ng d emo c ra c y Online voting ramps participation by almost 10 per cent in Markham

How to get younger citizens to vote? It’s a question political watchers obsess about, and one answer may be to implement online voting.

A report on Markham, Ont.’s 2006 e-voting pilot for its municipal election concluded online voting engages typically apathetic and difficult-to-reach citizens in the democratic process. The Understanding the Digital Voter Experience report (www.delvinia.com/egov), prepared by Delvinia Interactive, the town’s digital agency for the 2006 election, concludes the benefits outweigh the risks associated with voting online. Among the report’s findings: > 91 per cent of those who voted online said they would be “very likely” to vote online in the future > one in five Markham online voters said they did not vote at all

in the 2003 municipal election > 88 per cent of online voters cited “convenience” as their primary motivation > Markham saw online voting jump 48 per cent to 10,639 online ballots in 2006 from 7,210 in 2003 > this contributed to an overall 2006 voter turnout of 37.6 per cent, well above the typical 28 per cent for a municipal election > 90 per cent of 2006 Markham online voters would be “very likely” to vote online if it was offered in a provincial election, while 89 per cent would do so for a federal election.

“As politicians harness the power of the Internet to reach voters through Web sites, e-mail and blogging, why are citizens still forced to go offline to cast their ballots?” asked Adam Froman, president and CEO of Delvinia.

RFID keeps food on the shelves Consumers are often told that future kitchens will track our food stocks and order items before they run out or go all green and fuzzy. We’re still waiting on that but it looks like the other end of the retail food chain—the grocery stores—may soon be tracking carrots and spaghetti.

The first pilot of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology in the Canadian grocery industry concluded recently. The project was run by a number of tech and grocery companies and included retailers Loblaw Companies, Maple Leaf Foods, General Mills Canada, Kruger Products and Unilever Canada. RFID chips were placed on products in order to track their movement through the supply chain. Key conclusions from the pilot include: > best results were achieved when the tag was applied early in the supply chain > RFID technology avoids out-of-stock situations because the supply information is provided in real time, allowing employees to act more quickly on stock issues > RFID tags improved effectiveness of shipping and receiving processes by enabling operators to proactively identify wrong picks.

The pilot showed retailers would be the first to see the benefits of RFID because of the presence of a critical mass of RFID-tagged cases and pallets. However, manufacturers would see varied results, depending on the sophistication of their supply chain network.

Poland and Mexico top work-at-home wireless usage Lexmark and Ipsos looked around the world to

tion of wireless networks, and then at who used

turns out Canada is somewhere in the middle of

see which countries had the highest penetra-

wireless networks most often to work at home. It

the global pack.

Eighteen countries were surveyed, spanning

100% 90%

9,000 tech-savvy home computer users. Ninety per

80%

cent said they believe wireless networks will be

70%

important to everyday life in their homes over the

60%

next five years, and 40 per cent already have Wi-Fi.

50%

Asked if wireless technology enables them

40%

10

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France

Japan

Italy

Belgium

Switzerland

Spain

Netherlands

U.K.

Brazil

Australia

Canada

Germany

Austria 2 0 0 7

United States

said yes, as per the chart at left.

Denmark

47 per cent of worldwide respondents with Wi-Fi

10%

South Africa

20%

Mexico

to perform work-related activities in the home,

Poland

30%

All content is also on our Web site: www.backbonemag.com/magazine

B AC K B O N E

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8/20/07 12:20:32 AM

SMB

Managed services draw to the

button How the Canadian Curling Association peeled away all its daily tech tasks

B Y

Two hundred years ago, North America’s first formal athletic club was established in Montreal. The sport was curling. And today, as they have since 1807, Canadian curlers still throw stones, sweep them into position in the house and score points by drawing closest to the button.

But over the years there have been changes. Corn brooms were replaced by high-tech sweeping brushes. Frozen ponds gave way to expertly groomed indoor ice.

And the sport’s popularity has grown exponentially; according to the Ottawabased Canadian Curling Association (CCA), more than 950,000 Canadians now play the sport.

The CCA’s technology needs have also evolved. As the not-for-profit organization responsible for regulating the sport, the CCA operates with a staff of about a 12

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T R E V O R

M A R S H A L L

dozen people, including Glenn van Gulik, who joined the association in 2004 as manager of information technology. He is the CCA’s entire IT department.

When he arrived, most of his job involved keeping the association’s computers and network up and running. “The association had an internal mail server that was running on old software that wasn’t patched, and the chief operating officer was the first line of tech support,” van Gulik said. “She was the one who managed the mail server and handled the day-to-day computer problems, but she really had no time to do that…she was just trying to plough through.”

Ty p i c a l S M B s i t u a t i o n van Gulik said the CCA’s situation was typical of small organizations, which often

don’t have the time or money to establish a dedicated IT team or develop a strategic approach to its information technology.

Darin Stahl agreed. The lead analyst at London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research Group said that in the past it was fairly easy for small organizations to get by, but that is no longer the case. “What’s happening now is there’s a lot more demand for specialized services, and it’s a lot more complex,” he said. “There’s collaboration, there’s BlackBerry Enterprise and that kind of mobility coming into the space, and enterprise applications are coming downstream, such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions, DRP (Disaster Recovery Plan) solutions, and so on.”

For the Curling Association, this new complexity required a new approach, so it

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contracted out these daily tasks to Primus Business Services in 2006. At the same time, the association physically moved its servers into the Primus Internet data centre in Ottawa.

Primus sales engineer and enterprise product manager Mike Prince said this type of managed services offering and server co-location does more than just help manage increasingly complex IT infrastructure. It has also become very popular as companies of all sizes attempt to ensure they’re in compliance with various regulations across North America, including the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act (also known as Sarbanes-Oxley) in the United States and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) in Canada.

“There’s a lot of pressure, because of compliance, to have a more secure environment for your data infrastructure,” Prince said. “A lot of smaller organizations just can’t put the infrastructure or the people in place to handle that sort of protection for them.”

In-house benefits By taking advantage of managed services to handle the types of IT-related tasks common to all organizations, the CCA’s van Gulik has freed up his time for projects unique to the association, such as managing its internal network and investigating new technologies such as Voice over IP. In addition, he has developed an application to help register and schedule some 4,000 volunteers who help out at a half-dozen CCA-organized tournaments

each year, including the Tim Hortons Brier (Canadian men’s championship), the Scotties Tournament of Hearts (Canadian women’s championship) and the Ford World Men’s Curling Championship. van Gulik also developed a Flash application called CurlCAST that delivers real-time scoring from these bonspiels to the association’s Web site.

“I just wouldn’t have time to even think about looking into those things if my whole day was consumed with the monotonous tasks of maintaining the network,” van Gulik said.

The association also benefits from Primus’ ability to scale servers to seasonal demands. “In the summer their servers are underused. There’s nothing happening other than a little bit of e-mail and Internet traffic,” Prince said. “But during BACK BO NE

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Photos: David Gonzcol

GLENN VAN GULIK (RIGHT) OF THE CANADIAN CURLING ASSOCIATION HEADS DOWN THE ICE WITH MIKE PRINCE OF PRIMUS

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big

SMB

The

business of

small business Selling to SMBs is all the rage right now. Large tech vendors can’t utter five sentences without “SMB” cropping up, and many of them are changing to address the market

G A I L

B A L F O U R

ILLUSTRATION: STEVE ADAMS

B Y

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Waiting more than 90 minutes on hold before connecting with a live support person was the last straw for Trevor Anderson. He used the time on the phone to reflect on how unhappy he was with his current technology provider —and before the call was complete, he had decided to make a switch.

“I am not asking for VIP treatment, but (as a business customer) I don’t want to be taken for granted either,” said Anderson, IT manager for network systems and operation at Winnipeg-based law firm Thompson Dorfman Sweatman (TDS) LLP. Nine years ago the whole organization was running primarily on one Dell server. The single-server architecture and its lack of redundancy concerned Anderson, and the decision was made a few years ago to upgrade. This was a good opportunity to see what other vendors had to offer, and Anderson liked what he saw from HP. “We were 100 per cent Dell in the data centre and the desktop. Now we’re 100 per cent HP.” Anderson’s vendor switch was prompted by a problem common to many small- and medium-sized businesses: the products and support offered by technology vendors

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“You can get a Vostro computer up and running in six minutes.”

–CEO Michael Dell, announcing the company’s new SMB line

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E-TRENDS

Wi-Fi and the City Proponents promise municipal Wi-Fi will revitalize economic activity and improve quality of life. So, is wireless benefiting Canada’s largest city yet?

B Y

T R E V O R

In her influential 1961 attack on city planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the late Jane Jacobs noted that, “city sidewalks—the pedestrian parts of the streets—serve many purposes besides carrying pedestrians.”

Jacobs proceeded to describe the important role sidewalks play in the safety of a community, the creation of a city’s social fabric and the instruction of children as to the expectations of the society in which they live. “These uses are bound up with circulation but are not identical with it,” she argued, “and in their own right they are at least as basic as circulation to the proper working of cities.”

In 1968, Jacobs moved to Canada from the United States and, until her death in April 2006, she called Toronto home. As one might expect, she lived in a downtown neighbourhood— The Annex—that owes its continued success, in part, to the vibrancy of the life on its sidewalks.

ILLUSTRATION: JASON RAISCH

Vibrancy via Wi-Fi

24

Late last year, downtown Toronto sidewalks became the stomping grounds for a new wireless network that promised to add a very contemporary vitality to urban life. In October, Toronto Hydro Telecom launched One Zone— an 802.11g high-speed Wi-Fi service that allows users to get online from any suitably equipped laptop, PDA or other wireless device.

One Zone covers some 235 blocks in Toronto’s core. It blankets the financial district, downtown entertainment areas, hotels, universities, municipal and provincial governments, and the city’s burgeoning medical and life sciences cluster. The utility plans to expand the One Zone footprint across the city in the coming years.

Toronto Hydro Telecom offered city dwellers free access to One Zone for the first six months of service. In April, the utility started charging for access with three pricing options: $4.99 for one hour, $9.99 for a 24-hour window or $29 per month (plus taxes).

Despite a number of access options already available in the city’s core, Toronto Hydro Telecom was convinced it could at-

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M A R S H A L L

tract customers. If asked to boil down its business plan for WiFi, the utility might answer, “If we build it, they will come.”

So, have they come? And now that access comes at a price, are they staying? Does this network really have the potential to contribute to the vibrancy of the city to the same extent as Jane Jacobs’ sidewalks?

Ahead of projections Toronto Hydro Telecom president Dave Dobbin said things are going better than they hoped. “During the free period we gave out more than 43,000 passwords,” he said, adding that during this time up to 1,200 users were accessing the One Zone network at any given time.

Dobbin stressed that paid service has only been offered for a couple of months, but pointed out “when we wrote our business plan we had estimated getting a 10 per cent conversion ratio from free to paid subscribers, and we’re tracking well ahead of that.”

He is especially pleased that about 30 per cent of those using the paid service have bought monthly subscriptions, far more than projected. Another 30 per cent have opted for day passes, while 40 per cent are paying by the hour. “We thought there would be a lot more daily subscribers. We thought they would be 80 per cent,” Dobbin said, with the remaining 20 per cent evenly split between monthly and hourly users. “Considering we’re getting such a high percentage of monthly subscribers, the interesting thing from a financial model is if those monthly subscribers become repeat subscribers.”

Dobbin is equally pleased by the geographic breakdown of these users. “About half of the monthly subscribers coming on are condo dwellers,” Dobbin said. The measure is based on the street addresses provided when people register. “We were really surprised,” he said, because none of the One Zone marketing has targetted specific groups. That should change now that the network has gone through its initial shakedown period. “We have to focus our efforts more on condo dwellers.”

Dobbin said the balance of the monthly users appear to be business addresses. He speculates that sales personnel and oth-

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C OVER S T O R Y

networking

Your next client, partner, investor, employee or job may be waiting for you on MySpace or LinkedIn

D A N N Y

You’ve probably never heard of Ken Watanabe, and you almost certainly don’t know what he has in common with Kevin Bacon.

Watanabe is a Japanese actor, and he mostly plays samurai.

That’s why he was in The Last Samurai, which also features Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise starred with Bacon in The Color of Money.

Movie geeks love this sort of thing. They play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which they see how many steps it takes to link a chosen actor with Bacon through other actors with whom he has worked. Watanabe has a Bacon factor of two.

Computer geeks prefer to do this type of thing with computers, and that’s where social networking software was born. It takes the Bacon game and applies it to the rest of us. If you register on a social networking site like LinkedIn and join a couple of friends to your network, you can then search for, say, me. The software will churn through its database of members to see how many degrees of separation we are from each other. If we’re not too far away from each other, well…it’s a small world.

Social networking software started in the late nineties with the now-defunct Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The idea quickly evolved into application-specific sites like Friendster, designed to help users find friends, acquaintances or a date. Consumers devoured the concept and then MySpace exploded onto the scene.

Today these sites eat bandwidth and employee time. Why shuffle paper on a desk when you can goof around on student networking sites like Facebook instead? This was the Ontario government’s rationale when it decided to ban the site outright.

“We noticed the usage going up,” said Gerry Phillips, a spokesperson for Ontario’s Minister of Government Services.

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than a business one. So the decision we made on Facebook was not to have it available.”

Others would disagree. Facebook originally started in 2005 as a way for students and alumni to network with their friends.

They could post profiles of themselves alongside pictures and movies, and write on each others’ “wall”—a virtual note board.

And while it is not primarily a business tool, professionals are beginning to adopt it as an ad hoc networking tool.

Career links Other tools, such as LinkedIn, were business-focused from the start. Alec Saunders, CEO of Ottawa-based technology firm Iotum, has been using these tools for years. Facebook focuses on finding people already in your address book and keeping up to date with them, and features applications such as imported blog entries, music recommendations (using third-party plugins) and status updates so that you can tell what your friends are doing. In contrast, LinkedIn focuses heavily on finding new contacts by being referred through your existing network of business associates.

“I was looking for an effective way to do business development, gain introductions and so on. I understand that cold calling can be effective but it’s not necessarily going to get you the same response as an introduction from a third party,” Saunders said. He now has more than 1,600 contacts in his immediate LinkedIn network. “I use it for contacting venture capitalists and potential business partners.”

Like other social networking sites, LinkedIn’s fundamental value lies in its network. The network effect on which much

Illustration: gavinorpen.com

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HOT TECH

2.0

Politics

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The emergence of the blogosphere as the only medium faster than the 24-hour news cycle has resulted in political futures made and lost faster than Republican Senator George Allen can say “Macaca.” The popularity of YouTube, Facebook and other social networking services has altered the way politicians interact with the media and potential voters, and nowhere has this been more evident than in the rise of a rookie state senator from Illinois named Barack Hussein Obama.

Having gone from political nobody to genuine contender in the span of three short years, Obama is now polling a close second to Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. More importantly, perhaps, his campaign has raised more money from more individual donors than any other Democratic primary campaign in history.

The fundraising results for the second quarter of 2007 show the Obama campaign raised more than US$32.5 million. Frontrunner Hillary Clinton gathered an estimated US$27 million, while third-place John Edwards took in only US$9 million.

Political pundits are starting to point to the Obama ’08 campaign’s comprehensive Web 2.0 experience as a significant engine driving his political fortunes. While having a Web site is definitely old hat (even Bob Dole had one), the Obama campaign has done more with social media than any other campaign, and the results are starting to show where it matters: the bank balance.

In political terms, Obama’s campaign offers proof that Web 2.0 could be the new bag man: of the US$32.5 million raised, US$10.3 million came from online donors.

ILLUSTRATION: ROB CARTER

Putting the voter online This success doesn’t come by accident; Obama’s online organizing coordinator is none other than Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. With such an experienced set of hands on the social-media reigns, BarackObama.com has been able to open itself up to the public like no other political experience. This is most on display in the my.barackobama.com network—a sort of political Facebook that offers users an

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enhanced llevel of expression to help personalize the Obama campaign.

You can get yourself a blog hosted on the my.bar my.barackobama.com network that replaces th the “my” with your name (i.e. andrewrid andrewrideout.barackobama.com) and customize it i with your own set of friends, groups, photos and event listings. And beyond merely donating to the campaign yourself, you can create a personalized donation page, complete with its own fundraising thermometer which updates in real time. Private messaging is also available over the my.barackobama.com

been generated by sites like Obama’s and how that coverage is valued. In fact, a great deal of newspaper ink has been devoted to the video mash-ups posted to YouTube, Facebook and my.barackobama.com.

Two examples of social-networking-as-news are the well-known “1984 Big Brother” mash-up and the “I’ve got a crush on Obama” video. The first was inspired by the Apple Big Brother advertisement from the 1984 Super Bowl and, while there are many versions of it at YouTube, the original inserts Hillary Clinton in the place of Big Brother and includes several Clinton sound bites. Once the hammer is thrown through the screen the Obama ’08 logo appears.

“I’ve got a crush on Obama” is a slightly racy video starring Amber Lee Ettinger, a blogger known as Obama Girl, singing a sexy ode to her favourite candidate.

These videos were created by fans with no apparent assistance from the Obama campaign itself, and in the true spirit of viral marketing, these videos went from YouTube to CNN and Fox News all the way to the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Total development cost for the Obama campaign: zero dollars.

Definition Web 2.0: The second iteration of the Web experience, Web 2.0 is characterized by a level of sophistication and interaction absent in the Web’s early days. Social media is a Web 2.0 phenomenon.

Social media: Opinions vary, but well-known blogger and ex-Microsoft exec Robert Scoble defines these simply as Internet destinations that interact with users in some way. That means social media include blogs, photo and video sharing sites, and networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. RSS: Really Simple Syndication allows Web sites to syndicate (deliver) information automatically to Web users who have signed up to receive it.

network and you can use your preferred social networking tool (Facebook, YouTube, Partybuilder, Eventful and Flickr) to search for anything Obama-related. The site even throws in free Obama ringtones.

And as much as savvy public personalities are chasing new media, it’s interesting how much old-media coverage has

Act locally Another advantage of a social media strategy is the logistical edge associated with grassroots organizations. While Obama ’08 is a national campaign, much of the online fundraising and party building takes place at a neighbourhood level. This allows campaign staffers to micro-target BACK BO NE

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TEK GADGETS

Back at it The best tech for back to school and back to work Sexier BlackBerry RIM BlackBerry Curve Dudley Moore’s ad exec in the 1990 film Crazy People advised Volvo to go with the slogan “Boxy but safe” and that pretty much also described RIM BlackBerrys. Wildly successful, yes; drop-dead sexy, no.

Until now. The new Curve looks stunning and packs in a 2-megapixel camera, CD ripping software and onboard MP3 support, BlackBerry maps and a slew of other features. Starting at $299.99 from Rogers.

Multimedia Web-enabled handheld Nokia N800 Internet Tablet Picking up Nokia’s Internet Tablet won’t prompt you to toss your PDA, laptop or smartphone, but it is a solid performer for those who crave mobile media and connectivity. The N800 offers built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, a good Web browser and e-mail package, a Webcam and VoIP support, and it will even play videos and music.

While some buyers will have trouble figuring out where this unit fits with other devices, it has proved popular with a good chunk of consumers. $430

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BY PETER WOLCHAK PHOTOGRAPHY: MEEK KAPUSZCZAK

All about sound Future Sonics Atrio earphones If you’re setting off for class with a new iPod, you may want to upgrade the headphones. Apparently, Atrios are popular with people who should know sound: U2, Fergie, Shakira, Justin Timberlake, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Carrie Underwood.

At US$199 they are not cheap but the music that helps keep you studying at 2 a.m. may be worth it.

Radio, no plug required Freeplay Summit Radio is as popular as ever, and this unit promises to keep you listening even without a wall plug. The Summit can be powered by AC, solar energy using on-board solar panels or a little muscle power using its wind-up power system. A 30-second crank provides about 30 minutes of playtime.

The Summit will tune you into AM, FM and short-, medium- and long-wave transmissions for $89.99.

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TEK GADGETS

TV your way Stream S tream your files MediaGate MG-350HD Computers are great at storing videos, songs and photos but they are almost useless when you want to access that media anywhere else.

Enter the MediaGate. Connect this unit to your PC and out of the box it streams multimedia files over a wired or wireless network to a home theatre or another computer. If you add a hard drive to the unit, it also becomes a portable multimedia storage device. Available for approximately $280.

TV-to-Web update Slingbox family Sling Media grabbed a lot of media and consumer attention when it released the original Slingbox. By hooking this little box into a TV signal and an Internet link, users could watch their own television channels from any ’net-connected computer.

The idea has stayed the same but the company’s three new models improve the picture quality and target specific TV setups, starting with basic cable only and running up to those with full bells-and-whistles TV systems. Sling also offers software for Windows and Palm handhelds. Slingboxes start at $179.99.

Pocket your favourite shows SanDisk V-Mate Anyone who commutes will appreciate this one: the V-Mate is like a VCR except that it records to memory cards rather than tapes. Record Heroes, pop the card into your PDA and watch the show on the train to work. $149.99, with a remote for home viewing.

WEB GEAR Freeplay Future Sonics MediaGate Nokia RIM SanDisk Sling Media

w w w.f reeplayenerg y.com w w w.futuresonic s .com w w w. m e d i a g a t e u s a . c o m ht t p://store.nokia .c a w w w. rim.com w w w. s andisk .c a w w w. slingmedia .com

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BIG IDEAS

Solving the productivity problem

Riding a train or bus every day? That time is valuable

Doug Cooper is country manager at Intel of Canada.

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The solution to Canada’s productivity gap with the United States may be riding on public transit. More people are taking the bus or subway to work but Intel Canada’s Commuter Survey reveals that only 11 per cent of organizations empower their mass transit-riding workers with laptops or other alternatives that turn transit time into productive time.

Commuters are 12 per cent of the workforce and the number is quickly growing. They spend about 240 hours a year commuting, and this is time that communications and collaboration technology can make productive if they are knowledge workers.

Between 1990 and 2000, according to Statistics Canada, the percentage of knowledge workers grew from 21 to 25 per cent and that figure is undoubtedly higher today. In many organizations, they are the greatest expense and the most important success factor, so anything that makes this group more productive benefits the organization. Increasingly, that means giving them tools to communicate and collaborate. At Intel, our research told us that at any given time, our knowledge workers participated in three to 10 project teams. It was clear that anything that streamlined their interactions would make them more productive. We learned the route to success iis: classify, equip and measure.

Right tools for the job

All content is also on our Web site: www.backbonemag.com/magazine

Not all knowledge workers have the same needs, so a classification system assesses factors such s as the complexity of the daily work and the degree d of interaction with others. Some people perform fairly routine work and do little in the way perfo of col collaboration, while others might need to supplemen ment their individual expertise with that of others.

So how is that individual’s work getting done? A basic BlackBerry could be one person’s ideal prob ductivity solution while desktop videoconferencd iing and a virtual whiteboard might be optimal for someone else. Once managers understand how knowledge workers operate throughout the day, they know can equip e them with the right tools.

A good measure of how well an organization has equipped its knowledge workers might be teleconequip ferencing. How many companies still require someferen one tto book teleconference hours in advance with a human operator? A Web-based booking tool makes things a little easier and more spontaneous, but the goal should be complete availability and mobility.

At Intel, we have given employees their own personal audio bridges that allow immediate use of all teleconferencing functionality. Paired with a Webbased document repository and conference-room booking tool, the system is designed to improve a common knowledge worker behaviour.

When it comes to measurement, managers may need to get more comfortable with evaluating performance by outcomes instead of inputs, worrying less about tallying face time or counting up meetings and rather looking at what was achieved with the tools at hand. Are the collaboration tools being used? Is travel time going down while results are going up? Knowledge workers thrive in a marketplace of ideas; they bring value to others and they expect value from others. Organizations that enable quick, effortless communication for knowledge workers can only benefit from their interactions.

Right environment Managers should lead by example, first by learning and using collaboration tools themselves and then by creating circumstances where their knowledge workers can see them in action. And don’t be offended if it doesn’t work for everyone right away. If people want daily updates, for example, make them available in a document repository or on a blog; if meetings are crucial to their work, allow some meetings to be virtual—not always face to face. There are many ways for organizations to equip the workforce and improve the quality and consistency of their work: provide scripts for employees who deal with customer support issues, automate their repetitive processes and support them with intelligent systems that push information to them when they need it. Ultimately, however, success will depend on management’s understanding of how knowledge work is done in their organization and the effectiveness of their training and support.

Increased productivity is great for organizations and for Canada, but employees win as well. The Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity in Toronto said closing the “prosperity gap” of economic potential between Canada and the United States would give the average household nearly $12,000 more in disposable income. The links between productivity and prosperity are clearly understood and so are the technological solutions that can forge them. The next step is to make it happen.

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A U T O F O R WA R D

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Gazing at the three-wheeled Frankenstein before us—a mechanized monstrosity appearing to derive its parts equally from sport touring motorcycles, AT Vs and the fendered wheels of the departed Plymouth Prowler hot rod—the curious beast looks somehow familiar, even as it looks like nothing else on the road.

Yet there’s something magnetic about this mishmash of various transportation ideas. In a couple of hours of test riding around the coastline and back roads of New Jersey, fellow motorists pull up baring big smiles and camera phones. The common refrain of ‘What is it?’ is asked at every stop for gas and at red lights.

It is a Canadian-designed motorcycle that may just usher in a new generation of technologically advanced open-air motoring across North America and Europe. Or it could fizzle out as a brave but overly kooky Canadian business flop.

With two wheels in front and one in back, the Can-Am Spyder Roadster is a creation of Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP). The firm was spun off from Ski-Doo maker Bombardier in 2004.

BRP is not the first company to come up with a three-wheeled vehicle for the road (anyone remember motorcycle sidecars?) but it is the first to blend a two-plus-one wheel layout, sport-bike styling and power, automotive safety and security electronic controls, and the unparalleled view of the world that comes from sitting outdoors.

“Paradigm shifting is how this firm started,” said Chris Dawson, vice-president of strategic planning and the head of 70

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BRP’s Spyder program. “We wanted to offer something with more security and practicality than a sport bike, but for less money than a convertible.”

The security side of things is the key here: as a three-wheeler, the Roadster doesn’t need two legs on the ground at a light to prevent it from tipping over—although motorcycle riders may have to fight that “feet down” urge—and you can park it on a hill without worrying the Roadster will end up shiny side down on the pavement or, worse, on your legs.

Electronic brains There are many ATVs with three wheels, although with less radical tricycle layouts, yet the Roadster is no simple road-going version of one of BRP’s Can-Am all-terrain vehicles. What sets it apart from both ATVs and motorcycles, besides looks, are the Roadster’s electronic brains, designed to keep its rider in control. The sophisticated system comes from Bosch and operates in a fashion similar to the technology on four-wheel vehicles. It includes anti-lock brakes, traction control and electronic stability control systems. Anti-lock braking sensors at each wheel read for any discrepancy in wheel speed and cut power to the rear wheel whenever wheel spin is detected.

If that doesn’t help get the rider back on the intended path, as determined by sensors measuring the handlebar’s steering angle and the Roadster’s wheel slip, the system can then brake each wheel individually or brake all of them.

Growing trike market In Canada, the Can-Am Spyder is officially classified as a motorcycle, so any rider interested in one will need a motorcycle licence.

But in some key markets riders can operate these with a regular driver’s licence. Those markets include the states of California,

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e

Innovative Canadian three-wheeler mixes advanced bike and car technology to keep the rider on the road

eeling South Carolina and Delaware, plus western Europe outside of Greece.

Can-Am officials said these areas hold the best potential for massmarket penetration.

“Hardcore sport bike riders who want knee-scraping thrills are not as interested in the Spyder,” said Dawson, noting the target customers will most likely be married 35- to 55-year-olds who like toys and like to ride in groups.

The three-wheel vehicle concept just may be on the cusp of a major increase in mainstream credibility. European scooter powerhouse Piaggio unveiled its MP3 three-wheeler to North America earlier this year and various automakers have toyed with the idea of offering threewheeled vehicles, the most recent example being Volkswagen’s futuristic GX3 unveiled at last year’s L.A. auto show. Similar concepts have been shown by Mercedes-Benz, Honda, GM and BMW. The lack of mainstream manufacturer presence in the three-wheeler space won’t last long, however. Harley-Davidson, the world’s largest producer of motorcycles, announced in June it is planning to bring a trike to market and reportedly filed patent drawings on the one-plustwo wheeled vehicle it’s producing in cooperation with Lehman Trikes.

No confirmed arrival time arrival has been set, said Breanna Gaudet, communications manager for Harley-Davidson Canada, although it’s likely to be here by 2009. “[Three-wheelers] are going to be more mainstream,” Gaudet said. “There’s a market for it for sure, especially with aging bikers and (because of) the desire for security.”

BRP officials said they are already more than halfway to their goal of 2,500 pre-orders for the machines, which start at $18,499. They will be offered in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec in the fall. The rollout will expand to the rest of Canada and across the States by early next year.

By then, buyers will determine whether the Spyder Roadster will be a technologically driven phenomenon or a flop.

Volkswagen’s GX3 three-wheeler concept was introduced in January 2006, with an expected starting price of US$17,000

The Can-Am Spyder Roadster is an By mid 2006, VW had nixed its innovative two-plus-one trike GX3 production plans, citing design from Quebec-based liability concerns Bombardier All content is also on our Web site: www.backbonemag.com/magazine

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