One snowy evening last month, the Spark Zone finally got a chance to show what it had been up to in the past year or two.

The entrepreneurship group hosted its New Product Competition finals at Saint Mary’s University, showcasing three student-led companies it has been working with for the past few months. What was notable was the quality of the presenting companies. It wasn’t just that the

PocketPass, which plans to use blockchain technology to stop scalpers from jacking up ticket prices, won the $3000 first prize at Dalhousie University’s Collide pitching competition Thursday night.

Founded by Conor Daly and Kyle Gardiner, PocketPass is using blockchain, the technology that underpins the cryptocurrency bitcoin, to make sure scalpers don’t raise the price of tickets above a

Kognitiv Spark has plunged into the heady market for augmented realty training products, and is now using its traction to raise capital.

The Fredericton company offers an augmented reality solution to help the military and industries with training or instructing remote workers using complex equipment.

Yan Simard – a serial entrepreneur who founded another Fredericton startup, Zaptap – said the

Charlottetown-based Forestry.io has become the first startup in Canada to close a round of funding that includes an AngelList syndicate — a development that opens a new avenue of financing for Canadian startups.

Forestry.io, which has developed a platform for posting content on static websites, closed its US$560,000 (C$747,000) seed round in February. The investors included an AngelList

Startup Zone Names Deacon as Entrepreneur-in-Residence

Startup Zone, the startup hub in downtown Charlottetown, has announced that Colin Deacon will be joining the Startup Zone team as Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Deacon brings years of experience and know-how from investment, venture capital, and business building, said the organization in a statement. Deacon is the Founder of BlueLight Analytics

BoomersWork, the Halifax company that helps retired executives find part-time work, is rebranding itself as BoomersPlus and launching operations in Ontario.

The new branding is part of an expanded service that will offer its clients — largely people over the age of 50 —various lifestyle services, such as travel bookings and financial services.

Since it began in 2012, the goal of BoomersWork has

Our Jobs of the Week column today features a few recent postings in Halifax by IT companies Manifold and Dash Hudson.

Manifold is a young company dedicated to helping developers discover and use tools that can simplify and accelerate their work. The company offers two products – Torus, which lets developers store and share secrets across environments; and the Manifold Platform, which lets you

David Howe wants to do for haircuts what Uber did for transportation.

The CEO of Halifax-based Cribcut gets that it’s a bit of a cliché to say your startup can do what Uber did, but it conveys his message: he hopes that Cribcut can change the way that people crop their mops.

The year-old company offers an online platform where you can order a barber or hairstylist to come to your home or office

The organizers of the 18th annual Kira Awards have announced the finalists for the awards, which recognize success in New Brunswick’s knowledge industry.

The awards committee said in a statement the winners will be named at a gala in Fredericton on May 4. Tickets are available here.

“The KIRA Awards celebrate excellence in technological, social and economic innovation across all sectors and

A team of researchers at Mount Allison University was searching for a waste remediation product for miners last year when they struck gold.

Literally.

As a result, they have formed Kasis Environmental, a Sackville- and Moncton-based company that has devised a safe, environmentally friendly means of extracting gold from the rock miners bring out of the ground. If successful, the team could end