Jeff Roach likes the fact that he so frequently runs into his lawyer when he leaves his office.

Not to mention his accountant or other advisers and peers in the tech community.

Roach works in Uptown Saint John, and revels in the fact that his office is dead centre of the greatest concentration of information technology companies in the region. Within a few blocks – and blocks adorned with wonderful Victorian architecture – he can find 30 tech companies and a vast array of intermediaries. In fact, he says he can’t leave the office without running into them.

The tech community in Uptown

Cape Breton medical device maker Halifax Biomedical Inc. has secured a $3 million equity investment to help finance the roll-out of its high-resolution imaging system that allows surgeons to monitor changes in artificial joint replacements and detect implant failure.

Nova Scotia Business Inc. said Friday its venture capital arm has invested $2 million in the company, and that Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation is investing $1 million.

Mabou-based Halifax Biomedical's main product is the roentgen stereophotogrammetric analysis or RSA, which is an X-ray device that allows two simultaneous

Just back from a successful trade mission to Boston, Jason Richard, CEO of Saint John-based real estate website Prop2go.com, said his company is preparing to move into new market segments, including cars and jobs.

Prop2go’s technology allows landlords and property managers to find tenants for their apartment buildings. It has more than 100,000 listings from clients in seven countries, though its main focus is on Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. In a recent trade mission, it signed up three new clients in suburban Boston, which were its first clients in New England.

Richard explained in an

File-sharing enterprise TitanFile Inc. of Halifax has been named the joint winner of an award aimed at recognizing young companies contributing to Canada-U.S. collaboration.

The U.S. Embassy in Ottawa is holding a conference Wednesday titled The Canada-U.S. Partnership: Enhancing the Innovation Ecosystem, and in honor of the conference it held a contest for startups whose work contributed to cooperation between the countries. TitanFile and FloorNav3D of Toronto won the competition and are invited to the conference in Ottawa.

Founded by Milan Vrekic and Tony Abou-Assaleh, TitanFile’s

Cape Breton healthcare administration company Health Outcomes Worldwide has secured $840,000 in funding from federal and provincial governments to help with the roll-out of its new how2trak product.

Innovacorp, the Nova Scotia government’s innovation agency, said this morning it has made an equity investment of $250,000 in the New Waterford-based company. And the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency said in a posting on its website that it has extended Health Outcomes a $500,000 provisionally repayable contribution, which means it will have to be wholly or partially repaid under certain

 With a new in-licensing deal signed and sealed, Sackville, N.B.-based biotech Soricimed Biopharma is preparing to begin its Phase I human tests for its own cancer drug and cancer diagnostic product in 2012.

On Wednesday, the company announced that it has in-licensed a proprietary peptide from the University Health Network of Toronto so it can commercialize the drug. A peptide is a small protein, and this particular peptide can stop growth in cervical, bone and lung cancer cells. It has similar properties to the peptide Soricimed has been developing for the past six years.

In an

Fresh from the introduction of new training software products, Mathew Georghiou is gearing up to launch a software he believes could change the face of online entrepreneurship training.

Georghiou is the CEO of MediaSpark of Sydney, whose main business is producing GoVenture training software that educates employees through simulations, social features and gaming. On Oct. 18, the company announced the launch of GoVenture Any Business, which can be customized to train the staff of any enterprise in any sector. The new simulation has already received a Gold Omni Award with a perfect 10.0

With a bit of luck, Wilson Executive Search has the wisdom of Solomon because it will need it to find the perfect manager for the new regional venture fund for Atlantic Canada.

The Halifax recruitment firm was mandated on Sept. 1 to find a “qualified individual or company” by late November to lead the fund, to which Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have both committed $15 million.

So far, the creation of the fund has proceeded swimmingly. The two provinces have commissioned Stewart McKelvey to do the legal work and hope the fund will open its doors on Feb. 1. And the perennial problem in

Saint John has become the third New Brunswick city to be named to the Smart21, a club of cities and towns from around the world dedicated to the "broadband economy", the New York-based Intelligent Community Forum said Friday.

Fredericton received the honour several times, most recently in 2009, and Moncton made the list in 2009 and 2010.

"What we did is finally throw our hat in the ring," said Jeff Roach, the former executive director of Propel ICT and the brains behind the new thethinkcity.ca website. He said the other New Brunswick cities had applied repeatedly in the past but this

Innovacorp, Nova Scotia’s technology commercialization agency, has received 142 applications for its biennial I-3 competition, up almost 7 percent from two years ago and reflecting particular interest in the Halifax area.

Dawn House, spokeswoman for the agency, said Innovacorp is pleased with the numbers as it had set a target of 100 submissions.  It had received 133 submissions two years ago.

The Halifax region accounted for the lion’s share of the submissions with 69, up from 54 in 2009. Cape Breton was second with 27 submissions, followed by 24 from Digby and the Annapolis Valley, 16