Bedford-based software company NewPace announced yesterday that it has secured two loans worth a total of $850,000 from Business Development Bank of Canada to develop and market its suite of services, which will soon include a new mobile telecom product.

The company, founded in 2009, said in a statement the funding supports the development and marketing of a new mobile software solution that NewPace will sell to global telecommunications operators. The software solution is based on the Rich Communications Suite (RCS-e) specifications, a newly adopted mobile global standard established by

Halifax-based Tether announced overnight that it has extended its award-winning app – which allows simple and affordable laptop connections through smartphones – to iPhones. 

Originally known as TetherBerry, Tether first released its product for BlackBerry in 2009 to end the frustration of being unable to find a WiFi hotspot when most needed. After a little more than two years, Tether now provides 500,000 Blackberry and Android users with a dependable Internet connection for their laptops and desktops, using their existing smartphone data plans.

“We're excited to help the legions of

Innovacorp, the Nova Scotia government’s innovation agency, will announce tomorrow a $1 million investment in aioTV, a revolutionary platform that allows access to a range of video channels on a handheld device or computer.

Greg Phipps, Innovacorp’s Director of Investment, today confirmed posts that appeared on a few tech websites in the U.S. last week outlining the investment.

AioTV (short for All-In-One Television) was the brainchild of Michael Earle, a native Haligonian who once worked for Eastlink and has since moved to Denver, Co. The company and its five founding partners -- Don

When the board of the Prince Edward Island BioAlliance met last month for its first strategy session in three years, it didn’t exactly have to rip up its old plans and start afresh.

No, a better term for the BioAlliance’s task would be “fine tuning”. The BioAlliance knows that in six years it has established a successful model, with a gaggle of bioscience companies and organizations employing almost 1,000 people, and the private sector segment growing strongly. The partners in the alliance are in no hurry to fix what isn’t broken, so they are building on success with a few new or enhanced

SimplyCast, the Halifax-based multi-channel marketing company, is planning to launch its Version 7 product in January, including new features that will make it easier for users to reach their audience.

“It will basically allow us to launch products faster and it will include the most attractive user interface we’ve ever had,” CEO Saeed El-Darahali said in an interview this week.

A former executive at Innovacorp, El-Darahali left the government innovation agency in 2009 to develop his idea of starting an online company that offered a single point of contact for marketing across a range

Halifax’s LED Roadway Lighting Ltd. has bought the intellectual property and other assets of distressed Streetlight Intelligence Inc. of Victoria, B.C., to combine smart wireless technology with its energy-efficient HPS and LED street lighting.

To meet the latent demand for more sophisticated outdoor lighting, the company founded by CEO Chuck Cartmill has been researching new technologies such as dimming features that use less light during low traffic periods. The acquisition will propel the company further in that direction by adding wireless controls to the lighting technology.

“LRL

Halifax-based Sheepdog Inc., an industry leader in the development of Google Apps, began beta-testing its new Milely app for smartphones on Monday, following up on the success of its gTrax time tracking application and the GooGrant application filter.

The company said in a statement that Milely operates on Android and iPhone to track the users’ driving mileage and includes such features as a management approval process, entry auditing and custom reporting.

The company is targeting corporations interested in tracking staff mileage in an efficient and inexpensive manner.

As part of the

 Three months before the year-end figures are in we can all but confirm that Atlantic Canada is enjoying a record-setting year for venture capital investment.

Canada’s Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA) and Thomson Reuters last week released their VC stats for Canada and the good news is that the country is doing reasonably well this year in VC investment. The better news is that Atlantic Canada is doing brilliantly.

In the first three quarters of this year, venture capital firms have pumped $66.2 million into Atlantic Canadian companies; more than triple the $21.3

My sources say – and I hope they’re correct – that reports of the pending death of the National Research Council’s Institute of Information Technology facility in Fredericton are greatly exaggerated.

Last week, Warren McKenzie, chairman of the advisory board for the IIT, said publicly he expects the institute, which has a facility in Fredericton, will be closed by next spring and its talent will be absorbed into other government programs. The fear is that the R&D component will be transferred out of New Brunswick, meaning the province would lose a crucial segment of research in an

When Chris Zimmer looks at most e-books, he sees something tantamount to an electronic photocopy, but he believes they can be so much more.

Zimmer, a career filmmaker, has teamed up with Kirsten Tomilson, CEO of Lunenburg-based game producer Fourth Monkey  Media, to form Helix Media Publishing, which they hope will soon be producing an e-book a month.

Zimmer and Tomlison believe e-books should be more exciting than black-and-white reproductions of the printed page. They should be interactive, multilingual, with audio and video components, links to games and access to chat rooms. They