Innovacorp has received 65 entries for its CleanTech Open competition, more than doubling the Nova Scotian innovation agency’s internal target of 30.

Innovacorp has said it wants to find the best cleantech entrepreneurs in the world and encourage them to set up businesses in the province, so the competition is open to people with great ideas and business plans anywhere.

Though most of the entrants were from Nova Scotia, the competition did succeed in drawing competitors from as far away as China. The final tally is 48 Canadian entries, about 80% of which came from Nova Scotia. There

As it prepares to host angel organizations from across Canada next October, the Halifax-based First Angel Network is taking a lead in improving the standards of angel investing in Canada.

Ross Finlay, a founding member and de facto executive director of the Maritime group, spent last week at the National Angel Capital Organization Summit in Ottawa, and he and his executive are already organizing the next NACO Summit, which will be held in Halifax Oct. 24-26, 2012.

Finlay is now the vice-chair of NACO, the umbrella group for angel organizations in Canada, and also the chair of its new

PropelICT, the New Brunswick accelerator, has announced it is now accepting applications for its first five-month course in Launch 36.

For full details, please take a look at Propel's announcement here.

PropelICT announced in October that it would aim to take 36 seed level companies (with a preference for those setting up in New Brunswick) through its program in the next three years.

 

A Halifax startup pioneering a device that measures breast density may find its market buttressed by a wave of legislation sweeping the United States.

Densitas is a seed-level company launched by Dalhousie Associate Professor Mohamed Abdolell and serial entrepreneur Tim Burke. It is now developing the Densitas automated breast density measurement system, which will generate real-time breast density measurements each time a woman receives a screening mammogram.

The system, which the team hopes will be on the market in two years, can help to determine the risk of breast cancer. Women with

Customer relationship management giant Salesforce.com  yesterday unveiled its first step in integrating Radian6’s social media monitoring capabilities into its own suite of CRM services.

The San Francisco company, which earlier this year bought Fredericton-based Radian6 for $371 million, released a statement saying the new application includes new features in social monitoring, insights, engagement, workflow and websites.

The new tools – many of them developed in New Brunswick -- help companies to market their brands by monitoring what people are saying about them on Facebook and

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