Populus Inks Major Deal in Barbados

Health information company Populus Global Solutions has won an international bid to supply the Government of Barbados with a fully-integrated national electronic health information system – its fourth major contract in the Caribbean-Central American market.

Fredericton-based Populus, which received a $260,000 investment from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation several year ago, has commercialized software for running an electronic health information system, or HIS. It has been recognized by the World Health Organization as one of the best all-encompassing systems of its kind, said the

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Propel, BioAlliance Win CAIP Funding

PropelICT and the P.E.I. BioAlliance have been awarded five years of funding under the National Research Council’s Canada Accelerator and Incubator Program, or CAIP, which will allow them to expand their programing.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in Waterloo, Ont., today that the federal government will devote $100 million to funding several organizations across the country, including PropelICT and the BioAlliance. Though the government did not announce the size of funding, it said no accelerator would receive more than $5 million over the five-year period and all recipients must

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Teaching Youth Art, Entrepreneurship

A strong smell of pizza, along with words like “futurepreneur” and “artpreneur” drift in the air as the first cohort of ArtPreneur 2.0 meet at the Halifax offices of the Centre for Entrepreneurship Education and Development, or CEED. This is the second of eight meetings for the young artists who are here to learn skills they hope will help them turn their talents into profitable businesses.

A collaboration between CEED and the Youth Art Connection, a group that partners with community organizations and professional artists to deliver programs that empower youth, the new eight-week

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AVF, Launch36 Prove Our Progress

To assess the superb quality of the companies on display in Halifax this week, we should start with Charlottetown drug discovery company Neurodyn, which captured the best growth stage company at the Atlantic Venture Forum.

It’s difficult to highlight just this company.  You could choose DeCell Technologies of Halifax, which won the award for the best early-stage company.  Or any of the five companies that pitched Monday night at the Launch36 DemoDay. Or the other 24 startups that presented at the AVF. You could even focus on topLog of Halifax, which missed these events but was at

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Car Service Uber Comes to Halifax

Uber, a car-for-hire service that’s created controversy across the continent, has come to Halifax.

The San Francisco company announced Wednesday that it has launched its service in Halifax, so a fleet of drivers can now use its app to communicate with customers and accept payments.

Uber, which began five years ago, provides users with a smartphone app that takes their credit card number and connects them with a fleet of cars. When users need a car, the app shows a map of their immediate vicinity and outlines what cars are nearby. They can view the ratings of each driver as determined by

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Press Release: SHIFT in Vancouver

SHIFT Energy, a Saint John company that is developing automated energy-control systems for large facilities, issued the following press release yesterday with Canucks Sports & Entertainment:

CANUCKS SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT IMPLEMENTS NEW GREENING MEASURES AT ROGERS ARENA

17 June 2014, Vancouver, BC

Canucks Sports & Entertainment (CSE), in conjunction with SHIFT Energy, announced the launch of a comprehensive, automated Energy Optimization System (EOS™) at Rogers Arena. As part of CSE’s commitment to environmental sustainability and energy conservation, SHIFT’s EOS solution, the first

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Singh Sets Sites on Incubators, Grants

When Paul Singh speaks, it’s usually a good idea to forget the F-bombs and concentrate on the wisdom and candor of the other 60-percent of his speech.

When he returned to the Atlantic Venture Forum yesterday morning, he set the tone for the discussion for the rest of the day by challenging some of the pillars of the Atlantic Canadian ecosystem, including the availability of government grants and the number of incubators and accelerators.

Singh is the founder of Disruption Corporation in Washington, D.C., which operates the $50 million Crystal Tech Fund. Last year, when he was with 500

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Proposify Named to Techvibes 20

On the day it delivered a superb pitch at Atlantic Venture Forum, Halifax-based Proposify was named Tuesday to the Techvibes 20.

Launched in February, the Techvibes 20 is a bi-monthly list of the hottest and most promising tech startups across Canada. The list is carefully curated by Techvibes editorial staff and reflects who's making waves in our nation's tech ecosystem right now.

Proposify’s founders Kyle Racki and Kevin Springer recently sold their web design firm Headspace Design so they could concentrate full time on Proposify. Formerly called PitchPerfect, the company helps

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Launch36’s Cohort 4 Focuses on Sales

A few hundred startup enthusiasts gathered at Pier 21 in Halifax on Monday evening to graduate the fourth cohort of tech companies from Launch36, the regional startup accelerator.

While the headline story is five more tech companies progressing into the real economy, the deeper story is about the quality of great mentorship growing out of New Brunswick and spreading through the region.

Dealing with the headline first, the graduating companies include:

Adeptio, Charlottetown, which offers software and programs for personal coaches;

HotSpot Parking, Fredericton, which allows for

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Bungalo Sets Up Office in Halifax

An Icelandic startup that markets cottages to international tourists is setting up shop in Halifax as the launchpad for its Canadian expansion.

Bungalo began in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to help Icelanders in financial straits earn some income by renting out their cottages to tourists from around the world. The enterprise was so successful that it has expanded into Sweden and is now moving into the Canadian market.

“We want to start off in Nova Scotia,” said Founder and CEO Haukur Gudjonsson in an interview Friday. “We think it is the perfect market to establish our proof of

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