However, many signs of recovery are abound in the M&A world. In 2010, Google made six acquisitions, many in the mobile app arena. Meanwhile, Yamli has been steadily growing its profile. Nearly all the items on my wish list for Yamli (noted in the previous blog post) have been developed over the past three years by Yamli’s founder, Habib Haddad, and his team. Consequently, Yamli reported last week that approximately 2.5 million Arabic words are typed daily using its service.

Given the pace of recovery, and assuming Yamli continues to do all the right things, I believe Yamli will be looking at options by summer 2012.

Utilizing YouTube tags and annotations, the company did not only succeed in engaging its website visitors in a very unique way, but it was also able to gain tremendous viral reach as the new site/video propelled it to being one of the top five viral videos on the internet for the week of June 12-19 (Viral Blog rankings).

Check out the video below, or go to BooneOakley.com to see it.

Daniel McCann (Photo Credit: Saskatchewan Business Journal)

Daniel McCann wants to revolutionize the current online payment process used by millions of online shoppers when conducting online credit card transactions. During a telephone interview from his office in Regina, Saskatchewan, the 29 years-old inventor and entrepreneur told Your World Today that his new device has the potential of making the role of third-party security verification (Payment Gateways) obsolete.

And he should know what he is talking about. He was 26 when he first came up with the idea of a personal credit card reader; a fresh graduate of the University of Regina with a Bachelor degree in Computer Science. He entered his idea in a business plan competition sponsored by the Regina municipal government (called Progress2Capital) and placed in the top 10. He tried again the following year and won the first place prize of $10,000 in cash plus $5,000 in legal services. This was all the start-up capital he had to convert his idea from dream to reality.

A short three years later, and at age 29, Daniel is the President of a new technology company that employs 15 full-time employees. His invention is a patented reality, and is being sold online and through retail stores in Regina. He plans to offer the device in stores across Canada by mid to late summer of 2009.

I ask Daniel about his ‘big idea’, hoping that he would share his long-term vision of re-inventing the processing of online credit card transactions, and how the new process will cut the middleman out of the equation (Payment Gateways). He obliges.

‘Payment Gateways’ are companies that are used by online shops to process online purchases made by credit cards. The extra encryption and transaction verification (that Payment Gateways provide) is required by banks and credit card companies to accept transactions from online shops because the credit card information is entered by consumers on a website by hand, which makes the transaction less secure than if the credit card was ‘swiped’ at a point of sale (POS) terminal (e.g. : a retail store or restaurant transaction). When you pay for your bill with a credit card at a restaurant, the conventional store’s credit card reader retrieves the card’s information directly from the magnetic strip on the card and transmits it electronically to the merchant’s bank.

If Payment Gateways can be avoided, merchants and customers can save on transaction costs for shopping online by eliminating the percentage that the middlemen (gateways) charge on each sale to allow the use of credit cards on a website. This can translate into lower product prices for consumers, or higher margins for online merchants.

That vision will have to wait until enough people adopt the new portable device that he has invented in order to justify to merchants why they should go through the trouble of offering it as a payment option. If the technology becomes main stream, that will also convince banks and credit card processors to accept transaction info coming directly from a SmartSwipe device.

If that vision becomes reality, the impact on personal online shopping will be monumental. With the savings on transaction fees that online merchants can achieve by skipping the Payment Gateways, SmartSwipe can position itself as the next PayPal of the world.

For now, however, using the device allows online shoppers to automatically and securely fill the credit card fields in any existing online shopping transaction page. It is marketed as a safer alternative to entering credit card information manually on websites while shopping online.

The SmartSwipe website  gives a good list of potential risks to watch for when shopping online. This personal/portable credit card reader allows the online shopper to avoid entering credit card information manually by swiping the card using the USB-connected SmartSwipe device. The information is then encrypted using the same encryption technology required by banks, and transferred directly into the appropriate credit card fields on the website where the shopper is conducting the transaction.

Daniel was kind enough to send Your World Today a demo unit. I tested the SmartSwipe with a couple of online credit card purchases and  everything worked as advertised. The software didn’t activate automatically when testing a credit card transaction on Firefox (version 3.0.8), but worked without glitches in Internet Explorer (version 7.0.6).

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article, where Daniel McCann shares with YWT readers the journey of his invention from idea to reality, and provides valuable advice to similar entrepreneurs about patenting, raising capital, product design, and how online social networking played a crucial part in the invention process.

1. Get a domain name: You can buy a .com name from anywhere. However, a .ca name is regulated by the Canadian Internet Registry Authority (CIRA). Only certain domain registrar’s are approved by CIRA to sell .ca names. You can go to CIRA.ca and see a list of approved registrars who can sell you a .ca name.  My recommendation is to go with one that can give you both a domain name and a good hosting package so you can keep both under the same roof for easy management.

You can try godaddy.com. They are one of the larger ones, but they have annoying up-sell ads at every step of the way and all over your account management screen whenever you login to work on your website.

I prefer Bluehost, but they can’t register .ca accounts, so I curently have my domain from lowcostdomains.ca (not recommended, they’re very slow to respond to support questions), and it’s being hosted with Bluehost.com.  Bluehost has 24/7 online chat support, and they’re very quick at answers and guiding you through doing anything you need to do (including how to set up your non-bluehost domain to be hosted with a bluehost account). Besides, Bluehost has the latest wordpress right on their hosting account, so all you do is a one-click install and voila!

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2. Get a hosting account: Already mostly covered above. If you are looking at options other than GoDaddy or Bluehost, there is a list on wordpress.org of all hosting companies that have the minimum requirements to handle the wordpress install.

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3. Install WP software from WordPress.org on your hosting account: If it’s not already offered as a built-in option from your selected hosting company, download it from wordpress.org then upload it to the public_html directory in your new hosting account.

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4. Download a backup of your existing free wordpress.com blog: Go to ‘Tools’ in the admin menu of your old blog. Click ‘Export’. Select the directory (e.g. your desktop) you want to plop the file in, then follow the on-screen directions.

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5. Upload the backup into your new wordpress.org hosted blog: Go to ‘Tools’ in your new-blog admin menu. Click ‘Import’. Follow instructions and upload the file that you just exported from the old blog. You will now have all your posts and comments from the previous blog appear on your new blog.

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6. Go ahead and take your new blog for a ride! Unlike wordpress.com, a wordpress.org blog lets you install any widget or plugin your heart desires! You should know that you will not see many of the widgets you are used to from the previous free wordpress.com admin panel. You will have to download them or something similar (or better!) from the widget and plugin directory on wordpress.org. Click the image below to see a list of the plugins I use for YourWorldToday.ca.

Click to Enlarge

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If you want to carry your traffic with you from the old blog to the new blog (redierct):

If you have built some traffic that frequents your old (free) wordpress.com blog, then search engines and other sites will have lots of articles/references linking back to your old blog. You want those to go directly to your new blog until all the search engines refresh their links and you get a chance to update all the directories and sites that you have used to promote your old blog.

To do this, you will need to perform a little trick to your old wordperss.com blog, since there is no straight-up option from the admin menu to allow this. Don’t worry though, it’s not that hard and there is a guide by wordpress staff available at http://support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/redirecting-your-blog/.

Currently, wordpress.com lets people point their own domain (website name) to the wordpress.com blog. So, when I bought the name YourWorldToday.ca, I could have pointed that name to my free wordperss.com account so that I don’t have an unprofessional looking address like “http://johndoe.wordpress.com“. We are going to use this ability to do our little trick.

1. Point new website name to old blog: This is done by changing the ‘nameservers’ of my new domain name to the wrodpress nameservers (supplied by WP). Changing the nameserver of the new domain name is done through the admin panel of the Registering company you used to buy your domain name. I find the name ‘nameserver’ a bit intimidating for a non-techie, so let’s go ahead and refer to those as ‘arrows’ from now on, mmmkay?

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2. Tell old blog to recognize your new website name: Once you point the “arrows” of your new domain name to the old wordpress.com blog, you go to your old blog admin panel, choose ‘Domains’ from the ‘Upgrade’ menu, type the address of your new domain name in the ‘Add Domain’ box, and click on ‘Add Domain to Blog’. If your “arrows” are pointing to the blog correctly, the next screen will give you the option to ‘buy a domain’ (or something like that). Click that option and spend $10 via Paypal to get 10 WordPress credits (no way around this. It will give you a year’s worth of redirection, which can be extended for another $10 each year).

Note: If the ‘buy’ option doesn’t come up, don’t panic. Sometimes it can take up to 72 hours for the ‘interweb’ to recognize that the “arrows”of your new domain are now pointing to a new place. In most cases, it doesn’t take that long (mine switched within 2 hours). You can also double check that you entered the wordpress nameserver addresses corectly in your domain’s manager window. WordPress won’t give you the ‘buy’ option unless it can recognize that the “arrows” of your domain name are pointed at it.

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3. Connect new website name with old blog: Now that your arrows are pointed correctly, and you paid the 10 bucks to WordPress, you will have the option to ‘put blog here’ when you go back to the ‘Domains’ page in the ‘Upgrade’ menu of your old blog admin panel. Click the option and you will now be able to use ‘YourDomainName.com’ to get to your old wordpress.com blog.

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4. Pull a Brutus and stab the old blog in the back: Now comes the trick! Once ye olde WordPress.com blog is all comfortable and cozy under the new domain name, we’re going to go behind its back and change up those “arrows” again and make them point to where we REALLY want them to point: our new blog! To do this, just get the nameservers of your hosting company account (For Bluehost: ns1.bluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com), and enter them instead of the WordPress nameservers that we entered in step 1. Wait again for the customary 2 to 72 hours while the interweb refreshes the direction of your arrows, and now you will have your new website name pointing to your new blog, and any visitors to your old blog will automatically be redirected to your new blog.

You don’t need to brace for a Shakespearean epic plot for revenge by WordPress.com. They’re cool with it.

Our discussion was about how an ad agency in another part of Canada has been successful in utilizing effective outsourcing to provide its clients with competitive pricing and shorter delivery times by being able to have people continuously work on projects around the clock due to the advantage of various time zones.

That prompted a larger question of whether ‘creative’ work can be outsourced. Can ‘good creative’ be delivered only by creative talent that exists in the location of the client, and who have natural cultural/geographic ties to the environment where the creative will be used?

In my experience, here are some (not all) of the factors that I would look at when evaluating the option to outsource (to India, for example):

1. Proven Expertise & Reliability

A solid portfolio of projects and talent. References from other outsourcers who worked with the Indian company. In short, the quality of the work has to be at least the same (or even better) compared to local quality in the country of the outsourcing company.

The Indian provider must also have (and be able to demonstrate) a stable market presence. The outsourcing company can not take the risk of accepting a client project and making commitments, then turn around and discover that the Indian partner has closed shop without prior notice and is no longer in business.

This is the basic requirement of vetting and pre-screening the potential partner before starting any serious discussions or negotiations. Quality and reliable delivery can not be jeopardized by the potential advantages of outsourcing the work.

2. Communication

This includes factors like language, technology platform, people, professional practice, and cultural contexts (when applicable).

Communicating effectively is perhaps the single most important factor that affects the quality of the end product. Having an open and reliable channel of communication (between the company outsourcing the work and the company providing the service in India) is the backbone of a successful relationship.

Both sides must be intimately familiar with any technology platform that they agree to use for handling communications, manage document exchanges, event logging, feedback, project timelines, etc. Both must be prepared to invest in training their relative teams.

The assigned person(s) who will handle communication between the two companies have to meet ahead of time and determine if they are able to understand each other and build trust. If the project manager from the Indian side is not a good fit to handle communications with the outsourcer, then a new one must be selected.

In many cases, companies seeking to outsource are concerned with language barriers, and they usually expect that the Indian partner be able to communicate effectively in the language of the outsourcer (e.g. English) and not the other way around (the outsourcing company doesn’t expect to make provisions to communicate in Hindi).

While cultural context does play a factor in communicating creative requirements, this is not necessarily a deterrent. Ensuring that briefs and project requirements are clear and thorough is a shared responsibility between the outsourcing company and the Indian provider.

In fact, some people agree that it is an advantage to have access to creative output that is not bound by local conformity to cultural biases and norms. To some businesses, ‘different’ makes their design/ads stand out, and that is a competitive advantage.

The cultural relevance of a project can be determined on a per-project basis. For example, would/should a local newspaper in Dublin be able to outsource the creation of daily cartoons about local politics? Not likely. Can a Dublin ad agency outsource the creation of ads for a local car dealer? Most certainly.

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There are other factors to consider, but if the above two requirements exist and are satisfactory to both partners, then the rest can be negotiated and agreed upon (including pricing that is fair for the quality of work, and that provides the outsourcer with a competitive advantage they wouldn’t otherwise have).

These are always interesting events, one of (if not the only) event where you can get to meet the who’s who of Halifax’s tech-savvy innovative minds. Here we have the bloggers, the advertising creatives, the software gurus, and the entrepreneur dreamers congregating in one location for a bevvy and a chat. They share information, exchange cards, and discuss ways for project collaborations. It’s a relaxed atmosphere, and one that encourages innovation and social collaboration.

One such innovation came from a couple of Halifax developers that I met today (@coryschop and @JessyO), who just today launched a new Twitter application called “Tweepler”. They were featured on TechCrunch.com, one of the most popular technology review blogs out there.

The review can be found here. You can click here to visit and try Tweepler, or click on their logo below.

Halifax is full of young, innovative entrepreneurs. Can you imagine the possibilities if the city actually focused on nurturing these initiatives and providing our local talent with the resources they need to grow and florish?

For those who don’t know, the Ice Awards is an awards show that celebrates creative advertising and marketing made in Atlantic Canada (‘ICE’ stands for Innovation, Creativity, and Enterprise). To see the winning ads, you can visit the ICE website or click on the TV below.

Halifax-based agencies Extreme and Colour, and Newfoundland-based Target took home the majority of awards.

One thing I noticed while mingling with the local advertising crowd is their common use of Twitter. Now, while I pride myself for having above-average knowledge of social marketing and interaction tools, I must confess that I never really adopted the micro messaging site, or really understood why people use it. For Arabic users, a similar site called WatWet.com offers the same service.

In comes the ‘In Plain English’ series from the folks at CommonCraft.com, a service by a young couple based in Seattle who specialize in ‘explanations’. They produce short fun tutorial and training clips to explain, in plain English, whatever you want them to explain. An excellent substitute to boring corporate training videos that make you want to take a toothpick to your eyes for all the bad 80′s style cinematography you just had to endure.

So, if you are like me and you just don’t get what eveyrone is ‘Twittering’ about, here is Twitter – In Plain English.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

That’s where the features of the Pomegranate Phone start to draw skepticism from people. But the features that follow leave no doubt that this is a gag-ad. The ad showcases the phone as a personal shaver and mobile personal coffee brewer.

Thus begins Nova Scotia’s latest, slickest, and most expensive endeavour into using new media and social networking to pass the message of the ‘Come To Life‘ campaign to their unsuspecting target market. The viral campaign peddles this ‘it does everything’ phone with all the might that a $300K advertising budget can provide. Yet it seems that the jury is still out on the effectiveness of this campaign.

Visit the website by clicking the image below. Or see the videos below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq2A6bi_sDE

The campaign was produced by Bristol Group, Egg Films/Hatch, and Breathe Media.

• Art Director: Dan Couto
• Copy writer/creative director: Albert Ianni
• Production Manager: Collette Snow
• Designers: Andrew Grantham, Michael Gatto
• Internal Programmer: Melissa Castle
• External programmers/designers: Breathe Media
• Production/Post: Egg Films/Hatch Post
• Actors/Models: Christopher Killam, Lita Lewellen, John Beale, Laura Bleasdale, Andrea Wilson, Pasha, ?Others?

Synopsis:

The impossible-made-possible features of this phone are not so far fetched. In early 2007, I reviewed a new product by an Israel-based technology company that produced a pocket projector device not unlike the built-in fantasy projector showcased for the Pom. The Explay Nano Projector is effectively the world’s smallest consumer projector and was planned to launch to market in 2008. The company was working on providing the technology as OEM for cell phone and camera manufacturers to incorporate into future devices. Click picture below to visit their website.

Similarly, the voice translation function currently exists, though the technology is not fit for seamless speech recognition yet (only phrase by phrase). Devices combining voice recognition and translation software are a dime a dozen. A simple speech-to-speech voice recognition translator can be bought from Ectaco for a little under $400 CDN. The software itself is available for installation on smart phones.

Last but not least, a hybrid musical instrument phone was recently launched by Japan’s Kddi in collaboration with Yamaha. See my review of this technology here. It can be played as a harmonica, trumpet, flute, and various other instruments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-76oq_AHHg

The campaign can be said to have three components:

• The medium
• The message
• The actual product it peddles.

The Medium:

A great viral campaign by Bristol, Hatch, and Breathe. World class, really. It achieves the desired effect of getting people to pass around the url to give their friends and colleagues a quick chuckle. The campaign was implemented in Boston, Toronto, Calgary, and Ottawa. On Tuesday of last week, 200 pomegranates (the fruit, not the phone) containing the url (pomegranatephone.com) were passed around to people by street teams in Boston, Ottawa, and Toronto during their morning commute.

Yet, there appears to be a disconnect from the Pom site and the site containing the client’s message. It’s as if two different companies were hired, one for the flashy viral campaign, and another for the Come To Life mini-site.

The Message:

Here is where it gets tricky. Critics of this campaign point to how the message is hard to locate in this viral. Even when you do get to the mini-site containing the video clips that are meant to pitch Nova Scotia to the target market, there appears to be a disconnect between the demographic target of the videos and the demographic target of the Pom’s viral.

The Pom’s viral appeals to a tech-savvy younger demographic that spends a lot of time on the internet and enjoys passing around virals. Other demographics that spend a lot of time on the internet and pass around junk mail and viral videos are employees, stay at home parents, and teenagers without much to do.

Yet, Bristol notes that the key demographic they are after is “influencers and business leaders in key markets”, a group that usually stays on top of trends and the latest in technology.

Bristol is correct in that influencers and business leaders stay on top of technology and trends. However, perhaps a fatal flaw here is that the Pom phone is neither a new technology nor a trend, so it would be of little interest to business leaders to visit the site or forward to their contacts. It is just a gag site, and we have already established who is attracted to gag sites. Leaders and influencers are too busy leading and influencing to spend time checking out gag sites.

So, ultimately, the main visitors that ended up on the site were teenagers from around the world, and expat young professionals who out-migrated from Nova Scotia seeking opportunities in other Canadian or international cities. They clicked, they chuckled, some sent it to their friends.

Some followed the viral into the Nova Scotia Come To Life message, and were disappointed. The video testimonials mainly showcase entrepreneurs, doctors, and enterprises. No representative age group was showcased doing the things these expats fled the province to do elsewhere. This brings us to the third and final component of this campaign.

The product:

Regardless of how flashy the packaging is, the sale ultimately relies on the product itself. Does the product deliver as advertised? Is it reliable? Ultimately, the expat demographic left Nova Scotia for a reason. They are aware of the challenges, and are in touch with the motherland enough to know if these challenges have been overcome by the province/city or not.

So, you want people to ‘Come To Life’ in Nova Scotia? Many believe all Nova Scotia has to do is actually provide the product they are peddling, not just market a false image with pretty packaging and slick marketing. What if HRM City Council actually spent time implementing this fantastic 5-year Economic Strategy they came up with in 2005?

I will leave you with this MSN conversation between me and one such expat that might shed light on what I mean (look! He is using technology too!)

Jeff Lohnes graduated from Saint Mary’s University with an excellent record in student leadership and community involvement. Shortly after, he left for Toronto, where he currently works for the National Speakers Bureau as a Youth Market specialist.

First, allow me to clarify the parameters of this review. This review will not delve into the experience of each candidate. It will not scrutinize them on key issues either. While important, a review as thorough as that is simply beyond my capacity for time. Therefore, I hope readers will accept my attempt at deciphering the suitability of a candidate based solely on: Their use of technology in their campaign.

My reasoning is simple:

1. For a city to grow and prosper, it must have a vision of how it wants its future to look like, and appoint capable people to lead it towards that future,
2. Any talk of working towards or within ‘the future’ ultimately involves some form of interaction with the tools of this future, namely existing and upcoming technologies that are designed to provide leaders with the ability to efficiently and productively collect, analyze, and communicate information.

In other words, if a candidate can not collect, analyze, understand, and communicate information quickly, accurately, and efficiently, then it stands to reason that they may not be able to plan/implement/respond in a timely manner to the continuous pace of changes that are needed for a successful march towards the future. Of course, this is only a problem if a united vision of the future is present and if there is a collective will on council to achieve it within this lifetime.

THE SCORE CARD below will attempt to reflect a candidate’s ability to work with the communication tools of existing mainstream technologies (the internet), which may tell whether or not a candidate has access to the tools that open a world beyond Halifax or their district for their consideration, tools that allow this candidate to draw on this world’s marvel when it’s time to envision the future of Halifax as a city with its place in Canada and the world.

You may disagree with the above criteria. Certainly, an elections candidate can serve his/her immediate district constituents very well without ever having to send a single email. “What’s that Bob? Need snow plows to clear your cul-de-sac twice a day? I’ll call the person responsible and see what can be done about that right away.”

However, I contend that a candidate that can get the street plowed AND use the internet is infinitely more productive, and more informed. But that’s just me.

The big question is: can a candidate’s awareness of technology (the internet, productivity and communications tools, etc.) be a good indicator of their capacity for visioning a future for Halifax? Does this mean this candidate is completely unfit for council duties? Is it more acceptable for a candidate to be less apt with technology, vision, and the future if these things are not a priority to their target voter? Where is the line drawn between individual district priorities and the priorities of the city as a whole? These are the questions that keep me up at night.

I will leave this determination to your individual and collective priorities for the city and your understanding of the qualifications you require of your elected leader to achieve these priorities.

So then, let’s proceed to the rankings!

Measurement Criteria:

To offer a fair comparison, we will mainly analyze a candidate’s use of the internet to communicate in their campaign. If a candidate is unable or unwilling to use the most basic form of today’s communication technologies (a website), then I am willing to safely assume that this candidate does not have the knowledge of the tools of today’s productive leaders and visionaries. But, again, that’s just me.

Candidates will get 1 point on their use of each of the following online communication tools in their campaign. This does not mean that the candidate has to know how to program or create any of the following. It would suffice if they were merely aware of their existence/importance and have directed the appropriate resources towards addressing them.

- Website Presence
- Website professionally built?
- Mobile version of website? (For text message campaigns)

- Website contains:
- Bio
- Platform
- Clear description of represented district boundaries
- Contact Info
- Form to join an email list or newsletter

- Press Kit:
- Downloadable/Printable High-Res Candidate Photo
- Downloadable/Printable High-Res Campaign Logo
- Downloadable/Printable Bio
- Downloadable/Printable Platform
- Notable Candidate Quotes
- Dated Press Releases
- Log of Candidate mentions in the media
- Voting Information
- Volunteer information
- Donations information
- Support information
- Online Support signup form
- Online Volunteer signup form
- Online Donations capability (Paypal, etc.)
- Useful links to related external information
- Video clips (1 point for each video up to a max of 5)

- Use of Social Media tools
- Presence on Social networks (Facebook, etc.)
- Presence on YouTube or other Vlog (Video Blog) sites
- Frequently updated Blog
- Provide link-back tags/banners/widgets
- Use of RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

With the limited time at hand, I am only able to rate candidate websites that I am able to easily find. For those who do not have a readily identifiable web presence, I have assumed they don’t have a website altogether and are therefore marked as ‘0’ in the score card. If you know that a candidate marked with a ‘0’ actually does have a website, please send the web address and I will revise their score accordingly.

Notes:

1. The information in the score card is accurate as of Friday September 19.
2. Please allow for human errors.
3. If a candidate has updated their website to include any of the above elements after Friday, let me know and I will update their score.
4. If you wish to apply your own criteria to rate the candidates, please feel free to use this score card format. You can download the Excel file by clicking here.

Here are some excerpts from the score card. Click on image to enlarge. The complete score card is available as a PDF file Here.

Bedford Candidate Online Campaign Analysis

Halifax Mayoral Online Campaign Scores

Downtown Candidate Online Campaign Analysis